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Title: Portuguese portraits

Author: Aubrey F. G. Bell

Release date: May 31, 2022 [eBook #68210]
                Most recently updated: October 18, 2024

Language: English

Original publication: United Kingdom: B. H. Blackwell

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PORTUGUESE PORTRAITS ***

PORTUGUESE PORTRAITS




_By the same Author_

  THE MAGIC OF SPAIN, 1912.
  IN PORTUGAL, 1912.
  POEMS FROM THE PORTUGUESE, 1913.
  STUDIES IN PORTUGUESE LITERATURE, 1914.
  LYRICS OF GIL VICENTE, 1914.
  PORTUGAL OF THE PORTUGUESE, 1915.


  New York Agents
  LONGMANS, GREEN & CO.
  FOURTH AVENUE AND 30TH STREET




[Illustration: NUN’ ALVAREZ.

From the earliest (1526) edition of the _Cronica_.

  [_Frontispiece._]




  PORTUGUESE PORTRAITS

  BY

  AUBREY F. G. BELL

  _A notavel fama dos excelentes barões e muito antiguos antecessores
  dina de perpetua lembrança_

  DUARTE PACHECO PEREIRA, _Esmeraldo_


  Oxford
  B. H. BLACKWELL, BROAD STREET
  MCMXVII




TO

  THE COUNTLESS FORGOTTEN HEROES
  OF PORTUGAL

  In burning sands or Ocean’s blinding silt,
  In Africa, Asia, and the icy North,
  They lie: yet came they home who thus went forth,
  Since of their bones is all their country built.




Preface


Not seven, nor seventy, names exhaust the tale of Portugal’s great
men. The reader need but turn to the fascinating pages of Portuguese
history. There he will find a plentiful feast set out before him--the
epic strife between Portuguese and Moor, Portuguese and Spaniard,
and deeds of high emprise in the foam of perilous seas and the
ever-mysterious lands of the East. His delight will be impaired unless
he can follow the events in detail in the chronicles and histories of
the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and for this a knowledge of
Portuguese is requisite, since there are few satisfactory translations.
But it is as easy to acquire a sufficient knowledge of Portuguese to
read it with pleasure as it is difficult to write or speak it.

There is a whole literature, often not less attractive in style than in
subject, of histories, memoirs, travels, accounts of wrecks and sieges,
recording the deeds of the Portuguese on and beyond the seas. Of the
battle of Ourique (1139) Portuguese historians have loved to tell how
the Moors numbered 600,000 (since to say 900,000 were an exaggeration)
and how, heavy rain having fallen after the battle, the streams that
flowed into the far-distant Guadiana ran red with blood. But there were
scrupulous and moderate chroniclers like Fernam Lopez and Azurara, and
many of the historians of India were sober writers whose narratives
(those, for instance, of Fernam Lopez de Castanheda, Diogo do Couto,
and Gaspar Correa) bear the stamp of truth while they delight the
reader by their wealth of detail and personal anecdote.

They may be pardoned for declaring that their heroes’ achievements
outshone those of Greek and Roman. For indeed the half-century
(1498-1548) between the voyage of Vasco da Gama and the death of
Dom João de Castro is thick with names; the great men tread on one
another’s heels in the halls of fame, worthily continuing the work of
their predecessors during four centuries in Portugal. Sousa, Mello,
Meneses, Cunha, Castro, Noronha, Mascarenhas, Coutinho, Pereira,
Pacheco, Almeida, Azevedo, Sá, Silva, Silveira--these are names the
very catalogue of which must be music to a Portuguese, and which would
require a large volume to chronicle in detail.

And many women hold a high place in Portuguese history, as the
Queen-Saint Elizabeth (or Isabel),[1] the stout-hearted bakeress of
Aljubarrota, Brites (Beatrice) de Almeida, who slew, if we are to trust
the tradition, seven Spaniards with her wooden baker’s shovel, or the
heroines of Diu.[2]

Among the men there is Affonso Henriquez, first King of Portugal, half
French by birth, and grandson of the Spanish King of Leon, but in heart
and action wholly Portuguese; loyal Egas Moniz; Gualdim Paes and other
legendary heroes in the conflict with the Moors which transformed
Portugal from a dependent province into a free kingdom; and later, if
not less legendary, Fernão Rodriguez Pacheco, the astute defender of
Celorico, who in starvation by a miracle obtained a fish and sent it to
the besieger to show that plenty reigned in the town; or the defender
of Coimbra, Martim Freitas, heroically, almost quixotically loyal to
the deposed King Sancho II.

On the sea the first to signalise himself was Fuas Roupinho, in the
twelfth century; and thenceforth Portugal never failed to produce hardy
if obscure seamen, to fish for cod in the Northern Seas or to discover
the west coast of Africa till Bartholomeu Diaz rounded the Cape of
Storms in 1487, and King João II rechristened it the Cape of Good
Hope.[3]

João II (1481-95), “the Perfect Prince,” or as Queen Isabella of Spain
more bluntly called him _el hombre_, “the man,” was one of a series
of great kings of the House of Avis, founded by João I (1385-1433)
“of good memory,” darling of the Lisbon people. João I was succeeded
by his eldest son, the noble but unfortunate student-king Duarte
(1433-8). Other brothers of Prince Henry the Navigator, scarcely less
famous, were the Infante Pedro, statesman and author, who travelled
through “the seven parts of the world,” and the Infante Fernando, who
died slowly with saintly patient heroism as a prisoner of the Moors in
Africa.

Under Manoel I (1495-1521) the Great, the Fortunate, and his son João
III (1521-57), Gama, Albuquerque and Dom João de Castro are the most
conspicuous names; but Dom Francisco de Almeida, first Viceroy of
India, Pedro Alvarez Cabral, discoverer of Brazil, Fernão de Magalhães,
the harsh and fiery navigator[4] who first penetrated by sea to the
North Pacific and was slain in the hour of his triumph--his name
lives in the Straits of Magellan--and many more were almost equally
celebrated. But especially among the discoverers and early adventurers
in India the men of fame are but types of hundreds of less fortunate
heroes who perished. Men left Portugal with their lives in their hands,
and for every one who (like Fernam Mendez Pinto) survived to tell the
tale scores sailed away who were never seen or heard of afterwards.

Yet the population of Portugal in the first third of the sixteenth
century may have been but 1,500,000, and certainly did not reach twice
that figure. That is a fact that must uplift and inspire those who
study Portugal’s history or consider her future. For the Portuguese of
the sixteenth century fought not against or not only against hordes of
undisciplined savages, but against Moors and Turks highly civilised and
well equipped with artillery.

Perhaps the secret of their success is that their motto was “God, King,
and Country,” and that each man among them relied, under Heaven, on
himself, not on this or that sect or party or philosophy, election
promises or political programmes. They did not wait and watch for some
wonderful Ism, like a brazen serpent, to change the face of the world:
they as individuals simply, persistently set to work and--changed it.
In less than fifty years after the Portuguese first reached India they
were in Japan, converting and civilising the Japanese, and had made
possible that tremendous saying of Camões:

  E se mais mundo houvera lá chegára.

And had there been more world they would have reached it.

That is, of course, a terrible condemnation as well as an undying
honour, for unless each generation were to produce an Albuquerque there
could be no hope of maintaining conquests so wide, and Albuquerque had
had his hands tied by his own countrymen, so that, like the blinded
Samson, he achieved the ruin of his enemies by his unaided strength
and at the expense of his own life. But if Portuguese statesmanship
was at fault in India, there never failed a sprinkling of individuals
who spent their lives in ungrudging service and heroic effort to
counterbalance errors committed, and often died heartbroken for their
pains.

Two anecdotes will give an idea of the spirit that animated the
Portuguese in the sixteenth century. During the siege of Diu a soldier,
Fernão Penteado, seriously wounded in the head, went to the surgeon,
but, finding him busy with other wounded and hearing the noise of a
Turkish attack, he returned to the fight and came back with a second
serious wound in the head, only to find the surgeon busier than
before. Again he went to fight, and when the surgeon was finally able
to attend to him he had a third wound, in his right arm.

The second incident occurred in North-West Africa. During a fight Dom
Affonso da Cunha, aiming a mighty cut with his sword at a Moor, missed
him, and the sword leapt from his hand. “Go fetch it, you dog!” roared
Cunha, and the terror-stricken Moor obediently picked it up and gave it
to him, trembling. Cunha thereupon spared his life.

Such were those Portuguese of old, persistent, brave, proud,
magnificent. And something of their spirit survives in the Portugal of
to-day, ready to reappear at a crisis--more of it, perhaps, than is
generally imagined.


FOOTNOTES:

[1] Antonio Coelho Gasco in his _Conquista, Antiguidade e Nobreza
da mui insigne e inclita Cidade de Coimbra_ (Lisboa, 1805) drew the
following rash picture of her from an ancient portrait at Coimbra:
“This very saintly lady was of gigantic frame and very stout, very
white and very red, with a long face and large serene green eyes, nose
rather low with wide nostrils, head long and beautiful.”

[2] Isabel Fernandez, Barbara Fernandez, and Isabel Madeira. Later
heroines at home were Isabel Pereira in the defence of Ouguella against
the Spanish in 1644 and Elena Perez in the similar siege of Monção in
1656.

[3] The Portuguese accounts of these discoveries are most vivid and
minute, a fascinating introduction to the geography of what is now
largely part of the British Empire.

[4] Garcia da Orta introduces him with the words “The Devil entered
into a Portuguese.”




Contents


  I

                               PAGE

  KING DINIS                      1


  II

  NUN’ ALVAREZ                   17


  III

  PRINCE HENRY THE NAVIGATOR     47


  IV

  VASCO DA GAMA                  61


  V

  DUARTE PACHECO PEREIRA         79


  VI

  AFFONSO DE ALBUQUERQUE        103


  VII

  DOM JOÃO DE CASTRO            127




List of Illustrations


  NUN’ ALVAREZ                                            _Frontispiece_
  From the earliest (1526) edition of the _Cronica_.

                                                             FACING PAGE

  PRINCE HENRY THE NAVIGATOR                                          49

  VASCO DA GAMA                                                       63

  AFFONSO DE ALBUQUERQUE                                             105
  From Gaspar Correa, _Lendas da India_, frontispiece to vol. ii. pt. 1.

  JOÃO DE CASTRO                                                     129




I

KING DINIS

(1261-1325)

  Co’ este o reino prospero florece.

  CAMÕES, _Os Lusiadas_.

  Um Dinis que ha de admirar o mundo.

  ANTONIO DE SOUSA DE MACEDO, _Ulyssippo_.


When Henry of the French House of Burgundy became Count of Portugal
in 1095 he merely held a province in fealty to the King of Leon, but
by his son, the great Affonso I’s victories over the Moors it almost
automatically became an independent kingdom. The second king, Sancho
I, who has so many points of resemblance to King Dinis, further
established the new realm, and he and his successors continued to
wrest territory from the Moors. In the reign of the fifth king, Dinis’
father, Affonso III, the conquest of Algarve was completed, and the
only remaining difficulty was the claim of the kings of Castille to
this region.

Dinis, born on October 9, 1261, was but a few years old when he
was sent to Seville to win the consent of his mother’s father, the
celebrated Alfonso the Learned, to waive his right to the latest
Portuguese conquest. As the shrewd Affonso III had foreseen, he proved
a successful diplomatist. Alfonso X, enchanted with the grave, courtly
bearing of his little grandson, knighted him and sent him home with all
his requests granted.

Thus it came about that when Dinis, to whom his father had given a
separate household but a few months before, ascended the throne at the
age of seventeen, he was the first king to begin to reign over Portugal
with its modern boundaries, from the River Minho to Faro. Two centuries
of great deeds had achieved this result--two more were to pass before
Spain was likewise entirely free of the Moorish invader--and Dinis now
in a reign of half a century (1279-1325) saw to it that the heroism
and sacrifices of his ancestors had not been in vain.

His tutor had been a Frenchman, Ébrard de Cahors, who now became Bishop
of Coimbra, and the fame of his grandfather Alfonso X was spread
through the whole Peninsula. But, young as he was, Dinis at once made
it clear that he intended to rule as the national King of Portugal
and had resolution enough to withstand the Castilian influence of his
mother and Alfonso X. His first care was to acquaint himself thoroughly
with his kingdom, and he spent the great part of the first year of his
reign in visiting the country, paying especial attention to the still
almost deserted region of Alentejo.

But the first years of his reign were not entirely peaceful, for his
younger brother Affonso laid claim to the throne. Dinis was born before
the Pope had legitimised Affonso III’s second marriage; Affonso,
two years his junior, afterwards: hence the partisans of the latter
affected to consider Dinis illegitimate. The dispute was scarcely
settled when Dinis married Isabel, daughter of Pedro III of Aragon,
who proved so efficacious a mediator in the even more serious troubles
at the end of his reign, and, after sharing his throne for forty-three
years, is still venerated as the Queen-Saint of Portugal.

In his differences with Castile, Dinis was successful, both in peace
and war, and it was a tribute to his character and authority that he
was chosen as arbitrator between the claims of the kings of Castille
and Aragon. At home he was confronted by a powerful secular clergy,
by the excessive and growing wealth of the religious orders, and by
an overweening nobility, while his newly conquered kingdom urgently
required hands to till it and walls and castles for its defence. Dinis
dealt with all these problems in a spirit of equal wisdom and firmness,
upholding the rights of the throne and the rights of the people till he
had welded a scattered crowd of individuals into a nation.

His quarrel with the clergy, who protested that the King had infringed
their rights, was referred to Rome, and in 1289 a formal but not a
lasting agreement was reached.

Two years later the King checked the ever-growing possessions of the
religious orders by a law limiting their right to gifts and legacies.
Their wealth was the result of the great part they had played during
the long conflict against the Moors, but it naturally began to prove
inconvenient to King and people in time of peace. The nobles were
in like case, and Dinis showed the same resolution towards them and
abolished certain of their privileges.

He could protect as well as check. When the Knights Templar were
abolished by the Pope, Dinis secured an exception for Portugal and
reorganised them as the Order of Christ in 1319. Indeed he was
essentially a builder, not a demolisher. In 1290 he founded the
University of Coimbra; in 1308 he renewed and consolidated the
treaty between Portugal and England; in 1317 he invited to Portugal
a Genoese, Manuel Pezagno, to organise his fleet and command it as
Admiral.

He encouraged agriculture, calling the peasants the “nerves of the
republic” and passed many laws to ensure their security, so that in his
reign men began to go in safety along the roads of Portugal, hitherto
infested by brigands, and he divided grants of land among the poor
of the towns. He planted near Leiria the pines which still form so
delightful a feature of the country between that town and Alcobaça.

