The successor of King Edward, his eldest son Affonso V., afterwards called “the African,” was only six years old when he ascended the throne, and his reign commenced with a dispute as to the regency. By his will, Edward had left the regency to his wife, Leonora of Aragon, but this arrangement was not at all satisfactory to the people, and a great Cortes at Torres Novas set aside the will, and appointed Dom Pedro, Duke of Coimbra, to be “defender” of the realm with all the duties of government, the Count of Arrayolos, minister of justice, and Queen Leonora, guardian of her son, the young king, with a large allowance. This arrangement shows how great the powers of the Cortes had become, and a still more important testimony to their recognized influence appears in the motion by Dom Henry, that three members of the Cortes should be annually elected to reside at the seat of government during the months in which the Cortes was not in session. This arrangement was highly unsatisfactory to the queen, who had expected to be sole regent under the terms of King Edward’s will, and, assisted by the discontented nobility, headed by the Count of Barcellos and the Archbishop of Lisbon, she attacked Dom Pedro, and endeavoured by force to overthrow the arrangements made by the Cortes of Torres Novas. The struggle was but a short one; the people of Lisbon rose en masse to support the son of their favourite monarch, John I., in whom they perceived his father’s administrative ability and love for commerce, and the queen and archbishop were forced to go into exile. The result of this movement was to seat Dom Pedro firmly in power with the title of regent and the guardianship of the boy-king.

The regency of Dom Pedro, better known by his title of Duke of Coimbra, is marked by the same features as the reign of his brother Edward; in it appears the same consistent attempt to check the power of the feudal nobility and the same wise encouragement of commerce. His foreign policy followed the same lines, and he maintained the same neutrality with regard to Spain and the same close alliance with England. In 1439 the regent solemnly confirmed the Treaty of Windsor in the young king’s name, and was made a Knight of the Garter, and the same honour was conferred upon Dom Henry, Duke of Viseu, in 1444, and on Dom Alvaro Vaz de Almada, Lord High Admiral of Portugal and Count of Arronches, in 1445. Dom Pedro also encouraged the maritime explorations of Dom Henry and the literary revival, which were making the name of Portugal renowned throughout Europe, and his power seemed to be at its height, when, in 1447, his daughter Isabel was married to her cousin, the king, Affonso V.

But the great regent counted without the enmity of the feudal nobility, headed by his own half-brother, the Count of Barcellos, who was created by the young king Duke of Braganza. This nobleman had always been jealous of the legitimate sons of John I., and in spite of the kind treatment of Dom Pedro, he hated the regent. This hatred he instilled into the mind of Affonso V., who was rather restive under his uncle’s control, and he eventually persuaded the young king that his uncle and father-in-law had poisoned both his father, King Edward, and his mother, Donna Leonora. Affonso V. believed these libels, and ordered the great regent to leave the Court. Dom Pedro obeyed; but the vengeance of the Duke of Braganza was not yet satisfied, and he gladly led an army to arrest the Duke of Coimbra on his estates. Dom Pedro, deserted by all his old friends and sycophants, except the Lord High Admiral, yet determined to fight, and he defeated the Duke of Braganza at Penella. Affonso V. then declared his former guardian a traitor, and summoned the feudal nobility to his side. The nobles were only too happy to aid him, and in the hotly-contested battle of Alfarrobeira the friends of the regent were defeated, and Dom Pedro, Dom Jaymé, his only son, and the Lord High Admiral, were slain, on May 21, 1449.

Affonso V., at the beginning of his personal government, yielded to the influence of the Duke of Braganza and his sons, who humoured his desire for knightly fame and his dream of sitting on the throne of Castile, and who obtained vast grants of royal property for themselves. Among them they secured the lordships of the old royal city of Guimaraens, the birthplace of Affonso Henriques, and even of Oporto, the second city of the kingdom; but they never got possession of the latter, owing to the fierce resistance of the citizens. The young king’s main idea at this time was to win fame as a knight and a crusader, and unfortunately this whim led him towards the country which was to be the tomb of his dynasty. It was to raise funds for the expeditions which won him the title of “the African” that Affonso first issued the beautiful coins known as crusados, and with money raised by this means he paid the expenses of his three expeditions. In the first of these adventures, in 1458, he took Alcazar es Seghir, or Alcacer Seguier; in the second, in 1464, he failed; and in the third, in 1471, he took Anafe, Tangier, and Arzila. It was in these expeditions that he uselessly exhausted the strength of his people, but nevertheless the works of maritime exploration went on apace, though with less energy after the death of Dom Henry “the Navigator” in 1460.

From wasting the power of his kingdom in African wars Affonso V. turned to a still more fatal pursuit, the encouragement of his dream of sitting on the throne of Castile. The lessons of his grandfather’s reign were lost on him; he failed to understand that the two countries had developed on separate lines and could not coalesce, and did not see that in a contest Portugal, owing to her smaller population, must needs have the worst of it, unless the war were national and calculated to rouse the spirit of enthusiasm and not merely dynastic. His family was now at the height of its fame—his aunt Isabel was Duchess of Burgundy; his eldest sister had married the Emperor Frederick III.; his youngest sister had married Henry IV. of Castile; and his remaining sister, Catherine, had been sought in marriage by the son of the King of Aragon and by Edward IV. of England. His first wife, Isabel, the daughter of the great regent, Dom Pedro, had died in 1455, after giving birth to the prince who was to be John II., and it was not until after his third expedition to Africa that he contemplated a fresh marriage, which should give him a claim to the succession to the throne of Castile.

With this idea Affonso V. married his own niece, Joanna, elder daughter of Henry IV. of Castile (though but a girl of thirteen), in 1475, and he claimed the kingdom of Castile in her name. But the Castilians preferred the Infanta Isabella, who had married Ferdinand, King of Aragon, and they were as determined to prevent a Portuguese king from sitting upon their throne, as the century before the Portuguese had been against the union of their country with Castile. The Castilians, fighting for their independence, as utterly defeated the Portuguese at Toro in 1476 as the Portuguese had defeated them at Aljubarrota in 1385. Affonso hurried to France, to beg help from Louis XI.; but his supplication was unheeded, and in 1478 he found himself constrained to sign the Treaty of Alcantara, by which he agreed to send his newly-married bride to a convent. He remained inconsolable at this failure of his schemes, and alternately abdicated and returned to the throne, until his death in 1481.

The “Ré Cavelleiro,” or knightly king, had thus done his best to upset the results of the wise policy of his grandfather, John “the Great.” Fortunately he had not done much harm, and his son and successor, John II., proved himself able to do more than compensate for his father’s mistakes. But it must not be considered that Affonso V. was a worthless king of the type of Ferdinand “the Handsome”; he was rather a restless knight after the fashion of Count Henry of Burgundy. He had literary tastes as well; he wrote much and ably on various subjects, and showed a great knowledge of what a king ought to be—perhaps learnt from the “Cyropaedia” of Xenophon, which had been specially translated for his instruction by the orders of the Duke of Coimbra. He was a liberal patron of men of letters, and made Duarte Galvão “Chronista Mor do Reino,” or Chronicler-General of the kingdom; and he appointed Azurara, another chronicler, librarian and keeper of the archives at the Torre del Tombo. He collected a great library at Evora, and founded the Order of the Tower and Sword; but perhaps the truest sign of the greatness which existed somewhere in his character is to be found in his answer to the chronicler Acenheiro, who asked how he should write the chronicle of his reign, when he said simply, “Tell the truth.”

