Chapter II: The Period of Glory and Discovery (2)

The success which had attended the attack on Alcacer-Seguier animated Alfonso to renew the attempt on Tangier. Accordingly, in 1464, he sailed with another armament. The assault was repulsed with deplorable loss; the flower of the Portuguese chivalry either perished on the spot, or were compelled to surrender. The king himself had considerable difficulty in effecting his escape. For some years the result of this inglorious expedition seems to have inspired him with too much dread to renew the attempt; but, in 1471, he embarked thirty thousand men on board 308 transports, and proceeded to invest Arsilla, a fortress on the Atlantic. The king himself, and his son the infante João, were among the foremost in the assault. The Portuguese massacred all--as well those who resisted as those who threw down their arms in token of submission--with diabolical fury. In this work of destruction João was behind none of his countrymen. Terrified by the fate of Arsilla, the inhabitants of Tangier abandoned the city with all their movable substance. It was immediately occupied by the Christians, and it was formed into an episcopal see. From these successes, the Portuguese courtiers surnamed their king Africanus--an epithet which, with any other people, would have been considered a bitter satire. Throughout his operations in Africa he had shown great incapacity, and had met with unparalleled reverses; nor were the successes recently obtained in any way attributable to his valour or abilities, but to those of his generals and his son. The latter, who had attained his sixteenth year, was knighted on this occasion.[e]

ALFONSO V AND LA BELTRANEJA

We have now reached a shameful page in the history of Portugal. A vision passed through the brain of Alfonso V of uniting beneath his sceptre the kingdoms of Portugal and Castile. He thought to realise his dream by marrying his niece Doña Juana, daughter of his sister Doña Juana and of King Henry IV of Castile, who would succeed to that throne upon the death of her father. But Alfonso V was too faint-hearted and too unskilful a politician for so great an ambition, which had already turned the weak head of his predecessor Ferdinand I.

[Sidenote: [1475-1479 A.D.]]

On the death of Henry IV of Castile his daughter Doña Juana inherited the throne, she having been recognised and sworn queen of Castile even during her father’s life. Nevertheless Ferdinand, king of Aragon, who was married to Isabella of Castile, disputed her claim. It was then that Alfonso V sought to unite upon his own head the crown of Portugal and Castile by marrying his niece, the queen Doña Juana. The marriage took place by proxy at Palencia, in May, 1475. The pope, Paul II, was prevailed upon to grant the dispensation of consanguinity, but it was immediately revoked by his successor, Sixtus IV.

How different was the character of Alfonso V from that of some of his predecessors! How weak was his policy! The grandson of João I never even completed his marriage, in spite of his ambition to be king of Portugal and Castile, Doña Juana having been recognised and sworn queen of Castile even during her father’s life. What a difference between Alfonso V and his predecessor Alfonso III, who mocked at Rome and the pontiff, married one wife, with another living, raised one queen and deposed another, in spite of the excommunications of the Vatican, creating a strong faction in Portugal and getting himself proclaimed king; politically availing himself of every element in and out of the country to accomplish his ends, and only repenting on his death-bed, when he had won everything. It might be said that the cold British blood of his grandmother Philippa of Lancaster was still dominant in Alfonso V who, according to certain chronicles, observed complete chastity after the death of his wife, Queen Isabella.

In the meantime intrigues were active in Spain; one argument, on which great stress was laid against the claims of Alfonso V, was that Juana was the child of adultery, for the faction of Ferdinand and Isabella of Aragon never wearied of repeating that she was not the daughter of Henry IV of Castile, but of Beltran de la Cuenca [whence she was called the Beltraneja], making great sport of the dissolute morals of Juana, the sister of the king of Portugal, and mother of his bride. In the end the two factions came to blows. The fortune of war went against the Portuguese, who were defeated at the battle of Toro in 1476, in spite of the prodigies of valour performed in this battle by the infante Dom João, heir to the throne.

[Sidenote: [1479-1483 A.D.]]

Defeated in battle, Alfonso V attempted to gain his end by policy, for which he had not the necessary dexterity. He bethought himself of attempting to persuade Louis XI, king of France, to take his part and give him the help and protection of his troops to place the crowns of Portugal and Castile upon his head. The king of France remained unmoved, although the king of Portugal went in person to solicit his help. In disgust Alfonso V announced his intention of visiting Palestine, and declared to his son, Prince João, whom he had appointed regent during his absence from Spain, that in such a case he should be proclaimed king. But he returned unexpectedly in 1477, and on the 14th of September, 1479, signed the peace with Castile at Alcantara--a shameful treaty, by which the king of Portugal abandoned his wife, who was forced to become a nun and exchange the crown for the veil. She entered the convent of St. Clair in Santarem in 1479, afterwards passing to the convent of St. Clair of Coimbra, where she was professed on the 17th of November, 1480. In the meanwhile the negotiations were so prolonged that the prince Dom João lost patience, and with his impulsive disposition took upon himself to send the Castilian ambassadors two documents, one declaring for peace and the other for war, bidding them choose without further parley. Upon this final resolution, the Castilians concluded the negotiations. Greater energy on the part of Alfonso V might perhaps, even at the end of the dispute, have obtained less shameful and degrading conditions of peace. Alfonso V, crushed and reduced to the last extremity of consternation, was resolved to convoke the cortes and abdicate in favour of his son, when he fell sick of the plague at Cintra, and died in the very room of the palace in which he was born, on the 28th of August, 1481.[k]