Some have called King Dinis a miser, others declare that in his reign
there was a saying “liberal as King Dinis.” It is certain that he
expended his money wisely, and, while no early king ever accomplished
more for the land over which he ruled, he left a full treasury at his
death. The charge of avarice perhaps arose from the charming legend
which so well exemplifies the simplicity of those times.

The Queen was in the habit of distributing bread daily to a large
number of poor, and Dinis, who perhaps would rather have seen them
digging the soil, forbade the charity. Queen Isabel continued as
before, and one morning the King met her as she went out with her apron
full of bread.

“What have you there?” said King Dinis.

“Roses,” said the Queen.

“Let me see them,” said King Dinis.

And behold the Queen’s apron was filled with roses.

In the matter of buildings King Dinis not only fortified many towns
with castles and walls, but founded numerous churches and convents. The
traveller in Portugal even now can scarcely pass a day without coming
upon something to remind him of the sixth King of Portugal. The convent
of Odivellas, the cloisters of Alcobaça, the beautiful ruins of the
castle above Leiria are but three of many instances which show how King
Dinis’ work survives even in the twentieth century.

It was said of him that--

  Whate’er he willed
  Dinis fulfilled.

But he nearly always wrought even better than he knew. He realised
no doubt that Portugal was an all-but-island, especially when the
relations with Castille were unfriendly; but he could scarcely foresee
that of his pinewoods would be built the “ships that went to the
discovery of new worlds and seas”; that a future Master of his new
Order of Christ would devote its vast revenues to the great work of
exploring the West Coast of Africa, the work which bore so important a
share in transforming Europe from all that we connect with mediævalism
to all that is modern; that his embryo fleet would grow and prosper
till Portugal became the foremost sea-power; or that the treaty with
England would still be bearing fruit six centuries after his death.

The University, too, lasted and became one of the glories of Portugal,
and a source of many of her greatest men in the sixteenth century.
Since the sixteenth century, after being several times moved from
Coimbra to Lisbon and from Lisbon to Coimbra, it has been fixed in
the little town on the right bank of the Mondego and remains one of
the most treasured possessions of modern Portugal. The quality that
explains how so many of King Dinis’ institutions endured and prospered
marvellously in succeeding centuries was thoroughness, the conviction
that any work, however humble, if thoroughly done must bear excellent
fruit, and a certain solidity which finds little satisfaction in
feeding beggars precariously, but great satisfaction in setting them to
work on the land.

Perhaps, then, it may come as a surprise that King Dinis was also a
poet, one of the greatest of Portugal’s early poets. We have nearly one
hundred and fifty poems under his name. He may not have written them
all, some may have been composed by the palace _jograes_, but he showed
his good taste and inclination for the national and popular elements in
writing or collecting not only poems in the Provençal manner, then on
the wane in Portugal, but that older, indigenous poetry which is the
most charming feature of early Portuguese literature.

And King Dinis’ poems are among the most charming of all. Here is one
of his quaint popular songs, the fascination of which is only faintly
discernible in translation:

  Friend and lover mine
  --Be God our shield!--
  See the flower o’ the pine
  And fare afield.

  Friend and lover, ah me!
  --Be God our shield!--
  See the flower on the tree
  And fare afield.

  See the flower o’ the pine
  --Be God our shield!--
  Saddle the colt so fine
  And fare afield.

  See the flower on the tree
  --Be God our shield!--
  The bay horse fair to see
  And fare afield.

  Saddle the little bay
  --Be God our shield--
  Hasten, my love, away,
  And fare afield.

  The horse so fair to see
  --Be God our shield!--
  My friend, come speedily
  To fare afield.

It was King Dinis’ affection for his illegitimate son, Dom Affonso
Sanchez, also a poet, that brought trouble on the latter years of his
reign. His eldest son and the heir to the throne, Affonso, jealous
of the regard, the lands, and privileges bestowed upon Dom Affonso
Sanchez, afraid perhaps that the King might devise a way of leaving
him the throne, rose in rebellion in 1320 and advanced through Minho
to Leiria and Coimbra, ravaging the country as he came. The King, now
nearly sixty years old, set out against him and several engagements
were fought: it was not till 1322 that Queen Isabel succeeded after
strenuous exertions in bringing about peace.

The reconciliation was but temporary. Dom Affonso Sanchez retired to
Spain, but returned, and the Prince Affonso rose in arms again in
1323. Again Queen Isabel, going from one to the other, exerted herself
to make peace. King Dinis, his anger now thoroughly roused, was not
easily appeased. Finally he agreed to increase the Prince’s income,
and, much against his will, to part once more from Dom Affonso Sanchez.

Not many months after this settlement King Dinis fell ill at Lisbon,
where he had been born, and which he made the real centre of his
kingdom (his instinct unfailing in this as in other matters concerning
the future greatness of his country). Prince Affonso was summoned from
Leiria, and a sincere reconciliation followed. The Queen watched day
and night by her husband’s bedside, and to her his last words were
spoken when on January 7, 1325, one of the greatest of Portugal’s kings
died. He was buried according to his wish in the Convent of São Dinis
de Odivellas, which he had founded near Lisbon.

Three hundred years after his death it was still the custom in
Portuguese law-courts for a prayer to be said for his soul; and if
we consider how far-reaching, how immense were the results of the
measures taken by this strong-willed, wise, and energetic ruler, we
may conclude that the custom might well be continued in the twentieth
century. Humane and affable (_conversavel_, the quality of so many
great men), he won the personal love of his people and gave them
immediate prosperity, but he also, apparently, saw deep into the
future.




II

NUN’ ALVAREZ

(1360-1431)

 Mas quem podera dignamente contar os louvores deste virtuoso barom,
 cujas obras e discretos autos seemdo todos postos em escrito ocupariam
 gram parte deste livro?--FERNAM LOPEZ, _Cronica del Rei Dom Joam_.


Fifty years after the death of King Dinis it seemed as if the kingdom
that he had so carefully built up was to crumble away like dry sand.
The disorders and extravagances of King Ferdinand’s reign had brought
it to the verge of ruin, and the marriage of his only child Beatrice
with the King of Castille in 1383 appeared to destroy the last hope of
an independent Portugal.

It is ten years before that date that Nun’ Alvarez Pereira, to whom
mainly Portugal was to owe her continued existence as a separate
nation, first comes on the scene. His father was the powerful Prior of
Crato, Dom Alvaro Gonçalvez Pereira, in high favour at Court, son of
the Archbishop of Braga and descendant of a long line of nobles. His
mother, Iria Gonçalvez, was lady-in-waiting to the Princess Beatrice.

In 1373 there was war between Portugal and Castile, and a rumour spread
that the enemy was approaching Santarem. The Prior sent Nuno and one
of his brothers with a few horsemen to reconnoitre. On their return
they were received by the King and Queen. Queen Lianor, struck by
the bearing of the shy, precocious boy of thirteen, took him for her
squire, and the King knighted him, after a suit of armour of his size
had at last been found, belonging to the king’s half-brother John, the
Master of Avis, he who was king thereafter.

For three years in the palace the Queen’s squire gave his days to
riding and the chase, and to the reading of books of chivalry, of Sir
Galahad and the knights of the Round Table. Then his father arranged a
marriage for him with the rich and noble Dona Lianor d’Alvim, a young
widow of Minho.

Marriage was not in Nuno’s thoughts, but Dona Lianor had consented, the
King approved, and reluctantly he yielded. His life on their estate
was happy. Fifteen squires and thirty henchmen were in attendance in
their house, and after hearing his daily mass Nun’ Alvarez would spend
long days hunting the boar and the wolf in the wooded hills of Minho or
exchanging visits with the Minhoto nobility.

Of their three children two sons died in infancy; the daughter,
Beatriz, was married to the Count of Barcellos, son of King João I, and
through her Nun’ Alvarez was the ancestor of that line of kings which
was still reigning in 1910.

It was a life too quiet for the times, and a few years later Nuno was
ordered to Portalegre to defend with his brothers the frontier against
the Spanish. As they marched from Villa Viçosa to Elvas, Nuno, the wish
father of the thought in his keenness to encounter the enemy, mistook
the glint of the morning sun on the lances of their own footmen, who
had been sent on ahead, for the enemy advancing and gave the alarm. To
his vexation there was no fighting, and when he challenged the son of
the Master of Santiago to combat, ten against ten, the king forbade the
encounter, and the Earl of Cambridge, then at the Portuguese Court, to
whom Nun’ Alvarez appealed, pleaded for him in vain.

In 1382 a powerful Spanish fleet besieged Lisbon. The defence of the
city was entrusted to Nun’ Alvarez and his brothers. It was in late
summer, _quando l’uva imbruna_, and parties from the fleet would land
to gather grapes and other fruit. Nun’ Alvarez saw his opportunity
and, leaving the city one night with some fifty horse and foot, lay in
ambush in the vines by the bridge of Alcantara. The first boatload of
twenty Spaniards to land was driven headlong into the sea, but a larger
force came ashore and the Portuguese, seeing themselves outnumbered
five to one, fled.

Nun’ Alvarez, left alone, spurred his horse to a gallop and dashed into
the midst of the enemy. His excellent armour stood him in good stead,
but his lance was shattered, his horse cut down, and one of his spurs
caught in the saddle as he fell. Thus disabled he still fought on, and
then for very shame his followers turned to assist him. The first to
come up was a Lisbon priest, afterwards Canon of Lisbon Cathedral.

Nun’ Alvarez, hearing a few months later that the King was to engage
the enemy between Elvas and Badajoz, proposed to his elder brother
Pedr’ Alvarez, who had succeeded their father as Prior of Crato, that
they should have a hand in the fighting. Pedro, who had orders to
defend Lisbon and intended to obey them, refused, and, having previous
acquaintance of Nuno’s methods, gave instructions that no armed
persons should be allowed to leave the city. Nuno with a few attendants
dashed past the guard at the gate and rode post-haste to Elvas. He was
well received by the king, but again there was no fighting. Peace and
the betrothal of Beatrice were celebrated in a banquet at Elvas. King
Ferdinand was too ill to attend, but King Juan was present.

Nun’ Alvarez, in his bitterness at seeing Portugal given over to
Castille, for once forgot his manners. He and his brother Fernão, going
in more leisurely than the rest, found all the tables crowded, and,
unable to obtain a place, he pushed away the support from one of the
tables, which went crashing to the ground, and calmly went out. King
Juan remarked that he who so acted had a heart for greater things, but,
in the words of the old chronicle, had they been Castilians he might
have spoken differently.

After King Ferdinand’s death Nun’ Alvarez, brooding over his country’s
wrongs, keenly took the part of the young Master of Avis. He was not
present at the murder of the Queen’s favourite, the Count Andeiro, but
he approved the act, and when news of it reached him at Santarem he
hastened to Lisbon to the Master of Avis.

It was at Santarem one evening as he sauntered along the banks of the
Tagus after supper that he chanced to pass the door of an armourer
and sent for his sword to be sharpened. The _alfageme_ refused any
payment till he should return as Count of Ourem. Hail to thee, Thane of
Cawdor! The story adds that Nun’ Alvarez, returning Conde de Ourem to
Santarem after the battle of Aljubarrota, found the armourer in prison
as a friend of Castille and his property confiscated, and was able, by
protecting him, to pay his debt.

Nun’ Alvarez now became one of the Prince of Avis’ Council, his most
loyal and most trusted counsellor to the end of their lives. His first
important command was in Alentejo, and after delaying in order to take
part in a fight with eight Spanish ships in the Tagus he set out at the
head of his two hundred horsemen. Henceforth Evora, the ancient walled
city in the wide plain of Alentejo, was his headquarters. He instilled
confidence into his men and increased his army, although it rarely
exceeded five hundred horse and as many thousand foot, and was often
very much below that number.

The war continued with varying success. At one time Nun’ Alvarez
advanced to Badajoz, at another the Spanish were at Viana, but a
couple of leagues from Evora across the flowered _charneca_. But Nun’
Alvarez seized town after town and more than once defeated the enemy
in the open field. Monsaraz was taken by a wile, for some cows were
driven temptingly beneath the walls and when the commander sallied out
to seize them the Portuguese rushed in through the open gate. Nun’
Alvarez’ favourite method was to ride all night across the _charneca_
and appear unexpectedly before a town in the early dawn, so that the
enemy called him “Dawn Nuno,” _Nuno Madrugada_.

Thus he attacked Almada. He had but recently taken Palmella on the
height overlooking the Tagus, and, hunting in the neighbourhood, had
slain a boar and sent it as a present to the commander of Almada,
promising to pay him a visit soon. He now set out to ride thither by
night across the _charneca_, but they lost their way in the many paths,
and the sun was up when Nun’ Alvarez, in his eagerness outriding his
companions, advanced alone into the town. Four squires presently came
up to his support, and Almada was taken without difficulty.

The Master of Avis had summoned Nun’ Alvarez to Lisbon or Nun’ Alvarez
had determined to see the Master. From Palmella one night looking
across the river he saw the whole city apparently in flames. Not
knowing that the fires were lit by the King of Castille, whom plague
in his camp had forced to raise the siege, and aware that the Master
had powerful enemies within the walls, he watched the conflagration in
dismay, but next morning the city reappeared in all its beauty.

The Spanish fleet remained in the Tagus, and a squire besought Nun’
Alvarez not to cross, saying that he had dreamt that the enemy had
captured him as he passed through their fleet. Nun’ Alvarez went on his
way, leaving the squire with his dream on the further shore. When he
was in mid-stream, still perhaps thinking of the timid _escudeiro_, he
bade his trumpets blow the enemy a challenge. But the Castilians little
imagined what a prey was within their grasp, and his small boat passed
through safely to Lisbon.

A little later he joined the Master of Avis at Torres Vedras and
together they advanced to Coimbra, where the Master was crowned king as
João I. His first act was to appoint Nun’ Alvarez his Constable.

At Oporto, whither he went to organise a fleet, Nun’ Alvarez found his
wife and daughter, who had been prisoners of the Castilians for a time
at Guimarães.

From Oporto he set out on a pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela. His
purpose was threefold, “to serve God in pilgrimage,” to reduce Minho
on the way, and to secure mounts for his men. But the River Minho
was too swollen to cross, and the news that Braga was wavering thus
came opportunely. Leaving Viana do Castello he turned east along the
beautiful valley of the Lima and seized the little granite town of
Ponte do Lima and Braga on its steep hill. The King had also come
north, but the news that King Juan had crossed the Beira frontier and
was advancing rapidly into the heart of Portugal brought them south
again.

