Alfonso V, the eldest son of Duarte, being only six years of age on his father’s death, the regency devolved, in conformity with the last will of her husband, on the queen-mother, Leonora, a princess of excellent disposition, but not exempted from the fickleness of her sex, and ill qualified to rule a fierce people. To such a people, the sway even of a native woman could scarcely have been agreeable; as a foreigner (a princess of Aragon), she was peculiarly obnoxious. Seeing this general discontent, some of the nobles, with three uncles of the king, resolved to profit by it. Of the three infantes, the hostility of João was the most bitter; of Henry the most disinterested; and of Pedro [duke of Coimbra] the most politic, the most ambitious, and consequently the most to be dreaded.
She offered to Dom Pedro to affiance his daughter Isabella with the young king—an offer which he readily accepted, but which in no manner interrupted his career of ambition. He procured, not only the sanction of the deputies to the proposed marriage, but his recognition as joint regent. At this crisis, Henry proposed in the states assembled at Lisbon that the executive should be divided—that the education of the king and the care of the finances should rest with the queen, that the administration of justice should be intrusted to the count of Barcelos, and that Pedro should be nominated protector of the kingdom. At first, Leonora opposed this extraordinary expedient to satisfy the ambition of the princes; but, finding that the populace were arming in great multitudes to espouse the cause of their favourite, she was terrified into submission.
To bring the great question to issue, the mob, the only authority then subsisting, assembled in the church of St. Dominic, and swore that, until Alfonso reached his majority, the government should rest in Dom Pedro; that if Pedro died he should be succeeded in the office by his brother Henry, and the latter by the infante João, and that thenceforward no woman should be allowed to rule the Portuguese. Under the pretext that the education of the young king, if left to her, must necessarily be effeminate, and unfit him for his station, he was removed by a sudden decree of the same cortes, from her care, and placed under that of the regent.
The wisdom of Dom Pedro’s administration daily reconciled to it some of his former enemies: he restored tranquillity, encouraged the national industry, was indefatigable in his labours, and impartial in his judgments. Grateful for the benefits he procured them, the people of Lisbon would have erected a statue in his honour, had he not rigorously forbidden them. He was too well acquainted with both history and human nature not to know that popular favour is fleeting as the wind. He observed that, if such a statue were erected, it would be one day disfigured by the very hands which had made it. We are assured, indeed, by a contemporary chronicler, Ruy de Pina,i that he had some anticipation of the melancholy fate which awaited him. Yielding to the representations of her pretended friends, Leonora openly erected the standard of rebellion, and a civil war commenced: its horrors were increased by a body of Castilians, who, at the instance of Leonora, penetrated into the kingdom, and committed many ravages. In 1445, she formally requested permission to return, to end her days with her children; and her wish would doubtless have been gratified, had not death surprised her at Toledo.[156]
In 1446, King Alfonso reached his fourteenth year—the period of his majority. His first acts were regarded by the people as favourable omens of his future administration, and, above all, of his disposition to cultivate a good understanding with the regent. When, in the cortes convoked for the occasion at Lisbon, Pedro resigned the delegated authority into his hands, he desired the latter to retain it till he was better able to bear the load; and he soon afterwards married Isabella, to whom he had been affianced in his tenth year. But these buds of hope were soon blighted. The regent was powerful; he therefore had enemies—and enemies the more bitter, that there was now a master who could destroy him with ease. Of these none were more vindictive or base than his natural brother, the count de Barcelos, on whom he had just conferred the lordship of Braganza, with the title of duke. No sooner did the duke of Braganza perceive the secure place which he held in the king’s affections, than he began to inveigh against the character and actions of Pedro. These discourses, and the mention of his mother’s wrongs, which were artfully distorted, made a deep impression on the king, who at length regarded his father-in-law with abhorrence. The regent perceived the change, and he requested permission to retire to Coimbra, of which he was duke. His request was granted; and so also was another—an act, under the royal signature and seal, approving the whole of his administration.
No sooner had he departed than a hundred reptiles darted their stings. Among the new charges brought against him was one of poisoning the late king and queen. In vain did the sage Henry hasten from his aërial residence above Cape St. Vincent, to vindicate the character of his brother; in vain did Dom Alfonso de Alamado, a nobleman of unsullied honour, join in the chivalrous act—for chivalrous it was, when the lives of both were threatened as their reward, if they did not immediately retire from the court;[157] in vain did the latter challenge all who dared to dispute Dom Pedro’s virtues to a mortal combat; in vain did the royal Isabella plead her father’s innocence. Alfonso published an edict debarring all his subjects from communication with the prince, and ordering him to remain on his estates. His arms were next demanded: these he refused to surrender. The duke of Braganza now assembled his troops, and marched towards Coimbra; he was met at Penella by Dom Pedro, before whose handful of friends he fled with ignominy. Again did his daughter affectionately labour to avert his fate. In an agony of tears she cast herself at her husband’s feet, and besought his pardon. Alfonso was affected: he raised his queen, whom he tenderly loved, and promised that if her father would acknowledge his crime, it should be forgiven. More jealous of his honour than fond of life, the high-spirited prince would acknowledge no crime, simply because he had none to acknowledge. The incensed monarch tore the reply into pieces, and said, “Your father wishes his destruction; he shall have his wish!”