With the exception of the accidental success in Africa, his reign was almost uniformly disastrous--a misfortune more owing to the deplorable weakness of his character than to any other cause. He founded the order of the Tower and Sword, under the invocation of Santiago, and was a great patron of literature; he was the first of the Portuguese kings to collect a library, and to order the national history to be treated by competent writers. His reign is, however, somewhat redeemed by the discoveries of the infante Henry, who, from his residence at Tagus, continued to fix his eyes intently on the maritime regions of western Africa. Through this enlightened prince, the Azores, with the Madeiras, the Canaries, Cape de Verd, and other islands west of that great continent were discovered or colonised. The discovery of the Cape de Verd, the last which illustrated the life of Henry, was owing to the enterprise of a Genoese, Antonio Nolle, who had derived a confused knowledge of their existence from the ancient geographers, and who, from some dissatisfaction with his own country, offered his services to the prince. Having coasted from Morocco to Cape de Verd, he deviated westwards and soon fell in with the islands, which he called after the cape of that name.[e]

REIGN OF JOÃO II “THE PERFECT”

[Sidenote: [1481-1495 A.D.]]

Dom João II was now proclaimed king. His accession to the throne was the signal for a despotic war against the aristocracy and the territorial influence of magnates. João began by convoking the cortes at Evora in 1481. A law was then published introducing a new oath to be taken by all the chief alcaides and holders of grants. The restrictions placed upon the criminal jurisdiction of the nobility, the examination of grants, and the diminution of the political influence of the nobles, produced great discontent among the aristocracy, which gave rise to intrigues, plots, and conspiracies, which João II, following the example of Louis XI of France, repressed with all severity, not sparing blood nor executions even of his own kindred. Under these circumstances João II seized the opportunity of satisfying his vengeance and giving vent to the hatred which he had nourished for many years against the duke of Braganza, Dom Ferdinand, his second cousin, who was married to his wife’s sister. He had him publicly beheaded at Evora on the 22nd of June, 1483; he is now judged to have been innocent of the crime of high treason imputed to him.

In the following year, João II with his own hands plunged a dagger into the breast of the duke of Viseu, his cousin and brother-in-law, in the palace of Setubal, for having conspired against him. After his death the duke was judged and condemned (a ludicrous determination of the despotic monarch) and his accomplices executed. The bishop of Evora, who was accused of being concerned in the conspiracy, was ordered to be thrown into a well; and more than eighty nobles and fidalgoes paid with their lives for the opposition which they made or were accused of making to the king’s policy. It was the second time that the assassin’s dagger had been publicly used in Portugal in the royal palace, by a prince upon whose brow the crown of the kingdom was to rest. Both the royal assassins were excellent kings, who governed the country diligently with courage and wisdom, raised it and gave it prosperity. In the case of the blow struck by João II, it is to be noted that it was dealt to a subject whom the king might easily have committed to a proper trial, with the certainty of finding judges who would condemn those guilty of high treason. To lessen the awful impression which these extraordinary assassinations make upon the mind and the stain which they leave upon the memory of these monarchs, it is necessary to consider the political circumstances and the ideas and customs of those times. Things inadmissible to our present civilisation were not so to the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries--above all when the deed was that of an absolute king who had to render an account to God alone.

There is no doubt that the wealth and therefore the influence successively acquired by the nobility had reached such a pitch that they absorbed the best revenues of the land, vexing the people by the insolence, cupidity, and abuses which oppressed the vassals of the great lords and proprietors, though Portugal happily never suffered the terrors of feudalism. This excessive power of the nobles dated from the time of João I, who was forced to create a new aristocracy to enable him to combat the king of Castile, most of the old nobility having joined the Castilian banners, and to liberally divide the property of the crown with those who were faithful to his cause. The king afterwards endeavoured to obviate the inconvenience of these excessive grants by the “mental law” (_lei mental_), which, without revoking the grants already made to the possessions thereof and their lawful descendants, put great restrictions upon the alienation of such property. The mental law, published only in the reign of Dom Duarte, did not have the desired result; the infante Dom Pedro, during his troubled regency, was forced to make concessions which decreased the patrimony of the crown.

But the reign of Alfonso V was above all disastrous upon this point, as we have said; it was the best time for the nobles and holders of grants. To remunerate the nobles who fought at his side, the luckless pretender to the throne of Castile considered nothing too much--titles, favours, grants, salaries, pensions, allowances, marriage dowries, education of the children of nobles, gratifications for ordinary and extraordinary services, real or pretended; everything was conceded with liberality and profusion by the monarch who was called the African, but might more properly have been called the Prodigal.[158]

The internal political situation as well as the state of the treasury called for an effectual remedy, and it is certain that only an energetic, inflexible, and dauntless character such as that of João II could have applied by sheer force a prompt though violent remedy. It may therefore be said that the king, who was called “the perfect prince,” rendered a memorable service to the country by the tremendous blow which he struck at the aristocracy and territorial power, restoring freedom of action to the crown, and liberating the public exchequer from the heavy charges and expenses placed upon it by the nobility. It is not surprising that in this struggle between the crown and the nobility the middle classes and the people should be found on the side of the king, since he made the offences, sufferings, oppression, complaints, and petitions represented by the deputies of the councils in the cortes of 1481 his chief pretext and principal weapon in declaring mortal war against the aristocracy and allying himself with the people.

