The Portuguese possession of Brazil was to be far more dangerously disputed by the Dutch in the following century, and the only reason why they did not lose their American, as they did their Asiatic dominion is to be found in the method by which the colony had been settled. What was best in old Portugal, not necessarily what was bravest, but what was best and most industrious had gone to Brazil; the colonists there had been most wisely and prudently governed; they had been allowed to develop free from all restrictions by the wise policy of prudent governors; and the result of this free development was that the Brazilians remained Portuguese at heart. They repulsed the attempts of the Dutch, and even, when able to stand alone, they preferred to cling to the mother country. Therefore it was that when in the eighteenth century the Portuguese possessions in Asia were only a drain on the exchequer of the kingdom, Brazil became the main source of the wealth of the Portuguese Crown. Little did Cabral, or King Emmanuel, think that Brazil would be a far more valuable possession to Portugal than Cochin, or Goa, or Malacca, and that it was so was due to the manner in which it was settled; for colonies, whose prosperity rests on stout hearts and industrious hands, are of a lasting value to their mother country, while possessions, won and held by force of arms, are only of fictitious advantage and of transient value to the conquering race.
THE germs of the rapid decline of Portugal have been already noticed in discussing the reigns of Emmanuel and John III.; the country, exhausted by its efforts to conquer Asia and colonize Brazil, and deprived of liberty of thought by the deadly influence of the Inquisition, was fast losing its old vitality; and what Portuguese were left in Portugal were either enervated by luxury in the upper classes and slaves to the Court, or in the lower beggars upon the charity of the King and the Church. The Portuguese of the upper classes, who preserved the old Portuguese spirit of daring were in Asia; the sturdiest peasantry of the lower classes had found their way to Madeira or Brazil. Cultivated mainly by slaves, subject to an absolutist and bigoted court, and chiefly inhabited by slaves, priests, and beggars, it was no wonder that keen observers, like the Dutchman Cleynaerts, perceived that beneath its appearance of seeming prosperity, the Portuguese kingdom was rotten to the core. Lisbon was indeed the centre of the trade of the East; it was from the Tagus that the ships from the rest of Europe came to fetch the muslins of Bengal, the brocades of Gujarāt, the “calicos” of Calicut, the spices of the “Spice Islands,” the pepper of the Malabar coast, and the teas and silks of China. Lisbon was the commercial capital of the world; the King of Portugal was the richest sovereign in Europe. But in spite of wealth and luxury and universal consideration Portugal was a decaying power, and a single shock was sufficient to strike the country from its place, as the leading nation of Europe, the nation of heroes, and leave it defenceless against foreign foes.
This shock was supplied by the African expedition of Dom Sebastian and its disastrous result, and Portugal was then an easy prey to the ambition of Philip II. of Spain. The reign of Dom Sebastian has therefore a pathetic interest to posterity: the romantic character of the young king; his gallantry, and his death on the field of battle; and the sudden end of the house of Aviz, which had seemed so powerful, have contributed to make this reign one of the best known to students of general history in the whole annals of Portugal. To contemporaries this sudden collapse of the kingdom, which a few years before had seemed so great, appeared nothing short of marvellous, and political philosophers were never weary of dwelling on this extinction and finding reasons for it. Rabid Protestants argued that it was all due to the Inquisition; humanitarians agreed that it was a punishment for the high-handed conduct of the Portuguese “conquistadores” in the East; shortsighted historians attributed it entirely to the defeat of Dom Sebastian in Africa. But more careful inquiry has shown that the seeds of decline had long been planted, and that the fall of Portugal from her high estate was due to the exhaustion of her vital energies and to the rapid depopulation of her territory in Europe. No country can continue to exist and be a power, which sends forth all its best energies to foreign lands and foreign continents, and becomes exhausted at home; it might as well be expected that a man should be vigorous when his heart is hopelessly diseased.
Portugal was thus already rapidly decaying, when an infant of three years old became its monarch. Three times before in its history minors had succeeded to the throne, but in each case wise regents had governed the country, and the minorities had been marked by advance not retrogression. The first King of Portugal, Affonso Henriques, was but three years old, when he succeeded to his country; but the wisdom of his mother, Donna Theresa, during his minority paved the way for his subsequent success. Sancho II. was but a boy when he became king; but the great Bishop of Lisbon, by his self-abnegation, made his minority a triumph. Affonso V. had also been a child sovereign; but his uncle, the great Duke of Coimbra, ruled so wisely, that the king’s coming of age proved to be a disaster, not an advantage, to the country. But there were no such regents for the minority of Dom Sebastian: his grandmother was Spanish to the core, and loved Spain more than Portugal; his heir-presumptive was his great-uncle Dom Henry, Cardinal and Grand Inquisitor of the kingdom.
LISBON IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY. (From Braun and Hohenberg’s Civitates orbis terrarum, 1574.)
LISBON IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY. (From Braun and
Hohenberg’s Civitates orbis terrarum, 1574.)
The youthful king had none to help him. His father Dom João, the only son of John III., had died fifteen days before the birth of his only child, and his mother, Donna Joanna, the daughter of the Emperor Charles V., had immediately retired to Spain, leaving the child to the care of his grandparents. On the death of John III. in 1557, his queen, Donna Catherine, the sister of Charles V., assumed the regency in the name of her grandson. From the very first, the Portuguese people, from the highest to the lowest, disapproved of her rule; she was so aggressively Spanish in speech, bearing, and appearance, and had so persistently refused to identify herself with her adopted country, in spite of her long residence there, that every one believed her to be plotting to secure the eventual succession of her favourite nephew, Philip II. of Spain, to the crown of Portugal. Her bigotry and encouragement of the Inquisition did not tend to make her popular, and national prejudice declared itself strongly against her. Yet she was not a bad ruler; she maintained the old servants of John III., and the machinery of administration though in many places clogged by corruption, went on smoothly, and she even managed to despatch a sufficiently powerful army to relieve Mazagon, when it was besieged by the Moors. Yet throughout her five years’ tenure of power the queen-regent found herself hampered by the intrigues of the Cardinal Henry, who, as heir to the throne, thought he ought to be in her place, and at last she decided to give up the struggle, and in 1562 she retired to Spain.
The Cardinal Henry then satisfied his ambition and became regent of the kingdom, of which he was to be for a short time the unfortunate monarch, and during his rule the government of the country fell entirely into the hands of two brothers, who had made themselves very conspicuous in the intrigues which had led to the retirement of Queen Catherine. Of these brothers, the elder, Luis Gonçalves da Camara, was an able Jesuit, who had been appointed confessor and tutor to the young king, while the younger, Martim, was prime minister, and carried on the work of administration during the regency of the Cardinal Henry. The two brothers were both men of considerable ability, and, though they made no attempt to initiate reforms or to check the decay of Portugal, they managed to conceal her rottenness as much as possible from the eyes of Europe. In 1568 Dom Sebastian was declared of age by the Camaras, though only in his fifteenth year, and from that time they excluded their former master, the Cardinal, from even a semblance of power. This behaviour did not ensure their continuance in office, for as soon as the young king began to take an active interest in affairs, he dismissed the brothers, and placed the chief power in the hands of an upright nobleman, Dom Pedro de Alçaçova Carneiro.
