The reasons for which Portugal is neglected are precisely those which in some eyes make her truly lovable. For a half-century art has done almost nothing for the natural river highways; and the Douro, the Guadiana, and the Tagus flow through this kingdom like the wandering rivulets of great English parks. The large towns of the interior, Coimbra, Santarem, Evora, and Miranda, look like pretty kiosks rising about flowering thickets; peaceful retreats, solitudes animated with a life that jogs quietly along and does not go with leaps and bounds as in France, where a satisfied humanity stands still, instead of rushing into the unknown risks of the future.
The cities of the coast, Lisbon, Oporto, appear more like dwelling-places conveniently placed the better to enjoy the sunlight and the ocean breezes than wide-awake communities guarding their mercantile interests in the commercial exchange of the products of the Old World with the riches of the New.
If the Portuguese had been as skilful speculators as they were intrepid sailors and distinguished warriors, Henry the Navigator, who set the example of maritime conquest, Dias, Vasco da Gama, Cabral, Albuquerque, valiant captains identified with all the glories of the Aviz dynasty, would have imitated the speculative prudence of the Dutch, their rivals. And if, when the illustrious house of Braganza opened the era of national liberties, the people had had in their heads less of poetic imagination and more power of reason; if, courageous and adventurous as they were, they had shown themselves more positive, the French, at first, and then the English, would never have invaded their treasury, exploited their soil, and paralysed their industries. Truly a childlike nation, satisfied with little, pursuing the ideal, economical without avarice, pure in morals, sober, generous, hospitable, the Portuguese have bred heroes in place of diplomats, poets in place of capitalists: they knew how bravely to defend their country against the Romans, the Arabs, and the Spaniards, and still more recently against the army of Napoleon. They have kept themselves a free nation, independent and original, possessing a language, a literature, distinct manners and customs, and governed politically by one of the most liberal constitutions of Europe.
To make Portugal complete, Brazil and the colonies were necessary to this country whose language is spoken on the European continent by only five millions of men; and again the narrow domain which so restricts the use of this tongue creates an obstacle to the popularity of the works to which language gives birth, just as its poverty impedes the development of the fine arts. Jealousy and indifference, the double affliction of southern nations, have curbed the artistic and literary aspirations of the Portuguese. What man of genius would resolve on a career of self-denial only to be calumniated and persecuted as was Prince Henry, to achieve a miserable end like Admiral Pacheo, or like Camoens; or to languish forgotten, like the painter Glama, reduced to making tavern signs; like the sculptor Machado de Castro and the founder Costa, creators of an equestrian statue of José I, worthy of ranking with the greatest art works of the eighteenth century? Encouragement and recompense are the safeguards of emulation, and emulation, utilising the moral resources of a people, permits them the use of its advantages to rise to the level of other nations.
Except for a few coins, the Phœnicians, the Phocæans, and the Carthaginians have left almost no trace in Portugal of their occupation or their passing; but the touch of Rome clings better than in Spain. Cæsar’s Pax Julia sleeps thirty feet beneath the city of Beja and needs only the simple power of will to be awakened, with its population of statues, its inscriptions, and its frescoes; Liberalitas Julia, the Ebora of Ptolemy, planted like Beja upon high ground in the province of Alemtejo, has a double character, that of a Grecian town with its temple of Diana and that of a Roman city with its great aqueduct, immense works, wrought under the hand of Quintus Sertorius, who made himself master eighty years before the Christian era. The aristocracy of Pax Julia and Liberalitas Julia was accustomed to spend its summers in the little municipality of Alcacer, where there was a famous bath under the protection of a local divinity, the nymph Salacia. Braganza, the Juliobriga; Lisbon, the Felicitas Julia of the Augustan era, had equally received their political baptism from the conqueror of Gaul; while ancient Lusitania, become a Julian or Cæsarian country, easily adapted the popular customs and organisations of the Roman government to its Carthaginian institutions.
Vespasian and Trajan made an important town of Chaves; Viseu is the Vesontium of the consul D. Brutus; Lamego, the Urbs Lamacœnorum of Trajan. Setubal occupies a terrace opposite the ancient Roman colony of Cetobriga. At Braga, Ponte de Lima, Salvaterra, we find traces of amphitheatres, aqueducts, baths, and temples; so that well-directed excavations would evoke the manes of that sovereign people which, governing the universe, kept watchful station on the coast of Hispania to keep an eye on Numidia.