At Abrantes the King held a council. Many were of opinion that he
should not advance further against the enemy. Nun’ Alvarez--the same
Nuno who had ridden alone into two hundred and fifty of the enemy
on the banks of the Tagus and advanced alone into Almada--thereupon
set out with his men, and in the name of God and Saint George sent a
challenge to the King of Castille. Each fresh success of Nun’ Alvarez
had raised him envious backbiters in Portugal, and here was a new
opportunity to accuse him of arrogance. King João silenced his accusers
by following him to Thomar.

They then went west to Ourem and took up a position towards Leiria.
The advance of the King of Castille caused them to turn the front of
their battle towards the little village of Aljubarrota. The Portuguese,
barely 5,000 strong, were outnumbered seven to one, but they were
drawn up on foot in a small compact force and desperate, flight being
practically cut off. On the right was the _Ala dos Namorados_, the
lovers’ wing, pledged to yield no inch of ground; on the left fought a
few hundred English archers, _gens-d’armes Anglois si peu qu’il en y
avoit_, says Froissart.

The Spanish chronicler and poet, Pero Lopez de Ayala, and Nun’ Alvarez’
brother Diogo rode over before the battle and asked to speak with him
alone, but succeeded neither in winning him to their side nor in
casting suspicion on his loyalty. As he had said when fighting against
his brothers earlier in Alentejo, for the land that gave him birth he
would fight against his own father.

At nine o’clock on the morning of August 15, 1385, the battle began
with a great hurling of stones, followed by fighting with the lance,
and then at still closer quarters with axe and sword. Nun’ Alvarez was
constantly where the fight raged most fiercely, and his words “Fight,
Portuguese, fight for king and country” kept ringing out above the din.
The flower of Castilian chivalry fell that day and many Portuguese
nobles fighting for Castille. Nun’ Alvarez saw his brother the Master
of Calatrava fall pierced by a lance, but was never able to find his
body. The King of Castille fled to Santarem. The Convent of Alcobaça
still preserves a huge cauldron taken from the enemy at Aljubarrota,
but the noblest memorial of Nun’ Alvarez’ victory is the Church and
Monastery of Batalha.

Nun’ Alvarez, not yet as old as Napoleon when he conquered Italy,
crossed the Guadiana with a few hundred horse and a few thousand foot
and advanced into Castille. All the nobles from the south of Spain who
had not been present at Aljubarrota collected to give him battle. The
enemy, he was told, were as the grass of the field in number. “All the
greater will be our honour,” said Nun’ Alvarez.

A trumpeter with a bundle of rods knelt before Nun’ Alvarez seated to
receive him: “My Lord Constable, the Master of Santiago, my lord, sends
to defy you with this rod,” and the Master of Calatrava, the Master of
Alcantara, the Count of Medina Celi and many another had sent him rods
of defiance. The Constable received them one by one patiently, gave the
messenger a hundred gold pieces and bade him thank the senders for the
rods with which he would presently come and beat them.

The battle of Valverde that followed was an attack of several hills
from which the enemy had to be dislodged. “If Portuguese kneel in
battle,” said a later, sixteenth-century historian, “it is to the Cross
of Christ”; and certainly it was from no fear or weakness that Nun’
Alvarez, wounded by an arrow in the foot, knelt to pray in the thickest
of the fight. Anxious messengers came up with news that his men were
hard pressed, imploring his presence, but he, without answering, still
knelt in prayer. At last rising with a look of great joy he ordered on
his standard to the attack, and a few hours later no Spaniard was to be
seen.

It was in memory of this battle that the Constable built the Church
and Convent of Carmo, still in its ruins one of the most beautiful of
Lisbon’s buildings. This was the last of his great battles, although he
saw much more fighting (for peace with Castille did not come for many
years), and when fifty-five years old took part in the expedition that
conquered Ceuta.

But his abiding fame was won when he was twenty-five. His success was
due to his singleness of purpose. The independence of Portugal was
his object, and to secure that object he put forth his whole strength
not only ungrudgingly, but with a passionate eagerness, his strength
based on deep piety and faith. A keen judge of men, he was terrible in
his calm disdain to those whom he suspected of shirking or treachery;
without a word of abuse on his part he made their humiliation
unbearable. But he inspired his followers with extraordinary
devotion. His clear, piercing eyes and his self-possession gave
them confidence--_des yeux pleins de mitraille et un air de
tranquillité_--and he was always generous in rewarding constancy and
valour. His energy, fearless courage and fervent serenity won many a
fight against overpowering odds.

His fame extended throughout Spain. One evening near Caceres ten
henchmen appeared before him. The Count received them kindly, and on
hearing that they were from Castille asked how they were so bold as to
come without safe-conduct. Relying on his great goodness, they said.
He then asked what he could do for them, and they announced that their
only object in coming was to see him, and now they had seen him; and
so, refusing the supper he ordered for them, they departed as they had
come.

Many incidents show his power over his own men. Once, when they were
unwilling to go forward to attack a superior force, he just stepped
across a stream and bade those who were willing to follow him cross it,
and not one held back.

On another occasion an uproar arose in his camp owing to the fact that
the day’s booty had consisted of “many and good wines.” The Constable
came unarmed from his tent, but many soldiers, seeing him thus and
hearing the noise, rushed forward to protect him and formed a canopy of
swords over his head.

The irregular pay and supplies received for his men made it difficult
to maintain strict discipline; for some days they lived entirely on
figs, then as now one of the principal fruits south of the Tagus; for
one whole day Nun’ Alvarez’ own food consisted merely of a piece of
dry bread, a turnip, and a drink of wine from the flask of a common
soldier. Another time there was no bread in the whole camp except five
small loaves reserved for Nun’ Alvarez’ table; five starving Englishmen
came up, and he entertained them to dinner, giving each a loaf of bread.

It was impossible in such circumstances to forbid or prevent plunder
when it was obtainable. But, although he was obliged to allow his
followers to live on the land, he set his face against any unnecessary
pilfering, and one squire, convicted of taking a chalice from a church,
he sentenced to be burnt--indeed, the wood was piled and the fire lit
before he pardoned him at the instance of his captains.

In the teeth of great opposition, too, he resolutely forbade the
presence of women in his camp.

He was not less renowned for his chivalry towards the weak, women,
prisoners, and peasants, than for his victories in battle. He provided
pensions for “women who had been honoured and prosperous and were now
poor.”

But his chivalry went further. A countess at Coimbra who had held out
against him, and then plotted to seize his person by treachery, he
secured from the reprisals of his followers; the wife of the commander
of a captured town he sent away free to Castille. And these were no
isolated instances; his conduct never varied in its simplicity, dignity
and charming thought for others.

His biographers love to tell of the poor blind man of Torres Vedras
who had no way of escaping from the advancing Castilians and whom Nun’
Alvarez carried behind him on his mule for four leagues out of the
town. “Oo que humano e caridoso señor!” exclaims the old chronicler.

But it is the incidents of an illness when he was between thirty
and forty that throw most light on his character and on the devoted
attachment of those around him. The fever and deep depression that
came over him seem to have been in part, at least, due to the perpetual
self-seeking and mendicity with which he had to deal now that he was
a power in the land as great as the King himself--greater, said his
enemies. Sometimes, we are told, he seemed to have recovered from
his illness, and then the very sight of a stranger, especially of a
man with a letter, would give him a relapse. His secretary found it
necessary to intercept all letters.

Nun’ Alvarez, who had sought health in vain at Lisbon, set out to
return to Evora. Accompanied by his mother and his daughter, he was
carried in a litter to Palmella. His illness prevented him from going
further, and he was taken to the small village of Alfarrara, where
there were many trees and streams. The very sight of the garden of the
_quinta_ where he was to lodge seemed to restore his health. Several of
the foremost citizens of Setubal came to welcome him, and he received
them gladly; but, as they were leaving, one of them (who was very
stout) had the misfortune to bid him “remember the town of Setubal.”

Nun’ Alvarez, thus reminded of “men with letters,” fell into so great
a passion and fever that he was like to die. He refused to eat, and
it was only after much coaxing that he was persuaded to sit down at
table. They brought him water for his hands and roast birds to eat. His
daughter began to carve them before him, and his mother fanned him with
a fan; but he refused to eat, telling his mother that “that bloated
churl with his Setubal has been the death of me.”

His secretary, Gil Airaz, would have excused the offender, but Nun’
Alvarez turned on him in a rage: “The fellow, for what he said,
deserved a score of blows, and if you cared for me or my health you
would have given him them.”

Gil Airaz said that there was still time, if that was his pleasure, and
the Constable answered that such a pleasure would seem to him all too
long in coming. So the secretary, in his presence, took a stick and
went out. When he came back and told him how he had beaten and kicked
and covered with mud and water the citizen of Setubal, Nun’ Alvarez
seemed to recover instantly and began to eat and drink.

To any other man, lord of half Portugal, it might perhaps have seemed
a little thing to have had a citizen beaten and rolled in a ditch, but
presently Nun’ Alvarez stopped eating, his eyes filled with tears, and
he began to wish he was dead. “Do you not see, Gil Airaz,” he said,
“that it would have been better for me to die than that you should have
done what you did to that good man?” “Now would to God I had no part of
all that land that God and my Lord the King have given me, so that this
thing were undone!”

When Gil Airaz saw that he was in earnest he told him how he had only
made a pretence of having beaten the man of Setubal and how all the
citizens had gone contentedly home. Nun’ Alvarez was so overjoyed
at this that he rose straightway from the table and went out to the
orchard and flowing streams. In three months, with the help of the
King’s physicians, he was well, and going alone with a page he set
to cutting the brushwood in front of him, and found his strength had
returned.

There is something infinitely touching in this story about a man who
was usually so calm and restrained that he might be in a passion of
anger and only show it--to those who knew him--by his smile, and
whose whole life was marked by exceptional strength of will. But his
old vigour returned, and very soon he was challenging the Master of
Santiago, begging him not to tire himself in advancing through so hot a
country, as he, “Nun’ Alvarez Pereira, Count of Barcellos and of Ourem
and of Arrayolos and Constable of my Lord the King of Portugal,” would
save him the trouble.

The great grief of the latter part of his life was the death of his
daughter Beatriz, Countess of Barcellos, and his life must have been
lonely despite the friendship of the King and especially of Prince
Duarte, heir to the throne. Before the expedition to Ceuta they went to
ask his advice under pretext of consulting him about some dogs for the
chase, so as to keep the secret of their enterprise. None better than
the King knew the value of Nun’ Alvarez’ opinion. He always seemed to
know precisely the right thing to be done and the right moment to do
it, was as far removed from boasting and vanity as from false humility,
and respected his own rights as well as those of others.

In charity he gave liberally, but never carelessly. Thus he yearly
bestowed the same quantity of cloth, but bestowed it in different
districts, and stored the corn from his estates, to be given away in
years of scarcity.

Before the end of the fourteenth century (1393) he divided most of
his land, that is a great part of Portugal, between his followers.
Large portions of Tras-os-Montes, Minho, and Alentejo belonged to him.
He was Count of Ourem, of Arrayolos and Barcellos, Lord of Braga,
Guimarães, Chaves, Montalegre, and nearly a score of other towns. His
policy of dividing these lands among his vassals under condition that
they should maintain certain forces in his and the King’s service,
proved unsatisfactory. Like the sated Marshals of Napoleon, they were
subsequently less willing to leave their estates and risk their persons
in battle.

The King, who had been too lavish in his gifts, proposed to buy back
his grants of land. Other nobles agreed to sell, but Nun’ Alvarez was
resolved not to brook the injustice, and, far from agreeing to the
proposal, departed to Alentejo and gathered his followers with a view
to leave Portugal, although, as he said, he would never serve any other
king.

King João, thoroughly alarmed, sent the Bishop of Evora, the Dean of
Coimbra and the Master of the Order of Avis post-haste after him. But
Nun’ Alvarez then, as always when he seemed to be acting rashly on
impulse, was carrying out a quick but well-reasoned decision, and was
only with difficulty persuaded to a compromise. It was finally agreed
that his vassals should be transferred to the King, while Nun’ Alvarez
was to retain in his own hands most of his territorial possessions.
Seven years after the victorious capture of Ceuta he again renounced
them.

He had always been a man of great piety; after one of his victories
he had gone barefoot in pilgrimage to Santa Maria de Assumar; he
had founded churches throughout the country, heard mass twice or
thrice daily, and would rise at midnight to pray the hours. But it
was probably the death of his only daughter that moved him to retire
to serve God in the monastery of Santa Maria do Carmo, which he had
founded in memory of his victory of Valverde. There, on August 15,
1423, he professed as Frei Nuno de Santa Maria, after giving away all
his lands and titles. Of his daughter’s three children, Isabel married
the Infante João, Affonso became Conde de Ourem, and, later, Marquez de
Valença, and Fernando, Conde de Arrayolos and, later, Duke of Braganza.

When Nun’ Alvarez, penniless, retired to his cell it was his purpose to
beg his daily bread in the streets of Lisbon, and he also intended to
end his days where he might be quite unknown; but Prince Duarte went to
see him at the Carmo and affectionately ordered him to accept a pension
from the King, a great part of which, however, he spent in charities.

In 1431, in his seventy-first year, and two years before his life-long
friend, King João, the greatest of all Portugal’s great men died. “God
grant him as much glory and honour as in this world was his,” says the
old chronicle.

Surely no truer man or more chivalrous knight ever donned helmet or
drew sword. Tradition says that the Lisbon people long assembled to
sing songs and witness many miracles at his grave. But his fittest and
most enduring monuments are the noble buildings of Carmo and Batalha,
and, above all, a free and united Portugal.


[Illustration: PRINCE HENRY THE NAVIGATOR.]




III

PRINCE HENRY THE NAVIGATOR

(1394-1460)

 Ca trabalho seria de se achar antre os vivos seu semelhante.--GOMEZ
 EANNEZ DE AZURARA, _Cronica de Guiné_.

 Mestre insigne de toda a arte militar.--D. FRANCISCO MANOEL DE MELLO.

 O homem a quem a Europa deve mais.--JOSÉ AGOSTINHO DE MACEDO, _Motim
 Literario_.


For some years before his death, Nun’ Alvarez might well rest satisfied
with the prosperity which largely by his own exertions had fallen
upon his country. Nor was it a careless or degenerate prosperity. The
five noble sons of King João I and his English wife, Queen Philippa,
daughter of “time-honoured Lancaster,” had grown to manhood, and the
time was pregnant with great deeds. If Duarte was perhaps Nun’ Alvarez’
favourite among the princes, he certainly must have discerned in his
younger brother his own successor in guiding the destinies of Portugal.
Although possibly less chivalrous than Nun’ Alvarez, Prince Henry
possessed his strong will and intensity of purpose, with a wider range
of vision. A Portuguese writer represents him living in retirement at
Sagres, his eyes fixed exclusively on Heaven; but Prince Henry believed
that he could best serve Heaven by bringing to success the earthly
affairs on which he had set his heart.

