Portugal Old and Young: An Historical Study  

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Portugal Old and Young: An Historical Study (1917) is a book by George Young.

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GJarnell Untuerattg Sjtbratg

3tl;aea, New $nrk

BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME OF THE

SAGE ENDOWMENT FUND

THE GIFT OF

HENRY W. SAGE

1891

Cornell University Library DP 539. Y95

Portugal old and young:

3 1924 028 558 785

Cornell University Library

The original of this book is in the Cornell University Library.

There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text.

http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924028558785

PORTUGAL OLD AND YOUNG

Oxford University Press

London Edinburgh Glasgow New Tork

Toronto Melbourne Cape Town Bombay

Humphrey Milford Publisher to the University

1832.5

PORTUGAL

OLD AND YOUNG

AN HISTORICAL STUDY

BY

GEORGE YOUNG

AUTHOR OF

'CORPS DE DROIT OTTOMAN'; 'NATIONALISM AND WAR IN

THE BEAR EAST ' ; ' PORTUGAL : AN ANTHOLOGY '

FORMERLY SECRETAKY OF LEGATION, LISBON

OXFORD

AT THE CLARENDON PRESS

1917

The Altar-piece of San Vicente, by Nunc- Gonsalvez, oj which one panel is reproduced as a frontispiece to this book, is one oj the jew surviving masterpieces oj Portuguese mediaeval painting, and gives us the portraits oj some oj the leading personages oj the period when Portugal was a Great Power. The youth kneeling bejore St. Vincent in thejoreground isAjjonzo V, ' el rey cavalleiro ' (b. 1432, k. 1438, d. 1481), and the lady opposite is his wije and niece, the Infante oj Castile, through whom he claimed the Crown oj Castile. The Castilians resisted the union, made Isabella her younger sister Queen, dejeated the Portuguese at Toro, 1476, as completely as they had been dejeated by the Portuguese at Aljubarrota in 1385, and jounded the Kingdom oj Spain by marrying Isabella to Ferdinand oj Aragon. Ajfonzo was also involved in Moroccan adventures, which earned him the title oj ' the Ajrican ' and nothing much else. The child behind is his son, John II 'the Perject ' (b. 1455, k. 1481, d. 1495), and the careworn intellectual jace in the background, under a large hat, is no other than Prince Henry the Navigator — uncle oj Ajjonzo and son oj John the Great and Philippa, daughter oj John oj Gaunt — the most illustrious and interesting personality oj this Anglo-Portuguese dynasty.

These paintings were lost in dirt and darkness in a Lisbon church until the Revolution. Ajter being most carejully cleaned, they can now be seen in the Museum. Their resplendence makes them a worthy record oj Old Portugal, and Young Portugal is significantly symbolized in their resur- rection.

PREFACE

Portugal, during the years before the war, gave an English student of national reform movements and of international relations much interesting material and many opportunities of usefulness. But the war simplified the situation both internally and internationally, by submerging the cross-currents and side-channels through which the Portuguese national renascence was threading its way ; and these will not again appear until the flood subsides. Not that the military relationship between allies in wartime is without diplomatic .difficulties ; but such, like other war liabilities, are carried over to be paid off after peace. There- fore, as we have found before, especially after the Napoleonic wars, a return to peace conditions may be a trying process for both parties, unless there be a certain standard of under- standing between the two peoples.

The following essays on Portugal and its people have been written as a contribution to the better understanding of Portugal in England ; and as the only contribution that a friend of Portugal can make since the war caused him to desert ' diplomacy ' for ' intelligence ', and Lisbon for London.

The shortest and stupidest story of a nation can scarcely fail to convey something of its spirit — just as the worst trans- lation must give some idea of a foreign poet. Portugal : an Anthology, published last year, was an attempt to give an

vl Preface

insight into the spirit of Portugal through a collection of some of the more national and characteristic poems and ballads ; and the translations used in this book are borrowed from it. But both these books will have best served their purpose if they encourage the reader to embark in person on an excursion into Portugal or its poetry.

The intending tourist to Portugal after the peace will learn all that is necessary at the Royal Mail or Booth Line offices ; while the intending student of Gil Vicente or Camoens may be glad to hear that King's College, in the London University, is founding a Chair of Portuguese and already has three lecturers at his disposal.

G. Y.

July 1917

CONTENTS

PAGE

PREFACE i. PORTUGAL AND THE WAR i

2. OLD PORTUGAL . . 41

3. EMPIRE AND ECLIPSE 92

4. RESTORATION AND REACTION 146

5. POMBAL AND THE PENINSULAR WAR . . .179

6. YOUNG PORTUGAL 235

7. PORTUGAL AND THE PEACE . . . , .302 INDEX

ILLUSTRATIONS

The Altar-piece of San Vicente, By Nuno Gonsalvez . Frontispiece

Spain and Portugal. ........ viii

The World, showing Spanish and Portuguese colonization . .159

Portugal .......... 181

Portugal and the War

For thou hast great allies : Thy friends are exaltations, agonies, and Love, and man's unconquerable mind.

Wordsworth.

How is it that Portugal comes to be included in this series as a belligerent ? Why is Portugal at war — and at war on our side ?

This book has been written as an answer to these questions — questions which can only be answered by giving some idea of the part played by Portugal in past European history, of the present position of Portugal in the European polity, and of the potential power, moral and intellectual, repre- sented by the Portuguese people.

The present war has taught us to take moral factors into account in dealing with political problems, and to accept nationalism as a moral force capable of dealing with the most unpromising material facts. Even those who have hitherto been accustomed to consider foreign affairs in terms of big battalions and battleships may now be ready to admit that the military and material mechanisms of the greatest Empires are dependent for their driving force on the spirit of Nationalism. But such ' real-politikers ' would probably still maintain that the practical effect of any particular nationalist factor in European politics is measured by the national force in terms of men, money, or munitions. And if there are

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2 Portugal and the War

any who for this reason may be inclined to ignore Portugal as a factor in our foreign relations, they may well be surprised to learn what an important influence on the fortunes of Europe in general, and of England in particular, Portugal has exercised and will no doubt exercise again. Indeed, to show this much will be comparatively easy. Though it will be much less easy to explain exactly how Portugal comes to be involved in the conflict now proceeding between opposing European national philosophies.

Even when in due course this crisis comes to be considered without prejudice and in a proper perspective, it will probably still be difficult for the future historian to explain the principles governing the attitude to the present war of the lesser nationalities. If, now, an attempt were made to lay down the general principles governing the participation or non-participation in the war of the secondary nations it would be little more than a profession of faith in our national cause as drawn up for us by our own prophet and daily proclaimed from the minarets of our press. Yet even now, while rejoicing over the enrolling of the Portuguese in the ranks of the faithful, we may be curious to know how they came to be there, while other nations are not. Putting on one side those lesser nations involuntarily involved as belligerents, such as Belgium and Serbia, how does it happen that Portugal is a belligerent, Spain a neutral, Italy a belligerent, Greece a neutral, Bulgaria a belligerent, Albania a neutral, Turkey a belligerent, Persia a neutral, Roumania a belligerent, Sweden a neutral ? The answer is of course different in each case, and each case would take a book to answer. But it is suggested that the course of national policy in each case will probably be found to have been a compromise along the line of least resistance between

Portugal and the War 3

conflicting static and dynamic political forces ; the static forces of dynastic, capitalistic, conservative, class interests, and the dynamic forces of democratic, progressive, popular influences. Sometimes these political forces have been so evenly balanced that the initial impetus for the plunge into war or for the recoil from it could be given by some party or even by some personality. In these cases anti- national influence has in some cases been able to exercise a decisive influence over national policy.

If it were possible to explain these collisions between political forces as straight issues between democratic and despotic influences, between public opinion and personal policy, between progressive influences and particular interests, then the business of explaining belligerency or neutrality in such a case as that of Portugal would be merely that of analysing present-day politics in that country. It cannot, however, be maintained that the more democratic polities where public opinion and a progressive party are both strong have invariably taken up arms on our side, or that the despotic and conservative polities are all enlisted on the side of our enemies ; though it is demonstrable that a balance of these forces tends to a policy of neutrality. It does, however, seem to be indisputable that in the West at all events, nationalism as expressed in popular opinion, and as existing in Spain, Italy, Greece, Roumania, and Portugal, has tended to take up arms on our side ; although circum- stances have in cases retarded or restrained it from carrying this preference to the point of belligerency. Moreover it is as indisputable that in the East the principles and policies of our opponents have proved more attractive than ours to the Eastern form of nationalism as existing in Bulgaria, Turkey, and Persia ; possibly because these nations are still

B 2

4 Portugal and the War

in an earlier, cruder stage in which the fear of disintegra- tion at home and domination from abroad drives nationalism to the drill-sergeant and the despot. It is not difficult to understand how the Prussian faith in organization of the national, moral, mental, and material resources may seem to offer salvation to nations with strong tribal traditions and low individual differentiation like the Bulgars, Turks, Turkomans, and Tartars. This is, of course, only a generaliza- tion, for there are, no doubt, some Portuguese to whom Prussian ideals appeal ; while the Bulgars as a whole would apparently have remained neutral, or might even have joined us, but for the combination between nationalist demands for Bulgar Macedonia and despotic ambitions for Balkan hegemony.

Moreover the belligerency of Portugal is due to pecu- liarities in its national institutions as well as to its parti- cipation in our national ideals. It is instructive, for instance, to take the result of the conflict in Greece — a monarchy with a sovereign strong in political power, and in the personal prestige of victorious campaigns, and compare it with the result of the same conflict in Portugal — a Republic with a President then as weak in personality as in constitu- tional powers. King Constantine and President Arriaga both imposed neutrality on their respective governments by a coup d'etat under German influence ; but whereas in the Monarchy, the arbitrary regime has so far resisted a considerable amount of pressure from inside and from outside, constitutional government and with it a pro-ally policy was very quickly restored by internal forces alone in the Republic. The resignation of President Arriaga, the resumption of military co-operation with us and the subse- quent declaration of war by Germany render the case of

Portugal and the War 5

Portugal the best evidence in favour of our claim that progressive principles and the popular point of view in Europe are both in favour of our cause.

But the fact that Portugal is a Republic with a professorial president and not a Monarchy with a conquering king is not enough to explain its belligerency. We can only account for the part played by Portugal in this war by assuming that, as in the cases of the other nationalities, it is an effect of the force of nationalism acting along the lines of least resistance. This theory substitutes a simple and sufficient explanation of the various movements of these Secondary States for the complicated theories of ' orbits of influence ', lately much in favour ; even as the simple theory of the force of gravity replaced the cycles and epicycles of pre-Newtonian astronomy. In short, Portugal is at war because the instinct both of national self-preserva- tion and of national progress indicated that war on our side was the policy required by the national interest and by the national ideal.

But it will be objected that Portugal's national ideals are all adequately realized already, and that Portugal can have little or no national interest in the issues of this war, all- pervading and all-predominant as they may be. It may further be urged that the remoteness of Portugal from the centres of collision is indisputable, its political relationship with the causes and consequences of the war only indirect, and its popular interest in the issues involved by no means intense. And if this be so then cannot Portuguese belli- gerency be accounted for by less recondite reasons than national instincts and ideals ? For example, it may be pointed out, there is the reason that the Portuguese Govern- ment considers the reconsolidation of the Anglo- Portuguese

6 Portugal and the War

Alliance essential to the security of Portugal and its posses- sions — a reason of policy. Or that Portuguese finances, disordered by the war just as they were in a fair way to be regulated, require a foreign loan — a reason of pocket. Or there is the reason that the intellectuals who compose the Republican Government of Portugal have French associations, whereas the various interests composing the Royalist opposition have for the most part German affinities — a reason of preference. Or the reason that Lisbon fears and defies Spain and the Pope, and that these are both neutral — a reason of prejudice. Or again that the proclamation of the Allies of a crusade for the lesser nations appealed to the public opinion of this minor Power, whereas the mode of warfare of their opponents profoundly shocked the public sentiment of a humane people — a reason of principle. All of which explanations are no doubt true so far as they go ; but the point is that they will all be found to lead back to some essential national characteristic or circumstance. That is to say, Portugal is a belligerent because of essential characteristics and conditions inherent in its nationality ; or in simpler words Portugal is at war because it is a nation. This, however, only suggests another question distinctly more troublesome to answer : Why is Portugal a nation ? Reviewing the qualifications essential to nationality we shall indeed find, at first, no small difficulty in justifying the claim of Portugal to be a nation. For instance, one such qualifica- tion of a nation is that it should have, not only a name, but a local habitation — some region geographically defined, and more or less racially delimited. But a glance at the map shows that the country of Portugal is only an enclave in the Iberian Peninsula — a chunk chopped out of Spain. At first sight its position suggests political and provincial rather

Portgual and the War 7

than national characteristics. Again another national qualification would be racial difference. Whereas the Portu- guese would seem to have in their origin less racial difference from the Spaniards than have the Basques or Catalans who are still provincials of Spain and not nations ; for, ethnologi- cally speaking, the Portuguese stock originates in Galicia, which is not now, and never has been, part of the Portuguese nation. Then again, if culture is the test, accepted authorities on Portugal agree in asserting — some even argue — that Portugal has no language, but merely a Latin dialect ; no literature, but merely some songs on French models ; no painting, but merely bad imitations of Spanish Schools ; no architecture, but merely a debased development of flamboyant Gothic ; no political principles, but merely parochial politicians.

In reply, it is to be observed in the first place that these all concern material qualifications, whereas nationality is above all a moral quality. Yet leaving this for the present, let us see whether even these material disqualifications will stand investigation ; although some of them may seem at first sight obvious, and others might not be objected to by Portuguese writers themselves. In the first place, the want of defined territory is only cartographical, and an example of the misleading ideas given by maps and such-like conven- tional representations. The country of Portugal is not, as the map suggests, an integral portion of a geographical entity, the Iberian Peninsula, merely partitioned off from Spain by a political frontier and dependent on Spain for its communications with Europe. Portugal, on the contrary, has always been, and is to-day in closer relations with Europe than was, or is, Spain itself. Communications by the sea- route between European ports and Lisbon were, until

8 Portgual and the War

quite recently, safer and quicker, and still are more comfort- able and economical than communications between European capitals and Madrid by the land-route ; while for commercial purposes sea conveyance will remain unchallenged until air carriage comes into general use. The seas that on the maps seem to wall in Portugal on the west, really weld it to the maritime states of Europe and America ; while the sierras and stony wastes that apparently connect Portugal on the east with Spain constitute in reality a natural boun- dary and a national frontier. If we take that large-scale map recommended to political students by Lord Salisbury, we see at once the blank spaces, the ' despobladas ', in these marches between Spain and Portugal, empty of towns and villages except for an occasional ' villa franca ', artificially established as a frontier post in some pass where a river breaks through from the Spanish tablelands. To the traveller by road, or even by rail, the natural frontier afforded by those barren plateaux and high ranges is obvious, and no less obvious is the change from the typical landscapes of Portugal to those of Spain. Indeed no two countrysides could be more unlike than the well-wooded, well-watered hills and valleys of coastal Portugal and the stony ridges and wide uplands of central Spain. The traveller from Lisbon to Madrid will find no resemblance between the broad alluvial pastures and hill vineyards of the lower Tagus valley and the rolling ploughlands and rocky gorges of the upper Tagus. The traveller from Oporto to Burgos will, just before crossing the national frontier, pass the ancient University town of Coimbra, a pile of white buildings perched over green meadows between blue mountains and a blue river ; and just after crossing the frontier he will come to the ancient University town of Salamanca, a plaster

Portugal and the War 9

of red buildings on a yellow upland. In the extreme north where the mountains of the old County of Portugal merge into those of Galicia, and in the extreme south where the North African landscapes of the Algarves march on those of Andalusia, there is less of a marked frontier between Portugal and Spain ; but that there should be less sign of a national division in those regions where there is least national distinction, is itself evidence of the national differ- ence between the two countries.

Passing next to the people themselves we find that only ethnographically is there any difficulty in distinguishing Portuguese from Spaniards. In type and temperament the Portuguese differ as widely from the Spaniard as do the Irish from the Scots, and something on the same lines. They differ even from the Gallegans of Spain from whom they are supposed to descend ; though the part played by Gallegan stock in populating Portugal has probably been overrated. For while it is true that Portuguese populations descended from the north to take the place left vacant as the Moors were driven south, this does not mean that there were no Portuguese in the country before, or that there were none but Portuguese in the country thereafter. It is clear that the successive invasions of Portugal were, as else- where, of diminishing intensity. The Celts, as place-names show, probably exterminated the Iberians except in the mountains ; whereas the Visigoths and Romans only ex- pelled the Celt-Iberians from the castles and cities into the countrysides ; while the Moorish occupation of the Iberian Peninsula, like the Turkish occupation of the Balkan Penin- sula, only drove out and dispossessed the upper classes, leaving the cultivators of the soil and the small craftsmen for the most part undisturbed. The Celt-Iberian stock

io Portugal and the War

of Portugal survived the centuries of Moorish overlords as they had survived the overlordship of Visigoths and Romans.

Indeed, these conquering races have left far fewer visible relics of their association with the country than have the commercial races whose connexion with the national culture was apparently far less close. The Roman who governed the country for centuries left his language, his law, and his logomachic habit ; but his type — both physical and temperamental — has long since disappeared with most of his institutions. On the other hand the Carthaginian and the Greek, who had only trading settle- ments .on the coast, have perpetuated their respective types in 'certain districts to an extent that is remarkable. There are fishing villages where the men, their boats, and implements, their songs and even some of their words, are still Greek ; and in Lisbon its'elf the fish-girls from the Tagus villages still show examples of a type of beauty which, if not Phoenician, as generally supposed, is obviously from some stock of very ancient culture. The people of these villages not only have the small head, hands and feet, and graceful bearing of an ancient civilization, but can, it is said, stand the severest test of good breeding — social pro- motion. Not long ago a foreign financier found that one of these fish-girls made a very satisfactory countess : an experiment that could hardly have been successful unless there had been a leaven of Semitic aristocracy on both sides.

Owing partly to the isolated and primitive conditions of country life in Portugal these colonies of ancient foreign races have survived intact wherever they struck root in the soil or were associated with some particular industry. On the other hand in cases where the invader was only a super-

Portugal and the War n

ficial upper class he has, as a rule, disappeared leaving no trace. The last of the Visigothic aristocracy, reinforced as it was from French chivalry and later again from that of other northern aristocracies, was exhausted centuries ago by conquest and crusade. But in the agricultural class there are still obvious English and other European types ; as for instance in certain villages of the Tagus valley, where crusaders, among them yeomen from Devon and apprentices from London, settled centuries ago. Povos, a village on the Tagus, was until the seventeenth century known as Cornoalha through its having been a Cornish settlement dating from the time of the taking of Lisbon from the Moors with the help of an English expedition. In the same way the House of Lancaster now only survives in Portugal as a not uncommon surname, Lencestre, whose bearers show no trace of their origin ; whereas some red-headed, long-legged ' Saloyo ' that you may meet riding after the fighting bulls over the water meadows of the Tagus may talk to you in the same soft voice, and with the same sly humour as he would in the meadows of the Tavy. Again, all trace of the Moorish governing caste has disappeared from the Portuguese stock, such types as suggest it being of later origin ; but in the south there are only too obvious traces of the imported negro slave. The Spaniard and the Inquisition have disappeared, leaving nothing but a heritage of hate and atheism ; while the Jew has survived centuries of proscription and persecution, even where the latter has forced him to abandon his religion and mingle as a ' new Christian ' with the Portuguese population. For instance the town of Braganza, the ancient seat of royalty, on the north-east frontier, is still remarkable for its Jewish types, the descendants of refugees from Spain ', while the whole

12 Portugal and the War

Portuguese race owes much to the strong Jewish strain that runs through every class from the lowest to the highest. When King Joseph in a pious mood proposed that in the interests of religion and society all Jews be made to wear white hats, Pombal, his minister, replied next day by appearing with two — one, as he explained, for Joseph, and the other for himself. To this strong strain of Jewish blood can be attributed, indeed, the curious counter-current of radicalism and nationalism in the otherwise ultra clerical and conservative upper class of Portugal. Southey, writing just before the French Revolution, remarked that ' Whenever revolutionary principles shall find their way to Portugal, the Jews will probably be the first to receive them '.

Both of these qualities, the power of absorbing successive ruling castes and that of preserving intact foreign colonies, are evidence of a strong racial type. This Portuguese type can for convenience be described as Celt-Iberian. It may be said, indeed, that the Portuguese nation is composed of three elements — the first, the latest, representing the foreigners that colonized like the Greeks, or those that coalesced like the Jews ; the second, the Celtic element ; and the third, the indigenous Iberian of the Stone Age.

So clear indeed to the seeing eye is the manner of the composition of the Portuguese race, that one can often make out not only the contributions of foreign colonists and conquerors, but even the original components of Celt and Iberian. There is, moreover, very broadly speaking, a preponderance of one or other element according to position. The foreign types are most in evidence of course along the Tagus valley and on the coast ; the fertile middle country shows on the whole a preponderance of Celts, while the interior mountain ranges up to the frontier are

Portugal and the War 13

still inhabited by the more primitive Iberian. The lowland Celts are big men, in appearance and character very like the Southern Irish ; a resemblance increased by their witty picturesque talk, and by their taste for mutton-chop whiskers, frieze coats, donkey carts, and faction fights. The hill men, on the other hand, show much the same difference that we find in Ireland, between the large fair man and the small dark type ; the difference of the Milesian from the Firbolg. This very summary and superficial survey of the Portuguese race is supported by interesting anthropometrical statistics collected by the Portuguese Government, and by the more entertaining evidence of Portuguese literature. For there is a Portuguese literature, and most copious and character- istic it is, though few of us English know of its existence. To most of us Portuguese literature probably suggests the Letters of a Portuguese Nun which are in French, or the Sonnets from the Portuguese which are in English. We shall, accordingly, call in evidence to prove Portuguese nationality, a playwright of the sixteenth century, Gil Vicente, whose plays will be found to be very living pictures of a very live nation. In the following extract we see the old racial feuds between Iberian mountaineers and Celtic lowlanders, and the national hostility between Portuguese and Spaniard, still surviving each in its degree ; and we may note that the racial feud has become no more than a friendly rivalry, whereas the national hostility is a real hatred. Moreover, here and elsewhere in these plays we find not only those strongly marked types which are charac- teristic of a nation, but also a recognizable raciness of the soil such as characterizes all truly national poetry. Unfortunately the more ' national ' poetry and playwriting is, the less is it translateable, although where the national

14 Portugal and the War

quality is so marked as it is here, some evidence of it may, perhaps, remain even in the translation.

The Serra. Are you from Castille, my son,

or from beyond, down on the level ?

Jorge. Hark to that now — Why the devil turn me into a Spanish Don ? Why, I would sooner be a lizard, by' Matthew, Mark, and Luke and John !

The Serra. Whence are you then ?

Jorge. From Sardoal, —

take it or leave it, my good fellow : and we have come to give defiance to all you of the Serra d'Estrella, to beat us at a song or dance.

Rodrigo. I warrant you a saucy fellow ; for here are singers not a few, and very skilful dancers too, who need fear no men from below.

Lofo. Many hill rats come down there

from up here, a-harvesting ; and so, you see, we hear them sing and dance the way you do up here ; and it is much in this manner.

Hill Song.

' And what if I give myself, sweetheart, to you : A pretty thing is love.

On a day I had a swain, golden apples he sent in vain.

A pretty thing is love. On a day I loved a swain, golden apples he sent again.

A pretty thing is love. Golden apples he sent amain ; the best of them was cleft in twain.

A pretty thing is love.'

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That's the way like as two twos

you mountain men make melody. The Serra. Prithee, now sing such harmony

as in Sardoal you use. Jorge. Oh ! that 's another pair of shoes.

Wait a bit and you shall see.

Valley Song.

My lady now no more takes pleasure privily with me perpending — Alack for pains that are unending !

For oh, my lady once did tell me she would speak with me one day ; But ah, because of my offending, now she saith she never may — ■ Alack for pains that are unending !

For oh, my lady once did tell me she had something she would say ; But ah, because of my offending, now she will not look my way — Alack for pains that are unending !

For oh, because of my offending, she doth ever say me nay ; So out into the wide world wending, whither fortune leads, I stray — Alack for pains that are unending !

Felipa. Nay, you shall not get off so : Let us now have up the flute and the tambourine to boot : We'll dance you dead before you go, until you can't stir hand or foot.

Caterina. Meantime, by my life, I ween,

it were well we should prepare us for our little chacotine ; and therewith, we then will fare us forth to see the King and Queen.

i6 Portugal and the War

This scene, in which the Highlanders and lowlanders compete in singing and dancing in their own characteristic style, may serve as a parable of Portuguese nationality. It shows us the different elements that form the Por- tuguese people retaining as they still do many of their original characteristics, but all uniting in a common senti- ment of loyalty whether to a king as in the time of Gil Vicente, or to a republic as to-day. One might have expected these different elements to develop each its own separate sentiment, or its own self-governing institu- tions ; or at least that the lines of political cleavage would follow the lines of these constituent parts. But this is not so. One of the curious contrasts between the Portuguese and the Spaniard is that the former neither cares for, nor has ever got a respectable local government, whereas he never rests until he gets a tolerable central government. The converse is true of the Spaniard, whose local govern- ment has repeatedly run the country when the central government has entirely broken down. In other words liberty in Portugal is national. In Spain it is provincial. In Spain it was Saragossa or Madrid that fought the invader. In Portugal it was Portugal.

Gil Vicente's lowlander resents the uplander mistaking him for a Spaniard on account of his way of speaking Portu- guese. Survival of the Portuguese language is in itself an example of the way in which the symbols of Portuguese nationality have survived in spite of the attempts to suppress them. Spanish was the language of the Portuguese Court for a century, and of the Portuguese Government for another half-century, but remained always an alien tongue ; and to this temporary dethroning of Portuguese by Spanish no doubt we owe the general impression that Portuguese is

Portugal and the War ly

a sort of dependent dialect of Spanish. Whereas Portuguese is really an entirely different language and much less like Spanish than other Latin languages, such as the Languedoc or Italian. Even when Latin was still a common tongue the Low Latin spoken on the coasts was probably always different from that spoken in Spain, owing to difference of race and occupation. This distinction was no doubt then not much more than that between sailor-Latin and soldier-Latin ; like the sort of provincial plus professional difference between the slang of Plymouth and of Aldershot. Portuguese literature, on the other hand, owes more to France than to Spain, and in its origins is Gallegan, which is neither French nor Spanish.

To-day Portuguese and Spanish are as different in form as they are in spirit. There is a clear hard quality about Spanish, both in sound and in syntax, as different from the slurred consonants, softened vowels, and involved sen- tences of Portuguese as well may be. The curious perver- sions of syllables, characteristic of the Portuguese language, would be impossible to the Spaniard, and indeed the Portuguese are, so far as I know, the only race that have this strange taste for planting their Latin roots upside down. Spanish is clarified, consolidated , crystallized, stiff and starched and rather dead ; whereas Portuguese is a conglomerate full of corruptions and anomalies, fluid and very much alive. The humane sociability of the race has led them to borrow freely words from every. other language with which they have come into contact, while the conservative conditions of life in Portugal have kept these borrowings unassimilated. Thus Portuguese alone of the modern languages descended from Latin has kept so many of the most archaic forms such as the pluperfect indicative, the gerund, and even the

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18 Portugal and the War

declined infinitive ; and is still in many ways the modern language most like Latin as spoken under the lower Empire. It is still easy to write a sentence of Portuguese that will read as classical Latin, and a student of colloquial Latin will find in Portuguese the explanation of many puzzles.

If the original Latin of the language expresses well the tem- perament of the Portuguese, the borrowings from Moorish, Indian, Brazilian, and Chinese give interesting evidence of the experiences through which the Portuguese nation .has passed. In a list of Moorish words, concerning as they do agriculture, industry, medicine, administration, art and science, we see the important but superficial contribu- tions made by the Moors to Portuguese culture. On the other hand the character of the Hebraisms in the language, containing as they do forms of syntax and turns of expression, suggest the more penetrating influence of this oriental race on the Portuguese mind. Other adoptions from alien races of the far East and far West show that the commercial relations of humane and warm-blooded races such as the Portuguese, involve a closer relationship than with the colder, races of the North such as ours. The Portuguese have left a deeper linguistic impression in their short regime over a few districts in India than we have in our centuries of rule over the whole country; while 'Pidgin' English, the 'lingua franca ' of the far East, is in structure and vocabulary as much Portuguese as English. Finally, if the test of nationality in a language be peculiarity, Portuguese is the most national language of Western Europe. The pro- nunciation with its compound consonants comparable only to Russian, and its sixteen diphthongs, two of which exist only in Chinese, is practically impossible of really accurate acquirement by an adult alien.

Portugal and the War 19

If we go on to the other regions of national culture, such as expression in art and architecture, we find again evidence of intense nationalism which has either been under- rated abroad on account of its very peculiar quality, or altogether overlooked on account of its small output.

Both the art and architecture of Portugal are peculiarly national. They not only represent the national tempera- ment but even reflect the phases of foreign influence, or the pressure of circumstances through which that national tem- perament has passed ; and they respond by their development or decline to the rise and fall of the national fortunes of Portugal. Both art and architecture have at certain periods, and in one or two particular cases, reached the highest point of excellence. But those periods are so short, the particular cases so few, and the total production so small that it is no wonder that such excellence as there is, has been and still is for the most part denied. For quality, unless based on quantity, has little chance of recognition nowadays. Again and again we find art critics, after excursions through the large outputs and long periods of the Spanish schools, passing, exhausted with enthusiasm, to a hasty examination of Portuguese painting. These pundits, finding at first sight in Portugal only bad imitations of Spanish schools, proceed to pass a summary judgment of hearty and wholesale condemnation. One can almost hear them thanking heaven they are well rid of a knave. Those critics who, like Oswald Crawfurd, really got to know Portugal eventually changed their opinion ; and it is curious to see in one of his books, evidently compiled from notes of travel, a denunciation on an early page of the admirers of Portuguese painting together with a total denial of its existence, and on a later page an account of what is evidently a good specimen

c 2

20 Portugal and the War

of the peculiar Portuguese style which he had found in a remote monastery, together with an enthusiastic and exact description of the excellences of the best Portuguese school of painting. But fortunately the Portuguese Revolu- tion has made it unnecessary for us to go to remote monas- teries in order to decipher the significance of the Portuguese school from a smoke-browned painting in a dark chancel. Good examples of this school — among them the triptych of Nuno Gonsalvez reproduced in the frontispiece — have been resurrected and restored, and can now be admired in all their splendour in the Lisbon Museum. We shall see from them at a glance that as Portuguese poetry at its best and when in its most impressionable stage of development owes much to Provence, so Portuguese painting is based, not on the Spanish, but on the Flemish school. Nuno Gonsalvez is Van Eyck ; but a Van Eyck glowing with the sun of the South, and lording it with a gay and gallant air. The difference between the two is just the difference of the spirit of mediaeval Portugal from that of mediaeval Flanders.

But the masterpieces of Portuguese painting are, like their masterpieces in poetry and in public buildings, so few and far between that it is difficult to trace their development. A small nation can produce quality but not quantity, and without a large putput there is no means of tracing the growth of the magnum opus. Consequently Portuguese masterpieces are parvenus, things of the people, fish-girls turned countesses in a day with nothing to explain how the miracle was done. Spanish masterpieces, on the other hand, are patrician, and claim respect not only for their intrinsic merits, but for their inheritance from the past and their influence on posterity. Even phenomenal masters like

Portugal and the War 21

Calderon or Velasquez have more relation to their predeces- sors and successors than have Gil Vicente or Nuno Gonsalvez, who, so far as we know, had neither. It is indeed curious to find that German critics, arguing as Germans and critics will from ' ce qu'on voit ' and ignoring the far more im- portant ' ce qu'on ne voit pas ', agree for the most part in rejecting the claim of the Portuguese nation to their Gil even as they reject that of the English to our Will, and assert that both are products of the continental and not of the national spirit. We, however, are at liberty to believe that neither of these poets would ever have existed but for the desire of the national spirit to give itself expression by the intermediary of the best instrument then obtainable, the Court playwright, the Court being then the centre of national culture. In the same way as the national need of poetical expression made use of such to us unpromising instruments as Court playwrights, so the same need of pictorial expression has converted to its use the rigidities and reticences of altar-pieces and Court portraits.

The same strongly national character appears in the few but very fine buildings of note. Moreover, as man must build though he need not paint, it is easier to trace in the great buildings of Portugal a direct connexion with the national history. Thus in the year 1 153 Affonzo Henriquez, the first King of Portugal, celebrated his conquest of the kingdom from the Moors by building the monastery church of Alcobaca. There is more than a merely imaginative relation between the simple severity of the style of this great church and the stern struggle from which Portuguese nationality fought its way into its own. Stripped of later additions there could be no more eloquent monument to the virtues of these early crusaders, no more expressive

22 Portugal and the War

memorial of the national life at this early epoch than this fortress fane where the cathedral is still only rough-hewn out of the castle.

A few miles from Alcobaca is the abbey of Batalha — the Battle Abbey of Portuguese nationality by which Portugal, more fortunate than England, commemorates the successful issue of the next fight for its freedom and the defeat of one of the Spanish attempts at invasion. Batalha Abbey, like all Portuguese masterpieces, has no architectural past or posterity, and no environment. It stands far from everywhere in a lonely valley with only a small village round it. It has little or nothing in common with Alcobaca, other than a general Gothic basis, but like Alcobaca every feature in it reflects its close relationship to the national life of the time and to the event it commemorates, the victory over the Spaniards at Aljubarrota in 1385. Like all national buildings it has changed with subsequent changes in national taste, but it is not difficult to distinguish the original structure. An English observer is at once struck by the fact that the style is English Gothic, though disguised by local and mostly later additions ; but an English Gothic, which like the English rose, transplanted to Portugal, has burst into a wealth and splendour of bloom, only like the English rose to exhaust itself in a few years and die. In Alcobaga we had the symbol of the long fight of Portuguese nationality . against Moorish dominion, in alliance with French chivalry.; In Batalha we have the symbol of its long fight against Spanish despotism in alliance with English archery, We are reminded, when we look at Batalha Abbey, that Alju- barrota was won with the help of English bowmen and that the Treaty of Windsor and the marriage with John of Gaunt's daughter established the glorious national dynasty

Portugal and the War 23

of Aviz and inaugurated the golden age of Portuguese nationality. Combining as it does the strength and restraint of English Gothic with a wealth of oriental ornament, much of it admirable even to our attenuated taste, and conjoining the cross of Christianity with cryptic symbols and mottoes of oriental mysticism, Batalha is a projection into stone of the mediaeval mind in general and in particular of the Portuguese nation that so vividly developed some of the most typical phases of that mind.

There is one other masterpiece of architecture in Portugal better known than either of the two preceding buildingSj, because of its being close to Lisbon and because it is" a striking instance of a style whose national peculiarities force them- selves on the attention. The convent of Belem was buiLf by King Emmanuel in the ' manueline ' style, a sort of super-decorated, subter-decadent Gothic, as a memorial of the successful voyage of Vasco da Gama. The cloister of Belem, a polygon of petrified pergolas, is a marvel of masonic art. The orientalism here is no longer mystical as at Batalha, but purely material. The magic of the East has disappeared, leaving only its magnificence. To the designers of Batalha the East was the ' Moirama ', that is the mastery of Portugal by Moorish wizardry, or it was Mahound, the rule of evil over the Holy Places. To the designers of Belem the East was the wealth of the Great Mogul and of the ' Golden City of Manoa '. Batalha is national, Belem has become imperial.

With the break in its national life caused by the Spanish invasion and Inquisition, Portugal ceased to exist both architecturally and artistically. Old Portugal rallied from the paralysing oppression of the Spanish Church and State,, but its creative faculty was^gone and it never recovered its

24 Portugal and the War

power of artistic expression. The seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries in Portugal were dominated by a virulent theocracy, a vicious aristocracy and a vapid autocracy, and produced nothing but palatial extravagances like Mafra, that cumbers a dull plain with its monotonous masses of masonry — the vision of a Versailles Vitruvius, or the Pena Palace perched on a rock pinnacle — the fantasy of a South German scene-painter ; together with a multitude of rococo churches of which the less said the better.

Young Portugal has not yet found its expression in art or architecture, for these are the products of a more simple and less sophisticated phase of national culture than any that is possible at present. But it has already shown promise, especially in its preservation of the national monuments of the past ; and this is itself perhaps no less sure evidence of national spirit, than the production of public buildings. Although a government of rationalist Republicans might have been expected to neglect churches and palaces, not only does it keep them in better repair than the previous regime, but shows a more reverent respect for them. It is not respect for the deposed royalties that keeps the Pena Palace with Pears' soap on the washstands and the Sphere on the reading tables, just as they were left. Nor is it reverence for the disendowed and disestablished religion that restores so carefully the manoeline monstrosities of the cathedrals. It is nothing but pure nationalism, the feeling that these matters are relics with a historic relation to Portuguese nationality, and retaining consequently a sentimental value apart from their intrinsic worth. This makes their preserva- tion a duty ; not as it would be with us, a duty to posterity or to the past, but a duty to Portugal.

It has been suggested above that the possession of a

Portugal and the War 25

national religious cult is a test of nationality, and it might be asserted that since the Revolution Portugal not only has had no national cult, but has shown little religious sentiment. It must be admitted in this respect that the intelligenzia of professional men and politicians that governs the country for the Republic, has taken drastic action against all Roman Catholic influences and institutions. Laws have been passed on the model of those adopted by the French Republic, suppressing the whole ecclesiastical organization and substituting civil for clerical control. But this is not inspired by an inclination to repress religion as such, but by a reaction against the political oppression of the Church and its institutions. The Church having of old usurped many civil functions, the State has now by a natural reaction assumed some authority that might perhaps as well have been left to the Church. If, then, the Revolution went for a few months rather far in its repression of religion, this is natural enough in view of the centuries during which religious reactionaries repressed the liberties of the Portu- guese State. For since Madrid and Rome have continually conspired to use religion as a means of riveting their foreign rule on Portugal, Portuguese nationalism has had to seek its religious ideals otherwise than in the Church.

In the Middle Ages Portuguese princes and prelates resisted Rome as strongly and as successfully as did those of England. But when this resistance became organized and general at the Reformation Portugal found itself both racially, geographically, and sympathetically out of the range of the movement. In the great moral revolution of the sixteenth century with which the history of most modern European nations begins, Portugal had no part. That section of the nation that might have formed the Protestant

26 Portugal and the War

party was absorbed in amassing the wealth that poured into Lisbon from the East and West. The conservative section remained true to its ideal of the unity of Christendom, Portugal and England had developed concurrently along a slow rising curve, that of Portugal having taken a sharp upward turn after the age of discovery. But at the Reforma- tion the curve of England starts as sharply upward and that of Portugal as suddenly sinks down. The Portuguese monarchy absorbed in dynastic designs on the Spanish Succession, the gentry attracted still by Crusades and colonial adventure, the clergy dependent on Rome, the burghers deep in imperial trade, were all committed to anti-national and unprdfitable interests. Unprofitable because it profits a nation nothing if it gain the whole world and lose its own soul. As a result, instead of Lisbon absorbing Madrid, as the dynasty intended, Madrid absorbed Lisbon. The Spanish intrigues brought the Spanish Inquisition, and the Spanish Inquisition brought the Spanish occupation. The last king of Old Portugal, himself a cardinal, was succeeded by that arch-priest, Philip of Spain, who had no difficulty in descending upon Lisbon along a road trodden smooth by the emissaries of Rome. When at last liberation came, the yoke of Rome proved harder to shake off than that of Madrid. The Spanish Government of Portugal lasted only some sixty years, but the rule of Rome which had begun long before the Spanish occupation, and reached a climax during that occupation, was not even shaken until the reforms of Pombal in mid-eighteenth century. At that time the control exercised by the Church over national life, was still such that no books might be printed except by licence, or sold otherwise than by the organization estab- lished for that purpose by the Church ; while the prisons

Portugal and the War 27

were permanently filled with such persons as the Inquisition suspected of any inclination for intellectual independence. For two centuries and a half Portugal, the nation of poets and orators, was gagged. For the succeeding two centuries the national history of Portugal was, and to some extent still is, mainly the history of the struggle with the absolute authority of the Church, a struggle in which the best minds and characters of many generations of the nation have been mercilessly sacrificed. For this has not been such a political struggle as we English have had, in which both sides have found a political education, but a war in which too often the best on both sides have been exterminated.

The country having associated all religion with Roman Catholicism, and the Church having associated Roman Catholicism with reaction, religion became, in the eyes of the educated, responsible for such excesses as the perse- cution of Liberals by Miguel, or the persecution of the Jews by Manuel. Any possibility there might have been of a National Catholic Church was long ago extinguished, not only directly, as a matter of policy, by Rome, but indirectly by the persistence with which the Church supported all anti-national elements in the Court and in the country. ' Delenda est Roma ' became the first principle of the new Nationalism of Young Portugal. The Revolution of 1910 was finally triumphant in the long conflict — the conflict of Portuguese nationalism against Papal internationalism, of popular government against personal government, of Jews against Jesuits, of nationalism against religion, and last, if not also least, of republicanism against royalism. For it was largely long and bitter experience, proving that the connexion between the Crown and the Curia could not be permanently cut, that drove Portuguese reformers into

28 Portugal and the War

republicanism. Apart, however, from this political motive the republican ideal appeals to the strong sense of a com- munity of civilization inherent in all Portuguese. Forced to abandon the ideal of a Universal Church because the claims of that Church could not be combined with nationalism, the Portuguese see in their republican institutions not only a bond of sympathy between themselves and other republics but a basis for a possible European federation. An Association of Republics seems to them to offer a better basis for possible international institutions and a better expression of inter- national ideals than an Alliance of Courts, such as was the Holy Alliance, or an assertion of authority by the Church such as was the Catholic League.

Roman Catholicism and Royalism were in close alliance against the Republic when the war broke out, and though they had lost all hold over Portuguese nationalists and nearly all hold over the nation as a whole, they yet claimed to enjoy the sympathy and support of England, whose alliance is an essential element of the policy of Portuguese nationalists. If there were until lately many notes that were out of time and out of tune in the Anglo-Portuguese harmony, this has been corrected by the declaration of the Portuguese Republic for our cause, by the dissociation of the party of action among the Royalists from that declaration, and by the evi dence of events, showing that the Republicans represent Portugal and the Royalists do not, There is, therefore, nothing to complicate the simple issue in Portugal which for the time being places religion on the side of reaction and Prussia, and rationalism on the side of a Republic and progress.

Yet Portugal is not irreligious. The peasantry still have a lively and simple faith, while the educated classes express their religious instincts in various less attractive forms.

Portugal and the War 29

Even the Republic though anti-Roman is not anti-religious, and one of its first acts was to set up a National Catholic Church in independence of Rome : an experiment fore- doomed to failure because there was no demand for such a compromise. For Young Portugal was, and remains still, what might be called Primitive Rationalist, whereas Old Portugal was, and still is, Roman Catholic. It is indeed difficult at present to see what will be the end of this division. Education and enlightenment will no doubt relieve if they do not remove the difficulty, for both points of view are already much behind the times. The rationalism of the proletariat is as much cruder than that of the average Western European public opinion of the day as the religion of the peasantry is more credulous than that of other Western peoples. Both rationalism and religion are deeply rooted in superstition, and both show relics of primitive paganism. There are few countries, for instance, where one could have seen a year or two ago on a Good Friday on one side of the village square a church — one of the ugly churches of the Inquisition period — with a Government order on the door prohibiting entry under penalty of imprisonment ; and on the other side of the square the quondam congrega- tion occupied with the spring ritual of human sacrifice. It is true that the Republican administrator will explain to you that the door is legally closed under the Law of the Associations, just as the Royalist cure will explain to you that the dummy representing the Winter God is really Judas. But the door is shut as firmly, the dummy is burnt and its ashes thrown into the sea as fiercely, as if the fanaticism were that of an auto-da-fe or of a pagan festival.

