Upon the death of Dom Emmanuel in December, 1521, he was succeeded by Dom João, his eldest son, who had not yet completed his twentieth year. The chroniclers who wrote under the influence of the immediate successors of this prince, having the fear of censure before their eyes, represented him as endowed with high intelligence and qualities worthy of a king.
During his father’s life many considered him an idiot. Dom Emmanuel himself feared the influence which unworthy men exerted over João during his early youth. It is certain that through inattention or incapacity he could never master the rudiments of science, nor even those of the Latin tongue. Throughout his reign monkish questions always appeared among the gravest business of the state, and his first action, when he had scarcely emerged from infancy, was to build a Dominican convent. This may be regarded as the worthy presage of an inquisition king. Whether from want of natural intelligence, ignorance, or errors of education, João III was a fanatic. The intolerance of his reign, though furthered by different incentives, was chiefly due to his character and inclinations.
The secretary of Dom Emmanuel, Antonio Carneiro, who deserved his confidence for many years and continued to serve the new king, when fatigue forced him to withdraw from a charge which he still held nominally for many years, left as his successor his second son Pedro de Alçaçova. This man, whom we find years later managing the most various affairs at the same time, and whose activity appears almost incredible, by the side of a prince whose lack of culture his very panegyrists cannot bide, must have been practically king in resolving the most difficult questions, as was the marquis of Pombal at a later epoch. Pedro de Alçaçova made no parade of his influence, hiding in the shadow of the throne, and leaving the frequently sterile brilliance of importance and favouritism to a vain nobility. But every dark stain that rests upon the reign of João III may be attributed to him, except the establishment of the horrible tribunal of the faith. In this particular, although the actual deed was his, the impulse came from the monarch. The resistance of the New Christians was long and persistent. A steadfast will made up of a million hatreds struggled against this resistance for more than twenty years and overcame it. In the end the rack, whip, and stake reigned supreme in the region of religious belief, prevailing over the evangelical doctrine of tolerance and liberty.
The failure of the attempt to establish the Inquisition in Portugal in 1515, from whatever cause arising, and the predominance obtained by the policy of tolerance, must have increased the spite of the irreconcilable enemies of the Jews. The hatred of João III for the Jews was profound and well known. This sufficed to excite in the minds of the people the ancient spirit of persecution and assassination. Ignorance and monkish tendencies, unassisted by envy or the memory of former wrongs, made the king naturally a fanatic, though fanaticism did not prevent him from abandoning himself to debauchery with women.
His marriage was treated of and Doña Catherine, sister of Charles V who then reigned in Castile, was chosen for his bride. The marriage took place, and an attempt was made to tighten the bond between the two countries by negotiating the marriage of Charles V with the infanta Donna Isabella, sister of the king of Portugal. The final conditions were adjusted and it was agreed that the dowry of the Portuguese infanta should be 90,000 doubloons, or more than 800,000 cruzados. Resources were wanting and it was necessary to obtain them. Perhaps this circumstance and several others caused the convocation of the cortes in 1525. Since the fifteenth century the Portuguese parliaments had lost their true value; they were more a matter of pomp and formality than of substance. The essential point, which was to raise money, was effected, for the cortes voted the impositions of new taxes to the amount of 150,000 cruzados to be raised in two years. This was the most urgent business. The representations of the councils were generally answered in fair words, which were only partially carried out long after the cortes of 1535, when the same representations were for the most part renewed. It was in this assembly that the general ill will towards the New Christians was at last able to manifest itself in a solemnly significant manner, but within strictly legal limits.b In 1536 the Inquisition was finally established. Its methods and its effects will be sufficiently shown in the appendix to this volume. It destroyed life, liberty, humanity, commerce, literature, and art in Portugal as elsewhere. When the Jesuits were admitted in 1540 and given charge of education, the church and the state were one, and the result was as usual a shameful combination of atrocity and paralysis.a
The long reign of João exhibits interminable contests in India and Africa. Their details would be perused with little interest by an English reader. They can be noticed in so far only as they affect the general state of the monarchy. During these transactions in the East, Morocco continued to be the sanguinary theatre of the worst human passions. On the one hand the Portuguese were eager to extend their possessions; on the other, the sherifs, exulting in their successful ambition, were not less so to free the country from so troublesome an enemy. From the accession of the new dynasty, the affairs of the Portuguese began to decline. Indicative of the ambitious schemes which they had formed, the sherifs assumed the title of emperors of Africa: the elder, Hamed, remaining at Morocco; the younger, Muhammed, occupying the more western provinces.
