Personally dissolute, as the nature of much of his poetry and his encouragement of the troubadours and their Courts of Love show, the stories told of the Court of Dom Diniz are far from edifying. Yet some of them are full of romantic interest, and exhibit the more constant love of the south instead of the airy fancies of Provence. Of these stories, the most romantic of all is perhaps that of Donna Branca or Blanche, the sister of Diniz and the abbess of Lorvão and Huelgas, who loved a humble carpenter Pedro Esteves, and was the mother of a son, João Nunes do Prado, who became Master of the Order of Calatrava, and was beheaded by Pedro the Cruel of Castile. It is this story which has furnished the plot of one of the most striking of modern Portuguese dramas, Almeida-Garrett’s “Donna Branca.” The king’s favours to his bastards, João Affonso and Affonso Sanches, whom he successively made Mordomo Mor, and Pedro Affonso, whom he made Alferes Mor and Count of Barcellos, involved him towards the end of his reign in bitter disputes with his only legitimate son, Affonso. Open war at last broke out between Dom Diniz and his heir-apparent, and a pitched battle was only prevented by S. Isabel riding between the armies in 1323, and making a peace between her husband and her son, which lasted until the death of the great peace monarch, the “Ré Lavrador” in 1325.
Immediately on his accession to the throne, Affonso IV., the successor of Dom Diniz, gave full vent to his rage against his half brothers, and with the consent and assistance of the nobility of Portugal, he beheaded João Affonso and confiscated all his lands, as well as those of Affonso Sanches, who had escaped to Castile. This act of revenge, or of justice, as he called it, consummated, he settled down as a worthy successor of his father, and fostered all the schemes of Diniz for the development of Portugal. He also continued his father’s policy of peace with Castile, and made a formal alliance with that country in 1327 when he married his daughter Donna Maria to Alfonso XI. of Castile. This marriage did not prove a happy one; the king neglected his young wife for Leonora de Guzman, and treated her so badly that in 1336 Affonso IV. invaded Castile. A terrible war was impending, when S. Isabel once more played the part of peacemaker. Leaving the convent of Poor Clares at Coimbra, whither she had retired after her husband’s death, she hurried to Estremoz, where the two armies were facing each other, and made peace between the opposing monarchs. Alfonso XI. promised to treat his wife better, and the Infant Dom Pedro, the only surviving son of the King of Portugal, was granted the hand of Constance Manuel, daughter of the Duke of Penafiel. The strength of the new alliance was soon tried; for in 1340 Abu-l-Hasan, king of Morocco, crossed the straits to come to the help of the king of Granada, with a great army. Alfonso XI. sent his wife to beg for the assistance of the Portuguese chivalry, and Affonso willingly complied. In the great battle of the Salado on 29th of October the Moors were utterly defeated, and the two generals who were most conspicuous on the Christian side, were Affonso IV. of Portugal, who won the sobriquet of Affonso “the Brave,” and Don Pedro Fernandez de Castro, Mordomo Mor of Castile. This victory also marks an advance in Portuguese poetry, for on it was written the first Portuguese epic by Affonso Giraldes, the forerunner of Camoens.
It is interesting during this reign to notice the close intimacy growing up between Portugal and England, which was to have many important results. Directly on his accession, Affonso IV. determined to maintain the friendly relations which Diniz had commenced, and in 1325 he sent an ambassador to propose a matrimonial alliance with the English royal family, probably with a view of contracting a marriage between his elder daughter, Donna Maria, and the young Prince of Wales, afterwards Edward III. The English Court, then under the influence of Queen Isabella, replied that the ambassador was not of sufficiently high rank for his application to be received. Accordingly, in the following year, Affonso sent his Lord High Admiral, Dom Manoel Pessanha, and Dom Rodrigo Domingues on the same mission, but their embassy led to no result, probably owing to the disturbed state of affairs in England, and Donna Maria married, as has been said, the King of Castile. Friendly communications continued, nevertheless, between Portugal and England, and in 1344 Edward III. sent two ambassadors, Henry, Earl of Lancaster, and Richard, Earl of Arundel, to draw up a treaty of alliance with Affonso IV. This was followed by the mission of Andrew of Oxford, Richard of Saham, and Philip Borton to ask for the hand of Donna Leonora, the King of Portugal’s younger daughter, for Edward, Prince of Wales, better known as the Black Prince. The marriage was agreed upon, and in 1347 Robert Stratton and Richard of Saham arrived to fix the day for the passage of the infanta to England. But at this moment matrimonial alliances of more political importance occurred to each of the high contracting parties, and in this very year Donna Leonora was married to King Pedro IV. of Aragon, and the Black Prince to the Fair Maid of Kent. The rupture of this marriage scheme did not break the friendship of the two kings, both of whom perceived the wealth to be obtained for their countries and themselves by encouraging commerce. The business relations between the two nations soon became very close, and the wine of Portugal was freely exchanged for the long-cloth of England. On July 25, 1352, Edward III. issued a royal proclamation, ordering his subjects never to do any harm to the Portuguese, and on October 20, 1353, a curious sequel to the commercial treaty of 1294 was signed in London by Affonso Martins Alho. This young wine merchant had been sent to England as representative of the merchants of the maritime cities of Portugal, and the treaty he negotiated with the citizens of London was one guaranteeing mutual good faith in all matters of trade and commerce, with many other technical clauses referring to special lines of business. The very fact of this treaty or agreement being signed is a proof, not only of the close connection between Portugal and England, but of the high degree of wealth, intelligence, and business capacity possessed by the merchants of both countries.
INES DE CASTRO.
INES DE CASTRO.