The duke left Coimbra with one thousand horse and five thousand foot, all resolved to perish rather than permit a beloved leader to be oppressed; and on their banners were engraven, “Fidelity! Justice! Vengeance!” The king hastened to meet him with about thirty thousand veteran troops; they approached each other on the banks of the Alfarrobeira (May 21st, 1449), above which was an eminence where Pedro entrenched himself. The prince, who desperately sought the most dangerous post, and who evidently resolved to sacrifice his life, fell through a wound in the throat. The carnage which followed was terrific: the troops of the fallen infante, intent on revenging his death and resolved on their own, would neither give nor receive quarter; almost all fell on the field. The vengeance of Alfonso passed beyond the grave: he ordered the corpse of Pedro to remain on the ground, to be forever deprived of the last rites of humanity; but in a few days some compassionate peasants, whose souls might have put to shame the boasted chivalry of nobles, privately removed it, and interred it in the church of Alverca. The descendants of all his adherents to the fourth generation were declared infamous—incapable of holding any public charge. The mob of Lisbon testified characteristic joy at his catastrophe—a remarkable confirmation of his prudence in forbidding them to erect the projected statue of him.
The death of this prince—the greatest whom Portugal had lately seen—caused a deep sensation throughout Europe, and from Rome to Britain drew forth nothing but execrations against his murderers. Through the indignant remonstrances of the pope and of his brother-in-law, the duke of Burgundy; through the increasing influence of his daughter, whose virtues were appreciated by her husband, and whose efforts to honour his memory were at length successful; and more still through the king’s conviction of his innocence, in the fifth year from this tragedy his bones were removed from their humble sepulchre, and were transferred with great pomp to the mausoleum of the Portuguese kings. In 1455, the queen suddenly sickened and died. That her death was the effect of poison administered by her enemies, and the enemies of her father—among whom were doubtless the detestable princes of Braganza—is the unshaken opinion of her own times and of posterity.
The disastrous captivity of the infante Ferdinand had sunk deep into the heart of Alfonso, as into that of most princes of his family; and the desire of revenge had been suspended, not abandoned. The reduction of Constantinople by the Turks in 1453 had filled Christian Europe with consternation, and had led to the formation of a general league, the object of which was to drive back the misbelievers into their Asiatic wilds. Alfonso’s original intention was to reduce the fortress of Tangier, the siege of which had proved so unfortunate to the princes Henry and Ferdinand; but the advice of a Portuguese noble determined him to invest Alcacer-Seguier [or es-Seghir]. In September, 1457, the armament, consisting of above two hundred vessels, and carrying twenty thousand men, sailed from the three ports, effected a junction at sea, and steered towards the Moorish coast.
The success which had attended the attack on Alcacer-Seguier animated Alfonso to renew the attempt on Tangier. Accordingly, in 1464, he sailed with another armament. The assault was repulsed with deplorable loss; the flower of the Portuguese chivalry either perished on the spot, or were compelled to surrender. The king himself had considerable difficulty in effecting his escape. For some years the result of this inglorious expedition seems to have inspired him with too much dread to renew the attempt; but, in 1471, he embarked thirty thousand men on board 308 transports, and proceeded to invest Arsilla, a fortress on the Atlantic. The king himself, and his son the infante João, were among the foremost in the assault. The Portuguese massacred all—as well those who resisted as those who threw down their arms in token of submission—with diabolical fury. In this work of destruction João was behind none of his countrymen. Terrified by the fate of Arsilla, the inhabitants of Tangier abandoned the city with all their movable substance. It was immediately occupied by the Christians, and it was formed into an episcopal see. From these successes, the Portuguese courtiers surnamed their king Africanus—an epithet which, with any other people, would have been considered a bitter satire. Throughout his operations in Africa he had shown great incapacity, and had met with unparalleled reverses; nor were the successes recently obtained in any way attributable to his valour or abilities, but to those of his generals and his son. The latter, who had attained his sixteenth year, was knighted on this occasion.e
We have now reached a shameful page in the history of Portugal. A vision passed through the brain of Alfonso V of uniting beneath his sceptre the kingdoms of Portugal and Castile. He thought to realise his dream by marrying his niece Doña Juana, daughter of his sister Doña Juana and of King Henry IV of Castile, who would succeed to that throne upon the death of her father. But Alfonso V was too faint-hearted and too unskilful a politician for so great an ambition, which had already turned the weak head of his predecessor Ferdinand I.
On the death of Henry IV of Castile his daughter Doña Juana inherited the throne, she having been recognised and sworn queen of Castile even during her father’s life. Nevertheless Ferdinand, king of Aragon, who was married to Isabella of Castile, disputed her claim. It was then that Alfonso V sought to unite upon his own head the crown of Portugal and Castile by marrying his niece, the queen Doña Juana. The marriage took place by proxy at Palencia, in May, 1475. The pope, Paul II, was prevailed upon to grant the dispensation of consanguinity, but it was immediately revoked by his successor, Sixtus IV.