To the king of Fez this assumption was not less odious than it was to the Portuguese themselves. That on one occasion the sherif, with four thousand horse, was signally defeated by a Portuguese noble with one hundred and forty, is gravely asserted; victories equally improbable, we may add equally impossible, occur at every step in the Portuguese relations concerning the wars of their countrymen with the misbelievers. But what, we are told, could not be effected by valour was done by fortune. Considering the war which he had to support in India, and his want of troops, João took the extraordinary resolution of dismantling four of his African fortresses, Arzilla, Saphin, Asemmur, Alcacer-Seguier, and of abandoning the ruins to the enemy. This resolution was carried into effect; but that this was owing as much to the arms of the sherif as to the motives will be admitted by every reader except a Portuguese.c
The oriental empire of Portugal, however, continued to increase by the wars which the able statesmen and warriors, whom João sent out as viceroys and governors, waged, upon the most frivolous pretexts, against the different neighbouring princes. They took advantage of the dissensions of the princes of the Moluccas, to obtain the complete sovereignty of those valuable islands. The disorders provoked by the tyranny and consequent assassination of the sultans of Cambay enabled them to wrest from those monarchs the important fortress and city of Diu; and similar convulsions in the Deccan gave them opportunities of considerably extending the Portuguese dominions in that wealthy country. It is to be observed, however, that the sovereigns, thus lawlessly despoiled, were themselves equally lawless conquerors. They were the chiefs of the Mohammedan hordes, who had overrun India, overthrown the native princes, and oppressed the Hindus. The enslaved natives probably cared little for the expulsion of one foreign master by another, if they had not cause to rejoice at exchanging the wantonly cruel tyranny of oriental despots for the more orderly extortion and oppression of a civilised people.
The increase of the power of the Portuguese now alarmed all the Mohammedan potentates, and they applied to Constantinople for assistance to expel the Christian intruders. Again the request was enforced by a Christian power, Venice, whose jealousy of the Portuguese rivals of her own commercial greatness extinguished all nobler feeling, all religious sympathy. Suleiman, thus doubly urged, equipped a powerful armament in the Red Sea, which, proceeding to the Indian Ocean, joined the Cambayan forces in besieging Diu. The defence, first by Antonio de Silveira, and afterwards by João de Mascarenhas, of this place, or rather of the fortress, for the town and rest of the island were quickly abandoned as untenable, ranks amongst the most celebrated feats of the Portuguese in India. They repulsed incessant assaults, the women labouring day and night at the fortifications, and venturing into the posts of greatest danger, to carry every needful assistance to the combatants, who, from their scanty numbers, could hardly ever quit the walls. During both sieges, the place was reduced to the utmost extremity; and upon both occasions was relieved by the seasonable appearance of the viceroy with a powerful fleet.
Of the viceroys and governors who effected these acquisitions scarcely one was duly recompensed. Many died in poverty, and Nuño da Cunha, who gained Diu for King João, was only saved by death from being dragged in chains to the foot of his ungrateful master’s throne. During João’s reign, the celebrated apostle of India, St. Francis Xavier, visited that country to attempt the conversion of the idolatrous natives: and the Portuguese obtained an establishment in China, and a free trade with Japan.