The later years of the reign of Affonso IV. were marked by a fearful pestilence and a sad tragedy. In 1348 the plague, or, as it was more commonly called, the Black Death, reached Portugal, after traversing Europe, and more than decimated the inhabitants of Lisbon. On January 7, 1355, Donna Ines de Castro was murdered in the streets of Coimbra. The history of the various dynasties of Portugal is full of romantic stories, some with ludicrous, and others with tragical, endings, which illustrate, not only the characters of the respective monarchs, but the tendencies of their different epochs. The story of Donna Branca, the princess who loved a carpenter, has been told, with the comment that her son became Grand Master of the wealthy Order of Calatrava; the romance of Dom Pedro’s life ended more tragically. Dom Pedro was the only son of Affonso IV. and Beatrice of Castile who had survived his first year. He was born in 1320, and had married in 1336, in order to cement his father’s alliance with Castile, the Donna Constance Manuel, daughter of the Duke of Penafiel. In her suite as lady-in-waiting came the Donna Ines de Castro, daughter of Pedro Fernandez de Castro, Mordomo Mor of Castile, and hero of the battle of the Salado, and sister of Alvaro Peres de Castro, first Constable of Portugal. Dom Pedro fell in love with the beautiful Castilian lady, and though, during his wife’s lifetime, he always treated his wife with the utmost consideration, and was the father by her of Dom Ferdinand, afterwards King of Portugal, and of Donna Maria, afterwards Queen of Aragon, it was well known at the Portuguese Court that the love of Dom Pedro’s heart was centred on Donna Ines. In that dissolute Court little attention was paid to the conduct of the prince; princes were in those days privileged persons, and he was known besides to have another lady-love, the Donna Theresa Lourenço, who was the mother of João, afterwards King of Portugal. It was not until after the death of his wife that it was perceived that Dom Pedro’s love for the Donna Ines was more than the ordinary fancy of a prince, and was an absorbing passion. For love of her, he refused to marry any of the foreign princesses proposed to him by his father, and it is probable that he went through a form of marriage with her after his first wife’s death. However that may be, King Affonso determined to put an end to his son’s infatuation by murdering the object of it, and by his directions Donna Ines was murdered in the streets of Coimbra by three courtiers, Alvaro Gonçalves, the “Meirinho Mor” or Lord Chamberlain, Pedro Coelho, and Diogo Lopes Pacheco. This is the tragedy which Camoens has celebrated in an immortal passage,[7] and which has since become a common theme for the playwrights of the world, good, bad, and indifferent; and it may be said, that it is not so much in the murder itself, as in the events which followed it, that the most romantic part of the story is to be found. Dom Pedro was absent on his estates in the south when he heard of the murder of Ines. He at once collected his vassals, and prepared to attack his father, but, as had happened in the days of S. Isabel, the Queen, Beatrice of Castile, interposed, and a compromise was made, by which father and son agreed to see each other no more, and to abandon active hostilities, and this compact lasted until the death of Affonso “the Brave” in 1357.
The first act of Dom Pedro on ascending the throne was to punish the murderers of Ines de Castro, and he induced the King of Castile to surrender Alvaro Gonçalves and Pedro Coelho to him. Pacheco had escaped to England, and could not be found, and thus escaped the fate of his accomplices, who were slowly tortured to death in front of the royal palace at Coimbra before the eyes of Dom Pedro. The king four years later had the strange ceremony performed, which is far better known than the circumstances of his love affair with Donna Ines. On April 24, 1361, either to show his undying affection for her, or to confirm the story of his marriage and legitimate his children by her, he had her body disinterred at Coimbra, and conveyed to the Convent of Alçobaça, where it was solemnly crowned, and then buried. It is usual to speak of the Convent of Alçobaça as if it had been the burial-place of all the kings and queens of Portugal up to this time. Such was not the case; only Affonso II. and Affonso III. and their queens were buried there. Count Henry and Donna Theresa had their last resting-place in the Cathedral of Braga, Affonso Henriques and Sancho I. and their queens in the Convent of Santa Cruz at Coimbra, Diniz in the Convent of Odivelas, near Lisbon, S. Isabel in that of the Poor Clares at Coimbra, Affonso IV. and his queen in Lisbon Cathedral, and Dom Pedro’s wife, Constance Manuel, in the Convent of S. Francis at Santarem.
The spirit of stern, revengeful justice which had marked the commencement of the short reign of Dom Pedro continued to show itself in all matters of administration; the king loved to dispense justice in person, and the rigour with which he treated all culprits, noble and priest as well as merchant and vagabond, won for him the title of “Pedro the Severe.” This severity was not unpleasing to the people, and many tales are extant of the king’s visits incognito to the law courts, and of his rigorous punishment of unjust judges. Many of the famous stories told in the “Arabian Nights” of the Caliph Harun-ar-Rashid are also told of Dom Pedro, and in them his Chancellor, Vasco Martins de Sousa, played the part of the Vizīr, as companion and butt. In matters of policy Dom Pedro followed in his father’s and grandfather’s steps, avoiding interference with the other kingdoms of the peninsula, and maintaining a close political and commercial connection with England. His reign was too short to leave much trace on the history of Portugal, for he died in 1367 at Estremoz, and was buried at Alçobaça by the side of Ines de Castro.
The accession of Ferdinand, called “the Handsome,” the only son of Dom Pedro by Constance Manuel, marks a crisis in the history of the Portuguese monarchy. As a natural result of the long era of peace and prosperity which had succeeded the final conquest of the Algarves, the people of Portugal had become more wealthy, more cultivated, and more conscious of their nationality than almost any people in Europe while the Court had become more and more dissolute, and more out of consonance with the feelings of the people. If the Portuguese monarchy was to continue to exist, it was obvious that it must again become a truly national monarchy, as it had been in the days of Affonso Henriques and of Diniz, which should lead the way in finding new outlets for the growing energies of the people, and that the kings must remember their duties, and not think only of their pleasures. The affection the people showed for Dom Pedro, who was by no means a good king, but rather a despot of the Oriental type, was a proof that they were ready to recognize with gratitude the efforts of a just monarch, and their energies, now that, owing to long peace, they were the richest nation in the peninsula, only needed to be directed. Neither the priesthood nor the nobility showed any disposition to check the dissoluteness of the Court. The bishops lost their old commanding influence, as the Papacy, on which they depended, became degenerate, and the nobles, now that they had no longer wars to occupy them, either became courtiers and abettors of the vices of the kings and princes, or else lived on their feudal estates and imitated them. The people had now no share in the government. The power which the Cortes had obtained during the reign of Affonso III. was in abeyance, because the king did not need its help against his bishops and nobles, but it was only in abeyance, and ready to spring forth again into new life.