Thus there was a firm alliance between the king and the people, although João II convoked the cortes only three times during his reign, and the crown and councils were generally on the best of terms. On the 12th of July, 1491, the prince Dom Alfonso went hunting in Almeirim, and as he was galloping at nightfall the horse took fright at some object which lay across the path, and fell, dragging the prince with him. He was picked up speechless and unconscious, and carried to a fisherman’s hut where he died a few hours later in the arms of his father, mother, and wife.

This untimely death was a great affliction to the king and queen of Portugal, especially to João II, who thereby lost his hope of an heir to his throne; for by the death of Prince Alfonso the right of succession fell upon Dom Emmanuel, duke of Beja, the brother of Queen Leonora and of the duke of Viseu whom he had stabbed at Setubal. The thought that the crown of Portugal would pass to his wife’s family oppressed and tormented João II. The probability that his brother-in-law Dom Emmanuel (Manoel), the duke of Beja, whom he hated, would be king of Portugal, put his cousin the king beside himself. In this affliction João II thought of having his natural son Jorge [or George] acknowledged as his successor. Jorge was master of the orders of Santiago and Aviz, and duke of Coimbra. But Dom João did not carry out his intention; he remembered the precedent of João I, but the clear judgment of his wife, Donna Leonora, pointed out to him that the circumstances were very different; on the one hand there was no fear of foreign invasion as in the days of the master of Aviz, while on the other hand the king had left wounds still unhealed from his war against the aristocracy. Upon the death of João II, 1495, Dom Jorge had not sufficient partisans to secure to him the crown which his father so earnestly longed to bequeath him.[k]

_Character of João II_

João was a great prince--comprehensive in his views, vigorous in the execution of his designs, as he was cautious and politic in their formation; zealous for justice, and for the happiness of his people. That zeal, however, sometimes degenerated into vengeance, and was sometimes disarmed by capricious clemency. But his character will be better conceived from a few striking traits or sayings (and many such are recorded of him) than from any description.

He placed little value on the recommendations of his nobles; and a favour solicited through their medium was almost sure to be denied. But he was fond of honouring and rewarding merit, especially when, as is generally the case, that merit was dumb.[159] To a faithful and valiant knight he one day observed: “You have hands to serve me; have you no tongue to request a recompense?” Being at dinner, he was once served among others by Dom Pedro de Melo, a knight of great prowess, who was better fitted for handling the sword than a dish in the palace of princes, and let fall a large vessel of water, which sprinkled some of the courtiers, and made others laugh. “Why do you laugh?” inquired the king; “Dom Pedro has dropped a vessel of water, but he never dropped his lance!” He had borrowed money of a rich merchant at Tavira, to whom, at the expiration of the stipulated period, he returned it with legal interest. The merchant--a wonderful instance of disinterestedness in such a capacity--refused to receive more than the principal; João sent double interest, with the order to continue doubling it as often as the merchant should persist in the refusal. In one of his public edicts, with the view of recruiting his cavalry, he ordered all his subjects to be in readiness to furnish excellent war-horses. The churchmen pleaded their immunities, and some of them went so far as to say that they were not his subjects but those of the pope. To punish them in the way they deserved, João loudly asserted that he had never regarded them as subjects; and by another ordinance he forbade all smiths and farriers to shoe their mules and horses--a measure which soon compelled them to submit. The monopolists in corn had created an artificial famine by purchasing and piling in their warehouses all the grain in the kingdom, which they refused to sell under an exorbitant price. By a royal ordinance the people were forbidden to purchase from these dealers, and the Castilians were permitted to import in whatever quantities they pleased; the kingdom soon teemed with abundance, and the monopolists were ruined. He was a great enemy to detraction. One praised a recent feat of arms of a Portuguese governor in Africa: another attempted to detract from it by saying that the success was merely owing to chance. “That may be,” observed the king: “but how is it that such chance never happens to anyone else?” Nor was he less jealous of his dignity with foreign princes than with his own subjects. A Portuguese vessel had been captured by some French pirates: he ordered all the French vessels in his ports to be seized. The owners complained to their king, Charles VIII, who immediately punished the pirates, and caused their prize to be restored. It was found, however, that a parrot had not been restored with the rest, and he insisted that every vessel should be retained until the bird were produced. In short, the success of his administration was unrivalled; he introduced industry and comfort among his people; added largely to the national resources; and was in many respects the greatest monarch that ever swayed the sceptre of Portugal.

In the reign of this prince, the Portuguese spirit of maritime enterprise was carried to a high pitch--a spirit which, except in one instance,[160] he was always anxious to foster. His first care was to found a fort on the coast of Guinea, which had been discovered during the preceding reign, for the purpose of maintaining a permanent commercial intercourse with the natives. The barbarian king, who had entered into an alliance with the strangers, consented to the erection of the fortress. From this moment Portugal, or rather her monarchs, derived a great revenue in ivory and gold from this unknown coast; so great, indeed, that he feared lest the vessels of other European nations should be attracted to it. To damp their avidity, he took care that the voyage should be represented not merely as difficult, but as in the highest degree dangerous; and as impossible to be undertaken in regular ships; in any other than the flat-bottomed round smacks at that time peculiar to Portugal. The secret, however, was near coming to the knowledge of the vigilant monarch of Castile, who suspected the truth, and who longed to obtain a settlement on the same coast. In the hope of a princely reward, a Portuguese captain and two pilots proceeded to Castile. They were pursued into the neighbouring territory by the agents of João; and, as they refused to obey the summons of recall, two were killed on the spot, and the third brought back to Evora, where he was quartered. The severity of this punishment sank deep into the minds of the other pilots, and retained them in the service of their own sovereign. And when João heard that vessels were constructing in the English ports, unknown to Edward IV, and at the cost of the duke de Medina Sidonia, for an expedition to Ethiopia,--so the Portuguese termed all central Africa from the Nile to the western coast,--he sent an embassy to the English monarch, whom he reminded of the ancient alliance between the two crowns, and whom he easily induced to prohibit the preparations. In a short time, the fortress of São Jorge da Mina (Elmina) became a considerable city, and afterwards infamous from the traffic in slaves.