How different was the character of Alfonso V from that of some of his predecessors! How weak was his policy! The grandson of João I never even completed his marriage, in spite of his ambition to be king of Portugal and Castile, Doña Juana having been recognised and sworn queen of Castile even during her father’s life. What a difference between Alfonso V and his predecessor Alfonso III, who mocked at Rome and the pontiff, married one wife, with another living, raised one queen and deposed another, in spite of the excommunications of the Vatican, creating a strong faction in Portugal and getting himself proclaimed king; politically availing himself of every element in and out of the country to accomplish his ends, and only repenting on his death-bed, when he had won everything. It might be said that the cold British blood of his grandmother Philippa of Lancaster was still dominant in Alfonso V who, according to certain chronicles, observed complete chastity after the death of his wife, Queen Isabella.
A Portuguese Woman of the Fifteenth Century
In the meantime intrigues were active in Spain; one argument, on which great stress was laid against the claims of Alfonso V, was that Juana was the child of adultery, for the faction of Ferdinand and Isabella of Aragon never wearied of repeating that she was not the daughter of Henry IV of Castile, but of Beltran de la Cuenca [whence she was called the Beltraneja], making great sport of the dissolute morals of Juana, the sister of the king of Portugal, and mother of his bride. In the end the two factions came to blows. The fortune of war went against the Portuguese, who were defeated at the battle of Toro in 1476, in spite of the prodigies of valour performed in this battle by the infante Dom João, heir to the throne.
Defeated in battle, Alfonso V attempted to gain his end by policy, for which he had not the necessary dexterity. He bethought himself of attempting to persuade Louis XI, king of France, to take his part and give him the help and protection of his troops to place the crowns of Portugal and Castile upon his head. The king of France remained unmoved, although the king of Portugal went in person to solicit his help. In disgust Alfonso V announced his intention of visiting Palestine, and declared to his son, Prince João, whom he had appointed regent during his absence from Spain, that in such a case he should be proclaimed king. But he returned unexpectedly in 1477, and on the 14th of September, 1479, signed the peace with Castile at Alcantara—a shameful treaty, by which the king of Portugal abandoned his wife, who was forced to become a nun and exchange the crown for the veil. She entered the convent of St. Clair in Santarem in 1479, afterwards passing to the convent of St. Clair of Coimbra, where she was professed on the 17th of November, 1480. In the meanwhile the negotiations were so prolonged that the prince Dom João lost patience, and with his impulsive disposition took upon himself to send the Castilian ambassadors two documents, one declaring for peace and the other for war, bidding them choose without further parley. Upon this final resolution, the Castilians concluded the negotiations. Greater energy on the part of Alfonso V might perhaps, even at the end of the dispute, have obtained less shameful and degrading conditions of peace. Alfonso V, crushed and reduced to the last extremity of consternation, was resolved to convoke the cortes and abdicate in favour of his son, when he fell sick of the plague at Cintra, and died in the very room of the palace in which he was born, on the 28th of August, 1481.k
With the exception of the accidental success in Africa, his reign was almost uniformly disastrous—a misfortune more owing to the deplorable weakness of his character than to any other cause. He founded the order of the Tower and Sword, under the invocation of Santiago, and was a great patron of literature; he was the first of the Portuguese kings to collect a library, and to order the national history to be treated by competent writers. His reign is, however, somewhat redeemed by the discoveries of the infante Henry, who, from his residence at Tagus, continued to fix his eyes intently on the maritime regions of western Africa. Through this enlightened prince, the Azores, with the Madeiras, the Canaries, Cape de Verd, and other islands west of that great continent were discovered or colonised. The discovery of the Cape de Verd, the last which illustrated the life of Henry, was owing to the enterprise of a Genoese, Antonio Nolle, who had derived a confused knowledge of their existence from the ancient geographers, and who, from some dissatisfaction with his own country, offered his services to the prince. Having coasted from Morocco to Cape de Verd, he deviated westwards and soon fell in with the islands, which he called after the cape of that name.e
Dom João II was now proclaimed king. His accession to the throne was the signal for a despotic war against the aristocracy and the territorial influence of magnates. João began by convoking the cortes at Evora in 1481. A law was then published introducing a new oath to be taken by all the chief alcaides and holders of grants. The restrictions placed upon the criminal jurisdiction of the nobility, the examination of grants, and the diminution of the political influence of the nobles, produced great discontent among the aristocracy, which gave rise to intrigues, plots, and conspiracies, which João II, following the example of Louis XI of France, repressed with all severity, not sparing blood nor executions even of his own kindred. Under these circumstances João II seized the opportunity of satisfying his vengeance and giving vent to the hatred which he had nourished for many years against the duke of Braganza, Dom Ferdinand, his second cousin, who was married to his wife’s sister. He had him publicly beheaded at Evora on the 22nd of June, 1483; he is now judged to have been innocent of the crime of high treason imputed to him.