From the seventh century to the capture of Lisbon in 1147 Moorish architecture had its compromising effect on the elegant majesty of the great lines and arches of the Saracens’ predecessors; the baths of Cintra, the wall and seventy-seven towers of Lisbon, the fortifications and palaces of Evora, and many mosques since transformed into churches, signified, towards the close of the twelfth century, the degree of Islam’s foothold on Portuguese soil—an unsteady tenure, without consistence, without depth, bearing witness to the rapidity of conquest as well as to the fear of ephemeral possession. Little by little, in place of the mosques, arose churches, veritable apostolic citadels, headquarters for the war against the infidel. Formless and rude at first, they developed as the Christian armies won back the land; but when the native peoples effected their definite triumph they were obliged to call in foreign artists, more skilful than themselves in the interpretation of the architectural vernacular.
The Portuguese knew how to fight bravely and to sing their triumphs, but they did not know how to build; and for this reason the monastery of Alcobaça, founded in fulfilment of a vow by Alfonso I, king of Portugal, in 1170, is an Anglo-Saxon church, built by workmen from England. A new architectural epoch dates from the fifteenth century, and its character has been best perpetuated in the abbey of Batalha. Of its kind, this is one of the most beautiful edifices in existence; and assuredly it is the most majestic and the most pure in form that Portugal possesses. It was built in the reign of João I (1385-1433) who brought from England a celebrated sculptor named Stephenson. Many German, English, and Norman artists summoned by the monarch came to aid him. João himself and his queen Philippa, granddaughter of Edward III of England, supervised the work. And that nothing might be lacking to the poetic magnificence and graceful details of the building, another queen, the pious Leonora, and two monarchs—João II, the poet king, and after him, Emmanuel—followed the continuance of the work with intelligent interest. Nothing in the whole peninsula rivals in magnificence the façade of the monastery, nor in boldness of design its chapter hall.b
It has been stated that geographically the kingdom of Portugal is an integral part of the Iberian peninsula; the only reason why it has retained its independence, while the other mediæval states of that peninsula have merged into the kingdom of Spain, is to be found in its history. When Philip II of Spain annexed Portugal it was a century too late for it to coalesce with Spain. It had then produced Vasco da Gama and Alfonso de Albuquerque, and its language had been developed from a Romance dialect into a literary language by Camoens and Sá de Miranda. Conscious of its national history, it broke away again from Spain in 1640, and under the close alliance of England maintained its separate and national existence during the eighteenth century. A union with Spain might have been possible, however, during the first half of the present century had not a generation of historians and poets arisen who, by recalling the great days of the Portuguese monarchy, have made it impossible for Portugal ever again to lose the consciousness of her national existence.
The history of Portugal really begins with the gift of the fief of the Terra Portucalensis or the county of Porto Cale to Count Henry of Burgundy in 1094; for any attempt to identify the kingdom of Portugal and the Portuguese people with Lusitania and the Lusitanians is utterly without foundation. With the rest of the Iberian peninsula, Portugal was colonised by the Phœnicians and conquered by the Carthaginians; and the Roman province of Lusitania, whether according to the division of Iberia into three provinces under Augustus or into five under Hadrian, in no way coincided with the historical limits of the kingdom of Portugal. In common with the rest of the peninsula, it was overrun by the Vandals, Alans, and Visigoths, and eventually conquered by the Arabs in the eighth century. It was not until the fifteenth century that an attempt was made by Garcia de Menezes to identify Lusitania with Portugal. Under the influence of the Renaissance, Bernardo de Brito insisted on the identity, and claimed Viriathus as a Portuguese hero. Other writers of the same epoch delighted in calling Portugal by the classical name of “Lusitania,” and Camoens, by the very title of his great epic, Os Lusiadas, has immortalised the appellation.