The life and reign of Ferdinand “the Handsome” are marked, like those of his father, by a romantic amour, which, if not so tragic as the story of Ines de Castro, had far greater political importance. Ferdinand was a weak and frivolous, but ambitious, king, who, after binding himself to marry Leonora, daughter of the King of Aragon, suddenly surprised every one by claiming the thrones of Castile and Leon in 1369, on the death of Pedro “the Cruel.” This claim was derived through his grandmother, Beatrice of Castile, and was good in law, and Dom Ferdinand was favourably received at Ciudad Rodrigo and Zamora. But the majority of the Castilians, both noble and plebeian, had no desire to see a Portuguese monarch on their throne, and therefore espoused the cause of the illegitimate Henry of Trastamare as Henry II. of Castile and Leon. The war which followed turned to the advantage of the Castilian pretender, and the contest ended in 1371 by the intervention of Pope Gregory XI., when Ferdinand agreed to surrender his claim to the throne of Castile, and to marry Leonora, daughter of Henry II. However, in spite of the Pope, this treaty was never carried out, for at the marriage of his half-sister, Beatrice, the daughter of Dom Pedro and Ines de Castro, to Sancho Count of Alboquerque, King Ferdinand saw and fell passionately in love with Donna Leonor Telles de Menezes, daughter of a nobleman in the Tras-os-Montes, and wife of João Lourenço da Cunha, Lord of Pombeiro. This passion was the king’s ruin, for the object of it was a sort of Portuguese Lucrezia Borgia, of whom horrible stories are told, which historical research has unfortunately shown to be only too well founded. At this very period, when she first met the king, she made no attempt to repulse his advances, though she was a married woman, and she bore an undying feeling of revenge against her sister, Donna Maria Telles, for her attempts to repulse the amorous monarch. In spite of her sister’s efforts, Donna Leonor managed to captivate the king, who, in his infatuation for her, and in compliance with the dictates of her ambition, refused to marry the daughter of Henry II. of Castile. This refusal exasperated the people of Lisbon, who knew that the Castilians would not tamely suffer such an insult, and a great popular tumult and riot burst forth in the city. The story of this riot has been admirably told by the chief modern historian of Portugal, Alexandra Herculano, in one of his historical novels, and it affords a striking example of the political foresight of the people, and of their conviction of a coming revolution. The popular leader was a tailor named Fernan Vasques, under whose command the mob burst into the palace at Lisbon, hunted in vain for Donna Leonor, and made King Ferdinand swear to marry the Castilian infanta on the very next day. But Ferdinand escaped the same night to Santarem, and once there with his beloved, he forgot his oath, and sent all the troops he could collect to punish the rioters of Lisbon. They made but little resistance, being unprepared for their sovereign’s want of faith to his plighted word, and Fernan Vasques, the tailor, and his principal followers were beheaded. This cruel punishment inflicted, the king betook himself to Oporto, and there married the Donna Leonor at the Church of S. João do Hospital, although her first husband was still alive. It shows to what a depth of degradation the Portuguese nobles had sunk that all the nobility, with the exception of Dom Diniz, one of the king’s half-brothers, acquiesced in this bigamous marriage, and recognized Donna Leonor as queen. At the head of those who submitted were Dom João or John, the elder son of the late king by Ines de Castro, and Dom John, known as “the Bastard,” the Master of the Knights of Aviz, and the son of Pedro by Theresa Lourenço.
The people of Lisbon were right in believing that the Castilians would regard the marriage of Ferdinand to Donna Leonor as a deadly insult to their infanta. Henry II. at once invaded Portugal, and laid siege to Lisbon; Ferdinand lived meanwhile quietly at Santarem with his queen, and made no effort to intervene; and the war would have ended badly for Portugal, had not Cardinal Guy of Boulogne, who happened to be in Spain as legate, interfered, and by using all the authority of the Church, forced Henry II. to retire, and to make a treaty of peace with Ferdinand at Santarem. Even after this proof of the power of Castile, and after the sufferings incurred by the people of Lisbon during the siege, Ferdinand refused to keep the peace. He would not believe that Henry II. was firmly established on the throne, and in 1373 he treacherously renewed the negotiations which he had entered into the year before with John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster. This son of Edward III. claimed the throne of Castile for his wife Constance, the daughter of Pedro “the Cruel,” and Ferdinand signed a treaty of alliance with Edward III., through his ambassadors, João Fernandes Andeiro and Vasco Domingues, by which he agreed to support the claims of the English prince. But Donna Leonor did not approve of the English alliance, and in 1374, Ferdinand as usual broke his plighted word, and again made peace with Castile.