In the following year, João II with his own hands plunged a dagger into the breast of the duke of Viseu, his cousin and brother-in-law, in the palace of Setubal, for having conspired against him. After his death the duke was judged and condemned (a ludicrous determination of the despotic monarch) and his accomplices executed. The bishop of Evora, who was accused of being concerned in the conspiracy, was ordered to be thrown into a well; and more than eighty nobles and fidalgoes paid with their lives for the opposition which they made or were accused of making to the king’s policy. It was the second time that the assassin’s dagger had been publicly used in Portugal in the royal palace, by a prince upon whose brow the crown of the kingdom was to rest. Both the royal assassins were excellent kings, who governed the country diligently with courage and wisdom, raised it and gave it prosperity. In the case of the blow struck by João II, it is to be noted that it was dealt to a subject whom the king might easily have committed to a proper trial, with the certainty of finding judges who would condemn those guilty of high treason. To lessen the awful impression which these extraordinary assassinations make upon the mind and the stain which they leave upon the memory of these monarchs, it is necessary to consider the political circumstances and the ideas and customs of those times. Things inadmissible to our present civilisation were not so to the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries—above all when the deed was that of an absolute king who had to render an account to God alone.
There is no doubt that the wealth and therefore the influence successively acquired by the nobility had reached such a pitch that they absorbed the best revenues of the land, vexing the people by the insolence, cupidity, and abuses which oppressed the vassals of the great lords and proprietors, though Portugal happily never suffered the terrors of feudalism. This excessive power of the nobles dated from the time of João I, who was forced to create a new aristocracy to enable him to combat the king of Castile, most of the old nobility having joined the Castilian banners, and to liberally divide the property of the crown with those who were faithful to his cause. The king afterwards endeavoured to obviate the inconvenience of these excessive grants by the “mental law” (lei mental), which, without revoking the grants already made to the possessions thereof and their lawful descendants, put great restrictions upon the alienation of such property. The mental law, published only in the reign of Dom Duarte, did not have the desired result; the infante Dom Pedro, during his troubled regency, was forced to make concessions which decreased the patrimony of the crown.
But the reign of Alfonso V was above all disastrous upon this point, as we have said; it was the best time for the nobles and holders of grants. To remunerate the nobles who fought at his side, the luckless pretender to the throne of Castile considered nothing too much—titles, favours, grants, salaries, pensions, allowances, marriage dowries, education of the children of nobles, gratifications for ordinary and extraordinary services, real or pretended; everything was conceded with liberality and profusion by the monarch who was called the African, but might more properly have been called the Prodigal.[158]
The internal political situation as well as the state of the treasury called for an effectual remedy, and it is certain that only an energetic, inflexible, and dauntless character such as that of João II could have applied by sheer force a prompt though violent remedy. It may therefore be said that the king, who was called “the perfect prince,” rendered a memorable service to the country by the tremendous blow which he struck at the aristocracy and territorial power, restoring freedom of action to the crown, and liberating the public exchequer from the heavy charges and expenses placed upon it by the nobility. It is not surprising that in this struggle between the crown and the nobility the middle classes and the people should be found on the side of the king, since he made the offences, sufferings, oppression, complaints, and petitions represented by the deputies of the councils in the cortes of 1481 his chief pretext and principal weapon in declaring mortal war against the aristocracy and allying himself with the people.
Thus there was a firm alliance between the king and the people, although João II convoked the cortes only three times during his reign, and the crown and councils were generally on the best of terms. On the 12th of July, 1491, the prince Dom Alfonso went hunting in Almeirim, and as he was galloping at nightfall the horse took fright at some object which lay across the path, and fell, dragging the prince with him. He was picked up speechless and unconscious, and carried to a fisherman’s hut where he died a few hours later in the arms of his father, mother, and wife.
This untimely death was a great affliction to the king and queen of Portugal, especially to João II, who thereby lost his hope of an heir to his throne; for by the death of Prince Alfonso the right of succession fell upon Dom Emmanuel, duke of Beja, the brother of Queen Leonora and of the duke of Viseu whom he had stabbed at Setubal. The thought that the crown of Portugal would pass to his wife’s family oppressed and tormented João II. The probability that his brother-in-law Dom Emmanuel (Manoel), the duke of Beja, whom he hated, would be king of Portugal, put his cousin the king beside himself. In this affliction João II thought of having his natural son Jorge [or George] acknowledged as his successor. Jorge was master of the orders of Santiago and Aviz, and duke of Coimbra. But Dom João did not carry out his intention; he remembered the precedent of João I, but the clear judgment of his wife, Donna Leonora, pointed out to him that the circumstances were very different; on the one hand there was no fear of foreign invasion as in the days of the master of Aviz, while on the other hand the king had left wounds still unhealed from his war against the aristocracy. Upon the death of João II, 1495, Dom Jorge had not sufficient partisans to secure to him the crown which his father so earnestly longed to bequeath him.k
João was a great prince—comprehensive in his views, vigorous in the execution of his designs, as he was cautious and politic in their formation; zealous for justice, and for the happiness of his people. That zeal, however, sometimes degenerated into vengeance, and was sometimes disarmed by capricious clemency. But his character will be better conceived from a few striking traits or sayings (and many such are recorded of him) than from any description.