Brazil first acquired importance under João III. In 1531 he began the colonisation of that immense empire, then little more than a long line of seacoast. This he divided into several captaincies, which he granted, with large powers of jurisdiction, civil and criminal, to such persons as, upon those conditions, were willing to settle there, and to people and cultivate their respective grants. The French made various attempts to form rival settlements in Brazil, especially about Rio de Janeiro. They never obtained more than temporary possession of any part of the country.d
The greatest credit that can be given to João III is that he kept his country out of all European complications, a task made comparatively easy by his close alliance with the greatest monarch in Europe, Charles V. This alliance was sealed by three marriages: for King João was married to the infanta Catherine, the sister of Charles V; his only son, Dom João, was married to the infanta Juana, daughter of Charles V; and his only daughter, Donna Maria, was the first wife of Philip, prince of the Asturias, the eldest son of Charles V, and afterwards King Philip II.e
João died in 1557. By his queen, Catherine, he had several male children, of whom none emerged from their infancy except João. Nor did that infante survive the father. In 1553 he received the hand of Juana, daughter of the emperor; but he died in the third month of his marriage, leaving the princess pregnant of a son, afterwards the unfortunate Dom Sebastian. Of João’s brothers one only, the cardinal Henry, whom he had vainly endeavoured to place in the chair of St. Peter, survived him. As his sister Isabella was the mother of the Spanish monarch, the connection between the royal families of the two kingdoms was, as we shall soon see, fatal to the independence of Portugal. As Sebastian, on the death of his grandfather, was only three years of age, the regency, in conformity with the will of the late king, was vested in the widowed queen, Catherine of Austria. In a few years, however, being disgusted with the intrigues of Cardinal Henry, who aspired to the direction of affairs, she resigned it in his favour.c
Before going on with the chronicle, it will be well to read a Portuguese historian’s picture of the decline of this period.a
We are about to enter upon the saddest and most unfortunate period in the history of Portugal. The brilliant epic which the bright sword of Alfonso Henriques began with the battle of Ourique, stops at the exact epoch at which an immortal bard appears. The Lusiadas, that Homeric apotheosis of a great, heroic people, arises almost at the hour of their fatal fall. But a few years and the epic is transformed into an elegy, the apotheosis into a funeral panegyric. But a few years and Camoens drags from his Olympic strophes these four lines:
—in vain, when the descendants of the old heroes were cowardly and infamously about to sell their humiliated country, poor and agonised, to the sinister son of Charles V, the emperor of legends.
These years of servitude and captivity spread like an immense oil stain over the brilliant history of Portugal, and the sun which sank in clouds of blood at Kassr-el-Kebir plunged the country into an obscure and long night until it rose radiantly once more on the field of Montijo. It falls to our lot to relate the history of this painful period of darkness and tears, barely illuminated in the beginning by the last rays of light thrown out by the conquests of the old East. The warlike genius which gave to Portugal the most glorious pages in modern epopee, the spirit of adventure, chivalrous and combatant, which carried its name to every corner of the world, and gave it a place of honour in the vanguard of the nations of Europe, was the same that apparently lowered the national colours before the victorious crescent on the sands of Africa, was the same that strangled national independence with the bonds of captivity, and delivered it inert and defenceless into the hands of the devil of the south, the lugubrious Philip II.
Portugal, having reached the apogee of her glory, became giddy and fell into the abyss of slavery. In the supreme hour of her agony, the red hat of a cardinal appeared at the bedside of the dying kingdom. Portugal’s grave-digger, the cardinal Dom Henry, was a sinister figure. But who killed her, who struck her the fatal blow? It was not the perverse imbecilities of the cowardly Jesuit; it was not the dangerous errors of the youthful knight-king. The assassin of Portugal was that fanatic and imbecile monarch who opened his foolish arms to the Society of Jesus, who planted deep in the kingdom that deadly tree known as absolutism, under whose protecting shadow was planted, thrived, and flowered that colossal infamy—the Inquisition. And who has to answer before the same tribunal of history for the lost liberty, the outraged honour, the valour spurned, the ruined wealth of that nation which gave to the world the most magnificent spectacle of modern times, a diminutive country throwing over the two hemispheres her power, her influence, her name? It is not the ambitious and imbecile old man chronicled under the hated name of cardinal-king; not the heroic child, the beardless youth who, enamoured of glory, died in pursuit of it, like a daring paladin on the sands of Kassr-el-Kebir; not the cold inert corpse to whom, with pungent irony, tradition has given the nickname of Piedoso, and who is known in history as João III. In history’s terrible logic Philip II was fatal heir to João III. It was the unhappy reign of this inept monarch which prepared the way to Portugal’s ruin.
His internal policy completely transformed the government into a fierce unchecked absolutism; his external policy of pure neutrality, at a time of grave disputes between all the European nations, alienated from him the sympathies of all the states of Europe; and later, when Philip II wiped from the map this diminutive nationality which, hidden in a corner of the west, had spread its fame and name throughout the world, Europe paid back to Portugal the debt of haughty indifference she had incurred under the pious king. When the Spaniards made their threatening invasion into Portugal, instead of finding an energetic and valiant nation defending its life and its liberty, they found a weak and inert people, humbled beneath the yoke of fierce absolutism, fanaticism enveloping the souls of all, demoralisation rampant in the army, luxury enervating the higher social classes, hunger and misery devastating the people; a nation of lions transformed into a flock of sheep by immorality, by despotism, by misery—a flock of sheep guided by an imbecile and disastrous shepherd, the unlucky cardinal, Dom Henry.