These, then, were the kings who reigned in Portugal during the age of discovery. It is now time to see the nature, extent, and value of these discoveries, which were paving the way for the heroic age of Portuguese history.

PORTUGUESE GOLD COINS.
PORTUGUESE GOLD COINS.

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TABLE I. The Descendants of John “the Great.”
TABLE I. The Descendants of John “the Great.”

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VII.

THE PORTUGUESE EXPLORERS.

THE internal history of Portugal under the rule of John “the Great,” his son Edward, and his grandson Affonso V., has an interest of its own, yet it is not at home that the most important development of Portuguese energy is to be perceived. Great as were the services rendered to Portugal by King John, they mark no stages in the progress of Europe as the achievements of Dom Henry, his son, have done. Around the name of this prince, the discoveries of the Portuguese navigators may best be grouped, for he was the guiding spirit of these adventurers, and alike inspired and rewarded them.

Henry, Duke of Viseu, Grand Master of the Order of Christ, and governor of the Algarves, was the third son of John “the Great” and Philippa of Lancaster, and after winning great credit in the capture of Ceuta, he took up his residence at Sagre, near Cape St. Vincent, in 1418, and devoted himself to the task of maritime exploration. His father and his brothers assisted him, but they recognized his special fitness for the work, and therefore, though encouraging him as much as possible, they did not interfere with his projects, and made no attempts to contest his well-earned title of Prince Henry “the Navigator.”[9] The prince was too wise to neglect scientific knowledge, and he therefore summoned learned mathematicians and astronomers from all parts of Europe to his aid. Enjoying immense wealth, he established an observatory and a school of navigation at Sagre, where he employed the men of science in making charts and, above all, in improving the working of the compass. This was the theoretical side of his work; the practical was not less important. He collected together all the most daring captains and mariners he could find, and sent them forth year by year on voyages of discovery along the western coast of Africa. He never went on any of these expeditions in person, but he was acknowledged by all the men of science and sailors in his pay to be their master and presiding genius.

ST. SALVADOR IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY.
(From Braun and Hohenberg’s Civitates orbis terrarum. 1574.)

The idea in Prince Henry’s mind was that it was possible to sail round Africa to India, and thus trade directly with the East, and he died after more than forty years of endeavour without having fulfilled his dreams. There were legends of old time, which he knew well, that the southern continent could be sailed round, legends probably founded on the tales of Carthaginian sailors, but no geographer of that period could assert that these legends were founded upon fact. If it were true, and ships could sail direct from Lisbon to India, it was easy to see what enormous profits must accrue to the people who found and followed this route. At that time the products of the East came by a long and dangerous journey to Venice, whence they were distributed over Europe. They had either to be conveyed by land all the way to the Levant, or else to be borne up the Red Sea and carried across Egypt. By either way the expenses and risk were enormous, and the prices of the commodities of the East were proportionately great. Could a direct sea route be discovered, it was obvious that these risks and expenses would be avoided, and that Lisbon would take the place of Venice as the distributor of the treasures of the East to Europe. Dom Henry understood this, and, urged by patriotism, as well as by an ardent zeal for the cause of exploration, he devoted his wealth and time to discovering this direct sea route. As has been said, he did not himself succeed in attaining this great end, but he did much towards it, and the navigators who were successful, Vasco da Gama and Pedro Alvares Cabral, were men imbued with his ideas and in a way his disciples. In speaking of the explorers of Prince Henry’s time, the word “ship” must not be taken to mean the comparatively well-built and well-appointed vessels of the end of the sixteenth century. Modern sailors would think but little of Drake’s famous ship the Pelican, yet it was far superior in size and equipments to the wretched sailing boats of the first explorers of the fifteenth century. The enterprise of Dom Henry did much to improve the ship-building of the Portuguese, and towards the end of his life their vessels could carry as many as sixty men, but at the beginning of his career his ships were little better than half-decked sailing boats, with a crew of at most thirty-six sailors.

A mere record of discoveries, a list of names of places along the inhospitable west coast of Africa, may be monotonous in itself; but when the scanty means of these early Portuguese mariners is considered, and the greatness of the goal at which they were aiming, a fresh interest arises in the study of the map of Africa. The first-fruits of Prince Henry’s exploring ardour were the discovery of the island of Porto Santo by Bartholomeu Perestrello, in 1419, and of the more important island of Madeira by João Gonçalves Zarco and Tristão Vaz, in 1420. These successes delighted Prince Henry and his father, and John “the Great” immediately granted the two islands to the Order of Christ, of which his son was Grand Master. Prince Henry at once rewarded his captains, and leased Porto Santo to Perestrello, and Madeira in equal parts to its two discoverers. The provinces of the larger island were named Funchal, from “funcho,” the Portuguese word for fennel which abounds there, and Machico, said to be derived from the Englishman, Robert Machin. Prince Henry’s first effort, before proceeding further with his explorations, was to colonize these two islands. With Porto Santo he was not successful, for the rabbits introduced by Perestrello ate up the whole produce of the island; and a similar fate seemed to await Madeira, where the indigenous vegetation was almost entirely destroyed by a great fire, which lasted seven years. However, he did not despair, and it was Dom Henry who had the sugar-cane and the vine, which are to this day the chief sources of its wealth, introduced into Madeira.

It is but fair to mention that many authors have held these great discoveries to be merely re-discoveries. Some people affirm that Madeira was really discovered by Emmanuel Pessanha, the first Lord High Admiral of Portugal, in 1351, during the reign of Affonso “the Brave,” and there seems to be more foundation for the story of Robert Machin, which is at all events of great antiquity. The story runs that Robert Machin, son of a merchant in Bristol, loved and was beloved by a lady of noble birth, whose relations refused to countenance him, and threw him into prison. About the year 1370, on his release, he found that his lady love had married a wealthy baron, but he continued his suit and she consented to elope with him. He took her on board a ship intending to go to France, but a gale came on and the ship, after being driven south for thirteen days, struck upon an island. They found the island uninhabited and very beautiful, and Machin and some of his companions took up their residence upon it, and built huts under the branches of a spreading tree. Here they lived very happily until a storm one day drove the ship from its moorings, which so grieved the lady that she died in despair at the thought of never seeing her native land again. She was buried beneath the tree, and Machin soon followed her to the grave, having first erected a cross with a brief inscription, narrating his adventures, and begging any Christians who might come to the island to erect a church over the place where her remains rested. After his death, those of his companions, who remained, determined to try to escape in the ship’s boat, but they were taken by a Moorish cruiser and sold for slaves. While in captivity in Morocco, one of the Englishmen told a Spanish fellow-captive, named Juan Morales, the whole history, and this Morales, being afterwards taken prisoner by João Gonçalves Zarco, related the narrative to his captor and to Prince Henry. Morales, according to this tale, was the pilot of Zarco and Tristão Vaz on their voyage of discovery, and the story goes on to say that the grave of the two English lovers was discovered, and that Machin’s dying desire was fulfilled, and a church erected over their remains. Whatever may be the truth of this legend, and whether Machin ever landed on Madeira or not, the fact remains that the first occupation of the island, and its being marked upon the chart, were due to the enterprise of Prince Henry.