But, after all, religion is something different from ritual. And, if so, we may perhaps find the national religion of the

30 Portugal and the War

Portuguese in their humane conscience and their conscious- ness of a common humanity, for both are national char- acteristics. An appeal to the charity or to the courtesy of a true Portuguese is unfailing ; if we except those urban classes in whom circumstances, as in 6very race, have extinguished their national characteristics. In the same way an appeal to the humanity of the Portuguese nation, as a whole, has never, been in vain.

The humanity of the Portuguese is especially evident in their treatment of foreigners, inferiors, criminals, or animals. In Portugal domestic and draught animals are better treated than in any other Latin country. Not long ago English residents, influenced partly perhaps by experiences in Spain, partly by belief that our own virtues must be unique, and partly by cases of occasional overloading on the steep hills of Lisbon, started there an S.P.C.A. organization. The Portuguese accepted this, as they do all our proceedings, with professions of sympathy, but were really profoundly shocked that it should have been necessary in England to organize for this purpose, or that anything in Portugal should have suggested that such an organization was neces- sary in Portugal, where the farm animals seem to own the farm, where the draught animals seem to go where they please, as they please, where only the pig and the dog are not petted — and even they are politely ignored. Nor does Portugal allow of exceptions in favour of sport. A bull fight in Portugal, instead of a brutal butchery, is the best of sport in every sense. For real excitement and enjoyment, the proper mixture of thrills and laughter, there is no show to equal a Portuguese village ' corrida ' ; while the more formal performances in Lisbon are quite satisfactory from an aesthetic or athletic point of view. The cavalier in'

Portugal and the War 3 1

picturesque costume on a spirited horse galloping and wheeling within inches of the pursuing bull's horns is as fine a show as the village grocer, running hard for the barrier with a bull calf behind him, is funny.

But those who claim for the Portuguese a larger measure of humanity than that possessed by other people must face worse accusations than those of cruelty to domestic animals. An unfortunate and very incorrect impression has been made on the British public by the long campaign in our press, against certain labour conditions in certain Portuguese colonies. This question will be dealt with more fully later, and it will be enough to point out here that conditions in the Portuguese colonies had, until lately, little to do with the people of Portugal — that they have since the installation of a more democratic Government, through the Revolution of 1910, been so much improved that they have now been officially recognized by us as beyond criticism — and that the principles on which Portugal has conducted its relations with its subject overseas populations are so different frOm ours that they can scarcely be submitted to the same standard, or even regarded from the same stand- point. This latter point is the one which most concerns us here, where we are dealing with the Portuguese people rather than with the Portuguese Empire. The Portuguese people, in dealing with a subject race, draw little or no colour line, and do not govern as a caste apart. This has its disadvantages, which are more obvious to us than the advantages. But if it seems to us that the first result of this is a demoralization on both sides, this is certainly not the final result, and equally certain is it that the relationship is at every stage more human than ours. Moreover, where abuses have occurred Young Portugal has shown a keen

32 Portugal and the War

remorse, and has on the first opportunity reformed. Far more sensitive than ourselves as the Portuguese are to outside criticism, they have never been any more inclined than ourselves to protect themselves by self-deception. Indeed, we can scarcely imagine a British prophet of national- ism writing of a British extension of Empire as Guerro Junqueiro has written of the conquests in America by the Portuguese adventurers. There could scarcely be any stronger evidence of national humanitarian conscience than the following passage from the political play of Patria by this Republican and Chauvinist poet :

PATRIA

Justice of God, — thine equity divine

is manifest, to all with eyes that see,

in the long tragedy of my decline.

My glorious past ! — it is because of thee

I suffer now and search my soul with tears.

My glories ? — Deeds of infamy and shame

by robbers, murderers, and buccaneers !

New worlds I sought, new spaces broad and long,

but not the more to worship and be wise.

A cruel greed hurried my feet along,

the pride of conquest made my sword-arm strong

and lit the light of madness in my eyes.

I shall not wash the blood I then did spill

with tears of twice ten thousand centuries.

But leaving the Empire and coming to the nation, we find that in Portugal itself the Portuguese have never been efficient persecutors. The Jews survived in Portugal the Portuguese persecution, even when it was conducted, by Spanish Inquisitors. The Liberals of the last century were persecuted, many were imprisoned and many perished ; but

Portugal and the War 33

such bad reputations for persecution as those acquired by Miguel in the eighteenth century, or Manoel in the six- teenth century, are due as much to the feeling of horror they created as to the actual harm they did. Finally, to come down to the present day, contrary to the impression created in England by an interested propaganda, the Royalist insurrectionists of the last few years have been treated with the utmost clemency consonant with the maintenance of order ; the terms of imprisonment have been a matter of months at most, there have been no executions and practically no exilings. Again, if we consider the case of ordinary criminals, we find even more proof of Portuguese humanity in the evident difficulty they have in convincing themselves, as we can, that there is nothing in common between a citizen and a convict. They are very proud of having been the first Europeans to abolish capital punishment as they did early last century ; and if Portu- guese prisons are not all of them, hygienically speaking, as good as ours, humanitarianly speaking they are less inhuman. The standard of housing in Portugal, as in all southern lands, is not high, and a Portuguese would not hesitate long in choosing between the promiscuities of the Limoeiro and the immaculacies of Wormwood Scrubbs. Here again we have the same differences of standards and of standpoint as in the relationship with subject races ; and here again we find Portugal unfairly prejudiced by a foreign press agitation. The campaign conducted in the English press on account of alleged ill-treatment of Royalist conspirators during the first few years of the Republic was well-intentioned perhaps, but ill-founded. There was much crowding and consequent discomfort ; but seeing the crisis through which the country was passing, and the bitterness of the conflict, the still

1832-6 r,

34 Portugal and the War

infantilePortugueseRepublic,initsdealing with a veryformid- able Royalist conspiracy, gave an example of humanity that we ourselves did not follow under circumstances of inferior provocation. The difference is due to temperament. A Portuguese will kill readily in hot blood, but cannot in cold. He will work himself up to commit a political murder or a crime passionel, and public opinion in its turn will judge the case neither impartially nor dispassionately and rather as if it were a duel than as if it were a delinquency ; but the cold-blooded killing of a criminal by society is revolting to him. Portugal was quite unmoved by the assassination of King Carlos and his son, which to our point of view was an atrocious crime ; but when a year or two ago a drunken degenerate Portuguese murdered his mistress on a Royal Mail liner and was brought to trial in England, the ponderous processes of British justice slowly and surely eliminating the man out of existence threw the Portuguese people into a sort of hysteria. Petitions poured in, the position of the Government was imperilled, and the whole foreign policy of the country was put in question. When in due, course the capital sentence was commuted to confinement in an asylum, the revulsion of feeling was equally strong. For the moment the sympathy of London society and its press with the Royalist cause was forgiven, the support by the British Government of German schemes in Africa was forgotten, and the Anglo-Portuguese Alliance was considered as having been renewed and ratified by the British Crown in favour of the Portuguese Republic ; and when the com- mutation of the sentence was announced in the Chamber by the Premier, the whole House rose as a tribute of respect to King George. Have we not here, perhaps, an example somewhat exaggeratedly expressed of the things that will

Portugal and the War 35

really matter in foreign affairs when the national sentiment of a people exercises an influence over foreign relations ? If Europe had been composed of small national communities no larger than Portugal, with as close a control of their governments as the Portuguese, it would never have incurred the present collapse of its civilization.

' By the soul only the nation shall be great and free,' and it would hardly be too much to say that if one could analyse the soul of Portugal one would find that the real religion of the nation was humanity, the religion of which the cult is chivalry and the creed courtesy. Courtesy, it is true, in Portugal, as in other southern lands, has very generally degenerated into ceremony ; and there is a ritual prescribing elaborate and exaggerated forms for almost every act of daily intercourse. To the foreigner this is at first noticeable in conversation, in which no one may be addressed as less than ' Your Excellency ', while such things as pigs or dogs have to be referred to in polite periphrasis ; but later on it is found that the same spirit affects almost every ordinary act. While this ritual can become as wearisome as any orthodox liturgy, its formalities and absurdities are really inspired by a very true respect for others. Moreover, though the Portuguese will of course prefer it if you can deal with him in the current conversational coin, he will not refuse to change into thousands of reis the solitary sovereign of a sentence you may be able to produce at long intervals. The reason why a Portuguese is good company and a Spaniard is not, is not only that the former is humorous and cordial, for the Spaniard can be witty and companionable too if he likes, but that the point of view from which the Portu- guese approaches you is different. The Spaniard feels that he is in Spain, the Portuguese feels that you are in Portugal ;

36 Portugal and the War

the Spaniard condescends to you as a foreigner, the Portu- guese collogues with you as a fellow man. This courtesy is traditional with the Portuguese. Colbatch {Court of Portugal, p. 171) writes in 1700, at a time when religious intolerance was at its height, as follows : ' The common people about the city are not guilty of any rudeness to the English on account of their religion ; such as have had cause to be most exposed to affronts having never met with any, which, in my opinion, ought, in justice, to be ascribed to the humanity of the Portuguese nation.'

It is the essential humanity of the Portuguese, and their national preference for the charitable and chivalrous point of view, that counts for much in the decision of the country to fight on the side of England and France. Except among a very small section of the conservative, clerical, and capitalist class to whom Prussian principles appealed, the claims of the Allies to be crusading on behalf of the minor nations and the liberties of Europe found ready acceptance.

Those who knew the Portuguese had no difficulty in understanding their entry into the war, for there has always been, in Portugal, a strong sense of the solidarity of European culture or Christianity, and a ready response to a summons for a crusade on its behalf. This was one reason why Portugal resisted such movements as the Reformation, that, whatever its merits, undoubtedly broke up Europe into two hostile camps and ended the common cause of Christianity. Camoens, writing when the new epoch was already well begun, constantly returned upon these old regrets for the community of Europe. In the following stanzas from the Lusiad he bitterly reproaches the Western Powers for their defection from the common cause of Europe against Asia,

Portugal and the War 37

You Portuguese are few, but fortified

through ne'er your weakness with your will contrasting. You, who at cost of death on every side,

still spread the Gospel of life everlasting. You, so diminutive that men deride —

On you, before all, Heaven the lot is casting to do great deeds for Christ your Saviour holy : For thus doth Christ exalt the poor and lowly.

See now the Germans, — stiff-necked steers are they,

ranging at pasture over fertile meads. From Peter's place-holders they broke away

to seek new pastors, and new-fangled creeds. See them in ugly warfare pass their day, —

(blind errors not sufficing for their needs !) not fighting 'gainst the mighty Moslem folk, but shaking off our Mother Church's yoke.

See the dour Englishman who doth purport

to be king of that ancient holy city where the base Ishmaelite still holds his court, —

(who e'er saw title so remote from verity ?) Among his northern snows he lives for sport

and grows new kinds of Christianity. Against Christ's followers he bares his sword, nor seeks to free the birthplace of his Lord.

All newest and most formidable inventions

in deadly weapons of artillery should have been proved by now in stern contentions

against the bulwarks of Byzance and Turkey : Dispersing to their wild and wooded mansions,

in Caspian hills and snows of Tartary, that Turkish brood which mounts and multiplies, on wealthy Europe's foreign policies.

Armenian and Georgian, Greek and Thracian, each cries for help, — in that the brute Soldan

takes his dear sons in terrible taxation as is approved by the profane Koran.

38 Portugal and the War

The punishment of this inhuman nation

should be the glory of a brave statesman — not the pursuit of arrogant applause by bullying others of the Christian cause.

It is for this defection that we are now doing penance, for there is no doubt that had the Western Powers been able to continue some measure of common action against Asia until the Eastern Europeans were wholly free, we should not have drifted and been driven into our present disaster.

Portugal, alone among European States, has always been true to the common cause of Western civilization. For instance, it was not until 1843 that Portugal concluded capitulations with the Ottoman Empire, while those of England and France dated from 1579 and 1535. Again, Portugal has never lost any opportunity of supporting any common action by Europe in general, or any special action by England in particular (even when, as in the slave trade, it imperilled its own imperial existence). Portugal has, moreover, felt keenly any occasions on which it has been omitted from such joint action, even when this has been done out of consideration for its small purse or political situation. Now that we have at last learnt from this war the great moral value of the support of any independent State, however small, and the great practical value that independent peoples might have as preservers of the peace under proper international arrangements, Portugal may possibly be given the part in which its national quality will find proper scope. The past age, in which everything was expressed in terms of military or material progress, was not one that could appreciate or employ the peculiar qualities of the Portuguese. It has consequently been for the Portuguese, as for other smaller nations, a time of watching

Portugal and the War 39

and waiting. In the Revolution of 1910 and in the Republic, Portugal expressed something of what it had most at heart, but so long as Europe remains what it has been, Portugal cannot be to it what it might be. This feeling that the era before the war was the dark hour before dawn has always been very present to the mind of the Portuguese and has been a favourite theme of their poets.

The verses addressed to the Republic by Sousa Viterbo, an early Portuguese reformer who never saw the day break, express, crudely and clumsily perhaps, a sentiment peculiar to every smaller nation whether itself free or not.

TO THE REPUBLIC

You fear her ? See, she 's quiet, not yet awake, the goddess of interminable wars, while all around the cruel winter roars, and all about is dark before daybreak.

Nay, think not that she drowses, drunk with wine, soft slumbers that from royal wine-cups flow : Like Dante, she descends to worlds below, and rests awhile from what she doth design.

The same idea, almost the same imagery, is found in the lines written lately by another revolutionary republican who died for the freedom of one of the lesser nations.

She sleeps and dreams that she no longer sleeps. Her trembling heart impassionate with song : But her unsleeping soul waits crooning low Sad tunes, so stately that the golden deeps Melt into murmurs all the shore along And lapse to silence in the shallows low.

These are the visions of young men who led their forlorn hope in the first fight against the forts of folly. The more

40 Portugal and the War

mature view of Dr. Braga who, one of the earliest Portuguese Republicans, has survived to be twice president of the new Republic, gives a more definite idea of the spiritual part that Young Portugal may play in a new Europe. After reviewing the roles of the great Empires in the World's History, Dr. Braga defines that of Portugal in the epilogue to his poem the Twelve, of England.

And with what arms shall Portugal engage, so little as she is, in such great feats ? They call on her to play a leading part who know that in the Lusitanian heart Love beats ! '

'Love and man's unconquerable mind' are the contribu- tions that Portugal will make to the World under happier circumstances, and it is perhaps not too much to hope that Europe may, as a result of the war, so revise the relationships between the Great Powers and the Lesser Peoples that Portugal may find an even nobler expression of its loyalty to its ancient alliance with Great Britain, and its ancient allegiance to Christendom, than in sending its sons to fight at our side.

How long, O ruling Teutons, Slavs, and Gaels,

Must your wroth reasonings trade on lives like these,

That are as puppets in a playing hand f

When shall the saner softer polities

Whereof we dream, have sway in each proud land,

And patriotism, grown godlike, scorn to stand

Bondslave to realms, but circle earth and seas ?

Old Portugal

Planitie pars tensa iacet ; pars littora curvat ; Pars datur in tumulos ; pars aspera rupibus horret ; Pars data dulcifluis undantls fontibus agri. Promitur herba virens, it surculus omnis in auras, Et, semper vestita comis, frondescit oliva : Torta per obliquos it vitis in orbe corymbos ; Vinea pampineos subarundinat ebria campos, Munera laetitiae spondens pendentibus uvis ; Fructibus et variis redolent florentia rura : Una parens tellus non unum fundit odorem.

Dracontius.

The attractions of Portugal as a holiday resort or a place of residence have often been described since Dracontius, but have never been taken proper advantage of by us moderns in spite of its being one of the easiest of foreign lands for English tourists to reach. In vain do guide-books praise its wonderful climate and scenery, and point out how these may be reached and enjoyed with a minimum of trouble and expense; 'perfect climate', 'romantic scenery', 'wonderful colouring ', ' picturesque peasants ', all the usual attractions to an unusual extent have hitherto failed to lure us from our beaten tracks. But other imperial races have shown more appreciation, and the Romans, to whom also the civilized world lay open, clearly ranked Portugal very highly as a resort.

To most of us Portugal does not suggest very ancient

42 Old Portugal

associations. The name stands for modern matters such as African colonies, Republican movements, a Royal Mail steamer en route for South America, &c. To a few of us it may suggest mediaeval literature and picturesque peasant life. But even those of us who have been to Portugal do not, at first, realize the vast antiquity of much that is in plain view to those with'eyes to see. The Portuguese themselves, with few. exceptions, know little of the significance of the survivals of ancient civilization. Just as a Wessex peasant looks on every prehistoric monument as the work of the Danes or of the Devil, so for the Portuguese the Iberian cromlech, the Celtic earthwork, and the Roman viaduct are all the work of the Moors or the King of Spain ; while ' before the Moors ' or ' before Pombal ' will probably content the more educated townsman. But to the foreigner, with a taste for archaeology, a tour into Portugal is almost like a trip in Mr. Wells's flying machine. For the tourist finds that as he goes deeper into the country he goes further back into the past. After he has explored the eighteenth-century life of the port he lands at, the mediaeval manners of the provincial town he reaches by rail, and the Roman ways of life of the country-side he walks through, he will not be surprised to find prehistoric survivals if he penetrates as far inland as the ranges on the Spanish border. The bold explorer who should reach the remote valleys of the Monte de Outeiro, where live beehive hut-dwellers dressed in skins, will find himself back in the dim grey dawn of the world. For this great mountain barrier between Portugal and Spain is, indeed, a fearsome place, and it is easy enough for the lonely traveller there to believe in even more sur- prising survivals than the wolves and bears or the hut- dwellers and cavemen he will see there. There are eerie

Old Portugal 43

tales of mysterious presences still holding power in these high passes. More than one engineering project is said to have been abandoned owing to these uncanny influences, one of which is said to take the form of a mysterious and mortal sickness. Presumably the native gods here still hold out against those raiding Djinn we call engineers.

But without going back so far as these mountains that are still wrapped in the mist before sunrise, it is easy, via Portugal, to make a delightful trip in the bright morning sunshine of European civilization. Let us take, for example, two express excursions back into Old Portugal, the first, such as we might make on our way from our business in London to our business in Rio de Janeiro. The second, such as will give sufferers from the sullen sodden gloom and grime of a London winter a week of clear air, bright colour, woods and wild-flowers and the most vivid and various of sights to say nothing of smells — ' una parens tellus non unum fundit odorem.'

In the first excursion, starting from the twentieth century of the Royal Mail saloon with its architecture and atmosphere of South America chastened by Southampton, we shall land at Oporto straight into the eighteenth century. Taking the train to Braga we rapidly retire into the Middle Ages. At Braga we hire a motor, and as we go further up country we find that every jolt of the Portuguese car is taking us back at least fifty years. The centuries pass in a disinte- grating defilade as the hotel chauffeur, getting more and more drunk with driving as Southern Europeans do, hurls us into the past over gaps and round corners that even Portuguese mediaeval history seems scarcely to explain. Time travelling in a Portuguese motor is certainly not as smooth as in Mr. Wells's machine, and the traveller pays

44 Old Portugal

little attention to the passage of events until the car stops finally in a Virgilian country-side. The first glance shows there is no doubt about the period. We are here among people whose civilization is still Roman, though some of the less essential features of it may not be quite in the picture. But you will not notice such minor matters as that, for instance, the Christian and not the Augustan era is used — a change made as long ago as 1400 ; for all the out- ward and more material features of Roman life remain. An oxcart comes creaking past carrying a rough wooden plough, just a forked piece of timber shod with an iron coulter on it, and both are Roman. The cart is a little oblong box on two solid wooden disks whose wooden ungreased axle, as it turns bodily, keeps up an ear-piercing shriek. This not only serves to clear the narrow lane worn by centuries of use into a deep ditch, but also to keep away evil spirits who notoriously hate cart-wheels almost as much as church bells. No doubt this superstition seemed absurd to the Roman legionary, and the yoke also would, perhaps, strike the Roman farmer as rather old-fashioned, being a large board carved' with conventional designs of whorls and geometric patterns of obviously Celtic character. Again, the girl that guides the pair of little mouse-coloured oxen is dressed in bodice and kirtle, embroidered in designs and colours that were introduced when the country was flooded with the cheap textiles of the Phoenician. But the girl herself is oldest of all as she is evidently of that mys- terious race we call Iberian. We, in our northern countries, welcome some survival of this Iberian strain, the dark- haired, sombre-skinned, vital type, as giving qualities of charm, character and creative force so badly needed in our dull race and damp regions. But in Portugal, where this

Old Portugal 45

strain is still in places comparatively pure, and where the kindliest of climates develops instead of deadening every faculty, the vital force and primaeval power of this mysterious people is still cause for fear and dislike. Women, such as this girl, from a village near by where the type is still dis- tinct, are all well known to be witches. Our driver, who is quite as much interested in magic as he is in motors, knows this. You may observe that he does not try to attract the attention of this sombre beauty as he has that of every other pretty girl he has passed ; but you would not probably guess that he does not do so because he cannot decide as to whether she has, as yet, become a were-wolf.

The oxcart has come out of the gateway of a Roman homestead. The yard inside is shaded by vines trellised over granite posts, the long low house behind is divided into bedroom, living-room, and stable, the rooms separated from the stable by the floor being raised. Another step in the room itself at the far end from the stable represents a mediae- val improvement and makes the dais where the women sit. The fire-place is in the middle of the room and a square wooden funnel catches such smoke as comes out from the roof. There is generally an old woman crouching by the fire making some delectable stew or brew in a black pot, as old women, with the help of black pots, always could, until by an evil enchantment they became cooks with kitcheners. The farmer is leaning against the door-post, a broad-brimmed hat on his head such as Roman travellers used to wear, and, if it be wet weather, a cape of reed-thatch over his shoulders, a local adaptation of the Roman vine twig waterproof — the toga viminalis. While both the farmer and the rest of the family are clearly Celtic in type, in spite of their Roman surroundings, it is obvious that the

46 Old Portugal

oxcart girl comes of a different stock. To reach the home of her Iberian race we must leave the car and climb up a stony track through the woods and enclosures. There, on a lonely ridge overlooking the blue distances of North Portugal, we shall find what is left of an Iberian town.

The Roman historian, Valerius Maximus, mentions a fortified city, Citania, on a mountain in North Portugal which long resisted the Roman arms and, as there is no reason why we should not, we may suppose this ruined city to be Citania.

And just as the Roman Age in Portugal is not repre- sented to-day merely by a few ruined temples of a dead faith, by the grass-grown roads of a dead civilization, or by the relics of a dead language, but by the life and speech of the land ; so, of this Celt-Iberian civilization killed by Rome, there remains enough to let us see clearly how very much of it survived. There is indeed so much remaining that shows a developed domestic civilization — such as the curve of the tiles to make them watertight, the sockets in the stone lintels and thresholds to hold the wooden door that is still used in Portuguese barns, the conduits for water, the rounded stone seats, and so forth — that one would be tempted to think the settlement was later than Iberian, but for the unmistakable evidence of the pottery and of the general plan. Some of the houses — stone bee-hive huts — remind one of the Celtic Cashels of Ireland, but there are also unmistakable relics here of the earlier race. Besides the Celtic inscriptions there are others as yet unread, and stones curiously ornamented and inscribed in unknown characters. Here we have, in all probability, words written by primitive man when ' Rome was on the march to wipe out his petty tribe and name at once '. A point of special

Old Portugal 47

interest, explaining why the wiping out process took so long; is the skill with which the defences of the town are drawn along the ridge so as to use the ground to the best advantage — the general strategic plan being one followed in Portuguese hill fortifications until quite recently. The working of the mediaeval mind is often so difficult for us moderners to follow that the evidence everywhere given in Portugal, that the workings of the mind, and the ways of life of primaeval man were on lines comprehensible to us, is of the greatest interest. Indeed, the mediaeval mysticism of Batalha Abbey or the modern monstrosities of Bussaco Palace seem to-day remoter from us than the simple life of Citania. Those of us, who have other hopes for humanity than perpetual progress along the line of modern move- ments, will find much that is comforting in Old Portugal. In the northern world it may seem as though everything had always been going either up or down, according to our point of view ; but in this southern world of Portugal it is equally evident that things have always gone round and round. With such reflections, as the result of our excursion into northern Portugal, let us return to our Royal Mail steamer and steam on southward through the night until we come on deck in the morning to find we are rounding the bar into the Tagus. The difference between the narrow gorge of the Douro and the broad reaches of the Tagus prepares us for the dissimilarity between Lisbon and Oporto. Oporto brought to our mind the eighteenth century, the Methuen Treaty, Pitt and his port. But Lisbon rather suggests classical memories, the Felicitas Julia of the Roman, the Olyssippo of the Greek. For this city of seven hills is as fundamentally Roman as Constantinople is Greek or New York English.

48 Old Portugal

Even so early as Roman times there was a spirit of national- ism alive in Portugal. When Roman generals in 190 to 180 b. c. began to extend their conquests from the Carthaginian colonies on the Mediterranean westward to the Atlantic, they encountered a stubborn resistance in the Portuguese highlands. Only one name comes down to us from the Roman records, that of the shepherd and patriot Viriatho, who has been made the first national hero. But the resis- tance was evidently confined to that band of hardy moun- taineers who have, from their rocky fortresses, held out against every subsequent foreign occupation of Portugal, and who represent the spine, though not the spirit, of the Portuguese nation. The Celt-Iberian lowlanders readily accepted Roman civilization, adopted the Roman language and law, and were duly made Roman citizens by the decree of Caracalla. Portugal under Rome must, indeed, have been for five centuries as happy a land as well could be imagined, and the Roman name of the country Felicitas Iulia suggests that they appreciated the amenities of life in this pleasant land among a peaceful people. In return Rome gave Portugal public works and public institutions, some of which are serviceable still. Especially is this the case with the municipal institutions which long defended public liberties against the national predilection for strong central government.

Even in its outward characteristics Lisbon still suggests the Roman city. The curious difference between the formal respectability of the business quarter, rebuilt by Pombal in the eighteenth century, which occupies the lower ground with its streets and squares of uniform design each assigned to its own trade, and the mediaeval and Moorish quarters on the hills around, picturesque and disreputable, repre-

Old Portugal 49

sents, no doubt, the usual arrangement of a Roman pro- vincial town.

It is many centuries since the Tagus was the political frontier between Western and Eastern civilization, between Europe and Africa, between Christian and Moor, but it is still a geographical frontier, one of those boundaries between two different regions. We shall see this at once if, leaving Lisbon on a southerly excursion, we cross the Tagus and take the train past the great rock fortress of Palmella down through the orange gardens of Setubal to the shallow lagoon of the Sado estuary where the brown, pointed sails of the sardine fishers come and go against the southern sun. Our northern excursion was through the rugged gorges, the oak woods, and the bramble thickets, the water meadows and the hill- side fields of a country-side that might almost be in our own country ; but here, a few miles south of Lisbon, we are already in the atmosphere and scenery of Africa. Here is the clean clear colouring, the long sweep of yellow sand- bank and blue sea-line, the bare rocky range and the little white town with its sub-tropical trees and walled gardens. Moored along the quay of the little port are lateen-sailed eastern-looking vessels. Lurking among them is a motor- boat which plies across the lagoon to a sandy spit, separating it from the Atlantic, where is the site of another prehistoric city.

Nothing can be much more unlike the mountain city of Citania that we visited from Oporto than this city of Troya. The unlikeness is not only in its position and general picture, but in the people. Here are no comfortable Roman farms, no fertile vineyards, and meadows knee-deep in grass, but a bare sandbank with no sign of life other than one long long narrow boat, pointed high at bow and stern

1832-5 e

50 Old Portugal

and with a single lateen sail. On the bow there are eyes painted and the stem has a curious kind of figure-head. The structure is strong and rough, but the lines of the boat show a long evolution of swiftness and seaworthiness. An old man at the stern sits doubled over the steering oar, and on the sand not far away is a boy scraping among half- buried stones with a stick. He comes towards us holding out a coin that he has dug up. He won't sell it but will take a present of a testoon for it, and it is not likely to be worth more, being common Roman of the later period of occupation — as are obviously many of the ruins half-buried in the sand around. But the boy and the town itself are clearly of a more Eastern origin. His short curling black hair, slender and delicate build, narrow eyes, and oval face are all Semitic ; and some relics of the settlement also sug- gest that originally it was of Phoenician foundation. Troya, as the place now is called, was identified so long ago as the sixteenth century, by the antiquarian Resende, as the Roman Cetobriga ; and is possibly the place mentioned by Strabo as being situated on a spit of sand in this part of Portugal, and inhabited by the ' Bastuli ', a Phoenician tribe. It would indeed have been a poor site for any settlement other than a factory or trading station, and, though it has suffered much from the unscientific excavation of a French treasure-seeking company, and the less methodic grubbings of the native, enough of it remains to show from the ground plans of the houses that they must have been the dwellings of a population that made the best of the attractions of what must have been homelike scenery to an emigrant from Tyre. For even now as we rest among the ruins of Phoenician Troya and look out over the lagoon to the long line of the Sierra Arabida, with the scent of the orange blossom

Old Portugal 51

blowing from Setubal, we may scarcely believe that we are in the twentieth century and the fortieth parallel of latitude. If the first excursion gave you some idea of the deep roots of the Portuguese stock, this second excursion may give you an impression of the vividness and vitality of Portugal — a country that you have probably only thought of as dead, or at best dormant. And perhaps, for some evenings after, as you steam away to South America in your Royal Mail saloon, your port and oranges may bring back to you an afterglow of the purple and gold of this land that is as poor as a farm girl, and as beautiful, as penurious as a fisher boy, and as proud, that is as old as yoitth and as young as time.

But, fortunately, we are not all of us Royal Mail passengers in a hurry to make fortunes in South America. Some of us may prefer to visit Portugal under the more leisurely and scarcely less luxurious auspices of the Booth liners. For these afford a more prolonged and proteid-full excursion into Portuguese history than the port and oranges which are all that the Royal Mail have time or taste for. As Booth tourists, with a fortnight in Portugal before us, there is no need for abrupt and breathless plunges into the remotest past by motor-car or motor-boat, excursions which leave us with only a few hastily acquired and half- assimilated impressions ; but we can allow ourselves a care- fully planned, personally conducted, trip out and home again by a comfortable Portuguese train along the well-worn track of mediaeval history. Whereby, we shall find that early Portuguese history is the good old nursery history of kings who liberally ' fostered ' everything, and of the lesser personages who loyally ' flourished ' in their reigns — of conquests and of crusades — of ' the vexed moods of gallant

52 v Old Portugal

gentlemen ' and the caprice of fair ladies — that same old history of our childhood that we now find it so hard to be- lieve in. We shall find that this excursion through Portugal will bring it all back to us again ; for it seems to have come to an end there only yesterday and to be ready to begin again to-morrow. By going to school again as tourists, in that open- air school where buildings take the place of books, and ' summa diligentia ' may rightly be construed as the top of a diligence, we may recover the romantic reading of history and we may learn that the village pupil-teacher's view of the way the world goes round is more interesting and no more incorrect than that of the university professor.

The short and uninteresting railway journey from Roman Lisbon to Moorish Cintra will serve to remind us that there is little to record in Portuguese history between the going of the Romans and the coming of the Moors, and that compared with the recasting of society by the Romans, the overlaying of it by the Visigoths was comparatively unim- portant. Beginning with the fifth century the Visigoths had reached the zenith of their power under Euric at the end of that century, and ended it with the death of Roderick on his defeat by the Moors in 711. The Visigothic occupa- tion left, as a legacy, nothing more than a dominant, but perpetually decadent, caste.

The next remoulding of Portuguese society was far more fundamental. The Moorish invasion was probably inevitable, but it was hastened by the struggle between the Chivalry and the Church of the time, a struggle that the weak Visigothic dynasty was unable to keep in bounds. It was the ecclesiastical leaders, Count Julian and Archbishop Oppus, who invited the Moors into Portugal : a betrayal of nationalism by ecclesiasticism, and of Christianity by

Old Portugal 53

the Church, regularly repeated on later occasions whenever the nationalist and humanist spirit of the country was too weak to prevent it. To such a defection from the nationalist cause on the part of clerical and class-interests can be traced, in part, the Moorish occupation of some five hundred years, the Spanish occupation in the seventeenth century of some fifty years, and the French occupation in the last century of some five years. Portugal, from its important position and inferior power, always has been, and still is, exposed to such betrayals ; but it is interesting to note the increased pace of the rate at which nations live in the decreasing length of the periods of occupation. The inference, that if a foreign power now occupied Lisbon the period of occupation would not be much longer than six months, is probably sound enough.

But to return to our ' Booth ' excursion, and our trip from Lisbon to the rocky range of mountains that bound the Lower Tagus Valley on the north. High in the range lies Cintra, where we can spend comfortable nights and cool days in romantic gorges and woods not unlike those of the north, but growing as no northern woods ever grow. Here, at Cintra, is the Palace of the Moors, their last resting-place of any permanence in Portugal. This wonderful Arabian Nights sort of building with its curious chimney cowls, its arcaded courts, and its green-tiled bathrooms, framed among hanging gardens in a wooded glen, is a worthy relic of the civilization that forced science and sanitation upon a dark and dirty age. Above it, crowning the top of a precipitous rock pinnacle, is the Moorish castle, an empty shell of walls and towers, that recalls the grimmer side of the Moorish occupation. There are, indeed, two points of view of the occupation of Portugal by the Moors. Looked at

54 Old Portugal

from one point it was the beginning of a cruel and continuous race-war between a subjected Christian community and a horde of Moslem oppressors : the suppression of Arian freedom by African feudalism, the substitution for Roman law of the Cheriat, the subversion of European democracy by Asiatic despotism. From the other point of view the Moorish occupation was the ending of interminable internecine warrings between feudal, municipal, and local interests, by uniting them under a strong central administration — the superseding of superstition by science — the subordination of the individual and local interest to a common authority and to a community of purpose from which, first, the spirit of nationality was forged — and finally, the infusion of the cultivated leaven of Asiatic mentality into a raw lump of European humanity, whereby a national culture was created. These two points of view are sufficiently symbolized for us to-day by the difference between the Moorish palace and the Moorish castle at Cintra, and can be seen even more clearly in the more reliable record of the national poesy ; for a nation's buildings are a more remote and less reflex expression of its mind than its ballads.

Compare, for example, such ballads as that recovered from the monastery of Celanova, giving an account of the holding of such a rock stronghold as this of Cintra by the villagers against the raiding Moors, and its vivid picture of ugly ruthless race-war, with the ballad Ai Valenga, guai Valen^a and its chivalrous episode, in which, be it remarked, the chivalry is all on the side of the Moor and the treachery on that of the Christians. They are too long to quote in full here, but an extract from either will serve to give the different point of view of the Moorish occupation taken by each.

Old Portugal

55

These Moorish men, devils were they ; they harried all — we fled away. The altar dear of God on high was left all bare — a sunless sky. Into the rocks

and thickets eere we bore the Christ and all our gear. The Moorish sheikh miscreant reneager, came up the hill so fierce and eager, and our rock fortress did beleaguer, &c.

WOE VALENQA

The Sheikh. ' Oh, Valenca, woe Valenca !

Thou shalt burn with fire anon, for thou wast a Moorish city

ere by Christians thou wert won.

Oh, Valenca, woe Valenga !

Thou wast laid with silver once — now thou art a Christian city

thou art built of ill-hewn stones.

Oh, Valenca, woe Valenca !

How thou standest fair to see — but before three days are over

Moors shall beleaguer thee.'

The Baron. ' Dress and deck thee, oh, my daughter, all in gold and silver rarely— go, detain me that Morisco,

hold me him awhile in parley', &c.

Cintra, whether we look down at the wizard's palace in the glen or up at the giant's castle on the rocky peak, repre- sents Moorish Portugal and the life of the country for some five hundred years of its history. During these five hundred years of Moorish rule, as during the previous five hundred

56 Old Portugal

years of Roman rule, Portuguese nationality was taking shape, but was as yet unborn.

The Moorish occupation that probably postponed the appearance of the Portuguese nation for centuries, and possibly caused the curiously spasmodic and uneven course of its subsequent growth, was, in itself, as progressive and prosperous a period in the history of the country as was the period of the Roman occupation. The Ommeyad Caliphs were enlightened rulers who tolerated the municipal and ecclesiastical institutions that they found existing in the country, and greatly improved both the conditions of life and such culture as was possible in those days. The Arab words left in the language show clearly enough the scope of their activities ; and the main industries of the country, especially that of agriculture, have vocabularies that are still largely Arabic ; while science, especially medicine and administration, also show their debt to the Arab mind. There was, indeed, as much good to be said for the Ommeyad rule in the Iberian Peninsula as for the early Ottoman rule in the Balkan Peninsula. Such foreign rule did not become wholly evil until the inevitable renaissance of the subjected western nationality, and the equally inevitable decadence of the eastern ruling race, brought on in either land the long wars of liberation, and the long-drawn-out dissolution of the eastern domination. This dissolution began in Portugal towards the end of the tenth century with the decline of the Ommeyad Caliphate ; and thereafter, for a time, the history of the Peninsula became one of small wars between the Moorish emirs of the Algarves and Beira, and the Christian nobles of Gallicia and Asturias. This was the period of the Cid and of the Crusades, the school in which the future Portuguese chivalry was bred ; and many

Old Portugal 57

of the ideals of Portuguese nationality date back to this dark age. But the liberation of the land was not yet due ; and the unification of the Christians had, as a first result, the reconsolidation of the Moorish factions. The rise of a strong central power, the Almoravide Caliphate, gave new life to Moorish rule ; so that the war between Christian and Moor ebbed and flowed continually from the Douro to the Tagus. Meantime, the people of Portugal, the- raw material of the new nation, lay like a flooded land awash under this welter of warring creeds, waiting until the tide of time should free them from the Asiatic flood ; for the ebb and flow of the Moorish flood had broken up and beaten down into one solid society the Iberian, Celtic, Roman, and Visigothic elements composing the new nation. The Portuguese State, unlike other West European nations, but like many Central and East European nations, was mainly the product of wars of race and religion ; and we may, perhaps, consider that Portugal, towards the end of the Moorish wars, had already acquired a nationality. But it had as yet no name, and was without any sufficient territorial holding.

Late in the Moorish wars we first find the name of the country as that of a northern feudal province, the county of Portugal, so called because it contained the Portus Cale of the Romans — our Oporto. With the history of this province the political history of Portugal begins.

It is a truth, though a much disputed one, that war can create nothing ; and those who attribute the birth of Portugal as a nation wholly to the wars against the Moors are as far astray as those more enthusiastic nationalists who find its birth in the skirmishes of Viriatho against the Romans. But where the expression of an impulse towards civilized

58 Old Portugal

association, such as the impulse towards national association, is retarded by internecine and inherent warfare, an inter- national war for a definite national purpose may be the lesser evil and will possibly bring about a national unity that did not previously exist.

Leaving beautiful Cintra and its Moorish associations, •we go along the railway northward — ignoring Mafra that is as out-of-place in our programme as that Grand Mon- archical monstrosity has always been in every respect and relationship. During the short journey to Alcobaga, our next landmark, we may review the swift growth of the infant Portugal from the Moorish period, that is marked by Cintra to the mediaeval period that is well illustrated in Alcobaca.

In 1095 Count Henry of Burgundy had become Count of Portugal, but he was in position no more than a feudatory of Galicia, and in personality not much more than the average ambitious adventurer of those days. He clearly had not associated his interests in any way with those of the infant state, as his successors did. His restless rovings, his collisions with the victorious Almohades on his southern frontier, his crusades into Palestine, and his conspiracies against othor Christian princes show that he had no instinct other than his own personal promotion. Portugal was, in fact, still only a County, and had, as yet, no king. It had begun to realize itself, though it, as yet, was recognized by no one else, not even by its own prince.

So important has been the part played by Portuguese sovereigns in symbolizing the stage that Portuguese national development reached in their reign, that historians have been apt to ' put the cart before the horse ', and to attribute the character of each particular period to the personality of the king. No doubt a king counted for much, especially in

Old Portugal 59

such a state of society as that of the Middle Ages, both in directing and in developing various national activities ; but only in so far as he identified himself with the national instincts and interests. If the king succeeded in concen- trating these popular instincts and interests on himself he had achieved his function, and may then, perhaps, not unfairly be credited by history with having created that which really he had merely conformed to. Even under the light of this theory we find kings looming too large in the history of Portugal. The great kings of early Portuguese history cannot really have been quite so great as they are represented to us ; nor can the eighteenth-century mon- archs have been quite so' despicable as they seem. But, broadly speaking, every country has the government that it deserves, and it is as fair, on the whole, to judge a mediaeval country by its king as to judge a mediaeval king by his country.

The view that these early monarchs were probably, as the later undoubtedly were, only reflections of the state of society and the state of nationality in the country at the time, seems to be confirmed by such curious coincidences as occur in the contemporary careers of neighbours like Theresa of Portugal and her half-sister Urraca of Castile. This coincidence may be explained by the fact that Spain and Portugal being still at the same stage of development and their national temperaments not yet differentiated, the government of both went through the same phase in the very similar careers of these two queens. Both these ladies, after marriage to foreign adventurers, became queens in their own rights. Both were good mothers to their infant nations until they fell under the influence of a courtier. Both alienated their subjects by devotion to their lovers ;

60 Old Portugal

and both, after thus damaging the public interest for private reasons, were deposed by their sons. It was as a result of this deposition that Portugal got its first king, and took rank as a kingdom. And it was the spirit of Portu- guese nationality, nascent in the nobles, that substituted Affonzo Henriquez for his mother as soon as the latter fell into an anti-national policy ; for the national instinct of Portugal could, at this time, express itself only through the professional and personal interests of the bishops and barons. This Portuguese spirit was at once aroused when Alfonzo the Seventh of Castile, the son of Urraca, having deposed his mother, then invaded Portugal and forced Theresa of Portugal to submit to his suzerainty and to sur- render territory. So unwelcome was such a surrender in the eyes of all the elements of the new nation that they repudiated the capitulation by setting up Affonzo Henriquez, a boy of seventeen, in place of his mother. She raised a force of Galicians but was defeated at San Mamede (1128) and exiled. Poor Theresa, who deserved a happier end, wandered with her lover for some months in the mountains of Galicia and died of the privations to which she was exposed. Kingship in these early days was no sine- cure and no certainty, and one serious mistake of national policy was enough, in mediaeval Portugal at least, to bring about the deposition of a queen who was beautiful and brave, and who had been the nursing mother of the new nation.

Affonzo Henriquez has become almost a legendary character in Portugal. In that land, where the tradition of chivalry has never been lost, he is honoured as the first champion of chivalry, sometimes with as little regard for historic harmonies as in the case of our King Arthur. Indeed, history shows how curiously the general political

Old Portugal 61

tendencies of the nation were a compromise between a sound and self-consistent national policy and the romantic unrealities of chivalry. Affonzo Henriquez, having got rid of his mother, repudiated her capitulation to Spain, a sound and sensible national policy. But the breach of faith and of chivalrous honour had to be expiated by the voluntary surrender to Spain of his old tutor, Agas Moniz, the statesman who negotiated the capitulation. Fortu- nately chivalry also prescribed that Alfonzo of Spain should treat the old man well, though he at once set about preparing to retaliate on his own cousin. Affonzo of Portugal pressed the war against Spain, and frontier fighting continued until 1 1 37, when Alfonzo of Spain, now Emperor, decided to finish off Portugal and invaded it with a large army. Affonzo of Portugal saved himself this time by calling in the Church, who negotiated for him the Peace of Tuy, under which he agreed to convert his campaign against Spain into a crusade against the Moors. It looks as though he might never have realized, without the help of Rome, that the road to independence and sovereignty lay not eastward in barren battles with Castile, but southward in the conquest of fertile provinces from the decaying Moorish power.

The time was, indeed, very favourable for a crusade against the Moors, who, it must be remembered, at this time held Portugal as far north as the line of the Lis ; for the main armies of the civilized Almoravides were away in Africa fighting the fanatical movement of the Almohades under their new Mahdi. Affonzo had secured an under- taking from Spain at Tuy that Andalusia should be invaded by the Spaniards simultaneously, and he had, accordingly, little difficulty in defeating the Emir Omar at Ourique just south of Beja on July 25, 1 1 39. Indeed, the chroniclers

62 Old Portugal

report that so depleted were the Moorish forces that they had reinforced the ranks of the levy sent against the Portuguese with women.