For two centuries Portugal remained subject to the Omayyad caliphs, and under their wise rule the old Roman coloniæ and municipia, such as Lisbon, Lamego, Viseu, and Oporto, maintained their Roman self-government and increased in wealth and importance. Towards the close of the tenth century, as the Omayyad caliphate grew weaker, the Christian princes of Visigothic descent who dwelt in the mountains of the Asturias began to grow more audacious in their attacks on the declining power, and in 997 Bermudo II, king of Galicia, won back the first portion of modern Portugal from the Mohammedans by seizing Oporto and occupying the province now known as Entre-Minho-e-Douro. In the beginning of the eleventh century the Omayyad caliphate finally broke up, and independent emirs established themselves in every large city, against whom the Christian princes waged incessant and successful war.c
In 1027 Alfonso V of Leon fell before Viseu, the siege of which was in consequence abandoned; but in 1057, both it and Lamego were recovered by his son-in-law, Ferdinand I; and the following year Coimbra shared the same fate. In 1093, Santarem, Lisbon, and Cintra were reduced by Alfonso VI, the famous conqueror of Toledo, whose arms were generally so successful against the misbelievers.[135] As these conquests were continually exposed to the irruptions of the Almoravids, in 1095 that monarch conferred the government of Portugal from the Minho to the Tagus, and the right of conquering as far as the Guadiana, on Henry of Besançon or Burgundy, who in 1072 had married his illegitimate daughter Theresa, and to whose arms he had been so much indebted for many of his recent successes.[136]
The nature of the authority conferred on the new count has been a matter of much controversy between the Castilian and Portuguese writers. While the latter maintain that the concession of Alfonso was full and entire,—a surrender of all feudal claims over the country, which the count was to govern in full sovereignty,—the former no less zealously contend that the government was to be held as a fief, hereditary indeed, but no less dependent on the crown of Leon. In the absence of documentary evidence, probability only can guide us. It is unreasonable to suppose either that the king was willing, or, if willing, that his nobles would allow him to dismember at once and forever so fair a territory from his crown, and that too in favour of a stranger and an illegitimate daughter—for illegitimate she was, notwithstanding the allegations to the contrary by some Portuguese writers, who seldom regard truth if unpalatable to their national vanity. That Portugal was conferred as a dependent fief is also confirmed by the disputes between its early sovereigns and those of Leon—the former striving to maintain their avowed independence, the latter to reduce them to their reputed original vassalage. Alfonso died in 1109.
The administration of Henry was vigorous, and his military conduct glorious. His triumphs over the Mohammedans were frequent, whether achieved in concert with his father-in-law, Alfonso, or by his own unaided arm. Nor were his efforts to crush rebellion, whether of his local Christian governors or of his Mohammedan vassals, less successful. One of his last acts was to assist his natural sovereign, Urraca, daughter of Alfonso, against her husband the king of Aragon. He died in 1112, leaving many ecclesiastic structures enriched by his liberality. Braga, Oporto, Coimbra, Lamego, and Viseu were the places most indebted to his piety. Unfortunately for his memory, many of the great deeds recorded of him by his partial people rest on authority too disputable to be received. Probably some of them have been confounded with those of his more famous son.
During the minority of Alfonso [or Affonso], the son of Henry, who, at his father’s death, was only in his second year, the administration of the kingdom was assumed by the widowed Theresa. The character of this princess is represented as little superior to that of her sister Urraca: the same violence, the same unbridled passions, and the same unnatural jealousy of her son appear, though in a degree undoubtedly less criminal, to have distinguished her conduct. Yet on that sister and her nephew, the successor of Urraca, she sometimes made war, in the hope of profiting by the dissensions of the period; on every occasion she was repulsed, and was forced to sue for peace. Her intimacy with Dom Ferdinand Peres, whom she is supposed to have secretly married, and through whom all favours were to be solicited, roused the jealousy of the courtiers. By their persuasion Alfonso, whom she had rigorously endeavoured to exclude from all participation in public affairs, undertook to wrest the sovereignty from her hands. He had little difficulty in collecting troops; for no sooner did he erect the standard of resistance, than the discontented nobles flocked round it. His preparations reached the ears of his mother, who wrathfully armed to defend her authority. The two armies met near the fortress of Guimarães, where the princess was utterly routed, and forced to seek refuge in the castle of Leganoso. There she was speedily invested, and compelled to surrender the reins of government into the hands of her son, while her favourite or husband fled into Galicia. She survived her fall about two years.[137]
The new count was destined to prove a more formidable enemy to the Mohammedans than even his able father. During the first years of his administration, he was at variance with his cousin, Alfonso VII or VIII, whose Galician territories he invaded, and with whose enemy, the king of Navarre, he entered into alliance.h
When Alfonso Henriques was no longer checked by the enmity of his Christian neighbours, he prosecuted his enterprises against the Moors with such vigour that he soon extended his sway nearly to the Tagus; and, by the terror of his progress, obliged Ali to send from Africa a powerful army, to support the walis, next threatened against him. A battle ensued, esteemed the most memorable in Portuguese annals, but which has been so disfigured by national vanity or ignorance that the facts relating to it are not easily ascertainable. The numbers of the Mohammedans are rated at three hundred thousand, and even at six hundred thousand men; and this host is said to have been commanded by five kings. Since the establishment of the Almoravid domination, there were no Moorish kings left in Spain; but the name was erroneously given to the walis who led the troops of their respective provinces. What does seem certain respecting the battle in question is that the Mussulman forces were incomparably superior to the Portuguese; that, dreading an invasion, which, even if ultimately foiled, must still bring inevitable ruin upon his territories, the count boldly crossed the Tagus, and advanced to the plain of Ourique [or Orik], where he entrenched himself strongly, and awaited the attack; that the Moors repeatedly assaulted his fortifications and were as often repulsed, until at last, from weariness and mortification, they fell into some disorder; and that Alfonso Henriques, seizing the critical moment, burst out upon them from behind his lines, and completed their discomfiture. Upon the field of victory the army were said to have hailed their count king of Portugal; and this glorious day, the 25th of July, 1139, is considered the epoch of the foundation of the monarchy. The five walis of Badajoz, Beja, Elvas, Evora, and Lisbon were found amongst the dead, and honoured with the royal title. The conqueror assumed, as the arms of Portugal, their five shields, arranged in what he called a cross, though the figure they present more resembles that of a cinque upon dice; and accordingly the Portuguese arms are termed As Quinas, the Cinques.