He placed little value on the recommendations of his nobles; and a favour solicited through their medium was almost sure to be denied. But he was fond of honouring and rewarding merit, especially when, as is generally the case, that merit was dumb.[159] To a faithful and valiant knight he one day observed: “You have hands to serve me; have you no tongue to request a recompense?” Being at dinner, he was once served among others by Dom Pedro de Melo, a knight of great prowess, who was better fitted for handling the sword than a dish in the palace of princes, and let fall a large vessel of water, which sprinkled some of the courtiers, and made others laugh. “Why do you laugh?” inquired the king; “Dom Pedro has dropped a vessel of water, but he never dropped his lance!” He had borrowed money of a rich merchant at Tavira, to whom, at the expiration of the stipulated period, he returned it with legal interest. The merchant—a wonderful instance of disinterestedness in such a capacity—refused to receive more than the principal; João sent double interest, with the order to continue doubling it as often as the merchant should persist in the refusal. In one of his public edicts, with the view of recruiting his cavalry, he ordered all his subjects to be in readiness to furnish excellent war-horses. The churchmen pleaded their immunities, and some of them went so far as to say that they were not his subjects but those of the pope. To punish them in the way they deserved, João loudly asserted that he had never regarded them as subjects; and by another ordinance he forbade all smiths and farriers to shoe their mules and horses—a measure which soon compelled them to submit. The monopolists in corn had created an artificial famine by purchasing and piling in their warehouses all the grain in the kingdom, which they refused to sell under an exorbitant price. By a royal ordinance the people were forbidden to purchase from these dealers, and the Castilians were permitted to import in whatever quantities they pleased; the kingdom soon teemed with abundance, and the monopolists were ruined. He was a great enemy to detraction. One praised a recent feat of arms of a Portuguese governor in Africa: another attempted to detract from it by saying that the success was merely owing to chance. “That may be,” observed the king: “but how is it that such chance never happens to anyone else?” Nor was he less jealous of his dignity with foreign princes than with his own subjects. A Portuguese vessel had been captured by some French pirates: he ordered all the French vessels in his ports to be seized. The owners complained to their king, Charles VIII, who immediately punished the pirates, and caused their prize to be restored. It was found, however, that a parrot had not been restored with the rest, and he insisted that every vessel should be retained until the bird were produced. In short, the success of his administration was unrivalled; he introduced industry and comfort among his people; added largely to the national resources; and was in many respects the greatest monarch that ever swayed the sceptre of Portugal.
A Portuguese Captain of the Fifteenth Century
In the reign of this prince, the Portuguese spirit of maritime enterprise was carried to a high pitch—a spirit which, except in one instance,[160] he was always anxious to foster. His first care was to found a fort on the coast of Guinea, which had been discovered during the preceding reign, for the purpose of maintaining a permanent commercial intercourse with the natives. The barbarian king, who had entered into an alliance with the strangers, consented to the erection of the fortress. From this moment Portugal, or rather her monarchs, derived a great revenue in ivory and gold from this unknown coast; so great, indeed, that he feared lest the vessels of other European nations should be attracted to it. To damp their avidity, he took care that the voyage should be represented not merely as difficult, but as in the highest degree dangerous; and as impossible to be undertaken in regular ships; in any other than the flat-bottomed round smacks at that time peculiar to Portugal. The secret, however, was near coming to the knowledge of the vigilant monarch of Castile, who suspected the truth, and who longed to obtain a settlement on the same coast. In the hope of a princely reward, a Portuguese captain and two pilots proceeded to Castile. They were pursued into the neighbouring territory by the agents of João; and, as they refused to obey the summons of recall, two were killed on the spot, and the third brought back to Evora, where he was quartered. The severity of this punishment sank deep into the minds of the other pilots, and retained them in the service of their own sovereign. And when João heard that vessels were constructing in the English ports, unknown to Edward IV, and at the cost of the duke de Medina Sidonia, for an expedition to Ethiopia,—so the Portuguese termed all central Africa from the Nile to the western coast,—he sent an embassy to the English monarch, whom he reminded of the ancient alliance between the two crowns, and whom he easily induced to prohibit the preparations. In a short time, the fortress of São Jorge da Mina (Elmina) became a considerable city, and afterwards infamous from the traffic in slaves.
But this was only the beginning of Portuguese enterprise. The king had been taught to suspect that by coasting the African continent a passage to the East Indies might be discovered; and he not only equipped two small squadrons expressly for this object, but despatched two of his subjects (Pedro de Covilhão and Alfonso de Payva) into India and Abyssinia, to discover the route to and between these vast regions, and what advantages Portuguese commerce might derive from the knowledge thus acquired.