The discovery of these islands formed no part of Prince Henry’s plan. His desire was to circumnavigate Africa; the expeditions of Perestrello, Zarco, and Tristão Vaz were all intended to sail south and double Cape Bojador, and it was certainly in an attempt to achieve this purpose that Perestrello was driven out to sea to the island of Porto Santo. Many years passed, during which Cape Bojador remained the great obstacle to the Portuguese mariners. Year after year Prince Henry despatched fleets of two or three ships at a time, which sometimes made important discoveries among the islands off the north-west coast of Africa, but they never doubled the great cape. Among these discoveries the most important were the Canary Islands and the Azores. With regard to the former group, the Portuguese were met by a prior claim on the part of Castile; and after a dispute, into the details of which it is not necessary to enter, John the Great, in pursuance of his consistent policy of maintaining peace with Spain, and at the request of Dom Henry, who did not wish to waste his strength in occupying islands, surrendered the Canary Islands to Castile. The Portuguese, however, successfully maintained their claim to the Azores, which still belong to them. This group was first touched at by Bartholomeu Perestrello, the discoverer of Porto Santo, in 1431; and in the following year Gonçalo Velho Cabral discovered the island of Santa Maria. To this captain was allotted the task of further exploring and occupying this cluster of islands; and in 1444 he discovered the island of St. Miguel or St. Michael, where he founded the beautiful little town which gives its name to the St. Michael oranges.

Prince Henry’s endeavours were crowned with partial success, though not in the reign of his father, for in 1434 Gil Eannes doubled Cape Bojador, and in 1436 Affonso Gonçalves Baldaya reached the Rio d’Ouro. The attention of “the Navigator” was, however, soon absorbed by the progress of political affairs at home, and he had for a time to abandon his schemes of exploration. He served with distinction in the unfortunate expedition to Tangier, and then played an important part in the events, which ended in confirming the power of his brother Dom Pedro, the Duke of Coimbra, as Regent of Portugal. This enlightened prince took the greatest interest in the African explorations, and he assisted Prince Henry with even greater ardour than King John or King Edward. These were the most successful years of Prince Henry’s career. In 1441 Antão Gonçalves went a hundred leagues further than the Rio d’Ouro, and in the same year Nuno Tristão, the greatest and most daring of all Prince Henry’s captains, reached the cape which closes on the south the sort of shoulder formed by North-west Africa, and named it the Cabo Branco or White Cape. He did more than this; he brought home several captives, including a native prince. The capture was hailed with enthusiasm, and from this time the slave trade on the coast of Africa really began.

It is strange that Prince Henry “the Navigator” should have been the founder of the African slave trade, but so it was, and the reasons are not hard to find. The provinces of the Alemtejo and the Algarves had never been thoroughly populated since their conquest, and the great lords and religious military orders, the owners of those districts, had never been able to bring them properly under cultivation. Slavery was not regarded with the modern sentiment of abhorrence; it was the natural fate of prisoners of war, and flourished greatly in the neighbouring country of Morocco. Prince Henry and the Duke of Coimbra felt the need of procuring labour to cultivate the southern provinces, and it seemed quite natural to them to carry off the unfortunate savages of the African coast. This idea greatly impressed the Portuguese nobles with Prince Henry’s sagacity; they did not understand his schemes about discovering a direct route to India, but they highly appreciated the introduction of cheap forced labour. The commencement of the slave trade greatly favoured the progress of the Portuguese navigators; they no longer came home empty-handed, and exploring became a profitable as well as an adventurous business. In 1444 Lançarote, with a fleet of eight ships, went upon a slave-taking expedition, and brought home two hundred captives, who were set to work on the domains of the Order of Christ in the Algarves, and in 1445 the same captain sailed with a fleet of fourteen ships from Lagos and brought home a still larger body of unfortunate slaves. From this time forth the tracks made by the explorers were followed closely by the slave-dealers. Large profits were made in the trade, which had its centre at Lagos, and by the labour of the captives the great estates of southern Portugal were speedily brought under cultivation. The employment of slave labour was to have serious consequences in the near future; but at this period, during the life of Dom Henry, it had not yet begun to drive the poorer class of the Portuguese people out of work in the fields, and into more precarious modes of earning a livelihood.

It is not necessary to do more than notice the commencement of the slave trade here; it is far more important to trace the progress of the explorers.[10] In 1445 Nuno Tristão sailed as far as the Senegal river, and in the same year, Diniz Dias, his most daring rival, discovered Guinea, and first saw the really black negroes. This advance, as a glance at the map will show, meant much; the Portuguese explorers had now thoroughly learnt how to find their way round the inhospitable shoulder of North-west Africa; Cape Bojador and Cabo Branco had no terrors for them, and their hopes of reaching India were excited by finding that the coast trended abruptly to the east. The country, too, was very different to that which they had toiled around so slowly; the fertile land of Guinea with its powerful negroes, its spices and ivory, and its prospect of gold, gave them encouragement, and on their return, the acute merchants of Lisbon were not long in opening up a trade with the newly-discovered country. Unfortunately the slave trade accompanied the ventures of the Lisbon merchants, and the white men, instead of making friends with the blacks, did not hesitate to seize them and to sell them into slavery. The Church made no effort to restrain this traffic; the blacks were heathen, and so it was to their advantage to be brought to a Christian land to work, and perhaps to be converted.

The next two years were marked by the greatest activity. In 1446 Diniz Diaz reached Cape Verde, which he called by that name from its green appearance; and in the same year, Nuno Tristam was killed in a chase after slaves, and Alvaro Fernandes, the nephew of João Gonçalves Zarco, who had discovered Madeira, starting from that island, went one hundred leagues further than Cape Verde, and left João Fernandes at his own request among the negroes. It is a strange commentary upon the death of Nuno Tristão, that João Fernandes was able to remain among the negroes for seven months in safety, learning their language and studying their customs. It shows that there was no deep-rooted antipathy between the whites and the blacks, and that the latter only attacked the Christians, when they showed themselves enemies, and tried to rob them of their liberty. João Fernandes was taken off in safety by Antam Gonçalves, in the year 1447, and testified to Prince Henry that the blacks, if heathen, were not monsters, but people of peaceful and affectionate dispositions.

This activity was followed by another pause. Dom Henry was deeply affected by the overthrow of his brother Dom Pedro; and his nephew, Affonso V., failed to give him the moral and material support he had formerly received. It is indeed a blot upon the reputation of “the Navigator” that he made no greater effort to assist the great regent, and that he was not by his side at Alfarrobeira. The next decade is marked only in the history of maritime exploration by the discoveries of Luigi Cadamosto, a Venetian, who had entered the service of Dom Henry, and who had become his right hand both as a cartographer and an explorer. On the voyages of Cadamosto there has been much controversy. Some writers, resting upon certain notes of his, assert that he discovered the Gambia as early as 1445, and the Cape Verde Islands in 1446; but modern inquirers believe that he greatly antedated his discoveries in order to enhance his own glory. It is now generally believed that in his famous voyage in 1455 and 1456 he managed to get past the Senegal, and discovered the Gambia, and that the Cape Verde Islands were discovered in 1460 by Diogo Gomes. The tale that Cadamosto went as far as the Rio Grande is quite discredited, and seems in itself, apart from the evidence, to be most improbable.