It was certainly with the keenness which marked the young Nun’ Alvarez
that Henrique, then twenty-one, embarked with his father, King João I,
and his brothers, Duarte and Pedro, in the expedition against Ceuta in
1415. He had his father’s promise that he should be the first to land,
and in the storming of the town he was ever in the thickest of the
fighting. The Moors defended the town obstinately, and a fresh danger
arose when the victorious Portuguese dispersed to plunder. Henry, with
a little band of seventeen followers, saved the situation against such
odds that news was at first brought to the King that his son was dead.
For his gallant behaviour on that day he was made Duke of Vizeu and
Lord of Covilhã, while his brother Pedro became Duke of Coimbra.

But Henry returned from North-West Africa with perhaps a still
greater prize--increased knowledge of the Dark Continent and a fixed
determination to explore further a land which he now knew to be no mere
sandy and unfertile desert. To this work he devoted the next forty-five
years, without a shadow of turning, since political events might hamper
but could not weaken his purpose, merely delaying the promised end.

It is often asked what was his object, as though the wish to win
fresh knowledge, to acquire new territory for his country, and glory
and riches, and to extend the Christian faith were unaccountable or
unworthy aims. Rather we cannot wonder that the discoveries became the
absorbing passion of his life, so that he has been blamed for his
lukewarm intervention in contemporary politics and his weak defence of
his brother, the Duke of Coimbra.

On the discoveries as Grand Master of the Order of Christ he spent its
princely revenues, and in 1418, retiring from the Court, he settled
on the Sacred Cape, or Sagres, now Cape St. Vincent. His palace and
observatory soon drew a village round it, known as Terça Naval, or
the Villa do Infante (Princestown). Here, as Governor of Algarve, he
spent the greater part of his life, fitting out ships in Lagos harbour,
welcoming travellers, poring over maps brought to him by Prince Pedro
and others from their travels, observing the heavens, and watching for
the return of his ships.

His keenness was not inconsistent with a certain shyness and reserve.
He was a student prince, but less literary and more scientific than his
brothers. All day, and often far into the night, he would be at work,
an energetic hermit such as the Middle Ages had not known. His eyes in
the intensity and even fierceness of their glance repelled the timid,
but they also had the far-away look as of one watching and dreaming,
while his firm lips and jaws were those of one planning and willing.
His iron will and self-discipline curbed his equally strong temper and
impatient eagerness, so that when most moved to anger he would merely
say, like an Irishman, “I leave you to God.”

Courageous and persistent, he prepared all his schemes with the utmost
thoroughness, and all the help that science could afford, and he
carried them out with unfaltering resolution. All through his life he
acted up to his French motto, _Talent de bien faire_, which we may
translate by the “love of useful glory” to which, according to the poet
Thomson, he roused mankind. And if we do not sit cowering before the
unknown on all sides it is to Prince Henry and a few men of similarly
keen intellect and stout will that we owe it.

It must not be thought that he met with no opposition, apart from
the great difficulties that naturally beset all discoverers and
innovators. On the one hand, the perils of navigating down the coast of
Africa were considered insurmountable, and, on the other, the gains to
be derived from it were held to be nugatory. It was not till the first
slaves and the first gold arrived that men began to realise thoroughly
that Prince Henry was something more than an empty dreamer. No one with
less faith, a faith based both on religion and science, would have
persevered, as Prince Henry persevered, in face of the slight support
at first given by public opinion and the slight success obtained.
But, although there were many disappointments and progress was slow,
the mysteries of the African coast did gradually recede before his
persistency, as year after year he sent out ships with definite
instructions based on his maps and scientific knowledge.

The death of King João I in 1433 did not seriously interfere with his
plans; his brother Duarte gave him every possible support, and the
expedition against Tangier in 1437 was not an interruption but rather
one aspect of his life-work. Indeed, he was the leading spirit of
the enterprise. He and his younger brother, Fernando, obtained from
King Duarte the consent for which they had ceased to hope from their
father; but Duarte at first, and Pedro throughout, were opposed to
the expedition. It set out in August, and the little army of some six
thousand men disembarked at Ceuta, and, without waiting for the ships
to return to Portugal for reinforcements, marched to attack Tangier.

Failing to take the place by storm, the princes settled down to
blockade it. The danger of such a course was obvious, but even when the
Moors, who trooped down from the hinterland, outnumbered the Christian
force by twenty to one they were driven back in a series of magnificent
attacks. But the Moorish host continued to grow by scores of thousands
daily, and in the second week of October it became apparent even to
the fiery heart of Prince Henry that he was embarked on a hopeless
enterprise.

The siege was raised and the small army attempted to regain their
ships. Henry with the cavalry protected their retreat. But the
cowardice of some, the treachery of others, and the overwhelming number
of the enemy proved too much for his splendid defence, and on October
15 he was forced to come to an agreement with the enemy. By this
capitulation the Portuguese were to be allowed to re-embark without
their arms, Ceuta, their twenty-two years’ possession, was to be given
up, and Prince Fernando, with certain other hostages, was to remain in
the hands of the enemy until the Portuguese should have evacuated the
town.

Prince Henry, in his despair, fell ill at Ceuta and afterwards retired
to Sagres. He would not give up Ceuta, and he could not save Fernando
otherwise. King Duarte, confronted by the same cruel alternative,
succumbed to grief and illness at Thomar in the following year.

To Henry’s sorrow for the death of one brother and the living death of
another--the tortures of Fernando’s captivity ended in a miserable
dungeon in 1443--was added the crushing of his hopes and projects. For
the new King was but a boy, and it needed no peculiar foresight to
prophesy impending trouble in Portugal. It required all Prince Henry’s
fortitude and faith to persevere, in loneliness and remorse. Prince
Pedro had strongly opposed the expedition: it was on Henry that its
failure rested. Nor was he one to wish to shirk responsibility, and
many an hour he must have spent brooding over the fatal effects of his
rashness.

Henry is too great a man to need to have his mistakes glossed over.
He had underestimated the difficulty of the enterprise, he had been
rash in advancing from Ceuta without awaiting reinforcements, he had
been rasher in not retiring after the first unsuccessful attempt to
scale the walls of Tangier. His object certainly had been a noble one,
based on no personal greed or ambition, and the results of his failure
were felt by none more than by himself. In the eyes of others his
magnificent courage and steadfast retreat placed him even higher than
before.

Fortunately for him, there was plenty of work ready to his hand, for,
although he did not personally accompany the ships of exploration,
he scientifically worked out their instructions, equipped them, and
followed their progress on his maps. Perhaps a certain estrangement
between Pedro and Henry was natural after 1437; Henry, at least,
did not very actively support his brother in his quarrel with the
Queen-Regent, and failed to stand by him later when he had resigned his
Regency and was venomously attacked and slandered by his enemies before
his weak son-in-law, King Affonso V. When the matter came to open
conflict Pedro, with his small band of followers, could not hope for
victory, and again Henry did not resolutely intervene. Pedro’s tragic
death at Alfarrobeira in 1449 cannot have diminished Henry’s remorse
for the death of Duarte and Fernando eleven and six years earlier.

Meanwhile, his austere devotion to the work of discovery bore
increasing fruit, and before he died the rich islands of the Azores,
Madeira, the Canaries, and Cape Verde were discovered, and the coast of
Africa explored as far as Sierra Leone, which was reached by the famous
Venetian, Luigi Cadamosto, in the service of Prince Henry, nearly a
quarter of a century after Gil Eannez had rounded Cape Bojador in 1434.
The Infante himself had lost little of his energy, and although nearly
sixty-five, accompanied his nephew Affonso V in the expedition against
Morocco in 1558, and took a prominent part in the siege and capture of
Alcacer.

The last two years of his life were spent at Sagres. In September 1460
he disposed of certain of his revenues, potential rather than actual,
to the Order of Christ and to the State, which had hitherto recognised
his right to receive the profits of the discoveries as it had allowed
him to bear its burden. The burden to the day of his death was far
greater than the profits. Yet he must have realised that his life’s
purpose was attained, and that the rest was but a matter of time, as
surely as though he had planted an orange-tree and died when it was
covered with blossom. His body was taken to Batalha, and, if it was
not to remain on Cape St. Vincent looking southwards over the sea
to Africa, no worthier resting-place could be found for it than the
splendid church built to commemorate the victory of his father and of
his friend Nun’ Alvarez. Prince Henry spent himself, his time, and
his revenues without stint in the service of a great idea and a high
ambition. Nun’ Alvarez had worked for the independence of Portugal;
Prince Henry left it well on the road to an imperishable glory.

A generation later, when the full effects of his life’s work were
manifest, his countrymen and the world recognised in this strong,
tenacious ascetic, with his burning zeal for God and country, his
fearlessness and unwavering devotion, the inspirer and origin of
Portugal’s new greatness.

[Illustration: VASCO DA GAMA]




IV

VASCO DA GAMA

(1460?-1524)

 O qual Vasco da Gama era homem prudente e de bom saber e de grande
 animo para todo bom feito.--GASPAR CORREA, _Lendas da India_.


King João II pressed on vigorously with the discovery of the west
coast of Africa. The year of his accession was not ended before Diogo
de Azambuja set out with ten ships (1481), and after his return the
King assumed the title of “Lord of Guinea.” Diogo Cam in 1484 and
1485 carried the discovery still further, past the River of Crabs
(Cameroons), past Congo and Angola to Walvisch Bay, and two years later
Bartholomeu Diaz rounded the Cape, and with that the problem of the
sea-route to India was practically solved, so that King John died
(October 1495) in sight of the promised land. Indeed, the departure of
the ships which Vasco de Gama was destined to command was only delayed
by the King’s death. He had given “orders for such wood to be cut in
wood and forest as the carpenters and builders should desire, and this
was brought to Lisbon, where at once three small ships were begun.”

In appointing Vasco da Gama, a knight of his household, to the command
King Manoel showed that he knew the value of the men who had grown up
in the stern school of João II. The Gamas were a distinguished family
of the south of Portugal; they had already rendered good service to the
State--Vasco himself may have had a part in the work of discovering the
coast of Africa--and if they were at times quarrelsome and unruly their
loyalty and courage were never in doubt. In 1497 the meekest of them,
Paulo, Vasco’s eldest brother, was in trouble for having wounded a
judge at Setubal,[5] and received the King’s pardon before he sailed as
captain of one of the ships.

Vasco, a man of medium height and knightly bearing, was bold and
daring in enterprise, patient and determined in adversity, but harsher
and more irascible than his brother. It is a curious instance of the
continuous if often slight connection between the two nations of
seafarers, the English and the Portuguese, that Vasco da Gama had
English blood in his veins. The name of his mother, Isabel Sodré, which
survives in Lisbon’s _Caes do Sodré_, was a corruption of Sudley, her
grandfather having been Frederick Sudley, of the family of the Earls of
Hereford. Vasco was born probably in 1460, in the little sea-town of
Sines, of which his father was _Alcaide Môr_, and in honour of which
Vasco later is said to have been in the habit of firing a salute as he
passed.

The third captain appointed by King Manoel was Nicolao Coelho.

The three ships, of about a hundred tons, _São Gabriel_ (Vasco da
Gama), _São Raphael_ (Paulo da Gama), and _São Miguel_[6] (Nicolao
Coelho), after solemn procession and leave-taking of the King, on July
8, 1497, sailed down the Tagus from Belem and rounded Cape Espichel to
the south. The crews averaged little over fifty men, being perhaps 170
in all, including six convicts in each ship to be cast ashore in order
to spy out the land at different points. Bartholomeu Diaz, bound for
the fortress of São Jorge da Mina, accompanied them as far as the Cape
Verde Islands.

In November they reached the bay of St. Helena where Vasco da Gama was
slightly wounded in an affray with the natives. Hitherto their voyage
had been prosperous; but they encountered heavy storms both before and
after rounding the Cape of Good Hope, and it required all Vasco’s
resolution and Paulo’s persuasiveness to keep the crews to their
voyage. The mutinous crew of the _São Gabriel_ had counted without its
host, and found Gama little less formidable than the storms of these
unknown seas. Not if he were confronted with a hundred deaths, he said,
and not if the ships were all filled with gold, would he go back a
single yard; but he did not wholly disregard the murmurings of the men,
for he clapped the mate and pilot of his ship in irons, to hold them as
hostages, and, as they were the only persons who knew anything of the
art of navigation, the crew was effectually cowed.

At Christmas they reached the land which to this day bears the
Portuguese name, Natal, of the time of its discovery. Passing slowly
north along the coast, they arrived towards the end of January at the
Zambezi River, and in this shelter made a stay of several weeks; but
scurvy among the crew forced them again to sea, and in the beginning of
March they reached Mozambique. Here, as at Mombasa a month later, the
natives received them with every appearance of friendship, but made a
treacherous if rather courageous attempt to seize their ships. The King
of Melinde, a little further north, was friendly and loyal, and here
the Portuguese obtained pilots for the voyage to India.

The passage lasted less than a month, and on May 18 they sighted
Asia, the end and object of their enterprise, and came to anchor
off Calicut on the 21st. Calicut was a few miles distant, and Vasco
da Gama, although implored by his brother not to risk his person
by disembarking, started on the overland journey. It required some
courage, for among the native sightseers who crowded round the
Portuguese there were not a few armed and covertly hostile Moors.

In the minds of the Portuguese, the East had long been connected with
the empire of the Christian Prester John, the half mythical ruler of
Abyssinia, and they expected to find the majority of the natives
Christians. Accordingly they were easily duped here (as indeed they
had been in Africa) and Vasco da Gama and his companions on the way
to Calicut worshipped in a Hindu pagoda. The images on the walls
were unlike those of the saints to which they had been accustomed in
Portugal. Some of them had four arms, the teeth of others protruded a
whole inch from their mouths, and their faces were hideous as the faces
of devils. Like Little Red Ridinghood, one of the Portuguese, João de
Sá, was in the most serious doubt when he saw these figures, and, as he
knelt down, in order to avoid any mistake, he said aloud “If this is a
devil I worship the true God.” And Vasco da Gama looked across at him
and smiled.

 A che guardando il suo duca sorrise.

This does not tally well with the character of the disciplinarian,
despotic Gama, as it is usually represented. But these qualities
developed later.