Alfonso’s military election was said to have been subsequently confirmed by the cortes of Lamego, with a solemnity well deserving attention, as perhaps the only instance on record of a formal compact between prince and people, at the original establishment of a monarchy.i But it is now denied that such a cortes ever sat, the story being of much later date. The true kingship of Alfonso Henriques dates from 1143 when, at the intervention of a papal legate, Alfonso VII recognised him as king and vassal of the pope.a
Having established his own independence of foreign authority, the new king proceeded to the emancipation of his clergy from their subjection to the archbishop of Toledo, whose primacy extended over the whole peninsula. This was the subject of long negotiations with the papal see; but Alfonso Henriques at length obtained from Pope Alexander III a bull dissolving the connection with Toledo, and constituting the archbishop of Braga primate of Portugal.
Alfonso Henriques’ last conquest from the Moors was the city of Lisbon, which he took by the help of a fleet of French, English, and German crusaders, who put into the Tagus in their way to the Holy Land. He easily persuaded these champions of Christianity that it would be no violation of their vow to suspend their voyage for a while, in order to fight the Mohammedans in Portugal; and some of them, chiefly English, he is said to have induced permanently to settle in his new acquisitions.i
In 1147, we find the Portuguese intent on regaining Santarem. As the fortifications were strong, and the defenders numerous, he caused a small but resolute band to scale the walls by night: scarcely had twenty-five reached the summit of the wall, when the Moorish inhabitants took the alarm, and flew to arms. In vain one of the gates was opened by the Christians, and the rest of the assailants rushed in. The struggle which ensued, amidst the darkness of night, the clash of weapons, the groans of dying warriors, the shrieks of women and infants who were indiscriminately butchered, constituted a scene which none but a demon would have delighted to witness, which none but a demon would have commanded.[138] In an hour this important fortress, one of the great bulwarks of Christian Lusitania, was in possession of the victor. His success, and the embarrassment of the Mohammedan princes of Spain, both on account of the rising power of the Almohads in Africa, and of the hostilities of the kings of Leon and Castile, emboldened him to attempt the recovery of Lisbon. That city was invested; but the valour of the defenders and the strength of the walls would doubtless have compelled him to raise the siege, had not a succour arrived which no man could have expected. This was a fleet of crusaders, chiefly of English, under the command of William Longsword, who was hastening to the Holy Land. The Portuguese king had little difficulty in persuading them that the cross had no greater enemies than the Mohammedans of Spain, and that the recovery of Lisbon would be no less acceptable to heaven than that of the Syrian towns: the hope of plunder did the rest; the crusaders disembarked, and joined in the assaults which were daily made on the place. After a gallant defence of five months, the besieged showing no disposition to surrender, the Christians appointed October 25th for a general assault on the city. It was carried by storm; a prodigious number of the Moors were put to the sword; the crusaders were too much enriched to dream of continuing their voyage; so that, with the exception of a few who received lands in Portugal, the rest returned to their own country.
But the Mohammedans had still possession of one-half of Portugal, and of several strong fortresses. Having reduced Cintra, Alfonso passed the Tagus, and seized on several fortified places in Estremadura, and even in Alemtejo. It was not, however, until 1158 that he seriously attempted the reduction of Alcacer-do-Sal, which fell, after a vigorous resistance of two months. In 1165 Cezimbra and Palmella were invested: the former place was speedily taken; while, before the latter, he had to encounter a strong force sent to relieve it by the Moorish governor of Badajoz.[139] The misbelievers were defeated, and many places made to surrender.