STATUE OF PRINCE HENRY. (From Major’s “Prince Henry the Navigator.”)
STATUE OF PRINCE HENRY.
(From Major’s “Prince Henry the Navigator.”)

The period of the discoveries made under the direction and inspiration of Prince Henry “the Navigator” was then at an end, for he died at Sagre on November 13, 1460. What he had done appears better from a study of the map then in any number of words. He had not discovered a direct sea route to India, but he had paved the way for it, and it was quite certain that, if it existed, the gallant captains trained by him would find the route in time. His services are beyond dispute, and though he left no successor to carry on the work, he had given it such an impulse, that it remained only for the sailors themselves to complete it. He was never married, but was succeeded as Duke of Viseu, Lord of Beja and Madeira, and Grand Master of the Order of Christ, by his nephew, Dom Ferdinand, the second son of King Edward, and brother of Affonso V., whom he had adopted. This prince had also become Grand Master of the Order of Santiago by his marriage with his first cousin, Donna Leonor, daughter of Dom John, the fourth son of John “the Great,” by whom he was father of Dom Manoel, or Emmanuel, who reigned under the title of Emmanuel “the Fortunate,” and was to reap the fruits of the discoveries of Vasco da Gama and Pedro Alvares Cabral.

The death of Prince Henry did much to check maritime exploration for exploration’s sake, and for the purpose of discovering the direct route to India; but the slave trade and the general trade with the Guinea Coast were growing into importance, and the results of the labours of the early Portuguese navigators were not forgotten. Affonso V. was more bent on his Moorish expeditions and his schemes upon the crown of Castile, than upon maritime discoveries; but, nevertheless, something of importance was done during his reign in strengthening the hold of the Portuguese upon the part of the African coast already known, and in making their topographical information more exact. What Affonso did was done rather to improve trade or protect it for the benefit of his own exchequer than for love of exploration. It was for these reasons that he built a fort on the island of Arguin, near Cabo Branco, which became the depôt for the trade with Guinea, and eventually he granted the monopoly of the trade with the African coast to Fernan Gomes for five hundred crusados a year. This enterprising merchant employed able captains, of whom the chief were João de Santarem, Pedro Escobar, and Lopo Gonçalves, who worked their way further along the coast; and in 1471, in which year Fernando Po discovered the islands of St. Thomas, Fernando Bom and Anno Bom, they crossed the equator, and explored as far as Cape St. Catherine.

TOMB OF PRINCE HENRY. (From Major’s “Prince Henry the Navigator.”)
TOMB OF PRINCE HENRY.
(From Major’s “Prince Henry the Navigator.”)

John II., the successor of Affonso V., set the seal upon Prince Henry’s labours. He it was who built the fort of Elmina, and took the title of Lord of Guinea; and it was in his reign that Diogo Cão or Cam discovered the Congo in 1484, and Bartholomeu Diaz reached Algoa Bay in 1486, and doubled the cape, which he called Cabo Tormentoso, or Stormy Cape, from the winds he met there, but which his sovereign, presaging from this fortunate voyage the future glory of his country, called the Cape of Good Hope. John II., like Prince Henry, was fated not to see the fulfilment of his dearest hopes, and it was not until the fifteenth century was within three years of its close that Vasco da Gama made his way from Lisbon to Calicut.

While, in political life and commercial prosperity, the people of Portugal had been at home becoming more civilized, more self-controlled, and more wealthy during the fifteenth century, its sailors had been growing more daring and enterprising. In the sixteenth century the Portuguese were to have their reward. Lisbon was to take the place of Venice as the depôt for all the products of the East; the trade of Persia, India, China, Japan, and the Spice Islands, was to fall into their hands; they were to produce great captains and writers, and were to become the wealthiest nation in Europe. But that same sixteenth century was to see the Portuguese power sink, and the independence, won by Affonso Henriques and maintained by John “the Great,” vanish away; it was to see Portugal, which had been the greatest nation of its time, decline in its fame, and become a mere province of Spain. Hand in hand with increased wealth came corruption and depopulation, and within a single century after the epoch-making voyage of Vasco da Gama, the Portuguese people, tamed by the Inquisition, were to show no sign of their former hardihood. This is the lesson that the Story of Portugal in the sixteenth century teaches, that the greatness of a nation depends not upon its wealth and commercial prosperity, but upon the thews and sinews and the stout hearts of its people.

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VIII.

THE HEROIC AGE OF PORTUGAL.

JOHN II., surnamed “the Perfect,” the only son of Affonso V., succeeded his father as King of Portugal in 1481, and his short reign was marked by events of the utmost importance at home, as well as by the great discoveries of Diogo Cam and Bartholomeu Diaz. He had shown himself a gallant soldier in his father’s last African expedition, when he was knighted, and at the battle of Toro, and also a capable ruler, as regent, during the absence of Affonso V. in France, and during that king’s frequent periods of abdication. He saw the folly of his father in wasting his strength in African expeditions, and in fruitless wars with Castile, and he therefore recurred to the wise policy of his great-grandfather, John “the Great,” in avoiding all interference with Spanish affairs, and maintaining a close alliance with England. He also, as has already been said, adopted enthusiastically all the schemes of Prince Henry “the Navigator,” and laboured for the discovery of a route to India by sea. He possessed all the hereditary aptitude of the princes of the house of Aviz for literature, and fostered the spirit of the Renaissance in Portugal in the study of the classical languages, the advancement of science, and the encouragement of art. He was a broad-minded, tolerant man, with ideas far in advance of his age in many respects, and possessing at once an inflexible will and remarkable sweetness of disposition.

But John II. was more than all this; he was a politician and a statesman of the first rank, and openly professed himself a disciple of Machiavelli and a believer in the theory of absolute government. He imitated Louis XI. of France, just as one of his predecessors, Sancho II., had imitated Louis IX., and in his policy and in his manner of carrying it out, he showed himself an apt pupil of his wily master. The first great task he set himself, in imitation of that monarch, was to break the power of the feudal nobility of Portugal. In doing this he relied, and with justice, upon the assistance of the mass of the people, who had learned during the last reign to detest and fear the almost unlimited power of the nobles.