But this was only the beginning of Portuguese enterprise. The king had been taught to suspect that by coasting the African continent a passage to the East Indies might be discovered; and he not only equipped two small squadrons expressly for this object, but despatched two of his subjects (Pedro de Covilhão and Alfonso de Payva) into India and Abyssinia, to discover the route to and between these vast regions, and what advantages Portuguese commerce might derive from the knowledge thus acquired.

PROGRESS IN DISCOVERY

[Sidenote: [1487-1497 A.D.]]

The discoveries of Covilhão encouraged João to attempt the passage to India. One of the squadrons--that under João Alfonso de Aveiro--discovered the kingdom of Benin. The other, under Cam, was more fortunate. Crossing the equinox, he arrived at the mouth of the Congo. He coasted two hundred leagues further to the south; but finding no cape, he returned to Congo, and was honourably received by the barbarian king, whom he disposed to Christianity, and impressed with a favourable idea of European civilisation. His departure affected the half convert, who besought him to return with missionaries, and who at the same time permitted several natives to accompany him, for the purpose of being thoroughly instructed in the new faith. By the Portuguese king and court they were received with great joy, and at their express desire were soon regenerated in the waters of baptism, he, his queen, and many of the nobles standing sponsors at the font. After a residence of two years in Europe, they returned to Congo, accompanied by several monks, some mechanics and agricultural labourers, and an embassy, headed by Ruy de Sousa. Hundreds repaired to the missionaries for instruction; the idols were broken or removed; a church was built, and mass celebrated with imposing pomp. But to renounce worldly pleasures, and to mortify the strongest passions, to forego the privilege of many wives, and the gratification of revenge--were too much for these licentious barbarians. By degrees the new faith changed, and was finally extinguished.

Though no paramount advantage was derived from the alliance with Congo, the discoveries of Cam led to a solid one--that of the Cape of Good Hope. This memorable discovery was made in 1487, by Bartholomeu Dias, an officer of equal enterprise and experience. The high winds and still higher seas which assailed this vast promontory induced the captain to call it the Cape of Storms; but João, who had more extended views, called it O Cabo da Boa Esperança, or the Cape of Good Hope. On this occasion Dias ventured little beyond the promontory; nor was it passed by any vessel until the following reign, when the famous Vasco da Gama doubled it on his voyage to India.[e]

_Martius’ Account of Vasco and Cabral_

[Sidenote: [1497 A.D.]]

To Covilhão belongs the honour of marking the itinerary of the voyage to India, asserting that the East might be reached by the south of Africa. In the letters which he sent from Cairo, he said that ships navigating along the coast of Guinea would ultimately reach the extreme south of the African continent; and from thence steering east in the direction of the island of Lua, by Sofala, would find themselves on the way to India. From this and other information received, was composed the plan of the daring expedition of 1497, the destined course of which was first Kalikodu or Calecut (Calicut), as it was called then, and from thence to where Covilhão was. Vasco da Gama was chosen by Dom Emmanuel (Dom João II had then been dead three years) to command the expedition. He was a daring but prudent man, uniting the qualities of a soldier and sailor, a thing common at that time and even later. The same thing applies to Alfonso de Albuquerque, Dom João de Castro, and many others. Such a combination had a decided advantage; the separation of these qualities did not come to embarrass their plans; there was unity in the command, for the captain was likewise pilot.

The greatest judgment and prudence directed the preparations for the expedition. The information sent by Covilhão was weighed and considered and compared with that previously obtained. Charts and maps were examined, and Bartholomeu Dias himself related what had befallen him, the obstacles which he had encountered, and the difficulties which must be overcome. With his vast experience he directed the building of the ships, doing away with exaggerated dimensions, and insisting on the strength of the ribs. The discoverer of the cape was to accompany the expedition as far as São Jorge da Mina, and remain there to carry on the gold trade. There were four small ships, that they might be able to enter all the ports, explore every creek, pass over shoals, and cruise along the coast. Their construction was strong and perfect, such as had never been seen before.

They carried six freestone columns carved with the Portuguese arms, and the armillary sphere which the king had adopted as his emblem. One was to be set up at the bay of St. Braz, another at the mouth of the Zambesi, another in Mozambique, another in Calicut, and another in the island of Santa Maria. There were two chaplains on board each ship; negro, Kaffir, and Arab interpreters, ten convicts for any sacrifice that might be necessary, and finally 148 soldiers. The best pilots had been chosen and the king would allow nothing to be spared. He came in person to view the ships on the stocks, and remained conversing with the masters, listening to the observations of Bartholomeu and Pedro Dias, and Vasco da Gama, who showed him the new astrolabe of Behaim, a rough triangle of wood but very effectual.