The martial character of the Portuguese king, as well as the almost uninterrupted success of his arms, inclined him to perpetual war—whether with Moors or Christians appears to have given him little concern. In 1167 he seized on Limia, a territory of Galicia, which he claimed on the ground of its having formed part of his mother’s dowry. The following year he advanced against Badajoz, the Moorish governor of which was a vassal of the king of Leon. Ferdinand II hastened to its relief; but before his arrival the Portuguese standard floated on the towers. The forces of Ferdinand were greatly superior in number, and the Portuguese king prepared to issue from the gates—whether, as the national writers assert, to contend for his new conquest on the open field, or, as the Castilians say, to escape from the incensed monarch of Leon, is uncertain. What is indubitable is that, as he was passing through the gate with precipitation, his thigh came into contact with the wall or bars, and was shattered. He was taken prisoner by the Leonese, and conducted to their king, who treated him with courtesy, and consented to his liberation on the condition of his surrendering the places which he had usurped in Galicia. From this accident, however, he never recovered so as to be able to mount a horse; but it had a much worse effect than his own personal decrepitude: it encouraged the restless Mohammedans to resume their incursions into his territories.
Though these incursions were repressed by the valour of his son, Dom Sancho, who, not content with defending Portugal, penetrated into the Moorish territory, to the very outskirts of Seville, his people could not fail to suffer from the ravages of the misbelievers. This irruption, too, had its ill effect; it so much incensed Yusuf ben Yakub, the emperor of the Almohads, that he despatched a considerable force into the kingdom. The discomfiture of this army under the wall of Abrantes, and the exploits of the celebrated Dom Fuas Roupinho, one of Sancho’s captains, preserved the country indeed from the yoke of the stranger, but not from the devastation; Alemtejo, above all, suffered in this vindictive warfare.
Alfonso Henriques died December 6th, 1185. His memory is held by the Portuguese in the highest veneration; and hints are not obscurely given that he merited canonisation. He, who had been favoured by a celestial vision at Ourique, whose holy intentions had been so miraculously communicated to St. Bernard, and after death whose mantle, preserved with religious reverence, could cure the diseased, was surely worthy of ecclesiastical deification. That, in after times, when João I gained Ceuta, he appeared in white armour in the choir of Santa Cruz at Coimbra, and informed the holy brotherhood that he and his son Dom Sancho were proceeding to Ceuta to assist their vassals, no true Portuguese ever yet disbelieved: hence the peculiar office which the monks of that magnificent house solemnised in his honour. To a less Catholic reader, “this always adorable king” (sempre o rei adoravel) may, from his indiscriminate slaughter of the innocent and guilty, and from his amours, appear to have been imbued with the imperfections of our nature.h
Alfonso I was not generally over-scrupulous in sacrificing his knightly generosity and even his political faith to public convenience. The methods which he nearly always adopted to secure the independence and extend the limits of Portugal do more honour to his strength and dexterity than to his delicacy on points of honour. If, however, the severe and impartial historian must perceive blemishes in the character of Alfonso I as a man, justice must, in his favour, throw into the scale the difficulties which beset him in bequeathing to the next generation a well-cemented political existence, and a nationality, as we may say, sufficiently compact to withstand the storms which shook the peninsula. He had to attend to the internal organisation of society and externally to secure it an advantageous position in relation to the various nations of Spain, Christian and Mussulman.
Founder of a new dynasty in the midst of a society equally new, what more natural than that Alfonso I should conceive it necessary gradually to accustom his subjects as well as foreigners to look upon his son Sancho as king before death came to make, as it were, solution of continuity between father and son, and therefore in the monarchy? In Leon and Castile heredity had superseded election to the throne in point of fact; but the Visigothic right of election still existed as a written law, and was still presupposed by the formula of coronation even in the thirteenth century. There were no particular institutions in Portugal to fix the succession, nor any security that the Leonese-Castilian dynasty would offer a long line of kings succeeding each other from father to son. Neither daring nor ambition were lacking in those days; and the death of the first king of the Portuguese might give rise to serious disturbance, either in the country itself or from without, especially as Ferdinand II had already shown in his conduct towards the young king of Castile that his generosity could not always resist an opportunity of adding another crown to that which he already possessed. These and similar considerations probably moved Alfonso I to associate his son with him in the government, not by any formal act of which we have record, but by giving him a free hand in the government of the state, especially in matters of warfare.