Dom Henry and Dom Sebastian could barely reap the deadly fruits of the venomous seeds sown by João III. It would seem that in such critical moments providence chooses incapable, weak, and blundering kings, who instead of delaying for a time the inevitable fall, seem rather unhappily to hasten it.
And thus at the close of the sad reign of João III, on seeing the crown placed on the head of an infant of three years, obstinately disputed by two great ambitions, that of the queen Catherine the grandmother, and that of Cardinal Henry the uncle, on seeing the indifference of Europe, on seeing Spain’s vast power in Portuguese policy, one does not need to be a prophet to foretell in the near future the sad development which fanaticism, tyranny, and the stupidity of the unworthy son of the great Dom Emmanuel had prepared for the splendid epic commenced at the battle of Ourique; to foretell the tremendous downfall of the colossus known as Portugal. Before entering the most lamentable reign of Dom Sebastian, let us cast a glance over the state of Portugal during the last years of Dom João’s life, and consider what manner of kingdom and people the desired king received in heritage, upon taking his first childish steps in a world to which he was to leave so sad a tradition.
The reign of Dom João III is an original mixture of splendours and threats, of wealth and misery. It presents brilliant lights and implacable shadows, but unhappily the lights were the last reflections of Portuguese glory soon to be extinguished, the shadows the unfortunate heralds of the immense night into which Portugal was to be plunged. Portugal at this epoch had reached the apogee of her prosperity. The Portuguese flag fluttered over the most remote countries of the wealthy East. Her commerce sucked fabulous wealth from the abundant breasts of old Asia. India resigned herself to the conquest; Brazil was beginning to be peopled; China and Japan discovered, Oceania subjected, Abyssinia explored, were rich harvests of glory and gold, of heroic deeds and vast fortunes for Portugal. But this gold scarcely circulated in the country; instead of benefiting the latter, it went to enrich England, to give power to Italy and Flanders, stupidly to fill the ever insatiable coffers of the Vatican. This glory instead of acting as a stimulus was suffocated by the tyrannies of absolutism, was crushed by the stupid fanaticism of the Jesuits, who paraded, triumphant and strong, under the sinister protection of the Inquisition. The period of Dom João III marks out distinctly and perfectly in history the transition from the pinnacles of triumphant power to the dark abysses of slavery, from a glorious life to a humiliating death.
The conquests and prosperity in the East were the outcome of the former impulses; what the country owed to the pious king was the demoralisation of the army and people, the glorification of tyrants, the relaxation of judicial authority crushed by the Inquisition, the gilded poverty of the people, the enervation of the aristocracy, the loss of commerce by the flight of foreigners residing in Lisbon harassed at every step by the infamous cruelties of the Inquisition, and the stupid despotism of individual power. All the glory of his reign is due to his predecessors; the shame, opprobrium, immorality, and misery are due to him, and unhappily were left as an inheritance to his successors and to the country.f
João III, dying, had committed the government of his kingdom, and the care of his grandson, then only three years old, to his widow, Queen Catherine. She governed ably; and by her active exertions sent such effective succours to Mazagan, which was almost the only remaining Portuguese fortress in northern Africa, and then reduced to extremity by a Moorish army of eighty thousand men, that the Mohammedans were compelled to raise the siege. But the Portuguese detested queen-dowagers, especially when Spanish; and Queen Catherine in 1562 found it expedient to resign the regency to her brother-in-law, Cardinal Henry, for whom João had unsuccessfully endeavoured to obtain the papal tiara. The cardinal was a good man, but unfitted, by the habits of his past life, for government. Under his feeble administration, the authority of Portugal over her distant colonies was weakened, and the inferior governors struggled against the control of the viceroys; whilst, by committing the education of the infant king wholly to Jesuits, he prepared the way for the heavier calamities that followed.
Sebastian is represented as naturally endowed with many great and good qualities, especially an eager desire for knowledge. But the Jesuits seem to have studied only to guard their royal pupil from a tendency to vice. But scarcely any vice, however injurious to his own individual character and happiness, could have brought such wide-spreading misery, such utter destruction upon his kingdom, as did the extravagance into which Sebastian was hurried by mistaken virtues.[164] He grew up with the idea that hatred of the infidels was Christianity, and courage the first virtue of a king. He proved the ruin of Portugal.