The Crusade, thus well begun, went on from success to success, for the northern chivalry now saw their interest in prosecuting it instead of in fighting among themselves, and they had also the support of the country-folk. More- over, Innocent the Second was a crusading Pope, and he had not only done much to unite Christian chivalry against the Moors, but he had also provided that crusading in Spain should be a service of equal merit to crusading in the Holy Land. The crusading movement does not seem ever to have accepted this ruling altogether, but it became the recognized procedure for crusading expeditions from the north on their way to the Levant to put into Portugal for a short trial campaign against the heathen there. It was, no doubt, a pleasant promenade after the trials of a voyage across the Bay in a half-decked boat, and a useful preliminary to the greater hardships of the Holy Land.

In this curious way did the position of Portugal, as a Sea State, and the association with England which this position involved, first influence the national fortunes of the country. And we shall see later how Portuguese inde- pendence has continually been menaced from the land by England's enemies, and maintained from the sea by English expeditions. The first of these English expeditions on behalf of the Portuguese nation was that which captured Lisbon for Portugal in 1147. Fortunately, an account of the expedition by one of the Crusaders has been preserved, 1 and it is a curious anticipation in its general strategy of the

1 Vol. i, p. 392, Portugalliae Monumenta Historia — a publication of the Lisbon Academy.

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unsuccessful attempt by Drake to free Lisbon from the Spaniards at the beginning of the seventeenth century, and of the successful attempt to free it from the French at the beginning of the nineteenth century. It is also curious that while the East Coast English in the Fleet — the men of Norfolk and Suffolk under one Hervey Glanville ; the men of London under one Andrew ; the men of Kent under Simon of Dover — all responded wholeheartedly to the appeal of the Bishop of Oporto to join him in a campaign against the Moors, the more independent West Country Englishmen preferred to follow certain ' pirates ' on a more profitable excursion. Fortunately, however, for the future of Portugal, the ' Pirate ' Gulielmus Vitulus (alias William Widdle), was persuaded to give up his prospect of plunder, and to join the Crusade. William Widdle can, therefore, claim to be the first, as Wellington was the last, of the English who helped to make Portugal ; for without this reinforcement from the sea, by which the Portuguese territories still under the Moors were cut in two, there is little doubt that Affonzo Henriquez could never have carried his frontier down to the Tagus line or acquired the future capital of the new State.

As a result of these conquests the political independence, that Affonzo Henriquez had been unable to secure in direct conflict with his suzerain of Castile, came into his hands of itself. He had, soon after beginning the Moorish campaign, broken the Peace of Tuy, and again attacked Alfonzo of Spain ; but he seems soon to have been convinced that this was a mistaken policy, a conviction probably resulting partly from his being defeated and wounded. By the efforts of the Church the campaign was converted into a tournament — the famous Tourney of Valdevez — at which the Portuguese

64 Old Portugal

knights defeated the Spaniards. This, in virtue of the conventions of chivalry, provided one of the sanctions required by Affonzo Henriquez in order to promote himself from the position of a subordinate prince to that of a sove- reign prince. The previous step, from a private subject to a subordinate prince, had been won by Theresa, who had assumed the semi-royal style of Infanta. After the tourney Affonzo is found to call himself King of Portugal, apparently with the tacit approval of the Emperor and of the Pope. This tacit approval, dating from the 'Truce of Valdevez', was converted in 1143 into formal recognition by the Treaty of Zamorra, negotiated by the Pope between the Emperor and the new King of Portugal ; which treaty also secured Affonzo the succession of his dynasty by placing him under the protection of the Holy See.

So large does the personality of Affonzo Henriquez loom in this misty morning of Portuguese history that there has been a tendency among historians to attribute the establishment of Portuguese nationality wholly to his political skill and personal influence, as shown in his duels with the Emperor and his diplomacies with the Pope. This is the view followed, for example, in the excellent English summary of Portuguese history in the Story of the Nations Series, by Mr. Morse Stephens. On p. 41 he writes, ' It was not until the modern school of historians arose in Portugal which examined documents . . . , that it was clearly pointed out that Affonzo Henriquez won his crown by his long struggle with his Christian cousin and not by his exploits against the Moors. This fact ranks among the most startling discoveries of the modern scientific school of historians,' &c. But there seems to be some confusion in this point of view with the later period of Portuguese

Old Portugal 65

history when resistance to Madrid and Rome in alliance with France or England became the criterion of a 'national' policy. At this early stage the criterion was resistance to Islam in alliance with Spain and Rome. Moreover such opposition to popular traditional opinion, on the strength of documents only concerned with some very partial or partisan region of the national life, cannot be approved if, as in this case, it also conflicts with obvious general tendencies as well. And, apart from this, both the recorded facts of these political relationships and a careful review of the political forces at work suggest that popular opinion is right in considering that Portuguese nationality originated mainly in the crusade against the Moors. Affonzo Henriquez invariably failed when he tried to assert his independence by direct conflict with Spain, and he would never have secured the support of the Church for a merely feudal and factious ambition. By fighting the Moors he secured, first, the de facto independence of Portugal by doubling its territory and prestige, and secondly, the de jure sovereignty of Portugal by convincing both the Pope and the Emperor that a King of Portugal would be more useful to them, and to Christendom, as an independent ally than as a disaffected vassal. It does not follow from this that his skill, or that of his episcopal advisers, was of no value to the new nation, nor that the forces forming Portugal into a nation were not many of them rather material than moral ; for instance, territorial conquest was as much the object of these early Portuguese as a religious crusade. But, none the less, the fact remains that the popular 'moral' view of the foundation of Portugal is nearer the truth than the historic ' political ' view, and nearer also than the scientific ethnological view.

1832-5 F

66 Old Portugal

■ If the Royalist-Conservative school of historians has been tempted to attribute the foundation of Portugal to the 'Tourney of Valdevez', the Feudal System, and the Statesman-Sovereign, the other school of Republican- Liberal writers has sought the genesis of the nation in a national Crusade and the ' Cortes of Lamego '. Tourna- ments being easier to report and better reading than parliaments, the documentary evidence for the ' Tourney of Valdevez ' is more satisfying than that as to the ' Cortez of Lamego '. Nevertheless, the tradition in favour of the latter is strong, and what we know of the international political conditions of the province makes it probable that Affonzo Henriquez would have sought to secure the succes- sion of his sons, not only by conciliating any possible opposi- tion from Chivalry or from the Church, but also by getting some sort of recognition from the Commonalty. The history of the origin of popular assemblies and of democracy generally shows that such institutions originate in just such occasions as this, when monarchs,whose titles are weak in right divine, have to strengthen them by democratic recognition. The subsequent history of Portugal suggests that it is most probable that this first king did, at this early date, seek some public sanction. If, moreover, we take the view that these early kings of Portugal were really personifications of the period in which they reigned and not, as they are represented, the principal motive power of the nation at the time, then some such formal expression of the national will as would account for the Cortes of Lamego becomes more than probable.

The question is of some importance to the understanding of the Portuguese nation, because a large, perhaps the larger, school of students of Portuguese history attributes its very

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slow progress in modern times, compared with its very swift progress in mediaeval times, to the absence nowadays of such national leaders as were the early kings. The point of view of this school is put before English readers by Mr. Morse Stephens, 1 'There is no geographical or ethno- logical reason why the part of the Iberian Peninsula called Portugal should have formed an independent kingdom more than Leon or Castile. It was the greatness of one man which made it an "independent country". This is the first lesson taught by the history of Portugal.' Again, Oswald Crawfurd, writing in 1880, says : ' Because Affonzo Henriquez lived there has been in this corner of Europe an enduring kingdom which, in spite of its size, is in the true sense of the word a great kingdom.' The doctrine of the superman as preached by Carlyle, and practised by others since, is not, however, the lesson to be learnt from the history of the lesser nations such as Portugal.

The opposing point of view, which is held here, prefers to attribute the slow progress of Portugal in modern times to the exhaustion of the national stock by wars, an exhaustion to which kings contributed their fair share. A great expan- sion of national vitality will carry the heads of the people, kings or no, into prominence ; while the same expenditure of force will, for centuries after, leave the nation too ex- hausted to force a head to the surface at all.

If further proof were wanted that the success of Affonzo Henriquez was due to national rather than personal forces, it is to be found in the end of his long reign. He can never clearly have realized that Portugal had won its own inde- pendence and his crown by expansion southward, and by alliance with Spain — for in 1169 he laid siege to Badajoz, 1 Story of the Nations : Portugal, p. 59. F 2

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a gross breach of good faith and treaty right. His son-in-law, Ferdinand of Castile, raised a large army, defeated him and took him prisoner, a blow from which he never recovered, though he was soon after released. He then resigned in favour of his son Sancho, though legend relates that he lived to be carried in a litter at the raising of the siege of Santarem in 1 178.

Portugal, thereafter, was a full-fledged nation with an adequate territory, namely, all Portugal north of the Tagus, with suitable frontiers, namely, the Tagus line against the Moors and the mountains against Spain — with political re- cognition by the temporal and spiritual authorities of Europe — with a sovereign and a dynasty, no unimportant qualifi- cations in those days — and with a foreign policy of balancing sea power against land power — and the Pope against Spain.

The long reign of Affonzo Henriquez, during which Portugal became a European State, shows very clearly all the elements already existing that afterwards enter into the development of the nation. Some of these elements, such as those of chivalry and of the Church, were to decay and eventually disappear as material factors in modern Portugal though they still exist morally. Others, such as the English Alliance and the aspiration for popular govern- ment, were to develop until they dominated the country's fortunes. It is chiefly with a view to showing how mediaeval Portugal changes into modern Portugal, and how much in modern Portugal there remains of mediaeval Portugal, that the following historical review will be written. Unlike as the two may appear to be, the modern Portuguese intellec- tual will be found to be the lineal heir of the mediaeval Portuguese crusader. You must understand Affonzo Hen- riquez if you are to understand Affonzo Costa.

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The popular Portuguese view of the origin of Portuguese political independence is, it has been said, that it is to be attributed wholly to the crusade against the Moors. On this theory, Portugal won its status as a nation in the same way as the Portuguese won their standing as knights, by military service to Christendom and civilization. It is this point of view that inspired the people with such legends as that of the vision vouchsafed to Affonzo Henriquez before the decisive battle with the heathen, and that impelled them to the building of such wonderful expressions of natural religion as the Alcobaca Church.

From Affonzo Henriquez and Alcobaca we go on north- ward to the next landmark in Portuguese history, Batalha and John of Aviz. On the way — a pleasant upland road through the heart of Portugal — we may pass in review, the main happenings to the Kings and Commons of Portugal in this first chapter of its history as a nation. Fortunately, the lives of the kings so closely conform to the theory that their public characters are summaries and symbols of the social conditions of their reigns, that in their reigns we have a convenient record of the rapid growth of their people. The first of these eponymous heroes is Sancho — ' the Populator '. His reign is historically a record of inter- minable struggles with the Moors and of intricate marriage intrigues with Spain and other European States. We note, for instance, that the beauty of the Portuguese princesses was of world-wide repute and that one of them refused an offer from our King John, as also that Sancho was a high- spirited, broad-minded ruler, and resisted the Papacy and the great prelates of Oporto and Braga in the interest of the poorer clergy. Such facts have their significance, not only because the independence of these royalties proves the

70 Old Portugal

growing international importance of Portugal, nor only because we have here the first approximation to the Anglo- Portuguese Alliance, but also because, in attacking the political power of the Church, Sancho of Portugal was follow- ing the same policy as our Henry II — a nationalist policy which led us eventually into the Reformation. But the chief national service of Sancho is seen in his economic activities. During his reign, not only were the cities that had been ruined in the Moorish wars rebuilt, but much land was brought into cultivation by placing it under the protection of knightly orders. Sancho did not add to the extent of his territory, but he must have increased its productiveness and population many times over.

His successor, Affonzo the Second, ' the Fat ', devoted himself to swelling the Royal revenues ; but as it was mainly at the expense of the Church, and of his relatives, his acquisitiveness did not bring him into collision with the people. Rather the contrary, for in order to pass his Law of Mortmain he had to summon a Cortes ; and by refusing to give up his brothers' and sisters' legacies he let himself in for a defensive war against the King of Castile and Pope Innocent the Third — both popular and national policies. His Moorish wars also furthered the national fortunes, and introduced a new military era ; for the great victory of Naves de Tolosa in 1 212 was won, not by the chivalry which had hitherto alone conducted such crusades, but by Portuguese infantry. Thus, if we look back over the Portuguese Crusades we see that the first Moorish war, under Henry of Bourbon, had been an international crusade of the upper class for Mother Church ; the second, under Affonzo Henriquez,had become a race-war owing to the participation of the middle-class citizens and the northern peasants ;

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whereas the third, under Affonzo, was a true national war. So also if we look at early Portuguese deeds and grants, while we find that the tenures under Affonzo Henriquez require the furnishing for the king's wars of one or more ' horses ', sometimes ' great horses ' ; under Affonzo the Fat, it is rather the number of men than of horses that is required of the feudal lord. In fact, the foot-soldier was already challenging the supremacy of the cavalier, and the latter was to be driven into heavier and heavier defensive armour and armament until his fighting-value became something like that of a modern Dreadnought.

In this reign we find Portuguese territory extended by almost as important an addition as the previous advance to the Tagus, and again the extension is secured with the help of English auxiliaries. In July 1217 a crusade put into the Tagus, and the Bishop of Lisbon succeeded in persuading the English contingent to land. Joined with a Portuguese army, which had been recruited by Bishops and Templars, but not by the King, who was then at odds with the Church, this English force, under the Earl of Wight, de- feated the Moors and extended the frontier to the south of the Sado. Besides excluding Affonzo from this success, the Church injured his reputation in many other ways ; but we may infer that he deserved well of his people, on the whole, from the fact that he died excommunicate, but not in exile.

His son Sancho the Second was less fortunate. A long minority, combined with the Papal interdict bequeathed to him by his father, gave him a bad start ; but he threw himself into the national crusade, and so distinguished himself at the siege of Elvas that he secured the support of the Pope in bringing his unruly bishops to order. By

72 Old Portugal

1244 he had conquered the northern part of the Algarves, and, by his suppression of the great prelates and nobles and his success over the Moors, he had become a highly popular monarch. But he fell into the same snare as Theresa, and his devotion to a Spanish widow, Dona Mencia Lopez de Haro, ruined both his character and his career. Affonzo of Boulogne, his brother, invaded Portugal as Pretender with the sanction of the Pope and the support of the people. Sancho, deserted by his Castilian mercenaries, male and female, died in exile at Toledo (1248).

Affonzo the Third, being a usurper, was forced to be constitutional and summoned a great Cortes at Leiria, in which commoners were included for the first time. This democratic policy so strengthened him that he was able to put a check, not only on his clergy, but on the nobility as well. On the strength of the consent of the Cortes he even succeeded in doing that which had ruined Sancho, marrying a Spaniard and braving a Papal Interdict.. He was a politic person and died as King of Portugal and the Algarves ; having secured peaceful recognition by Spain of this extension of his territory. But he had to pay for his constitutionalism. The Cortes of Coimbra (1261) claimed to have a say in taxation, and his son Diniz, alarmed at the loss of the royal prerogatives, embittered his last years by rebellion.

By the accession of Diniz, 1279, Portugal had acquired its full national territory ; a national population which, thanks to its fertile soil, was already comparable with that of other European powers ; and a form of national govern- ment which for liberty and enlightenment compared well with any of them.

With the reign of Diniz the ' Lavrador ', the Worker,

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begins the Golden Age of Mediaeval Portugal ; and Dom Diniz, or Denis, as we should call him, was successful, not only in personifying, but in personally promoting the nascent national activities. It was a period of economic reconstruc- tion and of great development in agriculture, and the ' Lavrador ' worked like any improving squire. The plains of the Alemtejo were ploughed for cereals and the slopes of the Douro planted with vines, while the vast pine forests that we drive through on our way to Batalha from the north date from this period, and are attributed to the personal initiative of Diniz. Agricultural schools, model farms, and a kind of Barnardo homes for educating and establishing orphans on the land, were some of the features of this thirteenth-century industrial movement, which was inspired, moreover, by strong pacifist and socialist principles. This may seem impossible in a feudal society in a state of inherent and incessant war ; but the writings of the time show that the mediaeval mind did not differ from the modern in being able to combine the incompatible and to compromise between the contradictory. It was a time also of commercial revival, and Portugal gave evidence of the initiative, which afterwards distinguished the nation in enterprise of this nature, by setting up a navy and by con- cluding a treaty of commerce with England, signed in 1294. There is extant an interesting correspondence on foreign commerce between Diniz and Edward the First of England, and their commercial treaty is the first chapter in the long Anglo-Portuguese economic relationship. It is evident, that even thus early in the development of Europe, Portugal and England could not keep apart owing to economic and political reasons essential to their existence. When we see, moreover, that then, as now, this essential economic relation-

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ship between England and Portugal contained no menace to the political independence of either nation, we may record a passing regret that Ireland, which in its people and position so much resembles Portugal, should not have had the few more miles of sea from England and the few miles of land frontier to some other Power that would have put Ireland in the same relation to England as is Portugal.

The previous governors of Portugal had shown consider- able administrative ability, and their labours were now crystallized into the form of law. With Diniz Portuguese law begins to become a homogeneous and indigenous system and not a mere reproduction of Roman precepts and Visigothic common law. Nor did new mental activity stop there. Diniz founded, in 1300, the first university at Lisbon, which was subsequently transferred to Coimbra, where it was to take a leading part in the process of converting foreign ideas into national ideals, until eventually it became the centre and citadel of Portuguese nationalism.

This seedling was to survive many cruel winters and still give shade and shelter to the generations of to-day, but the early spring sunshine of the reign of Dom Diniz was also marked by the brilliant, if brief, glory of national poetry that blazed out and faded away even as the iris that for a few days in March clothes in purple the ploughlands of Portugal. Portugal had already appropriated the Trouvere forms of northern French poetry, while there must also have been relics of other foreign poesies, Gothic, Greek, and Celtic; but so far there had been no characteristic national poesy. Under Denis ' Troubadour ' lyrics and Provencal love-poetry came into fashion, more sympathetic to the national temperament than the severer ' Trouvere '

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traditions. As a result, there suddenly blossoms a flower of national poetry of surprising splendour.

It was natural enough that this national development should have been attributed to Diniz, who was, like every other gentleman of the time, something of a poet. The best examples of these early lyrics have accordingly been ascribed to him, and, by ignoring much that precedes, the very existence of lyric poetry in Portugal has been traced to his activities. But, even if he had written all the thousands of ' cantigas ' preserved in his name in the Vatican Song Book and elsewhere, in the intervals of fighting his relations and founding socialistic institutions, it could not alter the fact that the Portuguese always have sung and always will sing ; for the reason that no race could live in so lovely a land as Portugal without singing.

It would have taken a very bad king to stop the renascence of Portugal at the beginning of the fourteenth century, and Diniz was a good king. But there are records which show that the national instinct at the time recognized rightly that the great accession of strength to the monarchy, due to the centralizing tendency of the day, was not without danger. In other words, at a time when Old Portugal was still only in the first bloom of its youth, Young Portugal was already alive and kicking. Prom nursery rhymes, those most faithful store-cupboards of home-truths, we learn that :

Good King Diniz does just as he please for a man with such gold can do as he wold.

There is indeed no doubt but that, in spite of all the glory and glitter of his reign, and of all his solid service to the nation, Diniz does not escape censure for having

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encroached overmuch on the local liberties of the people. Moreover, if his Court was a radiant centre of chivalry and culture it also had its shadow side of licence and extravagance. The curious combination in the Portuguese character of mirth and melancholy was never more marked than in the cultivated Court of Diniz with its brilliant gaieties and its brutal tragedies. The king himself can have had no easy life, and, having won his throne after a fierce fight with his brother Affonzo, who questioned his legitimacy, he was involved in war at the end of his reign with his legitimate son Affonzo, whom he had passed over in favour of his bastards.

Affonzo the Fourth, the Brave, marks by his nickname the final defeat of the Moors by the allied armies of Castile and Portugal at the battle of Salado in 1 340. Otherwise he continued the policy of his father without enjoying, apparently, the attraction of his personality. The English alliance now advanced, matrimonially speaking, from the stage of a refusal to that of a betrothal. The daughter of Sancho had refused our King John, but the Infanta Maria now accepted Edward Prince of Wales, afterwards Edward the Third, in 1325, and the Infanta Leonora was engaged to the Black Prince in 1347. Neither marriage, as a matter of fact, came off, and the two Englishmen were jilted for two Spaniards ; for Dona Maria married the King of Castile and Dona Leonora the King of Aragon. Yet the friendly relations between the two countries stood the strain of a marked declaration in favour of the Spanish alliance, under conditions which ordinarily, in that age, would have been a casus belli. In July 1352 a proclamation of Edward the Third declared the Portuguese to be our friends, and the following year an interesting commercial

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treaty was signed in London by Aflpnzo Martins Alho, the representative of the Portuguese wine trade; which com- mercial treaty, in combination with the failure of the dynastic alliance, is interesting evidence that, even so early as this, the Anglo-Portuguese alliance was an association between the peoples and too firmly established to be disturbed by dynastic disagreements. Even more curious evidence of the popular basis of the alliance is, that in the Portuguese ballad, the Portuguese Infanta does, in defiance of fact, marry the Prince Edward. Here are some verses of the song in which the Portuguese have adapted an old ballad (that of the elopement of Robert the Devil with the King of Rome's daughter) so as to record a popular royal marriage which never took place : —

All in the month of April,

of May but and a day, the lilies and the roses

do show themselves so gay ; 'twas then the fair Infanta

aboard ship went her way, all through her father's garden,

and weeping she did say :

' Farewell, my thousand flowers,

cool streams where I did play, I never more shall see you,

I leave you all to-day ; and if my father seeks me,

as, for love of me, he may, tell him my love doth lead me,

I cannot say him nay.'

Then up spake Don Duardos, when he heard what she did say

oh, hush thee, fair Infanta Hush thee, my pearl, I pray.

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Within the ports of England

far clearer fountains play, more gardens and more woodlands

my lady shall obey.

Another interesting example of how a nation can find food for its national sentiment in the most unpromising fact is found in the famous tragedy of the end of Affonzo's reign. Affonzo, like most of his predecessors, closed his career in bitter enmity with his son. Their warfare was ended only by the peacemaking of the queen, Beatrice, even as the war between Affonzo himself and his father Diniz had been ended only by the sainted Isabel. It must, indeed, be remembered by those who attribute the misfortunes of mediaeval Portugal to the Spanish marriages of her kings, that both these queens were daughters of Spain, as many of the best queens of Portugal have been. But the personalities of those ladies could rarely, if ever, compensate for the bad policy of a Spanish alliance ; and the conflict between Affonzo and his son Pedro was itself an example of the evil effect of a Spanish political match. Pedro had an ' official ' wife, the mother of his heir Ferdinand; an ' official ' mistress, Theresa Lourenco, the mother of Joao, afterwards John of Aviz, or John the Great ; and a ' private ' wife, Inez de Castro, with whom he lived. The difficulty arose when, Pedro's Spanish wife having died, another was proposed for him, and it was found that he had, on his wife's death, married the beautiful Inez by whom he already had several children. Affonzo was a weak man in the hands of his nobles, who were determined on a Spanish alliance, and he allowed himself to be persuaded into letting Inez be murdered in the streets of Coimbra by his courtiers. Pedro, who was away at the time, at once prepared for war, but yielded

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after a time to his mother's mediation. After his accession in 1357 he extradited two of the murderers from Spain (the third was safe in England), and had them slowly tortured to death under his own windows ; then exhumed the body of poor Inez and had it solemnly crowned at Alcobaca. This grim tragedy, with its gruesome vindication of injured innocence, made the most extraordinary appeal to the popular feelings of the nation, an appeal which has never since lost its force.

The tragedy of the true love of Pedro and Inez made a sensation only comparable to that created in England by the murder of a'Becket. The villain of the piece in either case was the king. And though at the time, to Affonzo, it might have seemed a small matter to murder a not altogether virtuous lady-in-waiting in the street compared with murdering a venerated archbishop at the altar ; yet nolo episcopari is a popular policy, while all the world loves a lover. So that if Henry offended religion, Affonzo outraged humanity. Consequently the British Crown a-s an institution got no permanent and little temporary damage from what was popularly con- sidered rather as an unfortunate incident in a political struggle than as an insult to religion ; whereas the murder of this girl has been through all ages a constant reminder to the Portuguese nation of the deadly sins that may grow from the cold calculations of dynastic policies. This may be the reason why there is hardly any poet, in a nation where every one is a possible poet, that has not in some form or other recurred to this theme, and why the sup- posed scene of the tragedy at Coimbra has always been a place of popular pilgrimage. It is not merely the love of a sad tale, the national ' Saudade ', still less is it any

80 Old Portugal

conscious association of the story with nationality or other abstract ideals. But the story of Inez undoubtedly finds a response in the essential chords of the Portuguese character. It is for this reason that the many popular ballads that tell the story seem more satisfactory than the classical version of Camoens, the historical version of Garcia Resende, or the romantic treatment of later writers, in explaining why Inez still lives for the Portuguese nation. Even in transla- tion we get near the heart of Portugal in such lines as follow : (Here singeth Inez :)

' Mine own Infant, and Lord of me,

for whom I suffer wrong ! Oh hear, wherever thou mayst be,

thine own Inez her song.

And when my sighs no longer will

reach to thy heart — yet long these hills and vales shall sing thee still

thine own Inez her song.

To this my piteous tale of woe

these halls shall e'er belong; No other music shall they know

than thine Inez her song.'

Marked as his reign was by a sensational crime, Pedro ' the Severe ', as he came to be called, stands for a period in Portugal in which the main movement was a desire for justice. Just as the Portuguese of the day of Affonzo Henriquez would have said that the national need for the moment was land, as those of Sancho would have said that what was wanted was population, as those of Diniz would have elected for economic progress, so those of Pedro would no doubt have declared in favour of just laws and an equit- able government. Pedro, both in public and private life,

Old Portugal 81

represented this tendency, and his justice on peer or pauper was without fear or favour. While the stories of the judicial adventures of himself in company with his chancellor, which are very similar to, and perhaps suggested by, those of the Kalif and his Vizier, are creditable to his character, they also suggest that the Crown in this region of justice had become almost Oriental in its despotism. In the gradual absorption by the monarchy of the governing functions that of justice had been the first to be entirely assimilated ; probably because the system of justice in Portugal, unlike that in England and in other Saxon states, had been almost entirely feudal.

But, if in his public character as a faithful justiciary Pedro strengthened the monarchy, in his private character as a faith- ful lover he had, as we have seen, dealt it a very deadly blow ; and the dynasty did not long survive the sacrifice of Inez to its mistaken ambitions. Ferdinand ' the Handsome ', who succeeded in 1367, was the only legitimate son of Pedro and his reign was spent in dynastic intrigues with Spain. The Moors had by now been finally expelled, and Portugal only required peace with Spain to become one of the first European Powers. Already this people, in industry and in the arts, in commerce and in culture, was abreast and in some respects ahead of other nations of less homogeneous character. The king and his Court had, however, fallen behind the times, and could no longer march in front of the people as in the early days of the bold fighter Affonzo Henriquez or of the sweet singer Don Diniz. Prosperity and peace had demoralized an upper class not as yet adapted for them. Though the vices of the early kings, as reflected in their Courts, were only the obverse of their virtues, there was, unfortunately, now less opportunity for the

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82 Old Portugal

exercise of royal virtues than for the exhibition of royal vices. Both the monarchical institution and the individual monarchs were in decadence, and the descent from Don Diniz through Pedro to Ferdinand can best perhaps be seen in the deterioration of their women. Don Diniz introduced Courts of Love and what may be called the late decorated style of Chivalry ; and, if his Court was to our modern ideas very dissolute, there was yet an ideal in it all. The relations of Pedro to Inez had no such ideal, but were redeemed by their personal romance, and perhaps did as much good as harm as a moral example to a somewhat sensual society. But the relations of Ferdinand to Dona Leonor Telles de Menezes did no good to any one and least of all to himself. For her sake Ferdinand sacrificed in turn his knightly honour and his kingly duty. For her he so insulted Castile by breaking off his dynastic match that he incurred a Spanish war ; and so outraged his own people, who preferred a Spanish wedding to a Spanish war, that he raised a riot in Lisbon. The rioters, headed by a tailor, forced him to swear to keep faith with the Spanish princess — a pretty position for a king and a knight ! and he did not improve that position when, after being released, he cut the tailor's head off and broke his oath. He then married Leonor, though her husband was still alive ; and thereafter she was the real ruler. But one feels almost sorry for the woman, bad as she was, in having to work through such a weak man ; for again and again he failed her. He twice broke faith with England and twice with Castile, until he was as much discredited abroad as detested at home. At last she got rid of him. He was made to call a Cortes at Leiria to declare her daughter Beatrice heiress to the throne, thereby abolishing the Salic Law and excluding from the succession

Old Portugal 83

the illegitimate John of Aviz — already a formidable rival. She then betrothed this daughter to Edward of England, nephew of John of Gaunt, and having thus raised the girl's value, broke off that match and married her to John of Castile on the terms that she herself should be Regent of Portugal if Ferdinand died. Six months later, sure enough Ferdinand did die, and she assumed the Regency ; but, as usual in the case of bad rulers, she was reckoning without her host. The Portuguese nation simply got rid of her as they had got rid of Theresa, and as they would then have got rid of any one who seriously imperilled their vigorous young nationality. A rising under John, Master of Aviz, drove her from Lisbon to Santarem whence she planned to return at the head of a Spanish army. This John of Aviz was the son of Pedro and Theresa Lourenco, and is to be distinguished from his half-brother John, son of Inez de Castro. He now appealed to England for help and was given invaluable time by disputes between John of Castile and his mother-in-law. These squabbles ended in her trying to poison him, and in his sending her to a convent where she died soon after. Then, after an unsuccessful attempt to rush Lisbon, the Spaniards withdrew to muster their forces ; leaving Portugal united as a nation under John and deter- mined to defend their independence, though with little apparent prospect of success.

The crisis was one of a character to provoke an explosion of national feeling ; and the Cortes summoned at Coimbra in 1385 to settle the succession on the bastard John of Aviz was a very different assembly from that of Leiria, which reluctantly recognized the legitimate line in the little Beatrice. The Cortes of Coimbra declared the throne of Portugal to be elective, and unanimously elected king, John,

g 2

84 Old Portugal

Master of the Knights of Aviz. This was a revolutionary assertion of popular control in the form of a revival of ar- chaic traditions. For though some elective forms had always been preserved in the coronation ceremony, such as the public acclamation, yet the hereditary principle had taken strong root as an institution, as we see from the patience with which Ferdinand had been endured ; and had acquired, besides popular assent, the most powerful legal and moral authority then available, namely the sanction of the Pope, and the general practice of Europe. But the disapproval of Pope and of princes was braved, and the hereditary principle broken with. The Papal Bull pronouncing the illegitimacy of John was read' as part of the coronation ceremony, and he was crowned as John the Bastard, a title soon to be changed by the people to ' John the Great '.

But if the Portuguese nation were to survive, it was not sufficient to have a national or even a constitutional monarchy again. It had to defeat Spain ; and that could only be done with the help of England, though Portugal made a good start by itself. For the coronation coincided with a preliminary success of the Portuguese under the ' Holy Constable ' at Trancoso. The same day were landed the first English reinforcements — a contingent of five hundred archers under captains of John of Gaunt.

Before the English main forces could arrive the decisive pitched battle had taken place at Aljubarrota on August 14, 1385. It was a fair fight between nationalism and im- perialism — between social freedom and the feudal system — between man and master — both fighting with their own weapons. The British bow, like the Swiss pike, was one of those weapons by which man-power can occasionally break up a military machine, and the five hundred English bowmen

Old Portugal 85

were more than an equivalent to the two thousand French mounted men-at-arms that had reinforced the Spaniards. Crecy and Poitiers had already shown that the bowman was more than a match for the barded man-at-arms ; while the appearance at this battle of ordnance, for the first time in Peninsular warfare, marked the beginning of a further stage in the nationalization of war.

It is curious that both English and Portuguese nationality should have had a ' Battle ' with a foreign invader, commemo- rated by an abbey ; and comparing the Portuguese national ' Battle ' with ours we recognize that at Hastings our nation was still too undeveloped for the common soldier to save the day as he did at Aljubarrota. A defeat for the Portuguese nationality in 1385, when it had already achieved a consider- able cultural development and a high degree of consolidation, would have been a far more serious matter for them than was such defeat for us while our nationality was still in the molten and unmoulded stage. Our Battle Abbey com- memorates a fight whose result diverted and to some extent de-naturalized our nationality, but did not in the end degrade or retard it. But Batalha Abbey commemorates the victory of a lively and liberal national culture over one which was already tending to become dead and despotic. Disguised under dynastic alliances and all the paraphernalia of mediaeval political mechanisms we can clearly see in this fight the small nationality with its intense culture and higher idealisms in conflict with the great Power with its superior militarism and sophisticated materialism. While there was as yet little to choose in international position, in internal power, and in self-interested policy between the monarchies of Portugal and Spain, yet it seems already clear that the spirit animating the former country was the

86 Old Portugal

spirit of nationalism, as much humaner than the spirit of Imperialism animating Madrid as neighbourliness is in its turn humaner than nationalism. Even at this date we see that our sea power was enlisted in support of con- tinental national feeling as against continental imperial force, for the reason that it is the special property of sea power that it cannot, even if it will, be as tyrannous as land power ; for it can do more than invest and cannot invade. It is therefore the natural auxiliary for the lesser land power, anxious to reinforce itself against superior land power without renouncing its own rights or risking its independence. When the victory of Batalha was followed by the news that John of Gaunt was on his way from England with two thousand lances, three thousand archers, and, most significant of all, two daughters, Portugal was able to welcome him as an ally and a father-in-law without counting the possible cost. On May 9, 1386, the Treaty of Windsor was signed declaring Portugal and England to be for ever allied, and in February 1387 this alliance was dynastically ratified by the marriage of John to Philippa, daughter of John of Gaunt.

This alliance forced Spain to give up hope of conquering Portugal, and the peace between Portugal and Spain was also ratified with a princess. It is to be hoped that some of this royal wax found the process of sealing treaties not wholly unpleasant, and that Constance, daughter of John of Gaunt, the peace-offering to Henry, heir of Castile, was as happy as we have all reason to suppose was Philippa, the leading lady of the Anglo-Portuguese alliance. There were, however, still further ceremonies to perform before the birth of the Anglo-Portuguese alliance was sufficiently solemnized, nor had it as yet fully done its work in securing

Old Portugal 87

the dynasty of Aviz and the independence of Portugal ; for in 1398 Richard II had to help John to repel an incur- sion from Spain under his half-brother Diniz, and two years later John, in return for his recognition of Henry of Lancaster as Henry IV, was given the Garter, the first foreign sovereign to get it. In 1403 the Treaty of Windsor was again ratified, and, a year after, some further festivity being required and no regular royal matches available, the marriage of an illegitimate daughter of John to the Earl of Arundel was celebrated with royal splendour and became an historic event. It was also at this time that the incident may have occurred which gave rise to the legend of the ' Twelve of England ', a theme almost as popular with Portuguese writers as that of Inez de Castro. The story, though no doubt largely imaginative, is more picturesquely illustrative of the times and their tone even than incidents like the giving away of garters and princesses. It tells how the ladies of the English Court, considering themselves neglected by the knights, ask John of Gaunt to find them champions abroad who would teach the English manners. He accordingly applies to John of Aviz to choose him , twelve knights, whp, after many adventures on the road, arrive in England and defeat the English champions after various feats of hand, head, and heart. The agreement of all Portuguese authors in recognizing the sportsmanlike spirit in which we took our defeat is satisfactory, and it clearly did not put such a strain on international relations as more recent athletic contests. But all the same, there does not seem to be any English epic on the subject nor any repetition of the experiment, and it was probably decided that protocols and princesses were safer than this popular sort of propaganda and democratic diplomacy.

88 Old Portugal

In any case, the tourney of the Twelve of England has the same sort of international significance as the Tourney of Valdevez which preceded the first Spanish recognition of Portuguese independence.

Historic facts and traditional fictions such as these are only important as indicating the ideas of the day and the tendencies of the time. When we find garters and gallantries going between governments so persistently, it is safe to infer a democratic as well as a diplomatic basis for the alliance. The geographical relationship between these two maritime nations, the English and Portuguese, was drawing them together now they had entered the economic epoch of European civilization. As soon as England and Portugal became units in the European community they were bound to unite to some extent with one another. Politically speaking, Portugal was a necessary factor in any alliance of the maritime nations for mutual protection against militarist land empires. The growing democracies of Flanders and England were in alliance against the growing despotisms of France and Spain ; and whereas the nationalism of Scotland threatened by English imperialism had joined our enemies, that of Portugal threatened by Spanish imperialism joined us. If eventually first Spain and then France failed in their effort to crush English nationalism, it was largely because their continuous and concurrent conflict with Portuguese nationalism exposed them to our counter-attack through Portugal. In the same way our conflict with Scotland exposed us to effective counter-attack by France, and probably was the main cause of our failure to retain our conquests in France and prevent the consolidation of the various sub-nationalities now composing the French nation. For this fundamental mistake is made by govern-

Old Portugal 89

ments in all ages ; and the harder a government will fight for its own nationalism against foreign imperialism, and for its own democratic ideals against foreign despotic institu- tions, the harder it will fight, if its own people allow it, at the same time and in the same place, for its own im- perialisms and despotisms against the ideals of its subject peoples. And this is because war is not a principle but a procedure, and because governments have neither ideals nor instincts though peoples have.

The Portuguese people desired the English alliance quite as much because it secured them peace as because it guaran- teed their independence. So long as Portugal could count on the active support of England and so long as England commanded the seas, the lives and liberties of the Portuguese were safe. This is the meaning of the fifteenth-century distich which is still in constant use as a maxim of foreign policy :

Com todo o mundo guerra, paz com a Inglaterra,

War with the whole world and peace with England may sound bellicose, but the meaning is that war with the world matters less to Portugal than peace with England. We have not to look far to find the reason for this ruling. At the same time that the two nations were exchanging compliments they had established an exchange of commodi- ties — of Portuguese wines for English woollens and of English manufactures for Portuguese materials. The sea was after all, in spite of pirates and high protection, the only open road in the Middle Ages, and the only region in which two peoples could easily develop an economic relationship. When the Twelve Knights went to England eleven went by sea, and the one that went by land had as comparatively

go Old Portugal

uncomfortable and eventful a journey as a modern traveller who preferred the Sud Express to the Royal Mail. The underlying relationship that was springing up between the two peoples is pithily summarized in a rhyming report on our foreign commercial relations published in 1347.

Portugallers with us have troth in hand whose merchandie cometh much into England they be our friends with their commodities and we English passen into their countries. 1

This tells us all and more than we could learn from the statistics of a modern ' Commercial Report ', namely that business with the Portuguese was already found to be both pleasant and profitable, that their exports to us were con- siderable in amount and good in quality, and that there was a growing tourist traffic. These, moreover, are the matters that count in the relations between nations.

It is indeed a pity, in the interest of our Anglo-Portuguese alliance of to-day, that ' we English passen into their countries ' so little as we do, and that Batalha is less well known to us than Angola. For when you have spent a few nights in the quaint little mediaeval inn under the shadow of its pinnacles and a few days in its old-world market- place in the company of the courteous, genial farmers, their pretty daughters and their handsome sons, you will feel that you know to some extent what the Portuguese nation stands for, and are glad that to-day too ' Portugallers with us have troth in hand '.

And so with John of Aviz and his abbey at Batalha we come to an end of our tourist excursion into Portuguese affairs. This is the end of the mystical Middle Age, at whose

1 The British Policy, Hakluyt, vol. ii, p. 1 17.

Old Portugal 91

mind we can only guess by marvelling at the beauties or brutalities of its works. Hereafter we are in an age which can express itself in words, and whose motive forces are consequently accessible to those who sit at home and read. Yet it is true that Portugal of to-day cannot be properly understood except by those who understand a little what was the Portugal of the day before yesterday, and that little can only be understood by going to see Citania or Troya, or Alcobaca or Batalha. So the moral of this chapter is that if you want to know Portugal, go and see it; and you will be rewarded with discovering in the first place a delightful land where everything glows in the sunset of the day before yesterday, or the dawn of the day after to-morrow — a land where it is always afternoon.

What else you will find of the Portugal of yesterday and the Portugal of to-day is for a different chapter.

Empire and Eclipse

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It is ill for a nation to break with the little god of the little things of life as Portugal now did when it turned from the land and things national to the sea and things imperial. The suddenness of the change was remarkable, and can be accounted for both by general and special circumstances.

The general circumstances were that just at the time when the Portuguese nation was reaching its fullest vitality, European culture had reached one of those short days of warmth and light that separate its long nights of darkness and silence. It is probable that if we could read the history of the civilization of our world as we can that of its creation, we should find it divided into long glacial epochs broken by shorter periods of great warmth and rapid growth, subject to a general tendency in these ages to become shorter and more temperate. When the ice-age of mediaevalism ended with the Renascence of learning, the Reformation of religion, and the Revelation of the New World, Portugal was found in the front rank of the cultured nations. Indeed the part played by Portugal in the renascence of learning is no small one, though it is secondary to that of the neighbour- ing peninsula, Italy. In the re-discovery of America its

Empire and Eclipse 93

contribution is second to none, though the honours are shared with Spain and England. And if in the Reformation it finds no place at all, this is probably due to the fact that the Reformation took, under the guidance of the Northern races, a form which made no appeal to the Southern character, being in fact a revolt of reason rather than a revival of religion. There was indeed in Portugal a promising revival of Christian principles at this time, but Portugal was not strong enough to re-christianize Rome, and was too religious to revolt against it. Therefore the vital forces of that Portuguese reformation eventually failed in their spiritual inspiration, and were ultimately used by popes and princes for their political purposes.

The initial impetus given by the Portuguese in opening up the New World and inaugurating the age of commercial and colonial expansion is generally attributed to the enter- prise of the Portuguese adventurer of the middle class under the guidance of Henry the Navigator, John's scientific son. But the change had already begun in the previous genera- tion, when John had been forced, as democratic despots succeeding divine right despots usually are forced, to change the basis of the monarchy. That basis in the case of the previous kings had been the land acquired by conquest and assigned directly by the king, or on his behalf, to feudatories of various degrees. The early kings were in fact squires, and in such a king as Diniz we have as it were ' a good squire ' — ploughing and planting new land — improving the productiveness of the old — reviewing the yeomanry — making a good speech at the hustings and singing a good song at the tenants' dinner. But the manner of John's succession made him rather King of the Portuguese than King of Portugal, and the House of Aviz had no hereditary hold

94 Empire and Eclipse

over the land. Their farmers, so to say, that is the great feudatories, had taken the opportunity to make themselves freeholders. The Crown real estate was divided up and its revenues and resources mostly disappeared. There was nothing left for the Squire but his position ; and so, like any English gentleman in these conditions, John went off the land and went into business — the' legitimate government business of creating new revenues in return for new public services. Very soon, by energetically exploiting both his powers and position and the growing wealth of the com- mercial and industrial classes, John more than compensated the Crown for the loss of the land. His new taxes, especially the customs, soon made him the greatest capitalist in the country, and as he was careful to return a proper percentage to the public in buildings and other benefactions, his popularity grew with his power. Moreover, indirect taxes in customs duties, as they made or appeared to make the foreigner pay, had none of the disadvantages of the old direct taxation from the land. What wonder the Portuguese thought highly of a king who could defeat the Spaniards at Aljubarrota with English bowmen and pay for Batalha Abbey with English bullion.