The queen was now supreme; her weak and vacillating husband was her slave, and the tyranny which she exercised was odious in the extreme. Her wealth was great, for the king had in his infatuation granted her for her own use the lordship of many of the most important cities belonging to the Crown, including Villa Viçosa, Abrantes, Almada, Cintra, Saccavem, Alemquer, Obidos, Torres Vedras, and Pinhel, and she had obtained great estates for her brothers, of whom the elder, João Affonso Telles de Menezes, became Count of Barcellos, and the younger, Gonçalo, Count of Neiva. Her former husband, João Lourenço da Cunha, tried to revenge himself for the loss of his wife by attempting to poison the king; she at once had his lands confiscated, and ordered his execution, which he only escaped by a timely flight into Gallicia. Her revenge upon her sister, Maria Telles de Menezes, whom she had never forgiven for opposing her marriage with the king, was horrible in its wickedness, and affords an indisputable proof of her cruelty of disposition. Maria, who was as beautiful as her sister, and far more virtuous, had inspired a real passion in the bosom of Dom John, the king’s half-brother and the elder son of Ines de Castro. The young couple were married in 1376, and were as happy as they deserved to be. Enraged at their happiness, and the more so, because they had a little son, whereas her own sons both died in childhood, the queen set to work, like Iago, to instil the passion of jealousy into the young husband. She was soon successful, and Dom John murdered his wife with his own hand, in his palace at Coimbra, while she was vainly protesting her innocence. When the deed was done, the queen came into her dead sister’s presence, and laughingly informed the unhappy wife-murderer that the accusations were untrue. At this mockery, Dom John would have slain her, and on being prevented by her guards, he fled to Castile. Donna Leonor had not even the merit of being constant to her uxorious spouse, but carried on an open intrigue with João Fernandes Andeiro, the former ambassador to England, whom she persuaded the king to make Count of Ourem. Ines Affonso, the wife of Gonçalo Vaz de Azevedo, first Grand Marshal of Portugal, happened to hear a declaration of love made by the queen to her lover, and she informed Dom John “the Bastard,” Master of the Knights of Aviz. Some spy told the queen, and she determined at once to rid herself of the pair. She had a letter forged, purporting to be written by them to the king of Castile, full of treasonable passages, and on the strength of it, she obtained the king’s order for their arrest. When they were safely in prison, she tried to persuade her husband to sign an order for their execution without trial. King Ferdinand, who had a real affection for his half-brother, refused, and Donna Leonor thereupon forged his signature to an order for them to be beheaded at once. Fortunately for Portugal, the governor of the Castle of Evora, where they were imprisoned, Vasco Martins de Mello, refused to obey, and the future saviour of Portugal escaped.
The wonder is that the Portuguese people submitted so long as they did to this tyranny, and it shows how deeply they felt the debt due to their great monarchs, such as Affonso Henriques and Dom Diniz, that they made no attempt to overthrow their unworthy descendant. So strong was their attachment to the hereditary principle, that at a great Cortes held at Leiria in 1376, the queen’s only surviving child, the Donna Beatrice, was recognized as heiress to the throne. This declaration was of the greatest importance, for it governed the future rule of succession in the kingdom; and by declaring females able to succeed rejected the well-known Salic law, which prevailed in France and other countries. The queen steadily encouraged the king’s ambition to sit upon the throne of Castile, and when his hopes revived, on the death of Henry II., she persuaded him once more to send her lover, the Count of Ourem, as ambassador to England. Richard II. received him cordially, and Edmund, Earl of Cambridge, next brother to John of Gaunt, and better known by his subsequent title of Duke of York, agreed to bring military assistance to the aid of Ferdinand. In 1381, the Earl of Cambridge arrived accordingly with two thousand English men-at-arms, and, as had been suggested by the Count of Ourem, his eldest son, Edward, afterwards second Duke of York, was solemnly betrothed to the Donna Beatrice, the heiress to the throne of Portugal. The feeble Ferdinand, as usual, refused to keep faith, and terrified by the approach of a Castilian army, he deserted the English, who immediately began to ravage the country round their camp near Oporto, while he made peace with John I. of Castile at Salvaterra. By this treaty, which was signed on April 2, 1383, and in which the hand of Donna Leonor is clearly to be perceived, it was arranged that John I. should marry Donna Beatrice, who was but eleven years old, and that Leonor should be Regent of Portugal if Ferdinand died, until Beatrice’s eldest son came of age. At the wedding, which took place at once, Ferdinand was too ill to be present: but the queen and her lover were there in his stead, and behaved with such unseemly hilarity that many of the Portuguese nobility, headed by Nuno Alvares Pereira, who was to be known in Portuguese history as “The Holy Constable,” could not refrain from openly expressing their disgust. Six months afterwards, on October 22, 1383, King Ferdinand died, and Donna Leonor assumed the regency in the name of her little daughter, the Queen of Castile.
VIEW OF THE PALACE AT LISBON. (From “Les Royaumes d’Espagne et Portugal.” La Haye, 1720.)
VIEW OF THE PALACE AT LISBON.
(From “Les Royaumes d’Espagne et Portugal.” La Haye, 1720.)
But she did not hold it long. The whole Portuguese people detested her, and their spirit of nationality was outraged by the contemplated union of their crown with that of Castile. Dom John “the Bastard,” the Master of the Order of Aviz shared both their personal hatred for the queen, who had tried to take his life, and their political desire for independence; and on December 6th, he headed an insurrection in Lisbon and slew the queen’s lover, Andeiro, Count of Ourem, with his own hands in the palace itself. The people everywhere applauded his action, and attacked the friends of the queen; in Lisbon the Archbishop Martinho and the Abbot of Guimaraens were killed upon the same day, and the example was followed in the provinces, where among other notable murders, the abbess of the Benedictine nuns was killed at Evora, and the Lord High Admiral, Lançarote Pessanha, at Beja. Leonor among whose faults want of courage could not be reckoned, fled to Santarem, and not only summoned her son-in-law, John of Castile to her help, but began to raise an army from among the vassals of her own adherents. At this news, Dom John felt a momentary movement of weakness, and spoke of retiring to England, but the people of Lisbon, through the mouth of the popular leader, the cooper, Affonso Annes, so eloquently begged him not to desert them in their peril, but to stay and be their ruler, that he consented on December 16th, to remain, and named two of his wisest adherents, João das Regras and Nuno Alvares Pereira, to the offices of chancellor and constable.