The three ships bore the names of the three archangels: _S. Gabriel_ the _capitanea_ of 120 tons; _S. Miguel_ (formerly _Berrio)_, and _S. Raphael_ of 100 tons. The name of the fourth, of 200 tons, is unknown. At the end of June they were all finished and ready, and rode at anchor before the church of Restello, where the captains watched all the night of the 7th of July. The next day, after mass, accompanied by the king and all the people of the city, singing, with tapers in their hands, they all went in procession to the shore and there embarked. Camoens says that at that moment:

But now an aged sire of reverend mien,
Upon the foreshore thronged by the crowds,
With lore by long experience only grown,
Thus from his time-taught breast he made his moan:
“O curst the mortal who the first was found,
Teaching the tree to wear the flowing sheet.”

--_The Lusiads_, Burton’s translation.

Indeed many in their hearts strongly condemned the persistency of the monarchs in sacrificing men and money to this chimera of navigation. The cold and tardy prudence born of past experience did not believe success possible after so many vain attempts. The result was to prove the contrary; but the words of the poet prophesied the fatal consequences of an empire which all, both daring and prudent, were ready to acclaim upon the return of Vasco da Gama. Camoens, watching the decline of the sun, could relate the hunger endured at sea, the tempests, shipwrecks, and wanderings in the burning lands of the terrible Adamastor, and the trail of white skeletons left across the sands of both Africas--a rosary of mournful tragedies. He could relate how waves of tyranny and crime from that Indian sea stretched out to Europe to overwhelm Portugal with their slime.

They were three months reaching St. Helena Bay (Nov. 7th). They landed to take the sun with their astrolabe, the rolling of the ship preventing them from doing so on board; here they had several skirmishes with the natives, and set out again at last upon the 16th of November. On the 19th they came in sight of Cape Tormentoso, or of Good Hope, both names being fully justified on this occasion. For three days they were beaten about by tempests. The wind and waves were such that the upper parts of the ships were under water, and it could scarcely be seen if they advanced upon the waves or were wrapped around by them. Upon the stern castles the ships had painted pictures of the saints whose name they bore, and when the raging sea flung the pictures on to the tilt the crews grew pale with horror. It was a bad omen, for it seemed as if they were deserted by the divine favour. Fierce and angry seas washed over the poops, dashing the boats against the sides of the ships and damaging the helms. They furled the sails, cut down the tilt, and began to throw the cargo overboard. At last the weather cleared.

Having doubled the cape, they entered the bay of St. Braz, where the calms detained them until the 7th of the following month. Navigating for a week along the southern coast of Africa, on the 15th they reached the Chaos Islands, the farthest point reached by Bartholomeu Dias. Then they began to follow the instructions of Covilhão, the pilot absent in the lands of the mythical Prester John, of whom they were in search. They wished to proceed along the coast, but the currents, which were a great danger, carried them towards the vast and unknown southern sea. The sailors rebelled in vain; Vasco da Gama, like an inexorable destiny prudent in his audacity, overcame the currents and revolts.

[Sidenote: [1497-1498 A.D.]]

At last they got out of the “sea of darkness” (_mar tenebroso_), and then only could the terrific cape be looked upon as overcome. The tempests and the currents grew still. By day there was calm with the sky of purest blue; by night, several times the light of S. Pedro Gonçalves, the St. Elmo of Lisbon, shone above the tops of the masts. All promised fair weather. They climbed the masts to see the marks of the miracle, and brought back with great devotion the droppings of green wax left by the saint.

On January 10th, 1498, they touched land at Inhambane, and had some intercourse with the Kaffirs; on the 22nd they had reached Quilimane (Kilimane), where “noblemen” came on board to visit them, with turbans of worked silk upon their heads.

India was reached for the first time. They saw men of divers nations, and traces of that distant civilisation so eagerly sought for. They had emerged from the African sea, and from the heavy shadow of the dark continent. Yet these “noblemen” whom they gazed upon almost with love, regarding them as brothers, were to be their cruelest enemies. They reached Mozambique on the 2nd of March. Around the fleet at anchor came the native vessels, without decks or sails. The Moors came to trade with them. The sultan in person wished to compliment Vasco da Gama, who received him on board. The sultan proved perfidious, and the fleet, without the pilots, cruised along the coast to Mombasa (on the 8th of April), where chance alone saved it from the plot which the Moors had prepared against it; they had already recognised dangerous competitors in these men who had come over the sea to these regions, which had until then been the undisputed possession of Arabia, Egypt, and Nubia. Saved by a miracle, Vasco da Gama went on to Melinde (15th), where the sultan received him well; but not trusting these “noblemen” of Zanzibar, he availed himself of a Moor who had remained on board at Mozambique, and who chanced to know the way to Calicut. They put to sea, and in twenty-seven days (24th of April to the 19th of May), they were in India. The voyage had lasted ten months and eleven days.

It was now that their wonder reached its limit. Everything they had seen as yet gave not a distant idea of what they now saw upon their landing. The natural pomp and splendour of the East filled them with surprise and cupidity. In their religious ignorance they saw everywhere the Christians of Prester John. The natives adored the Virgin Mary, and the Portuguese also prostrated themselves before our Lady, in the person of Gauri, the white goddess, Sakti of Siva, the destroyer. This confusion, increased by the fact of not understanding each other’s speech, occasioned scenes ingenuously comical. Some who were doubtful, remarked that if the idols were devils their prayer was intended for God alone, quieting their consciences by this mental reservation. To increase their amazement, there came to them a Moor who spoke in Portuguese, “Good luck! good luck! Many rubies, many emeralds!”

