The Letters of a Portuguese Nun

by vicomte de Gabriel Joseph de Lavergne Guilleragues

Con que encarcelan a toda nobleza.

Cancioneiro de Resende.

‘IN 1663,’ says Sainte-Beuve, ‘it became the policy of Louis XIV. to help Portugal against Spain, but the succour which he gave was indirect; subsidies were secretly furnished, the levying of troops was favoured, and a crowd of volunteers hastened there. Between this small army, commanded by Schomberg, and the feeble Spanish troops which disputed the soil with it, there were each summer many marches and counter-marches with but few results, many skirmishes and small fights, and among the latter, perhaps, one victory. Who troubles himself about it now? The curious reader, however, who only looks to his own pleasure, cannot help saying that all this was good, since the “Letters of the Portuguese Nun” grew from it.

As Sainte-Beuve indicates, the subject of the ‘Letters’ forms one of the episodes of the war between Spain and Portugal which followed as a consequence of the Restoration of 1640 and the achievement of the latter’s independence under the House of Braganza. This war, which lasted for twenty-eight years, until the final peace in 1668, was intermittent, and carried on only at long intervals owing to the state of the two contending parties. Spain had now entered on the period of her decline, and Portugal was in a hardly better condition after her sixty years’ captivity and the exhaustion of her forces which had taken place during the reign of Philip IV. Owing, however, to the aid of France, she had been enabled to hold her own up to 1659; but the news of the Peace of the Pyrenees seemed at first to take from her all hope of preserving her hardly won autonomy. Yet in spite of this, Mazarin, while signing the clause which bound France to abandon the Portuguese cause, determined, with his usual duplicity, that this should not prevent him from secretly aiding an ally whom he had found so useful in the past as a thorn in the side of Spain. Hardly, indeed, had the treaty been made than he began to occupy himself in recruiting for the Portuguese service a number of French officers whom the peace had left without employment. Among these the chief was Schomberg, who went to Lisbon in 1660 as commander-in-chief and to reorganise the Portuguese army. It was not, however, until 1663 that the hero of the Letters, Noel Bouton, afterwards Marquis of Chamilly and St. Leger, arrived in the country, which he was to leave four years later with the betrayal of a poor nun as his title to fame. For at the time when Schomberg was already there, we see Chamilly (as he is generally called) assisting at the marriage of his brother to Catherine le Comte de Nonant, referred to in the text (Letter II.).

Three years afterwards, finding himself without military employment in France, he came to Portugal, attracted probably, like so many others, by the reputation of the great captain, with whom he had doubtless established friendly relations during the campaign in Flanders (1656-8).

Our hero, if hero he may be called, was the eleventh son of Nicholas Bouton, Lord of Chamilly, Charangeroux, and, later on, St. Leger, properties of modest size in Burgundy. His family was good, but its attachment to the Princes of Condé during the Fronde had compromised its position and damaged its fortunes. Noel, the future marquis, was born in 1636, and as soon as his age allowed he entered on a military career. He served through the Flanders campaign under Turenne, and in 1658 was made captain, under the name of the Count of Chamilly, in Mazarin’s regiment of cavalry. Reaching Portugal at the end of 1663, or the commencement of 1664, he was given the same rank in a regiment commanded by a French officer of note, Briquemault. Although his name is not mentioned in any of the contemporary notices of the war, we know that he was present at the Siege of Valença de Alcantara (June 1664), at the battle of Castello Rodrigo (in the same month and year), at that of Montes Claros (June 1665), and at the principal sieges which occupied the next two years. In 1665, he was promoted to the rank of colonel, and two years later a diploma of Louis XIV., issued, perhaps, at the instance of his brother, the Governor of Dijon, gave Chamilly a similar post in the French army, with the evident intention of enabling him to leave the Portuguese service when he liked, even though the war with Spain should not be ended. This, taken together with the fact that in the document the space for the month is left blank, is extremely significant, and, as will be seen later on, certainly connects itself with the episode of the ‘Letters,’ even if it does not enter into their actual history.[2] The diploma of Louis XIV., it may be added, is dated 1667, and the sudden departure of Chamilly took place at the end of that year, so that it seems probable that the French captain, fearing future annoyance or even danger to himself from his liaison, had determined to secure a safe retreat.

But let us look for a moment at the authoress of the famous ‘Portuguese Letters.’

Marianna Alcoforado was born of a good family in the city of Beja and province of Alemtejo in the year 1640. Her father appears to us in the first years of the Restoration as a man in an influential position, well related, and discharging important commissions both administrative and political. He possessed a large agricultural property, which he administered with attention and even zeal, and was a Cavalier of the Order of Christ, besides being intimate with some of the principal men of the time. He had six children, of whom Marianna, according to Cordeiro, was the second. Life in Beja at that time seems to have been sufficiently insecure, owing to the fact that the province of which it was one of the chief cities formed the theatre of the war, and Beja itself was the chief garrison town. Tumults were constantly arising from quarrels between the various parts of the heterogeneous mass which then composed the Portuguese army, and hence increased care would be necessary on the part of Francisco Alcoforado in order that the education of his daughters might be conducted in such a manner as their position demanded. Hence, too, probably, the reason why Marianna and her sister Catherine entered the Convent of the Conception at an earlier age than was usual. Their father, occupied with administrative and military work on the frontier, would be unable to give them the oversight and attention which quieter times would have allowed.