The discoveries of Covilhão encouraged João to attempt the passage to India. One of the squadrons—that under João Alfonso de Aveiro—discovered the kingdom of Benin. The other, under Cam, was more fortunate. Crossing the equinox, he arrived at the mouth of the Congo. He coasted two hundred leagues further to the south; but finding no cape, he returned to Congo, and was honourably received by the barbarian king, whom he disposed to Christianity, and impressed with a favourable idea of European civilisation. His departure affected the half convert, who besought him to return with missionaries, and who at the same time permitted several natives to accompany him, for the purpose of being thoroughly instructed in the new faith. By the Portuguese king and court they were received with great joy, and at their express desire were soon regenerated in the waters of baptism, he, his queen, and many of the nobles standing sponsors at the font. After a residence of two years in Europe, they returned to Congo, accompanied by several monks, some mechanics and agricultural labourers, and an embassy, headed by Ruy de Sousa. Hundreds repaired to the missionaries for instruction; the idols were broken or removed; a church was built, and mass celebrated with imposing pomp. But to renounce worldly pleasures, and to mortify the strongest passions, to forego the privilege of many wives, and the gratification of revenge—were too much for these licentious barbarians. By degrees the new faith changed, and was finally extinguished.
Though no paramount advantage was derived from the alliance with Congo, the discoveries of Cam led to a solid one—that of the Cape of Good Hope. This memorable discovery was made in 1487, by Bartholomeu Dias, an officer of equal enterprise and experience. The high winds and still higher seas which assailed this vast promontory induced the captain to call it the Cape of Storms; but João, who had more extended views, called it O Cabo da Boa Esperança, or the Cape of Good Hope. On this occasion Dias ventured little beyond the promontory; nor was it passed by any vessel until the following reign, when the famous Vasco da Gama doubled it on his voyage to India.e
To Covilhão belongs the honour of marking the itinerary of the voyage to India, asserting that the East might be reached by the south of Africa. In the letters which he sent from Cairo, he said that ships navigating along the coast of Guinea would ultimately reach the extreme south of the African continent; and from thence steering east in the direction of the island of Lua, by Sofala, would find themselves on the way to India. From this and other information received, was composed the plan of the daring expedition of 1497, the destined course of which was first Kalikodu or Calecut (Calicut), as it was called then, and from thence to where Covilhão was. Vasco da Gama was chosen by Dom Emmanuel (Dom João II had then been dead three years) to command the expedition. He was a daring but prudent man, uniting the qualities of a soldier and sailor, a thing common at that time and even later. The same thing applies to Alfonso de Albuquerque, Dom João de Castro, and many others. Such a combination had a decided advantage; the separation of these qualities did not come to embarrass their plans; there was unity in the command, for the captain was likewise pilot.
The greatest judgment and prudence directed the preparations for the expedition. The information sent by Covilhão was weighed and considered and compared with that previously obtained. Charts and maps were examined, and Bartholomeu Dias himself related what had befallen him, the obstacles which he had encountered, and the difficulties which must be overcome. With his vast experience he directed the building of the ships, doing away with exaggerated dimensions, and insisting on the strength of the ribs. The discoverer of the cape was to accompany the expedition as far as São Jorge da Mina, and remain there to carry on the gold trade. There were four small ships, that they might be able to enter all the ports, explore every creek, pass over shoals, and cruise along the coast. Their construction was strong and perfect, such as had never been seen before.
They carried six freestone columns carved with the Portuguese arms, and the armillary sphere which the king had adopted as his emblem. One was to be set up at the bay of St. Braz, another at the mouth of the Zambesi, another in Mozambique, another in Calicut, and another in the island of Santa Maria. There were two chaplains on board each ship; negro, Kaffir, and Arab interpreters, ten convicts for any sacrifice that might be necessary, and finally 148 soldiers. The best pilots had been chosen and the king would allow nothing to be spared. He came in person to view the ships on the stocks, and remained conversing with the masters, listening to the observations of Bartholomeu and Pedro Dias, and Vasco da Gama, who showed him the new astrolabe of Behaim, a rough triangle of wood but very effectual.
The three ships bore the names of the three archangels: S. Gabriel the capitanea of 120 tons; S. Miguel (formerly Berrio), and S. Raphael of 100 tons. The name of the fourth, of 200 tons, is unknown. At the end of June they were all finished and ready, and rode at anchor before the church of Restello, where the captains watched all the night of the 7th of July. The next day, after mass, accompanied by the king and all the people of the city, singing, with tapers in their hands, they all went in procession to the shore and there embarked. Camoens says that at that moment:
Indeed many in their hearts strongly condemned the persistency of the monarchs in sacrificing men and money to this chimera of navigation. The cold and tardy prudence born of past experience did not believe success possible after so many vain attempts. The result was to prove the contrary; but the words of the poet prophesied the fatal consequences of an empire which all, both daring and prudent, were ready to acclaim upon the return of Vasco da Gama. Camoens, watching the decline of the sun, could relate the hunger endured at sea, the tempests, shipwrecks, and wanderings in the burning lands of the terrible Adamastor, and the trail of white skeletons left across the sands of both Africas—a rosary of mournful tragedies. He could relate how waves of tyranny and crime from that Indian sea stretched out to Europe to overwhelm Portugal with their slime.