From Lisbon to India was but a short distance, for the feelings have no measure. They were all Christians, they also had kings. The world was all one and man the same everywhere. The ingenuous way in which the greatest things were accomplished is the greatest proof of the heroic strength of these men of the Renaissance.

[Sidenote: [1498-1500 A.D.]]

At that time India--and by that name we designate all the coasts and islands included between the meridians of Suez and Tidore, and between 20° south latitude and 30° north latitude, the scene of the Portuguese campaigns--in India, we say, foreign races held a kind of dominion resembling in all things that which afterwards belonged to the Portuguese--a commercial-maritime monopoly, and consequently, factories, colonies, and states. The races they were about to dispossess of this dominion were the Arabs, the Ethiopians, Persians, Turks, and Afghans, who, coming down from the Red and the Arabian seas, and confounded in the religious wave of Islam, had subjugated the peninsula from the Indus to the Ganges, and eastern Africa from Adal to Monomotapa. Extending themselves to the extreme east, they reached as far as Cambodia and Tidore in the Moluccas, across Arakan and Pegu, from the peninsula of Malacca (Malay peninsula), and from Burma and Shan (Siam) into the continent, through Sumatra and Borneo and the middle of the Sunda archipelago. The Portuguese called all the natives Moors, a generic term already in use in Europe to denote the followers of Islam, and therefore now adopted when, having come from afar and traversed so many seas, they again found themselves face to face with the Turk, the opponent of the Christian throughout the world.

“The devil take you! What brought you here!” was the compliment addressed to the Portuguese by a Moor in Calicut; and in Mozambique and Mombasa the Moors (we will henceforward use this word as a generic term, as aforesaid) persuaded or forced Samundri Rajah (Zamorin) king or count (India was under a pseudo-feudal rule) of Calicut, to exterminate the Portuguese. Calicut was the commercial empire of the coast of Malabar, and the dominions of the rajah formed the so-called kingdom of Kanara.

It was an easy matter no doubt to persuade the ruler that Vasco da Gama was a pirate and his king a myth; certainly the Moors of Calicut defined, in advance and unawares, the Portuguese dominion, which differed from common piracy only in that it was rapine organised by a political state. Convinced or constrained, the rajah ordered the navigators to be pursued, but they embarked and defended themselves, August 30th. After remaining some months in the island of Anjediva, upon the coast, Vasco da Gama resolved to return and set sail for Portugal on the 10th of July, 1498. A year later on the same date he reached Lisbon. Great was the enthusiasm. Dom Emmanuel also had his Indies, and Portugal her Columbus. But what tidings of Prester John? And what of Covilhão? None. The navigator had succeeded in overcoming the cape and discovering India, but he had not succeeded in solving the enigma which at that time had baffled their search for three centuries. This was of small account in history. The essential point was the solving of a greater enigma--that of the “dark ocean.” Little was now wanting; in twenty years there would not remain an unknown corner of land in the whole circumference of the globe, nor a span unexplored in the vast expanse of seas. “Under the wild waves to learn the secrets of the earth, and the mysteries and illusions of the sea,” the Portuguese with heroic curiosity took in their hands the future of Europe and of the world. In the year after the discovery of India, Pedro Alvares Cabral, who was sent thither with an imposing fleet, could not resist the temptation of curiosity. Steering east in the Atlantic a question constantly tormented him--what lay to the west? In that direction Columbus had discovered the Indies in the northern hemisphere; were there not perhaps Indies in the southern hemisphere also? He steered west to explore--what were a few months more or less in the long journey to the east? Thus he discovered Brazil; the western land lay from the extreme north to the extreme south, extending through the two hemispheres. Not till then could it be said that America was completely discovered (1500).

The news of the discovery of new lands made little impression in Lisbon; the fervent desire of the court was the discovery of the Prester, the enchanted Prester John, in order to make a good alliance with him and bring to Portugal a little at least of those good things which Vasco da Gama had seen with his own eyes, the report of which inflamed the whole nation with cupidity. Cabral was sent for this purpose, not to discover lands; the names in their repertory were now barely sufficient to designate the islands, capes, ports, bays, coasts, and continents. Their desires were set on other things; other hopes seethed within them: “Good luck! good luck! Many rubies, many emeralds!”

It was resolved to send a fleet to India, for now that the way was known there was nothing to fear and no reason to diminish the number or tonnage of the ships. Pedro Alvares Cabral was appointed admiral of the fleet, which consisted of thirteen ships and carried twelve hundred men. The fleet raised anchor in the Tagus on the 9th of March, 1500. The shouts of the sailors as they worked at the capstan in unison, a sound as sad and mournful as the sea; the low murmur of the cables in the hawses; the whistle of the masters as they directed the manœuvres; the many-coloured flags flying in the breeze; the sails half-furled upon the masts, made a vivid picture of the nation which in the year 1500 was also setting out, shriven and well-disposed, upon this long voyage of a little more than a century, full of disease and shipwreck, at the end of which waited a tomb vast as the sea and silent as the ocean in the funereal calm of the tropics.