He was very desirous of going out to India, to remedy, by his personal intervention, the disorders which had greatly increased during his minority, and to relieve Goa and Chaul, besieged, in consequence of the weakness those disorders had produced, by the whole force of the Mohammedans, in that part of the world. His ministers remonstrated. Sebastian listened to their representations, and resigned his purpose. It might have been happier for Portugal had he been suffered to execute it. Be that as it may, effective measures were taken. The enemy was repulsed from Chaul and Goa, and the Indian empire of Portugal was tranquillised.
In the year 1571, Philip II invited his nephew to take a part in the great armament against the Turks under Don John of Austria, which Sebastian declined doing, upon the plea of his dominions being desolated by the plague. Sebastian’s first visit to Africa more resembles some of the expeditions of the knights errant of romance, than anything in real sober history. He is said to have left Lisbon on a hunting excursion, in the course of which he crossed the sea, to pursue his sport in another quarter of the globe. Upon landing in Africa, he sent home for a small body of troops, and when they joined him, gave over hunting for the still more exciting amusement of making hostile inroads upon the neighbouring Moors. In these, he of course could do no more than take some booty and prisoners; and when he had roused the Mohammedans to assemble their forces, he was compelled, by the consciousness of inferior strength, to re-embark for Portugal. From this moment he thought of nothing but recovering the African possessions which his grandfather had lost or abandoned, and his court became a scene of contest and cabal—his grandmother, and Cardinal Henry, and all his sagest counsellors remonstrating vehemently against what they justly deemed the visionary projects of extravagant ambition; whilst flattering courtiers, heedless young men, and fanatical ecclesiastics eagerly encouraged his views.
In the midst of these contests, a revolution in Africa seemed to offer an opportunity too favourable to be neglected. In the empire of Morocco, upon the death of the emperor Abdallah, his son Mulei Ahmed usurped the government. He ruled tyrannically, and his uncle Mulei Moloch [or Maula Abd-el-Melik], the legitimate sovereign, easily formed a strong party against him, with which, after a severe struggle, he succeeded in overthrowing the usurper and establishing himself in his place. Mulei Ahmed sought foreign assistance. Philip II declined interfering, when Mulei Ahmed addressed himself to Sebastian, adding to his offer of tribute that of the restitution of Arzilla. Philip is said to have laboured to deter his nephew from embarking in an enterprise altogether beyond his means. Most historians, with the exception of the Spanish, accused Philip of having employed underhand methods of instigating the young king to persevere in the determination he affected to dissuade. Especially he is charged with inducing the pope to applaud and encourage Sebastian in his purpose.[165] Certain it is that the king of Portugal’s resolution to accept Mulei Ahmed’s offers was not to be shaken. The old queen died of the anxiety occasioned by her grandson’s rashness and obstinacy; Cardinal Henry marked his disapprobation by refusing to act as regent during the king’s absence: and Sebastian appointed in his stead the archbishop of Lisbon and two noblemen, one of whom was João de Mascarenhas, an ex-viceroy of India, and as distinguished a warrior as any of those who had conquered and secured the Portuguese empire in the East.
The army with which, in June, 1578, Sebastian sailed for Africa, to overthrow the powerful sovereign of Morocco, consisted of less than sixteen thousand men. But he was accompanied by almost all the young nobility of Portugal, and he relied upon the assurances of Mulei Ahmed that great numbers of his former subjects would immediately declare in his favour. A few volunteer adventurers, from different countries, joined the standard of the chivalrous young king [including Sir Thomas Stukeley, an English Catholic].
Mulei Moloch assembled an army of one hundred thousand men, and at their head, although so reduced by illness that he was obliged to be carried in a litter, he advanced to meet the invader. Some of these troops having been formerly partisans of his nephew, Mulei Moloch, distrustful of their attachment, issued a proclamation, that whosoever pleased was at liberty to pass over to his competitor. This magnanimity secured his triumph over any who might have previously hesitated between their old and new sovereigns, and very few indeed of the dispossessed usurper’s former adherents took advantage of the liberty offered them.