The Portuguese were as ignorant about the King of the country as about
its gods. For the Samuri of Calicut was no simple King of Melinde, but
a great potentate accustomed to traders and to foreign civilisations.
It was not without difficulty that Gama obtained an interview, and
when he succeeded, the King, all aglow with jewellery, seated chewing
betel, a page on either side, and his chief Brahman behind his chair,
was fully a match for the haughty Gama. From one of his bracelets
gleamed a priceless stone of a thumb’s thickness, his necklace was of
pearls almost of the size of small acorns, and from a gold chain hung
a heart-shaped jewel surrounded by pearls and covered with rubies,
and in the centre a great green stone, an emerald, of the size of a
large bean, belonging to the ancient treasure of the Kings of Calicut.
His golden trumpets were longer by a third than those of the King of
Portugal.

It appears that the Portuguese had brought no present worthy of
so great a monarch. The same historian, Correa, who thus vividly
describes the King’s appearance, also gives a detailed account of the
present. It consisted, he says, of “a very delicate piece of scarlet,
and a piece of crimson velvet, and a piece of yellow satin and a chair
richly upholstered with brocade, with silver-gilt nails, and a cushion
of crimson satin with tassels of gold thread, and another cushion of
red satin for the feet, and a very richly wrought gilt ewer and basin,
and a large and very beautiful gilt mirror and fifty red caps with
buttons and veils of crimson silk and gold thread upon them, and fifty
gilt sheaths of Flemish knives, which had been inlaid in Lisbon with
ivory.”

The King should have been satisfied, but probably this present, if it
ever existed, had dwindled in gifts to natives of Africa on the way.
The question in the King’s mind was that asked once of Telemachus: Had
they come as peaceful traders, or were they pirates?

Vasco da Gama, faced by a reception so courteous yet so insulting,
maintained a proud, serene attitude, as he had when on his way to the
palace--he is represented advancing slowly, waiting for the crowds
to be cleared out of his way--and as he did later when placed under
arrest by the Catual, or Governor of the city. By his resolution during
the dangers and obstacles of the voyage and by his calm behaviour in
Calicut he justified the King’s choice and his subsequent fame.

The Samuri himself was far more favourably inclined to the new-comers
than were the Moors, who naturally resented the appearance of other
traders. The Portuguese were greatly helped throughout by a Mohammedan
who had learnt Spanish at Tunis, but, although Gama brought home
specimens of pepper, ginger, cloves, musk, benjamin, and other spices
as well as pearls and rubies, his visit to Calicut, which ended with
the high-handed measure of seizing and carrying off several natives,
was unsuccessful, since it resulted in no treaty of friendship or
commerce.

At the end of August they started on the homeward voyage, but remained
for some time off the coast of India, and in the Indian Ocean lay
becalmed for many days, during which the crew again suffered terribly
from scurvy, a considerable number dying. The remnant of the crews
struggled on in their three ships towards Portugal; at Cabo Verde,
Coelho separated from the others and carried the news to King Manoel
(July 1499). Paulo da Gama was worn out by anxiety and exertions, and
Vasco sailed with him north-west to the Azores, where, in the island of
Terceira, Paulo died. It was not till the end of the summer that Vasco
da Gama reached the Tagus.

It is said--although Coelho’s earlier arrival contradicts the
story--that a Terceira trader, Arthur Rodriguez, about to sail from his
island to Algarve, saw two ships at anchor and asked whence they were.
“From India,” came the answer. At these magic words he set sail, not,
however, to Algarve, but due East, and in four days cast anchor in the
harbour of Cascaes. The King was at Sintra, and had just sat down to
supper when Rodriguez hurried in with the good news.

When the few survivors[7] arrived at Lisbon (September 1499) they
were given a splendid reception, and Vasco da Gama was never able
to complain that his services went unrewarded. He was granted the
coveted title of Dom, and became hereditary Admiral of India, while
his pensions (300,000 réis a year) and facilities of trade with India
made him one of the richest men in the realm. So powerful did he become
in Sines that the Order of Santiago interfered, with the result that
Gama was obliged to leave his native town and in 1507 went to live at
Evora.[8] In November 1519 the Duke James of Braganza sold him the town
of Vidigueira, of which Gama became first Count.

A large part of his triumph belonged to Prince Henry, to King João II,
and to Bartholomeu Diaz, who was drowned in the following year off the
Cape which he had been the first to round.

King Manoel, overjoyed at having attained the goal of nearly a
century’s constant striving, now styled himself not only King
of Portugal and the Algarves and Lord of Guinea but Lord of the
Navigation, Conquest, and Commerce of Ethiopia, Arabia, Persia, and
India; he sent word of the discovery to the Pope and all the princes
of Christendom; and at Belem, on the right bank of the Tagus, whence
the discoverers had set sail over two years before, he built the fine
monastery of São Jeronimo, where now are the tombs of the King himself,
of Dom Vasco, who brought him all this glory, and of Camões, who
celebrated it in deathless verse.

The building stands in strange contrast to that of Batalha, where
Prince Henry the Navigator lies buried. The pure Gothic of Batalha,
with its magnificent plain pillars and soaring arches, spells heroic
aspiration; the Manueline of Belem in its exuberance and rich profusion
of detail bears traces of satisfied accomplishment, as though Portugal
might now throw simplicity and austere endeavour to the winds.

Dom Vasco da Gama in February 1502 set sail a second time for India,
and returned in September 1303 with the first tribute of gold from
India. “As the King was then at Lisbon, Dom Vasco, when he went to see
him, took the tribute which he had received from the King of Quiloa[9].
A nobleman in plain doublet with uncovered head went before the Admiral
on horseback in great solemnity, carrying the gold in a large basin of
silver, to the sound of drums and trumpets, and in company of all the
gentlemen of the Court. And the King ordered a monstrance to be wrought
of it, as rich in workmanship as in weight, and offered it to Our Lady
of Bethlehem as first fruits of those victories of the East.”

The death of Paulo da Gama seems to have killed the gentler strain
in Vasco’s nature, and his many honours, titles, and estates rendered
him more overbearing. It was on his second voyage to India, in October
1502, that he blew up a peaceful trading ship from Mecca with 380 (or
by another account, 240) men on board, besides many women and children,
after relieving it of all gold and merchandise. As to his overweening
pride, he is said to have signed himself Count in a letter to the King
before the title had been actually conferred.

Despite the crying need for a strong man to restore discipline in India
after Albuquerque’s death, King Manoel did not send Dom Vasco out as
Governor, and it was only in the reign of King João III, and when
Gama was over sixty, that he left Lisbon, in April 1524, as Viceroy
of India, with his sons Estevão and Paulo and a force of 3,000 men.
He reached Goa in September and presently proceeded to Cochin. He
was resolved to bring some measure of order and justice out of the
confusion and corruption of India; and whereas most other Governors on
their arrival were too busily occupied in enriching themselves to pay
careful attention to other matters, Gama bent his whole will to effect
reforms.

The reforms were salutary, but they filled native and Portuguese alike
with consternation and were decreed in a harsh, unconciliatory spirit.
Gama came into conflict with the outgoing Governor, Dom Duarte de
Meneses, and only reduced him to obedience by giving orders to bombard
him in his ship.

The first three months of Gama’s vice-royalty proved that the task of
reforming the rule of the Portuguese in India was work for a younger
man, and on Christmas Day 1524, to the relief of the self-seekers,
to the grief of those who cared for the future of their country, Dom
Vasco da Gama died, exactly twenty-seven years after the sight of Natal
had given him the first real promise of success in his earlier great
adventure.


FOOTNOTES:

[5] This may have been the occasion on which Vasco da Gama, closely
wrapped in his _capa_, one night in the streets of Setubal refused to
reveal his identity to the Alcaide going his rounds, declaring that he
was no _malfeitor_. The Alcaide’s attempt to arrest him failed.

[6] Also apparently called _Berrio_, after the pilot from whom it was
bought (?). Since Berrio = New (Basque _berri_) it was an appropriate
name for a ship going to the discovery of _mares nunca dantes
navegados_.

[7] It is said that only 55 out of the original 170 returned.

[8] This apparently continued to be his home for twelve years, since a
document of November 7, 1519, has “in the city of Evora in the house
in which now lives the magnificent Lord Dom Vasco da Gama, Admiral of
India.”

[9] Now Kilwa; soon, perhaps, Quiloa again.




V

DUARTE PACHECO PEREIRA

(1465?-1533?)

  O gram Pacheco, Achilles lusitano.

  LUIS DE CAMÕES, _Os Lusiadas_.

  Diversas et incredibiles victorias obtinens.

  DAMIÃO DE GOES, _Hispania_.


One of the captains who sailed from Lisbon with the cousins Albuquerque
in 1503 was Duarte Pacheco Pereira. Like the great Affonso de
Albuquerque with whom he sailed, he was still unknown to fame. He
may have been between thirty-five and forty years of age, but his
subsequent glory has thrown no light for us on his earlier years; and
beyond the fact that he was born at Lisbon, that he was a knight of
the King’s household, and that under João II he was employed in the
discovery of the west coast of Africa, we have to be content with
silence.

Five years had passed since the Portuguese had first reached India, and
instead of peaceful trade there was war between the King of Calicut and
the Portuguese, and hostilities between Cochin and Calicut by reason
of the King of Cochin’s friendship with the new-comers. The King of
Cochin, indeed, had been uniformly loyal to the Portuguese and had
shown conspicuous firmness of purpose, and to Cochin the Albuquerques
directed their course.

It was in an expedition against one of the King of Cochin’s enemies,
the Lord of Repelim (Eddapalli), that Pacheco first signalised himself
for dashing bravery and learnt what daring and energy could do against
a numerous but ill-equipped and undisciplined enemy. As he returned
in four boats at ten o’clock one night from a long day’s victorious
expedition against six or seven thousand natives he found his progress
blocked by thirty-four ships chained to one another. After encouraging
his men by a stirring speech he locked his own boats together and
forced his way through, and then immediately went about so as to be
able to stop the enemy’s pursuit with his artillery. A fierce combat
ensued, but Pacheco had completed his victory before the Albuquerques
could come to his assistance.

The King of Cochin was so greatly impressed by this exploit that he
henceforth held Pacheco in the highest esteem. He little knew at the
time how intimately their fortunes were to be linked. Before Affonso
and Francisco de Albuquerque left for home it was known that the King
(the Samuri) of Calicut was about to attack Cochin with his entire
forces by land and sea. None of the Portuguese captains evinced any
alacrity to be left behind in its defence, and when Pacheco accepted
with a good will, but “rather to serve God and the King than for any
hope of profit,” those who knew how great was the might of Calicut
said: “God have mercy on Duarte Pacheco and those who remain with
him,” scarcely expecting to set eyes on him again. As it proved it was
Francisco de Albuquerque who perished, on his way home, while Pacheco
died many years later, in peace and on dry land.

Whatever Pacheco’s thoughts may have been at the prospect before him,
he knew that to instil confidence into his men was half the battle;
he said little, but showed by his demeanour that he was perfectly
satisfied, and asked for not a single man beyond those whom the
Albuquerques had found possible to leave him. Thus he remained alone in
India, still an unknown country to the Portuguese, with his own ship
and three even smaller vessels, and, in all, ninety men.

It was little wonder that even the faithful and resolute King of Cochin
began to despair when it was known that the host, or horde, from
Calicut consisted of 60,000 men. He himself could provide about half
that number, but of these three-quarters were actively or passively
hostile. The Moors, moreover, who supplied Cochin with provisions were
minded to abandon the city, and would have done so had not Pacheco
intervened.

He at first determined to hang the ring-leader in this treachery, but
the King declared that, should he do so, the rest would rise in mutiny,
and he accordingly assembled the “honest merchants,” and addressed
them in a speech of such vigour that for the moment he had no further
trouble from the Moors. Purple with rage and speaking so loud that he
seemed to be actually fighting, he offered them his friendship, but
should they thwart him he promised to be a crueller enemy to them than
any King of Calicut. Their respect for Pacheco was further increased
by his astonishing energy, for, after working all day at preparations
against the coming invasion, he spent the nights in forays into the
Repelim country.

Pacheco’s task was to defend the city of Cochin, and the Portuguese
fort recently built by the Albuquerques. The territory of Cochin
was separated from that of Repelim by salt-water channels, and the
preparations of the Portuguese were directed to the defence of the
principal ford, which was only passable at low tide, with deeper water
at each end. With this object stakes were made ready to be driven in
all along the ford in a serried stockade. By the time the King of
Calicut reached Repelim, Pacheco had put a salutary fear into the
hearts of the citizens of Cochin, so that when the news of his arrival
came their first impulse to abandon the city was immediately checked.

The better to inspire them with his own fearlessness, he made his usual
night expedition into Repelim and set fire to one of the villages.
He experienced some difficulty in returning, and five of his men
were wounded, but when the King of Cochin expostulated against this
foolhardiness he merely laughed and said that all he wished for was
that the King of Calicut should advance to attack him.

The first attack at the ford occurred on the last day of March 1504
(Palm Sunday), and the period that followed may well claim to be one
of the most brilliant Hundred Days in history. The enemy on this Palm
Sunday, relying on their overwhelming numbers, crowded down to the ford
at low tide, but the sharp stockade confronted them and the artillery
from the boats stationed in the deep water on both sides of the
stockade cut them down. Their own “cannon” were not very formidable,
for we are told that they did not propel their projectiles with greater
violence than that with which one might throw a stone, and at the end
of the day the Portuguese had but a few injured and none killed. Their
danger was nevertheless great, for although the enemy had suffered
considerably in this first assault they were so numerous that they
could continually renew the attack, and sleepless vigilance, with
intervals of terrific exertion, was necessary to defeat them.

But Pacheco had succeeded in imparting something of his own spirit
to his men. Undeterred by the flight of the Nairs who should have
supported him, he took advantage with his usual energy of the
breathing-space secured by this first victory, ordered his men to make
a show of revelry at intervals during the following night in order to
impress the enemy, and next day with forty men set out and burnt a
village. The enemy’s attacks were repeated on Good Friday and Easter
Sunday and Easter Tuesday, and in the intervals of victory Pacheco kept
on burning villages, to the delight of those in Cochin.

The endurance of the defenders was tested to the utmost when the
King of Calicut attacked on the same day in two places, at the ford
and in a deep water channel. He seems to have made a mistake in not
waiting to attack with his fleet until low tide enabled the infantry
simultaneously to assault the ford, or, at least, the plan did not work
out well, and Pacheco was able to deal first with the numerous fleet of
boats, said to have been two hundred and fifty in number.