Cabral’s voyage, besides beginning the Portuguese dominion in India, had really two desirable results: it swept away the two legends of Prester John and of the “sea of darkness.” He discovered Brazil and returned to tell Emmanuel that the supposed emperor of the East was a miserable black heathen king, intrenched in the inaccessible mountains of Abyssinia. In pursuit of a myth, drawn by an abyss, Portugal discovered the continents and islands of the Atlantic and reached India. For the sake of an illusion they achieved the reality which struck the world with wonder. The world is a mirage and men are but shadows borne upon the cunning winds of destiny. With the lands discovered and the seas ploughed from east to west, it still remained to unite these two halves of the known world, and sail round them, to make sure that they lay whole and complete in the hands of men. This was the effect of the voyage of Magellan (Magalhães) twenty years after. The sea was dark no more, the great conquest was complete. But a new enterprise now revealed itself--to devour what was discovered, to assimilate the world. The whole of Portugal embarked for India in Cabral’s fleet.

THE CONQUEST OF INDIA

[Sidenote: [1500-1502 A.D.]]

On the 13th of September of the year 1500, Cabral reached Calicut. He went, not like Vasco da Gama, as a discoverer, but as the emissary of the noble Portuguese monarch, the bearer of his letters and proposals of alliance to the rajah of Calicut. As such he was received in a solemn audience. The Portuguese, donning their richest clothes and their best and brightest arms, thought to make an impression upon the Eastern potentate by their riches; but the representatives of Europe, poor and strong, were to be outdone by the magnificence of opulent India. The polish of their arms was dimmed by the blaze of precious stones “whose rays were blinding.”

The rajah was borne in a palanquin, or litter, upon the shoulders of his nobles, reclining upon silken cushions among coverlets worked in gold thread, falling in folds and edged with borders encrusted with precious stones. The litter advanced slowly, under a silken canopy fringed with gold, and within this double tabernacle appeared the black rajah, covered with precious stones. It was blinding to look upon him. On each side of the canopy were pages stirring the air with fans of peacock feathers, and beside the palanquin came those who bore the insignia of royalty--the sword and dagger, the foil of gold, the symbolical lily-flower, the ewer of water, and finally the cup into which the king spat the betel, the chewing of which makes the teeth pink, and gives “a most sweet breath.”

Throughout the whole length of the procession and bringing up the rear were bands of musicians rending the air with their drums, tom-toms of gold and silver suspended by cords from poles of bamboo, and enormous trumpets, some straight and some curved, raised in the air, which gave the musicians the appearance of elephants with golden trunks, their flags encrusted with rubies and emeralds.

The reception was conducted with solemnity on either side, although they could not understand each other well; the scribes displayed in vain their long palm leaves covered with writing; the Portuguese by signs indicated their wish to establish factories there. The scribes gradually came to understand, and distrusted; and the Portuguese also distrusted the smiles of the rajah. In spite of this, however, their request was granted, and Cabral founded the first Portuguese factory in India at Calicut. Afterwards the Moors came and exclaimed against the intruders who were despoiling them, and, favoured by the natives, fell upon the factory, murdering all the Portuguese therein--fifty in all. Then followed the terrible vengeance of the admiral. He took ten ships of the Arab merchants, and put the crews, five hundred men, to the sword; bombarded the city, and set it on fire.

The burning of Calicut on the 16th of December, 1500, was the gloomy dawn of modern oriental history. In the middle of January (1501) Cabral loaded his ships with pepper and cinnamon and returned to the kingdom. Of the thirteen ships with which he set out a year before, barely three returned with him. The terrible enemy though conquered was not subdued, and this first expedition to India, the first act of a tragedy of more than a century, sketched out the course of its action; assassination, fire, massacre, shipwreck; the sword and pepper; the soldier’s arms in one hand, the merchant’s scales in the other--a modern Carthage; and in the background the open maw of the sea, ready to devour men, ships, and treasure; a perennial fount of vice pouring forth torrents of wickedness.

To inflict a terrible chastisement upon the rajah and to consolidate the factory of Cochin by fortifying it, was the object of the second fleet which set out from Lisbon in February, 1502, under the command of Vasco da Gama, the implacable captain. The story of the voyage is full of horror; and the revenge of the captain a proof of the sanguinary, impassive, and cruel coldness which does indeed exist in the almost African temperament of the Portuguese. Obliterated in peace and subjection it ever bursts out afresh in dominion, victory, and warfare. If such sentiments, alive in the soul of Gama, inspired his actions, his campaign followed no plan, nor could his rude spirit entertain the wide views of the statesman. If he had any plan in view, it was to amaze India by the cruelty of his deeds, and dominate it by the terror of his slaughters. Navigating the Indian seas, Gama met a ship of Arabian merchants going to or coming from Mecca. Besides the crew the ship carried 240 men, passengers with their wives and children. This was on the 1st of October, 1502; “which I shall remember all my life,” wrote the pilot, still horror-stricken at the remembrance of the cowardly way in which the ship was set on fire with all whom it contained, so that every soul perished in the flames or in the sea. Well pleased with himself, the captain steered for Calicut. He intimated to the rajah that he must expel all the Moors, who numbered five thousand families, the richest in the city; saying that any servant of the king Dom Emmanuel was worth more than the Zamorin, and that his master had power to make every palm tree a king! As was to be expected, the rajah refused. Then the captain, who upon anchoring had captured a considerable number of merchants in the port, ordered their hands and ears to be cut off, and crowded them into a boat in which they drifted ashore with the tide, bearing Gama’s answer to the refusal of the wretched prince.