Another consequence of the change was that the new relationship of the monarch to his people became that of a manufacturer to his workmen, whereas the old one had been that of a proprietor to his labourers ; and this is also suggested by a change in the situation of the Court — a situation that had always been suggestive of the circum- stances of the Crown. Fernando had spent the latter part of his wretched reign at Santarem, a strong place handy to the Spanish frontier — Pedro is mostly associated with Coimbra, the ancient capital and centre of the landed

Empire and Eclipse 95

nobility and gentry — Diniz with the fertile fields of Leiria — and Affonzo Henriquez with the border castles of Galicia ; but John of Aviz is the King of Lisbon. Under him this great port outclassed Oporto itself as a centre of capital and Coimbra as a centre of culture. John gave- Portugal the first necessity of an empire, a metropolis. Under his reign the sudden growth of Lisbon as a commercial capital, which continued during the second part of the fifteenth century, is only comparable with that of New York during the second half of the nineteenth. Nor were the political consequences of this change inconsiderable. For while it is true that the change apparently did no more than substitute a control of the Crown by the metropolis for the old control by the nobility ; yet, though the middle class was more liberal in its interests and more national in its instincts than the nobility, it was less capable of con- trolling the Crown. A Portuguese king living on land rents was more amenable to pressure than a Portuguese emperor living on overseas revenues.

Accordingly we find that just as John's foreign policy consisted in carefully leaving alone militarist Spain while developing in every way relations with maritime England, so his home policy consisted in cautiously leaving the landed nobility and gentry to themselves, while developing in every way the middle classes. Unfortunately, then, as now, this policy has a serious inherent defect, which is that the life of a people is more intimately bound up with the life on the land than either with life on the sea or life in the city. John, in spite of all his power, was not strong enough to control class exploitation of the agricultural industry and to secure tolerable conditions for the peasantry and small proprietors. He could do no more than introduce some

96 Empire and Eclipse

tentative attempts to redeem abuses, especially in the feudal administration of justice. As a result of this neglect we find evidence, even at this early date, that not only was Portugal not establishing a national population on the territories south of the Tagus, but that Beira and the new territories already settled north of the Tagus were not sharing in the prosperity of the ports, and that even the peasant proprietors of the north, the original Portuguese stock, were leaving their holdings and going off the land. The danger was realized, and in the literary age which followed John's reign, the liberalism of the time seems to be as much occupied with the land question as are the republican reformers to-day. But even at this early date — except in the extreme north, where feudalism had not been able to get a grip on land which was already fully settled by a virile stock — the property-rights and privileges of the upper classes were being recklessly and ruthlessly used to reduce the rural population to a servile class. The imperial enterprises of John rather aggravated this evil by giving new opportunities for the more independent individuals to seek fresh land abroad, thereby draining the population of its more stalwart stock. This subtle and insidious sapping of the strength of the nation is probably most to blame for more than one sudden social collapse and for its slow political development.

John the First was rightly called the Great, but like many great men he left a very difficult position for his successors. He was forced by his personal circumstances and by the political conditions of the period to promote an enterprise very perilous to the Portuguese monarchy and even to Portuguese nationality. So long as Portugal was content to be a self-contained nation, secured by an alliance

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with sea power against any aggression by land power, Portu- guese independence would be invulnerable and probably inviolable. But if Lisbon was to become a great commercial centre of world power, in the first place the danger of Spanish aggression was greatly increased, and secondly the English alliance must inevitably be compromised by colonial and commercial competition. It is usual to look on John as the saviour of Portuguese nationality, but probably he contributed more than any one to the early eclipse of Portugal as a nation by burning up the fuel for the sacred flame of nationalism in a short flare of imperialism.

It is quite possible, indeed, that the genius of Portuguese national character might have saved it from this splendid but mistaken adventure had the rulers of Portugal, in this critical period, been purely Portuguese. The Portuguese character expresses itself, materially, in work on the home land or on home waters, and, morally, in crusades for reli- gious ideals such as Catholicism, Comtism, Constitutionalism, Republicanism, &c. The compromises between self-sacrifice and self-interest, between domesticity and adventure, so characteristic of middle classes in general and of the English middle class in particular, are alien to the Portuguese. Though the boldest of fishermen and the hardiest of farmers, he is not naturally a merchant adventurer or a frontiersman. The part he has played in the development of relations between Europe and the Indies, East and West, has been due, not to any element in his national character, but to two effects of his national situation. He found himself in possession of the coast most conveniently situated as a point of departure both for southern and western overseas exploration, and he owed already to this maritime position a strong infusion in his coast population of roving races

1832. 5 H

98 Empire and Eclipse

such as Phoenicians, Greeks, Flemish and English. It was this element in the population that made Portugal an Empire, and it was headed and heartened by the half-bred Anglo- Portuguese sons of John of Aviz and Philippa of Gaunt. When we wonder at the position held in history by Prince Henry the Navigator — that strange man, part mystic, part mathematician, part philosopher, part politician — the man who founded modern navigation, yet never sailed the seas himself — who could do the meanest things with the best motives — who lived silent and solitary, and yet was one of the most prominent personalities in the most brilliant metro- polis of the period — who lived a monk and died a millionaire — we shall wonder in vain, unless we realize that he was in the first place an Englishman, and in the second place that he had the sympathetic support of a strong English element then present in the Portuguese nationality. While this English element was not anti-national as the Spanish element was, yet it is a question whether its effect on the democracy and middle class in encouraging it to launch on overseas adventures was not as antagonistic to true Portu- guese nationalism as the effect of the dynastic intrigues and class-interests of the Spanish party that controlled the landed class.

For while it is true that Portugal, but for this adventurous seafaring spirit in a section of its people, would have missed its brief period of splendour as a World Empire, and its present position as a colonial power, yet it is equally true that, but for this eccentric and extravagant enterprise, the Portuguese might have been a more prosperous and even a more powerful unit in the European polity. In fact its entry into the World Empires involved as serious a moral injury to its national spirit as its subsequent absorption

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into the Empire of Spain involved a material injury to its national institutions ; and a moral injury is far more difficult to remedy. Within eighty years of the Spanish invasion Portugal had recovered its national independence, but it is still to-day to a certain degree in spiritual sub- jection to its Imperial ideal. The peasants of Beira who perish, as young recruits, of disease and disaster in the hin- terland of Angola, or the middle-class clerks of Lisbon and Oporto who sink into mental collapse and moral corruption in attempts to bear an administrative burden too heavy for them under trials and temptations too strong for them, are heavy losses to Portuguese nationality. These losses to the strength and spirit of a Nation with one of the best of records are a heavy price to pay for remaining an Empire with one of the worst ; and this Imperial incubus with which the Portuguese nation has become inextricably involved first fell on it when John imposed his ' business ' monarchy and his ' bastard ' dynasty on the Portuguese nation. For there is a legitimism of the people as well as of the prince ; and though the Anglo-Portuguese descendants of John were born in honourable wedlock and from a political alliance, yet, for the practical purpose for which marriage was intended, such a confusion of national character in kings is as full of disturbing developments as a confusion of social class may be in lesser mortals. One reason why the feudal system of social classifications broke down was because when sex instinct was subordinated to the interests of society the stock died out, and when it was not the status was lost.

John having taken the important step of substituting a ' family business ' for the ' family property ', brought up his sons to professions. Edward went into law and worked

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under his father, Pedro into diplomacy and dabbled in literature, Henry the Navigator took up science and became famous, John married the daughter of their only competitor, Ferdinand went as a missionary and died a martyr, Isabel was as good as she was beautiful and made the match of the day with Philip the Good of Burgundy : they all ' did something ' and did it well, and with their Anglo-Saxon activities and adventures they seemed to cover the whole field of monarchy. Yet none the less there was room for a dangerous pretender.

Affonzo, Count of Barcellos, later Duke of Braganza, the ' legal bastard ' of John by a Portuguese lady, had married the heiress of the greatest Portuguese of the day, the Holy Constable, and was a ' legitimist ' pretender in the popular sense. He was Portuguese on both sides, and as heir to the greatest feudatory noble was necessarily ' on' the land ' ; he therefore became not only the leader of the landed nobility, the opponents of the ' radical ' John, but also had a following in the peasantry. He was a personality of no prominence and no very formidable pretender, one would suppose, as against such splendid specimens of royalty as the Aviz princes ; but the House of Braganza was Portuguese and the House of Aviz was not, and Braganza won in the end. The curious dualism that is always distract- ing the destiny of Portugal appears again in the difference between these two dynasties, one of which, Aviz, was more English than Portuguese, and exhausted Portugal by its ambitions for world-power in the Americas ; the other, Braganza, became more Spanish than Portuguese and ex- hausted Portugal by its ambitions for world-power in Europe.

The princes of Portugal were no longer to have only one temptation to resist, the old temptation of looking on

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Portugal as a point de de-part for an Empire over the Iberian peninsula, they were also to have to resist the new tempta- tion of treating Portugal as the port of entry to Europe of an Empire in the South American continent. We shall in future find these two forces at work on the fate of Portugal : a bad Portuguese monarch falls into the old mistake and becomes no more than a Spanish pretender, a good one falls into the new trap and becomes a South American president. In other words, the foundations of a Portuguese Republic were laid when Vasco da Gama made the Monarchy an autocracy by pouring into its pockets the wealth of the Indies, and when the Portuguese viceroys founded the greater Portugal overseas.

But it is a long road to the Portuguese Republic of the twentieth century from the rivalry between Aviz and Braganza in the fifteenth, and we had best get back on to it.

When John of Aviz died, in 1433, the monarchical authority was put into commission, so to say, between the brothers — a very English arrangement. They made a sort of cabinet : King Edward was a thoroughly competent and enlightened Premier and Home Secretary, and co-operated heartily with Henry the Navigator as Minister of the Colonies and Commerce, with Ferdinand as War Minister, and with Pedro as Foreign Minister. Edward at once set about land reform and summoned the Cortes of Evora, which passed the ' Lei Mental ' limiting the right of pro- perty in royal grants of land to succession in the direct male line — a bold attempt to stop the landed class from converting their feudal tenure of the land into freehold to the exclusion of all rights of the peasantry. This was forced through against the bitter opposition of the landed class, who retaliated by bodily going over to Braganza.

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Pedro, the next brother, had an easier task in continuing the economic and political alliance with England and the armed neutrality against Castile.

Henry had already, under John, as early as 141 8 invested his large private fortune in a school of science and naviga- tion at Sagres, a remote promontory in the Algarves but a convenient jumping-off place for the New World. There he worked out a science of navigation which soon began to open up such new worlds as only scientific study can. We can only judge of his labours by their practical results, for the records of his work are almost as completely gone as the ruins of his observatory and of his hostel for mariners ; though some such records are occasionally recovered in out-of-the-way places, such as the recent discovery that the early publications on navigation by the South Germans are really transcripts of his work. But to the age of exploration Prince Henry supplied what it most required — courage, capital, and co-ordinated effort. As a prince prelate he had nothing to fear from the popular cry of witchcraft, while public confidence in a science which seemed superhuman gave his followers courage to face the unknown ; and both these counted for much in this age of fear. Under him the Portuguese first learnt how to build a ship which could sail the open ocean with a reasonable prospect of survival, and first learnt the lines on which to sail it so as to explore the ocean with a reasonable prospect of arrival somewhere. For it was Prince Henry's school of science that not only gave impetus but direction to the enterprises of subsequent discoverers of other nations. And if he himself never lived to see his main idea realized — the idea of reaching the Indies by sea — yet his persistence in pursuit of it started the forces of exploration in Europe in steady progress along the

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two main lines of exploration, one of which was to lead them round the Cape to the East Indies, the other over the Atlantic to the West Indies. A good beginning was made in his lifetime, and in 1434 one of his captains doubled Bogador, while by 1446 Diniz Diaz had doubled Cape Verde ; and on the Western route the Azores had been discovered in 143 1.

Prince Henry died in 1460, and the practical results of his work, so far as Portugal was concerned, was the possession of the remote and rocky Azores — of Madeira, whose magnifi- cent woods laid waste by fire burnt for ten years — and of the Gambia, where the slave trade began its destroying and almost irremediable devastations. Madeira was re- settled by him as a plantation with servile labour ; and what is worse, slaves were thereafter regularly imported for field- labour in the Algarves. Consequently, so far as the Portu- guese nation was concerned, the main result of Prince Henry's labours was that the natural trend of population southward into the empty national territory of the Algarves was diverted westward into the imperial territories of the Atlantic, so that negro slaves might take their place in the southern provinces of the home country. The result, ' nationally ' speaking, was much the same as if the Portu- guese in a crusade of conquest to reannex the south of the peninsula to Europe had, in crossing the Tagus, been swept out to sea and as if the Moors had thereby been enabled to reannex the half of Portugal to Africa. The reply to this is that Prince Henry's services, as is the case with all true science, did not, and could not, serve a merely national purpose. If profit-seekers grossly misused his discoveries he cannot be blamed for it.

Prince Henry appeals strongly to our imagination because we feel that we modern English alone can understand this

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self-centred scientific nobleman, a type that was to reproduce itself in every epoch of our nobility. But even so, only few English ever penetrate to his real character ; our idea of a sailor-prince and a swashbuckling adventurer being as far from the truth as the burly bearded statue at Belem or the bloated death-mask at Batalha. As a matter of fact, Prince Henry was a scientist and a recluse, and no more adventurous and swashbuckling than was the

Old lady of Portugal Whose ideas were excessively nautical;

Who climbed up a tree

To examine the sea, But vowed she would never leave Portugal.

The portrait, probably from life, reproduced in the frontispiece shows a careworn ascetic with a student's stoop, his aristocratic Anglo-Saxon type in strong con- trast with the faces before and behind him : before him the dark, somewhat effeminate, type of the Portuguese nobleman into which his nephew the king and the little prince are already merged ; and behind him the coarse- featured peasant faces of the statesmen of middle class and mixed racial origin — that middle class that enabled the House of Aviz to build up the Portuguese empire without the support of the nobility. The arrogance of Prince Henry's face is redeemed by its refinement, and its thin strength contrasts well with the almost brutal force of the faces behind, or the emotional energy of the faces in front. Even his sombre old-fashioned dress is eloquent of his personality of English squire turned scientist.

However, we must not let these interesting personages of an interesting period bulk too large in our historical picture, the picture in which, as in the frontispiece, the

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personages are grouped around and subordinated to St. Vincent, the saintly symbol of Portuguese nationality. We have seen this nationality taken charge of by a board of half-English brothers and have dealt with the contributions of Edward, the king, and Prince Henry. The most attrac- tive member of the family was, however, Don Fernando, ' The Constant Prince ', a youth so saintly that he was offered, and refused, a cardinalate, and so chivalrous that he prayed for, and could not be refused, a crusade. Both the Pope and his prudent diplomatist brother, Pedro, discouraged his desire to lead an expedition into Africa, but Edward and Henry yielded to his pleadings against their dynastic policy and their better judgement. Moroccan adventures, like Spanish marriages, were not the true Aviz Anglo- Portuguese policy, and both Edward's marriage and Fer- nando's expedition were to bring them disaster.

Portuguese sea-power had provided a base of operations in Ceuta, but could not secure the safety of Edward's and Ferdinand's small Portuguese army when it undertook the siege of Tangier in 1437. The Moors cut them off from the coast and forced them to capitulate. The terms were the evacuation of Morocco, and that Fernando was to be handed over as a hostage for the surrender of Ceuta. Edward and his expedition escaped, therefore, with the loss of its instigator, who died five years later, 1443, in Moorish captivity ; as the country refused to ratify the capitulation and cede Ceuta. This broke up the band of brothers ; for Edward died the next year, 1438, of a broken heart, and Henry buried himself alive for many years at Sagres. Ed- ward's son, Affonzo the Fifth, a promising boy, was only six years old, and he left as Regent his Spanish wife, Leonor of Aragon. But this the national sentiment of Lisbon

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would not support, and the Cortes of Torres Nova broke the will and made Pedro Protector. They further established a standing committee of three to co-operate and combine with the Protector when the Cortes was not sitting — a remarkably democratic procedure at such an early period. The Queen Regent thereupon allied her Spanish interest with the feudal faction under the Braganza Pretender, Barcellos, and with the clerical factions under the Archbishop of Lisbon — a coalition which was easily overthrown by a levee en masse at Lisbon.

After this confirmation there seemed to be little question but that during the regency of Pedro, Duke of Coimbra, the national policy both foreign and domestic would follow the traditional lines of the Aviz dynasty. But this Anglo- Portuguese dynasty and policy of Aviz could only continue on the condition that it remained Anglo-Portuguese in its personnel and Aviz in its policy. Fernando, the most Portuguese of the brothers, had dealt it one deadly blow by departing from the Aviz policy, and Affonzo the Fifth, the kneeling figure in the frontispiece, now dealt it another by proving that he was only one-eighth English and one- half Spanish. For he now allowed himself to be won over by the Braganza party against his uncle, and in the ensuing civil war (1449), after an initial victory at Penella, Pedro was defeated, and he and his only son killed, at Alfarrobeira.

The result of this schism in the House of Aviz was to bring the House of Braganza into power. The Braganzas, recogniz- ing the source of their authority in land power with as unerring instinct as did the House of Aviz that theirs was in sea power, so used their influence with the young king as to increase enormously their vast landed estates. The

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King they occupied in the first place with the Moroccan expeditions that earned him his title of ' The African ', and some Moroccan territories including Tangier ; and in the second place with the usual Spanish marriage that brought it with the usual claims to the Castilian throne. His first wife, daughter of Pedro and mother of his successor, John the Second, having conveniently died, he married his niece Joanna, Infanta of Castile, and claimed the Spanish Crown. All that he accomplished thereby was to bring about the union of Castile and Aragon by the marriage of her sister Isabella to Ferdinand, and to rouse against Portu- guese intrigue and invasion the force of Spanish nationalism; with the result that he was severely defeated at Toro in 1476. The completeness of his failure broke his spirit, and the remaining four years of his life were spent in retirement.

The career of ' El Rey Cavalleiro ', as Affonzo was called, had, indeed, shown clearly the growing difficulty of the monarchical function in Portugal as a national institution. So long as the nation required a leader in national crusades, either against the Moors or Spaniards, the role of the king was obvious and easy ; but now that it required only peace with its old enemies so as to develop its economic resources at home and abroad, a Portuguese character like Affonzo the Cavalier King was a less satisfactory monarch than the half-English Pedro. His chivalrous ideas, which associated him with the representatives of ancient chivalry — the landed class — were exploited by them in their class-interest ; and his generosity made him strip the Crown of such land as was left to it in favour of the supporters of the hereditary enemy of his dynasty, the House of Braganza. By the end of his reign the House of Braganza held a third of the land in

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Portugal with the greater part of the Church patronage, and kept royal state ; while the feudal power of dispensing justice recovered by the landed class had been degraded by them into a lucrative licensing of crime. The social evils consequent on these concessions to the landed classes were so serious that the Cortes of Guarda, in 1465, called Affonzo to order, but his undertakings to them were not kept. The ruin of the rural population of Portugal went on apace under the combined pressure of the conversion of feudal claims into property rights and the competition of slave labour. Affonzo left the Crown impoverished and the country oppressed, for the sole benefit of the least deserving class in it. Little wonder that his death only anticipated his deposition.

His son, John the Perfect, fortunately inherited from his mother, the daughter of Pedro, a considerable share of Lancastrian common sense, and returned at once to the traditional Aviz policy. With the help of the Cortes of Evora, in 1481, he attacked so drastically the hold on the land of the nobles and their lucrative rights of justice, that he drove them to open opposition under the leadership of Braganza. Being assured of the country's support he then dealt with the opposition very summarily. The Duke of Braganza and some hundred or so leading nobles and chiefs he had executed, and their estates confiscated, while he himself stabbed to death the Duke of Viseu, his brother- in-law and heir of the immense wealth amassed by Prince Henry the Navigator. By this coup d'etat he established at one stroke the monarchy of Portugal in a position, not only of independence of the landed classes, but also of indepen- dence of the Cortes and the people. Though neither he himself nor his immediate successors abused this absolutism,

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yet the balance of the national organism was destroyed, and there followed a notable absence of national constitutional development, a sure symptom of the decline of democratic vitality.

John the Perfect was the last of the monarchs of this or indeed of any Portuguese dynasty whose personality was to count as a predominant political factor ; for his son Emmanuel, ' The Fortunate ', was a weak personality, the glories of whose long reign, often mistaken for the full noon of Portuguese nationalism, were no more than the sunset splendours of Portuguese imperialism. In John's action against the predatory nobility, and in his activities in support of all manner of national and imperial enterprises, we can see, for the last time in the dynasty of Aviz, the working of that combination of forces to which all national development is due, the combination of the driving power of a popular movement with the directing power of a personality.

It has been convenient up to this point to consider the spirit of the Portuguese nation as being summarized and symbolized in the character of the king of the period — a rough-and-ready, rule-of-thumb way of writing history less misleading in the case of Portugal than it would be elsewhere. But, henceforward, the monarchy in Portugal becomes an institution like the nobility and the Church, apart from and only too often opposed to the national spirit. Opposed, moreover, not only in its policy or in the personal character of its king, which can be corrected by a change of rulers, but in its principles and in the ideals of the institution itself. From now on, with the exception of the unfortunate Sebastian, we shall find no Portuguese sovereign representing the spirit of the nation and enthroned in the hearts of the

i to Empire and Eclipse

people. The history of Portugal can no longer be dealt with as divided into reigns, but must be distributed into political periods.

The epoch upon which we are now entering is one that covers the reigns of John ' The Perfect ', of Emmanuel 'The Fortunate', and of John, not otherwise distinguished than as being ' The Third '. It is an epoch of sudden and surprising colonial and commercial expansion abroad with its direct consequence in immense inflation at Lisbon and Oporto, and its indirect consequence in an artificial demand on national activities such as they were scarcely capable of meeting and quite incapable of maintaining. Money poured into the ports of the country and into the pockets of the upper and middle class, and poured out again without developing the national resources.

We may infer the general effect of these sudden riches from the result on architecture. There the decorated Gothic that Portugal was slowly developing from English and French models, suddenly blossomed into a fantastic flamboyance known as ' manoeline ' Gothic, and accepted as an appropriate expression of the age. The opulent ornamentation of this style shows a taste utterly demoralized by wealth. Nothing comes amiss to the manoeline mason ; ropes, trees, heraldic devices, mottoes, flowers are piled one upon the other, while a cheese-like stone and a frostless winter allows of a cabinet-maker's carving and under-cutting copied from Indian models. The ' manoeline ' Belem is to Batalha and Alcobaca what the colonizing and commercial Portugal of Emmanuel the Fortunate is to the crusading Portugal of John the Great and Affonzo Henriquez. With equal appropriateness Belem commemorates the great victory of the age of discovery, the doubling of the Cape and

Empire and Eclipse in

opening of communications with India by Vasco da Gama in 1497.

The course of colonial expansion since the initial impulse given by Prince Henry had been steady, and had kept Portu- gal well in the front rank of the overflowing tide of European expansion into Asia, Africa, and America. At the time of Prince Henry's death exploration had not reached south of the Gambia or west of the Azores ; and the advance was slow during the reactionary reign of Affonzo, so that it had no more than reached the Equator in 147 1. John the Perfect had, moreover, a personal preference for the com- paratively unprofitable plan of opening up land routes. His travellers penetrated as far as Timbuctoo, Abyssinia, and India, of course with little or no practical results. He also diverted some maritime energy into the ice-bound seas and barren shores of the North-East Passage, whereby Martin Lopez discovered for him Nova Zembla. It was only along the lines laid down by Prince Henry that any practical progress was made. On the southern route to the Indies the Congo was discovered in 1484, by Deogo Cao, and two years later Bartolemew Diaz doubled the Cape. The road to the wealth of the Indies now lay open and the Portuguese had a long start of their rivals along it. Had it not been for John's diversions of their energies towards the north and the land route, they would probably have begun to reap the fruits of their enterprise earlier, for it was not until 1497 that Vasco da Gama reached India by sea.

It was John, moreover, that lost them altogether the two great prizes of the age of discovery. It was at Lisbon that Christopher Columbus conceived his plan of starting out boldly across the Atlantic, but it got no support from John, whose imagination was only stirred by land adventure; and he

ii2 Empire and Eclipse

referred the matter to Master Rodrigo and Master Jiuseppe, Jewish physicians and expert cosmographers. They inter- viewed Columbus and got his full plans from him, then reported that it was a ' perilous notion ', but none the less advised sending a caravel out along the course proposed. This was done, and had not the caravel soon got discouraged and turned back, Columbus would have been cheated. So in great indignation with the Portuguese he went to Spain. In the same way the refusal of support to the Portuguese Magalhaens made him take service for Spain, and earn for that country the honour of first circumnavigating the globe. But though Spain was thus passing them in the race the Portuguese were not far behind, and in 1500 Cabral dis- covered Brazil and Corte-Real Labrador. By 1520 the Portuguese had reached the coast of China, and were in communication with Pekin, and it was in that year that Magalhaens doubled Cape Horn and entered the Pacific, his ship after his death circumnavigating the world.

Before the end of the epoch of imperial discovery that of imperial development was well under way. The age of discovery initiated by Portugal brought about as complete a revolution in the commercial arrangements of the world as the Renaissance brought about in art and literature, or the Reformation in its attitude to religion. In this commer- cial revolution Portugal profited enormously at first, and even to this day retains founders' shares in Africa and America of vast if still undeveloped value. The first revo- lutionary change was that the flow of commerce between East and West was diverted from the channel of the Mediterranean, already choked in part by the conquests of Islam, to the open channel of the ocean via the Cape. At one stroke Portugal succeeded Venice as the port of entry

Empire and Eclipse ir3

and the trading centre of Europe. Moreover, by the gain of the Far West as by the loss of the Near East the centre of commercial gravity was shifted westward from the Mediterranean coast to the Atlantic coast, which again gave Lisbon first claim. Further, by the opening up of colonies in the West, the flow of emigration and enterprise from East to West, checked for centuries, was again revived, and again Lisbon was the best point of departure. A Portuguese world empire had, indeed, become historically and geo- graphically inevitable.

This is a study of the Portuguese nation, and the Portuguese Empire in Asia, Africa, and America is only within its scope so far as it affects the fate of the Por- tuguese in Europe. That the Empire profoundly affected the fate of the nation, and in a manner very different from the effect of our early Empire on our Elizabethan age, is due to the difference in national character between the English and Portuguese. Many historians assume that the expansive effort of colonial and commercial enterprise was bound to exhaust the Portuguese, while accepting the fact that a similar effort of the English a little later had an opposite effect on us. They trace the collapse of Portuguese nationality to this excessive effort as complacently as they trace the creation of our imperial greatness to a similar effort on our part. Yet there was no difference between the comparative resources of England and Portugal at that time such as would explain why an enterprise so fortunate to the one should prove so fatal to the other. It is not until we examine the national ideals that inspired either nation in this effort that we find any answer to the puzzle. The Imperialism of the English was not a national movement, it was merely the practical enterprise of individuals or localities,

1832- 5 T

ii4 Empire and Eclipse

merchant adventurers of London or the southern ports driven by the search for wealth and the spirit of adventure. There was, perhaps, later some national sentiment for maintaining the freedom of the seas, and for asserting our claims to a place in the sun as against the world empire over the West claimed by Spanish naval supremacy. This, while it gave to our Elizabethan adventurers the support of a moral cause and gave what might have been no better than profiteering and piracy a moral motive and an atmo- sphere of self-devotion, was nevertheless not enough to force British imperial enterprise into unpractical or unprofit- able undertakings. But with Portugal the moral motive was not subsidiary. The object of the Portuguese nation really was to convert the East and West to Christianity and to civilization, and the worst results of their rule at this epoch are traceable to this proselytism, and not, as in our case, to mere profiteering. If we penetrate below the profiteering of the Portuguese Court we find that it was the natives' souls and not their products in which the Portuguese were interested, and that every private enterprise of the early imperialists was seriously hampered by the claims of the Church. Maritime conquest was in fact originally only a form of Moroccan crusade, and although the reward of the latter was generally six foot of sand, and of the former a Pactolus itself, the country as a whole favoured the barren crusade rather than the rich conquest. Perhaps, however, we may trace in this the curious instinct of self- preservation in all live nationalities. For if at first glance it would seem that the interests of the Portuguese nation was far more furthered by colonization and commerce in the new continents than by profitless crusades against Spanish Imperialism or Moroccan fanaticism, yet wars with Spain

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and Morocco would only have taken toll of life while stimu- lating the national spirit, while the overseas enterprises took an even heavier toll and the easily won wealth strangled the national spirit in a silken halter.

As one of the results of the Emmanueline epoch, like our own Elizabethan epoch, was that the national spirit found its voice, we have plenty of evidence of the national point of view both colloquial and literary.

Who follow the drum Home never come. Who to India roam Never come home.

So sang the Lisbon street-boys as the recruiting drum of the colonial company passed along the streets.

The faith in crusade drained away the best blood of the nation, and the fruits of conquest corrupted that which was left ; for if it was a religious ideal that recruited the Portuguese nation for imperial enterprise, it was less worthy motives that directed and exploited its efforts. The Crown, having established its hold over the colonies and commerce, then proceeded to deal with them as it had dealt with its rights over land at home, by treating them as real estate to be granted out to courtiers in return for their support and services. The commerce and colonies of Portugal became a Crown monopoly, shares in which could only be acquired by Court influence. The consequence was a corruption of the upper class far worse than that caused by their land ownership. A noble living on his land might be selfish and stupid, though no doubt he was as often generous and humane ; but if he came to Court to make his fortune there was little hope for him. The competition at Lisbon for concessions, and, still worse, for pensions out of the profits,

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became the principal occupation of the upper class. As usual with monopolies, while many mistakes were made that tended to check rapid development, development was, none the less, all too rapid and unregulated, and all the profits were squan- dered instead of some being reinvested in the business. It would be impossible here to analyse fully the difference between the use made by the Emmanueline Portuguese of their imperial opportunity and that made by the Elizabethan English. Both were somewhat on the same lines, but the difference in favour of England of a century more of demo- cratic development — of a more powerful middle class and a weaker upper class — gave a decisive advantage to the people who were out for commercial enterprise and for no more definite ideal than the freedom of the seas.

While a nation can resist coercion by foreign imperialism to the death, and, thereafter, when the fire and flood have passed, emerge cleansed and reinvigorated, it cannot resist the corruption caused by its own imperialism. We can see the development of the disease clearly enough at the distance we now are from this Portuguese crisis. Take, for instance, the old struggle for the land between the free commoners and the feudal class. With the help of the Crown the encroachments of the latter had been somewhat counter- acted, so that the population on the land had again been growing slowly and continuing the ' nationalizing ' of Portugal by a southward drift of the strong northern stock. But imperialism brought an immense accession of political power to the upper class in the new wealth and in the nouveaux riches that it added to its ranks ; while it further reduced the remaining survivors of the Age of Chivalry. In a word, the upper class became an imperial as well as a landed ' interest ', and fell still further out of touch with national instincts.

Empire and Eclipse 117

But an even more fatal feature than the flood of wealth into a few hands was the introduction of slavery. The conditions south of the Tagus, both climatic and social, were suitable to coloured slave labour. The climate and soil were such as to make agriculture by large proprietors and labourers more economic than that of small freeholders, while the manner of acquisition of the land had put property on a basis of vast estates belonging to military and clerical orders. As slave labour poured in from the south the white labour was pressed back north into Lisbon and employment in the new industries created by the new wealth. Lisbon in a few years trebled its population, though the wastage there, in periodic pestilence, was only less fearful than the wastage among those bolder spirits who passed through it and out overseas to the land from which no traveller returns. Thus it came about that the Algarves that had been annexed to Portugal by a national conquest were again lost to it by imperial corruption. Even in Beira, the garden of Portugal, though slave labour could not gain a footing there in a land suitable for and long settled by whites, yet its existence farther south helped to reduce the white popula- tion of the north to a dependence on the landowners little better than slavery. A clamour of complaint against oppressors of the poor bore witness to the resentment of the national spirit at this cutting of its roots in the land ; and grew in volume and vehemence during this century until the Spanish inquisition and Spanish imperialism silenced all.

This was a time when the ferment of the Reformation was stirring in Europe ; and in Portugal, where the national spirit is emotional rather than logical, the effect took a hu- manist rather than a rationalist form. Luther revolted against a Lordship of Unreason and Misrule, and the peasants

n8 Empire and Eclipse

rising against the oppression of the German nobles and knights got no sympathy from him. But in Portugal, though the clergy were corrupted like the whole upper class and were criticized as candidly, there was never any more idea of attacking the Church as an institution than Luther had at the time of his first protest. The reform movement in Portugal was directed at the abuses in the lower strata of the social structure along the line of contact between the class and the mass, and not at the aberrations of the governing centre — Rome. For at this time Rome did still exercise a governing function over Europe in general and Portugal in particular. Therefore no schism resulted nor even any serious secession ; and the reforming impulse died away in the general demoralization and denationalization, drowned by the deluge of wealth from overseas. ! The devotion of the Portuguese to the ideal of Christian unity was indeed to cost them dear. In a nation whose vitality was already weakened, this ideal not only caused the subordination of national independence to religious unity, but also called for a sacrifice of personal liberty. The result of the Reformation, when it assumed its political form in Protestantism, was to detach -Portugal from Protes- tant England and to associate it with Roman Catholic Spain. The traditional feelings towards English and Spaniards inspired by national instincts were submerged by the fanaticism of a religious revival. It is very difficult to say how far this revival was popular and instinctive, and how far it was political and interested. It certainly con- cerned mostly the class which acts by interest rather than by instinct, and the commonalty had been so weakened both politically and vitally that their failure to make an effective protest against the anti-national course that events were

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taking need not be held to imply their approval. Rome and Madrid were both determined that Portugal and its possessions should be a sword in their hand rather than a thorn in their side ; and they got every help from the Portu- guese rulers and ruling class demoralized by absolutism and denationalized by imperialism. But, on the other hand, the fact that the Roman Catholic cause in Portugal attracted to itself all the less progressive and popular elements and associated itself with abominable abuses does not necessarily mean that it did not enjoy the support of the people, at least up to the very last crisis when it finally delivered them into bondage to Spain. For the good of the Church the Portuguese were ready to give their lives in crusades and conquests abroad, and their liberties to priestly government and persecutions at home. Nor could they be expected to see that they were thereby losing hold both of their Christianity and of their nationality.

The revival of religion in Portugal which corresponded to the Reformation in Northern Europe, is recognizable in two principal institutions — the Inquisition and the Society of Jesus. The Inquisition, whatever its ideals may have been, meant for Portugal a governmental system of 'spiritual oppression, just as the Society of Jesus represented an inter- national conspiracy against personal and popular liberties. We are not concerned with the real character of these institutions and the relative quality of good and bad in either, but only with their results in Portugal. But it is of interest to note that in the free Portuguese communities of Brazil the Inquisition got no footing ; whereas the Society found a function there of the first value in regulating the relations between the colonists and the natives and in preventing the persecution of the latter. Indeed, when the

120 Empire and Eclipse

Inquisition endeavoured to gain a footing in Brazil on the establishment there of royal governors, the Society success- fully resisted the attempt. It is scarcely necessary to dwell on the philanthropic work of the Jesuits among the Brazilian natives, a work which spared to Portuguese colonization in South America the worst reproach against the introduction of our civilization into the New World, and which shows that the Jesuits, or at least the missionary Jesuits, were inspired by the best spirit of the Reformation ; for in Portugal itself we have, unfortunately, only to do with the Society as an instrument of the Inquisition.

It has been pointed out that the Inquisition was a Spanish institution, and that its introduction into Portugal, made possible by the revivalist sentiment then prevailing there, meant that Spanish and not Portuguese ideals would be enforced in all the regions of social policy then regulated by the Church. The introduction of these Spanish ideals began in Portugal some time before the actual invasion by the Inquisition. The first serious symptom was the persecution of the Jews which began under Emmanuel in the last decade of the fifteenth century, and was part of a dynastic deal by which he was to marry the eldest daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella. He thereby acquired her reversionary right to the throne of Castile and Aragon, in return for persecuting the most prosperous community in Portugal. This was required of him because Spanish policy had some years previously decided that the Jews were to be put down, they having been expelled in 1478 from Seville and Cordova. But the whole policy of anti- Semitism had its origin in essentially Spanish conditions and characteristics, and was as repugnant to the national character of Portugal as it was contrary to national circum-

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stances. The highly cultured Jews and Moors that Spain was expelling were the pith of the population of the peninsula and exactly the elements essential to Portugal to make good the drain on the upper classes caused by colonization and crusades. What the Flemings and Huguenots were to English industry, Jewish and Moorish emigrants from Spain might have been to Portugal. Moreover, the Sephardim Jews of the Peninsula were the finished product of an aristocracy of intellect. They not only provided both the capital and the capacity in the national commerce and finance, but were the principal promoters of scientific and industrial enterprise. They had acted as the repositories of Moorish culture, and had as far as possible reproduced it for the benefit of the Christian successors of the Moors. Thanks to the Jews, the Portuguese had got with their Portuguese conquests more than is generally included in a conquest, namely a higher stage of national culture, and, thanks to the Jews, they were getting with their colonial conquests more than they could otherwise have got, namely a great accession of national credit.

The Jew bankers of Lisbon were indeed just beginning to make the capital not only the port of entry to Europe of the produce of the Indies East and West, but also the point of distribution. By their efforts, a proportion of the wealth of the Indies flowing into Lisbon was accumulated there and made available for national purposes ; and they were beginning to extend their control over that part which flowed into Europe by setting up branch houses abroad in competition with the Londoners, Lowlanders, South Germans, and Lombards. Had they been let alone Lisbon might have become the commercial capital of Europe. For, as we have seen, the whole centre of gravity of European

122 Empire and Eclipse

commerce had been shifted by the opening up of the Western continents of America and the substitution of the ocean Cape route to the East for the route by the Mediterranean and Red Sea. The great commercial highway between East and West no longer lay along the Mediterranean and the eastern European ports of entry. Constantinople and Venice were consequently in decline. The highway to the East now ran north and south along the western coast of Europe and Africa. Therefore the port of entry from the East into Europe would also in all prob- ability be the port of entry from the Western world as well. And while the fact that Lisbon was separated from the rest of Europe by stormy seas or by long and difficult land routes was certainly an even greater disadvantage under mediaeval conditions than now, yet this might not have counted much as against the century start that Lisbon had over London ; had Lisbon but made the best of that start. But the Portuguese monarchy were no longer business men like the earlier sovereigns of the House of Aviz. To them the Indies were merely a source of revenues which relieved them from all constitutional restrictions and enabled them to pursue, unchecked by the Cortes, their old ignis fatuus of the Spanish succession. So that when Emmanuel and John III ruined the prospects of Lisbon by persecuting the Jews they thought they were taking the indispensable initial step towards uniting Spain to Portugal ; whereas they were really taking a step which made almost inevitable the ultimate subjection of Portugal to Spain.

The persecution of the Jews, and the consequent material ruin of Lisbon, was one result of Portugal ranking itself with Rome and Madrid against the Reformation and its ancient ally, England. Another result was the complete

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collapse of the incipient reform movement in Portugal, and that at so early a stage that evidence of it can now only be found in the ' humanism ' of Gil Vicente and contemporary writers. This movement expressed itself in Portugal as elsewhere by a revival of the altruistic socialism of Chris- tianity, carrying with it a critical rationalism in matters of religion. Dogmatism in religion had never had any more attractions for the Portuguese than despotism in politics ; and it is obvious that attacks on corruption in the Court or the Church and appeals for the poor or oppressed found as sympathetic an audience in Portugal as elsewhere. That Gil Vicente, the Court poet, should have ventured so far as he did in reviling and ridiculing courtiers and clerics shows that public opinion on this point was at least as de- veloped in Portugal at this time as it was in the England of Piers Plowman and of the Lollard movement.

But though the ' Protestant ' movement in Portugal had the same fate as the Lollard protest, it belonged in its general character to the Reformation. Its point of view was that of the Lutherans, not that of the Lollards. When, for example, we read The Ship of Hell of Gil Vicente, we wonder how it is that such a life-like picture of mediaeval society should be so surprisingly modern in its point of view, and how it is that anything so picturesquely Portuguese in its aspect can be so European in its appeal. The resem- blance between this work of a fifteenth-century Court playwright and the Faust of Goethe or the Man and Superman of Shaw is clearly too great to be accidental ; but the con- necting link, or rather the common origin may escape us unless perhaps Gil Vicente's titles, The Ship of Hell and The Ship of Heaven, may remind us of the famous Reforma- tion work, The Ship oj Fools of Sebastian Brandt, published

i24 Empire and Eclipse

at Strasburg in 1483. The strong family likeness is then explained by the direct descent of all these works from the spirit of the Reformation. The same rationalist movement, the same moral revolution that created modern Europe, was at work no less energetically in Portugal ; but the seed fell either on the stony ground of fanaticism or was choked by the thorns that sprang up from the riches of India and America, or was devoured by the wosbirds of the Church, When the Spanish Inquisition came to be formally estab- lished in Portugal in 1536, it was an easy task for it to kill off the few seedlings that had rooted in that exhausted soil. Gil Vicente's plays were put on the Index with all other writings of a similar tendency, and there was no further ' protest ' coming from an upper class reduced to Court placemen intriguing and truckling for concessions and pen- sions, or from a lower class reduced to poverty-stricken peasants dependent on the landed proprietor for the means of a miserable life, and on the priests for all hope of future happiness. The stronger spirits left the country; the gentry among them founded an honourable empire in the Indies, and the peasantry founded a free people in Brazil.

A clear consciousness of nationality only comes late in the development of nations, sometimes so late that, as in the case of Old Portugal, it has scarcely time for expression before death. It is only just before the Spanish occupation that we find Portugal as a nation becoming self-conscious and self-centred. It is, then, during the short golden age of Portuguese literature from the Renaissance to the Inquisition, that we find the natural gaiety of Old Portugal, this childish charm of a people joying in a joyous life, given delightful expression by one or two poets and playwrights. We find also that this folk literature is permeated by a feel-

Empire and Eclipse 125

ing of national life as well as by a forewarning of a national death, and by a confidence in a national life to come.

This national consciousness varies in different authors, and in a poet such as Bernardo Ribeiro it is barely noticeable. In his poems we have the Old Portugal of a rather artificial Arcadia, where national consciousness goes no farther than realizing that those who live close to the land live closer to the heart of their mother and their mistress. In spite of this and of their foreign forms the ' redondilhas ' of Ribeiro are lyrics of which any people might be proud ; but in Portugal, as with us, it was a playwright who first expressed the national soul.

Gil Vicente, Court playwright of the Emmanueline age, has already been compared, both in his work and in the circumstances of his life, to William Shakespeare, Court playwright of the Elizabethan age. So curious is the resemblance in fact, that it tempts us to accept the theory that even as kings are great in proportion as they can symbolize in their attitudes and actions the will of their people, so poets are great only in so far as they can sing what is in the heart of the people. Further, that at times of great national spiritual activity the volume of feeling is so great that it will give itself voice even through kings, courtiers, clerics, or any other professional mediums and musicians. At these great moments it is the people singing rather than the poet.

Gil Vicente preceded Shakespeare by a hundred years, and is to that extent more primitive ; while the unfortunate Spanish policy of tire' Court of the time compelled him to write half his plays in Spanish. Good as these are, the loss to Portugal is much the same as if Elizabeth, in the interests of the Union, had forced Shakespeare to write half his plays

126 Empire and Eclipse

in Scottish. When Gil Vicente is writing in his native tongue his representations of the life of his time are as alive as Shakespeare's and as Portuguese as those of Shakespeare are English, nor are the beauties of his lyrics incompar- able with those of Shakespeare. It is as though in these plays we have Emmanueline Portugal and Elizabethan England that sings and dances, laughs and weeps ; and while Shakespeare gives us probably an exact picture of the English national point of view under Elizabeth, Gil Vicente's picture of his Portugal is no less life-like. Like Shakespeare, he is no political moralist, and reproduces the popular opinions of the day whether right or wrong. For example, although, as we have seen, he is the best exponent in Portugal of the humanism of the Reformation, yet he also expresses better than most the Catholicism of the age and explains for us how impossible it would have been for Portugal at that time to have become Protestant. Thus he not only subscribed to such popular prejudices as that which the Portuguese princes for political reasons excited against the Jews, but shows us how the poetic passion which Portugal then felt towards religious ideas could never have been satisfied by the more practical and prosaic Protestant point of view. In his play, the Auto da Feira, we have an excellent exposition of the difference between rational ethics and religious enthusiasm. In this play the angels, in the true Protestant spirit, open a bazaar for the sale of virtues, under the patronage of Providence and with Mercury as manager, as they consider some advertisement of virtue desirable to promote a greater demand for it in the world. But the angels as stall-holders can do no business, while the devil gets in as a pedlar, and does a roaring trade. At last a girl, who might be Portugal herself, explains the reason :

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For these graces that you tell

you have here within your booth ;

These same goods that you would sell,

our Lady gives away forsooth

to all good folk, as you know well.

