João III, dying, had committed the government of his kingdom, and the care of his grandson, then only three years old, to his widow, Queen Catherine. She governed ably; and by her active exertions sent such effective succours to Mazagan, which was almost the only remaining Portuguese fortress in northern Africa, and then reduced to extremity by a Moorish army of eighty thousand men, that the Mohammedans were compelled to raise the siege. But the Portuguese detested queen-dowagers, especially when Spanish; and Queen Catherine in 1562 found it expedient to resign the regency to her brother-in-law, Cardinal Henry, for whom João had unsuccessfully endeavoured to obtain the papal tiara. The cardinal was a good man, but unfitted, by the habits of his past life, for government. Under his feeble administration, the authority of Portugal over her distant colonies was weakened, and the inferior governors struggled against the control of the viceroys; whilst, by committing the education of the infant king wholly to Jesuits, he prepared the way for the heavier calamities that followed.
Sebastian is represented as naturally endowed with many great and good qualities, especially an eager desire for knowledge. But the Jesuits seem to have studied only to guard their royal pupil from a tendency to vice. But scarcely any vice, however injurious to his own individual character and happiness, could have brought such wide-spreading misery, such utter destruction upon his kingdom, as did the extravagance into which Sebastian was hurried by mistaken virtues.[164] He grew up with the idea that hatred of the infidels was Christianity, and courage the first virtue of a king. He proved the ruin of Portugal.
He was very desirous of going out to India, to remedy, by his personal intervention, the disorders which had greatly increased during his minority, and to relieve Goa and Chaul, besieged, in consequence of the weakness those disorders had produced, by the whole force of the Mohammedans, in that part of the world. His ministers remonstrated. Sebastian listened to their representations, and resigned his purpose. It might have been happier for Portugal had he been suffered to execute it. Be that as it may, effective measures were taken. The enemy was repulsed from Chaul and Goa, and the Indian empire of Portugal was tranquillised.
In the year 1571, Philip II invited his nephew to take a part in the great armament against the Turks under Don John of Austria, which Sebastian declined doing, upon the plea of his dominions being desolated by the plague. Sebastian’s first visit to Africa more resembles some of the expeditions of the knights errant of romance, than anything in real sober history. He is said to have left Lisbon on a hunting excursion, in the course of which he crossed the sea, to pursue his sport in another quarter of the globe. Upon landing in Africa, he sent home for a small body of troops, and when they joined him, gave over hunting for the still more exciting amusement of making hostile inroads upon the neighbouring Moors. In these, he of course could do no more than take some booty and prisoners; and when he had roused the Mohammedans to assemble their forces, he was compelled, by the consciousness of inferior strength, to re-embark for Portugal. From this moment he thought of nothing but recovering the African possessions which his grandfather had lost or abandoned, and his court became a scene of contest and cabal—his grandmother, and Cardinal Henry, and all his sagest counsellors remonstrating vehemently against what they justly deemed the visionary projects of extravagant ambition; whilst flattering courtiers, heedless young men, and fanatical ecclesiastics eagerly encouraged his views.
[1574-1578 A.D.]
In the midst of these contests, a revolution in Africa seemed to offer an opportunity too favourable to be neglected. In the empire of Morocco, upon the death of the emperor Abdallah, his son Mulei Ahmed usurped the government. He ruled tyrannically, and his uncle Mulei Moloch [or Maula Abd-el-Melik], the legitimate sovereign, easily formed a strong party against him, with which, after a severe struggle, he succeeded in overthrowing the usurper and establishing himself in his place. Mulei Ahmed sought foreign assistance. Philip II declined interfering, when Mulei Ahmed addressed himself to Sebastian, adding to his offer of tribute that of the restitution of Arzilla. Philip is said to have laboured to deter his nephew from embarking in an enterprise altogether beyond his means. Most historians, with the exception of the Spanish, accused Philip of having employed underhand methods of instigating the young king to persevere in the determination he affected to dissuade. Especially he is charged with inducing the pope to applaud and encourage Sebastian in his purpose.[165] Certain it is that the king of Portugal’s resolution to accept Mulei Ahmed’s offers was not to be shaken. The old queen died of the anxiety occasioned by her grandson’s rashness and obstinacy; Cardinal Henry marked his disapprobation by refusing to act as regent during the king’s absence: and Sebastian appointed in his stead the archbishop of Lisbon and two noblemen, one of whom was João de Mascarenhas, an ex-viceroy of India, and as distinguished a warrior as any of those who had conquered and secured the Portuguese empire in the East.
THE DÉBACLE AT KASSR-EL-KEBIR (1578 A.D.)
The army with which, in June, 1578, Sebastian sailed for Africa, to overthrow the powerful sovereign of Morocco, consisted of less than sixteen thousand men. But he was accompanied by almost all the young nobility of Portugal, and he relied upon the assurances of Mulei Ahmed that great numbers of his former subjects would immediately declare in his favour. A few volunteer adventurers, from different countries, joined the standard of the chivalrous young king [including Sir Thomas Stukeley, an English Catholic].
Mulei Moloch assembled an army of one hundred thousand men, and at their head, although so reduced by illness that he was obliged to be carried in a litter, he advanced to meet the invader. Some of these troops having been formerly partisans of his nephew, Mulei Moloch, distrustful of their attachment, issued a proclamation, that whosoever pleased was at liberty to pass over to his competitor. This magnanimity secured his triumph over any who might have previously hesitated between their old and new sovereigns, and very few indeed of the dispossessed usurper’s former adherents took advantage of the liberty offered them.