The four little Portuguese ships seemed almost lost in the multitude
of the enemy. The darts and arrows, says one of the early Portuguese
historians, were in such quantity that they cast a shadow over the
ships, and so loud were the shouts and cries that it seemed to be the
end of the world. Again and again the enemy’s boats, chained together,
came on to the attack, but they never succeeded in boarding the
Portuguese _caravelas_, although many of the Portuguese were wounded.

Meanwhile twelve thousand infantry had advanced against the ford.
Message after message came to Pacheco for help, but the tide was still
running out and he contented himself with answering that he was still
engaged with the fleet but that this was “not the day of the King of
Calicut.” At the turn of the tide, after having dealt faithfully with
the fleet of the enemy’s boats, he went; but the water was still too
shallow when he approached the ford and the ships grounded. He was
able, however, to work great havoc with his artillery among the many
thousands of assailants, although he could not come up to fight with
them at close quarters.

For a long hour the low water at the ford gave every advantage to the
enemy. Crowds of them surrounded the stranded ships, thousands rushed
forward to attack the ford. The water was tinged with red. And still
the ships refused to move. At last they floated, and as the tide rose
the danger of the attack grew less and less, till at dusk it ceased
entirely.

Another most formidable battle was fought at the beginning of May when
the King of Calicut in person attacked the ford. The Nairs from Cochin
who were to have defended the stockade deserted their post, many of the
enemy actually succeeded in crossing, and it was only by unparalleled
exertions that Pacheco, after being retained with his ship by the low
water, was able to hurl them back with great loss. A cannon-shot aimed
at the King of Calicut, which succeeded in killing several persons
near him, profoundly discouraged him in what began to seem a hopeless
enterprise, instead of child’s play as at first.

But the strain on Pacheco was not relaxed, and he spent night and day
watching and fighting. One Sunday as he sat at his midday meal in
his caravel after keeping watch all night, the look-out man sighted
eighteen hostile craft approaching. He determined to attack, but when
he arrived in mid-stream another fleet of sixteen, and then eighteen
more, darted out suddenly from behind a promontory, and it proved no
simple affair to beat them off.

The King of Cochin came up in time to witness Pacheco’s victory, and
after congratulating him reproached him for having exposed himself
alone to such a risk. Pacheco did not think it advisable to tell the
King that he had attacked in the belief that the enemy were only a
third of their real number, and his prestige with the natives was still
further enhanced.

The King of Calicut was in despair, and his forces were already reduced
from 60,000 to 40,000 men by battle and cholera, when a Moor of
Repelim invented a scheme which put new heart into the King and seemed
to give certain promise of capturing the Portuguese ships and all the
Portuguese in them. The device resembled that of moving towers built
to the height of the walls of a besieged town. Two boats were lashed
together to support a square wooden tower capable of holding some forty
men.

Pacheco had spies in the enemy’s camp who warned him of the new danger,
but the information was also divulged in Cochin, to the dismay of the
King and his subjects. The King paid Pacheco a visit, and, although
he was received on board with dance and song, besought him with tears
in his eyes to save himself by flight since further resistance was
useless, and when he left bade him farewell as for the last time.

To embolden the natives, Pacheco declared that he intended to defeat
the enemy now as on previous occasions, and asked them if he had ever
failed to keep his word. The further to encourage them, he erected
a great pointed stake on which to “spit the King of Calicut.” He did
not neglect more practical measures, for he raised the prows of his
vessels by means of wooden structures high enough to dominate the
enemy’s castles, and he put together a boom and fixed it by means of
six anchors a stone’s throw in front of his ships.

About two hours after midnight on Ascension Day a few shots announced
that the enemy were in motion. Pacheco landed, and after harrying
the advancing infantry returned to his ships at dawn in readiness to
receive the approaching fleet. At first the Portuguese artillery seemed
to make no impression on the strongly built tower that confronted them,
and for a short time it seemed that the enemy must be victorious.
“Lord, visit not my sins upon me now!” was Pacheco’s despairing cry.
But at last one of the towers came crashing down and Pacheco knelt on
deck and gave thanks to God, for the destruction of the rest was now
only a matter of time. The fighting lasted till dusk fell. So complete
was the discomfiture of the enemy and so miraculous seemed the escape
of the handful of Portuguese that the natives of Cochin lost all
fear of Calicut, and the Portuguese in India acquired far and wide a
reputation for invincible prowess.

The King of Calicut now had serious thoughts of giving over the war,
but two Italians, Milanese, persuaded him to attempt a night attack.
The plan was for the Prince of Repelim to advance with a large force,
and when he had engaged the enemy certain Nairs, posted in palm-trees,
were to raise fire-signals for the King of Calicut to follow with the
second army.

Unfortunately for them, Pacheco had wind of the arrangement and, aware
of his great danger, resolved to save the Nairs their trouble. He
accordingly set friendly Nairs in palm-trees, and as soon as the first
army started they gave the fire signal. The King of Calicut hurried
forward, but in the darkness either army mistook the other for an
ambush of natives from Cochin, and a long, fierce battle followed
between them, while Pacheco listened to the uproar but awaited the
enemy in vain. At dawn the two hostile armies found out their mistake
and retired in horror and dismay, while Pacheco, like some great
gloating demon, appeared in the increasing light to add to their
confusion with his artillery.

This was the last serious attack, and one by one the lords and princes
opposed to him came to terms with Pacheco. By boundless energy,
complete fearlessness, bluff, and the power of inspiring men at will
with fear or with confidence and devotion, Pacheco had achieved this
amazing triumph, which certainly had far-reaching effects on Portuguese
rule in India.

The King of Cochin lacked Pacheco’s imposing personality, but he was
affectionate and reliable throughout, bidding his subjects obey Pacheco
as they would his own person, and this despite the fact that Pacheco’s
behaviour was often very disconcerting. More than once he all but
hanged some treacherous Moors, although the King had warned him that
this would entail the cutting off of provisions from Cochin.

On another occasion a body of hostile Nairs made a surprise attack on
the island of Cochin, but were beaten off by the workers in the rice
swamps with their rustic weapons. Their victory was the easier because
a Nair considered himself polluted if one of these low-caste peasants
approached him.

Pacheco, delighted at the victory of these humble workmen, and mindful
moreover of more than one desertion of Nairs at difficult moments,
suggested that the King should make Nairs of these men, in the belief
apparently that the caste system could be brushed aside or altered at
will.[10] It was only after heated and repeated argument that the King
was able to persuade him that the thing he asked was impossible. The
heroic labourers were, however, permitted to bear arms and to approach
Nairs in future.

For himself Pacheco refused the King’s spices and other gifts,
aware that he could ill afford them, and accepted only the strange
coat-of-arms that the King bestowed on him--five crowns of gold on a
crimson ground--emblem of the much blood he had shed in his victory
over five kings--surrounded by eight green castles on blue and white.

At the beginning of the year 1505 he set out for home, to the sorrow
of the King of Cochin, and in the summer arrived at Lisbon. He was
received with great honour; on the Thursday after his arrival he walked
with the King in solemn procession from the Cathedral to the Convent of
São Domingos. The Bishop of Vizeu preached, exalting Pacheco’s heroic
deeds, and similar services were held throughout Portugal. News of his
exploits were sent to the Pope and to the Kings of Christendom.

Pacheco received a yearly pension of 50,000 réis, a considerable sum in
those days,[11] and other gifts and favours, and he married D. Antonia
de Albuquerque, daughter of one of King Manoel’s secretaries. Better
still, he received further employment from the King, being entrusted
with the survey of the coast of South-East Africa.

Already in 1505 he was at work on his _Esmeraldo de Situ Orbis_,
which had to wait nearly four centuries for a publisher. He was more
accustomed to hold the sword than the pen, but his book contains much
of interest and affords occasional insight into the character of its
author. Thus he says--and the philosophic tone of the words is of
interest in view of the neglect and poverty into which he is said to
have fallen in his last years: “No one is content with his possessions,
and in the end eight feet of earth suffice us and there ends and is
consumed the vanity of our high thoughts,” and “Virtuous men who love
God and are of clean heart and uncovetous are never forsaken of the
grace of the Holy Spirit.”

He dwells more than once on the iniquity of oblivion wrought by time:
“Difference of ages and length of time hide the knowledge of things
and render them forgotten.” His descriptions are clearly those of
an eyewitness, as that of “a little river which flows from the top
of the mountains to the sea through reeds and mint and rushes and
wild-olives.” He praises Prince Henry the Navigator and King João II,
whose deeds are worthy to be told “by the ancient fathers of eloquence
and learning,” and it was in gratitude to them, a gratitude which
posterity shares, that he wrote: “Experience causes us to live free
of the false abuses and fables that some of the ancient cosmographers
recorded.”

Although the great events of India under the rule of Albuquerque may
have obscured the deeds of Pacheco, he was evidently not forgotten,
for in January 1509 he was sent with several ships against the French
pirate Mondragon and defeated and captured him off Cape Finisterre, and
probably about the year 1520 he was appointed Governor of the fort of
São Jorge de Mina, a coveted post on the west coast of Africa.

Tradition has it that he came home in irons, and he may have been the
victim of one of those accusations by subordinates which were becoming
so common in the Portuguese overseas possessions. Pacheco had shown of
old that he was one of those whom he calls _inimigos da cobiça_, with
thoughts set on higher things than gold. But a new king was on the
throne, who was but two years old when Pacheco was winning immortal
renown for the Portuguese in India, and it seems to have been the
general feeling that he was unfairly treated. Camões speaks of his
“harsh and unjust reward.”

It appears that he continued to receive his pension, yet he is said to
have died, about the year 1530, in extreme penury. We may be sure at
least that his heart did not quail before poverty any more than it had
before the countless host of Calicut. The recollection of his wiles and
devices during those hundred days at Cochin must have been a powerful
antidote to neglect and old age. “The thought of what he had done would
prove music to him at midnight.”

A few, no doubt, of the heroic ninety on whose behalf Pacheco wrote to
the King, recalling their services, survived, and they might discuss
the apparent miracle of their famous victory, and, in Pacheco’s words,
“the multitude of things in the very wealthy kingdoms of India,” glad
at heart the while to be at home under the more temperate sun of
Portugal and to rind their “eight feet of earth” in their own soil.


FOOTNOTES:

[10] “The nobles,” says Correa, “are called Nairs, and are men devoted
to war.” The peasants “are so accursed that if they go along a road
they must go shouting, lest Nairs should meet and kill them, for they
may not carry arms, whereas the Nairs are always armed. And if as they
go shouting a Nair answers they scuttle away into the wilds far from
the road.”

[11] The poet Luis de Camões, after his return from the East, supported
life on less than a third of that amount.


[Illustration: AFFONSO DE ALBUQUERQUE.

From Gaspar Correa, _Lendas da India_, frontispiece to vol. ii. pt. 1.]




VI

AFFONSO DE ALBUQUERQUE

(1462?-1515)

 Aquelle invencivel e espantoso capitão Affonso de Albuquerque.--HEITOR
 PINTO, _Imagem da Vida Christam_.

 O sem segundo Affonso de Albuquerque, honra de todos os advertidos
 e scientes capitães que teve o mundo.--JOÃO RIBEIRO, _Fatalidade
 historica da Ilha de Ceilão_.

 Albuquerque terribil, Castro forte.--CAMÕES, _Os Lusiadas_.


Had Affonso de Albuquerque died five or six years before he did the
world would never have realised that it had lost one of the greatest
men of all nations and ages. Born of an ancient family[12] about the
year 1460,[13] Albuquerque had in 1514 seen thirty-eight years’
service. He won the regard of Prince João in the campaign against Spain
in which that prince saved his father from irretrievable defeat, and he
became his equerry when he had succeeded to the throne as João II. He
also served with distinction in Africa.

It was in 1503, when he was over forty, that he first went to India. In
April of that year he sailed with his cousin Francisco de Albuquerque
in command of six ships, the chief object of the expedition being to
establish the friendship existing between the King of Cochin and the
Portuguese and to build a fort at Cochin. Albuquerque made no long stay
in India, and in July of the following year was back in Lisbon. But
he remained long enough to see the vast possibilities there of failure
or success for Portugal, and when, two years later, he again went out,
although he sailed as the subordinate of Tristão da Cunha, it was on
the understanding that he should soon obtain independent command and
with the provisional appointment as Governor of India in his pocket.

Smooth co-operation with other officials was not Albuquerque’s
strong point, and he felt no doubt that if he was to serve his King
and country as he would wish he must be able to act freely. It is
significant of his commanding personality that during his two years’
presence at Court he succeeded in imposing his views. In his absence
later his enemies were often able to tie him hand and foot even though
he was Governor of India.

There were two opposed policies. Hitherto the Portuguese in India had
been confined to the sea, and many considered that this situation
should continue. In a sense they were right, since it was obviously
impossible in so vast an empire to conquer and hold large tracts of
land. But Albuquerque considered that this floating empire should
be nailed down at cardinal points by capturing important towns and
building strong forts, and it was with this purpose that he went out to
India.

In the summer of 1507 he separated, according to his instructions, from
Tristão da Cunha, and when the latter returned to Portugal with the
rest of the fleet Albuquerque with his six ships remained in India. Of
these ships he has left a vivid description: there were no provisions,
the lances and other arms were few and rotten, with great scarcity of
cables, sails, and rigging; the powder was all wet, of bombardiers
there were but few, of carpenters one or two, and a hundred and fifty
men were dying of disease.

Even so he set to work to strike terror into the Moors and hammer the
Portuguese Empire into shape. Coasting down Arabia he sacked various
cities, spreading desolation with fire and sword and mercilessly
mutilating the Moors who surrendered. The poet Antonio Ferreira called
Albuquerque “clement.” It is not a clemency that we would wish to
encounter in ordinary life, and even among his contemporaries some
condemned his cruelty. Bishop Osorio, for instance, considered it as
unworthy of so great a man: _illius rebus gestis indignum_.

But although Albuquerque could be harsh and grim enough (his suggestion
to King Manoel that Spanish and Portuguese Jews in India should be
extinguished one by one is most sinister), and was quick to anger and
a stern disciplinarian, he had no delight in cruelty for cruelty’s
sake. He wished to reduce the Moors throughout India to subjection, and
considered that such acts would best spread the terror of his name and
conceal the difficulties of his position. He would have been the first
to admit that his policy in this respect was a sign of weakness.