Dom John then took upon himself the title of Defender of the Realm; but he knew how little chance Portugal could have against Castile without some powerful ally, and he therefore sent first Thomas Daniel and Lourenço Martins, and then his Chancellor and the Master of the Knights of Santiago to beg for help from England. The longed-for aid seemed tardy, and Dom John proceeded to put Lisbon in a state of defence, and despatched the “Holy Constable” to raise an army in the northern provinces. In 1384, John of Castile slowly entered Portugal with a great army and joined Donna Leonor at Santarem. But the allies soon quarrelled as to the government in future of the country they both believed to be already conquered, and Donna Leonor recommended her adherents to join Dom John. Not satisfied with this, she planned to poison her son-in-law; but her intention was discovered in time, and the wicked queen was sent by John of Castile to the convent of Tordesillas, in his dominions, where she ended her days in 1386. This act of justice done, the king of Castile laid siege to Lisbon. The resistance was worthy of the cause, which was indeed that of the continued existence of Portugal as an independent country. The priests fought at the head of their parishioners; the archbishop of Braga behaved as a gallant knight; and Dom John showed his fitness to be the monarch of a warlike people. A terrible pestilence, which broke out in the besiegers’ camp, did more mischief than the bravery of the besieged, and John of Castile had to retire discomfited. But it availed little to have repulsed one Spanish army; the relative sizes of Portugal and Castile, made it obvious that the struggle would be a severe one; the independence of Portugal was at stake, and the Portuguese fought as men fight for their existence as a nation. The heroic Constable enforced the lesson of the successful defence of Lisbon by his defeat of the Castilians at Atoleiros, but it was felt to be necessary to take yet stronger measures, if the war was to end in a triumph.
The first of these measures was to legalize the position of Dom John, the gallant leader of the people. A great Cortes was summoned to meet at Coimbra, and in it João das Regras declared the throne of Portugal to be elective on April 6, 1385. This proposition was agreed to by acclamation, and after the Chancellor had produced a Papal bull, declaring the children of Dom Pedro by Ines de Castro to be illegitimate, the Cortes unanimously elected Dom John “the Bastard,” to be king of Portugal. This measure legalized the position of Master of the Knights of Aviz, who took the title of John I., and is known in Portuguese history as John “the Great”; and the people believed the measure to have the sanction of heaven when the news arrived that the Holy Constable had won a great victory over the Spaniards at Trancoso, in which four hundred Castilian knights were killed. The spirits of the Portuguese were further raised by the landing of five hundred of the famous English archers, under the command of three squires in the service of John of Gaunt named Northberry, Mowbray, and Hentzel; but this assistance was counterbalanced by the arrival of two thousand French knights, who had joined the king of Castile. The two armies met at Aljubarrota on August 14, 1385, and it was there that the independence of Portugal was secured, and the House of Aviz made good its title to the throne. The Holy Constable commanded the vanguard; Mem Rodrigues de Vasconcellos the right, and Antao Vasques de Almada the left; while Dom John rode from place to place and never failed to be in the post of danger. Ten pieces of ordnance were used, this being their first appearance in the military history of the peninsula; the English archers did yeoman service, and repeated the glories of Crécy and Poitiers, and after a hard-fought struggle the Spaniards fled in confusion. Then did John I. feel himself king indeed; and he erected on the spot where his victory had been won, the magnificent convent of Batalha, which recalls in its name the famous Battle Abbey erected on the field of Hastings. This victory was followed up by another at Valverde, and then by the news that John of Gaunt was on his way with a powerful English army. The Portuguese felt that they had anew achieved their independence.
TWO SIDES OF THE ROYAL CHAPEL OF THE MONASTERY OF BATALHA. (PRESENT STATE.)
TWO SIDES OF THE ROYAL CHAPEL OF THE MONASTERY OF
BATALHA. (PRESENT STATE.)
On May 9, 1386, the Treaty of Windsor was signed by which the kingdoms of Portugal and England were declared to be united henceforth in the closest bonds of friendship and alliance; and it proved to be the corner-stone of the policy of the House of Aviz. On July 20, 1386, John of Gaunt reached Corunna with two thousand English lances and three thousand archers, accompanied by his wife Constance of Castile, and two of his daughters, Philippa and Catherine. He marched triumphantly through Gallicia; and at Oporto on February 2, 1387, the Anglo-Portuguese Alliance was sealed by the marriage of King John to Philippa, the daughter of John of Gaunt by his first wife, Blanche of Lancaster. This marriage was followed by another, that of Catherine, only child of John of Gaunt by Constance of Castile to Henry, Prince of the Asturias, and heir to the throne of Castile. These marriages settled the peace of the peninsula, for in concluding them, John of Gaunt abandoned his claims to Castile, and insisted as one of the conditions, on a truce between his two sons-in-law. This truce continued till 1411, when at last the title of John as King of Portugal was recognized, and peace between Castile and Portugal was solemnly declared.
King John “the Great” was now firmly seated on his throne; an effort of his half-brother Diniz, the younger son of Ines de Castro, to overthrow him in 1398, failed entirely, and foreign monarchs hastened to recognize his power. Through this hero, and the race of heroes who fought under him, the independence of Portugal was secured, and a new career opened before its people. The era of consolidation was over; the era of foreign discovery and of Asiatic conquests was to begin.
KING JOHN THE GREAT. (From his recumbent statue over his tomb at Batalha.)
KING JOHN THE GREAT.
(From his recumbent statue over his tomb at Batalha.)