The character of Dom Sebastian was one of the most important factors in bringing about the final overthrow of Portugal, and therefore deserves some examination, the more especially as the nature of the Portuguese monarchy was now entirely absolutist, owing to the wealth brought into the private treasury of the king by the Asiatic trade, and his consequent independence of the Cortes. The young king was rather German than Portuguese in appearance, with his blue eyes and fair hair and his face disfigured by the Hapsburg lip, and in his nature there was much of the Teuton dreaminess and love of the marvellous, which impelled him to take part in rash undertakings.[19] He was fond of solitude, and of building up castles in the air, in which he always appeared as a Christian hero exterminating the Mohammedans. For with his German dreaminess he united a truly Spanish fanaticism. His tutor, Luis Gonçalves da Camara, made him a bigot, and his governor, Dom Aleixo or Alexis de Menezes, taught him to look upon warlike enterprise as the chief aim of a monarch’s career, and the double teaching had inspired him with crusading ardour. He was not likely to be satisfied like his grandfather, John III., with showing his zeal for Christianity by rigorous orthodoxy and systematic persecution at home, but longed rather to unite war with religion, and to spread Christianity, like St. Louis of France, by his sword. To fanaticism and warlike ambition he added an obstinacy and imperiousness of character, which made him a tyrant. While training himself from boyhood for war, he determined to train his people also by issuing a sumptuary edict that none of his subjects might have more than two dishes, and those of the simplest character, for their meals, forgetting that no decree could alter the daily life of his people. Lastly, with these characteristics he united a spirit of profoundest melancholy, which is evident in his portraits and in all his actions, a melancholy which seemed to presage his early and tragic death, and is indicated by the motto he selected for himself:
Such a monarch was not the man to check the decadence of Portugal; only a practical man, who should try to husband the resources of the nation, could have attempted such a task, and even he would have had difficulties to face which might well seem insurmountable. But practical measures of reform, such as a systematic attempt to regulate the expenditure of the kingdom, and an effort to check the corruption which had grown up in all departments of the state, demanded an amount of serious and prolonged labour which the dreamy king was little inclined to bestow; he thought he had done enough in issuing his sumptuary edict, and paid no further attention to the evils which were sapping the strength of his kingdom. For one measure, however, he deserves much credit. Though paying no attention to the slaves in Portugal, and regarding negroes as a race made for slavery, he yet under the influence of the Jesuits issued a decree of the greatest importance for the colony of Brazil, by which it was ordered that for the future none of the aboriginal Brazilians should be publicly sold or sent as slaves to work in the plantations, except prisoners taken in a just war. Even in the higher domain of foreign politics as opposed to internal administration, he made no attempt to watch over the interests of Portugal. His early marriage was a matter of supreme importance to the kingdom, for the only male heir of the house of Aviz was his great-uncle, the Cardinal, and the deaths of Dom Sebastian and Dom Henry without direct heirs would inevitably be followed by a civil war arising from the disputed succession. This consideration weighed but little with the romantic monarch, who after making a half-hearted attempt in 1570 to secure the hand of the beautiful Princess Margaret, sister of Charles IX. of France, the famous “Reine Margot,” by the mediation of Dom Luis de Torres, abandoned the idea of marriage, and devoted himself to his schemes of fighting the Mohammedans.
The times were singularly unfit for a war against the infidels. Crusading ardour had long been extinct, and though Pope Pius II. (Æneas Sylvius Piccolomini) had in the preceding century tried to form a coalition against the Turks, and in 1571 Don John of Austria had broken their naval power at Lepanto, the ardour of the Pope and the navy of the prince were directed against the Turks, not because they were unbelievers, but because they were a conquering race and threatened Western Europe. The expeditions of the Emperor Charles V. against Tunis in 1535, and Algiers in 1541, were dictated rather by naval and commercial than by religious considerations, and John III. had acted with the thorough sanction of the Church, whose most humble devotee he was, in abandoning the smaller towns held by Portugal in Morocco. Yet Dom Sebastian persisted; he would be crusader rather than politician, and he was determined to fight the Mohammedans. His first idea was to go in person to India and place himself at the head of the Portuguese forces there; but the minister, Pedro de Alçaçova Carneiro, pointed out the difficulty of finding a regent to govern during his absence, and his former tutor, Aleixo de Menezes, turned his thoughts to Africa. He was fired by the fame of his ancestor, Affonso V. “the African,” and determined to waste what strength still remained to the exhausted Portuguese nation in useless expeditions to the barren regions of north-west Africa, where no possible advantage could be obtained of the slightest value to Portugal. Filled with the notion of recapturing the useless places which his grandfather had evacuated, such as Alcacer Seguier, Azamor, Arzila, and Cafim, King Sebastian in his twentieth year, in 1574, suddenly made up his mind to sail across to Africa. The expedition partook rather of the nature of a reconnaissance than of a serious campaign. The king spoke only of a visit to Tangier, and started off suddenly with his guards and courtiers from a hunting excursion, ordering the Duke of Aveiro to follow with a force of four hundred cavalry and one thousand two hundred infantry. With these troops Dom Sebastian made a few raids, and exhibited his personal courage by uselessly exposing his person, and he returned more bent than ever on a great war in Africa, which was to end in the Portuguese conquest of Morocco, and the acquisition of everlasting fame for its leader as a brave “soldier of the Cross.”
Before entering on the history of this expedition, which was to end so disastrously, and strike a last and final blow at the declining power of Portugal, it would be as well to see how the Portuguese dominion in Asia had been faring during the regencies of Queen Catherine and the Cardinal Henry, and during the earlier part of Sebastian’s own tenure of power. Dom Constantino de Braganza, the friend of the poet Camoens, had succeeded Francisco Barreto, the enemy of the poet, in 1558, the year after the death of John III., and had distinguished his viceroyalty by the capture of Daman. He was a truly great governor, although he permitted the Inquisition to be established at Goa, and his high rank gave him an ascendency not possessed by previous viceroys. His conduct was so blameless and his power so wisely exercised that the queen-regent begged him to accept the viceroyalty for life. He refused, and at the end of his three years of office resigned and was succeeded by Dom Francisco Coutinho, Count of Redondo, a nobleman of high character, who died in office, and was succeeded first by João de Mendonça, and then by Dom Antonio de Noronha, who took the important city of Mangalore by assault. During his viceroyalty in 1565 occurred the battle of Talikot, in which the powerful Hindu kingdom of Vijayanagar, which embraced the greater part of Southern India was overthrown by the Mohammedan kings of Ahmadābād, Bīdar, and Bijápur, and the way prepared for the extension of the Mohammedan power over Southern India. The next viceroy, Dom Luis de Athaide, was specially selected by King Sebastian himself in 1568, and he certainly justified the choice of the boy-king and his advisers. The Mohammedan kings of the Deccan were full of delight at their great victory of Talikot, and Alī Adìl Shah, king of Bijápur, believed he could expel the Portuguese from his dominions. With this intention he collected a vast army of one hundred thousand men, recruited from various adventurers of the Mohammedan religion, and laid siege to Goa in 1570. The city was being ravaged by a pestilence, but nevertheless the defence was a gallant one—the last great feat of arms of the Portuguese in India. The siege lasted ten months, and ended in the discomfiture of the besiegers and their final defeat in a pitched battle beneath the walls of Goa, when a victory was won, second only to that of Dom João de Castro at Diu, twenty-five years before. On his return to Portugal, Dom Luis de Athaide was received with the greatest favour by King Sebastian, who created him Count of Atouguia, and also by the people of Lisbon, who gave him the greatest reception vouchsafed to any Indian governor on his return for many generations. King Sebastian then made an important alteration in the government of his Asiatic possessions. Hitherto all the petty governors from the Cape of Good Hope to Japan had been subject to the Governor-General or the Viceroy at Goa, an extent of command which caused many serious inconveniences. In 1571 this vast extent of land and sea was divided into three separate governorships. The new viceroy, Dom Antonio de Noronha, was to be supreme from Cape Guardafui to Ceylon with his capital at Goa, while Francisco Barreto was to govern the south-east coast of Africa with his headquarters at Mozambique, and Antonio Moniz Barreto was to rule from Pegu to China with his capital at Malacca. Antonio Moniz Barreto succeeded as viceroy in 1573, and Dom Diogo de Menezes in 1576; and in 1578, the very year in which King Sebastian met his fate, his faithful servant, Dom Luis de Athaide, became viceroy for the second time, and it is said that the defeat of his sovereign broke the heart of the defender of Goa and caused his untimely death.