An Early Portuguese King
Following the phases of this long reign, and judging impartially the actions of the man placed by providence at the head of the nation, to guide it in the first years of its existence, it is recognised that the idea of fixing the Portuguese independence outweighed all other considerations in his mind, sometimes perhaps to the prejudice of some which should have been respected. It is this idea which in reality links together many acts of Alfonso Henriques which, taken separately, would give men a right to accuse him of little faith and immoderate ambition. Besides the revolt against Doña Theresa which is to be attributed rather to the nobles than to an inexperienced youth, the breaking of the truce with the emperor in 1137, the cruelties practised upon the Saracens, and finally his conduct towards the king of Leon, his son-in-law, whose noble and generous character cannot fail to cast a reflection upon that of Alfonso I, are actions which, taken separately, are worthy of condemnation, at least until records reveal some circumstances still unknown to us, which may absolve them. But, if we consider them in connection with the idea to which the king of Portugal had devoted himself, and which was so to speak incarnate in him, who will not find excuses for such actions, especially if we consider the barbarous epoch, the difficult situation of the country, and the real weakness of a society separated from another which struggled to bring it to reunion? The great need to which Alfonso I was bound to attend was to give homogeneity and internal and external strength to the nation which was being formed. For this purpose he was forced at the same time to seek the favour of the church, the first element of strength in those days; to favour the nobles, the chief nerve of the army, and finally to impart the utmost degree of vigour to the municipal spirit without which, in our opinion, popular spirit and keen love of country never have existed and never will exist.
Besides this labour of internal organisation, he had to extend the limits of the territory which he inherited, too narrow for the establishment of an independent state. The fear of his name among the Mussulmans and Christians and the daring of his troops were means to accomplish it. Naturally warlike, two successive generations learned in his school the hard business of war and succeeded in bequeathing to those to come the glorious traditions of strength and patriotic love which the nation guarded religiously for several centuries. However, before Alfonso I could trust the independence of the country to the chances of war, it was necessary to shield it while a frail plant, by political dexterity. In some cases this gave rise to actions which considered summarily would be condemned by severe morality. But view the picture in the proper light, and the stains which before cast a shadow upon the noble and haughty figure of the first Portuguese king will almost disappear, and the sympathy which the Portuguese nation has in all ages shown for the memory of the son of Count Henry will again appear estimable, for it has its roots in a sentiment rarely found among nations—gratitude to those to whom they are most indebted. This national affection went so far as to attribute to Alfonso Henriques the halo of the saints, and urge that Rome should bestow upon the fierce conqueror that crown which belongs to the martyr’s resignation. But if a creed of peace and humility forbade Rome to grant that crown, another religion likewise venerable, the religion of patriotism, teaches us that when we pass the pale, worm-eaten portal of the church of Santa Cruz we are about to pay homage to the ashes of that man but for whom the Portuguese nation, and perhaps even the name of Portugal, would not be in existence to-day.
The historical value of the twenty-six years’ reign of the son of Alfonso I is perhaps no less than that of his own long term of government; but the character of the two epochs differ as much as did the gifts and characters of the two princes who presided over the political life of each. Less able as a captain than his father, and without that superior invention and daring which incited the founder of the monarchy to great enterprises, Sancho I was far from winning equal renown as a conqueror, but wasted the best years of his manhood in wars for the most part useless and obscure.
Upon this point the two epochs admit of no comparison. Before the sword of Alfonso, Saracen and Christian drew back dismayed, citadels and castles opened their gates; the limits of the country were extended, and the foundations of the existence of Portugal, cemented by torrents of blood, were permanently laid in the west of Spain. After a conquest Sancho always lost again, and for years carried on a sterile strife with Leon; and if he recovered a part of the north and west of Alemtejo it was because the Almohads, whose power was already on the decline, had not sufficient forces to maintain the almost useless dominion of those inhospitable deserts, and so abandoned them, while the Christians, especially the military orders, gradually reclaimed them and built castles and preceptories.
But if we turn our eyes from the frontiers and look upon the interior of the country, the name of the second monarch appears no less glorious than that of the first, and we see his reign as a complement of the preceding reign. Fertilised by the ashes of the martyrs of the Gospel and the Koran, turned and furrowed by the steel of combatants and the whirl of battles, the land of Portugal received from the hands of Sancho the seeds of greatness and royal strength in the councils which were everywhere established; in the farms and villages which were founded in the districts least subject to invasion and incursions; and in the frontier castles which were crowned with bastions and provided with military stores. In those days the courage which faces death was but a trivial virtue. Without the grand idea which dominated all his conquests, without the political skill and extraordinary military talent with which he made up for the lack of strength and resources of the monarchy which he founded, Alfonso I, in spite of his courage and energy, would rank no higher than a fortunate knight.