Sebastian’s camp was now distracted by contending opinions. Mulei Ahmed, who was disappointed in his expectation of deserters from his uncle’s army, and now relied upon the impending fatal issue of that uncle’s malady for making him master, without a blow, of empire and army, and perhaps of his Christian allies, urged Sebastian to fortify himself in a strong position on the seacoast; but Sebastian, rejecting all rational counsel, led his small army forward, into the open country, to encounter the overwhelming superiority of numbers there awaiting him.
On the 4th of August, 1578, the armies met near Kassr-el-Kebir (Alcazar-Quivir). Mulei Moloch was conscious that his death could not be long deferred, and fearful that, upon its occurrence, his nephew might gain some advantage over his brother and lawful successor, Ahmed ben Muhammed, he sought an opportunity of engaging the invaders, and by their defeat insuring the peaceful succession of Ahmed ben Muhammed. He caused himself to be carried through the ranks in his litter, that he might personally exhort his troops.
Portuguese Costume of the Sixteenth Century
Sebastian likewise displayed a degree of military skill not to have been anticipated from the rashness of his previous movements; and, at first, victory seemed to incline towards him. One division of the Moorish army was routed, when Mulei Moloch, forgetting his malady in indignation, insisted upon being placed on horseback; and in person rallying the fugitives, attempted to lead them back to the attack. The effort was too much for his strength; he fainted, and was replaced in his litter, where he only recovered sufficiently to charge his attendants to conceal his death, lest it should discourage his troops, and expired, with his finger on his lips, to enforce these last commands. They were obeyed. His attendants affected to open and reclose the curtains of the litter, as if making reports, and receiving orders; and the troops, encouraged by his last exertion, and believing themselves still under his eye, fought with irresistible valour. The Portuguese, notwithstanding their dauntless intrepidity and discipline, notwithstanding the invincible heroism of their king, who, flying from place to place, was seen wherever the danger was most imminent, were completely defeated. More than nine thousand of the army fell, and the rest were made prisoners, with the exception of about fifty, who escaped by flight. The young nobility, fighting desperately, were almost all slain; many a noble family was there extinct, and all were plunged in mourning. Mulei Ahmed was drowned in endeavouring to fly; and Ahmed ben Muhammed obtained uncontested possession of his inheritance.
Some portion of obscurity hangs over the fate of the adventurous Sebastian himself. But little real doubt can exist of his having fallen upon the fatal field of Kassr-el-Kebir. He had several horses killed under him, and was seen fighting, long after the general rout, with only three companions, against a host of enemies. The sole survivor of this devoted little band, Nuño de Mascarenhas, stated that, after the fate of two of their company, the king was disarmed and taken prisoner; when, his captors quarrelling about their prize, one of the Moors terminated the dispute by cutting Sebastian down, and he was forthwith despatched. Ahmed ben Muhammed, hearing this, sent one of Sebastian’s servants to the spot indicated, who pointed out and brought away a corpse, which was recognised as the king’s by the other attendants upon the royal person. The emperor of Morocco afterwards delivered it up to his ally the king of Spain, together with some noble prisoners, including two sons of the duke of Braganza. Philip generously sent home the released captives, as well as the remains of Sebastian, which were interred in the royal sepulchre of Belem.d
The 4th of August will ever be the most memorable of days in the annals of Portugal. Never was victory more signal than that of Kassr-el-Kebir. Of the Portuguese force which had left Lisbon, fifty individuals only returned; the rest were dead or in captivity, and with them the chivalry of the kingdom. Eighty of the nobles, through the good offices of Philip, were subsequently ransomed for 400,000 cruzados. The uncertainty which hung over Sebastian’s disappearance was converted into a doubt of the catastrophe; and this doubt was still further improved into a report that he was still alive. Several nobles, and among them the prior of Crato, always affected to believe that he had survived the dreadful slaughter of that day. As the public mind was taught to expect the possibility at least of his re-appearance, impostors, in such an age and at such a crisis of affairs, would scarcely fail to personate him—with what success will soon be related.[166]
On the character of this prince, after the preceding relation, it is needless to dwell. Without judgment or power of reflection; the tool of interested flatterers; unacquainted alike with war, with human nature, or the world; misled by the lying miracles recorded of Portuguese valour—one Portuguese being affirmed as a sufficient match for one hundred Moors; confiding in his natural courage, which knew not fear, because it had never been conversant with danger; and taught to believe that to the valour of his people all things must yield—he persisted in the wildest schemes of conquest ever devised by disordered brain. The obstinacy with which he adhered to this resolution, in opposition to representations the most forcible and pathetic; the lamentable imbecility which he displayed alike in the preparation and execution of his purpose, prove that his only virtue was courage. Had there been some superior power to confine the moonstruck prince in the same apartments with his cousin, Don Carlos of Spain, well would it have been for unhappy Portugal.