The expedition which was to meet with such a disastrous termination had long been contemplated by Sebastian, but its despatch was hastened by the state of affairs in Morocco itself, which seemed to the king most propitious for the success of his enterprise. The empire of Morocco had been divided between two brother Sherīfs, as the rulers of that country were termed, in the early part of the sixteenth century. The younger of the brothers, Maulā[20] Mohammed, beheaded his senior, Maulā Ahmed, and was in his turn assassinated in 1556. The successor to the throne, Maulā Abdallah, murdered two of his brothers and was succeeded by his illegitimate son, Maulā Ahmed ibn Abdallah, the “Muly Hamet” of old English writers. At this, the brother of the late Maulā Abdallah, Abd-el-Melik, commonly known as Muley Moloch, fled to Constantinople and, with the help of the Turks, ousted his nephew, Maulā Ahmed. The defeated usurper then decided to make an application for Christian help, and when refused asylum by Philip II., of Spain, he appealed to Dom Sebastian. This was the opportunity the young king had longed for, and when Maulā Ahmed promised to hold the crown of Morocco as a vassal of the King of Portugal, Sebastian enthusiastically welcomed him and promised him assistance. The wiser statesmen of Portugal pointed out that the strength of Portugal in men and arms was in Asia, and that it was impossible to attempt such an enterprise as the invasion of Morocco without foreign help. Sebastian therefore sent embassies asking for help from the Pope, and from his uncle, Philip II. of Spain. Pope Gregory XIII. sent him an arrow of S. Sebastian and nothing else, but the arrangements with Philip II. were more important. The minister Pedro de Alçaçova Carneiro was sent in person to the King of Spain to ask for troops and ships, in recognition of which Dom Sebastian would marry a Spanish infanta. Philip opposed the project strongly, but eventually promised five thousand men and fifty galleys to assist in an attack on Larache (El Araish), an offer which he afterwards withdrew, when the Duke of Alva assured him that at least fifteen thousand veteran soldiers would be necessary. In December, 1576, Sebastian had an interview in person with his uncle, when Philip II. again opposed his nephew’s mad idea, and he is reported to have said when his efforts proved in vain, “If he win, we shall have a good son-in-law; if he lose, a good kingdom.”
VIEW UP THE DOURO TOWARDS OPORTO. (After a drawing by J. Gibbs of Bath.)
VIEW UP THE DOURO TOWARDS OPORTO. (After a drawing by J.
Gibbs of Bath.)
Dom Sebastian then decided to have all the glory of conquering Morocco for himself, and his hopes reached their height when Maulā Ahmed managed to buy over the Kaid of Arzila and handed over that place, one of those surrendered by John III., to the Portuguese monarch. Maulā Abd-el-Melik, who was in bad health, tried to dissuade his rash opponent from attacking him, and in a letter pointed out that he was the rightful Sherīf of Morocco. He even went further, and offered to the young king a district of ten miles round each of the Portuguese towns—Tangier, Ceuta, Mazagon and Arzila—if he would give up supporting the usurper. Never might the hackneyed line of Horace be quoted with more justice than in regard to the rash young Christian monarch:
No amount of opposition could check the king’s ardour; he believed himself already surpassing in glory both John “the Great” and Affonso “the African,” and proceeded to raise money in every possible way. The treasury was nearly empty owing to peculation and bad management, and it was filled by imposing new taxes, by further harrying the converted Jews, and by partial bankruptcy. As the country was nearly drained of men the king had to hire mercenaries belonging to different nations, who were not properly equipped, and he never seemed to realize the difference between an expedition to take a sea-side town and the invasion of a powerful empire. If Affonso V. had met with difficulty in taking Tangier, how could Sebastian hope to penetrate to Fez, seventy miles up the country? Dom Sebastian trusted too much to the promised help of Maulā Ahmed; he believed other cities would yield as quickly as Arzila; and he had been thoroughly convinced by the expelled usurper that his uncle Maulā Abd-el-Melik was not only hated in Morocco, but enfeebled by illness; and that his offers of peace were dictated by fear.
The preparations made for the campaign were ridiculous in the extreme; all the most experienced generals and most tried Portuguese soldiers were in India, and the Portuguese troops who were enlisted consisted of a few old veterans whose time had expired in Asia, and of youthful raw recruits. These latter were not in the least disciplined, and were officered by young courtiers, who may have been brave, and were certainly inexperienced. The king himself intended to take the command in person, and instead of making plans for the conduct of the campaign and looking after his troops, he spent his time in borrowing the sword of King Affonso Henriques from the convent of Santa Cruz at Coimbra, and in having a banner worked in which the arms of Portugal were for the first time surmounted by an imperial crown. This banner was solemnly blessed by the archbishop in the cathedral of Lisbon on the 14th of June, and the king then considered that all was ready.
On the 24th of June, 1578, King Sebastian set sail with a fleet of fifty ships of war and about nine hundred transports under the command of the Admiral of Portugal, Dom Diogo de Sousa, carrying fifteen thousand infantry, two thousand four hundred cavalry, and thirty-six guns. Of this army only about ten thousand were Portuguese, the rest consisting of Spanish and German volunteers and mercenaries, and of nine hundred Italians, under the command of a gallant Englishman, Sir Thomas Stukeley. This well-known English Catholic, who had been created Marquis of Leinster by the Pope, had been stopped with his soldiers by Sebastian while on his way to raise an insurrection in Ireland against Elizabeth. In spite of the desperate hurry in which he had been to start, Sebastian made no attempt to hasten his passage and try the effects of a surprise. He first stopped at Lagos in the Algarves, then at Cadiz, where he was sumptuously entertained by the Duke of Medina Sidonia, and did not reach Tangier until July 6th. He was there met by his Mohammedan ally, Maulā Ahmed, who handed over his son as a hostage, but who only brought eight hundred Moors instead of the army which he had promised. Sebastian at first amused himself with hunting, while his opponent was concentrating his forces, and then repulsed a few Moors in a skirmish, which he magnified into a victory. From Tangier he suddenly carried his army to Arzila, where he encamped beneath the walls and wasted time. At last he determined to hold a council of war to decide in what way the army should attack Larache; Maulā Ahmed wisely suggested by sea, so as to have the advantage of a convenient means of retreat to the ships, but Sebastian answered the Moorish prince so rudely that he left the council, and the king decided to march by land. Even at this last moment Maulā Abd-el-Melik offered to cede Larache to Sebastian if he would cease his military operations, but the rash young king returned no answer whatever, and the Sherīf of Morocco, finding all his efforts for peace repulsed, determined to crush the invader.