Upon this point his son was not fortune’s favourite. However, he revenged himself nobly, labouring to earn the title of the Povoador, or city-builder, which he indeed deserved. History, so subject to the vulgar error of rating the barren laurel crown above the fruitful olive branch, has treated the last years of Sancho’s reign with scorn because therein he endeavoured to substitute cities for deserts, cultivated fields for waste lands, and life for death. He pursued this end with energy, and his highest praise lies in the collection of documents which prove his activity and which are perhaps but a small portion of those once existing. This monarch sincerely followed the system which the internal state of the nation demanded, and enabled his successors to be, if not more valiant, at least more fortunate soldiers.
Such is the justice due to Sancho as king. As a man his moral character was not relatively bad, it was vulgar; that is, he had the defects common to princes and barons of the times; he was ignorant and credulous—for science, according to the opinion of the age, was only fit for the mean-spirited—irascible, and violent, because moderation is not learned upon the battle-field, where his father educated him. Besides this he seems to have been inclined to gallantry and the pleasures of the chase. Certain facts of his life also cast upon him the suspicion of cupidity, and of having gathered large sums into his treasury by means grievous to his nation. Sancho himself asserts that the defenders of the state often lacked necessaries, and yet he left in his will nearly a million maravedis, almost all in gold coin, that is, more than three million cruzados of the actual currency—truly an incredible sum, if we consider the rarity of precious metals at that time. Such riches presuppose frequent rapine or a too violent system of taxation. Indeed it is proved by a law of Alfonso II that the king as well as his barons obtained the greatest necessaries of life at an incomparably inferior price, a monstrous imposition which may give us some idea of the other exactions of the treasury.
But the point in which the reign of Sancho has perhaps the highest significance lies in the beginning of that varied and complex fact which for three centuries constituted the principal feature of our Middle Ages. We speak of the alliance of the king and councils against the privileged classes, the clergy and the nobility. The first phases of the struggle are not only the beginning but the epitome, or rather the symbol of the whole. The burgesses of Oporto, attacking their bishop and lord with the officers of the crown, confiscating his property, expelling him covered with ignominy, and braving the anger of the powerful family of Martinho Rodrigues, are a type of the resistance and ill will exhibited by the municipality and the king towards the two high classes of the state, until the monarchy gained a final and decisive victory. Sancho, abandoning the citizens of Oporto, transferring, so to speak, his inert strength of a dying man to the opposite camp, and even associating himself with the clergy to assist in subduing the burgesses, gave a deplorable example to his successors and stirred up the popular spirit to future strife. In spite of this, history cannot condemn him, for everything seems to indicate that the last months of his life were one protracted agony; and if even in our own times, when religious feeling has grown dim and weak, souls calling themselves strongly tempered waver at the approach of death, and bow not only to the terrors of religion but often even to the superstitious beliefs of infancy which then importunately revive—how can we fail to excuse an ignorant and credulous man, born in an inexorable age, for sacrificing both political convenience and loyalty to the voice of a frequently legitimate remorse?j
Alfonso II “the Fat” had no sooner ascended the throne than he showed a disposition to evade the execution of his father’s will. Not only did he refuse to allow his brothers the money which had been bequeathed them, but he insisted on the restitution of the fortresses which belonged to his two sisters, the saints Theresa and Sancha; and on their refusal to surrender them, he seized them by force. The infantas complained to the pope and the king of Leon: the former ordered his legate to see justice done to them; the latter, who still bore an affection towards his divorced wife Theresa, interfered more effectually by way of arms. The Leonese entered Portugal by way of Badajoz, reduced several fortresses, and spread devastations around them. In the sequel, Alfonso of Portugal, at the command of the pope and doubtless through fear of the Leonese, consented to treat with his sisters.
The transactions of Alfonso with the Mohammedans were not so remarkable as those of his predecessors—a circumstance that must be attributed not to his want of military spirit but to his excessive corpulency, which rendered the fatigues of the field intolerable. Though he sent a handful of troops to aid in the triumphs of Las Navas de Tolosa, he did not take the field in person against the enemies of his faith, until 1217 when the arrival in his ports of another crusading armament, which promised to co-operate in his designs, roused him to the reduction of Alcacer-do-Sal, a place that still remained in the power of the misbelievers. It held out till the end of September. The Mohammedans who had remained in Alemtejo, and were pressing the siege of several fortresses, were compelled to retire.