THE reigns of John I., surnamed “the Great,” and of his two successors, occupy nearly a century, during which Portugal was learning to become the greatest nation in Europe. It was the age of exploration and discovery, during which the acutest intellects and the most daring natures in Portugal were dreaming of a new route to India, and were endeavouring to discover it. It was an age of growth, abounding in statesmen, mariners, and chroniclers, who were to have their successors in the all too short but immortal period of Portuguese greatness, in such men as Alboquerque, Vasco da Gama, and Camoens. The history of these maritime explorations and discoveries, of the painful and slow progress down the western coast of Africa, and of the great schemes and efforts of Prince Henry “the Navigator,” will form the subject of a separate chapter; but it is first expedient to study the history of the Portuguese people and monarchy at home during this period, and to see how, from the reign of John I., a new spirit appeared alike among the kings, and the merchants, and the soldiers, which was to culminate in the glories of the heroic age.
King John, after the victory of Aljubarrota had firmly seated him on the throne, felt it necessary to give Portugal such an interval of peace after the great efforts of the Castilian wars, as King Diniz had given it after the cessation of the wars against the Moors. This peace was secured by a wise foreign policy, of which the key-notes were, a close alliance with England, and systematic non-interference with the affairs of Spain. He had seen the value of the assistance of England in the final throes of his struggle with Castile, and the English monarchs on their side felt the advantage of having such an ally as Portugal to act as a thorn in the side of Castile, should the Spaniards come to the help of the French. The statesmanlike idea of Henry II. of England when he supported the proposal of the Count of Flanders for the hand of the daughter of Affonso Henriques, that this marriage should cement an unwritten alliance of England, Flanders, and Portugal, against France, Scotland, and Castile, seems to have been in the minds of the English statesmen of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Just as Scotland afforded a convenient base of operations, whether military or political, for France against England, so did Portugal give a similar position for the English to act from against Castile, and the subsequent history of Portugal shows how generously and wisely England treated her southern ally. The people of the two nations gladly supported the political ideas of their monarchs and rulers. Each country could supply what the other wanted. From Portugal, the English merchants could obtain fruits and wines, which found a ready market, and the Londoners, not satisfied with supplying the home demand only, distributed these products of the south among the countries of the north, and notably in those lying round the Baltic Sea, Sweden, Denmark, Pomerania, and Lithuania. On the other hand, the Portuguese had no manufactures, and gladly took in exchange for the productions of their fertile soil, the cloth not only of the English looms, but of those of Flanders, in which the London merchants dealt.
This alliance was maintained in spite of dynastic changes and political revolutions in the two countries. In 1389 the name of the King of Portugal was introduced into the Treaty of Paris as an ally of the King of England; in 1398 Richard II. sent a body of English archers, under Edmund Arnold of Dartmouth, to assist in repelling the incursion made into Portugal by the son of Ines de Castro and some Spanish knights; and in 1400 John I. recognized his brother-in-law, Henry of Lancaster, as Henry IV. of England, and was created by him a Knight of the Garter, being the first foreign sovereign to receive that honour. In 1403 Henry IV. solemnly ratified the Treaty of Windsor, and in the following year the illegitimate daughter of John I., by Ines Pires, was promised in marriage to Thomas, Earl of Arundel, one of the leaders of the English nobility. This marriage was regarded as a further bond of alliance, and was celebrated in 1405 in England with the greatest splendour. Equally friendly relations were maintained with Henry V. and with the rulers of England during the minority of Henry VI.; Henry V. sent provisions and troops for the expedition to Ceuta in 1415, and in 1428 a strong force of 144 lances was sent to join the King of Portugal. This English alliance was the key-note of the policy of John I., and it was maintained without a breach from the arrival of John of Gaunt in 1386 until the death of the great Portuguese monarch in 1433.
The internal government of King John I. was hampered in one respect to such an extent as to vitiate the effect of his great administrative reforms. It will be remembered that he was elected to the crown by the Cortes, and followed to the field of Aljubarrota by all classes of the Portuguese people. Yet for some reason he would not trust in the people who loved him, but believing he owed his success to the nobles who had supported him, he began his reign by making extensive grants of lands and privileges to his principal supporters of noble birth. It would perhaps be too much to expect the political knowledge of a statesman in the nineteenth century from a king in the fourteenth, but it seems to posterity that King John greatly over-estimated the assistance of his nobles, and that he over-rewarded them by granting them nearly the whole of the old royal estates of the kings of Portugal. It may be believed that he feared the secession of his nobles to the Castilian party, and that he thought they could take their vassals with them, but whatever may have been the reason, he gave them such enormous grants as to seriously weaken the royal power. These grants however did not impoverish the treasury, which was filled more by the proceeds of the customs duties, a source of income, which his wise commercial policy increased, than by rents from landed estates. So wealthy did he become that he left his mark on the country in his great buildings; besides the magnificent convent of Batalha on the field of Aljubarrota, he constructed no less than four palaces at Cintra, Almeirim, Cezimbra, and Lisbon. The last-mentioned city was his favourite place of residence; under his fostering care it became the official capital of Portugal instead of Coimbra, and soon surpassed the wealth of Oporto as a commercial city. The citizens of Lisbon regarded him much as the citizens of London did Edward IV. a century later; they never forgot his gallant conduct in the great siege, and were at all times ready to obey him and to pay him a fair tithe of their wealth. In one respect especially did King John gratify the aspirations of the religious section of the people of Lisbon, by obtaining the sanction of the Pope to erect the bishopric of Lisbon into an archbishopric.