Albuquerque’s first great achievement was the bombardment and capture
of the important city of Ormuz, at the entrance of the Persian
Gulf, and in October he set about building a fortress. Milton in the
following century wrote of “the wealth of Ormuz.” To Albuquerque it
was but the first stone in the vast edifice of his projects, but to
his captains it was already more than enough. They wished to be making
prizes on the high seas, not to be bottled up in Ormuz building a fort
as if they were masons. Albuquerque, to whom in their complaints they
were very much like gnats in a thunderstorm, went on with his work,
tore up their first petition and placed a second under a jamb of one of
the fort’s doorways as it was being built. This was too much for the
vanity of his captains and several of them sailed away to India.

The result of this desertion was that Albuquerque was obliged
temporarily to abandon Ormuz. Small wonder that he wrote of their
conduct with extreme bitterness. “Without shame or fear of the
King or your Lordship,” he says in his letter to the Viceroy, Dom
Francisco de Almeida, “they deserted me in time of war, and during
actual hostilities with this city they left me and fled.... Portuguese
gentlemen have been guilty of no such vileness these three hundred
years, nor have I read of any such in the ancient chronicles.”

Even if they had all the right in the world on their side, these men
had deserted in the presence of the enemy; and had they been shot by
order of the Viceroy there and then, Portuguese rule would have been
greatly helped and strengthened and not only many troubles but many
lives spared in the future.

But no such salutary discipline prevailed in India; the instructions
given to the captains were partly independent, and the Viceroy
received them courteously and bade them draw up a document of their
complaints. When Albuquerque arrived in India his enemies took care
to foster differences between him and the Viceroy, who was opposed
to Albuquerque’s policy and methods, and, after being treated with
great discourtesy, Albuquerque was placed under arrest. One of the
accusations of his captains was that he wished to make himself King of
Ormuz.

They little knew their man. To expect Albuquerque, whose dreams of
conquest were as wide and magnificent as those of Alexander, to
vegetate as King of Ormuz was a mistake as colossal as to believe that
Napoleon could be content to rule Elba. There can be no doubt that
Albuquerque was unjustly treated by men incapable of understanding him,
all the more so in that Almeida’s term of office was up and by right
it was Albuquerque and not he who should have been governing India.
Albuquerque for his part disdained to be conciliatory.

Fortunately for Albuquerque and for India his imprisonment only lasted
a few weeks. The arrival of the Marshal, Fernando Coutinho, from
Portugal put a new face on the situation; he released Albuquerque and
installed him as Governor of India. Almeida set out for, but never
reached, Portugal.

The year 1509 was almost out, and it is 1510 which marks the beginning
of Albuquerque’s victories. With the Marshal he attacked Calicut,
but the Marshal’s impetuous rashness (he was so nettled by a first
success of the impetuous but wise Albuquerque that he said he would
take Calicut with no other arm than a stick in his hand) involved the
expedition in disaster, and, although they sacked Calicut, the Marshal
and many of the Portuguese lost their lives in a disorderly retreat
to the ships, Albuquerque himself receiving a wound which permanently
disabled his left arm.

The rest of the year was occupied with Goa.[14] He obtained possession
of this city after a mere show of resistance, but a large and
ever-growing army of Turks forced him to abandon it after being reduced
to great straits and danger. Albuquerque had had fresh trouble with his
captains, but on the arrival of a few ships from Portugal he returned
to Goa in the autumn and stormed it. Most of the Moors were put to
the sword in a massacre which lasted four days. Some Moorish women of
almost white complexion he married to Portuguese soldiers. This was
a deliberate policy, approved by the King of Portugal, in order to
provide a peaceful settled population.

The possession of Goa changed the whole position of the Portuguese
in India. Remote kings who had hitherto looked on the new-comers as
passing freebooters now sent ambassadors offering friendship and
treaties.

Barely six months after taking Goa, Albuquerque stormed and sacked
Malaca, in Malay, a city which now belongs to the British Empire and
has about 100,000 inhabitants, and which then, in Albuquerque’s own
words, was “_muito grande cousa_.”[15] Of all the great spoils the
Governor characteristically reserved for himself only two great bronze
lions which he intended to have placed on his tomb. But his ship, laden
with the costliest plunder, much of which was intended for King Manoel,
met with a violent storm and foundered. Albuquerque, dressed in a brown
coat and anything that came to hand, escaped on a raft.

In 1513 he carried out his long-cherished project of an attack on Aden,
whence, he said, “vermilion, currants, almonds, opium, horses, dates,
gold” went to India. The Portuguese assaulted but failed to take the
town--in their eagerness the ladders broke again and again under their
weight--and it was not safe to blockade it for fear of adverse winds,
lack of water, and the large and speedy assistance the enemy might
expect. Swift cameleers carried the news of the attack in fifteen days
to Cairo, and, generally, the presence of a large Portuguese fleet in
the Red Sea made a far-reaching impression.

Albuquerque set out to attack Aden again in 1515, but was occupied for
some time at Ormuz, and fell ill there. He started to return to India,
and on the way received tidings from a passing boat that his successor
to the Governorship of India had been appointed, and many important
posts given to his personal enemies.

This was his death-blow. Only a year before he had written to the King
of his determination to continue in India for the rest of his life,
at whatever sacrifice to himself, for the sake of maintaining and
strengthening the empire he had won. Now heartbroken he exclaimed, “Out
of favour with men for the sake of the King, and out of favour with the
King for the sake of men. It is good to make an end.” He dictated a
last brief letter to the King “in the throes of death,” recommending
his son, and died as the ship came in sight of Goa, straining his eyes
to see the tower of the church he had founded (December 1515).

Next day his body, dressed in the habit of Santiago, was carried ashore
and buried amid universal grief. The natives perhaps mourned him
sincerely, since he had worked for their prosperity and his attitude
towards them, as distinguished from the Moors, had always been kindly.
The gods, they said, had summoned him to war in heaven. His enemies
continued to fear him even dead, so that King João III declared that
India would be safe so long as Albuquerque’s body remained there, and
it was only in 1566 that his bones were brought to Portugal.

A contemporary Portuguese historian, Barros, thus describes
Albuquerque: “He was a man of medium height, of a cheerful, pleasant
countenance, but when angry he had a melancholy look; he wore his beard
very long during the time of his command in India, and as it was white
it made him very venerable. He was a man of many witty sayings and
in some slight annoyances [_menencorias leves!_ Had not Barros read
Albuquerque’s letters?] during his command he said many things the wit
of which delighted those whom they did not immediately affect. He spoke
and wrote very well with the help of a certain knowledge of Latin [the
superior Barros!]. He was cunning and sagacious in business, and knew
how to mould things to his purpose, and had a great store of anecdotes
suited to different times and persons. He was very rough and violent
when displeased and he tired men greatly by his orders, being of a very
urgent disposition. He was very charitable and devout, ever ready to
bury the dead. In action he was somewhat impetuous and harsh. He made
himself greatly feared by the Moors and always succeeded in getting the
better of them.”

Another historian, Correa, who had served Albuquerque three years
as private secretary in India, knew him better and appreciated his
greatness. It is Correa who gives us an imposing glimpse of the
Governor of India two years before his death, _i.e._ at the time when
Albuquerque described himself as “a weak old man.” He was dressed “in
doublet and flowing open robe, as was then the fashion, all of black
damask streaked with black velvet, on his head a net of black and
gold thread, and above this a large cap of black velvet; in his belt
a dagger of gold and precious stones worth fifteen thousand crusados,
round his neck a thick chain; and his long white beard, knotted at the
end, gave him a very venerable presence.”

Albuquerque was sincerely devout, even to the verge of mysticism or
superstition. He believed that St. James went before the Portuguese on
a white horse guiding them to victory, and when in the Red Sea that a
fiery cross in the sky was specially sent to beckon him on to further
conquests.

There is a massive strength in all that he said and did.[16] After
he had subdued Ormuz its king hesitated whether he should pay
his customary tribute to Persia and sent to consult Albuquerque.
Albuquerque made a little collection of firearms and cannon-balls and
answered, “In this coin is the King of Portugal wont to pay tribute.”

But the whole man is in his letters, aptly described as being “written
with a sword.” Perhaps it is only in the letters of Napoleon that one
finds the same mingling of great plans and conceptions with a mastery
of the smallest details and concern for things which a lesser man would
scorn to notice.

This Governor, the fear of whose name extended far into China, to
whom the Kings of Narsinga and Persia, Siam, Cambaya, Turkey, and
Cairo sent gifts, the conqueror of Ormuz and Cananor, Goa and Malaca,
who dispatched his agents even to the remote Moluccas, and who was
determined to destroy Mecca (five hundred Portuguese were to ride
swiftly inland from the coast, take it by surprise and burn it to
ashes) and thought of altering the course of the Nile, did not disdain
to occupy himself with the alphabets for teaching children to read, the
missals and pontificals for churches, pearl-fisheries, the horse trade,
the colour of the Red Sea, how to pack quicksilver, and a hundred
other matters of great diversity, while on the question of arms and
merchandise to be sent from Portugal to India[17] no modern official
report could exceed his letters in accuracy and minuteness.

For instance, he declares that lances are sent out unsharpened, as they
come from the Biscay factories, to the care of a _barbeiro inchado_ in
India, and in 1513 says that he now has workmen in Goa who can turn out
better guns than those of Germany. Unfortunately in Portugal India was
regarded merely as a mine to be exploited, not as a field that required
farming in order to continue productive. Albuquerque, when, as he says,
over his neck in work, had to answer great bundles of letters from the
King, often filled with carping criticisms of his actions or containing
contradictory projects. He complains that there is a new policy for
each year, almost in the words of Dante in the _Purgatorio_:

                  fai tanto sottili
  Provvedimenti ch’ a mezzo Novembre
  Non giunge quel que tu d’Ottobre fili.

It must be confessed that Albuquerque in these letters, filled with the
eloquence of the Old Testament, gave as good as he got: the pity is
that the King probably only saw them in the official summaries. “Sir,
the soldiers in India require to be paid their salaries,” he says on
one occasion, or “Your Highness is not well informed,” and he warns
him that should matters continue as in the past the empire will come
crumbling about the King’s ears.

Again he writes that he is not amazed that the accusations should be
made, but amazed that the King should believe them. The names of his
accusers were withheld, as later in trials before the Inquisition, but
he knew whence the trouble came and does not mince his words in telling
the King of the corruption, greed, carelessness, and incompetence of
the officials in India appointed by the King. “And if I were not afraid
of Your Highness I would send you a dozen of these mischief-makers in a
cage.”

In five days he writes nineteen letters to the King, some of them
of considerable length, this task occupying him till dawn, after a
long day’s work. On a single day he wrote the King eight letters, one
of which contains a splendid general account of the state of India,
another is a little masterpiece describing the misdeeds of one of his
captains.

No doubt his critics believed him to be harsh and insensible.
That this was far from being the case is shown by the fact that on
receiving, amid a shower of blame and criticisms, a sympathetic letter
from his old friend, the historian Duarte Galvão, he shed tears, and
also by the deep feeling he displayed when a whole batch of letters
came from the King full of dispraise. “Your Highness blames me, blames
me, blames me,” he wrote, and again, “My spirits fell to the ground and
my hair turned twice as white as it was before.”

When, therefore, a few months after he had written of his intention to
return from Ormuz to India in order to see the King’s letters and know
if he had sent ships and men for the expedition against Aden, he heard
that his successor was appointed, it is scarcely an exaggeration to say
that the news killed him.

Albuquerque’s crime was to have thought of India and Portugal first,
before personal interests and ambitions. “They call me a harsh man,”
he said; and “these officials of yours do not love me.” But if he
could vigorously show his dislike of the false and slovenly, he always
liberally rewarded good service, was loyal, generous, and unselfish,
and showed a most delightful pleasure in any thorough work or workman.
“The best thing I ever saw,” he says of a map; and of a good carpenter,
“he is a marvellous man.”[18]

No sooner was Albuquerque dead than his greatness was felt, and
posterity has never sought to deny it. If we consider the conditions
under which his great work was accomplished in six years--his ships
often so rotten that they sank of sheer old age, his men few and
ill-armed (before he received reinforcements in October 1512 he says
that the whole number of Europeans under his command in India were but
1,200, of whom barely 300 were properly armed), the fact that all his
projects were liable to be upset by orders dictated in ignorance at
home, and that as soon as his back was turned (for instance, when he
went to attack Aden) all the officials in India treated him as dead and
his instructions as a dead letter--we will not deny that posterity has
done well to honour and admire this man in his lonely magnificence.
_Fannomi onore e di ciò fanno bene._

No doubt he had great faults, since everything in him was great. He
adopted oriental methods in dealing with the kings of the East. He
murdered in cold blood the powerful minister of the young King of
Cochin, and in one of his letters to King Manoel he remarks calmly, “In
all my letters I bade him kill the Samuri of Calicut with poison.” But
he understood the East and was the only man who could have established
the Portuguese Empire firmly. That he was not given a free hand and
every assistance from the first was the doom of that empire, and
Portugal never saw his like again.


FOOTNOTES:

[12] Albuquerque’s father, Gonçalo de Albuquerque, was in favour at
Court. His grandfather João Gonçalvez had been secretary to King João I
and King Duarte, but was hanged for murdering his wife in 1437.

[13] In 1461 or 1462. In one of his letters (April 1, 1512) he says
that he is fifty. Correa, who calls him old in 1509, says that he
was over seventy at the time of his death. Despite the very definite
assertion in his letter, perhaps the last word has not been said as to
his age. Misprints in these matters are common. Couto, for instance,
says that Albuquerque’s nephew Naronha is nearly seventy in 1538 and
eighty in 1540. All the historians call Albuquerque old, yet the
captain of a fortress was considered too young for the post because he
was under forty (Correa III, 687). On the other hand not Borrow merely
but Couto (VI. 2. ix) calls Castro old, although he did not live to be
fifty. Perhaps in Albuquerque’s letter we should read LX instead of L
(for indeed why should he speak so fatherly to King Manoel (1469-1521)
if he was not considerably older than the King?), and _sesenta_ for
_setenta_ in Correa.

[14] Goa is thus described by an early traveller: “La città di Goa è
la più fresca delle Indie e la più abbondante di tutte le cose da....
È detta città molto grande, con buone case e grandi e belle strade
e piazze, murata d’intorno con le sue torri e fatta in una buona
fortezza. Fuori di detta città vi erano molti horti e giardini copiosi
e pieni d’infiniti arbori fruttiferi, con molti stagni di acque; eranvi
molte moschee e case d’ orationi di gentili. Il paese d’intorno è molto
fertile e ben lavorato.”

[15] The same traveller says: “Questa città di Malaca è la più ricca
scala di più ricchi mercatanti e di maggior navigatione e traffico che
si possa trovare nel mondo.”