During the last three years of his reign, Alfonso had new disputes with the church. He appears to have borne little respect for the ecclesiastical immunities, some of which were, indeed, inconsistent with the interests of the community. Alfonso insisted on churchmen heading their own vassals in the wars he undertook, and such as refused were compelled to go. For such violence there was no excuse; but in subjecting the ecclesiastical possessions to the same contributions as were levied on the property of the laymen, and churchmen themselves to the secular tribunals, he attempted a salutary innovation on the established system of the clerical exemptions. The archbishop of Braga, like the English Becket of the preceding century, remonstrated with the king; and when remonstrances were ineffectual, hurled at the head of his abettors the thunders of the church. In return he was deprived of his revenues, and compelled to consult his present safety by flight. He complained to the pope: Honorius III ordered three Castilian bishops to insist on ample reparation, to excommunicate the king, and impose an interdict on the nation. The afflicted people now endeavoured to effect a reconciliation between the king and the archbishop: the former promised to make satisfaction, and in future to respect the privileges of the church; he was accordingly absolved, and the interdict removed, but before he could fulfil his share of the compact he was surprised by death (1223).
Sancho II, having reluctantly promised to respect the immunities of the church, prepared to extend the boundary of his dominions at the expense of the Mohammedans. He recovered the important town of Elvas, which had been regained by the Moors: next Jarumeñha and Serpa yielded to his arms. He now carried the war into Algarve. He appears to have left the enemy no fortified places in Alemtejo; the frontier fortresses of that province, thus rescued from the infidels, he intrusted to the defence of the order of Santiago, who triumphed in several partial engagements. The frontier places continued for some years to change masters, according as either of the hostile powers prevailed.
In his domestic administration, Dom Sancho was doomed to be far less fortunate. From his infancy he appears to have been of a weak constitution, and of a still weaker mind; but if he was weak, we have no proof that he was vicious, though great disasters afflicted his kingdom, and the historians of his country have stigmatised his memory. His hostility to the immunities of the clergy appears to have been the first and chief cause of his unpopularity.h
The account of the state of the kingdom which served as a foundation for the acts which afterwards emanated from the Roman curia affirmed that the king in spite of his former promises showed on the one hand pertinacity in the perpetration of violence, and on the other the most inexcusable tolerance towards criminals, and neither amended himself nor restrained his subjects; that robbers, highwaymen, incendiaries, sacrilegists, and murderers swarmed everywhere, robbing and killing clergy and laity without distinction, and living secure of impunity. That through this contagious example of the impotence of the laws, barons and knights, nobles and plebeians made general practice of those acts which the church by the most severe comminations had endeavoured to restrain. That certain patrons of parishes and monasteries, and others falsely giving themselves out as such, accompanied by illegitimate children, wasted the property of the said parishes and monasteries without pity, reducing them to such misery that the very ministers of worship could not maintain themselves; so that in some there was even no one to perform the indispensable services, and in others the cloisters, refectories, and other offices were converted into stables and brothels for the lowest of men, and it might almost be said that divine worship had ceased there and the property of these holy places was given over to dilapidation and plunder. That at the same time Sancho allowed the castles, towns, and revenues of the crown to be destroyed and squandered, and suffered the increase of assassinations without any distinction whatever of the class, age, or sex of the victims; as well as robbery, incest, the rape of nuns and secular women, grievous oppression of labourers, priests, and merchants, with the purpose of extorting money from them; violation of temples and cemeteries, incendiarism, and breaches of truce. That Sancho was aware of all this and yet tolerated it, and through neglect of punishment facilitated the perpetration of further crimes; that finally, by abandoning the defence of the frontiers, he, the king of Portugal, allowed the Saracens to occupy the lands and lordships of the Christians. “We,” added the prelates, “have used our utmost endeavours to move the prince to devote himself with due ardour to the repression of such evils; but he closes his ears to our admonitions, which have so far been entirely vain.”
If the reader will reflect upon this last invective of the clergy against Sancho, he will recognise with what good reason we attribute to the long wars of this reign an immense influence upon the strife with the clergy, and see in these repeated enterprises against the infidel an idea, or maybe a political instinct, of the monarchy which drew strength from them for the eternal duel with the priesthood. As far as documents throw light upon the last conquests in Algarve, the accusation that Sancho in a cowardly manner abandoned the defence of the frontier and allowed the Mussulman arms to encroach upon the territory of the kingdom was a calumny.