For some time the nation, unwilling to believe that Sebastian had perished, regarded Henry merely as regent; but on the arrival of the royal body, and on the confirmation of the catastrophe by every Portuguese who arrived from Africa, the cardinal, the last surviving male of the ancient house, was solemnly crowned. He was an excellent ecclesiastic; but his bounded capacity, his meekness of character, his subjection to the arts of his courtiers rendered his administration of little use to his country. His short reign has nothing to distinguish it beyond the intrigues of candidates for the throne, which, as he was in his sixty-seventh year, broken down by infirmities, and evidently on the verge of the tomb, could not fail to be soon vacant. At first, indeed, he was advised to marry; and application was actually made to the pope for the necessary bull of secularisation; but Philip of Spain, who had so close an interest in the affair, frustrated his views at the pontifical court, and compelled him to abandon them.
The candidates for the throne of Henry, as may be seen from the adjoining chart,[167] were: (1) Antonio, prior of Crato, who affirmed that his father Luiz, brother of João III, was married to his mother, and that he was consequently legitimate; (2) João, duke of Braganza, in right of his wife Catherine, a younger daughter of the youngest son of Emmanuel; (3) Ranuccio, prince of Parma, whose mother, Maria, was the eldest daughter of Dom Duarte; (4) Emmanuel Philibert, duke of Savoy, sprung from Beatrice, a younger daughter of King Emmanuel; (5) Philip, king of Spain, whose claim was twofold—his mother, Isabella, being eldest daughter of Emmanuel, and his first queen, Maria, eldest daughter of João III. From this genealogy nothing can be more clear than that, if the claim were to be decided by consanguinity alone, Philip’s was by far the most powerful; but by the laws of Lamego, the princess who accepted a foreign husband was ipso facto excluded from the throne. Hence, according to the strict letter of the constitution, Isabella and Beatrice, the daughters of Emmanuel, and Maria, the daughter of Duarte, had, by their marriages with the emperor Charles, the duke of Savoy, and the prince of Parma, renounced all claim to the succession: hence, too, by their exclusion, João was the true heir. Besides—and Philip was probably aware of the fact—the law of exclusion, in its very origin, had been expressly aimed at the probability of a union with Castile, seeing that, if the same prince ever became heir to the two crowns, the less must be absorbed in the greater—the independence of Portugal must be at an end. But conventional forms must yield to necessity. We have before seen how, on the marriage of Beatrice, daughter and sole child of Ferdinand, with Juan I of Castile, the states of the kingdom agreed to recognise the issue of that marriage as their future sovereign; and how, on the death of her father, she being yet without issue, she was actually proclaimed in Lisbon and other places. But such was the hatred of the Portuguese to the Castilians—hatred now as then deep, cordial, and everlasting—that they preferred the bastard, grand-master of Aviz, to that princess.c
Dom Antonio, who, after being taken prisoner at Kassr-el-Kebir, had broken his Moorish fetters by the help of a Jew, was the favourite of the populace. He still asserted his legitimacy, imputed corruption to the judges who had decided against his mother’s marriage, and reminded his friends that João I, the founder of the reigning house, was an illegitimate son, raised to the throne by popular election. The feeble-minded Henry, whose chief ministers, as well as his Jesuit confessor, were gained over by Philip’s money, hesitated to pronounce, lest he should involve the country in civil war. The cortes, whom he convoked, were divided, and timid as himself. The seventeen months of his reign passed in deliberation; and at his death, on the 31st of January, 1580, he left the question to be decided by five regents, whom he named. Had he boldly declared Catherine his heiress, the greater part of Dom Antonio’s adherents would most likely have deserted an illegitimate pretender for their recognised lawful queen. As it was, the kingdom, divided between two strong factions, lay at the mercy of a powerful invader.