The origin of the enormous estates held by the Portuguese nobility has already been pointed out, and the attempt made by King Edward to check accumulations by the “Lei Mental” has also been mentioned; but this regulation had had but little effect, owing to the profuse prodigality of Affonso V. This monarch had granted away nearly the whole patrimony of the crown; and John II. said with justice that his father had left him “only the royal high roads of Portugal.” This liberality had kept Affonso poor in spite of the increasing wealth of his people and his extravagance had been such, that he had been formally rebuked by a Cortes, held at Guarda in 1465, and had been obliged to promise amendment. Under the influence of this headstrong monarch and his favourites the evils, inherent in the feudal system, had increased alarmingly; crimes in country districts were only punished by fines, and every means which rapacity could suggest to wring money out of an impoverished tenantry were resorted to, while the wealth of the great landlords had been increased by the improvement in the cultivation of their lands due to the large importation of slaves. John II. determined to crush the powerful and turbulent feudal nobility, and to draw back some of its wealth into the royal treasury, and for this purpose he summoned a great Cortes to meet at Evora in 1481, the year of his accession. In this Cortes he proposed that a “inquiracão geral” should be held into all titles to landed property, and that the royal corregidors should alone be empowered to dispense and execute criminal justice throughout the country. Both measures were agreed to, but the nobles determined to resist the examination into their titles, and the loss of the lucrative privilege of dispensing criminal justice, and they combined to oppose the king, under the leadership of the Duke of Braganza.

Ferdinand, Duke of Braganza, was the wealthiest and most powerful nobleman, not only in Portugal, but in the whole peninsula. He was the grandson of Affonso, Count of Barcellos, the illegitimate son of John “the Great,” who had been created Duke of Braganza by Affonso V., and he had inherited the vast possessions of his grandfather and of his grandmother, the daughter of the Holy Constable. These possessions had been increased by the lavishness of Affonso V., who had showered favours on the first and second Dukes of Braganza. Ferdinand possessed fifty cities, towns, and castles, and nearly one-third of the land of the kingdom; he was patron of one hundred and sixty canonries and religious benefices; he maintained a royal household, and bore the titles of Duke of Braganza and Guimaraens, Marquis of Villa Viçosa, Count of Barcellos, Ourem, Arrayolos and Neiva, and Lord of Montalegre, Monporto, and Penafiel. His brothers were nearly as powerful as himself. The eldest, João, was Marquis of Monte Mor, and Constable of the kingdom; the second, Affonso, was Count of Faro; and the youngest, Alvaro, held the important office of Chancellor. In the reign of Affonso V. this great nobleman had quarrelled fiercely with John II., then heir apparent, but he believed he had secured his safety by marrying a sister of the future queen, for both Prince John and himself married daughters of Ferdinand, Duke of Viseu and Beja, the brother of Affonso V., and inheritor of the wealth of Prince Henry “the Navigator.” The Duke of Braganza took the lead in opposing the king’s decrees passed in the Cortes of Evora, and John II. was glad of it, not only because he coveted the wealth and lands of the Braganza family, which dimmed the splendour of the Crown, and on account of their former quarrels in the late king’s lifetime, but also because he remembered that he was, through his mother, the grandson of the great regent, Pedro, Duke of Coimbra, who had been defeated and slain at Alfarrobeira by this very Duke of Braganza and his father. For all these reasons John II. decided to strike a sudden and decisive blow, which should at once re-establish the power of the Crown and paralyze the feudal nobility with terror, and he therefore had the Duke of Braganza arrested, and executed, after a very short trial, at Evora, on June 22, 1483.

The nobles, however, were not yet defeated, and they continued to intrigue against the king’s authority under the leadership of a yet nearer relation of his own, Diogo, Duke of Viseu and Beja, the eldest son of Dom Ferdinand, and grandson of King Edward, and the brother-in-law alike of the king and of the executed Duke of Braganza. But John II. was not dismayed: imitating Louis XI. of France, he determined not to spare his own relations, and on August 23, 1484, he stabbed the Duke of Viseu with his own hand in his palace at Setubal. This murder he followed up with decision: he had the Bishop of Evora, one of his father’s favourites, thrown down a well; and he executed, with or without trial, about eighty of the leading noblemen of the country. By these means John II. broke the power of the feudal nobility for ever, and as happened in France under Louis XI., and in England under Henry VII., the fall of the nobility was followed by the absolutism of the monarch. Now that the nobles had lost their power, and the Crown had become wealthy by the confiscation of their property, John II. needed the support of the people, as represented in the Cortes, no longer, and he became a despot, though a benevolent one. But the weight of this despotism was not yet felt, for John II. possessed all the political ability of his grandfathers. He tried to find means for encouraging his nobility, now that they were frightened out of treason, to enter into the career of maritime exploration, which had been opened by Prince Henry, while at home he won the love of his people by reorganizing the government of the kingdom, and proved so good an administrator that the Portuguese gave him the title of “the Perfect King.”

It has been said that in his foreign policy John II. followed in the course set before him by John the Great. With the great monarchs then ruling in Spain, Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile, he consistently remained on friendly terms, and in 1490 his only legitimate son, Affonso, was married to Isabella, eldest daughter of these sovereigns. The death of this son in the following year, without leaving children, was a terrible blow to him, but he nevertheless maintained his friendship with Ferdinand and Isabella, and in 1494 concluded the Treaty of Tordesillas with them. By this treaty, which was confirmed by a Bull, issued by Pope Alexander VI., the limit of the future possessions of the Spaniards and Portuguese in the regions explored and discovered by their mariners was 370 leagues west of Cape Verde, and it was agreed that the Spaniards were to have full right to all lands discovered to the west of this line, and the Portuguese to all to the south and east. What a curious commentary this treaty forms on that of Cella Nova, concluded three hundred years before between Affonso Henriques of Portugal and Ferdinand of Leon, by which these two monarchs agreed to take the course of the Guadiana as the line to separate their future conquests from the Moors. Both nations had now developed; the energies of both, heightened by the long struggle with the Mohammedans, sought for fresh fields, and expanding far beyond the boundaries of Europe, were to prove themselves, in the one case in Mexico and Peru, and in the other in India and the countries of the East.

In the other cardinal point of the policy of John “the Great,” the maintenance of a close alliance with England, John II. carefully followed the example of the founder of the house of Aviz. Affonso V. had not neglected this important tradition, and had even promised his sister, Donna Catherine, to Edward IV., in 1461, a marriage only frustrated by the death of the princess in 1463; and the English monarch had solemnly ratified the Treaty of Windsor in 1471, and again after the battle of Barnet in 1472, and he had also included the name of the King of Portugal, as an ally of England, in his treaty with Louis XI. of France, in 1475. John II. drew the bonds of friendship still closer, and sent important embassies to the three kings of England, who ruled in quick succession in this country. In 1482 Edward IV. ratified the Treaty of Windsor in the presence of the ambassadors of John II., and recognized his new title of “Lord of Guinea,” and in 1484 Richard III. did the same. In 1485 the King of Portugal proposed in a Cortes held at Alçobaça, that his only sister Joanna should be given in marriage to Richard III., but the princess, who was famed for her piety and wished to become a nun, fortunately for herself, refused the alliance, as she afterwards did the hand of Charles VIII. of France. Henry VII. bore no enmity towards John II. on account of his friendship with Richard III., but, on the contrary, showed every disposition to assist him in his struggle with his nobility, and in 1488 went so far as to arrest the Count of Pennamacor, one of the insurgent Portuguese noblemen who had escaped to England, and to imprison him in the Tower. It was in this year also that the last treaty of commerce between England and Portugal, before the famous Methuen treaty in 1703, was concluded at Lisbon by Richard Nanfran and Thomas Savage, who had been sent for that purpose, and to invest John II. as a Knight of the Garter.