It is not to be wondered at that King John loved to live in Lisbon, and watch the daily passage up and down the Tagus of the ships, which were making his capital a great commercial centre, when it is remembered how slight was his actual power over the greater part of his kingdom. The other cities were indeed fairly well governed owing to their possession of ancient charters from kings, bishops, or lords, granting them a system of municipal self-government, but the country districts were ruled by the strictest feudal law and custom, and the king was powerless to interfere. Now was to be seen the harm done by the monarchs who had conquered the Alemtejo and the Algarves from the Mohammedans by the distribution of their conquests in estates among the military orders and private individuals. The result was the division of these provinces into enormous feudal counties and lordships, dangerously large to be the properties of subjects in such a small kingdom as Portugal. The condition of the Beira was a little better, and the two northern provinces of the Entre Minho e Douro and the Tras-os-Montes, were, as they are still, the homes of the sturdy Portuguese peasantry, who gave to the Portuguese armies and fleets their bravest and stoutest soldiers and sailors. Bitterly did John the Great repent the mistake he had made by his large grants to the Portuguese nobility, and his consequent inability to correct the most crying evils of the feudal system. He had, however, at the beginning of his reign, some wise and able counsellors, in the Holy Constable, in Lourenço, the brave Archbishop of Braga, and in his great chancellor, João das Regras. With the help of the latter he managed to get some valuable laws passed in the Cortes affecting criminal procedure and jurisdiction, by means of which he somewhat controlled the feudal methods of holding courts of justice without much offending the great nobility, but he dared go no further in this direction, and had to allow many abuses, inherent in the feudal system, to continue to exist. In every other respect his administration was extremely good; his cities grew in wealth; his navy increased in number of ships; his sailors became famous for their daring; and in minor points many reforms were made, such, for instance, as introducing the use of the Portuguese language into the law courts, and changing the era from that of Augustus to that of Christ, which made the date of the year consonant with that of the rest of Christendom.
In such labours passed the first thirty years after the battle of Aljubarrota, and Portugal and its great king became renowned throughout Europe. During this period, a new generation grew up, the sons of the men of Aljubarrota and Trancoso, and the young nobility burned to prove themselves worthy sons of their brave fathers. In their aspirations they were headed by the princes of Portugal. The union of the old royal family of Portugal as represented by King John, with the blood of the English Plantagenets in the person of his queen, Philippa of Lancaster, produced the five famous princes, whose names stand out conspicuously in the history of the fifteenth century. The three elder sons of John and Philippa, Dom Duarte or Edward, Dom Pedro, and Dom Henry, were in 1414 respectively 23, 22, and 20 years of age; they longed to win their knightly spurs, and to show themselves worthy cousins of Henry V. of England. The King of Portugal did not wish to check their ardour; he felt the need of occupying the energies of his youthful nobility; and as there were no enemies at home, he acquiesced in the desire of his sons to attack the old enemies of Portugal, the Moors, in Morocco. By such an expedition against the Mohammedans the young princes would show themselves crusaders, and would find adversaries worthy of their swords, without arousing the jealous watchfulness of the King of Castile. Ceuta was the city of Africa selected for attack, not only because it was the chief port of the Moors in the north-western corner of Africa and threatened the south of Spain, but also because it was the headquarters of the numerous corsairs and pirates, who preyed upon the already growing traffic of Portugal with the west coast of Africa, and at times made descents upon the Portuguese province of the Algarves. The expedition sailed from Lisbon in 1415; the three princes were followed by the flower of the Portuguese chivalry, and accompanied by their two boy brothers, Dom John, who was but fifteen, and Dom Ferdinand not yet thirteen; from her deathbed the Queen sent her blessing, and in the month of June the expedition safely disembarked on the African coast. The Moors fought bravely on their native soil, and it was not until 24th of August that the city of Ceuta was stormed, after a siege, in which the sons of John the Great showed themselves to be gallant soldiers and prudent leaders. This conquest was of importance in two ways; it was the first conquest made by the Portuguese outside the limits of their own country, and was therefore a proof of their energy and the expansion of their power; but, on the other hand, it pointed in a false direction, and was the first of a series of African expeditions, which were not profitable to the country, even when successful, and which terminated in the great disaster associated with the name of Dom Sebastian.
QUEEN PHILIPPA. (From her recumbent statue over the tomb at Batalha.)
QUEEN PHILIPPA.
(From her recumbent statue over the tomb at Batalha.)
The conquest of Ceuta completed, the elder princes devoted their extraordinary powers of mind and body to pursuits worthy of the cousins of Henry V. of England. Dom Edward, so named after his great-grandfather, Edward III. of England, the eldest son, married Donna Leonora of Aragon, and helped his father in the duties of government. He proved an apt pupil of João das Regras, the chancellor, and, after devoting much time to legal studies, he drew up the first code of Portuguese law. Dom Pedro, the next brother, who was created by his father Duke of Coimbra after the storming of Ceuta, travelled all over Europe, enjoying in turn the hospitality of Henry V. of England, of the Emperor, and of the Pope, and astonishing those monarchs by his abilities. He proved his valour by fighting beside the Teutonic knights against the Lithuanians, in the extreme east of civilised Europe, and his literary taste by his enlightened patronage of men of letters in all parts of the continent. In 1428 he ended his travels, and settling at Lisbon, he married Donna Isabel, the daughter of the Count of Urgel, and assisted his father and elder brother in the duties of government, taking special interest in the progress of literature, and co-operating in all the various schemes for the development of Portugal. The third brother, Dom Henry, created by his father, Duke of Viseu, and appointed Master of the Order of Christ, and governor of the kingdom of the Algarves, has left his mark on the history of the world as Prince Henry “the Navigator.” This prince refused all the offers of the Pope, the Emperor, and of Henry V., to visit their courts, and established himself in 1418 at Sagre in order to devote himself and his wealth to the cause of discovering a continuous route by sea to India, which should bring the trade of Asia and its profits to the Portuguese. His efforts and the discoveries he superintended form the subject of a separate chapter, but it must be remembered that in all his efforts he was seconded by his father and elder brothers. The fourth brother, Dom John, Master of the Order of Santiago, married his niece Isabel, daughter of the Count of Barcellos, and became eventually third Constable of Portugal. The fifth brother, Dom Ferdinand, who earned the title of the “Constant Prince” in after years, was Master of the Order of S. Benedict of Aviz, as his father had been before his elevation to the throne; his piety was so well known, that he was requested to enter the Church, and promised a cardinal’s hat by the Pope, but he refused the honour, longing rather for the glory of a crusader than the influence of an ecclesiastic, and winning in the end a martyr’s crown. Their sister, Isabel, was as famous for her beauty, as her brothers for their valour, wisdom, and piety, and was married to Philip “the Good” of Burgundy, the founder of the Order of the Golden Fleece. To mar the unity of this illustrious and gifted family, there existed a half brother Affonso, the son of King John by Ines Pires, born before the marriage with Philippa of Lancaster, who was jealous of his legitimate brothers, and ultimately proved the evil genius of their destiny. This son was regarded with special favour by his father, who brought about his marriage with Donna Beatrice Pereira, daughter and heiress of the Holy Constable, and created him Count of Barcellos.