If the national allegory here in the Auto da Feira is only suggested, in another pastoral, Mqfina Mendez, it is set out clearly enough. Mofina, the pretty feckless shep- herdess, who counts her chickens before they are hatched, is Portugal all over and all through. And when we come to the Auto da Fama, we find the spirit of Portugal per- sonified in a goose-girl, who is courted in bad Portuguese by the other nations, and who, after rejecting them all, is led off in triumph by Faith and Fortitude.

In the Exhortafao da Guerra we get a stirring ' recruit- ing ' play a propos of a long-forgotten expedition to Morocco. The main appeal has a curiously modern ring, maintaining as it does the moral worth of crusades and the demoralizing effects of peace and prosperity. Here for example are the sentiments of Penthesilea on being summoned by a wizard to appear before the Court. After regretting that as a woman and an alien she cannot enlist, she concludes with this warning :

O thou famous Portugal,

know what profiteth thy soul,

now that to the Southern Pole

stretch thy powers imperial. . . .

Seek fame in a sterner school ;

sack not riches, they are peril ;

gild your land with gifts less sterile,

much less cry and much more wool.

The Barca de Inferno, a very interesting comedy of manners full of the most life-like characters, after bitter attacks on

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the corruption of clergy and nobles, strikes at the end a high note of chivalry in the song of the crusading knights.

The Angel. O Crusader-Knights of God ! We are waiting till you come, who fell fighting far from home in the ways Our Saviour trod. From all ills you have release and redemption first of all ; for who in that battle fall win the everlasting peace.

But it is in the Auto da Alma that Gil Vicente most clearly reveals the spirit of his country. The national character of the allegory is not so pronounced as in the Auto da Fama, yet there can be little doubt that this pilgrim's progress of the soul through trial and temptation to its rest in Mother Church represents the via cruets of Portugal. The theme is kept on a high level of poetry, free of all realistic comedy or classic ornament. A quotation in translation can give but little idea of the teaching of this masterpiece, to say nothing of its beauties.

The soul having yielded to temptation and accepted riches from Satan, says to its guardian angel :

The Soul. The jewels irk me not at all,

but the infirmity of my nature

doth me distress ; another step and I shall fall

for weariness. I am so very frail a creature

and void of grace : Master, go on your ways ; alas, in me I find no remedy, for I am as

I was always. . . .

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129

The guardian angel says to the soul, on its reaching the gates of Mother Church :

The Angel. Thou seest here at last, a haven veritable and very sure,

if life you seek. The Church. How wearily thou comest, Maiden,

and heavy laden. The Soul. I come from my misadventure,

worn and weak. The Church. Who art thou ? Whither wouldst thou win ? The Soul. I know not whither, — a runagate — •

a poor savage — I am a soul contaminate

with mortal sin against God, who did me create

in His image. . . . At every step I went astray. I served my God the least of all,

I sinned the most : Have pity upon me, who pray, in that I never knew the way, but lost my innocence, and shall

for aye be lost. And what is greater grief, I find I can no longer feel remorse

as still I would : for that my too-distracted mind

all unconfined, I cannot to obedience force,

as once I could . . . I know myself a grievous faulter and therefore now before thee thus

myself unburden. O Mother Church, I seek thine altar- grant me thy shelter — for it is He who died for us

who doth us pardon.

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If Gil Vicente expresses for us the soul of national Portugal, Camoens represents the spirit of imperial Portugal. In spite of a life spent in uncongenial con- ditions abroad, sighing for his native land, and in spite of the magniloquence and the melancholy due to these artificial conditions, Camoens succeeds in expressing one side, at all events, of his country's spirit. What Camoens might have been, had he been able to live at the true source of his inspiration in Portugal, and had he been able to be a national poet, to hear and to have sung the native songs of Portugal instead of composing an epic of Empire like the Lusiads, is a question we can only answer by inference. For instance, by comparing the noble lines to Catharine de Athaide, his lost lady-love in Portugal, with those to ' Barbara ', his colonial mistress, or when he is dealing with what he has lived as distinct from what he has learnt. We owe these imperial epics of Camoens, like the Spanish plays of Vicente, to the Portuguese Court ; which banished the poet, it is supposed, for offending against its puritanical proprieties by making love to a lady-in-waiting in its precincts. The Court of the fanatical bigot John III was indeed no place for a Portuguese of the age of King Denis, such as was Luis de Camoens, son of a sea-captain, suitor of an heiress, and soldier of fortune. But no more were the Portuguese overseas settlements the place for a poet of his capacities. The result was his famous epic, a work which has been accepted by the literary world as a magnum opus and by imperialist Portugal as a national ' Magnificat '. As a matter of fact the Lusiads are not ' national ' at all, but are essentially and extravagantly imperial. But there is more than imperialism in Camoens, and even in the Lusiads ; and if we penetrate the classical

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mechanisms and the conquistadorial magniloquences, we find home truths. Disgust at the corruption of the Portu- guese colonial system and the commonness of its ideals breaks out now and again. Take this Little Portugaller's point of view from the Lusiads.

O Pride of Empire ! O vain covetise

of that vainglory that we men call Fame :

O false ideal, that finds its verities in that vulgarity we Honour name.

What punishment and what just penalties thou dost inflict on those thou dost inflame :

What deaths and what disasters, what heartbreakings,

what hardships in thy cruel undertakings.

Now to what new disaster dost consign

this my dear native country, — this my nation ?

What dangers and what deaths dost thou design under some high and mighty appellation ?

What profit from dominion or gold mine dost thou propose for our remuneration ?

What promises of fame ? What place in story ?

What triumphs, — what Te Deums, — and what glory ?

Thou leavest enemies shouting at the gate

to search out other enemies over sea : Thou dost depopulate our ancient State

till dissipation brings debility : Thou seekest ends obscure and obfuscate,

while fame inciteth thee with flattery — calling thee Lord of Empires Utopian, Indian and Persian, Arab and Ethiopian.

Or the following from the Sonnets :

Here, in this Babylon, whence ever drains infection of all evils' bred on earth : Here, where the purest love has little worth, and lust, o'er all presiding, all profanes : k 2

132 Empire and Eclipse

Here, where man courts the bad, the good condemns,

and honour counts for less than tyranny :

Here, where a blundering and blind monarchy

believes that God is mocked by empty names :

Here, in this labyrinth, where nobility,

courage and knowledge, all, like beggars, spy on

the doors of avarice and vulgarity :

Here, in this chaos of confusion, ^_

where I accomplish my nativity —

could I forgetful be of thee — O Zion !

There is here a nostalgia for things national, a revolt of the spirit against things imperial. The denunciation of Babylon is not merely disgust at the heathen corruption of Malacca or Macao. The devotion to Zion is not merely desire for the home comforts of Lisbon. Babylon is the world ; Zion the holy city, the shrine of the spirit of Portugal. And in the spirit of Portugal is to be found the only hope of Christianity.

You Portuguese are few, but fortified

through ne'er your weakness with your will contrasting. You, who at cost of death on every side,

still spread the Gospel of life everlasting. You, so diminutive that men deride —

On you, before all, Heaven the lot is casting to do great deeds for Christ your Saviour holy : For thus doth Christ exalt the poor and lowly.

Camoens lived up to his ideals, and in his life we find a truer picture of the life of Portugal than in his poems. A child of the sea and land, ruined by Courts, and crippled by crusades — a singer silenced by exile — a conqueror of a new world who came home a pauper — a slave-driver who died dependent on a slave. So in the last days of Old Portugal, on the eve of the Spanish occupation, died Camoens in great misery, and with him died the spirit

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of Portuguese poetry, not to reappear again until the true national renascence in the last century. His life ended on a dying fall, as did his epic.

No more, my Muse, no more, for lo my lyre

is out of tune, my voice is out of tone — though not with making music : but I tire

of singing to deaf ears and hearts of stone. That public favour which doth poets fire

my country cannot give me, — 'tis all gone to those who preach cupidity, or profess a grim and grievous sanctimoniousness.

As compared with the collapse of the Reformation, the suppression of the revival of learning was a small matter, but it is worth noting. Portugal was admirably situated and circumstanced for taking a leading place in this revival, having an intellectual and imaginative race, a leisured class, and a peaceful prosperity. But the taste for classical culture went no farther than importing ready-made stage properties and shop-window dressings from the classical Pantheon.

It is true that Portugal produced some meritorious native scholars — such as Ayres Barbosa, who revived Greek — Andrea de Resende the antiquarian — Pedro Nunez, mathematician — and the Govea brothers, who made Coimbra celebrated and drew there such world-famous lights as the two Buchanans, George and Patrick, and the Frenchmen, Fabricius and Vinetus. But this culture centre, an anticipation of the role of the Coimbra intelligenzia of the present day, was broken up by the Inquisition. Thereafter the university produces nothing but crowds of religious commentators and clouds of gods and goddesses, and it is difficult to say whether the Catholic divines or the classical divinities did most to stultify the close observation and keen inspiration of ' humanists ' like Bernardim Ribeiro or still more Gil Vicente

134 Empire and Eclipse

or Camoens. If only the Inquisition had persecuted these heathen effigies as it did good Christian flesh and blood, and had compelled Ribeiro to describe a country courting, Vicente a peasants' revel, Camoens a caravel in a storm, without the irritating intrusion of ' Phoebus Plutarch and Nebuchadnezzar all standing naked in the open air .'. But the play was damned, and the only assets left were the costumes and properties. So the gay and graceful fancy of Old Portuguese lyrics of the fifteenth century became first riotous and rank in the sixteenth, and then reacted in the seventeenth into doleful dirges. The ' lais ' became first lewd and then lives of the saints ; just as the Crusaders and troubadours became first courtiers and then concession- naires and then monks.

The decay of the Papacy, due to a long period of un- questioned political domination, had resulted in general corruption and a century of schism in the Papacy itself. This, followed by the successful secession to Protestantism of the more progressive parts of Europe, threw Rome into the arms of Madrid. It was the Spanish national spirit, uncom- promising, incorruptible, cruel, and conventual, that gave the Papacy a new lease of life and the strength to resist the liberal and humanist revolt. In return the Papacy was forced to give the support of the Church to the secular aims of the Spanish monarchy. Thus Portugal, by throwing itself into a crusade for the Church, had thrown itself into the power of its national enemy.

None the less, Portuguese national institutions might have saved its independence but that the monarchy had absorbed all such institutions into itself, and had then itself been absorbed by Spain. Emmanuel, whose dynastic relations to Spain have already been reviewed, was succeeded in

Empire and Eclipse 135

1521 by John III. He and his sister were married to a sister of Charles V of Spain, and to Charles V himself ; his son John and his daughter were married to a daughter of Charles V and to Philip II, the latter's son and successor. Dynastic union by intermarriage could scarcely go farther, but no other opportunity was lost, of denationalizing Portuguese institutions or of naturalizing Spanish institu- tions in Portugal. Thus as soon as the Inquisition was firmly established, John's brother, the Cardinal Henry, was made Grand Inquisitor, and the Portuguese and Spanish forces fought against the Mohammedan under Spanish com- mand. The partition of the New World between the two Powers by the Pope was clearly designed to give the future control of the South American continent, of the Isthmus, and of the Far East to Spain. Already by the middle of the sixteenth century the fate not only of the Portu- guese Empire but of the Portuguese nation had become clear.

As the sixteenth century advanced the symptoms of decay in the Portuguese nation became ever more unmistak- able, but were concealed from the outer world within the imposing cell of the Portuguese Empire. The Empire still consisted of three elements of different character and origin — Morocco, India, and Brazil. The Moroccan fortresses, the outposts of Christianity against the Moors, had been of use in keeping the Barbary pirates from controlling the Straits and from cutting the trade route between East and West. These citadels had never had anything but a strategic value, and the diversion of the eastern trade from the Mediterranean route to the new route round the Cape had reduced that value considerably. None but the most indomitable and disinterested crusader would have cared

136 Empire and Eclipse

to undertake an African campaign to defend Arzila, Alcacer, or the other conquests of Affonzo the African. They could have been retained by the use of the fleet, but the fleet was already under Spanish command and pursuing Spanish interests in Tunis. The Moroccan towns had therefore been abandoned, with the exception of Ceuta and Mazagan, and their loss would seem to have been nothing but a gain for Portugal. But such a withdrawal of Christendom in the face of the heathen was highly offensive to Portu- guese public opinion. The crusading spirit was dead everywhere else, killed by Protestantism in England and by clericalism in Spain, but in Portugal it was still a driving force in politics. It was an unmixed misfortune for the nation that at this crisis in its history it should have had the last of the crusaders for its king.

Dom Sebastian was the grandson of John III, whom he succeeded as a child of three in 1557, both his mother and his grandmother, the first regent, being Habsburgs. This last representative of the originally Anglo-Portuguese House of Aviz was accordingly of Hispano-German stock, and it is curious that this blend should have produced a temperament so thoroughly Portuguese. His accession was to be brought about when he was still in the first hot- headedness of his youth. For the nation was impatient of the regency of the Spanish Queen Katharine. But as soon as she was replaced by the Cardinal Henry, the government was entirely taken over by the Jesuits, who were repre- sented by the brothers Camara, and it was they who educated Sebastian. This Portuguese nationalism would not endure either, and it accordingly shook off the Cardinal and the Jesuits, and declared Sebastian of age at fifteen. Accordingly in 1568 he assumed the absolutist government of Portugal.

Empire and Eclipse 137

His reign began excellently well. His ministers were well chosen, and some good social legislation was passed ; such as legislation against luxury and corruption, which was of course useless, and the abolition of Indian slavery in Brazil at the request of the Brazilian Jesuits, which then seemed Utopian. This was indeed the first abolitionist measure in Europe, and one that should be remembered in view of the less high-principled policy followed later with regard to the African colonies. But wise councillors could not correct the education or control the enthusiasm of a young despot. Had there been any form of constitutional government it might have tempered his idealism and turned his enthusiasm into useful or at least harmless channels. It was, for example, essential that he should secure the succession, for that alone could save the independence and integrity of Portugal. An effort was therefore made by the Portuguese to arrange a match between Sebastian and the famous Reine Margot of France; but this project failed, as it did not suit the Spanish princes and priests now in control of the country. They had, no doubt with intent, brought up Sebastian to be a saint and a soldier ; he being already by temperament a fanatic and a fatalist, as appears in the ominous motto that he chose compared with those of his practical Aviz forefathers. Instead of ' Talent de Bien Faire', 'J'ai Bien Raison ', or some such self-assured sentiment, his device was ' Un Bel Morir tutta la Vita honra '. The Portuguese nation had in this fateful hour fallen into the hand of a king who was ' fey '.

It was natural enough for a mind such as Sebastian's to turn towards a crusade, and his first idea was a crusade in the East Indies. It is difficult to say what the result of this enterprise would have been, but it might have resulted

138 Empire and Eclipse

in the immediate loss of the Portuguese establishments there ; and the able Portuguese proconsuls of India, labour- ing with their difficult diplomatic and administrative problems, must have breathed more freely when they had averted the danger of this incursion. But, again, it might have raised the Portuguese establishments in India from enclaves in the territories of native rulers into such an empire over those rulers as we established by war two centuries later. Diverted from India, Sebastian turned to the abandoned towns of Morocco, where it was more difficult to check him. His first expedition to Tangier he undertook as a private excursion ; and, being followed by a few troops, after some dashing forays he returned deter- mined to raise an expedition. One of two rival ' Mulays ' then at war with one another promised a Moorish army which proved to be a ' mahallah ' of little military value ; the Pope's contribution resolved itself into an arrow of San Sebastian; while Philip of Spain promised an army and a fleet and produced advice. Philip seems to have behaved characteristically, letting his nephew commit himself to the blunder and then saving his own face by obviously useless good counsels. But indeed Philip stood to win in any event, for, as he himself said, ' If he win, we shall have a good son-in-law; if he lose, a good kingdom.' The expedition as finally made up consisted of Sebastian with the sword of old Affonzo Henriques and a sacred banner, some cavalry, 36 guns, about 10,000 inferior Portuguese infantry (their best troops being all in India), and 5,000 mercenaries. Among the latter was a body of Italians under Sir Thomas Stukely, intercepted at Lisbon on their way north to raise Ireland for the Pope against Elizabeth, a curious version of the old Portuguese policy of intercepting crusaders on

Empire and Eclipse 139

their way south for crusades against the Moors of the peninsula. In 1578 the expedition landed at Tangier, and marched to Arzila. Then, having refused all the advances of the hostile Mulay, Abd-el-Malik, and rejected the advice of the friendly Mulay, Ahmed, Sebastian started on an overland march to Laraiche, and within a few days his exhausted force was surrounded and cut to pieces at Alcacer Kebir. The king and many nobles and prelates, including Stukely, were killed, as were some nine thousand others, the remainder being all taken prisoners. There was some doubt as to the circumstances of the king's death, and though his body was identified and buried four years later at Belem with due ceremony, yet the legend of his survival took firm root in the people.

This catastrophe left the national liberties of Portugal dependent on the exclusion of Philip from the succession ; and that would have been still just possible if the Crown, Church, gentry, and commons of Portugal could have united against him in support of a national claimant. But this was not to be, and the rival claimants divided the country between them. The claim of the Duke of Braganza was the best at law, and his large possessions and high position in the country made him otherwise suitable, but he had no political power, no personality, and no popularity, and he was moreover suspect of subservience to Philip. Antonio, Prior of Crato, the other claimant, had a weaker title, originating as it did in a more recent illegitimacy, but he had both personality and popularity with the commons and country clergy. Unfortunately he was hated and feared by the nobles, and had all his position to make. While the Cardinal King Henry, who could have united the country in support of either claimant, could not be

140 Empire and Eclipse

induced to designate any one of them or take any de- finite line.

This inaction of Henry is variously accounted for, but, on the whole, it seems probable he was acting in the interests of Philip, under the influence of Jesuit intermediaries, such as his confessor, Leon Henriquez. For, exhausted as Portugal was, its nationalism only required a leader to defeat any attempt at foreign domination ; while Henry's various pro- posals for settling the disputed succession were well cal- culated to keep the question in dispute and the country distracted, until in despair it should fall an easy prey to the strongest claimant, Philip. At last in 1580, the year of his death, Henry seems to have thought the occasion ripe for- Philip's recognition, and he summoned a Cortes at Almeria for that purpose. The result was a good guide as to how much strength was left to Portuguese nationalism and as to what was its stronghold. The clerical estate ac- cepted Philip unanimously ; the nobility, after long and lively debate, decided in his favour by a majority of one ; the delegates of the commons rejected him without discussion or dissent. Moreover, this decision was reached by the delegates in the face of an energetic canvass of their con- stituencies in Philip's interest, which had secured the return of delegates ' instructed for ' Philip from Lisbon, though it failed in the country districts. Philip had indeed ' collared the machine ', only to find that his bosses could not ' deliver the goods ' in view of the unsuspected resis- tance developed by the democracy; for Portugal was still in those days a real democracy in the form of an absolutist monarchy, even if later it was to become a real absolutism under democratic forms.

At this juncture Henry died, leaving the kingdom in the

Empire and Eclipse 141

hands of five governors, three of whom were in Philip's interest. Through these governors Philip now made his bid, in which Portuguese independence was subjected to little more than a union of crowns and of customs duties. And for this union he got the support of the nobility by- promises as to the preservation of their privileges. But the commons still held out ; for they had no interests other than their liberties, and those they knew could never be secured against a dominant Spain by any personal promises on the part of Philip.

It was, however, useless for them now to reject Philip unless they could resist him, and they could not resist him otherwise than in support of one of the other claimants. Braganza was useless to them, for he had been bribed with the promise of a kingdom in the Algarves, the same gaudy bait with which Napoleon afterwards hooked Godoy. Antonio, Prior of Crato, was their only representative, and they on their part were his only resource. He could only count on raw levies of townsmen and on the sympathy of the country clergy and peasantry for a national resistance against the Spanish veterans of Flanders led by Alva. Nevertheless, Portugal might have defeated them, as did Holland, could he have raised the country for his cause. But the great gentry and higher clergy were for Philip, and Antonio lost much sympathy and support in the middle class by emancipating the slaves, a measure partly military, partly social in its motives. As a last resource to gain time, a deputation of Portuguese governors journeyed into Spain to implore Philip not to invade Portugal until his claim had been judicially decided. But Philip only replied that he was the sole judge of his claim. Portugal was even at this eleventh hour nearly saved by an epidemic of influenza,

142 Empire and Eclipse

a mortal illness when treated by ' Dr. Sangrado ' ; but Philip recovered though the queen died.

Alva gave Antonio little time to organize his forces, and entered Portugal in June 1580, on the same day that Antonio had himself proclaimed king at Santarem. Antonio's plan was to defend the Tagus line against Alva advancing from the south-east ; but Alva outmanoeuvred him, and crossing the estuary under the guns of the Spanish fleet, advanced against Lisbon from Cascaes. Antonio, with more courage than prudence, gave him battle outside Lisbon, at Alcantara, where his raw militia and coloured levies, that might have successfully stood a siege, were easily rolled up and routed by Alva and his trained troops. It was this strategic blunder quite possibly that altered the history of Portugal and of the Peninsula, for if Antonio had succeeded in holding out in Lisbon or even in the interior until help could reach him from the Sea Powers, he might well have beaten Spain as John of Aviz had done or as John of Braganza later did. For both England and France were alarmed at the prospect of so great an accession of strength to the predominant mili- tary power of the day, and were already preparing such dila- tory and diffuse action as pacific sea power always does at first adopt against the swift searching blows of land power. A French naval demonstration to the Azores was a failure, and its success would in any case have had no significance. England did nothing at all ; and did not develop any effective intervention until 1589, after Spanish sea power had been broken by the defeat of the 'invincible Armada'. In that year, long after Antonio was done for, an English force landing in the north of Lisbon and co-operating with an English fleet in the Tagus under Drake, anticipated in its strategy, though not in its success, our more persistent

Empire and Eclipse 143

efforts on behalf of Portugal in the Peninsular War. The land force under Sir John Norris was too weak, and was not on good terms with the navy. When at last a junction was effected outside Lisbon, there was no response from Portuguese nationalism. The country by then had been thoroughly subjugated, and it would have taken a much longer occupation than the expedition could risk before any local resistance could have been organized. Besides, the country was still Catholic in its sympathies, and to fight with ' El Draco ', that arch-heretic and pirate, against Church and King was more than most Portuguese nation- alists could stomach.

After Alcantara, Antonio had fled a solitary fugitive, and he never made head again, though he lived in the country in disguise for some months, concealed by the common people and the country clergy, whose devotion was proof against the large price put on his head by Philip. Philip had entered Lisbon in 1 58 1 in solemn state, and had been received in sullen silence. The Estates of the Cortes- of Thomar, convoked in order to receive and ratify the pledges offered them by Philip in return for his recognition, had responded each after its kind. The commons called for a withdrawal of the Spanish garrisons, the nobles for the immediate revival of their ancient privileges, while the clergy asked for nothing, having presumably all that they wanted. But the time for favours from Philip was over, and that for the fulfilment of his promises was never to come. That there might be no doubt as to the character of the new government, the amnesty promised to the adherents of Antonio was found not to apply to any one even suspected of association with them, and a long list of executions and exiles cowed a country that could not

144 Empire and Eclipse

hope to raise any resistance. Portugal was crushed under the combined moral and material dead-weight of Rome and Madrid, and could not rouse itself to revolt until its various classes had been reunited and their nationalism revived by foreign oppression.

The catastrophe of the Spanish occupation and the occultation of the star of Portugal by that of Spain had been brought about through a betrayal of their national trust by the Crown, the Church, and the Upper Class of Portugal. But in respect of these renegades Portugal has come to wear its rue with a difference. At first the tendency was to ascribe the whole fault to the Crown, to Sebastian's rashness, and Henry's bigotry ; as in the contemporary rhyme :

One King without all common-sense,

one soulless Cardinal,

Two Jesuits with no conscience

have done for Portugal.

But within a few years there was a reaction in favour of the Crown, while the responsibility for the catastrophe was wholly thrown on the nobility. The national ideal could scarcely give itself expression in those days otherwise than in personal loyalty to a king. Sebastian was forgiven not only because he had given his life for an ideal, but because that ideal, though fatal to the survival of Portu- guese nationality, was none the less faithful to its spirit. In the ' religion ' of Portuguese nationality, Sebastian was both the slayer and the slain, and having been the victim he became the god; nor was it mere moral caprice or mental confusion that made him for three centuries the mystic monarch of Portuguese nationality. For his failure did more for Portugal than the renown won by her more

Empire and Eclipse 145

successful crusaders or the realms acquired by her con- querors, in that it restored to Portugal her lost soul — lost when she gained a whole world.

This it is that explains ' Sebastianism ', that strange belief in a miraculous resurrection of the dead king and a messianic restoration of the golden age of Portugal. ' Sebastianism ' was in fact, during the dark ages that followed, the religion by which the Portuguese expressed their belief in the immortality of their national soul. ' Sebastianism. ' kept alive this belief in the hearts of farmers and fisher- men through all the confusion of the seventeenth century, the corruption of the eighteenth, and the chaos of the early nineteenth centuries. Until the advent of Young Portugal and the spread of Europeanism and education replaced Sebastianism by constitutionalism, republicanism, and such abstractions, this allegiance to the phantom of a failure kept alive the soul of the nation. For three cen- turies Portugal was under the rule of hobgoblins, but was reigned over by one radiant ghost.

1832-6

Restoration and Reaction

' Then they of Babylon took great indignation and conspired against

the King, saying, The King is become a Jew and he hath destroyed

Bel; he hath slain the dragon, and put the priests to death. So they

came to the King and said, Deliver to us Daniel or else we will destroy

thee and thine house.'

The Book of Bel and the Dragon.

The Spanish occupation is the prelude to Portuguese modern history and to the advent of Young Portugal, just as the Moorish occupation prefaces the mediaeval history of the country. With the Spanish occupation, the personalities, the points of view, and the policies have already come into our present plane, though they are still in remote per- spective. Philip II, the reactionary, who began the Spanish occupation, and Joao Ribeiro, the revolutionary who ended it, are modern characters. The letters Philip wrote to his family describing his journey into his new kingdom, all about the smart clothes he wore at the Cortes, and how he missed the nightingales, and the baby's first tooth, and the last auto-da-fe, are those of a modern mind. These men are no longer mediaevals, like Henry the Navigator and Gil Vicente, who are surprising us by their occasional modernism, but moderns still partly submerged in the

Restoration and Reaction 147

Middle Ages. You can see to this day in the museum at Lisbon the travelling carriage in which Philip II drove over from Madrid to his new province, and its contraptions for his comfort are like those of a modern motor car. The forts the Spanish built on the coast to keep off the English fleet are still many of them in use to this day, and the wounds left by the Spanish occupation on the national pride still ache when the wind is in the east — that bitter cruel wind so unlike the blustering but kindly gales from the sea.

Spanish marriage or wind

is not to our mind,

is to the Portuguese as true to-day as when the chilling frosts of the Habsburg or the fires of the Inquisition scourged Portugal.

At first sight the Spanish occupation seems to break the national life off short. The Court of Philip's viceroys was indeed a very different place from the Court of a typical Portuguese monarch, as different as a convent from a Court of Love, or as the cloisters of the Escurial from those of the convent of Belem. This change, however, had already been introduced by John III, and the spirit of mediaeval Spain had killed the spirit of Old Portugal long before, the actual Spanish occupation ; while some bare bones of Portuguese political liberties survived that occupa- tion several decades. For, though the dramatic defeat of Antonio, the last and most Portuguese of the princes of Old Portugal, and the death of Camoens, the last and most Portuguese of its poets, seem to mark the actual coronation of Philip, that most Spanish of Spaniards in 1 58 1, as the date of the death of Old Portugal, as a matter of fact Old Portugal lived on in a comatose

148 Restoration and Reaction

condition long after. Even in the political region, con- siderable relics of Portuguese independence survived during the reign of Philip II, to disappear only under Philip III. For a time an appearance of a Portuguese administration was kept up, though from the very beginning all real trans- action of business was transferred to Madrid. The political pledges given by Philip II to the Cortes of Thomar in order to secure his peaceful accession in Portugal had practically restricted union with Spain to a mere personal union of the crowns. There was, however, no force left in Portugal capable of compelling the Spaniards to keep these pledges, and before Portugal was again re-established by armed revolt, every one of them had been broken, and a policy of Spanification was being attempted. It looks as though the final insupportable injury had been the granting of Portuguese land to Spaniards. If this was so, it shows that Portugal as a nation had died, so to say, right down to the very root.

That all Portugal above the ground,- that is, off the land, was already dead or hopelessly decayed is indicated not only by the great length of time — some three centuries — that it has taken the new growth to force its way through the rotting rubbish, but also by the very different fates of the overseas offshoots. Those offshoots, such as the eastern colonies, which were mere grafts — military and administra- tive empires based on class privilege and imperial prestige — were soon cut off or crowded out by rivals. They did not indeed long survive the parent stem. But the western colonies, the Atlantic islands and Brazil, grown more slowly and surely from' the seed of real ' national ' settlement, struck such root in the new soil that nothing could uproot them. Spaniards might and did occupy and exploit Beira

Restoration and Reaction 149

for a time, provided that the Portuguese possession of the soil was left undisturbed, just as the Dutch might and did occupy and exploit Brazil, but sooner or later the national growth would thrust them out again. This, however, was not the case with the East Indian Empire.

Owing to the pledges not only given, but in this respect for a time observed by Philip, the East Indian Empire was not at first prejudiced by the Spanish occupation. When all offices in Portugal itself, in violation of Philip's pledge, were being transferred to Spaniards, in the colonies the Portuguese patricians were still in power, and the shaken prestige of Portugal in the East was for a time strengthened by association with the leading European Power, Spain. Administrators in the Portuguese colonies must have welcomed the Spanish association as a reinforcement that improved their already precarious position, while adven- turers would welcome it as affording a prospect of more plunder. Of the finer and more far-seeing minds, many were already dead, like the great Viceroy, Don Luis de Athaide, while others had for some time been in disgrace. The policy of the Portuguese Empire in the Indies had for some years been inspired by Spanish principles, and the profits were already mostly passing through Lisbon to Spain. A screwing up of the Inquisition at home and abroad was the chief practical result of the change of government, and though every native Christian burnt at Goa and every Jewish banker banished from Lisbon hastened the end of the East Indian Empire, yet the process was gradual. Until the death of Philip II in 1598, the Portu- guese Empire showed no decline, though the Portuguese State was by then dead. It was, moreover, not the death of the Portuguese State, but the decay of the Spanish State

150 Restoration and Reaction

that was the cause of the ruin of that Empire. Had Spain remained the first naval and military power, the Portuguese Eastern Empire would probably have survived as a system, being as it was always almost as Spanish as Portuguese.

The Portuguese in India under Philip II not only success- fully continued their commercial campaign but even extended their conquests. Their Eastern trade returns reached unprecedented records ; Ceylon was annexed, China penetrated peacefully, a religious mission sent to Japan, and this was moreover all entirely in Portuguese hands. Like a modern capitalist, Philip was usually satisfied to let others have the pride of Empire, provided he got the profits. When, however, the profits were unsatisfactory, the Spaniard wanted to know the reason why. Angola, then as now, was an unprofitable possession, and the report on the reasons of its failure, made by a Spanish commissioner, shows great insight into the principles of successful colonial administration in general and the particular failure of the Portuguese in this case. The report extracted from Hakluyt (Vol. vi, p. 469) is as true to-day as it was when read by Philip in 1591.

This realm of Africa hath, for the most part thereof, twice bene wonne and twice lost for want of good govern- ment. For hers have been many governours which pretended to do justice, but have pitifully neglected the same and practised the clean contrary. And the only way to recover this realme must be by sending some noble and mighty man to rule her. . . . And by this means your Highness shall know what revenue Angola will yield into your coffers and what profit will grow thereof.

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The amalgamation of the Spanish and Portuguese mono- polies in the newly-opened ocean trade with the East and West had undoubtedly given these monopolies a new vitality and power of resisting attacks against the vested interests of the trust, and the union of the Spanish and Portuguese Empires was a thoroughly sound policy, from a business point of view. If a privilege is to be maintained, whether it be political or commercial or social, it must continually widen its basis and heighten its barriers. But the days of the great Catholic cartel were numbered. The Portuguese Eastern Empire, like that of Spain, had owed its origin to sea power expressed in maritime adventures, and it could only be maintained by sea power expressed in maritime aggression. But the one and only attempt of the Hispano-Portuguese Empire to assert control of the seas, and to compel its business competitors to become its customers, failed.

We generally look on the defeat of the ' invincible Armada ' as a successful defence of our shores against an imperial foreign invasion, and a successful defiance of the spiritual domination of the Papacy. It was all that and more. It was the defeat of one of the most formidable efforts to establish a military and naval empire over the world. There have indeed been few more formidable combinations against individual and national freedom than the combination of the political authority of Philip and the spiritual authority of the reformed Papacy. When the Armada was undertaken the Catholic cartel either commanded or controlled practically all the profitable regions of Western Europe and all the most promising regions overseas. England and France alone held out, and the process of peaceful penetration that had devitalized the

152 Restoration and Reaction

nationalism of Portugal had gone some way with these more obstinate opponents. We are apt to consider the Armada as an isolated adventure, a single bold bid for empire of the sort that we ourselves have sometimes made, generally with no better results. But it was in reality no blind blundering, but an overwhelming offensive launched over carefully prepared ground.

Philip must certainly have known that the Spanish penetration of England was much less complete than that of Portugal. The marriage with Mary had been cancelled by the accession of Elizabeth, the gold he had poured into the country had brought no very valuable support, and the sympathies of the Catholic nobility could not be counted on for any effective co-operation. Still, enough had been accomplished to justify his believing that an invasion on a large scale would have the same discouraging effect on any desperate and hastily organized defence as it had had in Portugal. Certainly there was the important difference that against England the offensive would have to be made by sea. Yet he might well suppose it to be possible to produce a fleet so imposing that its appear- ance alone would paralyse opposition as had the mere appearance in Portugal of an army under the terrible Alva. For this decisive stroke the Portuguese and the naval reserves of Portugal were invaluable, for though in Basques and Catalans Spain had hardy sailors, yet these then poverty-stricken Spanish provinces had not the expert or material reserves required to produce new developments in naval war machines such as would overawe a seafaring race like the English. So the resources of Portugal in timber and technical skill were drawn on heavily in the building of the great Armada ; and that it was, in appearance at all

Restoration and Reaction 153

events, so formidable must have been largely due to the Portuguese.

It is, however, a saving grace of sea power that, unlike military power, it can only be built up slowly. The triumph of the Portuguese in sea power during the age of discovery was due to the long years of scientific investigation by which Prince Henry the Navigator's sea captains and ship- wrights evolved an ocean-going vessel. But the vessels of the Armada were, for the most part, only the ship of the day built vastly bigger, without expert adaptation to service conditions. They were consequently ' Great Easterns ', not Dreadnoughts. Their advantages of armament and armour were altogether neutralized by the absence of sea-worthi- ness. Like Napoleon, who planned the invasion of England in open scows, Philip, with his sea castles, forgot that before you can overthrow a sea folk you must first understand the sea. The Portuguese, left to themselves, professional seamen and shipbuilders as they were, could never have made such a blunder, but they had to pay the penalty of association with a land power.

The English, Protestants and Catholics alike, ' called the bluff ' of the Catholic Powers, and the ' invincible Armada ', that was to secure at one stroke the sea supremacy and world empire, was driven into the northern storms and destroyed.

But Philip did not therewith abandon the struggle. He still built armadas and defended with them his ocean trade routes. In 1591, three years later, another armada of Portuguese, Basque, Catalan, and Spanish squadrons, sent out to escort home the treasure fleet, encountered the Revenge off the Azores. The superiority of the British warships in a run- ning fight had been proved by the Armada, but the Revenge

154 Restoration and Reaction

now proved its superiority in a fight to a finish at close quarters. The action had the same result in both cases, that the Armada, disarrayed and demoralized by the punishment it had got, was thereafter in great part destroyed by storm.

After the fight of 1588 it was obvious that the Catholic cartel would never dominate the seas, after that of 1591 it was obvious that they would be driven off them altogether. Nevertheless, by representing the little Revenge, which was certainly not so very little, as a super-Dreadnought, it could be considered as a creditable victory, and is accordingly so recorded in a long rhymed chronicle in Spanish written by a Portuguese author, de Resende. This chronicle is obviously an official document, but equally obviously anxious to appropriate quietly as much credit as possible to the Portuguese. It kindly extols the valour of Campo Verde, as it calls Grenville, and shows no love of the Spaniard. It is indeed interesting to compare this official communique in its sixty or seventy stanzas of stilted Spanish, only recently recovered from some forgotten archives, with the live ballad of the Battle of Lepanto, when the Spanish and Portuguese, under Don John of Austria, defeated the Turkish fleet, and which you can hear sung to this day in the farms of Beira. The first stanza of either, showing the different style in which the two fleets get under weigh, is enough to show the different character of the report of the national from that of the imperial battle.

Restoration and Reaction 155

THE BATTLE OF THE REVENGE

'Twas when that luminary

that makes the night and day, traversing its twelve houses

to the sixth did take its way : One day before the high-day

when, — O thou Virgin May, thy blessed soul and body

to Heaven were borne away : From the year when as a maiden

Our Saviour thou didst bear, in the one thousand five hundred

and ninety-first year. — 'Twas then the Spanish Armada

of His Catholic Majesty, From the good port of Ferrol

the general led to sea.

THE BATTLE OF LEPANTO

It was Don John, God save him,

sent orders to the bay that the Count he should make ready

to sail at break of day. The Count he did make ready

his frigate of great grandeur ; and on the point of noonday

gave signal to weigh anchor. They sent ashore the long-boat

the crew to take away. Some sprang at once aboard her,

the others wished to stay. So sadly these land-lovers

stood weeping on the key, and when the Count he saw this,

full loudly thus said he :

156 Restoration and Reaction

' Let all the old men stay ashore

who land-lubbers would be ; let all the bully boys come aboard

who love to sail the sea.'

The comparison leaves little doubt as to whether the war against the English Protestant was a popular crusade or a political combination. But whether the Portuguese had called the tune or no, they had to pay the piper. The year after the Armada was the English incursion into Portugal under Drake and Norris, already mentioned. This, be it observed, was very different from Drake's raids in Spanish ports, being an attempt to raise Portugal against Spain, not the ravaging of a Spanish province, as when he ' singed the king of Spain's beard '. True, he sacked Faro in 1595, but this remote corner of the Algarves was then still almost outside the national consciousness of Portugal. Not, of course, that Drake knew anything about that, or if he had, would have shown any consideration for Portuguese national feeling. So he burnt the town archives and carried off the famous library of the Bishop of Osorio, the ' Portuguese Cicero ' ; which eventually came to the Bodleian, whence it may be hoped it will some day return to Portugal. A still more inexcusable vandalism of 'El Draco' was the burning of Sagres — the foundation of Henry the Navigator.

But it was principally in colonial possessions that Portugal was made to pay for its compulsory complicity with the Habsburg imperial monopoly. By the end of the sixteenth century English private adventurers were raiding the Portu- guese settlements in all quarters of the world and cutting them out by competing colonial enterprises of their own. In this profitable pursuit they were soon joined by the Dutch, who had been most unwisely excluded by Philip

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in 1594 from participation in the profits of the monopoly. Unwisely, because the Portuguese imperial business which had amalgamated with the Spanish had had the same weak- ness as the latter. It had consisted only in a collecting and carrying business, collecting goods at the eastern port of export and carrying them to the peninsula port of transhipment, whence they were distributed to the European markets by English, Dutch, and Flemings. Obviously the latter, having already control of the home end of the business, had only got to open up other eastern outlets to cut out the Portuguese carrier and middleman altogether. The Portuguese business entirely depended in fact on the main- tenance of an artificial political monopoly, and neither at the port of export in the East nor at the port of import at Lisbon did the Portuguese control of the trade contribute anything practical in return for the profits it levied ; on the contrary the control was both costly and inconvenient, and could only be justified morally as a sort of authors' royalty. But business takes no account of such moral claims, and as the Portuguese had by now lost the advantage given them by their start of over a century in advance of their competitors, there was nothing to prevent them being cut out but their command of the seas. For so far as efficiency of production and capacity for expansion went, the more liberal Anglo-Dutch system of chartered companies was proving itself as far superior to the Crown monopolies of Portugal as subsequently complete freedom of trade proved itself superior to the restrictions of the chartered company system. The date of the foundation of the British Empire in the establishment of the East India Company and the Levant Company at the beginning of the seventeenth century is also the date of the fall of the Portuguese Empire.

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When Spain had so far lost command of the seas that it could no longer protect its own possessions, including those of its dependency Portugal, it was natural that those of the Portuguese should be sacrificed first. Thus in the truce Spain concluded with the Dutch in 1609, the line accepted by the Dutch as the limit of their expansion was so drawn as to save the Spanish possessions, while sacrificing the Portuguese. Between 1595, when the Dutch fleet rounded the Cape and broke into the Portuguese East India trade, down to 1635, when they occupied Formosa and finally captured the Portuguese China trade, the Dutch ousted the Portuguese from their hold on eastern commerce, and from most of their colonial centres in the East Indies, the Spice Islands, Malaysia, and the China Seas. The Portu- guese colonial capitals, from Ormuz in the Persian Gulf to Goa in the Indian Ocean and Macao in the Far East, all lost their prestige and pre-eminence, and sank .more or less swiftly into insignificance. The Dutch having picked out the eyes, the English took the carcass, less profitable for the moment, but involving then unforeseen possibilities of imperial expansion. Even the Danes got hold of scraps of Hindustan that they still retain.

Nor was the Empire broken up by the sea powers alone. In losing the command of the seas to their English and Dutch rivals, the Portuguese lost also the control over their native neighbours, a control based mainly on prestige. The Portuguese establishments in the Bay of Bengal, near where now is Calcutta, were destroyed by Shah Jehan in 1629. Everywhere the native rulers turned gladly from the semi-militarist, semi-monastic Portuguese, with their obvious intention of conquering and converting the country, to the more insidious invasion of the British and Dutch

160 Restoration and Reaction

trader. Moreover, once the Portuguese crusading conqueror had been defeated by other Europeans in view of the native or by the native himself, his prestige was irretrievably lost; whereas the English or Dutch factories were of little military importance, and their destruction meant nothing but a loss of profit both to the Rajahs and to the shareholders. But Portugal can solace itself with the consolation that before its Eastern Empire expired it was no longer Portuguese. Philip III had broken all the pledges of Philip II as to employing Portuguese in the Portuguese possessions, and Spaniards filled all positions of importance. In fact the Eastern Empire being merely imperial and not national — a creation of the Crown and upper class — it could be as easily alienated from the nation as the Crown and the Court had been.