On the 29th of July the march inland, away from the cool breezes off the sea, was commenced under the burning sky of an African summer; the soldiers were soon maddened by hunger, thirst, and heat, and by the incessant attacks of the Moorish skirmishers; and the army was dispirited before a battle took place. These miseries continued for five days, until August 3rd, when the Portuguese had some success in a skirmish, and Dom Sebastian took up what he considered a strong position near the little town of Alcacer Quibir, or more correctly El-Kasr el-Kebīr. The position was from a military point of view utterly indefensible, for both flanks were exposed, and Maulā Abd-el-Melik, who was now face to face with the Christians with an army of forty thousand cavalry and fifteen thousand infantry saw that the Portuguese king was lost. At daybreak on the 4th of August, 1578, the battle commenced with some brilliant charges on the part of the Portuguese, but in a short time the wings of the Moorish army, which were entirely composed of cavalry, overlapped the small Christian army, and for four hours the army of Dom Sebastian was compelled to defend itself. The result of the continued charges of the Moorish cavalry could not be doubtful, and at the end of the four hours’ fighting nearly the whole of the Christian army was cut to pieces. The Moorish monarch, Maulā Abd-el-Melik, had been in the agonies of death when the battle commenced, and died in his litter from the exertion of trying to mount his horse at the first charge of the Christians, placing his finger on his lip as a sign that his death should be kept secret for a time. His rival, Maulā Ahmed, was drowned in crossing the Wed or Wady M’Hassan, and his brother, Ahmed ibn Mohammed, was declared king by the soldiers at the conclusion of the battle. The slaughter was terrible; more than nine thousand Christians were killed, and all the rest, except about fifty, were taken prisoners. Sir Thomas Stukeley, after gallantly defending himself, was killed, with many of the chief Portuguese nobles and prelates, including Dom Jaymé, brother of the sixth Duke of Braganza, the Duke of Aveiro, who had commanded the cavalry, and the bishops of Coimbra and Oporto, while among the prisoners were the Duke of Barcellos and Dom Duarte de Menezes, Quarter-Master-General of the army.
Dom Sebastian throughout the battle behaved himself as a gallant knight, though he had not been a prudent general, and when the fortunes of the day went against him he determined to lose his life also. Many accounts are given of his death. One tradition says that he was taken prisoner by some Moors, who stripped him of his arms, and began to quarrel about him, and that a Mohammedan general rode in amongst them, and shouting out, “What, you dogs, when God has given you so glorious a victory, would you cut each other’s throats about a prisoner,” immediately struck the King of Portugal down in ignorance of his rank. Another story is that the king met Dom Luis de Brito with the consecrated banner wrapped around him, and said, “Hold it fast, let us die upon it;” and that when, after fierce fighting, Brito was taken prisoner with the banner, he saw the king riding away unpursued. Dom Luis de Lima also asserted that he saw the king making his way towards the river unhurt. According to the most trustworthy account, Christovão de Tavora, the king’s equerry, showed a flag of truce, and offered to surrender with the fifty horsemen, who still remained about the king, when Sebastian suddenly dashed on the Moorish cavalry, who, irritated at this breach of faith, instantly slew him, as well as the brave equerry, who followed his master. Anyhow, it is certain that the new Sherīf Ahmed ibn Mohammed sent out Sebastião de Resende, a gentleman of the bedchamber, to discover the corpse of the king, and that a naked body was brought in covered with wounds, which the Portuguese prisoners at once recognized as that of the ill-fated Dom Sebastian. The body was temporarily buried in the palace at Alcacer Quibir, and removed in the following September to Ceuta, at the request of Cardinal Henry. It was eventually taken to Portugal in 1582, by the orders of Philip II., and buried with great pomp in the church of St. Jerome at Belem.
It is important to lay stress on this subject, because for many years the lower classes of the Portuguese people refused to believe that their sovereign was dead, a belief encouraged by the stratagem of a wounded noble on the evening of the fatal battle to gain admission into the city of Tangier by asserting that he was the king. It was this belief which led to the acceptance of the successive false Dom Sebastians, who played a part in the ensuing half century, and it had a still further influence upon the whole future of the Portuguese people. That the “Principe Encuberto” or Hidden Prince would appear again became a religion, and the sect of the Sebastianistas became a powerful body of fanatics. Their belief was fostered by the princes of the House of Braganza as patriotic, and whenever Portugal has been subject to a great strain, the Sebastianistas have always come to the front. Even at the present day they are not extinct, and Sir Richard Burton asserts that he has met with them in the interior of Brazil. It was this firm belief that gave point to the remark of Lord Tyrawley, in the English House of Lords in 1763: “What can one possibly do with a nation, one half of which expect the Messiah, and the other half their king, Dom Sebastian, who has been dead two hundred years?”
The news of the terrible disaster of Alcacer Quibir was brought to Lisbon by the Admiral Dom Diogo de Sousa, and occasioned the most passionate lamentation. There was not a noble family which had not lost more than one of its representatives, not a patriot who failed to see that ruin was staring his country in the face. Deprived of soldiers, resources, and reputation at one fell blow, the Portuguese nation seemed stunned at the extent of its calamity. Even in India the same alarm was felt, and it is said that the brave Viceroy, Dom Luis de Athaide, died of a broken heart at the news. The Cardinal Henry was solemnly crowned king, but he was a feeble old man of sixty-six, who had to be fed like a baby, and he was quite incapable of facing the situation. He utterly refused to acknowledge any successor, or to express any opinion on the subject, and when he died on January 31, 1580, the Cortes which had been summoned to decide this important question was still sitting at Lisbon. With him ended for a time the separate existence of the Portuguese nation, and it is significant and interesting to observe that Camoens, the great national poet of Portugal, the poet who had immortalized its heroic epoch, died in a hospital of semi-starvation a few months before or after the Cardinal-king. It was well he did not live longer, for Portugal was to enter on the period of its “Sixty-Years’ Captivity,” and her proud sons, who had the patriotism of a Camoens in their hearts, would not have been able to bear the burden of subjection to a foreign king.
IT has always been the case in the history of a nation which can boast of a golden age, that the epoch of its greatest glory is that in which its literature chiefly flourished. The energies of a nation at its zenith cannot be bounded by the vastest schemes of conquest, but develop in other directions as well. It was so with Portugal. The age which witnessed the careers of its famous captains and conquerors was also the age of its greatest poets and prose writers. The establishment of the Inquisition soon checked the progress of Portuguese literature, but before its fatal power had time to thoroughly stifle free thought, and before the disaster of Alcacer Quibir, and the annexation of the country by Philip II. of Spain, Portugal had been able to produce many great writers, and one of the most supremely-gifted poets the world has ever seen, Luis de Camoens.
The affection which the first princes of the house of Aviz had felt for literature, and especially for purely national literature, has been alluded to, and the natural result is to be seen in the works of the early poets, and of the eloquent chroniclers of the fifteenth century. The honour given by these princes to literary endeavour heightened its importance in the eyes of the people, and raised the whole standard of education. The Portuguese were therefore prepared to take advantage of the stores of knowledge revealed by the revival of classical learning, and to profit greatly by it. Ayres Barbosa, a native of Aveiro, was the first to introduce the study of ancient Greek into the peninsula; he had listened to the lectures of Politian and his contemporaries at Florence, and after teaching “the humanities” at the University of Salamanca for about twenty years from 1495, he returned to Portugal as tutor to the younger sons of King Emmanuel. His most distinguished Portuguese pupil was, however, Andrea de Resende, the antiquary, who was one of the professors at the University of Coimbra, during the epoch of its greatest reputation, and is well known as the friend and correspondent of Erasmus.