They were three months reaching St. Helena Bay (Nov. 7th). They landed to take the sun with their astrolabe, the rolling of the ship preventing them from doing so on board; here they had several skirmishes with the natives, and set out again at last upon the 16th of November. On the 19th they came in sight of Cape Tormentoso, or of Good Hope, both names being fully justified on this occasion. For three days they were beaten about by tempests. The wind and waves were such that the upper parts of the ships were under water, and it could scarcely be seen if they advanced upon the waves or were wrapped around by them. Upon the stern castles the ships had painted pictures of the saints whose name they bore, and when the raging sea flung the pictures on to the tilt the crews grew pale with horror. It was a bad omen, for it seemed as if they were deserted by the divine favour. Fierce and angry seas washed over the poops, dashing the boats against the sides of the ships and damaging the helms. They furled the sails, cut down the tilt, and began to throw the cargo overboard. At last the weather cleared.
Having doubled the cape, they entered the bay of St. Braz, where the calms detained them until the 7th of the following month. Navigating for a week along the southern coast of Africa, on the 15th they reached the Chaos Islands, the farthest point reached by Bartholomeu Dias. Then they began to follow the instructions of Covilhão, the pilot absent in the lands of the mythical Prester John, of whom they were in search. They wished to proceed along the coast, but the currents, which were a great danger, carried them towards the vast and unknown southern sea. The sailors rebelled in vain; Vasco da Gama, like an inexorable destiny prudent in his audacity, overcame the currents and revolts.
At last they got out of the “sea of darkness” (mar tenebroso), and then only could the terrific cape be looked upon as overcome. The tempests and the currents grew still. By day there was calm with the sky of purest blue; by night, several times the light of S. Pedro Gonçalves, the St. Elmo of Lisbon, shone above the tops of the masts. All promised fair weather. They climbed the masts to see the marks of the miracle, and brought back with great devotion the droppings of green wax left by the saint.
On January 10th, 1498, they touched land at Inhambane, and had some intercourse with the Kaffirs; on the 22nd they had reached Quilimane (Kilimane), where “noblemen” came on board to visit them, with turbans of worked silk upon their heads.
India was reached for the first time. They saw men of divers nations, and traces of that distant civilisation so eagerly sought for. They had emerged from the African sea, and from the heavy shadow of the dark continent. Yet these “noblemen” whom they gazed upon almost with love, regarding them as brothers, were to be their cruelest enemies. They reached Mozambique on the 2nd of March. Around the fleet at anchor came the native vessels, without decks or sails. The Moors came to trade with them. The sultan in person wished to compliment Vasco da Gama, who received him on board. The sultan proved perfidious, and the fleet, without the pilots, cruised along the coast to Mombasa (on the 8th of April), where chance alone saved it from the plot which the Moors had prepared against it; they had already recognised dangerous competitors in these men who had come over the sea to these regions, which had until then been the undisputed possession of Arabia, Egypt, and Nubia. Saved by a miracle, Vasco da Gama went on to Melinde (15th), where the sultan received him well; but not trusting these “noblemen” of Zanzibar, he availed himself of a Moor who had remained on board at Mozambique, and who chanced to know the way to Calicut. They put to sea, and in twenty-seven days (24th of April to the 19th of May), they were in India. The voyage had lasted ten months and eleven days.
It was now that their wonder reached its limit. Everything they had seen as yet gave not a distant idea of what they now saw upon their landing. The natural pomp and splendour of the East filled them with surprise and cupidity. In their religious ignorance they saw everywhere the Christians of Prester John. The natives adored the Virgin Mary, and the Portuguese also prostrated themselves before our Lady, in the person of Gauri, the white goddess, Sakti of Siva, the destroyer. This confusion, increased by the fact of not understanding each other’s speech, occasioned scenes ingenuously comical. Some who were doubtful, remarked that if the idols were devils their prayer was intended for God alone, quieting their consciences by this mental reservation. To increase their amazement, there came to them a Moor who spoke in Portuguese, “Good luck! good luck! Many rubies, many emeralds!”
From Lisbon to India was but a short distance, for the feelings have no measure. They were all Christians, they also had kings. The world was all one and man the same everywhere. The ingenuous way in which the greatest things were accomplished is the greatest proof of the heroic strength of these men of the Renaissance.
At that time India—and by that name we designate all the coasts and islands included between the meridians of Suez and Tidore, and between 20° south latitude and 30° north latitude, the scene of the Portuguese campaigns—in India, we say, foreign races held a kind of dominion resembling in all things that which afterwards belonged to the Portuguese—a commercial-maritime monopoly, and consequently, factories, colonies, and states. The races they were about to dispossess of this dominion were the Arabs, the Ethiopians, Persians, Turks, and Afghans, who, coming down from the Red and the Arabian seas, and confounded in the religious wave of Islam, had subjugated the peninsula from the Indus to the Ganges, and eastern Africa from Adal to Monomotapa. Extending themselves to the extreme east, they reached as far as Cambodia and Tidore in the Moluccas, across Arakan and Pegu, from the peninsula of Malacca (Malay peninsula), and from Burma and Shan (Siam) into the continent, through Sumatra and Borneo and the middle of the Sunda archipelago. The Portuguese called all the natives Moors, a generic term already in use in Europe to denote the followers of Islam, and therefore now adopted when, having come from afar and traversed so many seas, they again found themselves face to face with the Turk, the opponent of the Christian throughout the world.