Not so the Western Empire, which at the same time suffered similar attacks but with a very different result. By the beginning of the seventeenth century English and Dutch had cleared away for ever the claims of the Portuguese to control all trade with the South American continent, and had confined them to their colonies there. But not content with this the Dutch in 1624 founded a West India Company, with the object of taking over those colonies. The Dutch fleet captured in 1626 San Salvador, the Portuguese Brazilian capital, but the invaders could get no hold over the colony itself, and in the towns they were closely blockaded by the settlers. The Brazilian Portuguese, who had already shown by excluding the Spanish Inquisition that they had a stronger strain of the Portuguese national spirit than the Portuguese themselves, now exhibited a livelier nationalism, and defended their new territories against a new foe more determinedly than the Portuguese

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had defended^ their homeland against their arch-enemy. Nationality as a religion has this, and perhaps this alone in common with Christianity, that it finds its most faithful followers and most efficient exponents in the lowest social strata. For example, the Portuguese and Spanish proconsuls in the East Indies were drawn from among the best and bravest of the two nations, but when the crisis came their work was destroyed easily and for ever. The Portuguese in the West had, many of them, left their country as convicts, and with few exceptions were from the common people, but their nationalism survived submergence by foreign invasion, and their creation of a new Portugal is still only in its beginnings.

During the ten years following their first failure, the Dutch annually raided the Brazilian Portuguese with punitive and plundering expeditions, and by 1637 con- sidered them sufficiently reduced to annex. They appointed as Captain-General of Brazil Count Maurice of Nassau, an able soldier and capable administrator, who established Dutch dominion on a business basis. The Portuguese were recognized in their possession of the land on somewhat the same footing as the Indians, with whom, thanks to the Jesuits, they had settled down amicably. For useless attempts to extirpate them the Dutch substituted a syste- matic exploitation of them. The original object of the Dutch had been plunder, and they now had a means of procuring larger and less exhaustible profits. Profits they got galore, and in return gave the Portuguese of Brazil an equitable and efficient government, that made them the envy of their compatriots under Spanish rule. But Dutch domination was merely tolerated, because the forty- five forts, the ninety war-ships, and the standing army of

1832.5 M

1 62 Restoration and Reaction

Count Maurice were too strong to oppose; and there was never any doubt that Brazil would remain Portuguese and revert to Portugal at the first opportunity.

Meantime, while the Portuguese Empire was being partitioned by the English and Dutch, the Portuguese nation itself was being rapidly degraded from a Spanish protectorate to a Spanish province. Such of the pledges given by Philip II to the Cortes of Thomar as had not been broken by him were broken by his successors. The Cortes was never summoned except to recognize the succession of a new Spanish sovereign, the Portuguese Executive Council disappeared, and the country was governed by the Spanish Viceroy and his Spanish officers, while all revenues went straight to the Spanish exchequer. It is estimated that between 1584 and 1640 Portugal was drained of one hundred millions in gold — a stupendous sum in those days. All Portuguese resources in men, money, or material were wholly and without restriction at the disposal of Spain, and the process of subjugation had been so unremitting and relentless that by 1640 one may fairly say that Portugal existed only in the hearts of the Portuguese.

The rising of 1640 has been generally represented and read as the spontaneous upheaval of a whole nation against foreign oppression. Those who accept this point of view cannot but be puzzled by the relapse of Portugal after this national effort into a long period of evident national exhaus- tion. It would be disappointing to those who believe in nationalist movements as the motive-power for national development if a nationalist movement of so vital and universal a character as this revolt against Spain appears to be at first sight, should result only in such a relapse as that

Restoration and Reaction 163

suffered by the Portuguese nation during the remainder of the seventeenth and the eighteenth centuries.

The explanation seems to be that the revolt of 1640 was rather a governmental reform than a national rising, and that the Portuguese nation, as a nation, were as little con- cerned with the exit of the Spaniard as they had been with his entry. The national life of Portugal had been, as we have seen, dormant for several generations before the actual loss of political independence in 1580, and it was to continue dormant for the most part for many years after the recovery of political independence in 1640. This recovery was effected on behalf of the nation by the ruling class — the same class that had alienated that independence to Spain in 1580. It had been sold to Spain in the interests of that class, and it was in the interests of that class that it was now recovered from Spain for breach of contract. For the Spanish occupation had not favoured the position of the Portuguese upper class to the extent that Philip's promises had led them to expect. Spain had promoted a few great nobles so as to create a counter-weight to the greatest of all, the Braganza, and had created more dukes, marquises, and counts in the sixty years of Spanish rule than in all the previous six centuries of the Portuguese kingdom. But the old landed gentry, unlike these parvenus, were known to be still Portuguese at heart, and they were accordingly deprived first of their privileges, then in many cases of their properties, and finally were menaced in their persons When the Portuguese gentry found not only that their lands were granted to Spaniards, but that their lives were to be disposed of in forced levies for the Spanish campaigns against France, they realized their mistake in betraying the national cause.

m 2

164 Restoration and Reaction

Portuguese nationalism was indeed, at the time of

the revolution of 1640, in a transition state. 1 'Sebastianism,' the strongest national ideal left in the country, could effect nothing practical against the Spanish domination, because it represented the spirit of Old Portugal, and Old Portugal was, if not dead, an old man dreaming dreams. But we now for the first time come on Young Portugal — the young man seeing visions. The nationalism of Old Portugal had drawn its leadership from the chivalry and the Church, and its rank and file from the yeomen peasantry. The nationalism of Young Portugal was to draw its leaders from the ' intellectuals ' and from the universities, and its rank and file from the proletariat. In the revolution of 1640 these two extreme elements, Sebastianism and Rationalism, which, not long after, were to become bitter antagonists, are allied in support of the move- ment ; though neither of them can claim to have caused the success of the venture. It is, however, interesting, as showing how rapid was the development of Young Portugal, that it is asserted on good authority (Macedo Lusitana Liberata, p. 225) that in the conclave that planned the revolt there was a considerable minority in favour of a republic.

The Rationalism and Radicalism of Young Portugal had an international origin in that humanism and christian socialism of the Reformation that we have already remarked in the Portuguese writers of the Golden Age, but they now assume a strictly national form, and become political and propagandist. Portuguese literature of the Spanish occupa- tion consists of epics recounting colonial conquests, histories reviewing national achievements, odes lamenting lost inde- pendence. These works are interesting as political documents

Restoration and Reaction 165

rather than as literature, and exhibit even at this early stage the tendency of Young Portugal to find its religion in political ideals. The transition from Catholicism to Chau- vinism is curiously illustrated by some of these authors of the Spanish occupation; as, for instance, the enthusiast who devotes some half-dozen pages to arguing that even sup- posing the whale that swallowed Jonah did double the Cape of Good Hope, Jonah could not under the circum- stances properly claim to have circumnavigated it before Vasco da Gama. But the new wine of nationalism could not long be kept in Old Testament bottles, and one of the first results of the Revolution was the starting of a news- paper, the Gazeta de Lisboa. Young Portugal became, and has since remained, an ' uplift ' of the national intelli- genzia, and not, as it might have been, an upheaval of the nation as a whole.

It would perhaps have been better for the future of the nation had the Spanish occupation lasted longer and cut deeper. The cleansing as by fire was not complete, and the young phoenix emerged only half baked ; or perhaps a more helpful simile would be that of the ' four-and-twenty jackdaws '. As is usual in revolutions, ' when the pie was opened the birds began to sing ', but in different tunes. National freedom was not as yet the be-all and end-all of one and all. To the upper class it meant a recovery of power and privilege ; to the middle class a relief from taxation. There is certainly nothing in the records of the revolution suggesting any such general emotion, any such energizing of the whole people down to the peasantry, as evidently occurred in previous wars of liberation against the Spaniard. The long and languid war of liberation that began in 1640 and lasted forty years

166 Restoration and Reaction

is signalized by no legendary heroisms, no popular myths, not even by a ballad. It is a long affair, turning not so much on pitched battles and popular risings as on plots and diplomacies. The leading figures are Richelieu, Olivarez, Braganza, archbishops, duchesses, courtiers, Jesuits, first and second conspirators ; who plot and counter-plot, while professional armies march and counter-march. Here is no Aljubarrota, ' The Battle ', with its mystical heroes, like the Holy Constable, whose tomb is annually visited with ancient rites of song and dance, and its mythological heroines, like Madanella, the baker's wench, who slew seven Spaniards with a shovel. Yet this was the century in which nations of Eastern Europe were creating legendary heroisms against the Turk in wars where the people as a whole was fighting for its liberation.

Though there was in Portugal no general national rising such as would at once and once for all expel foreign oppression and establish popular government, there was enough reaction against the Spaniard to bring about a transfer of the existing system of government from Spanish to Portuguese hands.

Spain, owing to the imperialism of its Government, had exhausted its strength as gravely as had Portugal. England and France, on the other hand, were being driven by new national energies into imperialist expansion as Spain declined. France, under Richelieu, was at war with Spain, and was for the moment Spain's most formidable opponent. It had succeeded in fomenting secession in Catalonia, and was ready to give every support to a similar movement in Portugal. England, neutralized by civil war, and Holland, greedy for Portuguese colonies, could not at that time be of assistance to Portugal.

Restoration and Reaction 167

Besides the powerful assistance of Paris, Portugal had other assets in favour of the success of a revolt. There was an adequate king ready to hand in the Duke of Braganza, whose legitimist claim, political position, and great wealth made up for the deficiencies of character and courage that have been both a boon and a bane to the house of Braganza. There were the gentry ready to risk their persons and pro- perties in overthrowing a regime that had already imperilled them. There was the new nationalism of the Coimbra professors and the professional men of Lisbon and Oporto. There was the discontent of the whole taxpaying class and the detestation of the Spaniard throughout the people. On the other hand the Spanish administration, consisting of the Duchess of Mantua, some Spanish courtiers, and the much-hated Portuguese Vasconcellos, was weak ; having in fact no more responsibility than, say, the Irish Viceroyalty — all real power being retained by Madrid. The Vice- royalty could easily be overthrown and Lisbon recovered, but the independence of Portugal could only be won at Madrid.

The decision for or against action depended on Braganza, and his policy was determined by whether he had more faith in Richelieu or more fear of Olivarez. Never indeed were the fortunes of two great nations and the fate of a small one more entirely in the hands of three men ; and the story of the revolt is that of a diplomatic duel between the Cardinal representing France and the Count- Duke representing Spain.

The object of the Count-Duke Olivarez was to get the Duke of Braganza out of Portugal and into his power ; and his rather transparent plots for this purpose were countered by the no less diplomatic Duke with polite

168 Restoration and Reaction

procrastination. At last Olivarez lost patience, called out a general Portuguese levy to put down the revolt in Catalonia, and ordered Braganza to Madrid. This direct challenge was probably intended either to bring the conspiracy to pre- mature birth or stamp its life out unborn. Without Young Portugal it is possible that the timid Duke would have been cowed; but Joao Ribeiro, Professor of Civil Law at Coimbra and the leading organizer of the rising, succeeded with the help of the Duchess in persuading Braganza to prefer possible to certain destruction. It is indeed a curious fact that the house of Braganza was established on the throne of Portugal by a republican professor and by a Spanish princess. Braganza would never have had the courage or capacity to succeed but for the ability of Ribeiro and the ambition of the Duchess— a lady who, as Caetano Passar in his De hello Lusitano observes, was ' bonos et malos regiminis dolos et dominationis arcana instructa ', or vulgarly speak- ing, up to all the tricks of her trade.

The first act of the revolution was easy enough. On December I, 1640, the palace at Lisbon was rushed, the Spanish guards overpowered, the most objectionable of the Spanish administrators assassinated and the Duchess of Mantua imprisoned. She was then forced to sign an order for the surrender of the citadel, which was accordingly seized, together with the Spanish ships in port. The Duke of Braganza was proclaimed as John IV, was crowned in Lisbon a fortnight later, and was recognized by a Cortes on January 19. Meantime the Spanish garrisons throughout the country were peaceably expelled — no action being fought until May 1642, when some Portuguese levies defeated a small Spanish force at Montijo. So far all had gone smoothly; but, as compared with a real war of liberation,

Restoration and Reaction 169

a political change of government such as this is as much easier to effect as it is harder to establish. The new dynasty was accepted by Portugal, but had still to win acknowledge- ment from Europe in general and from Spain in particular. And without this recognition it could not continue, for it was then a far more difficult matter to get recognition for a new dynasty than it is now to get it for a new democracy. Therefore Olivarez was more than merely tactful when he diplomatically broke the news of the secession to Philip by congratulating him on acquiring the Braganza estates ; for the chances were good that the rising would result only in the elimination of the house of Braganza and the Portu- guese nobles as elements of Portuguese independence.

Before Braganza could get recognition from Europe he had to secure his position in Portugal, and his first public acts indicate what he considered the sources of his strength there. He devoted the revenues of the Crown lands to the relief of taxation, he distributed liberally the spoils of office to the landed gentry, and he dispatched a diplomatic mission to Richelieu. France responded with an offensive and defensive treaty signed on June 1641, which made Portuguese independence a condition of peace in the war with Spain; and sent a strong fleet to the Tagus. Eng'and and Holland recognized Braganza ; and the Dutch sent a fleet, exacting in return that Brazil, which had acclaimed John IV, should be left to their tender mercies for ten years. How- ever, Brazil took the matter into its own hands, and the Dutch having been foolish enough to recall Maurice of Nassau and raise taxation at the same time, Brazil rose against them in 1645, and within ten years the last Dutch- man was expelled. The loyalty of Brazil to the national cause by securing Portugal a never-failing source of ready

170 Restoration and Reaction

money was not the least factor in the success of the revolt.

In Portugal itself the opportunity for reform offered by revolution was taken advantage of by Young Portugal. Ribeiro worked hard to set the new national institutions on a proper and a popular basis, and the administration and much of the judicial system of the country dates from his innovations. But in the absence of any real democratic driving power in the revolution the attempt to give the new institutions a democratic form failed, and the Govern- ment remained as it had been, absolutist. The first con- sequence of this failure to give the new regime a broad base was the constant intriguing of dissatisfied cliques in the ruling class of courtiers for the improvement of their private prospects at the cost of internal peace and national unity and to the encouragement of the enemy. It was not long before a conspiracy under the Primate of Portugal, Archbishop of Braga, the most powerful personality under the Spanish Viceroyalty, seriously imperilled the new regime. The rank and file of these reactionaries were disappointed nobles, and curiously enough the half-converted Jews under the leadership of the Grand Inquisitor, actuated by a promise of a cessation of persecution. The plot was discovered owing to the correspondence of the plotters with Olivarez passing through the hands of a grandee who was himself plotting with Braganza for a rising against Philip in South Spain. The lay leaders were executed and the prelates imprisoned, but the dissatisfied office-seekers were not yet discouraged, and other plots followed. A peculiarly disgraceful intrigue was that by which Olivarez, a few weeks before his own fall, brought about the execution, as a spy, of Lucena the capable and worthy minister of John.

Restoration and Reaction 171

The foreign situation was, moreover, as great a danger to the new dynasty as that from faction at home. England, now under Cromwell, was disposed to treat the new Portuguese dynasty with little consideration, and when in 1650 John IV, reviving the spirit of Portuguese chivalry, refused to surrender Prince Rupert and Prince Maurice, Cromwell, in anticipation of the spirit of Palmerstonian foreign policy, sent Admiral Blake to raid the Portuguese colonies and seize Portuguese vessels. The Dutch, never friendly, were alienated by the revolt of Brazil and by the success of the Portuguese fleets in recovering some of their colonies from the Spaniards — among the possessions so recovered being Angola and Mozambique. There remained only France, and French policy now under Mazarin was an even shiftier foundation on which to build than it had been under Richelieu. Everything depended on France remaining at war with Spain, and it was possibly in the hope of contributing to the continuance of the Franco- Spanish War that in 1647 John IV made his strange offer of abdication in favour of a French prince. The offer, whether it was ' meant ' or no, shows in what remote and unreal regions of diplomacy the independence of Portugal was being dealt with. But it was not until 1655 that by threatening to make terms with Spain he succeeded in securing a renewal of the French alliance with Portugal.

It is pleasant to contrast the part played by the French Government in Portugal's War of Liberation in the seven- teenth century with the contribution of the English Plan- tagenets to the War of Liberation of the fourteenth century; and to recall that Portuguese independence was never secured until the English were in a position to put it through. This they now did as soon as the Restoration

172 Restoration and Reaction

had given a new orientation to our foreign policy. France was solemnly pledged to Portugal, but this in the diplo- macy of the day was only a formal difficulty, and a secret clause in the Treaty of the Pyrenees between France and Spain promised the latter a free hand in Portuguese affairs. As, however, the real interests of France required Portuguese independence, the duplicity of Mazarin worked a double cross, and having kept faith with Portugal in form and broken it in fact, he now dealt as faithfully with Spain. So England was put up to give Portugal the support that France was debarred from giving — England being now available as a co-partner and catspaw, that good fellow Charles II having replaced the outsider, Cromwell. This diplomatic deal suited all parties. Charles had an embarrassing accumulation of trained veterans, Cromwellians and cavaliers, especially Crom- wellians, and an equally embarrassing want of ready money. Portugal was to buy these troops to fight Spain, paying Charles in cash and with a colony or two, as a sop to his Parliament. This deal was to be ratified in the approved mediaeval manner by a royal marriage ; and accordingly in 1 661 Charles announced to Parliament his marriage to Catharine of Braganza, she bringing as her dowry .£800,000, Tangier, Galle, and Bombay. Charles, on his part, was to send to Portugal 3,000 trained soldiers, for each of which he was to receive .£10 per annum ; and to mediate with the Dutch. The following year, 1662, an English fleet brought the Cromwellians to Lisbon, strangely enough under a gal- lant Irishman, Murrough O'Brien, Earl of Inchiquin ; and returned with Catharine.

The help came none too soon, for Spain had now turned its strength against Portugal, and Spanish forces under Dom John of Austria occupied the whole of the Alemtejo,

Restoration and Reaction 173

and were advancing on Lisbon from Setubal — the route followed by Alva in the previous century. Lisbon was distracted by disorders and incapable of defence, while the Portuguese garrisons were offering little resistance, those that did not surrender at once being treated with great severity. A gallant exception was that of the town of Alegrete; whose Governor, a Frenchman, replied to the formidable Dom John, who had just shot the Governor of the neighbouring town of Crato, that he had found a cellar- full of excellent wine, and intended to defend it to the last drop.

The arrival of the English trained troops turned the tide. With them, some other mercenaries and Portuguese militia, Schomberg not only checked the Spaniards, but for five years beat them annually in pitched battles with punctuality and precision. They were defeated in June 1662 at Ameixial, in July 1664 at Ciudad Rodrigo, and in June 1665 at Montes Claros. Though these highly professional campaigns are now forgotten even in Portugal, it is interesting to find that the English soldier shows the same characteristics, whether fighting as an archer under John of Gaunt, or a pikeman under Inchiquin, or a light infantryman under Wellington, or as one of the new army to-day. Here is an almost con- temporary account of the battle of Ameixial. 1

Count Schomberg, who, as being the author of the battle, had a more than ordinary concern for its success, was now everywhere giving orders and encouragement to the officers and soldiers. He coming to the left to animate his country- men, as he called the English, found that notwithstanding their yesterday's fatigue, the sight of the enemy had made them wanton, a thing usually observed in our soldiers and seamen when in hope of an engagement. They were 1 Colbatch, Account of Court oj Portugal, ed. 1700, p. 134.

174 Restoration and Reaction

become proud beforehand of their buff-coats which they saw on the backs of the Spaniards, Dom John's guards being cloathed in yellow. The Count hearing them bragging how fine they should be gave them a gentle reproof, telling them that the time to boast was when the armour was put off ; but seeing that the enemies cannon was likely to prove troublesome to them where they stood he ordered Lieut. Col. Hunt who commanded them to advance nearer the hill to certain broken houses. . . . When they came to the houses it was found they did not afford cover for half the men and the soldiers began to grow impatient indeed. The place seemed hot and the enemy anear and it seemed hard that they must stand there to be pelted at, whereupon they were all for having their com- mander lead them on, so that he resolved to gratify them, though he had no orders for it, and so forward they marched through all the fire and smoak the Spaniards on the hill could make. The Lieut. Col. commanding on pain of death that none should fire 'till he gave the word ; when they were got upon the brink the three foremost ranks were ordered to give fire at once the first kneeling, the second stooping. The soldiers took their aim so well and this discharge being seconded by another the enemy began to give way in disorder. Our men perceiving their business in a manner done gave as loud a shout as possible and then fell in with the butt ends of their muskets and in a short time routed them beyond all possibility of rallying. Con- tinuing the pursuit for about a mile, having made them- selves masters of the four pieces of cannon, Dom John's tent and baggage many of our men looked on their work as done and thought it time to go to dinner ; for among other things they had seized on Dom John's provisions which they found ready dressed and were falling to but Count Schomberg soon found employment for them elsewhere.

This resolute action of the English foot occasioned the famous victory of Ameixial, Canal or Evora ; but the author of the Portugal Restaurado lately published so orders the matter as to communicate the honour of it to his own

Restoration and Reaction 17

country men and will scarce suffer the English to have the least share. . . .

We are more interested now in recognizing the national characteristics of the English private than in the respective contributions of Schomberg or Villaflor ; and we are content to know that the series of battles of which this was the first, eventually forced Spain to acknowledge Portugal as a sepa- rate and sovereign State. The Treaty of Lisbon, by which Portugal in return for ceding Ceuta to Spain acquired for its king the long-coveted title of ' Majesty ', was negotiated by the English ambassador ; and those interested in early examples of ' democratic ' diplomacy will find instructive the manner in which the English envoy forced a peace in opposition to France on the Portuguese Court and upper class, then under French influence, by a judicious manipula- tion of the Lisbon mob through the Juiz de Povo, a sort of Tribune of the People.

Meantime His newly made Majesty of Portugal was in something of a mess. The character of the young. King Affonzo VI had been sacrificed to the ambitions of the clique of nobles surrounding his mother. Having allowed him to run riot so as to retain the power for herself as regent, and then endeavouring to put him under restraint, she gave an opening to other ambitious courtiers to rally to his support and overthrow her. From the end of the regency and the accession to power of Affonzo in 1662 the country was governed by the ambitious and able Castel- melhor in the French interest. When he succeeded in crowning his policy and consolidating his position by marrying Affonzo to Mile d'Aumale, daughter of the Due de Nemours, and a granddaughter of Henri IV, it looked as though the regime had been put in stable

176 Restoration and Reaction

equilibrium. But these diplomatic deals always run some risk from the feminine factor involved in the protocolary princess. Affonzo, at best, was a bohemian, and if the worst be true, was a blackguard, while the lady was a clever and conceited cadette of the greatest royal house in Europe. Finding Affonzo hopeless, both as a consort and a king, the lady intrigued with his austere and astute brother, Pedro. The crisis came quickly, and the queen having with universal approval shut herself up in a convent, Pedro, with no less general approbation, shut up Affonzo in a monastery. Affonzo, reputedly insane, remained immured till his death, and the pathway worn in the flags by his pacings to and fro can be seen at Cintra to this day. Pedro having assumed the regency in 1667, the queen emerged from her respectable retirement and married him, after elaborate and somewhat embarrassing nullification pro- ceedings.

What the rights and wrongs of this curious episode are, historians seem unable to decide. Of contemporary observers Sir Robert Southwell, our envoy, and Colbatch the historian and traveller, both evidently considered that Affonzo did not get a fair chance. Their sympathies are evidently rather with Affonzo, who roystered in taverns and smoked in bed, than with Pedro, who dined in state off bread and water sitting on a strip of cork on a stone floor. We may conclude, if we will, that Affonzo was either a Henry V in his hobble- dehoyhood or a half-witted hooligan, and that Pedro was either a public -spirited statesman or the meanest of Jacobs ; but on the whole the moral seems to lie in the importance of being earnest. Affonzo kept low company and played practical jokes on stupid courtiers, unpardonable proclivities in that pompous period ; whereas Pedro, by showing a proper

Restoration and Reaction 177

respect for public appearances, usurped his brother's crown and queen to the public good. None the less the escapades of Affonzo, the scurvy part played by Pedro, and the scandal of the queen's nullification proceedings had rolled the monarchy in the mud. ' It is certain ', reported our envoy, ' that the people will hardly in half a century be brought to that distance and humiliation towards the supreme magis- trate that before they were in, so debauched have they been by the opinion of authority infused into them.'

As usual, our envoy was out in his prognostication, and Pedro, with his queen, succeeded almost at once in estab- lishing the Portuguese monarchy in a position of great power and prestige. Unlike all other Portuguese kings with an inferior title, he was not driven into constitutionalism or any concessions to popular control of affairs. He was the most conscientious and commonsensible of sovereigns, but also the most conservative. So long as Affonzo lived he was exposed to conspiracies and coups d'etat from dis- contented nobles, but the danger was not great enough to drive him to strengthen himself constitutionally. Again, in the early years of his reign he was greatly straitened for money, and except for the considerable proceeds • of the sale of indulgences, his royal revenues were restricted practically to his ducal rents. But, like John of Aviz, he pre- ferred to wait until he could find new resources in imperial revenues rather than be dependent on constitutionally raised taxation. For this reason his administration was a period of strict retrenchment and reform, very valuable to a country exhausted by war and waste. This progress is by historians attributed altogether to Pedro's personality, but it is probable that Portugal was beginning to find herself again, and develop some driving power underneath

1832-5 M

178 Restoration and Reaction

the dead-weight of the Church and the ruling class. But we can only infer this, for there was as yet no direct indica- tion of it. At all events, we feel when we reach the reign of Pedro that Portugal is again established as an independent State and that the chapter in which the Spanish occupation is the central feature is definitely closed.

9 Pombal and the Peninsular War

Minister. Jetzt ist man von dem Rechten all zu weit, Ich lobe mlr die guten Alten ; Denn freilich, da wir alles galten, das war die rechte goldne Zeit. General. Wer mag auf Nationen trauen,

man habe noch so viel fur sie gethan ; Denn bei dem Volk, wie bei den Frauen, Steht immerfort die Jugend oben an.

Goethe.

The history of Portugal in the eighteenth century might seem to be without interest for the purpose of this study, as being a time when there was no striking national develop- ment, and when Portugal played no important part in the history of Europe. But when we look closer into the history of Portugal in the eighteenth century we find that both its domestic activities and its foreign affairs are highly typical of its national character. The peculiarity of Portuguese national progress is that it has a small and swift cycle in its spiral ascent, and that possibly in consequence of this, it affords always one brilhant example, and one alone, of the most characteristic condition peculiar to that European epoch. Thus in the eighteenth century, when we, for instance, were slowly passing from one extreme in the Elizabethan age to another in the Victorian age, Portu- guese nationalism went full circle from the Papal Crusade of 1 71 7 to the principles of the French Revolution. Further,

n 2

i8o Pombal and the Peninsular War

in an age when the general stagnation of progress in Europe was relieved by an occasional stimulus from some benevolent despot or his reforming dictator, Portugal produced Pombal, the most typical example of the reforming reactionary.

But in spite of this, Portugal was during the eighteenth century rapidly falling behind in terms of power and popula- tion, and sinking into the background as a European Power. When it reappeared in the heavens after its long eclipse, it was no longer as a fixed star but as a satellite revolving in an eccentric orbit governed by the alternating influences of England and France.

One might have supposed that if any nation could have worked out its own salvation in peace and, apart from European disturbance, to its national development, it would have been Portugal, separated from the ' cyclone area ' of Central Europe by the whole width of two great and powerful States. But resistance to Spain and the consequent relationship with England have resulted in involving Portugal in every one of the later European war epochs. Whenever Europe was on the war-path Portugal has relied on England as a base, and in return has been used by England as a bridge-head. It is, however, Portugal's especial misfortune that these war epochs have in the last three centuries coincided with a critical period in the internal development of Portugal. The national recovery that was proceeding during Pedro's reign was checked and chilled by the Wars of the Spanish Succession, even as reforms resulting from the French Revolution were pre- vented by the Napoleonic Wars, and as those of the Revolu- tion 6f 1910 will undoubtedly be embarrassed by the war now proceeding.

The decay of Spanish absolutism and the development of

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French absolutism made European war inevitable on the death of Charles II of Spain. No one wanted war outside the governing gang of corrupt courtiers, clerics, and cour- tesans, that for convenience we call ' Louis XIV ', and who realized that for the time they had a stronger war machine than any other gang. No one wanted war less than Pedro and Portugal. But nothing could have stopped war short of a revolution in France itself, and that was still only in the making ; so that Pedro had to prepare for war by securing the Portuguese succession by strengthening his forces and by saving money. Avoiding the trap of a French marriage, he chose a daughter of the Elector Palatine as his second wife, by whom he had four sons ; while the discovery of gold in Brazil gave him credit for the necessary military and naval expenditure. Brazil, with its gold, though it made possible in general the deprivation of all democratic liberties in Portugal, quite possibly on this occasion prevented a second loss of independence. Pedro at first did his be9t to keep out of the war ; and on the death of Charles in 1700 proclaimed his neutrality and non-intervention in the Spanish succession, to which he had a claim. He maintained this neutrality for two years, recognizing Philip V, Louis XIV's grandson, as King of Spain, and letting Lisbon be used as a base by the French in their naval war against the English. As usual Portugal found that the maintenance of neutrality was for any length of time impossible ; so finding that the Franco-Spanish combine intended to absorb Portugal, Pedro renounced the Devil and embarked on the Deep Sea of a British alliance. In December 1703 was signed the Methuen Treaty, by which Portugal associated itself with the Anglo-Austrian coalition in a war for the maintenance of the European balance of power against

Pombal and the Peninsular War 183

Franco-Spanish militarism. In this war Portugal was, as usual, saved from Spanish invasion at the price of becoming a base of British operations. In March 1704 with an English fleet under Rooke, and an army of 10,000 men under Ruvigny, Lord Galway escorted to Lisbon the Archduke Charles, the Coalition claimant to the Spanish throne. Thence, reinforced by a Portuguese army, they invaded Spain, and even occupied Madrid, in July 1706. Portugal had not had to wait much more than a century to make effective reprisals against the invaders of Lisbon in 1588. But the Spanish people have never endured the im- position by arms of an alien administration ; and the arrival of Austrian Charles at the head of foreign and Portuguese troops was enough to rally them as one man to the cause of French Philip. The next spring (1707) at Almanza, the Franco-Spanish, led by an Englishman, Fitzjames Duke of Berwick, handsomely defeated the Anglo-Portuguese led by their Frenchman, de Ruvigny. This cleared Spain and established a military equipoise, broken only by some minor campaigning in favour of the Spaniards and colonial raids by the French, such as that under Duguay-Trouin, which occupied Rio de Janeiro in 171 1. But national feeling kept a sort of war going between Portuguese and Spaniards for two years after it had died out in Europe with the Treaty of Utrecht, the Treaty of Corte Real not being signed until 1715. For the fact was that Portuguese and Spaniards had some- thing national to fight about, whereas Europe had not — being merely engaged in counteracting an imaginary coalescence of the strength of France with that of Spain by an artificial coalition of the States of England and Austria. As a matter of fact there had been and could be

184 Pombal and the Peninsular War

no real coalescence of the nationalities of France and Spain, and when some French phrasemaker, as 'Louis XIV, pro- claimed ' the Pyrenees are.no more to exist ', he was talking great nonsense. The French Bourbons made no worse kings of Spain than the Austrian Habsburgs, and the arrival of these Bourbons at Madrid made Spain no less Spanish than the arrival at Lisbon of an Austrian wife for John V made Portugal less Portuguese. The net result of the Peninsular policy of Louis XIV was not to subject Spain politically to France, but to subject economically Portugal to England.

The commercial clauses of the Methuen Treaty were probably considered at the time comparatively unimportant, but subsequently their consequences have brought them into much greater prominence than the political considera- tions. The arrangement by which the British took port in payment for textiles is generally quoted as an early example of the morally providential and mutually profitable workings of free trade. But it was nothing of the sort. It was a diplomatic deal in necessaries of life, as a war measure, by which our popular taste in French light wines was perverted into a taste for Portuguese heavy wines, while the Portu- guese home-made textiles were killed by the showier and shoddier British manufactures. Portuguese native industry was smothered in its infancy, and the whole energy of a people of great industrial capacity was relegated to the production of raw materials such as wine and fruit. Even the wine industry was taken out of native hands and con- ducted by British capitalists. The ' factory ' at Porto is and has been for two centuries more truly a factory than such foreign commercial establishments usually were. The Douro port district became a sort of hinterland to a British

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colony. While the Portuguese can scarcely be blamed for submitting to a form of economic subjection which secured them their political independence, and while the British are to be praised for never presuming politically on their economic predominance, yet this artificial alliance of two peoples at different stages of economic development, based as it was on war barriers against more profitable partnerships, is not an instance of free trade, and brought none of the stimulus of a liberation of trade. War so restricted our range on the continent that our business men were glad to have a monopoly of the Portuguese market and to make Portugal the British winter resort. The new trade in tourists was just beginning with those whose health made a winter in England a worse hardship than crossing the seas ; and Fielding's account of his journey to Portugal as a luxurious invalid late in the eighteenth century, shows what hardship then meant. The mild moist climate of Lisbon was con- sidered suitable for consumptives by the science of the day, and all who could afford or survive the journey went with Fielding to fill the British cemetery at Lisbon. Before the introduction of port into Britain the British upper and middle class, at its most disreputable, was not drunken ; and before the introduction of British cotton goods and consumptives into Portugal the Portuguese stock, however decadent, was not diseased. We owe it to the Methuen Treaty, that is to the militarism of the French Court of two centuries ago, that many of us are martyrs to hereditary gout, while the Portuguese are mown down by hereditary consumption.

Nor can it be said that trade with England, whether in textiles or tourists, led to any closer relation between the two peoples. England of the eighteenth century, the

1 86 Pombal and the Peninsular War

England that is to say of Walpole and North, could infuse but little inspiration or strength into a nationality in the state that Portugal then was in. It was not until the nineteenth century that Portugal, torn by revolution and civil war, sought in England for the secret of settled government. In the eighteenth century, those of the educated who were not either sunk in mental indolence or in ignorance, and they were very few indeed, turned to France, and gradually worked round by way of French encyclopaedist culture back to a form of national culture. But it was not until near the middle of the century that the strangle-hold of the Church was so loosened as to allow any intelligentzia to exist. The measure of its control can be gauged from such illustrative facts as that the charitable foundation for the blind had a monopoly of all publications, and that the Society of Jesus was rapidly monopolizing the trade with Brazil. But, fortunately for the country, the Church eventually went too far and encroached on the prerogatives of the Crown. Even so, nothing could be done without the Pope ; but in 1725 a Papal Bull allowed counsel to those accused by the Inquisition, and required confirmation of all its sentences by the Govern- ment. Even in this dead age Portugal was not quite dead. The years that followed the Peace of Corte Real were inspired by a conscious effort to revive ancient glories and archaic gloom. The foreign policy of John V of Braganza was the same as that of John III of Aviz, a compromise between militarism and maritimism by combining dynastic alliance with Spain and economic association with England. As in the reign of John III, the dynasties of Portugal and Spain were united by a double marriage of either heir apparent ; Joseph, heir of John, marrying a daughter of

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Philip V, while the latter's heir, Ferdinand, married a Portu- guese princess. This involved a political predominance of Spain almost as great as the commercial control exercised by- England under the Methuen Treaty. The policy of Portugal was guided behind the scenes by the personal intrigues of the representatives, official and otherwise, of Spain and France, while the English ambassadors, Lord Tyrawley, for example, regulated and almost ruled its economic affairs. Otherwise the country was governed by the monarchy, absolutist and obscurantist, but kept going by the support of the Church and the landed class, and by the subsidies from Brazil. There was very little indeed that was popular about the Portuguese Government of the eighteenth century ; but the remains of its imperial possessions enabled the monarchy to cut a considerable dash in an age of monarchical megalo- mania.

The crusade of 1717, for instance, was quite a spirited affair. Portugal responded promptly to the Pope's appeal on behalf of its old rival Venice, and sent a fleet which ensured the defeat of the Turk off Cape Matapan. Thanks to this and to enormous subventions of Brazilian gold to the Papacy, the Portuguese monarchy obtained from the Pope the title of ' Most Faithful ', and was thereby raised to an equal footing with the ' Most Christian ' King of France and the ' Most Catholic ' King of Spain. Lisbon was indeed most especially honoured among European capitals ; Western Lisbon being created a patriarchate, while Eastern Lisbon remained an archbishopric ; the latter not being merged in the former until the hard times of 1840. It was indeed the pride of Portugal in general, and of the patriarchate in particular, to reproduce in every respect the splendours of the Papacy to the minutest detail ; even if we

188 Pombal and the Peninsular War

reject as apocryphal Southey's story of a ceremonial being postponed until it could be ascertained from Rome whether the Holy Father on the occasion in question used a buckle or a button. But we must not make too light of such matters in a century when divine right was the popular sanction of government, and in a country where Rome still ruled supreme.

Nor were mere material symbols of monarchical greatness wanting. At a time when every European king with any self-respect was ruining his exchequer by reproductions of Versailles, Portugal, following Colbert's maxim that the greatness of a monarchy will be estimated by the size of its monuments, produced an edition de luxe of Versailles that for pure versailliness has never been beaten. The monastery-palace-barrack of Mafra took thirteen years to build, during which fifteen to fifty thousand workmen were employed ; it has 866 rooms and 5,000 doors ; 10,000 men could drill on the roof, and it cost over 20,000,000 crowns. The magnificence of its marbles, alabasters, porphyries, &c, is in proportion to its size ; and the whole is a curious case of the capacity of Portugal for excelling just once in the biggest and best example of the culture of the day — bad or good.

It is not surprising, therefore, that when John V died he left an exchequer seriously embarrassed. Even Brazil could not meet the demands made by John's piety and profligacy, for not content with trying to outbid Louis XIV as a devotee, as a debauchee he outdid Louis XV. Con- fessors and courtesans swarmed in the palaces ; while officers of the royal army were forced to wait at table in noblemen's houses, and soldiers or sailors from the crusade begged in the streets. Throughout Europe the early eighteenth

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century was a period of little progress and even less promise, and in Portugal the prospect was even gloomier. But a nation, even when it seems to be in a hopeless decline, has a wonderful faculty for recuperation. ' Out of the eater came forth meat,' and the corrupt regime and decadent ruling class of Portugal produced at this eleventh hour a really great personality.

In a period which throughout Europe was famous for great administrators, Pombal was perhaps the most famous of them all, in spite of his small stage. None the less Pombal was not great in spite of Portugal, but because of Portugal. For great personality as he was, he was not born great, nor did he become great ; but rather had greatness thrust upon him by that peculiarity of Portugal we have already noticed, for producing occasionally one super- excellent specimen of the speciality of the day and for finding occasionally an absolute ruler that would personify perfectly its own national peculiarities. Pombal was not an individual phenomenon but a national phase, and his success was due to his being a personification of the Young Portugal of his time — in other words, an appropriate expres- sion of the nationalism of his day. His predecessor, Ribeiro, the professorial revolutionary of the revolt against Spain, was two centuries in advance of his age, being an anticipation of the radical republicans of to-day. His successors, such as Miguel, were two centuries behind the age. But Pombal, or, as he originally was, Jose de Carvalho e. Mello — born of the country gentry — bred at Coimbra- — a ' blood ' of the Court, was the suitable compromise between Old and Young Portugal — the country and the capital — the Court and Coimbra.

Pombal cut himself out a career with such weapons as

190 Pombal and the Peninsular War

came to his hand ; and certainly owed as little to the popular suffrage in making his way to power as he afterwards did to popular support in maintaining his position. His good parentage, fine presence, and proficiency in the gentlemanly accomplishments of the age opened to him the houses of the great families, and from one of the greatest he eloped with the heiress. Having successfully survived in seclusion the first reaction of class resentment, he reingratiated himself with the parents and their set, and in 1739, at the age of forty, was by their influence made ambassador to London. He made good use of this opportunity, and in London established intimate relations with the beau monde that then constituted, and still on occasion constitutes, the nervous system of the civilized world. Having assured to himself the support of the British ruling class that was then an essential, though external, element in Portuguese politics, he went to Vienna, where he got in touch with the con- tinental element of European policy. He secured the support of this section by a second marriage to the daughter of Count Daun, the leading Austrian general. This excep- tional position in Europe secured his appointment as first Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs on the creation of that post. From this stage the step to Prime Minister with plenary power was in an absolutist regime no long one ; and fortune, that had twice prospered him in marriage, now promoted him with an earthquake.

The great earthquake of 1755 T was such a test of per- sonality as fortunately seldom tries the quality of public men. In Lisbon and the suburbs alone some 50,000 people perished and some £20,000,000 sterling worth of property was destroyed. The whole river front of Lisbon was bodily engulfed, and the quarters that survived the shocks and

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the seismic waves were ravaged by fire and pillage. The whole structure of society in the capital was shattered materially, and morally so shaken that it was proposed to transfer the Government to Rio. Order and self-possession were restored principally by the personal activities of Pombal. For eight days this dilettante and diplomatist lived in his carriage — rescuing sufferers — repressing rioters — reorganizing society, and emerged from the crisis the sole repository of the confidence of the Crown and the country. In a few hours Pombal made himself absolute ruler of Portugal, thanks to an iron physique and a telling phrase. ' Feed the living and bury the dead,' his famous reply to the hysterical ' What shall we do f ' of the King and the country, might indeed well be adopted by Young Portugal as its motto. Calm and common sense are the best of contributions to a national crisis.

The earthquake made a deep moral impression on the whole of Europe ; and to Lisbon it gave the sort of shock that could alone have shaken its excessively eighteenth- century society out of its torpor. The general effect on the Portuguese mind was that of raising a doubt as to the immutability of circumstances and the omnipotence of the gods of things as they are. We see this feeling illus- trated by King Joseph, who deserted his rococo palaces and lived ever after in wooden huts and tents. The general unsettlement and unrest was another factor in Pombal's favour, and as soon as he had, with the help of British relief ships, restored in some measure normal conditions, he entered on a campaign against the corruption and confusion of clerical and feudal abuses that still cumbered the ground. In 1756 Joseph gave him full powers as Premier to carry out his own personal policy, and he at once set to work

192 Pombal and the Peninsular War

with the energy that Portugal had already learnt to respect.

In these reforms Pombal represents the spirit and policy of Young Portugal which has always been at war with its two spiritual enemies, the ruling class and the Romish clergy. Pombal could not reform his class, but he could break the power of Rome.

Rome in Portugal was still represented by the two great institutions which divided between them the political and economic control of the country — they were the Inquisition and the Jesuits. The Inquisition, though already past the prime of its political predominance, was still in complete control of all matters of the mind, a control only slightly crippled by the reforms of 1725. Pombal, after breaking the economic power of the Jesuits, as will be described presently, attacked the remains of the political power of the Inquisition. The main obstacle to a campaign against these citadels of the Church was the piety of the Crown. Providentially both the attack on the Inquisition and that on the Jesuits were preluded by Pombal's opportune discovery of a clerical conspiracy against the life of the pious but pusillanimous Joseph. By 1769 Pombal had succeeded in reducing the Inquisition to a mere ecclesiastical tribunal, conducting its proceedings with some semblance of judicial procedure, and confining its sentences for the most part to imprisonment in a monastery. Any one curious to examine its operations in this period will findsome interesting reports of its proceedings and sentences reported by Southey (p. 127).

A deadlier blow at the root of clericalism was the seculariza- tion of education. The national university of Coimbra was freed from priestly control, and the colleges for the better class founded by the Jesuits and other Orders were taken

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over as Government institutions. Every encouragement was given to the teaching of the new French schools of thought. The ' Arcadia de Lisboa ' was founded to spread the doctrine of the encyclopaedists, while a whole series of ' academias ', literary and scientific, bore witness to the revival of mental activity due to the removal of spiritual repression. This renaissance was naturally accompanied by a revival of nationalism, though the new and voluminous works of politi- cal history and historical drama are perhaps rather of interest as nationalist propaganda than as literary productions. Moreover, while this literary revival had at first to be alto- gether expressed in French forms owing to the interrup- tion of national literary tradition under the Inquisition, it is interesting to see how quickly it consciously and sub- consciously revived its national characteristics.