[16] The story, maliciously recorded by Barros, that Albuquerque sent
ruby and diamond rings to the historian Ruy de Pina to jog his memory
in relating the events of India, may or may not be true. In a way it is
characteristic, for Albuquerque, if he wished for Pina’s praise, which
one may be inclined to doubt, was not a man to beat about the bush.
Perhaps after all it was more honest to plump down the rubies than to
indulge in _elogio mutuo_.

[17] In one letter he bids the King plant all the marsh-lands of
Portugal with poppies, since opium is the most welcome merchandise in
India.

[18] _Estimava muito os homens cavalleiros_, says Correa, who knew him
personally and insists more than once that he was very accessible. To
cope with what Albuquerque himself calls the “mountains of petitions”
that beset him he employed six or seven secretaries, but he dealt with
them unconventionally, signing them or tearing them up in the street as
they were given him, thereby expediting his business but offending the
vanity of the petitioners.


[Illustration: JOÃO DE CASTRO.]




VII

DOM JOÃO DE CASTRO

(1500-1548)

 Era tambem de sua pessoa tam esforçado como em letras insigne.--PEDRO
 DE MARIZ, _Dialogos de Varia Historia_.

 In that low shady quinta, embowered amongst those tall alcornoques,
 once dwelt John de Castro, the strange old Viceroy of India.--GEORGE
 BORROW, _The Bible in Spain_.


Castro was still a schoolboy when Albuquerque died. Born in 1500, the
son of D. Alvaro de Castro, in high office under Kings João II and
Manoel, and a daughter of the Count of Abrantes, he studied with the
famous mathematician, Pedro Nunez, and had a scientific as well as
a classical education. There is every reason to believe that he was
a promising and fervent scholar, but the victories of Dom Duarte de
Meneses in North Africa appealed to him even more than did the figures
of Euclid, and in 1518 he “took the key of the fields” and fled to
Tangier. There he served with the greatest distinction for nine years,
and stood high in favour with the Governor, Meneses, who knighted him
and on his return to Portugal in 1527 furnished him with a glowing
recommendation to the King.

Of the next few years of his life comparatively little is known. He
received a _comenda_ from the King, was employed on various service,
and married D. Leonor de Coutinho, of noble family but poor. Probably
he was able to devote considerable time to quiet study. In 1535 he
commanded one of the twenty-five Portuguese ships in the Emperor
Charles V’s victorious expedition against Tunis. It was on this
occasion that Castro’s lifelong friend, the gallant poet Prince Luis,
followed his example of 1518 and ran away to join the expedition
against the wishes of his brother King João III.[19]

In the autumn Castro was back in his favourite Cintra. There he himself
planted a _quinta_, to which his thoughts, later in India, constantly
turned. Those who go along the delightful shady road of orchard
and running streams, rock and woodland from Cintra to Monserrate
and Collares come in a few minutes to an archway and green door on
the right. It is here, in the _quinta_ now known as _Penha Verde_,
overlooking the fertile plain of Collares to the sea, that Castro, like
Pitt planting by moonlight or Garibaldi in his island, indulged his
love of husbandry.

“Here,” says one of his early biographers, “he entertained himself with
a new and strange kind of agriculture, for he cut down fruit-bearing
trees and planted wild woods, perhaps to show that he was so
disinterested that not even from the earth would he expect reward. Yet
it is no wonder if one who disdained the rubies and diamonds of the
East should think little of the products of Cintra’s rocks.” It was to
the _matos_ of the Serra de Cintra that he longed to return in 1546.
But he certainly did not despise the fruits of the soil, and probably
occupied himself with grafting experiments.

In the spring of 1538, as perhaps previously in the spring of 1537,
he sailed to India as captain of a ship. The fleet arrived at Goa
in September 1538 and went on to the relief of Diu. In March of the
following year he returned to Goa, and two years later accompanied the
new Governor, Dom Estevão da Gama, to the Red Sea.

On all these occasions Castro kept a log or _roteiro_, from Lisbon
to Goa, from Goa to Diu, and from Goa to the Red Sea. They display
a strong scientific interest, a spirit thoroughly modern--nothing,
however small it might be, was to him necessarily unimportant or
negligible--or perhaps ancient, since he complains that in his day the
scientific investigations of the ancients were no longer in vogue. The
logs are written with that vivid directness which mark his letters,
“written,” he said, “not for the ladies and gallants of the Court and
royal palaces, but for the mariners of Leça and Mattosinhos.”

His descriptions are precise and accurate, which does not prevent
them from being often picturesque. He notices many birds, including
one white and grey which, he says, the sailors call _frades_ (monks).
“I pay great attention to eclipses of the moon,” he writes, as also
to longitudes and latitudes, fishes, seaweeds, currents, winds, the
colour of the Red Sea, and every detail that might concern the art
of navigation, to the delight of his friends Dr. Pedro Nunez and
Prince Luis, who had furnished him with special instruments and other
assistance for his voyage.

In the summer of 1542 he was back at Cintra, but in December of that
year he was appointed to the command of the coast fleet, the main
duties of which were to keep clear the coast of Portugal from pirates,
such as Mondragon, who perpetually hovered in wait for the priceless
spoils and cargoes of Portuguese ships homeward bound from India. He
seems to have gone to sea before the end of the year and held this
post for two years, with a brief interval in 1543 when he commanded
the Portuguese fleet sent to co-operate with the Spanish against
Barbarossa. They did not come to an engagement, and Dom João, after
visiting Ceuta, returned to Portugal.

He was at Cintra in the beginning of 1545 when the unwelcome news
reached him that he had been appointed Governor of India. Most
unwillingly he accepted this new post, the difficulties and disquiet of
which he had been able to gauge at first hand during his former sojourn
in Goa. His young sons were to accompany him.

A picturesque story of the Governor-elect cannot be better told than
in the words of the historian Couto, who served under him in India:
“Passing one day by the door of a tailor [in Lisbon] he noticed a
pair of very rich and fashionable velvet breeches, and pulling up his
horse asked to see them. After examining their curious workmanship he
asked whose they were. The tailor, not knowing whom he was addressing,
answered that they were for a son of the Governor who was going to
India. Dom João de Castro thereupon in a rage took up a pair of
scissors and cut them into shreds. “Bid that young man buy arms,” he
said to the tailor, and so passed on.”

At the end of March the fleet sailed. The number of men actually
enlisted was eight hundred, but many more who had been rejected for
some defect or were escaping from justice succeeded in embarking as
stowaways. In the Governor’s ship alone there were nearly two hundred
of them, and they required to be fed during a voyage of many weeks. The
Governor was advised to cast them adrift in the provision ship or to
maroon them in the Cape Verde Islands, but humanely and persistently
refused.

He had not been long at Goa when, in April 1546, news was brought
that a formidable attack was being prepared against Diu, the fort
commanded by the heroic Dom João de Mascarenhas. Castro sent his son
Dom Alvaro with a strong fleet to its relief. The fleet was delayed by
violent storms, and when it finally reached Diu there was little of the
fortress left. The walls and bulwarks were levelled with the ground,
most of the defenders dead, and those who remained either wounded or
ill. No one but Mascarenhas could have held on in such conditions, and
even so “six more days,” wrote Castro to the King, “and relief would
have come too late.”

Most of the nobles in Diu were dead, and among them Dom João de
Castro’s other son, Fernando, who had been blown up with many others on
a mined part of the wall on which they had rashly remained, although
warned by Mascarenhas of their danger. “He should have obeyed Dom
João,” wrote Castro stoically to the King, and he added: “Of what Dom
Fernando did till the time of his death I will say nothing to your
Highness, for it cannot be that men are so wicked but that some among
them will inform your Highness of the services and great exertions that
my sons undergo in your service.”

The King of Cambaya still boasted of victory, and Dom João de Castro
himself sailed north with a powerful fleet from Goa. After striking
terror into the enemy by ravaging the coast of Cambaya, setting it all
aflame and, in his own words, “sparing no living thing,” he left these
shores covered with dead and crossed to Diu.

The fortress was now again invested by an army of 60,000 Moors, and
in the battle with the besieging force the Governor was himself more
than once in the greatest danger before the enemy was routed. Indeed,
it was his personal exertions which largely decided the day, and with
pardonable pride he wrote to the King that it was “the greatest victory
ever seen in all the East.”

He sent the King a long list of those who had conspicuously
distinguished themselves, and for himself he asked for the reward or
_alviçaras_ which it was customary to give to a general who had won
a battle or taken a city. “And because your Highness may give me one
unsuited to my nature and mode of life, I will ask for it specifically,
and it is that you should grant me a chestnut-grove which you have in
the Serra de Cintra, by the King’s Fountain, bordering on my _quinta_,
that my servants, having chestnuts to eat on my estate, may not go
plundering what does not belong to them. Its value may be ten or twelve
thousand réis, but to me it will be worth many thousands of crusados.”

There may be something a little theatrical and fantastic (contemporary
historians call him _bizarro_ and _fanfarrão_) in some of Castro’s
actions in India, in his Albuquerquian prowess on the coast of Cambaya,
the pawning of his beard (again in imitation of Albuquerque), his
triumphal entry into Goa, his preparation of stakes on which to spit
the Sultan as Pacheco had prepared one for the Samuri of Calicut; but
there can be no doubt of the sincerity of his desire to obtain this
Cintra _castanhal_.

After his victory he besought the King not to prolong his term of
office beyond the ordinary three years, and to allow him to return to
the Serra de Cintra, and in his will he says: “I have near Cintra a
_quinta_, called the Quinta of the King’s Fountain, which I made, and
to which I am greatly devoted because I made it and because it is in
a country where my father and ancestors were born,” while his letters
contain several pathetic references of the same kind.[20]

After his victory over the Moors, Dom João de Castro set about
rebuilding Diu, and to obtain money sent an appeal to the citizens of
Goa with some hairs of his beard in pawn,[21] since it was impossible
to send the bones of his son, as he had first intended, his death being
but recent. The citizens of Goa responded nobly to the appeal, and when
the Governor returned to Goa in the spring of 1547 received him with
great rejoicing. His barbaric “triumph” has been often described.

“He was richly Cloath’d, giving the season its due, and became them
as well and sprightly as his Arms. He had on a French suit of crimson
satin, with Gold twist about the Slashes and Seams, and, not to forget
he was a Souldier, he put on a Coat of Mail wrought on Cloth of Gold
with Buttons of Plate [_i.e._ silver].

“The Magistrates of the City received the Governour under a Canopy and
presently a Citizen of Quality, reverently bowing, took his Hat from
his Head, putting him on a Crown of Triumph and in his Hand a Palm.

“The ladies from their Windows sprinkled the Triumpher with distilled
Waters of diverse Spices.”[22]

In Portugal, too, the news of the victory before Diu was received
with universal exultation. The King raised Castro to the dignity
of Viceroy--the fourth Viceroy of India--granted him ten thousand
crusados, and gave his son Dom Alvaro the command of the Indian Sea.
But instead of allowing him to return he prolonged his term of office
for another four years. Castro was ill at the time, and shortly
afterwards this “saint and hero,” as the modern Portuguese historian
Oliveira Martins calls him, died at Goa in the arms of his friend St.
Francis Xavier (June 1548).

Thus Albuquerque, whose ties with Portugal had been gradually replaced
by those that bound him to Goa, which he had made, as Castro his
_quinta_, died with the bitter knowledge that, if he lived, he must
spend his years in Portugal, a whale among minnows, and watch his work
being undone by others; Castro, with his thoughts ever turning to the
rocks and woods of Cintra and the study of philosophy in his beloved
_quinta_, died in a foreign grandeur at Goa. He died in poverty, for,
ever disinterested and humane and generous towards others, he had spent
his money on the soldiers whom the State neglected to pay, and himself
remained penniless.

The last scene of his life in which he addressed the chief officials
and magistrates of Goa is almost as famous as the pawning of his beard.
“I am not asham’d, gentlemen, to tell you that the Vice Roy of India
wants in this sickness those Conveniences the meanest Souldier finds
in the Hospitals. I came to Serve not to Traffick in the East, I would
to your Selves have pawn’d the Bones of my Son and did pawn the Hairs
of my Beard to assure you I had no other Plate or Hangings in the
House to buy me a Hen, for in the Fleets I set forth the Souldiers fed
upon the Governour’s Salary before the King’s pay, and ’tis no wonder
for the Father of so many children to be poor. I request of you during
the time of this Sickness to order me out of the King’s Revenue a
proportionable maintenance and to appoint a Person of your own who may
provide me a moderate allowance.”[23]

It may be said that for the Governor of a great Empire to leave himself
without the means “to buy me a Hen” was the height of extravagance, but
that is only the cavil of a more mundane spirit, incapable of attaining
so heroic a sublimity, and his countrymen, at least, have always
been grateful to Castro for ostentatiously proving that amid all the
prevailing corruption there remained one honest man.

Like Albuquerque and Gama, he died in harness. But, great as Castro was
as a soldier, he would in all probability have been no less celebrated
for his services to literature had it been granted him to spend his
old age in the quiet of his shady _quinta_.

Couto ends his portrait of the Viceroy thus: “And for his great
charity, temperance, disinterestedness, exceeding love of God, and
other qualities of a good Christian, it may be affirmed that he will be
receiving in glory the prize and guerdon of all his trouble and toil.”
By his energy, vigour of thought and action, by his splendid character,
humane and resolute, he closed the most brilliant half-century of
Portugal’s history with a key of gold.


FOOTNOTES:

[19] The Emperor, who was the Prince’s cousin and brother-in-law,
welcomed him with open arms at Barcelona. On one occasion, when neither
would go through a door before the other and the Emperor insisted on
Prince Luis being the first to pass, the latter seized a torch from one
of the pages and so preceded him.

[20] In a letter to King João III from India he recalls all his
services since the age of eighteen and says: “For the love of God and
in reward for these services I beg your Highness to allow me to return
to Portugal to live with my wife and children and end the few troubled
days that remain to me in the Serra de Cintra,” and in 1540 he writes
to Prince Luis that only the arrival of a Turkish fleet in India will
prevent him from returning to Portugal.

[21] Then, as in the Middle Ages, the beard was considered an
honourable pledge, and men swore by it as Zeus might swear by the River
Styx. Albuquerque in India had given some hairs of his beard to a
soldier and afterwards redeemed them by a payment of money.

[22] From Sir Peter Wyche’s picturesque seventeenth-century translation
of Jacinto Freire de Andrada’s _Life of Dom João de Castro_.

[23] Wyche’s version.


_Printed by Hazell, Watson & Viney, Ld., London and Aylesbury._




Transcriber’s Notes

A few minor errors in punctuation have been corrected.

The spelling of “King Diniz” changed to “King Dinis” in a few spots
throughout the text.



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