Philip had hitherto committed the management of his pretensions to ambassadors and secret agents; and he now supplied these persons more abundantly than ever with pecuniary means to continue their operations. A majority of the regents were bribed by those agents, and consequently sought to dispose the nation in Philip’s favour, by publishing the terms he offered to grant. The chief of these were, in addition to the general maintenance of the constitution, that he would reside as much as possible in Portugal; that the viceroy appointed to govern in his absence should always be either a prince of the blood or a Portuguese; that a Portuguese council should always attend him for the management of Portuguese affairs; that natives of Portugal should be admitted into offices of the household and others of minor importance in Spain, whilst Spaniards, and all strangers, should be excluded from all offices in Portugal, civil and military, as well as from all church preferment; and that crown lands, as the existing grants fell in, should be regranted to the nearest relations of the former grantees. Conditions so favourable seem to have had great influence in lessening the abhorrence with which the nobles had hitherto shrunk from a connection with Spain; and Philip now prepared to enforce and support his claim with the potent argument of thirty thousand men. A fitting commander for this army was, however, not so easily found. The duke of Alva was the only general esteemed by Philip competent to the task.
The corrupted regents took all measures for betraying the country to the usurping invader. They dissolved the cortes, and placed creatures of their own in the command of the frontier towns. In June, Alva entered Portugal at the head of his army. Every fortified place threw open its gates at his summons, and he marched onwards unopposed. The duke of Braganza had taken no steps for maintaining his wife’s rights, otherwise than by argument. The prior of Crato got possession of Lisbon, where he was proclaimed king by the populace. The nobility, disgusted by his elevation and the inaction of the regents, withdrew sullenly to their houses; and the regents, freed from their control, boldly declared Philip the lawful heir of the crown.
Dom Antonio seized the crown jewels, church plate, and other funds. He released all prisoners, armed them and the rabble, and offered liberty to all negro slaves who would embrace his cause. With an army thus constituted, he attempted to defend the passage of the Tagus against the veteran Alva, who was master of the whole province of Alemtejo, and had reached the south bank of the river, without more fighting than a short siege of one fortress that had declared for Dom Antonio, and the commandant of which, when taken, he had executed. Dom Antonio was, of course, defeated, almost at the first onset. He fled through Lisbon, northwards; collected another army, with which he was again defeated; and thenceforward thought only of escape. Philip set a high price upon his head, but could not tempt any one of his adherents to betray him. For nine months Dom Antonio lurked in the kingdom, concealed now in one place, now in another, sheltered by rich and by poor, in castle, monastery, and cottage, and everywhere diligently sought by his enemies, ere he could find an opportunity of getting on shipboard.
After Dom Antonio’s second defeat no further resistance was attempted. Portugal submitted, and swore fealty. Her American, Indian, African, and insular possessions followed her example, with the single exception of the Azores, which proclaimed Antonio. The duke of Braganza and his sons acknowledged Philip. The duchess would not thus surrender her rights; and even when Philip, upon the death of Queen Anne and the duke of Braganza, offered her his hand, she refused a crown as the price of disinheriting her sons; but she too desisted from further contest. When all was quiet Philip visited his new kingdom, convoked the cortes, and swore to the conditions he had previously offered.
Thus was effected, however illegally, the union of Spain and Portugal—a union apparently as important to the true interests of the peninsula as is that of England and Scotland to the well-being of Great Britain; and not more repugnant to the inclinations of the two nations in the one case, probably, than in the other. Had Philip and his successors strictly observed the terms of the union, and endeavoured otherwise to conciliate the Portuguese, these last might, erelong, have considered the Spanish monarchs as their lawful kings, and have reconciled their pride to their incorporation with a larger state. But although rather a usurper than a conqueror, he chose to treat Portugal as a conquered country. He rejected the proposals for beneficial laws, and, indeed, all the demands of the cortes, except a few of the most insignificant, and speedily dissolved that assembly. He refused the favours solicited by the nobles, withheld the honours and pecuniary compensations promised to the Braganza family; and although he did publish an amnesty, the exceptions were so large (including all who had favoured Dom Antonio) that, it was said, Philip had pardoned only those who were free from offence. He then proceeded to punish the persons thus excepted; and the extent of the executions which followed may be judged by two circumstances: one that, from the number of dead bodies thrown into the sea, the people would not eat fish again, until the archbishop, in a solemn procession, had purified by his blessing the polluted ocean; and the other, that Philip himself thought it requisite to obtain absolution from the pope, for having put such numbers of ecclesiastics to death. He then appointed his nephew and brother-in-law, the cardinal-archduke Albert, viceroy of Portugal; and committing to him the government of the country, where discontent was already very general, he returned to Spain.d