[Sidenote: [1502-1503 A.D.]]

Then he began the bombardment, November 2nd. The city was in flames for the second time, and the lamentations of the people answered the cynical and ferocious laughter of the sailors sheltered behind the sides of the ships near the guns which vomited fire. This was a foolish, cruel, and cowardly deed; for the short lances and arrows of the natives could not measure themselves against the grenades fired from afar on board the ships. Gama left part of his fleet in India under the command of Vincente Sodre, as eminent and celebrated a man as the admiral, whose uncle he was.

The Portuguese dominion thus assumed from the very first the twofold character which it never lost in spite of all subsequent attempts at law and order. On the sea was anarchy and theft; on shore, a succession of blood-thirsty depredations. Vasco da Gama showed how to rule by fire and sword; Sodre showed how to reap a harvest at sea by boarding the ships of Mecca. Piracy and pillage were the two foundations of the Portuguese dominion, its nerves were cannon, and its soul was pepper. When Gama returned from his second voyage a third fleet left Lisbon (April, 1503) with Alfonso de Albuquerque and Duarte Pacheco on board. They went to Cochin to assist the rajah in his war against the rajah of Calicut, and built the first fortress in India. Albuquerque returned to the kingdom; Pacheco remained at Cochin with the troops and ships prepared for the attack. The hero--for he fought like a wild beast in his den of Kambalaan, nobly, disinterestedly, and fiercely--said at once that now all lay with the artillery. This will explain the possibility of the resistance of Pacheco’s seventy men, feebly assisted by the natives, against the fifty thousand attributed to the army of Samundri, rajah of Calicut. But the artillery alone would not have sufficed to repulse the solid body of the enemy’s columns, if the courage and wonderful rapidity of the marches, the ubiquity, so to speak, of the first soldier-hero of the East, had not supported the powerful means of defence. The fleet of Lopo Soares Albergaria brought back Pacheco to the kingdom in 1505. Being a simple and upright man he returned rich in wounds and poor in money and diamonds; he had remained in the captaincy of São Jorge da Mina, from whence he was brought in irons because of the accusations brought against him, to languish in prison for a long time and to die at last in poverty and oblivion. “The fate of this hero,” says Goes,[n] “was of a nature to warn mankind to beware of the inconstancy of kings and princes and their small remembrance of those to whom they are bound.” And yet Dom Emmanuel owed the consolidation of his still incipient empire in the East to this man.

[Sidenote: [1505-1509 A.D.]]

Dom Francisco de Almeida was the man chosen to be governor of India, now constituted a viceroyalty. He is the first of the successive figures presented by the Portuguese empire of the East; and the first of the three most notable viceroys. The government of India formed three great men--Castro, who may be called a saint; Albuquerque, to whom the name of hero is better adapted; and Almeida, a wise administrator and intelligent factor. The viceroy, his plans matured by observation on the spot, and the first naval war with which he was received by the unrepentant rajah of Calicut, mentally completed his system of government. “Let all our strength be at sea,” he said; “let us refrain from appropriating the land. The old tradition of conquest, the empire of such distant lands, is not desirable. Let us destroy those new races (the Arabs, Afghans, Ethiopians, and Turks) and reinstate the ancient races and natives of this coast; then we will go further. Let us secure with our fleets the safety of the sea and protect the natives in whose name we may practically reign over India. There would certainly be no harm in our having a few fortresses along the coast, but simply to protect the factories from surprise, for their chief safety will lie in the friendship of the native rajahs placed upon their thrones by us, and maintained and defended by our fleets. What has been done so far is but anarchy, scarcely an outline of government, a system of murder, piracy, and disorder which it is necessary to remedy.” The difficulties seemed to him more formidable in that “the past warfare was with beasts, but now we are to fight Venetians and the Turks of the sultan.” The former impunity disappeared as soon as the Venetians and Egyptians launched a powerful fleet upon the Red Sea, with artillery.

Dom Francisco de Almeida advanced up the coast, leaving behind him a trail of ashes and blood which everywhere marked the passage of the Portuguese. The Egyptian admiral still feared the viceroy, and as soon as the fleet had anchored and grappled with his ships, he meant to cut the cables and drift ashore, dragging the Portuguese with him, where the Indian launches and _fustas_ might fall upon them furiously. But the viceroy perceived the snare and ordered the anchors to be prepared in the stern, and the enemy’s ships went ashore alone. It was the 3rd of February (1509), the feast of St. Braz, at noon. The confusion of races gathered in that fight was inextricable; the banners of the cross and crescent flying from the masts covered the most extravagant sentiments and varying beliefs. The truth is that they fought not for faith or fatherland, but furiously disputed the spoils of India; and covetousness can make brothers of men of every faith and children of every race. There were French and Germans as bombardiers on board the Portuguese ships; there were Indian Brahmans and even Moors. On the other side in the confusion of ships there might be found from the Nubian to the Arab; from the Ethiopian to the Affran; there were Mussulmans of every caste; Persians and _Rum_[161] of Egypt--mercenaries from all parts to whom this generic name was given. Besides the heathen multitude was the Venetian renegade or Catholic--but above all the merchant, who had come with artillery to the Indian Sea by order of his republic to defend the interests of his associates in the commerce of the East. Around the confused bands on board the fleet of the Rum gathered the dark mass of Indians in their junks, from Diu in Guzerat and from Calicut in Kanara.