This university,[21] at which the most famous authors and statesmen of Portugal received their education, deserves some slight notice here. A university was founded by King Diniz at Lisbon in 1300, but the turbulence of the students, and their perpetual quarrels with the citizens, caused him to remove it to Coimbra, about the year 1308. During the fourteenth century the habitat of the Portuguese university was moved from Coimbra to Lisbon in 1338, from Lisbon to Coimbra in 1354, and from Coimbra back to Lisbon in 1377. John “the Great” paid great attention to the university, as he did to every valuable institution in the kingdom; and in 1400 he entirely remodelled it, establishing a staff of fourteen regius professors, four of whom were to teach grammar, three Roman law, three canon law, two logic, one medicine, and one theology. On this footing the Portuguese university remained until 1537, when John III., perceiving that the busy pursuits of a noisy capital were hardly suited to quiet study and the acquisition of learning, removed it finally to the beautiful city of Coimbra, and once more changed its constitution. In 1547 the king summoned Andrea Govea back to his native land, and requested him to bring with him other men of learning. Andrea Govea and his brothers were famous as scholars throughout Europe, even in the days which could boast of Scaliger; they were all natives of Beja, and had been educated at Paris; Martial Govea, the eldest, wrote one of the earliest Latin grammars, published at Paris in 1534; Antonio Govea argued the cause of Aristotle against Ramus, edited Virgil and Terence, and was held to be the most formidable rival of Cujas as an exponent of Roman law; while Andrea had been principal of the College of St. Barbe, rector of the University of Paris, and afterwards principal of the College of Guienne at Bordeaux, and was termed by Montaigne, “le plus grand principal de France.”[22] Andrea Govea brought with him to Coimbra, as requested, many of his friends and colleagues, including George Buchanan, the greatest scholar Scotland has ever produced, Patrick Buchanan, his elder brother, Arnoldus Fabricius and Elias Vinetus, learned Frenchmen, and his own countrymen, Diogo de Tieve, João da Costa, and Antonio Mendes. This brilliant band did not, however, long remain united, for Andrea Govea died in 1548, and his death was followed by the persecution of George Buchanan by the Inquisition. The illustrious scholar was accused of eating flesh in Lent, and of writing a poem against the Franciscans, and after being imprisoned in a convent he was only too glad to escape from the inhospitable country. Though the death of Govea, and the persecution of Buchanan, deprived the remodelled university of its most famous teachers, there yet remained a sufficient number with such coadjutors as Jeronymo Osorio, Bishop of Silves, Andrea de Resende, and Pedro Nunes, the mathematician, to make this the golden age of the University of Coimbra; and the instruction they imparted profoundly impressed the minds of their most promising young Portuguese pupils, such as Ferreira and Camoens.
The result of the introduction of a knowledge of the masterpieces of classical literature was bound to have a great effect upon the development of Portuguese poetry and prose, but before noticing the result of that influence in the works of the “classicists,” headed by Sá de Miranda and Ferreira, and in the epic of Camoens, it is necessary to devote a little space to the life and works of the greatest Portuguese dramatist, Gil Vicente. The versatility of the Portuguese people during the heroic period is in no way better illustrated than by the fact that in their country appeared the first modern dramatist, nearly a century before Shakespeare or Calderon. The date of Gil Vicente’s birth is unknown, but it is said that he came of a good family, and he is first found attached to the Court of Emmanuel as a dramatic author. He began by writing “autos” or religious pieces, resembling in their nature the miracle plays common all over Europe at the time, and the first, which attracted King Emmanuel’s attention, was written to celebrate the birth of his eldest son, afterwards John III. Most of them are Christmas pieces, and the dramatist took advantage of the story of the shepherds watching their flocks by night, to introduce the elements of what may be called pastoral comedy. Far more important are his comedies and farces, which latter won for him the title of the Portuguese Plautus. Neither the plots nor the language of these productions are very refined, but they are full of dramatic vigour, and represent the life of the lower classes in Lisbon, with a vividness which strikingly recalls the works of his Roman prototype. Gil Vicente died at Evora in 1557, the same year as his patron, John III., who, in his younger days, did not disdain to act in his favourite’s dramas, and he has had no successor as a comic writer worthy to be named beside him, which proves once again, how thoroughly with the extinction of the national greatness, the originality of the Portuguese people in every direction disappeared.
Side by side with Gil Vicente must be mentioned Bernardim Ribeiro, the founder of the most national school of Portuguese poetry, that of the romantic-pastoral type. Though he showed the influence of the revival of classical learning in his style, he did not show it in his ideas, and the shepherds who converse in his eclogues, are as thoroughly Portuguese as those who appear in Gil Vicente’s Christmas “autos.” Ribeiro, like Gil Vicente, was a favourite at the Court of King Emmanuel, where he held the office of “Gentleman of the Chamber,” and it is said that the lady for whom he cherished a hopeless affection was the Donna Beatrice, daughter of the king. A modern writer on Portuguese literature, speaking of Ribeiro and his works, says: “The rivers and mountains of his native land are the natural framework of a poet’s fancy, and the revival of classical learning showed him in the Eclogues of Virgil a model, which he was not slow to imitate. His Eclogues, written in ‘redondilhas’ (octosyllabic nine or ten-lined stanzas), are the earliest in modern Europe, and while replete with the charms and conceits of versification of the troubadours, show a truly poetic love of nature.”[23] Ribeiro was the first true Portuguese poet, as Gil Vicente was the first Portuguese dramatist. While coming under the influence of the classical writers of Greece and Rome, he was not a slavish imitator of their master-pieces, and as the founder of the school of pastoral poetry, he holds an honourable place in the Portuguese literature of the heroic age.
Ribeiro exhibits in his poetry the influence of the revival of classical learning to a slight degree; after his time that influence increased, and his successors, who bridged over the chasm between Ribeiro and Camoens, were thorough classicists, who imitated the Greek and Roman poets, not only in form, but in spirit. The chief poets of this classicist group were Sá de Miranda and Ferreira. Francisco Sá de Miranda was born at Coimbra, the Portuguese Oxford, in 1495, of a noble family, and he became professor of jurisprudence in his native town. On the death of his parents, he resigned his professorship, and travelled in Italy, where he studied the works not only of the great classical authors, but of the new school of Italian poets. He returned to his native country with a great reputation, and received an appointment at the Court of John III. He proved an accomplished courtier, but a quarrel with a Portuguese nobleman forced him to abandon his office, and he retired to his country seat at Tapada, near Ponte de Lima, where he died in 1558, while Camoens was still fighting in India. It was in Italy and not in Coimbra, that he learnt to study the great classical poets, and reverencing their works with the almost superstitious admiration of the Italians of the Renaissance, he dared not treat their ideas with the freedom of either Ribeiro or Camoens. Sá de Miranda devoted himself to the task of polishing the Portuguese language, and in doing this, he did more harm than good, for he introduced many Latin and Spanish forms of expression, which were not needed, and which helped to hinder the natural development of the national literature. He openly expressed his opinion that Spanish was a more dignified language than Portuguese, and many of his best poems are written in the former tongue, and are considered by authorities on Spanish literature to be excellent specimens of sixteenth-century work. Sá de Miranda’s poems comprise imitations of many poets. He wrote eclogues in the style of Theocritus, epistles on the lines of those of Horace, plays based on Terence, and sonnets of which the form was borrowed from the Italian writers of the Renaissance. All are good and interesting in their way, but all are imitations, and the very best imitations of foreign styles can hardly rank a poet among the glories of his country’s literature. Sá de Miranda’s right to be included in any work on Portuguese literature is not due to the poems he wrote, or to his questionable improvements in his native language, but to the fact that he familiarized the people with the classic forms of poetry, of which a greater than he was to take advantage. Yet Sá de Miranda held a very high place in the estimation of his contemporaries, and the writers of the next century did not hesitate to rank him above Camoens, as being more “correct,” a criticism, which irresistibly recalls Voltaire’s avowed preference of Pope over Shakespeare.
Antonio Ferreira, the second leader of the Portuguese classicist school, was like Sá de Miranda, a slavish adherent to classical forms, but he was at the same time a genuine patriot and a lover of his country, and a student of its past history. He, like Sá de Miranda, was of a noble family, and he was born at Lisbon in 1528. He was sent to the University of Coimbra, and studied there in the days of its greatness. His favourite teacher was Diogo de Tieve, the friend of George Buchanan, and professor of classical literature, from whom he obtained a knowledge of the classics, not inferior to that possessed by Sá de Miranda. Even in his youth, Ferreira determined to devote his poetical talent to works in his own language, and he refused to write Latin or Spanish verses. He formed round him at Coimbra, a school of young poets, of whom the chief were Andrade Caminha, Jeronymo Corte-Real, and Diogo Bernardes; and in 1557 he published his first volume of poems. This book established his fame, and on coming to Lisbon, he was appointed a judge of the Court of Appeal, and a gentleman of the Royal Household. He continued to write and publish until his death from the plague in 1569, the year before Camoens returned from India. Ferreira, like Sá de Miranda, was an imitator of the great classical poets, but he differed from his predecessor, in that he combined with this predilection, an appreciation of the national greatness. He wrote sonnets after the manner of Petrarch, elegies after Ariosto, eclogues after Virgil, and odes and epistles after Horace; but his greatest work was a drama founded on the model of the ancient Greek tragedies. He selected for his subject the touching story of Ines de Castro, and the characters in his play are Ines and her nurse, Dom Pedro and his secretary, King Affonso and his three counsellors, a messenger, and a chorus of women of Coimbra. Ferreira’s tragedy, though more fit for the study than the stage, remains to this day the finest drama in the Portuguese language, and stands almost as far as above other dramatic attempts of subsequent ages, as Camoens’s great epic towers above all imitations.
The history of the development of the revival of learning, as illustrated by the classicist school of Sá de Miranda and Ferreira, is of great importance to the right understanding of the course of Portuguese literature, but to the world at large its chief interest lies in its share in forming the taste of the one man, whom Portugal has contributed to the small roll of supreme poets, Camoens. His name is more famous than that of any other Portuguese, whether king or captain; his great epic has been translated into every civilized European language, and is a greater subject of pride to his countrymen than their conquests in the East; and no “Story of Portugal” could be complete which did not give some account of the poet who has given immortal fame to the heroic deeds of the great age of Portugal.
LUIS DE CAMOENS. (From the Portrait in “Portugal Illustrated,” 1829.)
LUIS DE CAMOENS.
(From the Portrait in “Portugal Illustrated,” 1829.)
Luis de Camoes, commonly called in English Camoens, was the son of a captain in the Portuguese navy, who had more than once experienced the perils of the voyage to India, and he was born at Lisbon in either 1524 or 1525. His family was noble, but by no means among the first rank of the Portuguese nobility in wealth or importance. He was educated at the University of Coimbra, before it had been revivified by the energy and learning of Govea and his friends, and there acquired a profound knowledge of the Latin poets, and of the symbolism and the legends of the Greek and Latin mythology. He seems to have left the university, which he ever dearly loved, before the arrival of Diogo de Tieve, and the foundation of what may be called the national-classicist school of poetry by Ferreira, and went to Lisbon to obtain employment. His poetical powers soon became manifest, and he had become somewhat of a favourite, when he fell in love with a great lady of the Court, said to be the Donna Catherine de Athaide, lady of honour to the queen. The lady’s friends were indignant at the poet’s suit, and at their request he was exiled to the little town of Ceuta, on the coast of Morocco, where he lost his right eye in a skirmish with the Moors. Wearied of this life he volunteered for India, the goal of every gallant Portuguese gentleman, and after serving a term in prison for a street brawl in Lisbon, he set sail for the East in 1553. In Asia, Camoens remained for more than sixteen years, and it was there that he gathered the local knowledge which gives truth and charm to many passages of his immortal poem. In 1554 he served in the Red Sea and at the capture of Muscat under Dom Fernando de Menezes, and soon after his return to Goa he was ordered to take up a lucrative appointment at Macao, in 1556. Here he remained for two years, and the chief glory of the little island off Canton is the cave where he is supposed to have worked on his epic, and which is still known as the “Grotto of Camoens.” From Macao he was recalled in 1558, when in spite of his poverty he was thrown into gaol at Goa for peculation, and he was not released until the arrival of an old court acquaintance, Dom Constantino de Braganza, as Viceroy of India. With this prince, he served at the capture of Daman, and he distinguished himself in various engagements under the next governor-general, the Count of Redondo. In 1568 Camoens determined to return to Portugal with his great poem for his only fortune, but on his way, disaster again overtook him, and in 1569 he was thrown into an African prison for debt, by Pedro Barreto, Governor of Mozambique. From this cruel confinement, he was released by some old friends on their way from India, who paid the debt, and in 1570 he once more found himself in Lisbon. His reception in his native land was not encouraging; he was not received at Court; he had made no money in India, and had only shown a peculiar faculty for getting into debt and making enemies; and he now devoted himself to the final recension of his “Lusiads.” The first edition of the great poem was published in 1572, but the fame it at once acquired did little good to the author, who was only granted a pension of £3 8s. 0d. a year, equivalent perhaps to £20 in modern money. The later years of Camoens were utterly miserable; poor and neglected, the arch-poet of Portugal had to subsist upon what his Javan slave could beg for him at night in the streets of Lisbon. He lived long enough to hear of the disaster of Alcacer Quibir, and of the death of Dom Sebastian, but he was spared the pain of seeing the Spaniards ruling over the fatherland whose glories he had sung, for he died in a common hospital at Lisbon in June, 1579, or June, 1580.
These are the chief incidents in the life of one of the world’s greatest poets, and they tell their own tragic story without need of a commentary. It serves no good purpose to speculate why Camoens was ever in debt and making enemies, or why he was neglected and left to die in poverty; other poets and men of letters have shared the same lot. It remains rather to examine the causes which make his epic take rank among the works which the unanimous opinion of posterity has decreed to be immortal. Of his sonnets, eclogues, and smaller poems, beautiful as many of them are, there is no need to speak, for it is on his “Lusiads” that the fame of Camoens must ever rest. The subject of the epic is Vasco da Gama’s first voyage to India and his return, an achievement of such surpassing difficulty, and of such importance alike to Portugal and to Europe, that Camoens perceived its fitness for poetical treatment. But the poem is not confined to the narration of the perils of the voyage only: it abounds in long episodes, in one of which Vasco da Gama relates the history of the Portuguese people to the king of Melinda, while in another a nymph gives a prophetic history to the great admiral of the achievements of his country-men in the land he had just visited. Sir Robert Walpole is said to have declared that he derived his knowledge of English history from Shakespeare’s historical plays, and it might be affirmed in the same sense that many, if not most, educated people have learned what they know of Portuguese history from the “Lusiads.” Such a knowledge is not to be despised. For, if the poet makes the mistakes of his era, and, for instance, identifies the modern Portuguese with the ancient Lusitanians, he manages in a few stanzas apiece to sum up with dramatic genius all the famous tales of Portuguese history, such as the voluntary surrender of Egas Moniz, the pathetic story of Ines de Castro, and the glories of the victory of Aljubarrota. This power of historical description is of itself enough to make Camoens the national poet of Portugal; every old Portuguese family finds its name enshrined in some of its glowing passages, and the whole Portuguese people feel identified with the actors in the great deeds it describes. But Camoens is not only a national poet; he is a hero telling of an heroic deed done by an heroic people, and this secures for him the interest of readers of all nations, who can appreciate true heroism. Vasco da Gama was a Portuguese sailor, but the results of his enterprise and success were to the advantage of all Europe, and the poet who sings of him deserved to be heard by Europe. If, then, the subject was fitted for epic poetry, the style of Camoens was equal to it. He rises far above the purely classicist school in Portuguese literature; he uses the names of the Roman gods, and narrates their councils and their intervention in mundane affairs with the verisimilitude of Virgil, yet he never falls into a base or servile imitation of the great Latin poet, but preserves throughout the cast of thought of a Portuguese “conquistador.” To criticize the “Lusiads” further is without the purpose of this book, but in conclusion it must be pointed out that the great poem remains the strongest bond of union between the modern Portuguese people, whether in Portugal itself, or in Brazil, Goa, Macao, and Mozambique. It is impossible to meet an educated Portuguese, who does not know his Camoens; he is more to them than Dante to the Italians, Goethe to the Germans, or Shakespeare to the English; he sings of their nation’s glory, and in maintaining his fame, each one of them is interested. Never was this more manifest than in the Camoens Celebration of 1880, when Portuguese-speaking people of all climes, and of all varieties of political and religious opinion, gathered together in Lisbon to do honour to the memory of their great poet, whose glory they felt to be a connecting link between them all.
JOÃO DE BARROS. (From a Print in the British Museum.)
JOÃO DE BARROS.
(From a Print in the British Museum.)
It was not only in the domain of poetry that the boundless energies of the Portuguese of the heroic age distinguished themselves; in prose composition, also, they stood high above their contemporaries of other nations. History, as might be expected, was their chief study, and João de Barros, the Portuguese Livy, was the writer who bridged over the gap between the old chroniclers, of whom Damião de Goes was the last, and the regular historians. This young nobleman, who was born in 1496, was distinguished at the Portuguese Court by his ardent study of the Latin historical writers, and especially of Livy, and was commissioned by King Emmanuel to draw up an account of the discoveries and conquests of the Portuguese in the East. John III. continued the royal patronage to João de Barros, who received many lucrative appointments, such as Captain-general of Brazil and treasurer of the Indian department at Lisbon. The latter post gave him the opportunity to collect valuable information on his subject, and he made good use of it. His “Asia” is written in exact imitation of the style of Livy; it is divided into decads and abounds in speeches which might have been, but certainly never were, delivered, and in curious theories, entirely without foundation. Nevertheless, João de Barros possesses the greatest quality of an historian, for he took pains in trying to ascertain the truth, and when he believed he had found it, he told his story simply and directly. He combines the naïve simplicity of the early chroniclers with the art of making a story interesting, and he deserves a niche in the history of Portuguese literature as the first writer of modern Portuguese prose. In fiction the “Amadis de Gaul” type of romance was followed by imitations of the “Palmeirim de Inghilterra;” both are alike tedious and absurd, and thoroughly deserve the hearty mockery of Cervantes, who laughed them and their school out of existence. Far more interesting, if also somewhat tedious, are the pastoral novels, which were originated by the poet Bernardim Ribeiro, and written with most success by Rodrigues Lobo, for they are truly national, and exhibit the love of nature, which is inherent in the Portuguese character.
Nor was more serious literary work neglected by the universally cultured Portuguese of the heroic age. Mention has been made of the great scholars, who made the University of Coimbra renowned, and who encouraged the study of the classics. Theological inquiry was also much favoured, and Francisco Ferrario, one of the divines at the Council of Trent, and Jeronymo de Azambuja, a learned Hebrew scholar, who wrote a commentary on the Bible, both held a high place in the estimation of their contemporaries. Among grammarians, the name of Manuel Alvares, a Jesuit, is honourably remembered, while scientific research was represented by the mathematician, Pedro Nunes, who was reckoned one of the wonders of his age. Lastly, Andrea de Resende, the greatest Portuguese antiquary, must be again noticed, for his “De Antiquitatibus Lusitaniæ” is a work of exceptional value, and contains a transcription of many Roman inscriptions, since destroyed.
Enough has been said to indicate how great and varied was the literary activity of the Portuguese during their golden age, and it is worthy of notice, that their literature was most abundant in great works at the very time in which their energies were most strained by their Asiatic conquests. It is matter for wonder, that one small nation could do so much, and in the “Lusiads” the key-note of their success is to be found. The Portuguese race, trained under great kings and great captains, believed itself to be invincible, and from that very belief it remained invincible for a time. When the illusion was shattered, the superabundant energy which it had fostered vanished completely. When once a nation has been conquered, and its belief in its invincibility is gone, its power withers away. The greatness of a nation depends upon the opinion its people have of themselves as individuals and members of the body politic; as long as they believe in themselves they can do anything; when their faith in their invincibility disappears, their position among nations speedily declines.
THE death of the Cardinal-King Henry brought the people of Portugal face to face with the problem which all had been discussing ever since the melancholy fate of Dom Sebastian. There were seven candidates for the throne, but only five of them need be seriously considered, for the claims of Pope Gregory XIII., as heir-general to a cardinal, and of Catherine de’ Medici, through the first marriage of Affonso III. to the Countess of Boulogne in the thirteenth century, need no further notice. The relationship of the other five claimants to Emmanuel “the Fortunate” can be best perceived from the table on the opposite page. From this table it clearly appears that the true heiress to the throne was Catherine, Duchess of Braganza, and failing her heirs, the Duke of Parma; and that the claims of Philip II. of Spain and of the Duke of Savoy were only legally valid in case of the extinction of the descendants of Dom Duarte or Edward, Duke of Guimaraens. The University of Coimbra, after due consideration, declared in favour of the Duchess of Braganza, but Philip II. of Spain cared little for this opinion; he had long hoped to sit upon the throne of Portugal, and to rule over the whole Iberian peninsula, and he wished still more to add the profits of the Portuguese trade with Asia to his own American revenues, and thus fill his exchequer with the sinews of war for his struggle against the Protestants of the north of Europe. Philip II. therefore set to work to win over the majority of the Cortes which had been convened at Lisbon, to settle the succession to the throne. Money and lavish promises assisted the eloquence of the two chief supporters of the King of Spain, Christovão de Moura and Antonio Pinheiro, Bishop of Leiria; and when the death of the cardinal-king was announced in January, 1580, the Cortes was quite ready to recognize Philip as king, although the people, or rather that small section of the people who were Portuguese patriots, felt and expressed all the traditional hatred against the union of the thrones of Spain and Portugal.
TABLE II. The Descendants of Emmanuel.
TABLE II. The Descendants of Emmanuel.
The death of King Henry hurried on matters, and Philip, in order to establish himself peacefully on the throne, entered into negotiations with the Duke of Braganza. The King of Spain solemnly promised the duke that he should have Brazil in full sovereignty with the title of king, and that a marriage should be arranged between his daughter and the Prince of the Asturias, heir to the conjoined thrones; and the duke, who hated war and loved peace, accepted these terms, in spite of his wife’s opposition. But, to the surprise of Philip, another competitor for the crown, to whom he had paid no attention—Dom Antonio, the Prior of Crato—declared himself king at Santarem, and, entering Lisbon without opposition, struck money and began to raise soldiers. This Dom Antonio was the son of Dom Luis, Duke of Beja, the second son of Emmanuel “the Fortunate,” by Violante de Gomes, surnamed “the Pelican,” one of the most beautiful women of her time. Dom Antonio alleged that his father was secretly married to his mother, and reminded the people, in a proclamation, that, even if the marriage were not legal, one of the greatest of all the kings of Portugal, the victor of Aljubarrota, was a bastard also. But the Portugal of the close of the sixteenth century, enervated by wealth and luxury, oppressed by the Inquisition, and with its free population reduced in numbers, possessed none of the energy of the Portugal of the fourteenth century, and felt no inclination to fight against the King of Spain, the son of the great Emperor Charles V., and the uncle and friend of their lamented monarch, Dom Sebastian. The brave, but hot-headed and noisy Prior of Crato could not be compared in warlike prowess or statesmanlike qualities to John of Aviz, and he had no “Holy Constable” to support him; and the Cortes of 1580, unlike that which in 1385 had listened to the manly words of João das Regras, and declared John “the Great” king of Portugal, listened to the promises of Christovão de Moura, and rejected the Prior of Crato. Dom Antonio raised a few soldiers, but the Duke of Alva who entered Portugal at the head of twenty thousand men, defeated them without difficulty at Alcantara on August 26th, when the pretender fled to France, and Philip II. was proclaimed king.
PHILIP II.
PHILIP II.
In 1581 Philip II. of Spain and I. of Portugal, as he now styled himself, solemnly entered Lisbon, and in the presence of a great Cortes held at Thomar he swore on April 15, 1581, that he and his successors would observe the following conditions, which had been settled by his agents. He swore that he would maintain the privileges and liberties of the Portuguese people; that the Cortes should be frequently summoned to meet in Portugal; that the viceroy or chief governor should always be a native, unless the king should give that charge to one of the royal family; that the royal household should be kept up on the same scale as hitherto; that all offices, civil, military, and judicial, and all dignities in the Church, and in the orders of knighthood, within the kingdom, should be conferred upon Portuguese subjects alone; that the commerce of Africa, Persia, and India should be reserved to them, and carried on only in their vessels; that he would make no royal grant of any city, town, or royal jurisdiction to any but Portuguese; that forfeited or lapsed estates should never be absorbed in the royal domain, but be regranted to some relative of the last possessor or to some other Portuguese subject; that the king should reside as much as possible in Portugal, and that, when he did come, he should not take the houses of private individuals for his officers, but observe the custom of Portugal; that there should be always resident at the royal court an ecclesiastic, a chancellor, a treasurer, and two masters of requests, of Portuguese birth and nationality, to manage all business relating to their country; that the revenue of Portugal should be kept distinct from that of Spain, and spent in the kingdom; that all matters of justice should be finally settled there; that Portuguese noblemen should be admitted to offices in the households of the King and Queen of Spain; that all customs duties at the land frontiers should be abolished; and that King Philip should at once grant three hundred thousand crowns out of his royal treasury to redeem prisoners, repair cities, and relieve the miseries which the plague had brought upon the Portuguese people. All these conditions Philip II. solemnly swore to observe, and he was in consequence recognized as King of Portugal, not only in Portugal itself, but in Brazil and the Indian settlements, where Fernão Telles had succeeded the viceroy, Dom Luis de Athaide, as governor-general.
The other candidates for the crown of Portugal were obliged to acquiesce in Philip’s success; the Duke of Braganza, though greatly disappointed at only receiving the office of Constable of Portugal and the Order of the Golden Fleece instead of the sovereignty of Brazil, was too apathetic to resist, and, in face of his apathy, the Dukes of Parma and Savoy were forced to surrender their claims, which were obviously inferior to those of the Duchess of Braganza. Only the Prior of Crato persisted in his attempts to win the throne from Philip by relying on the old dislike of the Portuguese people for the Spaniards. He was cordially received in France by Catherine de’ Medici, who, though Italian by birth, was true to the French policy of trying to weaken Spain; and through her influence a strong French fleet of sixty ships of war, with many troops on board, was sent, under the command of Philip Strozzi, to the Azores, which had recognized Dom Antonio in 1580 as king of Portugal, and had refused to acknowledge Philip. But the ill-luck of the Prior of Crato followed him; the French fleet was defeated at Terceira by the Spanish admiral, Don Alvaro de Bacam on July 26, 1582; Strozzi was killed, and Dom Antonio escaped with difficulty to England. There Elizabeth received him cordially, and in 1589, the year after the defeat of the Great Armada, she sent a strong fleet, under Sir Francis Drake and Sir John Norris, to help him win back his “kingdom.” This attempt also proved a failure; Maulā Ahmed ibn Mohammed of Morocco was prevented from advancing to the prior the loan of two hundred thousand crowns, which he had promised on receiving Dom Antonio’s son, Dom Christovão, as a hostage, by Philip’s timely surrender of Arzila; Drake and Norris quarrelled, and the English retired without effecting anything of importance. The unfortunate prior, finding that Elizabeth would do nothing more for him, once more went to France, where he died in great poverty and distress on August 26, 1595. He was buried in the Church of St. Germain l’Auxerrois at Paris, where the inscription on his tomb styles him “King of Portugal”; and he left several children behind him, who were not recognized as legitimate, owing to the fact that their father had taken a vow of chastity on becoming a Knight of Malta.
The attempts of the Prior of Crato did not affect the equanimity of Philip II.; he satisfied himself, when he entered his new kingdom, by making fifty-two exceptions to the general amnesty, which he had declared, including Dom Antonio himself and his chief adviser, the Bishop of Guarda. He returned to Spain shortly afterwards, leaving his nephew, the Cardinal-Archduke Albert as viceroy at Lisbon, with a strong guard of Spanish soldiers. The most interesting occurrences of the cardinal’s administration were the risings of the two first “false Dom Sebastians.” It has been said that the lower classes of the Portuguese people refused to believe that the young king was dead, and it was not long before impostors arose, who tried to make profit out of this credulity. The history of these impostors[24] is as curious in its way as those of the “False Smerdis,” the “False Demetrius,” and the pseudo-Louis XVII.s, and proves how strong a hold the memory of Dom Sebastian, in spite of his being a rash and foolhardy tyrant, had taken upon the minds of the Portuguese people. The first two of these impostors, who were mockingly called the “King of Pennamacor” and the “King of Ericeira” from the headquarters of their operations, were Portuguese of low birth, whose risings were easily put down. The original inventor of the idea was the son of a tiler of Alçobaça, named Sebastião Gonzales, who, after leading a profligate life, had retired to a hermitage near Pennamacor. From this retirement he emerged in July, 1584, and declared that he was King Sebastian; that he had escaped after the battle of Alcacer Quibir, and had since been praying in the hermitage, but that the miseries of his people had reached his ears, and he had determined to come forth to remedy them. He was accompanied by two men, who styled themselves Dom Christovão de Tavora and the Bishop of Guarda, and began to collect money in Pennamacor and the neighbourhood. The trio were speedily arrested and marched through the streets of Lisbon to show that they were impostors; and the false Sebastian was then sent to the galleys for life, and the pretended Bishop of Guarda was hanged. In the following year, one Mattheus Alvares, son of a mason at Ericeira, declared himself to be the lamented Dom Sebastian, to whom he bore a considerable personal resemblance, and solemnly promised to marry the daughter of Pedro Affonso, a rich farmer, whom he created Count of Torres Novas. His future father-in-law advanced the impostor a large sum of money, and he had raised a small corps of eight hundred fanatical followers, when the cardinal-archduke thought it necessary to send royal troops against him. The poor enthusiasts were defeated with much loss, and both the pretender and Pedro Affonso were hanged and quartered in Lisbon.