The latter years of King John “the Great’s” fortunate reign of nearly half a century were marked not only by the discoveries of Prince Henry “the Navigator,” but by the development of Portuguese into a literary language by many talented authors. Mention has been made of the poetry of the Portuguese troubadours, who sang in the reign of Diniz, and of the first Portuguese epic on the battle of the Salado, which foreshadowed the “Lusiads” of Camoens. But a literary language is formed not so much by its poetry as by its prose; the early poetry of Portugal differed but little from that of Gallicia, while its prose developed in an independent direction. The first Portuguese prose work of any length or importance was the famous romance of “Amadis de Gaul,” written by Vasco de Lobeira, who died in 1403. This romance gave rise to a host of imitations, and the taste for romances was further developed by the popularity of the “Prophecies of Merlin,” and the Arthurian tales, the knowledge of which came into Portugal with the English alliance. The king himself encouraged this literary revival; the “Book of the Chase,” one of the best specimens of early Portuguese prose was written for him under his superintendence, and among his sons, Dom Pedro wrote poems, and Dom Edward two excellent prose works, “Instructions in Horsemanship” and “The Faithful Councillor.” More important to notice are the works of the first great Portuguese chroniclers. Chronicles of early events in Portuguese history had been written in monasteries, and have a value of their own, but these works are little better than annals noted down year by year with no pretence to literary form. Next in order stands the anonymous “Chronica da Conquista do Algarves,” which represents the transition from the annalist to the chronicler, and in the reign of John I., under the special patronage of the monarch and his sons, the first great Portuguese chronicler, Fernan Lopes, who has been called the Froissart of Portugal, wrote his chronicles of the reigns of Pedro “the Severe” and Ferdinand “the Handsome,” and Matthew de Pisano, wrote his “Guerra de Ceuta,” a history of the famous expedition of 1415. These men were the forerunners of the great chroniclers of the fifteenth century, Azurara, Ruy de Pina, and Duarte Galvão.
After a reign, which ranks among the most glorious in Portuguese history, made famous by maritime discoveries and literary advancement, leaving behind him sons worthy and able to guide the people along the road of civilization to wealth and prosperity, John I., rightly surnamed “the Great,” died at his palace at Lisbon on August 14, 1433, having survived his wife Philippa of Lancaster nearly twenty years.
Contrary to the expectation of his subjects, the reign of King Edward was but short, and it is marked only by a signal disaster. His own great qualities, and the promise he had given of being both a good and a great king when assisting his father, combined to raise the highest hopes, which were destined to be cruelly shattered. On ascending the throne he believed himself strong enough to take a step, intended to check the perpetuation of power in the hands of the feudal nobility, which had often been discussed between his father, his brother Dom Pedro, João das Regras, and himself, and in 1434 he summoned a full Cortes at Evora. He there propounded the “Lei Mental” or the provision, which was assumed to have been in the mind of King John when he made his extensive grants of land to the nobility, namely, that they could only descend in the direct male line of the original grantee, and should revert to the Crown on failure of such heirs. The law was carried by the influence of the king’s brothers, in spite of the natural opposition of the nobility, who never forgave the supporters of the measure. In other matters Edward simply followed the example of his father. He continued the English alliance, ratified the treaty of Windsor, and was made a Knight of the Garter in his father’s room; he maintained an attitude of prudent neutrality towards Castile; he encouraged the literary movement, represented by Fernan Lopes, and took an intelligent interest in the schemes and plans of his brother, Dom Henry.
But, unfortunately, the king’s life was shortened and Dom Henry’s explorations checked for a time by the fatal expedition to Tangier in 1437. This expedition was the natural sequel of the expedition to Ceuta, and was undertaken in opposition to the advice of the Pope, and of Dom Pedro. It was entirely the result of the earnest solicitations of the king’s favourite brother, Dom Ferdinand. This pious young prince burned with crusading ardour; his one longing in life was to fight the infidels, and he could not appreciate the fact that Dom Henry was doing far greater work for the world in exploring the coast of Africa, than in killing Mohammedans. The ardour of Dom Ferdinand won the day, and King Edward collected a fleet and army in the Tagus, and sailed for the coast of Africa. The object of the attack was Tangier and it was most foolishly chosen. Ceuta was on the sea coast, and the Portuguese soldiers could use their fleet as a base of operations, and could retreat to it in case of need; whereas Tangier was three miles from the coast. As might have been foretold, when King Edward with his eight thousand Portuguese soldiers formed the siege of Tangier, the Moors at once cut off his communications with the fleet, and in three days the Portuguese army was reduced to extremities. It was only by Dom Ferdinand’s willing sacrifice of himself as a hostage, that the troops were allowed to return to their ships and find their way back to Lisbon. This disaster and the captivity of his favourite brother so preyed upon King Edward’s mind that he died in 1438. His death was happier than that of Dom Ferdinand, who, after a long and cruel imprisonment, borne with such heroic patience and exemplary piety, as to win for him the title of “the Constant Prince,” died at Fez in 1443.
The noble conduct of Dom Ferdinand, who preferred death in captivity to safety purchased by the surrender of Ceuta, the only alternative which the Moors would accept, has its place also in the great epic, in which all noble deeds of Portuguese heroes are commemorated. Speaking of King Edward, Camoens says: