The early, the first five, centuries, of Portugal’s history read like some enchanting romance of chivalry, a long chain of heroic deeds by a few great men in an age when the individual counted for everything. In Roman history, Viriathus, the chieftain of the Serra da Estrella, and the Lusitanians under Sertorius had signalized themselves for their courage and powers of resistance. But Portugal was but a part of a Roman province—modern Portugal corresponds only in part to the ancient Lusitania—nor was it in existence as a separate region when Count Henry of Burgundy became Count of Portugal in 1095. The Moors, who had conquered Lisbon three centuries after the Roman rule in Lusitania came to an end in A.D. 409, were still in possession, although temporarily ousted by Alfonso VI, King of León, in 1093. Thus the province which separated itself from Galicia consisted of a narrow tract with wavering borders between the Minho and the Tagus.

Count Henry had extended its southern frontier before he died in 1112, but it was his son Affonso Henriques, who, by his mighty deeds of war, really established the kingdom. Santarem was taken in 1147, and in the same year, with the help of English and other Crusaders, Lisbon. His mother, the Countess Theresa, was Regent from 1112 to 1128, but in the latter year he took over the reins of power. For the first year of his rule he was at war with Castille, but soon all his energies were directed against the Moors, and the battle of Ourique, before which Christ was supposed to have appeared to the Infante, promising him victory, definitely turned the scales in favour of the Christians (1139). Henceforth he was known as King of Portugal, a title conferred perhaps on the battlefield of Ourique and confirmed at the Cortes of Lamego (1143). The King’s untiring energy had the great incentive that whatever territory he won from the Moors he held in his own right, and if this territory became greater than that originally held in fealty to León, Portugal would almost naturally become independent. His prudence seems to have matched his valour, and he parried the claims of León by making Portugal tributary to the Pope. In 1184, after nearly sixty years of warfare, begun in 1128 against his own mother in order to obtain his kingdom, the old King was once more in arms, with the object of relieving his son, besieged in Santarem by the Moors. He died in the following year, in great honour and glory. The King had made the nation.

His son, Sancho I, second King of Portugal (1185-1211), and perhaps also her first poet (in a poem addressed to the fair Maria Paes), had proved himself in his youth worthy of his father’s great reputation. The conquest of the south of the Peninsula from the Moors continued. Silves was taken in 1189, retaken by the Moors in 1191. But Sancho did not confine himself to war: he founded towns and encouraged agriculture to such an extent that he became known as the Lavrador or the Poblador. In his reign occurred the first disagreement between Church and State, which was soon to grow to so serious a conflict. The religious orders for their past and prospective services against the Moors had received huge grants of land from his father and from King Sancho himself. Often an Order would be given the whole of a vast tract of land still unconquered from the Moors. It seemed a little thing at the time, but when conquered and cultivated, made the possessors as powerful as the King or more so. King Sancho, however, left a prosperous kingdom at his death. By his will he bequeathed certain important towns to his daughters absolutely.

Their brother, King Affonso II, refused to waive his right to these towns, and the first years of his reign were occupied with civil war, while it ended in a first serious disagreement with the Clergy and Rome. The most welcome event of his reign was the capture of the strongly fortified town of Alcacer do Sal from the Moors in 1217, with the help of Crusaders who had sheltered in the Tagus and sailed up the Sado to the attack.

In the reign of his son, Sancho II (1223-46), the strife with the Clergy developed and the powerful nobility took part against the King, the dissatisfaction being fanned apparently by the report that the King intended to marry his distant cousin, Mecia Lopes de Haro, daughter of the Lord of Biscay. The King, who had continued the conquest of Algarve, and won the important town of Tavira, was powerless to withstand the forces united against him. A deputation of Portuguese prelates and nobles waited on the Pope at Lyon, and persuaded him to depose King Sancho, or rather to appoint his brother Affonso as Regent. The cynical and ambitious Affonso had been long resident in France, and he now accepted the offer with some alacrity, taking whatever oaths were required of him before he set out for Portugal. The King fled at his approach, and died two years later an exile at Toledo (1248).

As he was childless, Affonso was his natural successor. His ambitions realised, he made a good king—he seems to have had great personal attractions—and continued successful in all his undertakings. The conquest of Algarve was completed, Faro, facing out towards Africa, falling to the King in 1249. A dispute between Affonso III and Alfonso X, the Learned, of Castille, arose out of these Portuguese victories in Algarve. The Guadiana was not yet a boundary between Spain and Portugal, and it seemed as if the victorious Portuguese might eventually deprive Castille of the potential possession of the whole southern strip of the Peninsula, even to Almería. A treaty settled their differences in 1253. By this treaty Affonso III was to marry Brites, illegitimate daughter of Alfonso X. The wedding, as well as the bride, was illegitimate, for the Portuguese King was already married to the French Countess Mathilde. The dowry now offered was a glittering temptation, and the Pope, who excommunicated Affonso III for bigamy, should have included in his ban the Castilian monarch, fellow-conspirator with Affonso in this wickedness.

When Affonso died his eldest son, Diniz or Denis (1279-1325) was in his eighteenth year. Owing to the illness of his father—bedridden for years before his death—he had early taken a part in affairs. Indeed, at the age of six, we find him a full-blown diplomatist, sent on a mission—connected with the independence of Algarve—to his grandfather, King Alfonso the Learned, at Seville. As King, his activities were many-sided, and in all of them he showed the same strong will and good sense, always directed towards the strengthening of Portugal, and making the interests of throne and people one. The quarrel between the State and the Church in Portugal, backed by the Vatican, which had caused his father to die excommunicate, continued, but by an attitude of equal firmness and justice. King Diniz contrived to bring about a settlement, and to check the acquisition of real property by the religious orders. The same firm hand dealt with the overweening nobility. Some discontent was felt among the nobles, and Diniz’ real popularity was with the workmen, peasants, and small farmers, whose interests he so unflaggingly protected. Throughout the country he built and rebuilt walls and towns and towers, and encouraged the cultivators of the soil as “the nerves of the republic.” He founded in 1290 at Lisbon the University, which after several removals from Lisbon to Coimbra and from Coimbra to Lisbon, is now definitely fixed at Coimbra. And, as if he foresaw all Portugal’s destined task and glory, he encouraged ship-building, imported an admiral for his fleet from Genoa, and planted the country about Leiria with pines. As a poet he has left us a greater number of lyrics than any other early king, with the exception, perhaps, of his grandfather of Castille. And he wrote them not only in the Provençal manner, but characteristically encouraged the indigenous poetry derived from the soil of Galicia. He was a thorough Portuguese, and ruled over a clearly defined region with the boundaries of modern Portugal. The first years of his reign were clouded by civil strife with his brother, who based a claim to the Crown on the fact that Diniz was born before the Countess Mathilde died, and his last years were saddened by disagreement with his eldest son. This only did not come to battles even more serious than those actually fought owing to the untiring mediation of King Diniz’ wife, the Queen Saint Elizabeth.

King Diniz, the Lavrador, was reconciled to and succeeded by this son, Affonso IV. Under Affonso the relations with Castille became more and more frequent, and in 1340 the Portuguese King and the flower of the Portuguese chivalry helped to win the great battle of Salado against the Moors. Affonso IV, who had embittered his father’s last years, suffered in turn at the hands of his son. It must be allowed that Pedro had some excuse, for the King had sanctioned the murder, during his son’s absence, of the mother of Pedro’s three children, the lovely Inés de Castro. Maddened with grief, Pedro harassed his father’s realm with fire and sword.

This sorrow seems to have increased the eccentricity of his character, so that at times there seemed a streak of madness. It was he who thrashed the Bishop of Porto, it was he who condemned a stonecutter who had killed a man to the same sentence as a priest who had killed a man: after ascertaining that the priest had been forbidden to say mass as punishment, he sternly forbade the stonecutter to cut any more stones. There was grim humour in many of the sentences of this Rei Justiceiro, and they were always directed against the powerful, the nobility, the clergy, the King’s officials in favour of the weak and unprotected, so that the people sang his praises. He seems to have had something of his grandfather, King Diniz’, art of popularity without his high sense of dignity. Pedro’s passion was for the dance and to the blowing of his long silver trumpets he would dance through the streets of Lisbon by night or day.

After a reign of ten years (1357-67) he was succeeded by the reckless and irresponsible Fernando, who contrived during his reign of sixteen years to squander the great wealth built up by the Kings of Portugal since Affonso III. He must needs lay claim to the Crown of Castille, and in a series of unnecessary wars brought his kingdom to the verge of ruin. Lisbon was besieged by land and sea by the Castilians in 1373. The King’s unpopularity was increased by his marriage with the wily and unscrupulous Leonor Telles. It was in this reign that occurred the murder of the beautiful and innocent Maria Telles, at the hands of her own husband, brother of the King and son of murdered Inés, by instigation of her sister Leonor. Her fate has been less celebrated than that of Inés, but had no less of tragedy and pathos. During the whole of the fourteenth century a succession of double marriages between the royal families of Castille and Portugal increased the mutual familiarity, if not friendliness, of the two countries. Finally, to crown the impolicy of his whole reign, Fernando married his daughter Beatrice to King Juan I of Castille in the year 1383, thereby almost irretrievably assuring Portugal’s union with or rather subjection to Castille. He had previously settled to marry her to nearly every prince in Europe, but did not consider himself bound by treaties. To him they were mere scraps of paper. The old-fashioned German historian, Heinrich Schäfer, writing in 1835, says that “neither duty nor honour could bind him” to respect them.

His widow, Queen Leonor, stood for the cause of Castille, wishing the Portuguese throne for her daughter and son-in-law. After her favourite, João Fernandes Andeiro, Count of Ourem, had been murdered almost before her eyes in the palace, and popular excesses at Lisbon, Evora and other towns had fully showed the danger of her position, she retired from Lisbon and joined the Spanish invader. Early in 1384 King Juan I was at Santarem, styling himself King of Castille, León and Portugal. Thus Portugal was ruled at one and the same time by two Kings John I, for the Infante João, Master of Aviz, illegitimate son of King Pedro, and intensely popular, especially at Lisbon, was now king in all but name. Many of the Portuguese nobility favoured the cause of Castille, and King Juan I appeared to have good chance of ultimate victory. Queen Leonor soon found that she had exchanged one difficult position for another. She was virtually a prisoner in the King’s hands, and was finally relegated to the Convent of Tordesillas. The Castilians besieged Lisbon closely by land and sea, and only the plague in their ranks brought relief to the starving city. On the 6th of April, 1385, the Infante João was formally chosen King of Portugal. His chief supporter was, like Napoleon, worth a whole army. Others might waver, but in Nun’ Alvares’ straight and clear mind loyalty to Queen Leonor, who was held to have forfeited loyalty, could not weigh for an instant against his love of an independent Portugal. To secure that, he said, he would fight against his own father. Against his brother he did fight, and no suspicion of the loyalty of the Constable, not long out of his teens, could be instilled into the mind of his friend João I, who rewarded him for his victories with well-nigh half his kingdom. The first great Portuguese victory was at Trancoso in July, 1385, followed on the 15th of August by the battle near Aljubarrota, in which the flower of the Spanish nobility, and of Portuguese nobles fighting on the side of Castille, fell. It was a victory of King and people over the nobility. King Juan fled in haste to Santarem, and thence to Spain. Nun’ Alvares in October won another great victory at Valverde, and after that there was little more fear of serious Spanish invasion. Fighting, however, went on at intervals, till a truce in 1389 was followed by a more permanent truce in 1400, and by a treaty of peace in 1411, after the death of King Juan’s successor, Henrique III. The last great achievement of King João I’s great reign was the conquest of Ceuta. The expedition was saddened at its outset by the death of the Queen, of plague, a few days before the King and his three older sons, Duarte, Pedro, Henrique, sailed on their crusade against the Moors (1415). The expedition was completely successful. Ceuta was taken immediately owing to the eager heroism of the Princes and their Portuguese followers. This was the first of Portugal’s great deeds beyond the seas. The last years of King João I’s reign were peaceful, and when he died in 1433, two years after the death of his life-long friend, Nun’ Alvares, Portugal was as independent as Spain or any other country, and her alliance with England already ancient and secure.

King Duarte (1433-8) himself married an Aragonese princess, another Leonor. In spite of his good sense and great qualities, in spite of his personal courage amply shown in the expedition against Ceuta, his combination of king and philosopher was not entirely successful. He had the weakness to yield to the fiery determination of his brother, Infante Henrique, to send a force against Tangiers. The expedition ended disastrously (had it been a success there would, of course, be no talk of King Duarte’s weakness). After thirty-seven days of heroic fighting against vast numbers of Moors, the Portuguese were forced to surrender. In return for permission to sail back without their arms, to Portugal, they agreed to give up Ceuta, and the Infante Fernando remained as hostage and died a prisoner after many months of fearful ill-treatment. His brother, King Duarte, had died before him, leaving his wife, Queen Leonor, Regent for the infant King.

Another of his brothers, the Infante Pedro, soon became Regent, while another, the Infante Henrique, now known as the Navigator, was preparing Portugal’s future glory with a faith and persistency rarely surpassed. At his bidding and under his direction, Portuguese mariners crept down the west coast of Africa, and at his death in 1460 he had cause to feel that his labours had not been in vain, and that a rich field for the merchant and the missionary would yearly extend. The discovery of the Cape of Good Hope followed, and in 1497-9, when Vasco da Gama, rounding the Cape, crossed from East Africa to India, and returned in triumph to Lisbon, this successful enterprise was felt to be, and indeed was, the crown and natural outcome of Prince Henry’s life-work. He was the last of that noble galaxy of brothers. When the Infante Pedro, answering to the wishes of a great part of the kingdom, and especially of the people of Lisbon, assumed the Regency, he ruled firmly and wisely (1438-47), and did not, therefore, make the fewer enemies. Queen Leonor died in 1445, and two years later the young King took power into his own hands. No sooner had Pedro ceased to be Regent than his enemies combined for his ruin, and the King, his nephew, and son-in-law, an amiable but weak young man, was induced to listen to their accusations. The Infante Pedro was banished from the Court, and was given no opportunity of defending himself. The matter finally came to open war, and the King’s large army met the Infante Pedro’s small force at Alfarrobeira in May, 1449. The Infante was killed in a preliminary skirmish. Affonso V (1438-81), gifted with a noble and generous character, as king proved at once weak and obstinate. An extant letter from him to the historian Azurara shows him in a very pleasant light. In his external policy he had two chief aims, to conquer North-West Africa, and to make good his claim to the Crown of Castille. As to the first he obtained some measure of success, so that flatterers called him the “African.” Alcacer was taken in 1458, Tangiers thirteen years later. But the last ten years of his reign had no victories to show. He espoused the cause of Juana, daughter of Henry IV, King of Castille, making it his own by betrothing himself to her (a excellente Senhora). War with Castille followed, and he was defeated at the battle of Toro (1476). He was not more successful in his attempt to obtain the support of France. In his visit to the French Court he was a puppet in the hands of the astute Louis XI, and when he returned to Portugal it was felt that he had failed doubly. Indeed, he had renounced the throne and decided to retire to a convent, but he now reassumed his position as king, although the real power and direction of affairs remained in the vigorous and able hands of his son João. Before Affonso V died, João had effected a peace with Castille (1479), by which the hapless Juana was shut up in a convent, at Santarem.

Affonso V had always been man first and king by an after-thought, his son João II was always king first. In his reign (1481-95) the royal power was strengthened and made supreme in Portugal. This was indeed the outstanding feature of the rule of the “Perfect Prince,” in whose strong hands Portugal reached the height of her strength, though not of her glory. The most powerful Portuguese subject was the Duke of Braganza, who owned a third of Portugal, or more. The founder of this house was an illegitimate son of João I, married to the daughter of Nun’ Alvares, who had received from the King a large proportion of the towns and territories conquered by his skill and energy in battle. The Duke of Braganza was now arrested by João II and executed at Evora as a friend of Castille, but essentially as a too powerful vassal of Portugal. Part of the nobility, disaffected owing to the King’s strenuous proceedings, and the Bishop of Evora involved the Duke of Vizeu in a plot to dethrone his brother-in-law, although, as it proved, he would have become king in the natural course of events a few years later. King João II’s son, Prince Affonso, married in 1490 to Isabel, daughter of the Catholic Kings, died in the following year at the age of sixteen. The Duke of Vizeu’s plot was betrayed to the King, who acted with his usual energy and decision. His brother-in-law he stabbed to death with his own hand. The other principal conspirators were sentenced to imprisonment or death. The title of the Duke of Vizeu was extinguished, but his younger brother, Manoel, became heir to the throne with the title of Duke of Beja.

As King Manoel, the Fortunate, he ruled over Portugal for twenty-six years (1495-1521), a period which will always be considered the greatest of Portugal’s prosperity and glory, as well as the golden age of her literature (although her greatest poet, Camões, was unborn when King Manoel died). The fruits of the labours of the Infante Henrique, of King João II, of a long line of glorious or obscure heroes and adventurers and administrators from the time of King Diniz now fell into the mouth of King Manoel. Compared with his predecessor on the throne, he has been aptly described as an orange-tree succeeding an oak. But it must not be supposed that he was without energy, witness the speed with which he prepared to rescue Arzilla in 1508, and the fact that he would be up and at work when most of his subjects were still asleep in their beds. But what astonishes and must ever astonish the world is the mighty achievement of this tiny kingdom. The series of wars with Castille, of adventures along the west coast of Africa, of battles in Morocco, of internal troubles, might seem to justify and explain a period of complete inactivity. Yet in the years that followed the Portuguese conquered not one country or one province, but a whole world.

To tell the wonderful story of the Portuguese discoveries, culminating in the rounding of the Cape of Good Hope by Bartolomeu Diaz and the voyage of a handful of Portuguese under Vasco da Gama, and how the Portuguese Empire in the East was defended by such heroes as Duarte Pacheco Pereira, and strengthened and extended by the indomitable Affonso d’Albuquerque, would fill volumes. The tiny Portuguese nation provided men to do these deeds, and also historians to record them worthily. Sometimes the hero was himself author, and wrote with a directness and vigour of style scarcely ever attained by Portuguese writers of to-day. Only half a century elapsed between the voyage of Vasco da Gama and the death of D. João de Castro in India in 1548, and into this brief period is crowded a bewildering array of fighters, writers, poets, historians, administrators, men of science, to such an extent that no brief summary of Portuguese history can even record their names. But large tracts of Asia and Africa now acknowledged Portugal’s sway, and all the kings of the East sent costly presents, gold and spices and precious stones, to their suzerain in the West. The name and fame of the Portuguese extended throughout all lands in mixed fear and admiration. Foreign adventurers and merchants and men of curiosity and learning flocked to Lisbon, which for a brief space appeared as the true centre of the universe. The Pope and Cardinals in Rome gazed in wonder at the unprecedented gifts from the East sent by the King of Portugal. But not in the East only were great deeds performed at this time by the Portuguese, for in North-West Africa D. João de Menezes won undying glory by his brilliant military achievements, taking Larache, Azamor (1519), and other towns. When we read that in a single day—in the defence of a fortress they were building in North Africa—1,200 Portuguese are said to have fallen, and know that this was a comparatively unimportant link in the huge chain of empire which Affonso d’Albuquerque (the fear of whose name penetrated far into China) was even then (1515) forging in India, we are not surprised that agriculture in Portugal was neglected and that two generations later King Sebastian could only collect a force of 9,000 Portuguese to accompany him to Africa. Rather we marvel how Portugal could continue so long to sustain efforts so many and so various. For a skilful historian the story of Portugal in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries affords an epic subject more wonderful than perhaps any in history—except that of the events exactly four centuries later which welded together another empire and again saw all the Princes of India sending gifts to the West. And the materials to the hand of such an historian are fascinating and abundant, both published and manuscript. Unfortunately the age of King Manoel did not provide a fresh crop of heroes equal to those who had grown to manhood under King João II, and when he died in 1521 the disquieting symptoms were many. In Portugal the real prosperity had been replaced by a garish and deceptive luxury, and the old simple pleasures and jollity had vanished with the old austerity of life. In the East the mighty compelling arm of Affonso d’Albuquerque had sunk to rest in 1515. King Manoel had married as his first wife Isabel, daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella. She died in childbirth, and their son Miguel died two years later in 1500. Had he lived he would have succeeded not only to the throne and mighty empire of his father, King Manoel, but to the throne and mighty empire of the Catholic Kings. Such a load of empire would seem too great for the shoulders of one ruler to bear, and in the very year of the infant prince’s death the Portuguese Pedro Alvares Cabral’s discovery, or rediscovery, of Brazil added another huge item to the burden and the glory.

King Manoel was succeeded by his son, João III (1521-57), born in 1502. To the oak and the orange succeeded the cypress. But the gloom of his reign has been much exaggerated, and the King’s character wilfully distorted by the historians, who have described him as a bigot and a witless idiot. King João was no fool, and had an intelligent love of letters, and, if the Court was now less given up to pleasure than in the reign of his predecessor, we still read of serões continuing at the palace during several nights. But the power of Rome in Portugal certainly grew in his reign, and a succession of personal sorrows increased his devotion to religion. About fifteen years after his accession many of his nearest relations died, and, although a son and heir to his throne survived till 1554, his death in that year came to crown the many griefs of this reign. This precocious boy, the Infante João, had already won some fame as a patron of letters, and was married when he died at the age of sixteen. His death was one of the greatest misfortunes of Portuguese history, from which indeed the goddess of Good Fortune seems to have departed in the first half of the sixteenth century, leaving in her place a poor Mofina Mendes, personification of ill luck. King João III and his brother Henrique had worked persistently to introduce the Inquisition into Portugal, and the Company of Jesuits, destined to do excellent work in education at home and in the colonies overseas, also came to Portugal during his reign.

Prince João’s infant son, Sebastian, born in 1554, was educated by priests and Jesuits, and in 1562 his grand-uncle Henrique, priest first and prince afterwards, succeeded Queen Catharina as Regent, and continued to rule till the King came of age (14) in 1568. King Sebastian reigned in person for ten years. His character and capacities have been much discussed. To a love of sport and all dangerous enterprises, he united a deep religiousness, instilled into him by his education, and a consuming desire to extend the Christian faith and win personal glory by a victory over the Moors in Africa. To this end the ten years of his reign were directed, and in 1578 he sailed from Lisbon (25th June), with a force of about 14,000, Portuguese and foreigners, including members of all the noblest families in Portugal. Surrounded by a vastly superior number of Moors in the battle of Alcacer Kebir (4th August, 1578), the majority of the Portuguese were slain or taken prisoners. The King himself, a Don Quixote before Don Quixote was born, died fighting valiantly. His body was recovered later and sent to Spain and thence to Portugal, where it was buried in the convent of Belem, built by his great-grandfather, King Manoel. Yet in the confusion of that battle many rumours arose and the people in Portugal never believed in his death, a fact which occasioned various episodes in the following year, and was the basis of a kind of religious faith which lasted on into the nineteenth century. Not quite two centuries had passed since the battle of Aljubarrota, and into that period the Portuguese had crowded a history more brilliant than that of any other country. Now it seemed as if the ship had gone by, leaving only a wake of troubled water.

Sebastião was succeeded by his great-uncle Henrique, Cardinal at 33, and King at 66, who, however, only survived him for a few months, dying in 1580. His last days were embittered by the question of the succession. Seven pretenders claimed the Crown of Portugal, and chiefly the Duke of Braganza, in his wife’s right, Antonio, Prior of Crato, the Lisbon people’s favourite, and King Philip II of Spain.

The right seems to have been doubtful, but the might was on the side of King Philip, who made no secret of his resolution to win the kingdom by force if it were not given to him willingly. Many of the Portuguese nobility were on his side, and the King Cardinal was finally induced to recognise his claim. But the people strongly resented the intrusion of the Spaniard, and the Prior of Crato found no difficulty in having himself proclaimed King at Santarem. When, however, King Philip’s army, under the Duke of Alba, arrived at Setubal, and after taking Cascaes, advanced on Lisbon, Antonio’s forces, encamped outside the capital, melted away—they consisted of untrained citizens for the most part—and Antonio himself fled into Lisbon and thence to Oporto and Vianna in the North. From Vianna do Castello he escaped in disguise by sea, accompanied by the Bishop of Guarda and the Conde do Vimioso (October, 1580). He did not, however, yet leave Portugal, remaining disguised there and even at times at Lisbon till June, 1581, when he retired to France. Philip II had entered Portugal by Elvas, and was received as king without further resistance, making a solemn entry into Lisbon, the fourth king of Portugal in the last three years. A French fleet was sent to the Azores in favour of Antonio, but was defeated. He made a last fruitless effort in 1589 in combination with Drake, who took the town of Cascaes. There was no support forthcoming in Portugal, and the Prior de Crato returned to France, and died there a few years later. If Philip II expected now to rule over Portugal in peace he had mistaken the character of his new subjects. Antonio was dead, King Sebastian dead and buried at Belem, but in the wishes and thoughts of the people King Sebastian was alive and might be expected to return from one day to another. Pretenders accordingly abounded and gave considerable trouble; one, especially, who appeared in Italy, bore so striking a resemblance to Sebastian, and displayed knowledge of matters which only Sebastian could, apparently, have known, that to this day some believe him to have been the real king.

But Portugal was now definitely wedded to Castille for the next sixty years. Spain’s enemies became her enemies, and her great colonial empire lay at their mercy. Before the end of the century the Dutch were in the East, and like rats in cheese, battened on the possessions of the Portuguese. A few years later the English followed. All the old daring and enterprise of the Portuguese mariners of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries seemed to have fallen from them like the cloak of Elijah. Their ships were used in the service of Spain, and their own overseas dominions left unprotected. Lisbon, accustomed to see the fleets depart and come in traffics and discoveries from the East, now watched the building of the invincible Armada against her old ally England. But Philip II’s hand was a strong hand, and not lightly to be shaken off by an exhausted people. Under the rule of his successors it was otherwise. Hollow pomp took the place of real power, and the concentration of affairs in the King’s hands, or in those of his minister, required men of more insight and astuteness than Philip IV (Philip III of Portugal) or the Count-Duke Olivares possessed. In Portugal discontent was widespread. The people had never willingly accepted Spanish rule, and the increased burden of taxation did not lessen their dislike. The nobles, even if they were not fired by the misfortunes of their country, were enraged by slights inflicted upon themselves. Margaret, Duchess of Mantua, had been appointed Regent of Portugal in 1634. The real power was in the hands of Miguel de Vasconcellos, who concentrated in his own person all the hatred of the Portuguese for the Spaniard.

In 1640, forty nobles, sure of the support of the people, and encouraged by the enthusiastic approbation of the Archbishop of Lisbon, decided that the hour had come to throw off the hated yoke. The Duke of Braganza’s agent, João Pinto Ribeiro, was the heart and soul of the conspiracy. The secret was well kept. Fu cosa meravigliosa il concerto, says an Italian historian. The Countess of Atouguia, Filippa de Vilhena, who had knowledge of the plot, herself armed her two young sons to take part in it on the 1st of December. As nine o’clock struck that morning the conspirator nobles forced their way into the palace and proclaimed the King, João IV, Duke of Braganza.

He was the grandson of the Duchess Catharina, one of the claimants to the Portuguese throne on the death of the Cardinal King. Spain, with burdens not less great than her vast resources, and the revolt of Catalonia on her hands, was unable to do more for the moment than encourage plots in Portugal against the new King. The most serious of them was a conspiracy to kill the King, of which the Archbishop of Braga was the organiser in 1641. The Vatican gave its support to Spain and connived at this conspiracy. King João IV was too deeply religious to take the opportunity to free the Church—and State—in Portugal from the supremacy of Rome, and his foreign policy generally was not marked by the strength which the circumstances required. His foreign ministers had extraordinarily difficult tasks. In the year after the Restoration, treaties were made with France and Holland, and the alliance with England was renewed. But the custom to plunder Portugal’s overseas territories was now inveterate, and she derived little profit from her new allies, although a common cause united them against Spain. The Dutch gave the Portuguese fair words in Europe and hard blows in her colonies, and Portugal was powerless to do more than protest with words against such double dealing. Actual war between Spain and Portugal began in 1643, and continued desultorily till 1646, when it was broken off till the death of King John IV in 1656. King João’s brother, the Infante Duarte, had been arrested by order of Philip II as soon as news came of the Restoration in 1640, and was subjected to a process of slow murder till he died in prison in 1649, a second Infante Fernando, only that his gaoler was no prince of Fez but the Catholic King.

King João’s eldest son, Theodosio, who had shown great promise, also died before him, aged nineteen and the second son, Affonso, succeeded at the age of thirteen. Although completely uneducated and incapable of affairs, he wrested the power out of his mother’s hands six years later. Affonso VI is said to have been more at home in the company of grooms than in that of statesmen, but fortunately at the beginning of his reign he had an affection for a statesman of strong and wise views, the Conde de Castello Melhor, and allowed himself to be guided by his counsels. There seems no reason to think that he would not have continued to rely on ministers as excellent, and in that case his reign might have ended as prosperously as it began. But dissensions at Court deprived him first of Castello Melhor, then of his capable successor, Antonio Sousa de Macedo, and without them he was helpless. The Queen, a daughter of the Duc de Nemours, insisted on taking part, and no minor part, in affairs, was determined, in fact, to govern Portugal in the interests of Louis XIV. The strife between her and Castello Melhor was open and continuous till the Secretary of State fell. The King’s brother, the Infante Pedro, who must have known better than most how the country would gain if King Affonso had a wise minister at his elbow, supported the cause of the Queen. He forced Sousa de Macedo to flee from the palace to save his life, and when the King was thus left defenceless, obliged him to resign (November, 1667) and proceeded to marry the Queen.

He did not himself assume the title of King but used that of “Governor” until the death of the King, who had been sent to the island of Terceira and then brought to Cintra, where he died in 1683. (The Queen, his former wife, died in the same year.) During these internal affairs events had happened which were of vast importance for Portugal. The war with Spain had at first been favourable to Spain, but three years after Affonso VI came to the throne the Spanish were decisively defeated at Elvas, and four years later, in 1663, the Portuguese under the leadership of the Count of Schomberg, achieved the victory of Ameixial, by which Portugal really established her independence. The capture of Elvas and the victory of Montes Claros followed. These were good answers to the exclusion of Portugal from the peace between Louis XIV and Spain in 1659. The Restoration of Charles II brought about renewed relations of friendliness between England and Portugal. A fresh treaty was signed between the two countries in May, 1661, and Englishmen (as well as Frenchmen) fought at Ameixial. Negotiations for peace with Holland began in the same year, and were brought to a successful issue in 1662, although, owing to new conflicts in India, the Portuguese and Dutch were not really at peace till 1669. Finally, in 1666, negotiations for peace were carried on between Spain and Portugal. They were, however, broken off, and in 1667 a treaty was signed, not between Portugal and Spain, but between Portugal and France. However, in 1668, the war with Spain, which had lasted for over a quarter of a century, ended, and peace was concluded between the two countries. Ceuta remained in the hands of the Spanish. This was unhappily the fate of many of Portugal’s overseas possessions. She lost or pawned one jewel after another till her splendid heirlooms were reduced, not indeed to insignificance, but to insignificance in comparison with their former worth. She did at least succeed in recovering Brazil from the Dutch. Pedro II, who ruled as Regent from 1656 to 1683, and as King from 1683 to 1706, was little better educated than his unfortunate brother, but he proved a wise and capable statesman with the good of his country constantly at heart. If personal ambition seemed to mark the first events of his public life, he redeemed these faults by a real devotion to Portuguese interests, and under his rule Portugal again attained a degree of importance which was clearly shown at the beginning of the War of the Spanish Succession, when all the European Powers eagerly sought her assistance. Portugal at first maintained her neutrality, and, not for the last time in her history, bobbed and wavered like a cork between conflicting waves. But before Pedro II died he had set the seal on his wisdom by openly throwing in his lot with England and her Allies (May, 1703). As events proved, the other course would have meant Portugal’s ruin. The same year, 1703, witnessed the signing of an important and much discussed commercial treaty between Great Britain and Portugal, known as the Methuen Treaty (27th December). It provided that Portuguese wines should be admitted to Great Britain at reduced rates (a third less than those upon French wines), and that as regards the prohibition of the importation of manufactured woollen goods into Portugal an exception should be made in the case of Great Britain.

João V was but seventeen when he began his reign of forty-four years in 1706. His noble qualities and lofty aims were marred by the grandiose taste of the time and by an unwise imitation of the Roi Soleil. He wished to be the Portuguese Louis XIV. He lavishly encouraged art and science, and took personal and intelligent interest in their progress. He acted generally with a magnificence befitting a lord of all Europe, or at least of all the possessions in the East that had once been Portugal’s, whereas his treasury was supplied mainly by gold from Brazil. In the matter of buildings, especially, his extravagance was unbridled, and two of them, the Convent of Mafra and the Alcantara Aqueduct, still excite wonder and admiration. It was all very splendid, and very unwise when agriculture at home and the development of the colonies abroad as well as a fleet to maintain them required every available penny. The principal event of his reign in foreign affairs was the peace of Utrecht, signed between France, Spain, and Portugal in 1713.

His successor, Joseph I (1750-77) might perhaps have reigned in Portugal as a Philip IV of Spain, and been known chiefly for his love of the theatre had he not possessed a minister far wiser and abler than Olivares. This minister, Sebastião José de Carvalho e Mello, Marquez de Pombal, born in 1699, had been Ambassador in London (1739-45), and then at Vienna before becoming Joseph I’s Secretary of State. A terrible event on the 1st of November, 1755, proved his decision, calmness, and energy. At 9 a.m. on the morning of that day an earthquake of unparalleled severity set Lisbon in ruins in the space of a quarter of an hour. Slighter shocks continued to terrify the inhabitants—the survivors (between 25,000 and 30,000 had perished) during the next two months. That the consequences were not even more disastrous and that the population did not get wholly out of hand was due to one man—Pombal. His plan for rebuilding the city was not carried to completion, but the regular streets and squares of the lower part of Lisbon, the Baixa, still attest his energy and foresight. The other event with which his name is chiefly associated is the expulsion of the Jesuits whose power had been steadily growing in Portugal and her colonies for the last two centuries.

To this end Pombal’s great energies were for years directed, although he found time in some measure to give attention to the more important objects of agriculture, education, etc. An attempt on the King’s life on the 3rd of September, 1758, in which the King was wounded in the arm, gave Pombal his opportunity against the Jesuits, who were accused of being the promoters (impulsores) of the plot. First the Duke of Aveiro, as the chief conspirator, was executed with horrible cruelty, worthy of the twentieth century, at Belem. The Count of Atouguia and the family of Tavora, the Marquez de Tavora, who had recently returned from ruling Portuguese India as Viceroy, his noble and witty wife and their two sons, were executed with him. They were probably all innocent. Their ashes were thrown into the Tagus, their arms crossed out from among the noble families of Portugal. Then, exactly a year after the attempt, the Jesuits were banished from Portugal and her colonies (3rd September, 1759), and their goods confiscated (25th February, 1761). Relations between Portugal and the Vatican were broken off and were not resumed until 1770 after prolonged negotiations and the death of Pope Clement XIII. His successor, Clement XIV, extinguished the Society of Jesus (August, 1773). Soon after King José’s death the Marquez de Pombal retired to the village of Pombal, and died there five years later in 1782, in his 83rd year. Ambitious to obtain power and merciless in its use, he was, undoubtedly, a man of strong will and enlightened views (he condemned slavery and protected the Jews), but he was unattractive and often unjust in his methods. He is sometimes spoken of as if he were the only enlightened ruler of the eighteenth century in Portugal, whereas both the preceding and succeeding reigns were marked by a steady progress and culture. King João V gave a strong impulsion to literature and science: and in the reign of King José’s daughter, Queen Maria I, the first roads worthy of the name were built. In Pombal’s methods we may perhaps see the germ of that embitterment in Portugal which has manifested itself in open or latent civil war almost ever since.