CHART OF GOA. (From the Sloane MS. 197, folio 248.)
CHART OF GOA. (From the Sloane MS. 197, folio 248.)

But it was not only on account of his suppression of the power of the feudal nobility, and of his wise peace policy, that John “the Perfect” was beloved by his people, it was also because he showed himself a worthy successor of Prince Henry “the Navigator,” in promoting exploration, and devoted his best energies to discovering a direct route to India. The two famous voyages of Diogo Cam and Bartholomeu Diaz, which had resulted in the discovery of the Congo and of the Cape of Good Hope, have been mentioned, but it was rather in other directions that the originality of mind which distinguished John II. showed itself. He was the first European monarch who thought that if it might be possible to reach India by sea by sailing round the continent of Africa, it might also be possible to find a road to “Cathay” by sailing round the continent of Europe to the north-east. On this mission he despatched Martim Lopes, who sailed past the North Cape into regions hitherto unexplored, and discovered the great island to the north of Russia, which still bears the name he gave it of Nova Zembla. John II. also had ideas of striking out new routes to India by land, or at least of exploring the land routes in order to correct prevalent geographical mistakes. With these ideas he sent forth the two first European explorers of the interior of Africa, Pedro de Evora and Gonçalo Annes, who managed to get as far as Timbuctoo. Still more important were the missions which he sent overland to India, and in search of that mythical Christian potentate, Prester John. The two travellers he despatched were João Peres de Covilhão and Affonso de Payva. The former of these enterprising men made his way safely to India by following the regular trade route and accompanying the caravans. He visited both Goa and Calicut, and though he was refused a passage to the Cape, he managed to find his way back to Arabia, and eventually to Abyssinia, where he became the chief adviser and almost prime minister of the king, at whose capital he died. The other traveller, Affonso de Payva, went direct to Abyssinia, where the mythical Prester John was supposed to reign, and also died there.

VASCO DA GAMA. (From the Sloane MS. 197, folio 18.)
VASCO DA GAMA. (From the Sloane MS. 197, folio 18.)

The energies of John II. were so wholly absorbed in these expeditions to the East, and he felt so certain that he was in the right direction in trying to reach India by eastern routes, that he made the great mistake in 1493 of dismissing Christopher Columbus from his court as a visionary. He listened to all the arguments of the great discoverer with patience, but he did not agree with his conclusions that it was possible to reach India by sailing westwards across the Atlantic, and he therefore lost the opportunity of immortalizing his name and reign by a greater discovery than that of Vasco da Gama, the discovery of the vast continent of America. In other departments his energies found full scope. He greatly improved the art of ship-building, and encouraged the immigration of skilled shipwrights from England and Denmark; he did much to promote the improvement of fire-arms, and established a cannon foundry and a corps of artillery, of which he made Diogo de Azambuja the first Inspector-General; and, above all, he patronized literature, and encouraged Ruy de Pina, the greatest of all the Portuguese chroniclers. His court abounded in great men, the founders of great families and the fathers of the coming generation of heroes, among whom may be noted, besides his navigators, Diogo Cam, Bartholomeu Diaz, and Lopo Infante, and his famous travellers just mentioned, his Lord High Admirals, Pedro de Alboquerque and Lopo Vaz de Azevedo; his Lord Stewards, Diogo Soares de Albergaria, Pedro de Noronha, and João de Menezes; his Master of the Horse, Affonso de Alboquerque; his Secretary-General Ruy Galvão; and his Chancellor, the acute lawyer and most strenuous supporter of the despotic power of the king, Ruy de Graa.

Yet the reign of John “the Perfect,” full as it was of great events, and great as is its importance in the history of Portugal, was but comparatively short. His happiness was clouded by the sad death of his only son, Dom Affonso, in 1491, the year after he had married the Infanta Isabella, eldest daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella, who then ruled in Spain, and he felt with repugnance that his successor on the throne must be Manoel, or Emmanuel, Duke of Beja, the brother of the murdered Duke of Viseu, a man in whom he could see no fit qualities for carrying on his own great schemes and projects. To oust him John II. thought of legitimatizing his illegitimate son by Anna de Mendonça, Dom Jorge, or George, whom he had made Grand Master of the Orders of Santiago and Aviz, but the reflection that on his death the country he loved so well would then be torn by civil war restrained him, and he did not interfere with the law of succession. During the last days of his life the “Perfect King” was busily engaged in fitting out the fleet which, under Vasco da Gama, was to realize his most cherished dream, and he was still in the ripe strength of manhood when he died at Alvor, in the province of the Algarves, on October 25, 1495.

The quarter of a century during which the successor of John II., Emmanuel “the Fortunate,” reigned, is the great heroic period of Portuguese history, and during it the great deeds, which make the Story of Portugal an important part of the history of Europe and of the world, were done. Discoveries and daring feats of arms distinguished nearly every year of this truly fortunate reign, and the fame of the great Portuguese generals, captains, and travellers is rivalled only by that of its poets and men of letters. As the progress of the Portuguese in the East and West, and their great literary development, will be examined in three different chapters, it will here be possible only to narrate the events of Emmanuel’s reign in Portugal, and to show how, at the period of the greatest glory of the country, the age of its rapid decline was at hand. The causes of that decline were manifold, and are generally placed in the reign of Emmanuel’s successor, but the seed of each appeared in the reign of the “fortunate” monarch himself.

Emmanuel himself contributed but little to the blaze of glory which illustrates his reign. He despatched great fleets and armies to distant parts of the world, and received the wealth their discoveries and exertions brought into his treasury with equanimity; but he had only one fixed idea, the old wild dream which had brought disaster upon Ferdinand “the Handsome” and Affonso V., the longing to sit upon the throne of Spain and to unite the kingdoms of the peninsula under his sovereignty. To gain this end he proposed to marry the Infanta Isabella, the eldest daughter of King Ferdinand of Aragon and Queen Isabella of Castile, and widow of the unfortunate Affonso, the only son of John II., and in order to be recognized as heir to the kingdoms of Spain, he promised to expel the Jews and unbaptized Moors from Portugal.