“The devil take you! What brought you here!” was the compliment addressed to the Portuguese by a Moor in Calicut; and in Mozambique and Mombasa the Moors (we will henceforward use this word as a generic term, as aforesaid) persuaded or forced Samundri Rajah (Zamorin) king or count (India was under a pseudo-feudal rule) of Calicut, to exterminate the Portuguese. Calicut was the commercial empire of the coast of Malabar, and the dominions of the rajah formed the so-called kingdom of Kanara.
It was an easy matter no doubt to persuade the ruler that Vasco da Gama was a pirate and his king a myth; certainly the Moors of Calicut defined, in advance and unawares, the Portuguese dominion, which differed from common piracy only in that it was rapine organised by a political state. Convinced or constrained, the rajah ordered the navigators to be pursued, but they embarked and defended themselves, August 30th. After remaining some months in the island of Anjediva, upon the coast, Vasco da Gama resolved to return and set sail for Portugal on the 10th of July, 1498. A year later on the same date he reached Lisbon. Great was the enthusiasm. Dom Emmanuel also had his Indies, and Portugal her Columbus. But what tidings of Prester John? And what of Covilhão? None. The navigator had succeeded in overcoming the cape and discovering India, but he had not succeeded in solving the enigma which at that time had baffled their search for three centuries. This was of small account in history. The essential point was the solving of a greater enigma—that of the “dark ocean.” Little was now wanting; in twenty years there would not remain an unknown corner of land in the whole circumference of the globe, nor a span unexplored in the vast expanse of seas. “Under the wild waves to learn the secrets of the earth, and the mysteries and illusions of the sea,” the Portuguese with heroic curiosity took in their hands the future of Europe and of the world. In the year after the discovery of India, Pedro Alvares Cabral, who was sent thither with an imposing fleet, could not resist the temptation of curiosity. Steering east in the Atlantic a question constantly tormented him—what lay to the west? In that direction Columbus had discovered the Indies in the northern hemisphere; were there not perhaps Indies in the southern hemisphere also? He steered west to explore—what were a few months more or less in the long journey to the east? Thus he discovered Brazil; the western land lay from the extreme north to the extreme south, extending through the two hemispheres. Not till then could it be said that America was completely discovered (1500).
The news of the discovery of new lands made little impression in Lisbon; the fervent desire of the court was the discovery of the Prester, the enchanted Prester John, in order to make a good alliance with him and bring to Portugal a little at least of those good things which Vasco da Gama had seen with his own eyes, the report of which inflamed the whole nation with cupidity. Cabral was sent for this purpose, not to discover lands; the names in their repertory were now barely sufficient to designate the islands, capes, ports, bays, coasts, and continents. Their desires were set on other things; other hopes seethed within them: “Good luck! good luck! Many rubies, many emeralds!”
It was resolved to send a fleet to India, for now that the way was known there was nothing to fear and no reason to diminish the number or tonnage of the ships. Pedro Alvares Cabral was appointed admiral of the fleet, which consisted of thirteen ships and carried twelve hundred men. The fleet raised anchor in the Tagus on the 9th of March, 1500. The shouts of the sailors as they worked at the capstan in unison, a sound as sad and mournful as the sea; the low murmur of the cables in the hawses; the whistle of the masters as they directed the manœuvres; the many-coloured flags flying in the breeze; the sails half-furled upon the masts, made a vivid picture of the nation which in the year 1500 was also setting out, shriven and well-disposed, upon this long voyage of a little more than a century, full of disease and shipwreck, at the end of which waited a tomb vast as the sea and silent as the ocean in the funereal calm of the tropics.
Cabral’s voyage, besides beginning the Portuguese dominion in India, had really two desirable results: it swept away the two legends of Prester John and of the “sea of darkness.” He discovered Brazil and returned to tell Emmanuel that the supposed emperor of the East was a miserable black heathen king, intrenched in the inaccessible mountains of Abyssinia. In pursuit of a myth, drawn by an abyss, Portugal discovered the continents and islands of the Atlantic and reached India. For the sake of an illusion they achieved the reality which struck the world with wonder. The world is a mirage and men are but shadows borne upon the cunning winds of destiny. With the lands discovered and the seas ploughed from east to west, it still remained to unite these two halves of the known world, and sail round them, to make sure that they lay whole and complete in the hands of men. This was the effect of the voyage of Magellan (Magalhães) twenty years after. The sea was dark no more, the great conquest was complete. But a new enterprise now revealed itself—to devour what was discovered, to assimilate the world. The whole of Portugal embarked for India in Cabral’s fleet.