This nationalist movement of Young Portugal in the eighteenth century is not to be despised either in respect of its services or of its sacrifices, in spite of its arcadian artificialities and academic absurdities. Deriving its force as it did mainly from the irrepressible strain of Jewish intellectualism in the urban gentry, it came into collision very quickly with the dogmatism and despotism of eighteenth- century Portugal. The first of its poets, Antonio da Silva, was burnt in an auto-da-fe in 1739; another, Francisco do Nascimento, or ' Filinto Elysio ' as he was called in ' Arca- dian ', only escaped from the Inquisition to die in exile. Correa Garcao incurred the enmity of Pombal, and died in prison in 1772. Manuel de Boccage, in Arcadian ' Elmano Sadino ', was imprisoned by the Inquisition as late as 1797 for publishing his poem, ' The appalling illusion of Eternity ', and died in a monastery. Jose de Macedo, the last literary leader of the movement, died in 1831, unmolested. Though

1932.5 Q

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these are names now little known even in Portugal, and the fierce controversies of the schools of the Felintists and Sadinists have long been forgotten, the work they did as culti- vators of national literary forms and as upholders of national free thought, prepared the way for the more characteristic national culture of the Coimbra school a century later.

Returning to the reforms of Pombal, we find that next in importance to the freeing of the mind of Portugal, within limits imposed by the requirements of personal power, was the freeing of its material resources within the limits required by imperial privilege.

An idea of the economic control acquired at that time by the international ramifications of the Jesuits can perhaps best be conveyed by comparing it to the financial control acquired in modern times by the Jews. The old monopoly of the Crown still feebly struggled against this new corpora- tion, but both imperial and internal economic development were rapidly coming under the control of the latter. The Jesuits were indeed far more formidable foes to Pombal than the Inquisition, for their power lay rather in the future than in the past, and not in ecclesiastical discipline but in economic development. Nor were their activities merely commercial, for such were indeed only a later development, while the great administrative work they had done in South America, as well as their educational enterprises in Portugal, had been a real service to the race. When we contrast the vitality and prosperity of Brazil in the eighteenth century with the decay and corruption of Portuguese India, we find that ' Golden Goa ' under the Inquisition, with its grass- grown streets and its thirty thousand priests and some thousands of Government employes, represents the reductio ad absurd-urn of colonial government by a metropolitan

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privileged caste; while Brazil, under the Jesuits, seems to be more like a colony conducted by a chartered company. But it was obviously impossible for the Crown, dependent as it was on its revenues from Brazil, to leave the regulation of those revenues to an international corporation of such financial and political strength as the Society of Jesus had become ; for even dependence on a national Cortes might have been less objectionable. The attack began in 1757, and fortunately for Pombal the Papacy was as jealous of the Society as it had been of the Inquisition. In 1758 Benedict XIV joined in the attack by forbidding the Society to trade. It was at this stage that occurred the famous ' Tavora ' plot that enabled Pombal to pose as the king's pre- server and the saviour of society. Whatever the real origin of this plot may have been, it resulted in the king being waylaid and wounded, and in the execution of some of the most prominent nobles of Portugal, including the beautiful and powerful Marchioness of Tavora. It seems not impossible, in view of the repetition of the incident ten months later, that Pombal by these ' popish plots ' was killing his two birds with one stone, so as to strengthen his influence with the king by disgracing the great nobles who were jealous of his power and by discrediting the Jesuits, whose reputation and record would certainly render them responsible. In 1759 the Society's estates were confiscated and its members expelled. In 1764 a Jesuit, Malagrida, who had been under suspicion in connexion with the Tavora plot, was burnt alive as a heretic. This caused a reaction, and the Papacy broke with Young Portugal for two years. But the lead given by Portugal had been followed in the meantime in France and Spain by Choiseul and Aranda, both reforming ministers, and in 1773 the Society was generally abolished.

o 2

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Young Portugal accordingly, though it had failed to join in the Protestant movement of the sixteenth century, can claim to have led a successful crusade against clericalism in one of the most lifeless periods of European history.

The Marquis of Pombal, for such Carvalho became in 1769, after a transition stage as Count of Oeiras, continued his reconstruction and his clearing away of rubbish as only a reforming dictator can. It is often difficult to say in his measures whether his motive is to be sought in lust of power or in love of progress. ' Thus the abolition in 1773 of slavery in Portugal as well as of the civil disabilities of ' new Christians ' and others shows a liberalism and enlightenment in advance of European opinion of the period ; and was at the same time as severe a blow at the privileged position of the ruling class of nobles as the ruthless reprisals for the Tavora plot had been to their prestige. In the same way his drastic dealings with small sinecures, which eventually became the great evil of the present day, was in itself excellent ; and not less excellent indirectly as a blow to the patronage of the ruling class. The power of the nobility was also broken in another way by the establishment of efficient police and public pro- secutors. Lisbon, which had been one of the most dangerous of European cities, the scene of nightly assassinations and brawls, became quite the safest.

Revolutionary reforms such as those of Pombal cannot, however beneficial, be forced on society by authority with- out coercion or even cruelty. The prisons were filled to overflowing, respectable citizens were ruined, and great sufferings were inflicted on many meritorious persons. Many of the Jesuits and gentry who had lived lives of self- sacrifice and public service were made to suffer for the

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selfishness of their order. If these severities have escaped with less criticism from the public opinion of Europe than have those of later reformers, it is probably because public opinion, including especially our own, looks with less critical eye on royalist than on republican reform. But the only difference between Pombal and the Young Portugal of to-day is in the source of their authority and the sanction of their actions, which in the case of Pombal lay in the autocracy, in the case of the republicans in the democracy. Their policy of nationalist and rationalist reform was the same in both cases.

Pombal's nationalism was indeed lively enough to lead him into some curious contradictions. While it caused him to encourage in every way the introduction of French ideas, it also compelled him to make war on France in alliance with England ; and while it made him throughout a loyal adherent of the English alliance as indispensable to Portuguese independence, it also made him combat the economic control over Portugal established by England. Thus, not content with reviving agricultural and fishing industries, 1 he attempted to free the wine industry from English control by creating the Oporto Wine Company, to reduce the English monopoly of manufacture and to create home manufactures by the help of a customs tariff, and to free national finance from dependence on London by the foundation of the Bank of Portugal.

1 Some of his bounty-fed enterprises exhibit the economic difficulties that always hamper developments by benevolent despotism. Thus he founded at great cost the town of Villa Real de San Antonio at the mouth of the Guadiana, so as to cut out the Spanish competition for the local fishery. But all he did was to destroy the Portuguese industry by injudicious interference.

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All these policies contained some essential elements of modern national development, and still exist as policies. The distinction between the Portuguese and the British interest in the Oporto wine trade cannot to-day be ignored by any one interested in the good relations of the two countries. But of the industries started by Pombal only those continue to-day which owe their survival to some artistic, technical, or natural advantage peculiar to Portugal, and not to the protective policy of Pombal. For the economic policy of Pombal suffered from the same defects as his social policy. ' Trade in order to be prosperous should not be free ', is a saying of his reported by ' Junius ', then a diplomatist with Lord Kinnoull's mission. If ever protection could have created industrial prosperity it should have been in the Portugal of Pombal, a docile and industrious people under an enlightened autocrat.

Like all nationalists whose activities have been autocratic, Pombal was also an imperialist. It was he who again made Portugal a competitor of ours in world commerce. India and the spice trade was irretrievably lost, but the Chinese and South American trade was still open to competitors. Macao enabled Portugal to profit by the tea trade, and Brazil by the sugar trade. Lisbon was on the way again to become a European emporium.

This edifice of Portuguese prosperity in the eighteenth century rested on two pillars — one was Pombal's lease of power and the other the peace of Europe ; and by 1770 neither was worth many years' purchase. The weakness of Pombal's system was that it depended on the personal relationship between Pombal and Joseph, and that either partner was irreplaceable. Pombal had indeed done his best to secure a succession that would support him by

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marrying Joseph's eldest daughter, Maria Francisca, to his younger brother, her uncle, Dom Pedro. But there had already been too much of this sort of thing in the House of Braganza, and when they succeeded Joseph in 1777 as king and queen they were too feebleminded to exercise any influence. This left Pombal at the mercy of his old enemies — Joseph's widow, Marianna Victoria, a fanatical Spaniard — the Court camarilla — and the clerics. An old man of eighty, deserted by his followers, he was easily driven from power and banished to his estates. Indeed, he doubt- less only owed his three remaining years of life to the death of the old queen.

The best evidence of the excellent service of Pombal is that in spite of the absolutist basis of, his regime and its consequent collapse, it was not possible for its enemies to efface its results or even to break altogether its traditions. Pombal, though he could not provide a successor to himself, left behind a body of civil servants trained in his tradition of honest and efficient public service. These men had control of the administration, and had no intention of allowing greedy and ignorant courtiers and clerics to oust them from their powers. There was thereby established during the difficult years that followed, and until the Napoleonic wars involved all in chaos, a balance of power, internally, which was by no means unfavourable to a peace- able transition from absolutism to democracy. For instead of a duel between Gallophil revolutionaries and Hispanophil reactionaries, with only the Crown as connecting link, there was now an intervening body of Anglophil bureaucrats and liberals favourable to reform and constitutionalism. This body, recruited from the more intelligent and en- lightened gentry on the one side and from the more moderate

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intellectuals on the other, might have exercised the con- solidating and conciliating function for which the Crown was now too feeble.

Nor was there any State in Europe where such a function was more required than in the Portugal of the end of the eighteenth century. While the nobility and clergy still held firmly to the ideas and institutions of an ancien regime more antiquated even than that of France, the professors, professionals, and what we should now call the proletariat, had adopted whole-heartedly the principles of the approach- ing French Revolution. For these latter there was no salvation in anything short of a radical reconstruction of society and a clean sweep of the aristocracy. The following doggerel, dating from this period, shows that for the Portuguese proletariat the Court and the country gentry were now the enemy rather than the Crown or the Church.

When died our own King Cardinal, then to Philip, king of Spain, noblemen sold Portugal : And that 's plain.

When by all the people's vote Antonio became our king, noblemen did turn him out : And that was seen.

When John the Fourth as King was hailed, not for long they wanted John : The noblemen they all caballed : And that 's known.

Alfonso Sixth as King was hailed : He, of his kingdom and his queen by noblemen was soon despoiled : That too we've seen.

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King Joseph most of all was then the object of their odium low— these bloody-minded noblemen : That 's true also.

When the Royal House Braganza the Marquis of Pombal did stablish, he was ruined by their rancour : A great injustice.

Principles, measures, and public treasures the Lord deliver from noblemen ever,

to the end of the chapter.

Portugal was indeed still, except in a very small element of radical extremists, entirely royalist in sentiment, and there was still a larger, perhaps the larger, section where royalism was the only political sentiment. Sebastianism, which had somewhat declined under Pombal, now revived and reached its high-water mark. Belief in the imminent return of the dead crusader became a political programme: and not only the exact manner of the event, but its date was fixed — 1808 being the year appointed by prophecy. This prognostication of a crazy Jewish necromancer is perhaps worth quoting as illustrative of a state of mind that in Europe only survives to-day in Russia. The date was supposed to" be symbolized in the arms of Portugal — the pillars of Hercules — and the following gibberish was generally accepted as gospel.

One with two oughts on each other,

and another to the right — then two more just like the first two,

and you have the year aright.

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In this year 1808, then, Sebastian was to leave the un- known isle in the Atlantic, to which his reputed abode had been transferred from the remote frontier valley where he had been supposed to be so long as it suited Spain. On Good Friday a miraculous fog would envelop the Tagus, which on Easter Sunday would rise revealing Sebastian's ship irradiated with a divine illumination. Thereafter the king would come on shore, and having ascended the throne of Portugal, would be accepted by all nations as king of kings by right divine. Restoration of the unity of Christendom and a reign of perpetual peace and equity would ensue.

Translated into this practical programme, a poetic ideal that had kept alive nationalism in the dark days became an impermeable obstacle to the political education of the people. For in view of this imminent millennium nothing mattered other than preserving a ' most faithful ' absolutism. Constitutionalists, encyclopaedists, reformers of every shade were all alike traitors to the true faith.

What might have happened in Portugal had it been left to work out its own salvation, matters little, for Europe was entering one of those periodic war epochs which supersede and suppress all processes of peaceful and gradual national progress. What was even more serious for Portugal was that the centre of militarism being still in Western Europe, the line of cleavage between it and maritimism was bound to follow the frontier between Portugal and Spain. This frontier, that we are so apt to look upon as artificial or even anomalous', was once more to be the battle-front presented by the maritimist and nationalist elements of Europe to militarist and imperialist expansion. Whether the centre of militarist expansion be in Madrid, as in the sixteen hundreds, in Paris as in the seventeen and eighteen

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hundreds, or in Berlin as in the late nineteen hundreds, the line of cleavage between these camps and their encircling opponents in each case follows this frontier. Portugal has in each case been drawn by its maritime position and by the British alliance into the ranks of those opposed to militarism. Only as the focus of militarism — the cyclone centre — moves away from Madrid northward and eastward, Portugal benefits by finding itself further removed from the fighting front. But in the Napoleonic war, Spain was drawn in necessarily on one side and Portugal as necessarily on the other, to the dire disaster of both. The great upheaval of the Napoleonic era caught many European nations, including our own, at a critical stage of their democratic development, and delayed that development for a generation, but none of them suffered as severely in this respect as did Portugal.

The position of Portugal in the years before the French Revolution was, as it generally is in times of peace, one of compromise between the maritimist and the militarist Great Powers. It had for a time braved the rest of Europe by its fidelity to us in refusing to join the Baltic Confederacy and the Armed Neutrality of 178 1 directed against our maritime domination ; but it eventually joined the League of Neutrals in 1782, being driven into detaching itself from us both by its own interests and by our intransigence. The Anglo-Portuguese Alliance consequently remained in abeyance for ten years, until the French Revolution realigned Europe along the line of the old cleavage that had been temporarily obscured by the American revolt.

As the French Revolution developed, every phase of it was at once reflected in the opinions of the Portuguese intellectuals, who were by now mostly Rousseauists and

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Republicans. Their enthusiasm for the principles of the Revolution was indeed such as to unite against them both bureaucracy and aristocracy, thereby beginning the long duel between Conservative and Progressive that was to divide and distract Portugal for a century. On the Con- servative side was ranged almost the whole official class together with the Lisbon mob, as also the greater part of the landed class together with the peasantry ; while on the Progressive side were the more educated urban and pro- fessional classes, together with the middle class and the artisan. The Progressives being necessarily pro-French, the Conservatives naturally became the English party. The Crown was the only institution, in the absence of any constitution, that could keep these two parties in con- stitutional relation to each other, and the Crown was represented by the idiotic Maria Francisca and later by the imbecile John VI.

The proclamation of the French Republic concentrated these two parties into two hostile camps, and a conflict little short of civil war began with the persecution of all ' Frenchmen ' and ' freemasons ', or in other words, Radicals and Rationalists. This conflict between reaction and revolution at once took on the character of a crusade, and the Portuguese Government, supposing that it had crushed the infidel within its borders, actually set about carrying the holy war into France. Disregarding the politic advice of Pitt to stay neutral, the Portuguese Govern- ment, with characteristic impetuosity, dismissed the French ambassador, and dispatched a contingent of $,000 men to join the Spanish force invading Roussillon. But no coalition between Portugal and Spain, even for a crusade, has shown any element of permanence, and after eighteen months'

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fighting, the Spanish Government, that is to say, the ex-guardsman, Godoy, went formally over to the French and concluded the Treaty of Basle in July 1795.

Portugal found itself deserted and was driven into desperate attempts to patch up a compromise with the French party at home and to make peace first with the Convention and then with the Directory. But the French Government preferred that Portugal should remain a belligerent, and had indeed already planned a partition of it by the Treaty of San Ildefonso, concluded with Spain in 1796. Under these circumstances an invasion was imminent, and there was nothing left for Portugal but to take refuge in the British camp. The French party were again suppressed, «nd an appeal was made to England, which as usual responded by sending drill-sergeants, great and small, supplies of every sort, and a sufficient force under Stewart to discourage Spain from crossing the frontier. The Directorate thereupon abandoned or post- poned its aggressive policy, and offered peace, which Portugal, now in the power of the English party, in its turn declined. But public opinion was so strongly in favour both of peace abroad and of progress at home that the French party succeeded in ousting the English party and in bringing about the return of the English expedition and the reopening of the negotiations with France.

At this juncture, 1800, the direction of French policy was taken over by Napoleon, and thenceforward the French Revolution became, so far as Portugal was concerned, purely militarist and anti-national in its action. Portugal cannot complain of the effect upon itself of this perversion of the principles of the Revolution, for it had taken a prominent part in helping the rest of Europe to bring this calamity about.

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The terms Napoleon offered Portugal involved entry into his political and economic system and cessions of Portuguese territory to Spain and France ; being indeed such as could not possibly have been accepted. On their being refused Portugal was invaded by Spain, and that too with a promptitude that indicated a premeditated aggres- sion. The ensuing campaign was disastrous to the Portu- guese, who after a few weeks signed a peace at Badajos, in 1 80 1, ceding the district of Olivenca to Spain and part of Brazil to France ; but undertaking no further aid and comfort to our enemy than the maintenance of an attitude of friendly neutrality. This refusal of the Portuguese to enter the French system did not, however, restrain us from retaliating against them by occupying Madeira and Goa. The position of Portugal as a neutral was no better than that of being plundered by both parties ; until the Treaty of Amiens gave some stability to its status.

The Portuguese people were indeed so divided between the hope of civil liberty offered by the principles of the French Revolution and the fear of losing their political independence should they desert the British alliance that neutrality was their proper policy. But it would have needed a more intelligent and forceful government than they had to keep them out of the fight in view of the strategic impor- tance of their territory to either combatant. What the difficulties and dangers of a minor power are in the area of collision between two imperial systems have been too abundantly illustrated in the present war to need further explanation.

To Napoleon Portugal was no more than a pawn in the stalemate that he was trying to force on Europe before he was himself checkmated. But it is by bad

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pawn play in the opening moves that emperors generally lose the game, and Napoleon was no exception. He could work out the most sensational combinations and the most complicated problems with queens and bishops, knights and castles, but he never could manage to move his pawns when and where he wanted. Portugal, for example, he regarded as a British colony on the continent and in his hinterland, and he sent the very undiplomatic Lannes to Lisbon, nominally as ambassador, but really to take over the military administration. Lannes obtained without difficulty the dismissal of all adherents of the English party ; for the Portuguese Government were at the time resentful of England's persistent non-recognition of their neutrality and ready to give credence to a recognition of it by France. Such recognition cost Napoleon nothing, as he could not at the moment make use of Portugal ; whereas it put England in an equivocal position. When in 1806 an English special mission demanded that Portugal should declare its attitude, and appealed to the ancient alliance, the Portuguese Govern- ment, completely under French'control, made no reply. But though the Portuguese Government, now as pro-French as during the French Revolution they had been pro-English, could keep the country neutral, they could not carry it into the French continental system. International politics can be for a time forced by governments into non-national channels, but international economics, fortunately, take longer to alter. Napoleonic efficiency having changed the Anglo- French duel from a political fight between governments into an economic fight between peoples, it was only a ques- tion of time before the Portuguese people would be forced to take sides with the people with whom they had the closest national economic relations.

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Having found this out by 1807, and having then an oppor- tunity for turning his attention to the Peninsula, Napoleon determined, as a simple solution, to abolish Portugal. In this, however, he made his first capital political mistake and his first step towards the ruin of his imperial system. That system was in fact welcome to European nationalities so long as it freed peoples from the wretched governmental systems of the anciens regimes ; but was bound to fail once it came into collision with the national instincts and prejudices of the populations.

Napoleon's plan was to absorb Portugal first, before tack- ling that tougher morsel — Spain. He accordingly conde- scended to an alliance with Spain, and by the Treaty of Fontainebleau humbugged the Spanish Government under Godoy into agreeing to a partition of Portugal, in which Godoy was to receive the kingdom of the Algarves. But there was clearly never any intention of a partition with Spain. The extraordinary expedition with which the French forces executed the invasion of Portugal ruled out their allies altogether, and it was a purely French force under Junot himself that crossed the frontier in November 1807, within a month of the signing of the Treaty of Fontainebleau.

The speed of Junot's progress made any resistance on the part of the inert Portuguese Government out of the question. His head-quarters were already at Abrantes and across the Tagus before the Court at Lisbon had realized its danger.

' Quartier general ' en Abrantes — tudo anda como antes !

yelled the furious Lisbon mob at the great gilt coach of ' John the Goat ', as it went rumbling and rolling on its daily round from church to church. But no attempt was

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or could be made to check the French advance, and as it- came streaming along the road to Lisbon a pathetic party was hurriedly embarking on Sir Sidney Smith's flagship in the Tagus — the obese dullard John — the courtiers and con- fessors hilarious at having saved their skins — the mad Queen Maria Francisca keenly realizing the situation and loudly screaming frantic protests — the Spanish virago, Queen Carlotta, in grim disgust. As the king by right divine sailed down the Tagus under foreign protection, Junot, the swaggering soldier of fortune, rode into Lisbon at the head of a thousand or so ragged and road-worn French recruits, the rest of his army being strewn as stragglers all across Portugal and Spain. But had he ridden in alone the result must have been the same. Portugal in general and Lisbon in particular had had enough of the Braganza absolutism as represented by John and his Jesuits. They knew nothing of the Napoleonic system, and to them the French came as liberators, not as invaders. Their coming made a clean sweep of the swarm of foreign priests and parasites that pullulated in the corrupt body politic of Portugal, and brought with them, like a breath of fresh air, the sane and sanitary principles of liberty, equality, and fraternity. So the ' Freemasons ' as the anti-clerical democratic organiza tions had been called, welcomed Junot with open arms ; while even ' Sebastianists ', at the other end of the political scale, remembered that the ' Hidden One ' was to return in 1808, and the more intelligent and imaginative considered whether they could accept a reincarnation of the messiah of Portugal in a marshal of France.

Poor Portugal ! It has twice been cheated out of its independence by its ideals — the first time when it wel- comed the King of Spain as the restorer of a united

1832.5 p

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European Christianity, and the second when it welcomed the Emperor of France as the regenerator of European society united by the principles of the Revolution. Twice bitten once shy, however ; and in our own time Portugal has rejected the German Emperor's claim to be the all-Highest of Europe by right of scientific efficiency and of the super- state. The ideal in each case has been progressively lower, and the realization of the mistake came in each case propor- tionately quicker. Junot was not long in convincing Lisbon that instead of a messiah of liberty, equality, and fraternity they had got as ruler a vulgar and vicious mercenary ; but he was just clever enough not to disclose Napoleon's design against Portuguese independence until Portugal was fully disarmed. It was not until every coin in the Treasury had been sent to France, and every trained soldier had followed them there, that he deposed John and set up a French military government. A few reliable Portuguese were allowed to call themselves ministers, as under the Spanish occupation ; but all power was in the hands of Junot as President of the Council of Regency, and was administered through his generals in command in the provinces.

The difference between the French and Spanish occupa- tion was — and it was an important one — that Napoleon could not, try as he would, administer Portugal from Paris. He was obliged to leave power to Junot, and his policy and that of Junot were different. Napoleon's object was in the first place to exclude the British from Portugal ; and in the second to turn the resources of the country in men, money, and material to the use of his own army. But Junot's object was to establish himself on the Portuguese throne ; and no sooner was French military rule established than he began to make personal concessions to the Portuguese

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Liberals at the cost of Napoleon's policy, by reducing his requisitions, reviving national institutions, and so on and so forth. It was a strong bid for the empty throne, but any chance he might have had with the intellectuals in Lisbon had by that time been ruined by his troops in the provinces, who treated Portugal as a conquered country, and daily added insults to injuries. Consequently, no sooner did a favourable opportunity for a rising present itself in the Spanish revolt against the French, and in the defeat of the latter at Bailen, than the Portuguese peasantry rose as one man. For them French political ideals and the promise of civil liberty were no attraction, and the military rule of an arrogant foreigner was intolerable. The French generals and their garrisons were besieged by militia, and the government taken over by local committees. The central Portuguese Government had practically ceased to exist, though fortunately there still remained a few public personages, such as the Bishop of Oporto, who could appeal to England. Fortunately also for Portugal — for the militia could not face the French troops — the British were in a position to help at once, much in the same way as they had helped on so many previous occasions. An expedition just sailing for South America, under Sir Arthur Wellesley, was diverted to Portugal, together with a foreign legion of Portuguese refugees — an interesting example of the haphazard way in which, when at war, we hurl expedi- tionary enterprises about the world. In August 1808 the expedition landed at the mouth of the Mondego and defeated Laborde at Rolica, and Junot himself at Vimiera before the end of the month. This successful campaign was then closed by the much-criticized Convention of Cintra, under which Junot's troops evacuated Portugal in

p 2

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return for a safe-conduct to France. Whether wise or no, it ended the first chapter of the Peninsular War, and, by effectively substituting British for French rule in Portugal, committed us to a continental campaign.

In the second chapter we find Beresford organizing and equipping the Portuguese forces, which in consequence are able to face and check a more serious French invasion under Soult, until Wellesley, landing in the Tagus with a second and more formidable expedition, in 1809, drives Soult into Galicia, and, crossing into Spain, defeats Joseph Bonaparte and Victor at Talavera.

In the third chapter we find Beresford's efforts resulting in Portuguese troops being recognized as better far than the Spanish, and as good enough to be brigaded with the best British; but the incapacity and corruption of the Council of Regency and the provincial committees administering Portugal, combined with the impossibility of confining such foreign control to one watertight compartment, forcing us into taking over more and more of the Government. Our ambassador, Stuart, became first a member of the Council and then practically a sort of agent-general, to the great material advantage of the country ; but with the moral consequence that the French party recovered their position as protagonists of nationalism as well as of democracy.

Upon the third and most critical French invasion, under Massena, in ifiio Wellington, after the somewhat risky retreating battle at Busaco, retired behind the lines of Torres Vedras. By defence of these lines the whole province between the Tagus and the sea was converted into a citadel which commanded the rest of Portugal. Mean- time the Portuguese had been trained into a national army of first-class quality. The co-operation and camaraderie

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between the British and Portuguese officers was admirable, and the rank and file could be relied on for the hardest service. Even the dour Wellington talked of the Portuguese troops as his ' fighting cocks ' — or, in the less graphic and gram- matical language of dispatches, as ' worthy of contending in the same ranks as veterans, to which they were not inferior in point of valour and discipline '.

In 18 1 1 Portugal was evacuated by the French for the third and last time, and the war drove across into Spain. Thereafter Portugal itself was free from war, but the Portuguese contingents on either side continued to serve' with distinction. The ' cacadores ' even achieved the honour of being brigaded in the famous ' Light Division '. Indeed our popular idea that by the Peninsular War we liberated Portugal from France is only a half-truth, and the impression that the Portuguese troops were only good for guerilla is wholly false. We supplied the money and material, and Portugal provided the greater part of the men, as well as the battle-field. Moreover, in this our joint campaign against the Napoleonic system the price paid by Portugal was quite disproportionate. We on our part contributed no more than we could afford ; and for us the Napoleonic wars were followed, after a short depression, by the greatest development of our economic and po- litical history. But Portugal was ruined, constitutionally and economically, and did not begin to recover for half a century.

Three times the tide of war had swept back and forth across the most prosperous provinces of central Portugal ; three times the manhood of Portugal had been laid under contribution, first for John's expedition against the French Revolution, then far more heavily by Junot's levies for the

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French legion, then most heavily of all by Beresford's levy en masse. This was, indeed, not a war like the campaigns of the old professional armies, but a war that devastated and depopulated nations. And when at last the flood drained away into Spain, the condition of Portugal, political, social, and economical, was desperate. The Government was so demoralized that British control could not prevent it from embezzling the subsidies and supplies intended for its own soldiers. As to the people itself, here is Napier's description of how Massena left a countryside that in peace is almost arcadian in its beauty and bounty.

In the hills was found a house where thirty women and children were lying dead from hunger, and sitting by the bodies fifteen or sixteen living beings — only one a man — so enfeebled by want they could not devour the food offered them. All the children were dead.

Moreover, so hard had been the fight for its rights as a nation against foreign aggression that Portugal had been forced to surrender all these rights for safe keeping to its ally. Abandoned by its own dynasty, Portugal had given its government into the hands of British generals and diplomatists, had given its villages and fields to be fought over, had left its women and children to be starved, and had turned its manhood into ' fighting cocks ' of the British ruling caste. In defence of its independence, Portugal had voluntarily degraded itself into a British dependency.

That so large a sacrifice was required was largely the fault or misfortune of Portugal ; for Spain, where the spirit of local self-government and military self-sufficiency survived all disaster, retained a large measure of independence, render- ing thereby proportionally less valuable services to the common military cause. But, as we have seen, govern-

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ment in Portugal had always been essentially central and monarchical ; and the monarchy gone, there was for the time no other institution capable of representing national ideals of independence. The monarchy being in Brazil, highly unpopular, and already divided into two factions, the only political institutions left were the remains of the two parties, the English constitutionalists and the French radicals. The first of these was discounted by the popular determination to throw off British control : a determination that grew as the French menace diminished and the domination of Beresford and Stewart became more irksome ; the second was discredited by the unpardonable outrages inflicted on the people by the French soldiery. The political field in Portugal was indeed as devastated and devitalized by the war as any of the fertile ploughlands of Leiria or Coimbra.

When peace again brought political problems to the front, it was evident that the best prospect for Portugal lay in a gradual transfer of power from the British pro-consuls to the pro-British constitutionalists, and in the setting-up of a two-party system, in which the pro-British and pro- French factions should gradually develop respectively into conservative and progressive political parties. There were two difficulties to the prompt realization of this process. One such difficulty was the absence of any political educa- tion whatever in the Portuguese. There were, in fact, no elements of an electorate. To the opposing camps of the ' Freemasons ' and ' Sebastianists ', neither of them con- stitutional organizations, had been added a mass of disbanded soldiery — veterans of the armies that Portugal had supplied to either side in the great struggle. On the one side thousands of veterans of Wellington's victorious

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Peninsular armies, on the other veterans of Napoleon's cam- paigns in Germany and Russia. For such voters the only possible electoral address was a pronunciamento in Napo- leonic periods or a field order of Wellingtonian precision. For such partisans the only possible electoral campaign was a guerilla, and the only general election a civil war.

The other difficulty lay in the failure, not the first or the last, of the British ruling caste to divest itself gradually and gracefully of the domination over an inde- pendent people that political and geographical conditions had forced upon it. We were, as a nation, when we came to realize the problem, earnestly desirous of transferring the dictatorship of our diplomatists to a Portuguese party. But the principle of constitutional monarchy appealed neither to the Gallicist intellectuals nor to the Sebastianist ignorant. Even at the right moment it would not have been very easy to secure an enthusiastic acceptance of it by Portugal, and we delayed until it was too late. When we are puzzled by the crassnesses and cross-purposes that falsified the friendly relations between England and Portugal at this period, and that tried the patience of our forefathers to the breaking-point, we must remember how easy it is to do the right thing at the right time and how difficult it may become later. The behaviour of Wellington, Beresford, and Stuart, unmannerly and unsympathetic as it was, could not altogether discount the cameraderie that united the Anglo-Portuguese armies ; but once these ties were dissolved and the armies disbanded the administrative authority exercised by us in the name of the Regency lost all popular sanction. Recognizing this or realizing that it was in a false position, a British Government really represen- tative of the nation would have withdrawn from all attempts

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at administering Portugal the moment military necessity no longer required it, would have left the Portuguese people to reconstruct their form of government themselves, and would thereby have given the constitutionalists a chance. But like most governments that are the result of a long war, the British Government of that day could trust neither its own people nor any other.

But what was worse than our distrusting the Portuguese was our giving them cause to distrust us. They had endured our position at Lisbon because we were, after all, fighting their battles for them ; but the end of the partnership came when Castlereagh and Wellington at Vienna, for diplomatic reasons, allowed Spain to retain the Portuguese district of Olivenca, filched by Spain from Portugal during the Franco- Spanish alliance. This injury, perpetrated by the British people through their representatives, unknown to them then and unheard of since, has never been forgotten by the Portuguese, and it seemed at the time as though it could never be forgiven. The immediate result was such resis- tance to the rule of Stuart and Beresford as reduced them to having recourse to more and more autocratic methods in the name of the Regency. There was no remedy but revolt, and it was not long delayed, for in 18 1 8 a plot was discovered for a coup d'etat in the interest of Freire de Andrade, the gallant leader of the Portuguese Legion in Napoleon's army and head of the French party. The execution of the general and ten of his colleagues finally put an end to the daily diminishing possibility of a peaceful penetration of Portugal by English constitutional methods. These executions were an act of war on our part against Portuguese nationality, and had the same moral effect as a formal declaration of war. By them not only the

218 Pombal and the Peninsular War

forces striving for civil liberty but also the forces struggling for national independence were for a time united against us. The opportunity of our opponents came in 1818, when Beresford was forced to go to Brazil to get money. Lisbon and Oporto rose ; the British officers were expelled ; and Beresford, on his hasty return, was refused a landing. A constitutional assembly was convoked, and in 1822 passed, under the auspices of the French party, a constitution embodying most of the principles of the French Revolution. All feudal privileges and the Inquisition were abolished ; and the sovereignty of the people was proclaimed and pro- vided for by a single-chamber legislature and a king with merely suspensory powers. It seems doubtful whether the French party could have got Portugal to digest so large a dose of democracy. There is no doubt at all that their attempt to restore Portuguese control over Brazil by a highly centralized form of colonial government would not have delayed Brazilian independence ; and the declara- tion of that independence in 1822 was probably due as much to this policy of theirs as to dynastic disputes.

In any case Young Portugal was not yet to be given the chance of realizing its ideals, for the European Govern- ments, including our own, were, by the compact known as the Holy Alliance, still making war against the ideas of the French Revolution. This instance of the danger of ill-considered international institutions is of so much interest to us now that it would be worth closer examina- tion than it can be given here. It must be enough to call attention to the promptitude with which the international ideal that gave the Alliance such popular sanction as it possessed, was ignored, arrd a pacifist institution thereby perverted into an instrument of oppression. The idea of

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the Holy Alliance was that of a league of peace, in which mandatories of Europe were to put down all disturbances. It is somewhat alarming to us to-day to see with what readiness the Governments of Great Britain and France, professedly as policing Europe but really as prolonging the war against the principles of the Revolution, undertook to put down by force reform movements in Portugal and Spain.

Intervention in the affairs of other peoples is generally harmful, and our well-meaning, muddlesome meddlings are always as bad as any. Our recipe for re-establishing a Portuguese governmental regime was the restoration of the Braganza dynasty as a constitutional monarchy based on the support of the English party and of the moderate middle class. But it was too late for this, for Portugal was already divided into two extreme camps of radicals and reactionaries, and it would have taken a strong king to have held them together ; whereas the House of Braganza was itself divided between the constitutionalists, John and his son Pedro, on the one side, and on the other the absolutists Carlotta and her son Miguel. Of these there was no doubt as to who was the better man. John, fat-bodied and feeble-minded, had no parts, and, so far as history records, only two passions — one for collecting Crown jewels and the other for wearing the same pair of trousers. Carlotta had a passion for power, and a strength of character com- moner among the great ladies of Spain than among the grandees. Like others of her type before her, she might by herself have dominated Portugal, but she was frustrated and stultified by the feebleness or folly of the men she had to work through and work for. Already in Brazil she had plotted to get an independent kingdom there

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for her son Miguel, taking sides then with the extreme radicals. But when the British Government forced John, much against his will, to return to Portugal to be king — such a British king as the Portuguese had no wish for — the boot with which he and the heir could be kicked off the throne was clearly on the other leg. So Carlotta and Miguel returned to Portugal with the king, but osten- tatiously refused to recognize the constitution. And as the able and honest heir, Pedro, had been left behind as Emperor of Brazil, this precious pair had a free hand. They lost no time in entrenching themselves in all the old citadels of reaction, and soon showed that they were too strong for a puppet king and a paper constitution. Their power behind the throne and above the law was known vulgarly as the ' mao occulta ', the hidden hand, a phrase which, like that .of ' liberal ', chosen by its opponents, has since had a chequered career.

But the reactionaries were not long in showing their hand and openly raising their standard of monarchy ' assoluto e fradesco ' — absolute and friararchical. In 1823 a pro- nunciamento in the extreme north proclaimed resistance to the constitution, and was acclaimed by the clergy and country gentry. The Lisbon mob had also been won over to absolutism, being dependent on the poor relief given by the religious orders and recalcitrant to all foreign ideas and institutions. Rising against the Government, the populace assassinated Louie, the king's liberal adviser, and insisted on the imprisonment of Palmella and other leaders of the coalition of pro-English and pro-French constitu- tionalists.

The Holy Alliance, however, was not going to let a mob have its way, even in the cause of reaction. John, who had

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taken refuge on a British warship in the hope of a passage to Brazil, was restored to the bosom of his people, and Miguel was banished. Then, having secured by their high- handed intervention a large measure of national support for Miguel, John was allowed to return to Brazil to die in peace. This he did, poor soul, in 1826, and Portugal was left to be governed by Palmella in the name of his daughter, Maria Isabella, as regent. By which dispensation of Pro- vidence, per pro Metternich, the affairs of Portugal became so involved as to defy detailed description. Briefly, the situation in 1826 was that a radical revolt under Villa Flor and Saldanha was driving before it a reactionary rising under Chaves, while the Government troops, nomi- nally constitutionalist, were supporting the absolutist Regent.

These disorders caused dismay and disgust to the associated rulers of Europe, who could not be expected to realize that they were in part the result of their own interference and in part the rude but effective manner in which Portugal was manufacturing an electorate out of ex-legionaries. Even in England, a land of settled government, the transition from a war footing to peace conditions lasted a quarter of a century and was by no means undisturbed. English conditions were only quantitatively, not qualitatively, different. But the situation was taken very seriously by the foreign patrons of Portugal, and to Canning the failure of the British constitutionalist party seemed to mean that Portugal was dissolving in anarchy and, what was worse, lapsing into de- pendence on France and Spain. So after some searchings of heart, characteristic of our diplomacy, as to whether there was a casus foederis and a moral cause for intervention in the internal affairs of an ally, he decided for action, and

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announced that he was going ' to plant the Standard of England on the heights of Lisbon — and that where that Standard was planted foreign dominion shall not come '. This was, perhaps, not the best way of getting Portugal out of the wood, altogether overplanted with the standard of England as it had been. But the restoration of order by force from outside was the obvious remedy, and Canning sent a division to garrison the fortresses while he negotiated a diplomatic accommodation between the rival parties. Miguel had succeeded in uniting in his own favour both the liberal and the conservative elements in the Holy Alliance by much hard swearing and soft speaking at Vienna. Pedro was accordingly got to renounce the throne of Portugal in favour of his daughter, Maria da Gloria, then a child of seven, while Miguel her uncle was to be Regent and marry her. In these domestic dispositions we can recognize the felicitous proficiency of Vienna in such affairs (tu felix Austria nube), while the less important task of remodelling the radical constitution to suit con- stitutional monarchism was left to London. As a hint perhaps to Portuguese liberals not to expect too much, the charter, as the new constitution was called, was sent out to Portugal in the charge of Lord Stewart de Rothesay, the ex-diplomatist-dictator.

Certainly, if London expected that Miguel would let a piece of sheepskin or a little girl in short frocks stand between him and the throne, they were mistaken. Miguel had swallowed the charter easily enough, but once back in Portugal he as easily threw it up again. In order to give his usurpation a colour of legality, he revived the ancient Cortes — -whose last meeting had been held in order to confer the succession on Philip III of Spain — and had

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himself crowned by this convention of nobles and clerics in -1828. He then repudiated all pledges and restored a clericalist absolutism.

This reaction was accepted by Wellington and the Tory cabinet as an expression of the popular will of Portugal, and the British garrisons were withdrawn, thereby removing the only restraint on Miguel. The constitutionalists had from the first anticipated that Metternich and Miguel had come to stay, and that Canning and his charter had not ; and any hopes they may have had of British support died when their appeals on behalf of Maria da Gloria to Welling- ton's Government were answered with the cynical advice that the little girl should be married as soon as possible to her reprobate uncle. Dissembling their disgust, the con- stitutionalists removed the queen from England to a place of safety, while some of the more courageous raised her flag at Oporto in May 1828. The forlorn hope might have had a fair chance of success had not the Tory Government stopped the dispatch of supplies from England and the departure of the English contingent. This so checked the spread of the rising that the Miguelites recovered from their panic and, after some hard fighting, mastered the revolt.

Thereafter, feeling relieved of any restraint, whether at home or abroad, Miguel's regime passed from reaction to a reign of terror. Having set up an absolutist Cortes in place of the legislature, he now set up a sort of absolutist inquisition, the ' Alcada ' tribunals, in place of the judi- cature. The ' Alcada ' of Oporto had as many as 8,247 persons at one time in prison awaiting examination ; some 30,000 persons were at one time imprisoned in Lisbon. More than 50,000 families in all, mostly middle class, were

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deprived of their property, and several hundred thousand were reduced to poverty by forced exactions. Finally* in March 1829, a series of political executions at Lisbon and at Oporto were followed by the deportation of thousands to destitution and death in Africa. So the final result of our well-meant meddlings was a government as bad as any that modern Europe has seen, and far worse than any that had ever been suffered in Portugal.

It is of course possible that the confusion of the Napoleonic epoch and the course of political events in Portugal might in any case have resulted in an ' apostolic absolutism ', such as that of Miguel ; but it could not possibly have been so bad but for the unhappy part played in Portuguese affairs by the British Government. The complacency with which our ruling class of that day contemplated the excesses of Miguel indicates that they had made the mistake, still common to this day, of favouring those forces which seemed most likely to impose a ' strong ' government on the country, whereas in all nations in general and in particular in nations like Portugal, the strength of a government lies in its passive acceptance by the public, and not in its own active self-assertion.

We, looking back over a century, see only that Miguel's apostolic absolutism, by right divine and the sanction of the Holy Alliance, was bastard, bigoted, and brutal, founded on cynical betrayals and breaches of every pledge, public and private. But that is not how Miguel appeared to our forefathers, those gallant gentlemen who had fought in, or at least paid for, the Portuguese campaigns. Here is the opinion of a country M.P., Sir William Wraxall, written a few years before this, and representing well enough to this day a too-prevalent point of view : ' The

Pombal and the Peninsular War 225

national character of the Portuguese, at once bigoted, sanguinary, and vindictive, demanded a severe govern- ment. They were neither to be reproved, enlightened, or coerced by gentle remedies.' No doubt, then, this good gentleman thought there was much to be said for Miguel and the remedies by which he coerced his ' sanguinary ' sub- jects, even though be did occasionally have an Englishman shot or imprisoned for weeks in barrack latrines. Then, too, Miguel was a sportsman in the technical sense of the term. His horses took quite a prominent part in politics. For instance, his breach with his mother, which ultimately ruined him, was caused by her killing, out of spite against England, a favourite black horse presented to him by the Prince Regent ; while two vicious piebald ponies which he drove at some danger and called Chartist and Constitu- tionalist, are said to have suggested the necessary popular opprobrious nickname for his opponents. It might have been difficult to club or stab a fellow citizen for being a ' liberal ', whereas it would be obviously proper to abolish by any means a ' malhado ', a ' spotted one '. Then also he was popular with the less educated upper class, whose privileges were restored by him — with the town rabble, who in the dearth after the war were dependent on the Religious Orders for relief — and with the peasantry, to whom he was just ' the king once more '. The famous ballad, ' Rey Chegou ' — the king once more — represented a real reaction of popular feeling towards what seemed to be a restoration of the old peaceable, if despotic, ancien regime. The ballad, which in its original form had, curiously enough, been composed by a Brazilian liberal to welcome John on his arrival, played a part in the Miguelite cause whose importance can with difficulty be explained

1832.5 n

226 Pombal and the Peninsular War

by anything either in the music or the words. Here is the

chorus :

The king once more,

The king once more,

in Belem

he's come ashore :

Malcontents

he has disgraced,

Monarchists

he has embraced.

and two of the many verses :

The Malcontents, they didn't want him —

Dom Miguel for General ; So you see now they have got him

crowned as king of Portugal.

' Mr. Malcontent, come here, Sir ;

Here 's a chair, Sir, pray sit down ; Cry " God save the King Dom Miguel " ;

If you don't, I '11 crack your crown.'