No class had done more to promote the height of commercial prosperity to which Portugal had attained than the Portuguese Jews. In another volume of this Series[11] Mr. Lane-Poole says: “Wherever the arms of the Saracens penetrated, there we shall always find the Jews in close pursuit,” and in no part of the peninsula had they collected in greater numbers than in the great cities of Portugal, especially in Lisbon, Santarem, and Evora. These Jews belonged for the most part to the Sephardim, and were in every intellectual quality superior to the Ashkenazim, or German and Polish Jews; protected by the Moors, they had grown in wealth and power, and when they came under the rule of Affonso Henriques, that great monarch extended the same tolerance towards them. His successors followed his example, and under monarchs with commercial aspirations such as Diniz and John “the Great,” the Jews had been more than protected, they had been favoured. While persecuted in other countries, they had met with consistent protection in Portugal, and they acknowledged the generous treatment which they received by extending the commerce of their adopted country. The Portuguese Jews possessed a high reputation all over Europe for wealth, integrity, and commercial acuteness, and had business agencies and banks in every land, which contributed to the wealth of the country, which had been for centuries their home. Such was the wealthy and industrious class of citizens, which Emmanuel consented to banish from his dominions, partly to please the bigotry of Ferdinand and Isabella, whom he hoped to succeed, and partly in order to absorb, as the Portuguese crown eventually did, the whole of the coming trade with the East. These unfortunate families were obliged to leave the country, which had been their fatherland, and the cities, which had been their homes, from generation to generation, with but six months in which to prepare for banishment; they were obliged to dispose of their flourishing businesses at a loss, and to start anew in the world to find new occupations and new homes. It is hardly a matter for wonder, that many Jews preferred to be baptized and to become half-hearted Christians rather than expatriate themselves, but these “Novaes Christiãos” had, as will be seen, no reason to rejoice a few years later at their apostasy. With the Jews were banished also many unbaptized Mohammedans, the especial enemies of Ferdinand “the Catholic.” This class had become numerous since the taking of Granada in 1492, when many of them fled from Spain into Portugal, and had been kindly received by John II. It is worthy of notice that the Most Catholic monarchs, who persuaded Emmanuel to take such severe steps against Jews and Mohammedans, who were ready to earn an honest livelihood as free men, made no protest against the thousands of negro slaves, who were being yearly imported into Portugal, and left to their belief in superstitions far more degrading than the religions either of Jews or Moslems.

For this decree of banishment passed against law-abiding Portuguese citizens, Emmanuel had his reward, for he was married to the Infanta Isabella in 1497. But the curse of the Jews followed him, and he never sat upon the throne of Spain. Whilst the royal bride and bridegroom were passing through the cities of Castile in a state progress as heirs to the thrones of Spain, Queen Isabella fell ill, and died at Toledo on August 24, 1498. She left an infant son, Dom Miguel, at whose birth she had died, but he did not survive to realize the hopes of his father, and died in 1500. Even these two deaths did not put an end to Emmanuel’s schemes, and in the same year 1500, he married the Donna Maria of Castile, the sister of his deceased wife. This marriage was not so likely to promote his success as the first; for whereas the Infanta Isabella was the eldest daughter of Ferdinand and his queen, the Infanta Maria was but the third daughter, and the daughter between them, the Infanta Joanna, had a son who, as the legitimate heir of his grandparents, was to succeed to thrones of Spain and eventually become the Emperor Charles V. By his second wife, Emmanuel had no less than six sons, but what has been called the “curse of the Jews” pursued them, and his descendants soon failed in the direct line. Even to the last, the same wild fancy possessed him, and in 1518, the year after his second wife’s death, he married again, and this time also with a view of succeeding Charles V., for he married his own niece, the sister of the Emperor. She survived him, and afterwards married Francis I. of France.

From these restless longings after the neighbouring thrones, and the ignoble schemes of the Portuguese monarch, it is a relief to turn to the actions of the Portuguese heroes. Their deeds will be related separately, but after the barren intrigues of Emmanuel, it will be as well to mention chronologically the chief discoveries of his captains. In 1497, Vasco da Gama doubled the Cape of Good Hope and reached India by sea; in 1500 Pedro Alvares Cabral discovered Brazil, and Gaspar Corte-Real, Labrador; in 1501 João da Nova Castella discovered the islands of St. Helena and Ascension; and in that year and in 1503 Amerigo Vespucci first visited the Rio Plata and Paraguay; in 1506 Tristão da Cunha discovered the island which bears his name; and Ruy Pereira Coutinho explored Madagascar and the Mauritius; in 1507 Lourenço de Almeida touched at the Maldive Islands; in 1509 Diogo Lopes de Sequeira occupied Malacca and explored the island of Sumatra; in 1512 Francisco Serrão discovered the Moluccas; in 1513 Pedro de Mascarenhas first touched at the Île de Bourbon or Réunion; in 1516 Duarte Coelho worked his way up the coast of Cochin China and explored Siam; in 1517 Fernão Peres de Andrade established himself at Canton, and the same explorer made his way to Pekin in 1521; and in 1520 Magalhães (Magellan), a Portuguese sailor, though in the Spanish service, passed through the Straits which bear his name and led the way into the Pacific Ocean.

These exploits make up a list of achievements of which any country might be proud; the bare catalogue of them, without any epithets, justifies the description given of the reign of Emmanuel “the Fortunate” as the heroic age of Portuguese history. It has been shown that the king contributed little to this greatness, and the mistaken direction of his foreign policy has been noticed. It now remains to be seen how the seeds of rapid decline were sown. Emmanuel was far from being a bad man, though he does not show to advantage, when compared with such monarchs as John “the Great” and John “the Perfect;” he was a moral and pious man,—too pious as his expulsion of the Jews clearly demonstrates; he can hardly be blamed for his extravagance and taste for luxury, when the enormous wealth of the Portuguese Crown is considered; and he spent much of this wealth on art and architecture, as the construction of the magnificent palace of Belem, near Lisbon, testifies to this day. This superb building may have many faults to the eye of the architectural expert, but to the ordinary mind it seems almost the most superb structure in the world. With regard to internal administration, Emmanuel did not do much harm; the wheels of government had been put into such perfect order by John II. that the machine of administration worked well without interference. But John II. had made one great mistake, the fruits of which appeared in the reign of Emmanuel and his successor; he had changed the monarchy of Portugal from being patriotic and dependent on the good will of the people into an absolute monarchy, in which the king’s will was everything. The overthrow of the nobility and the wealth of the Crown had made the king independent of the support of his people, as represented in the Cortes. The nobility, deprived of their power at home, had thrown themselves with ardour into the career of Eastern discovery and conquest, and nearly all the great heroes of the period belonged to noble families. Emmanuel recognized the greatness of these men, and showered honours upon them; but in the next generation, the fatal result of despotism became evident, and the nobility, instead of thinking of their country, and looking to their fellow citizens’ approbation for their reward, looked rather to the king, and made loyalty to a man and not to their country their guiding principle. This attachment to the king was encouraged by the wealth of the Crown, which enabled the sovereign to bestow large pensions and pay enormous salaries, and the Portuguese nobility began to become a nobility of courtiers instead of a nobility of patriots. This extraordinary wealth of the Crown was due to its absorption of the trade with India, for the wealth of the East was conveyed to Lisbon on royal ships, and fetched thence by enterprising traders of other nations. It was then that the mistake of Emmanuel in banishing the Jews became more and more obvious, for Portugal only brought the products of Asia to Europe, but did not distribute them throughout Europe. It was in these respects that the seeds of decline were sown, in the loss of public spirit, and the absorption by the Crown of the whole wealth won by the valour of the people. Yet these steps towards decline were not at first visible to the eyes either of foreign nations or of the people themselves. The glory of Portugal was spread abroad, and the wealth of its monarch and his splendour became proverbial. The great literary movement, which in this reign is represented by Gil Vicente, Ayres Barbosa, Garcia de Resende, and Bernardim Ribeiro, will be discussed in another chapter, but it must be noted here in regard to Emmanuel, that, though he did banish the Jews, he was broad-minded enough to be a patron of literature and that he was in this respect the superior of the fanatical bigot who succeeded him.

Emmanuel, as he increased in wealth, bestowed great appanages on his sons, while his daughters were sought in marriage by the greatest princes in Christendom. His eldest son Dom John married Catherine of Austria, sister of Charles V. Of his other sons, three—Dom Luis, Dom Ferdinand, and Dom Edward—were created respectively dukes of Beja, Guarda, and Guimaraens, while the other two took holy orders and became cardinals. Of his two surviving daughters, the elder, Donna Isabel, married the Emperor Charles V., and the younger, Donna Beatrice, the divinity to whom the poet Bernardim Ribeiro addressed his songs, married Charles III., Duke of Savoy. With such a family of sons it did not seem likely that in a few short years the male line of the house of Aviz would become extinct, and it was with a feeling of pride in his wealth and with assured confidence in the perpetuation of his line that Emmanuel “the Fortunate” died in his beautiful palace at Belem, on December 12, 1521.

The reign of John III. is that in which the rapid decline of Portugal is most perceptible. All the germs of decay which had appeared in the reign of Emmanuel, developed during the reign of his son, by the end of which, though the sovereign of Portugal was the richest in Europe, not excepting the Emperor himself, the greatness of the country was obviously disappearing. The natural growth of this decline was assisted by the fanaticism of John III., who was a bigot of the most pronounced type, and who powerfully aided the extinction of the greatness of the country by his introduction of the Inquisition. Though personally a pious and estimable man, he was absolutely unable to take any steps to check the downfall of his country’s greatness, and considered the greatest fame of his reign would be due to the establishment of the Inquisition and the introduction of the Jesuits. The greatest credit that can be given to him is that he kept his country out of all European complications, a task made comparatively easy by his close alliance with the greatest monarch in Europe, the Emperor Charles V. This alliance was sealed by three marriages; for King John was married to the Infanta Catherine, the sister of Charles V., his only son Dom John was married to the Infanta Joanna, daughter of Charles V., and his only daughter, Donna Maria, was the first wife of Philip, prince of the Asturias, the eldest son of Charles V., and afterwards King Philip II. These marriages knitted the bonds of alliance closely between the reigning houses of Spain and Portugal, and a powerful Portuguese fleet under the king’s brother, Dom Luis, Duke of Beja, assisted in the Spanish expedition against Tunis in 1535. Yet fighting with the Moors seemed to have lost its charm for the Portuguese people, for during the next ten years, all the chief towns held by Portugal in northern Africa, Azamor, Cafim, Cabo do Sul, and even Arzila and Alcacer Seguier, the captures of Affonso “the African,” were abandoned, in order that the whole strength of the country might be concentrated on its Indian and Brazilian possessions.

This quiet abandonment of all the north African possessions, except Ceuta and Mazagon, affords a yet further proof of the change in the character of the Portuguese nobility and their sovereign. They no longer desired to fight against the old hereditary enemy of the Christian religion, as crusaders; John III. was no “Ré Cavalleiro” like Affonso V., but preferred stamping out heresy at home to fighting infidels abroad; and king and nobles alike agreed that it was better to expend their power in the wealthy Indies than in barren Africa. The nobles became more and more dependent on the Crown, and spent all their energies in intriguing for “moradias” or pensions from the Court, and for rich governments abroad. The absolutism of the king and the employment of crowds of sycophant courtiers spread corruption into every department of government, and the officials of all sorts, both in Portugal and India, hurried to make fortunes by every means, honest or otherwise, in their power. “Personal worship of the king,” in the words of an able Portuguese writer, “had eaten out patriotism,”[12] and though such a man as Dom João de Castro may be cited as a specimen of the great-hearted Portuguese nobleman of the finest type, most of the nobility sank into Court lackeys or greedy fortune hunters, and even the famous navigator, Fernão de Magalhães, deserted his country and entered the service of Spain, because the pension he coveted was not conferred upon him. The Asiatic trade, it must be insisted upon, was the monopoly of the Crown, and only indirectly profited the ordinary trading classes, and in the hot pursuit of wealth, agriculture was neglected.

There was, however, a more serious cause for the decline of the power of Portugal than the absolutism of the Crown, the want of patriotism of the nobility, or even than the corruption of the officials, and that was the rapid depopulation of the country. The Alemtejo and Algarves had never been thoroughly peopled, for the devastations caused by the Moorish wars could not be easily repaired; and, though the exertions of Diniz “the Labourer” had made the Beira the garden of the whole Iberian peninsula, the part of the kingdom to the south of the Tagus had remained either in the hands of the military religious orders or split up into large feudal estates. The great discoveries at the end of the fifteenth and the beginning of the sixteenth centuries largely checked the natural increase of population. Not only did the bulk of the young men gladly volunteer to man the fleets and serve in the armies in India and the East, but whole families emigrated to Madeira, and after 1530 to Brazil. The Portuguese are essentially an adventurous nation, fond of travelling and full of enterprise, and no difficulty was found in manning the great Indian fleets and recruiting the armies of Alboquerque and his successors. Of the thousands who flocked to Asia, but few ever returned. The incidents of perpetual warfare, and the noxious climate, killed off most, and of those who survived, many married native women and settled down in India. Even of the people who did remain in Portugal, few remained in their native homesteads engaged in agriculture; most crowded into Lisbon, where the necessities of the Eastern trade afforded work for all. The capital trebled its population in eighty years, in spite of its most unsanitary condition and the periodical pestilences which ravaged it. The king, the nobles, and the military orders were, however, quite undisturbed by this extensive emigration and rapid depopulation, for their large estates were much more cheaply cultivated by African slaves, who had been imported in such numbers that the Algarves was almost entirely populated by them, and in Lisbon itself they out-numbered the free men by the middle of the sixteenth century. In this respect the condition of Portugal resembled that of Italy at the time of the decline of the Roman Empire, as the wealth of Lisbon resembled that of Imperial Rome, while the utter corruption and oppression of the officials in the Indian settlements resembled only too closely the peculation and corruption of the Roman proconsuls and procurators.

While the Portuguese nation was exhibiting these signs of rapid decadence, another factor of decline was added by the religious zeal of John III., who, from the moment of his accession, had striven to introduce the Inquisition into Portugal. The Church of Rome was not likely to hinder his pious desire, but for several years the “novães Christiãos” or neo-Christians, as the half-hearted converts made from the Jews, on condition that they might remain in Portugal, were called, managed to ward off the blow. But the king’s earnest wish was gratified at last, and in 1536 the tribunal of the Holy Office was established in Portugal, with Diogo da Silva, Bishop of Ceuta, as first Grand Inquisitor, who was soon succeeded by the king’s brother, the Cardinal Dom Henry. The Inquisition quickly destroyed all that was left of the old Portuguese spirit, and so effectually stamped out the revival of Portuguese literature that, while, towards the close of the sixteenth century, the rest of Europe was advancing in civilization under the influence of the Renaissance, Portugal fell back, and her literature became dumb. The establishment of the Inquisition was followed in 1540 by the introduction of the Jesuits, who speedily obtained control of the national education, and carefully checked intellectual development. The king received his reward from the Pope for these services to Catholicism; he was permitted to unite the Grand Mastership of the wealthy orders of Christ, Santiago, and Aviz, with the Crown, and to found the new bishoprics of Leiria, Miranda, and Porto Alegre, in Portugal, and the archbishopric of Goa, in India.