These simple, straightforward sentiments suggest a popular feeling, more effective, if less enlightened, than the literary laments of the exiled intelligenzia, such as, for instance :

I must fly the plague of Furies wherewith poor Portugal is smitten in happy cultivated Britain kindly shelter I may find, &c.

That was, indeed, about all that the poor constitutionalists did find in cultivated Britain so long as it remained under the Tory Government. Palmerston had pronounced for a spirited foreign policy, but, on the whole, public opinion had had enough of intervention in the internal affairs of Portugal. No matter that the confusion in Portugal was largely due to

Pombal and the Peninsular War 227

previous intervention and to a policy of sympathetic support of a bad government amounting almost to intervention. The middle class of Great Britain was sick of foreign affairs and war, and the sentiments of the upper class were well enough expressed by Winthrop Praed :

Let Portugal have rulers twain, let Greece get on with none, let Popery sink or swim in Spain, while we enjoy the fun . . . there was a time for borrowing, but now its time to pay ; a budget is a serious thing, so take the sword away.

It is well for us to realize the effect on European affairs of this mood of just a century ago, after the last great war ; for it is such a phase on which we ourselves are about to enter. We Europeans of to-day, even as our ancestors, by neglecting our responsibility for controlling foreign policy, allowed the affairs of nations to get so involved that war became the certain and sole solution ; and in the same way, after having had to settle these affairs at cruel cost, we shall resign their control with a sigh of relief to governments that will at once set about preparing another day of reckon- ing for our great-grandchildren.

The tyranny of Miguel would not have been so long endured as it was but for his elaborate espionage having made any conspiracy centring in Portugal impossible, and because of the fear lest any great activity of the exiles might cause the British Government to break their last link with liberalism and repudiate the claim of Maria da Gloria. As a test of the situation, the vessel conveying that young lady to Rio was sent into Falmouth, and

Q 2

228 Pombal and the Peninsular War

Portuguese liberalism breathed again as the harbour forts duly fired the royal salute. No less and no more significant was the blank cartridge discharged at Miguel by Palmerston in the debate on Portuguese affairs in June 1829.

The civilized world rings with execrations upon Miguel ; and yet this destroyer of constitutional freedom, this breaker of solemn oaths, this faithless usurper, this enslaver of his country, this trampler on public law, this attempter of the life of helpless women, is, in the opinion of Europe, mainly indebted for the success which has hitherto attended him to a belief industriously propagated by his partisans and not sufficiently refuted by any act of the British Govern- ment that the Cabinet of England look on his usurpation with no unfriendly eye.

The reverberations of these respective tributes to the sovereigns of Portugal had scarcely died away before there arose the uproar of another civil war. In 1829 Palmella, Villa Flor, and other leading constitutionalists, set up the standard of Maria da Gloria in the Azores which had throughout refused to recognize Miguel. The following year a Miguelite fleet attacked the islands and was duly repulsed. The re- conquest of Portugal would, however, have been a parlous task for a band of intellectuals, with no better base than islands in mid Atlantic. Their spirit was excellent, and their battle hymn, though less famous than ' Rey Chegou ', has the true ring :

While of us exiles one only remains the tyrant shall never be safe while he reigns. To arms then, oh Lusians, the bugle is blown, Maria the Second we '11 raise to .the throne.

All the same, it was just as well for the future of liberalism in Portugal that the cause now found outside support. The

Pombal and the Peninsular War 229

excellent Pedro, whose preference for being Emperor in Brazil had left Portugal kingless, and whose sanction of our diplomatic settlement in 1826 had placed Miguel on the throne, now decided that he must undo the harm done and take the field himself. He may, perhaps, have been influenced in taking his heroic decision by the difficulties he was having in governing Brazil as a constitutional monarch ; but all the same it was an act that atoned for the sufferings his house had inflicted on Portugal, and that appealed strongly to the sympathies of Europe. He gave the cause of the Portuguese liberals a sanction that secured them both royalist and radical support — when, leaving his throne to his infant son, he set sail for the Azores as leader of a forlorn hope and the last crusader king of Portugal.

It was, perhaps, also as well for Portugal that the direction of French policy had passed to the liberal regime of Louis Philippe and that of England from the Tories to the Whigs. Miguel was reduced abroad to old friends like Metter- nieh and the Morning Post, though in Portugal his power was still unshaken. An attempt to raise the country against him in February 1832 was suppressed with great severity, and it was obvious that a regular invasion was the only possible remedy. Pedro had been allowed to use Belle Isle as a base and to raise men and money in England, so that in July 1832 he was able to land at Oporto at the head of a considerable force — the ' Seven Thousand '. The force was none too large, and its effectiveness was reduced by disorganization, Saldanha, the best general and most influential liberal in Portugal, having been left behind in deference to Spanish intrigue. The liberal army was at once closely besieged by a Miguelite force ten times its num- ber, but held its lines without difficulty; and a prominent

230 Pombal and the Peninsular War

part was borne by the English volunteers in the siege — though blockade would perhaps be a better word, for the liberal forces soon established their superior fighting quality. The deadlock on land transferred the decision to the sea — on which Pedro was dependent for his communications. In October the Pedroite fleet, commanded by the Englishman Sartorius and manned largely by veteran tars of the great war, repulsed that of Miguel and reopened the estuary of the Douro. It was not, however, until July 1833 that the war again became one of movement, when Napier convoyed a liberal force under Villa Flor to the Algarves, and after- wards destroyed the Miguelite fleet in a spirited action. While Pedro held Miguel in the north, Villa Flor, marching swiftly from the south, occupied Lisbon. The Miguelites were forced slowly inland toward the Spanish frontier, while Pedro and Maria were proclaimed at Lisbon constitutional monarchs subject to the charter of 1826. The Constitu- tional Government was set going, its reconcilable opponents conciliated, and the Religious Orders, as irreconcilable, suppressed. Civil war continued, however, until May 1834, when Miguel, tired of campaigning in the country, com- pounded his claim to the throne for a handsome pension by the Convention of Evora Monte. Portugal was at last rid of Miguel, but ill-fortune had not finished with her yet; for in September 1834, m t -' le ^ rst stress of the work of reconstruction and of re-establishing the country in peace conditions, Pedro, worn out by the strain, fell into a decline and died.

Even in this land of strange contrasts and strong colouring there have been few more dramatic conflicts than this single combat between Pedro and Miguel — personalities curiously symbolizing their causes in their characters. In these two

Pombal and the Peninsular War 231

brothers the house of Braganza produced perhaps its very worst and possibly its very best king, both thoroughly Portuguese and the last really Portuguese kings of Portugal. For their successors in virtues as in vices took after their German progenitor. It is also curious that of these two Pedro should now be forgotten, whereas Miguel is still remembered and survives in a political party. The reason of course is that to-day all Portugal is Pedroite without knowing it, whereas no one can still be a Miguelite without every one else knowing it. Indeed the Republican Revolu- tion has tended rather to revive the allegiance of a small minority to the extreme reactionary principles of the Miguelite faction."

The loss of Pedro was a national calamity ; for a young queen in her teens as chief executive, while excellent in conditions such as those of early Victorian England, was quite inappropriate to those of Portugal. It required a strong personal power to persuade generals and colonels to become peaceable ministers and under-secretaries and to prevent them calling out the troops instead of canvassing the electorate. If in England with a professional army very small in proportion to the population, with a people long trained in the traditions of self-government, and with a Parlia- ment which had jealously resisted all military domination, the effects of the Napoleonic wars were still at this date disturbing factors in politics, the prospect of restoring peace conditions and constitutional politics seemed still remote in Portugal, where they had to be constructed de novo out of a nation in arms. When a two-party system again emerged it was on a broad division into moderates calling themselves ' chartists ' and corresponding to the old ' English party ', and into progressives calling themselves ' constitutionalists ' and

232 Pombal and the Peninsular War

connected with the old French party — with an unconsti- tutional opposition of absolutists in the background. But these terms are really rather misleading, for Charter and Constitution meant nothing more permanent than a political programme, as the parties still looked for support to cer- tain military leaders and sections of the army. Militarism in politics must always make either for autocracy or anarchy — and in Portugal affairs narrowly missed anarchy. If we consider the constitution alone we find that in 1836 a military pronunciamento replaced the liberal Charter of 1826 by the radical Constitution of 1822, which latter was then revised in a liberal sense and repromulgated in 1838. But in 1842 Cabral and General Villa Flor, the latter now Duke of Terceira, combined to restore the old Charter. In 1846 the Constitutionalists, or Septembrists as they were now called, returned to power by a coup d'etat of General Saldanha, and had hardly restored the Constitution before Cabral, with the Charter, replaced them again in 1849. In 185 1 Saldanha again recovered control by a coup d'etat, and brought with him the Constitution. But by that time, though on the surface of politics there seemed to be little improvement, there had been a social change. The old generation of Peninsular veterans was dying out and the new generation, which had acquired some political education, were weary of being endlessly whirled in the militarist maelstrom. The Charter, which had become very conservative, was restored, renamed the Constitution and revised in a radical sense ; and a further break with the past came when Maria da Gloria died in 1853.

With the rise of a new generation came the resurrection of the old democratic spirit. The education of the upper and middle classes in political procedure and systematic self-

Pombal and the Peninsular War 233

government was very rapid. We may trace it in the con- version of civil war, first into the military coup d'etat, and then into the ministerial crisis. When, in 1870, the aged and incorrigible General Saldanha attempted a coup-d'etat, he encountered only kindly contempt. But if the education of the commanders was quick, that of the rank and file has been slow. To this day the Portuguese peasantry are still mediaevally minded, while the proletariat tend to become more and more mass-minded. The peasantry are still feudal and the proletariat still factious ; though these disabilities, dating from a past chapter, are yielding slowly to the better conditions of the present day.

There are, of course, no chapters in the story of a nation ; but as we follow a nation's story we realize from time to time that we have turned a page or taken up a new volume. Such a feeling is strong as one passes from the history of Portugal in the first fifty years of the last century to that of the last fifty years. The change goes so much further and cuts so much deeper than that between any other two half-centuries since the seventeenth that we feel we are indeed beginning a new chapter.

In this new chapter we shall find Portugal recovering the ground it had lost owing to the French revolutionary wars and working out a national renascence. But its upward progress will be no more regular than before. For Portugal is of such special interest to the student just for this reason, that it exhibits in a small field easy to focus, and in a course of rapid recurrence, the general laws which govern the movements of the national bodies of our European civiliza- tion. It has already been said that the general effect of this movement in the case of Portugal is that, looked at from one point of view it seems just to go round and round. But

234 Pombal and the Peninsular War

if we look closer we shall see that the orbit is slowly narrow- ing and is all the time approaching a central point — an ulti- mate goal. Looked at from another point it seems merely to swing from side to side, from revolution into reaction through intervening stages of stagnation. But again looking closer we see that the pendulum-swings are getting shorter and quicker and that it is really oscillating onward. Could we look at it from all points of view at once, we should see probably that the true movement was in a spiral, and that along its ascending curve the nation was approaching that point in the far future where as a nation it will have fulfilled its function.

Young Portugal

Even as by winds the pine-tree cones are cast

upon the ground and scattered in the throwing, — and, one by one, down to the very last

their seeds upon the mountain sides are sowing. Even so, by storms of time, ideas are strown

little by little, though none see them fly, — and thus in all the fields of life are sown

the vast plantations of posterity.

Antero Quental.

We have seen Portugal during the eighteenth century in a sort of glacial epoch, and during the first half of the nineteenth century in such a thoroughgoing thaw brought on by the volcanic eruptions of the French Revolution, that the whole field of national life was flooded for a time by long-pent-up turbulent theories. As this flood drained down during the half-century of diminishing civil war it left behind it a waste, but a waste fertilized by a sediment of disintegrated political ideals and full of seeds of new political institutions.

The new epoch that followed was one in which all the growths were indeed developments of growths in the previous epoch, but showing differences due to reversion or variation. Regrown once more from seed instead of reproducing themselves on the same old stock, they either reverted to a primitive type or else evolved into a new species. Thus the old passion of loyalty and devotion to

236 Young Portugal

central authority that so long induced the Portuguese people "to suffer wrong from the Church and the Crown, did not die but developed a new form, one which seems likely before long to replace altogether the old belief in divine right and religious dogmas. The new ideal of the National Renaissance and of the Republican State is still young, but it has already proved effective in its action upon national vitality.

Again we have seen how in the days of dynastic diplomacy the lure of a marriage alliance with Spain was always seduc- ing the princes of Portugal into anti-national policies, and we now find that this ignis fatuus had in the nineteenth century, and still to some extent has, its counterpart in the Pan-Iberian ideal of a federated Iberian Republic. ' Iberi- anism ' was never popular in Portugal, and is not practical politics now ; for though the peninsula may some day become a federation of republics, such a development will involve as a condition precedent the disintegration of the State we now know as Spain, and the establishment as nations of such communities as those of the Basques, Catalans, and possibly Andalusians.

Again the old duel between European militarism and maritimism still keeps Portugal between the devil and the deep sea, and, while occasionally coquetting with the devil, in the end committing its fortunes to the deep sea ; but the centre of gravity and source of militarist aggression have shifted from Paris to Berlin. The entry of Germany as an economic and political element into all Portuguese problems is a marked feature of this new chapter.

As for the old internal duel between Old Portugal and Young Portugal, between conservatives and progressives, between clerical and class vested interests and the ideas of

Young Portugal 237

intellectuals, between privilege and the professions, between property and the proletariat, we find them all again in slightly modified form — landlordism with its consequence in excessive emigration, industrialism with its consequence in discontent and disorder, capitalism with its pursuit of anti- national policies. There is little difficulty in tracing any of the modern troubles of Portugal to its mediaeval source.

Even when the connexion is most far-fetched, and when it may seem fanciful at first sight, it will often prove helpful in conveying an idea of the nature and extent of the present evil and the lines along which it will probably be combated. For it is so much easier to realize the negligences and ignorances of our forefathers than it is those of ourselves.

For instance, a comparison of the burden imposed on the country under the clerical regime by the religious orders with that now inflicted on it for the support of a host of idle and interfering officials is helpful to our understanding. It helps us not only in recognizing the extent of the evil in Portugal, but in realizing the nature of that evil by comparing the Portuguese civil service with our own. Such a comparison suggests that whereas the British departmental temperament can rival in austerity and in authority the severer monastic orders, Cistercians or Dominicans, with some relaxation in favour of the more literary and leisured Benedictines, the Portuguese tradition favours the more human methods of the mendicants, such as pardoners, almoners, and friars. Let us not, however, pride ourselves too much on our superiority. For the Portuguese democracy recognizes the evil, and realizes that it is a dry-rot at the roots of individual liberty and of national life.

There are then two main sources of interest in present-

238 Young Portugal

day Portugal. The first is^ the extent to which the national ideals and institutions reproduce what is good in the moral forces and political forms of the past, and the second the extent to which these new ideals and institutions are succeeding in reducing the evils inherited from past conditions, and those inherent in the new circumstances of the present day.

If we deal in the first place with national ideals of present- day Portugal, leaving the national institutions to later,. we find that these ideals are to-day represented principally by the ideas of what we have already called Young Portugal — young, not because it is of recent date, for, as we have seen, this element has played a part in every period of Portu- guese history ; but because it seems generally to represent the new men, the young idea, a renascence, or at least a recrudescence of inspiration. As we have seen, Young Portugal has generally drawn its inspiration from France — as for instance the poetry of Provence that did so much for Portuguese culture in the Middle Ages, or the political theories of Paris that have done so much for Portuguese self-government.

Just as we have found it impossible to give an idea of Portugal in the past without giving more space than they intrinsically seem to deserve to the deeds and misdeeds of princes, and as when we come to deal with Portuguese institutions of the present day it will be impossible to ignore apparently unimportant altercations of political parties, so in dealing with Young Portugal we are forced to take account of the somewhat petty jealousies of rival literary schools. For such rivalries, in themselves ridiculous, represent real movements under the surface.

The lineal descendants of the Arcadians and of the

Young Portugal 239

Academicians of the Young Portugal of the eighteenth century had been the Romanticists and ultra-Romanticists of the first half of the nineteenth. The exiles brought back with them whole literary repertoires of the European Romantic school, chiefly of course as represented in France. From this basis Almeida Garrett succeeded in reviving the national theatre, and Alexander Herculano repeated the efforts of Young Portugal of the renascence of 1640 by producing a history constructed from real records and conceived in the best spirit of nationalism. But this was no more than mere intellectual industrialism, such remaking of foreign raw material as every nation carries on at every stage. There was as yet no popular inspiration or passionate conviction ; and the end of this romanticism was reaction. In Ca%tilho (1800-75) reaction took the form of a reversion to eighteenth-century classicism, and in Joao de Deus it found a truer and more attractive expression in a revival of the methods- of the Middle Ages. Castilho was little more than a cultured versifier like the Arcadians, but Joao de Deus was an inspired improvisatore like King Denis. Revolt- ing against all foreign fetters he returned to the simple speech of his own people and to their simple feeling. His was a perennial spring of pure poetry, and he allowed the stream of his verse to find its natural channel in popular imagery and the idiom of the people. The difference r between his poetry and the productions of the classicists is that between one of the living rivers of Portugal and an Italianesque ornamental water or a French canal. The clear stream of his inspiration flows on from its springs in the bed-rock of the national life through a sunlit country- side ; but its natural beauty is as devoid of national con- sciousness. It serves in its course none of the works of man

240 Young Portugal

nor turns any mills of God. For the national service of Joao de Deus was a service in its earliest, most elemental stage. He restored to the people of Portugal a sense of the beauty of their own speech and of their own simple life. He showed, too, once for all, that it was not necessary to be more than a poetic Portuguese in order to be a Portuguese poet, and that the classicists and romanticists who required a gradua- tion in some foreign school were, in so far, pedants and peddlers of foreign goods. But his nationalist mission stopped there, and he never attempted to give direct expres- sion to any of the passions or sufferings of his people as a whole, keen as they were in his time. Portugal at this opening of a new era was looking for a leader, but Joao de Deus was no priest, neither was he a prophet. His philosophy of life could be of little help to a generation that found life very real and earnest. According to him,

Life is this present hour :

Life is a cry aloud :

Life is a driving shower :

Life is a drifting cloud :

'Tis a dream that comes and goes,

that melts like summer snows

or a vapour, past recalling.

Life is a thing of naught,

'tis lighter than a thought,

of every wind the sport :

Life is a leaf that 's falling.

Life is a flower by a stream :

Life is a laughter light :

Life is a meteor gleam :

Life is a swallow flight :

'Tis one cloud that another races,

one wave that another chases,

Young Portugal 241

blown both upon one breath.

Life is a feather riven

from a wing stricken high in heaven,

from valley to valley driven

and borne on the winds to death.

We find therefore in Joao de Deus the poetic link between Old Portugal and Young Portugal. He revived in Young Portugal of the present day the soul of the Old Portugal of the day before yesterday ; but then, inasmuch as his was ' pure ' not ' applied ' poetry, his national and political importance was less than that of lesser poets who came later.

The next generation was that of the famous ' Coimbra School ', whose work stands in direct relation with the Portuguese Renascence and the Revolution of 1910. This movement began, like that of the Arcadians of the eighteenth century, as no more than a literary clique, and gave little promise of the national part it was to play in providing prophets of the Revolution and presidents of a new Republic. Its first public appearance is in the very year that has been chosen, for this and for other reasons, as the beginning of present-day Portugal, 1865. There then raged a wordy war between the Young Guard of the Coimbra School and the Old Guard of romanticists under Castilho, who had by then reverted to classicism. For six months the fight raged in the fiercest dialectic, relieved by less formidable duels. When it ended, the literary leadership of the country had passed finally into the hands of the Coimbra School.

This obscure and long-forgotten literary controversy had more importance than all the cabinet crises in the fifty years that followed, for by it the -intellectual direction of the educated electorate passed into the hands of a body

242 Young Portugal

of propagandists,. who used their position to the full with considerable skill and great persistence for the purpose of forcing reform on a recalcitrant Government. As it became clear that the governmental system was incapable of carry- ing reform, this extra-constitutional party, which had always had revolutionary tendencies, adopted a definite pro- gramme of Republicanism. As it grew in political power it passed almost imperceptibly from literary propaganda to political action ; just as its leaders, who began life as university professors, and who became revolutionary politicians, have ended as Presidents of the Republic.

Of these men the first in time was Antero de Quental (1842-91), whose unhappy life serves as a link between the futile self-sacrifices of the pioneers of liberty in the earliest struggles of Young Portugal and the fruition achieved by some of his contemporaries. Descended from one of the in-bred, bred-out aristocrat families of the Azores, and with a constitution weakened by early excesses, he never had the necessary stamina to stand the strain of his career, nor had he that unerring instinct of nationalism that might have come with a more plebeian and puritan stock to save him from some of the blind alleys into which he blundered. His poetry never freed itself in form from the influence of French romanticism, but when the Coimbrists were still young men, he reached his most revolutionary point of view, and became the acknowledged leader of the republican vision- aries. These young men were led to choose republicanism as the expression of their ideals partly because it was their appropriate and most practical expression, partly because of its existence in France, and of the experiment in Spain that had not as yet expired. It was the example of the Spanish Republic that caused Quental, with characteristic

Young Portugal 243

want of instinct, to let himself in for the logical but quite illusory corollary of the Pan-Iberian Union. He was led into this by a cosmopolitanism that was the result of his foreign culture, and by a pacificism that was intellectual rather than moral. It may be that a Pan-Iberian federation is one of the possibilities of the future, but it was clearly out of place as a programme at a time when the question was not as to whether Portuguese nationalism could come to terms with Spanish nationalism, but as to whether Portuguese nationalism could show vitality enough to justify its further independent existence. It says much for the poetic inspiration of Quental that his many attempts to give expression to this untrue poetic orientation are all failures. For instance :

There shall they recognize in each a brother,

those friends that have been kept apart long ages :

Then (new and strange event) they see each other, these nations, face to face, and neither rages

to tear the other's heart out. And, lo, there a protocol is read from great gold pages,

all written fair, with no word marred or missed,

by Love's own hand, — that great diplomatist.

In fact Quental did not show the political ability in affairs of other members of the Coimbra School, and it was as well that he early went into retirement in the country, from which he did not emerge until the catastrophic crisis of the British ultimatum, of the abortive Republican rising, and of the repudiation of the debt which marks the middle of our period in 1890-3. His admirers then put him at the head of the public protest against our high-handed pro- ceedings. This protest could do no more, and was perhaps not expected to do more, than give a safety-valve for a public

r 2

244 Young Portugal

opinion at high pressure. But its failure to obtain any satisfaction drove Antero de Quental to suicide. In his death as in his life he was symbolical of the Romanticist element in Young Portugal, and it is fortunate that the movement contained members of sterner stuff and sounder strain. As it was, the tragedy of Quental only throws into greater relief the triumph of his colleagues.

In Guerro Junqueiro we for the first time find the full expression, poetic and political, of Young Portugal of the present day. A disciple of Victor Hugo in more than mere form, for his attacks on the corruption and incompetence of the Royalist regime recall those of the great Romantic on the Second Empire, Guerro Junqueiro is none the less the poet of Portuguese nationalism par excellence. No better idea of the meaning and motives of the Young Portugal movement can be got than from his poems, and they will be freely drawn on for this purpose in the pages that follow. He was from the beginning of the reform movement accepted as its prophet, and like the Hebrew prophets, whom he so much resembles in character and career, no less than in countenance, his sceva indignatio against oppression is often vindictive and occasionally only vituperative. The poetic inspiration of his jeremiads only fails, however, when the feeling itself is forced, as in his bitter attacks on us in the years following the crisis of 1890. Wiser than Quental, he has taken no direct part in the political cam- paign, and the trumpet-blasts of his sonorous diatribes have been no longer heard since the walls of Jericho fell flat before them.

With Dr. Theophilo Braga we come to a personality in whom an unusual combination of qualities has produced an exceptional capacity for national service. He has him-

Young Portugal 245

self given poetic expression to the national ideals, as we noted at the end of the first chapter, but it is as a ' producer ' of the national literature of Portugal that he is best known, and his labours in collecting, editing, and publishing have opened a large part of the unexplored field of Portuguese literature and folk-lore to foreigners. It has always been the pride of Young Portugal that its mission has been not only to express the spirit of present-day Portugal, but to revive the spirit of Portugal of the past, and to recall to the world the half-forgotten glories of Portuguese art and literature. The work of Dr. Braga is perhaps the most important personal contribution to this patriotic task, and the recognition given to his work both at home and abroad has won him a position which he has more than once turned to good political account. Keeping away from the fighting line of politics, he has been available to fill a gap when all the political leaders themselves were for any reason hors de combat, as may always happen in the corps-a-corps of congressional conflicts. Thus he became President of the provisional Republican Government on the establishment of the Republic in 1910, and five years later was made interim President on the re-establishment of constitutional government after the coup d'etat.

Dr. Bernardino Machado, Premier of Portugal at the outbreak of war, and now President, was one of the younger members of the Coimbra School, and may be considered as their political leader. The movement, by the time he came to the front, had indeed become rather political than literary, and required a statesman and a man of the world to represent it in the new role upon which it was entering. The long training of Dr. Bernardino Machado as politician and plenipotentiary, the courage he has shown in such crises as

246 Young Portugal

that of the coup d'etat of 1915, his unfailing courtesy, and his unchallenged character, all combine to concentrate on him the confidence of a political community which is only too critical of its leaders. This has enabled him to serve his country as a centre round which the best elements could rally when it was realized that the national interest was being imperilled by faction. A master of that diplomacy of politics which alone makes government possible when party conflict has resulted in a deadlock, Dr. Bernardino Machado has steered the State through some perilous passages. His services as Premier and President may be considered as crowning the work of the Coimbra School and the first chapter of the Young Portugal movement. Thanks largely to him, we may hope, that the difficulties of the transition stage and of the establishment of a working system of party government will be successfully traversed.

Before leaving the Coimbra School we must note two other members of it whose careers led to a different conclusion. Oliveira Martins who, as a friend of Antero de Quental, had faced the trials of the first years of the movement, succumbed early in life to the temptations of the enemy. Involved as a Royalist in the meaningless maze of rotativist politics, his career lost all direction and his considerable driving-power now only survives in some excellent historical studies. On the other hand Dr. Arriaga, like Antero de Quental, of an aristocratic island family, professor of mathe- matics at Coimbra and of English at Lisbon, and one of the first avowed Republicans, carried his career of courageous national service consistently to its culmination in the Presidency of the Republic, 191 1-15. But the strain thrown on the chief executive by the European War, and the conflict it produced in Portugal itself, was too great for the capacities

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of the aged and humane President. He allowed himself to be led into anti-national and unconstitutional action, and, as will be recounted later, his tenure of office was prematurely closed.

So much, then, for the personalities of the Coimbra School, which gave Young Portugal its line of action and its leaders.

But just as these men who have been mentioned are only ,a part of the Coimbra School, so that body was only a por- tion of the Young Portugal movement. The careers of these presidents, like those of the princes of Old Portugal, only symbolize and illustrate the forces that were driving developments. In the same way we can judge of these forces by their effect on those who opposed them ; as we may estimate the ideals of Young Portugal from their operation on the institutions of the country.

Let us trace, then, first of all, the process by which the change in the form of government was brought about : — a change which converted a religious and a royalist people, that could suffer and even support enthusiastically the despot Miguel, into a rationalist and Republican electorate that revolted against the dilettante Don Carlos and his reforming dictator Franco.

Queen Maria, following good precedent, had been given a prince-consort from the German House of Saxe-Coburg Gotha. As king-consort, and after Maria's death in 1853 as regent for his son Pedro V, Ferdinand was in every way admirable. He was mildly artistic and not too immoderately architectural, and he kept himself clear of Portuguese politics. But he was a German with all the inadaptability and much of the intractability of that race. Thus the Portuguese Crown during this critical, because constructive, period was practically in abeyance, and the very virtues of the foreign trustee tended to depreciate the value of the

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trust. For the attitude of dignified detachment which certainly at this time strengthened the Crown with us, as certainly did not do so in the very different political con- ditions in Portugal.

With Ferdinand the Braganza dynasty had undergone a change, which, while it produced rulers of far better quality than the Braganzas of the eighteenth century, had deprived the Crown of much of its Portuguese tem- perament, and consequently of its touch with the people. A northern stock, and these men were Germans, when subjected to the forcing effect of the Portuguese climate flourishes generously, even grossly, for a time before it acclimatizes. A stock in which the strain of greatness is dominant will, as we have seen in the Anglo-Portuguese dynasty of Aviz, throw out under this forcing influence offshoots of great splendour, but any strain of grossness will also appear with equal emphasis.

Pedro V, a handsome and intelligent youth, became King in 1855 and promised well. Had he lived, the history of Portuguese politics might have been different ; but he sacrificed himself to his people, like his grandfather Pedro, by exposing himself to a cholera epidemic. He was succeeded by his brother Luis, a more teutonic type, and one on which the powerful stimulus of thePortuguese atmosphere had had a different effect. The loss of Pedro was, like that of his grandfather, a national calamity, and the accession of Luis — whose education, as a second son, had been neglected — was no less so. It was during the reign of Luis, 1861-89, that political movements and ideas in Portugal took a definite direction, a direction that was little controlled by the meaningless muddle of party politics, and in which the Crown was scarcely considered.

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With the accession of Carlos I, a king came to the throne who might have succeeded, had he come to power earlier, in establishing constitutional monarchy as an essential element in the Portuguese State. But it was too late for such qualities as Carlos possessed to recover the lost ground. The circles by which he was surrounded, and the circumstances to which he succeeded, were too great a handicap on his moderate abilities. While his affection for the picturesque and poetic element in the Portuguese nation might have made him a popular king in a country requiring less from its king than did Portugal, pressure drove him into attempting revolutionary reform in opposition to such popular repre- sentatives as the nation possessed, and sent him to a defeat that was at all times imminent and at last inevitable. His complete failure to appreciate the moral power of his people, and to aid them in their struggle to give that power political expression, soon forced him, in spite of his apprecia- tion of the picturesque side of Portuguese life and his affection for the peasantry, into bitter conflict with the national movement of the age. Cynical in his point of view and sensual in his pursuits, his was not the personality to concentrate in itself the energies and enthusiasms of the people in an intellectual and scientific age. Consequently his efforts to exercise control of affairs through a contemptible Court and a by no means incorruptible Cabinet were such as still further to demoralize and emasculate a government that was never equal to its task. At a time when the mainte- nance of national independence was menaced by a bank- ruptcy due to nothing but futile frittering away of the national resources, he set the worst of examples, being always in debt to the nation and not over-scrupulous in his transactions with the exchequer. It is true that he got

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a bad start, for the opening of his reign coincided with the complication of catastrophies from .1890 to 1893, and the twenty years of his reign all passed under the shadow of an impending tragedy that he had not the capacity to avert. It was, in fact, not long after his accession that Guerro Junqueiro predicted the end in a grim satire, very expressive of the formidable temper of the reform movement : —

The King is left to die — the King is dying : In the grim citadel no light is seen, no sound is heard, only the deep sea sighing and the low, passionate weeping of the Queen.

'Oh, who is that passing, my court popinjay ? ' ' Prince Simon, — Prince- Simon was hunting to-day.'

The King is dead — bells tolling — dirges droning— all Death's appalling pomp and awful show : From every stricken soul goes up a moaning, a measureless moan of misery and woe.

' Oh, who is that passing, my court popinjay ? ' ' King Simon, King Simon goes hunting to-day.'

Our Liberties are dead — dead is our State — dead black our night — there are no stars, no lights : Our deadly enemy grins at the gate- dishonoured are the graves of our dead knights.

' Oh, who is that passing, my court popinjay f ' ' King Simon — King Simon goes hunting to-day.'

Shots afar off — rebellion all ablaze !

a rising multitude comes rolling on —

a barrack bugle blows the Marseillaise —

a blast — a throne goes crashing and is gone.

' Oh, who are those passing down there, popinjay f ' ' The hunters — The hunters are hunting to-day one Simon, the huntsman.'

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As is always the case when the Government is a bad one, the mass of the people were poverty-stricken, while a class, and notably the Court, were plutocratic. The Court and, through it, the country were controlled by barons of finance, many of them German Jews, whose pilferings and plunderings were all too recent to be respectable. While this prostitution of the nobility had begun before the reign of Carlos, under him it became rampant, until the spirit of revolt against this ruling class was perhaps the strongest force in the reform movement. The Portuguese had suffered patiently the tyranny and stupidity of their landed gentry, but from the first resented the cupidity of foreign financiers. A rhymist of the early nineteenth century summarized public opinion thus :

Who steals pennies gets a year ;

who steals pounds is made a peer ;

who steals piles and isn't took,

from a Lord is made a Dook.

And the same indictment is brought against the ruling class and the Court of the late nineteenth century by Guerro Junqueiro :

Hungry, half clothed, no mother and no quarters,

I stole some clobber. Who 's that in uniform with stars and garters ?

— A robber !

All crimes in me, descendant of disgrace,

have had their vogue. Who 's that in the pink of fashion and pride of race ?

— A rogue !

Who ravishes, debauches, robs, and murders ?

Mammon Bashaw. — Who is that harlot singing to his orders ?

— The Law

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For the men whom the king delighted to honour were only too often those cosmopolitan concessionnaires or those too politic politicians who were looked on by the public as robbers and traitors.

The failure of the nobility and gentry of Portugal to fulfil their function as in our constitutional history, and act as trustees in the transfer of the sovereign power from the prince to the people, is due to such early differences of tradition as have been reviewed in the previous chapter — to their exclusion from education in governing themselves and others by the Church during the eighteenth century — to the shattering of the social structure by the Peninsular War and the civil wars in the first half of the nineteenth century — and to the failure of the Crown in the second half of that century in reconstituting and reconcentrating a nobility capable of governing. After the death of the great political landed proprietors that had as constitutionalist leaders governed the country during the troubled times, such as Palmella and Louie, and after they had been followed by the coup d'etat commanders who governed through the army, such as Saldanha, there were no personalities to take their place, and such as there were had no power other than that of popularity with the proletariat in the capital. The landed gentry showed no interest in public affairs further than in the retention or restoration of their properties and privileges, and the few exceptions fell early victims to the trials and temptations that beset them between a corrupt Court and the fickle crowd. On the other hand, the new parvenus were only fit for money making or money wasting. Both old and new nobility and gentry considered solely their class interest and took no account of the growing pressure from the country for reform. These financial and

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territorial interests believed that they had only to control the Court and to keep the Cortes from effective expression of the national will in order to continue indefinitely exploiting the national resources delivered over by bad government to their depredations. A strong Court could have dissociated itself from this conspiracy and a strong Cortes could have destroyed it. But Portugal had neither.

The Portuguese representative system, as constituted in a Cortes of two chambers, was during this period in its hobbledehoyhood. It was slowly adapting itself to its functions, but as yet scarcely capable of providing a respec- table executive, still less of producing a reforming legislature. The democratic ideal of government by responsible repre- sentatives subject to well-considered periodic revision by an educated electorate is an ideal that in States such as Portugal is not only still remote from practical possibility as in our own, but that cannot even be made a basis for working institutions. A nation of southern stock at the social stage of the Portuguese can be governed easily enough by a variety of combinations of political authority and of popular appeal, but a representative Chamber does not in itself contain the minimum of either. In the present stage of Portuguese opinion we shall find that the recent coup d'etat and closing of the Republican Congress by an anti-national pro-German clique caused as passionate a resentment as did the attempts of Spain to overthrow the House of Braganza after the revolution of 1640. But this was after the revo- lution, when the representative Chambers had clearly become as indispensable and integral an institution in the Republican regime as the Crown had been in the absolute monarchy of the first Braganza. Congress, under the stimulus of the Republican revolution, now makes its proper appeal, and

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will in time acquire its proper authority. But after the dying down and choking off of the popular impulse which had set up the constitutional monarchy the old Cortes fell like the Crown and the upper class into a period when it was propelled by no popular impulses and produced little or nothing to meet the popular demands.

This condition, when there is only enough steam to turn the wheels round, is the cause of ' rotativism ', the coming in and going out of office by mutual arrangement of persons and parties, without any consideration for the public interest or any connexion whatever with popular ideas. At first ' rotativism ' revolves solely under the influence of personal or party interest, but gradually, as the years pass, we find the influence of public opinion beginning to play a part. The party in power reluctantly relinquishes the spoils of office, not only because it can no longer hold together, but because it recognizes that the term of toleration it can count on is running out, and that it is in the interest of personalities concerned not to outrun that term. It accord- ingly goes into liquidation and a reconstruction or resignation brings in the other leaders. The majority is, of course, arranged by the party leaders and their local agents without difficulty at first. But as the influence of public opinion increases, and more steam comes into the machinery, this system can no longer be smoothly worked. There are recriminations over the way the game is being played, and refusals of the minority to play any'more. Therewith Con- gress and constitutional government enters a new phase, where development will depend generally on the extra- constitutional institutions that may have grown up in the meantime. British critics may shake their heads and contrast the stormy scenes and strained situations in the

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Congress with the sedater atmosphere, of the High Court of Parliament, but these scenes are really satisfactory signs of vitality, and show that the representative chamber is really becoming representative and is no longer merely ' rotative '.

But under the monarchy rotativism seemed likely to have a long reign, and in consequence the Cortes was quite useless even for dealing with the one really pressing political problem. This was no less than the question whether Portugal could pay its way as a nation. If it could not be made to do so, then obviously it could not hope even to maintain its position as a sovereign State, still less to make good its pretensions to be a world-empire.

It is not correct to trace all the muddles and miseries of Portugal during this period directly to the failure of the Government to balance its budget ; but indirectly they were all due to it to some extent, if only because nothing could be done by way of improvement until the budget was balanced and the deficit abolished. The annual deficit, growing merely by bad economy and extravagance, caused an annually accumulating load of floating debt on more and more onerous terms as the country's credit declined. It is the familiar story of the poor man and the money- lenders. In order to put down new security, everything was pawned, and in order to pay up the debt-charges, everything was taxed. To meet the tribute thus exacted from Portugal by foreign capital everything that could be sold abroad had to be exported — down to the very labour of the people. Indeed, as taxation and the cost of living rose, the impoverished peasantry of the small- holding class — the backbone of the nation — were practically sold into slavery in America. We shall deal later with the

256 Young Portugal

economics of this. Here we are only concerned with the political effect of a process which was obviously bleeding the country to death. As the population of Beira drained away to Brazil and Massachusetts, and the resources of the country and its colonies were drawn more and more into the clutches of the German Jews of Lisbon, resentment grew against the impotence of a Government that could not cut the evil at its root by economizing the few thousand contos required to balance the budget. Even to-day one can scarcely read the terrible denunciations of Guerro Junqueiro without anger at the contemptible incompetence that was the main cause of it all.

The land is poor, the children swarm,

our fields lack seed : Our cradles fill,— a double harm : God sends a drought upon the farm

and a mouth to feed.

The kine are lost, the crop is lost,

lost all delight : Burnt up by sun, cut down by frost : At the door stands the famine ghost,

by day and night.

The bells are tolled, the bells are tolled —

Ill-omened ringing : We bury young, we bury old — the bells are tolled, the bells are tolled —

The grave-digger is singing.

The sexton chants, the clerk intones

the funeral staves. Poor men sleep sound beneath their stones ; There are soft beds for weary bones

in quiet graves.

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There go the emigrants in troops :

Look, look, they're starting ! Wailing along the streets, in groups upon the quays, crowding the poops

of ships departing.

Driven o'er the deep sea, unresistant,

from lands and loves — oh, pitiless ! —

to distant countries, — countries, Christ, how distant !

Is it for ever ? Say, oh surf insistent ! Ah yes, ah yes.

The vine is dead, nor shall bear grapes again : The old-time villagers die off and go : The cottage walls are swept by wind and rain, the roof trees fall — widows and waifs remain. Want, waste, and woe !

The politics of the quarter-century, 1865-90, leading up to the catastrophe can be treated briefly. Even the party names are unimportant except as showing that it was soon recognized that the Portuguese people would insist on a ' Liberal ' label. Since the original ' Progresistas ' and ' Regeneradors ', representing more or less Liberals and Conservatives, almost every word suggesting reform or pro- gress has been appropriated at one time or another by some group of politicians. But such party labels were remote from the realities which, it must be repeated, were at this time to be found only in finance and foreign politics.

It was obvious from the first that the Government had not enough authority to deal with finance. Thus in 1868 a Progresista ministry, under Aguiar, is forced by the accumulating deficits to pass new revenues and retrench- ments ; but public disorders break out and the ministry falls. His successor, d'Avila, proposes the repeal of these

1832-5 s

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measures, but the Cortes sustain them, and are therefore then dissolved by the Crown, which suspends the new taxation by administrative order. The new ' Cortes ' not only approve but repeat the new proposals for raising money, and as the king refuses another dissolution, d'Avila's reforming ministry goes too.

Then in 1870 came the belated and meaningless coup d'etat of the senile Saldanha, and after that a term of Re- generador ministries, ending with that of Fontes Pereira de Melho, who attempted mild financial reforms, but without any solid success, and made way for the Progresistas. They never got a chance of dealing with finance, because the African colonial questions held the field. The treaty of March 23, 1881, with Great Britain regulating transit relations between Mozambique and the interior caused public disorders, and after various Progresista ministries, the return of the Regeneradors. They at once found them- selves occupied with the settlement of Portuguese claims to the Congo, but none the less Fontes de Melho again attempted financial reform, and resigned on its rejection by the Cortes (February 1886). The following Progresista ministry had to deal with Germany's claims in Africa, and in 1890, the year after the accession of Carlos, they fell before the fury of indignation excited in the country by Lord Salisbury's ultimatum, calling on Portugal to evacuate the Makololo country, where an expedition was operating under the popular explorer, Major Serpa Pinto. The question was settled the following year by a treaty in which the disputed territory and other choses in action were divided fairly enough ; but the weakness of the whole governmental system of Portugal had been exposed.

We have now reached the middle of our period, 1865 to

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1914, and our attention is claimed by the events of the five years 1889-93. This was the nadir of the national fortunes ; and after this the next twenty years will begin to show signs of recovery — imperceptibly slow for the first ten years, because altogether subterraneous, incredibly swift in the last five, when it was all on the surface. For the catastrophes of the early nineties were indeed comprehensive and condign enough to serve as the turning-point of any national Rake's Progress.

In 1889 King Carlos had succeeded his father and taken over command of a position that was rapidly becoming politically untenable. Events gave him little time to con- solidate his defence or acquire the confidence of his people. For such improvement in the prestige of the monarchy as was inseparable from the accession of a young and promising prince was counteracted by the British ultimatum and by the declaration of a Republic in Brazil. Until an equilibrium could be brought about between current revenue and current expenditure, not only was no national renascence possible but the integrity of the national possessions over- seas was put in question, and even the nation's independence was prejudiced. Obviously it could not claim to exclude the great economic empires from the undeveloped areas of Africa, when its own petty Portuguese resources were being annually pawned to foreign financiers to pay for its current budgetary expenditure. Portugal seemed rather in a fair way to find the fate of Persia, since the control of public utilities and national resources was rapidly passing into the hands of foreign financial cliques, and the power these were thereby acquiring was beginning to make itself felt in the national administration and legislation. Nor could it count on its ancient ally in this juncture, for until a settle-

s 2

260 Young Portugal

ment could be arrived at between the traditional title de jure of Portugal to immense tracts of African territory and the de facto claims to them acquired by the all-conquer- ing capitalist centres, London and Berlin, there could be no stability in the international position of Portugal ; and the Anglo-Portuguese Alliance, the foundation of its foreign policy, was being perpetually exposed to constant strain and such occasional shocks as that of Lord Salisbury's ultimatum. It mattered little that the motive of our Government was possibly not careless contempt for all comity or even courtesy towards a weaker nation, but a wish to prevent the often preposterous imperial pretensions of Portugal from prejudicing its international position and its further internal prosperity. The effect on the Portuguese people was just the same even though the slap in the face may have been well meant. Certainly the first resentment was followed by a wholesome reaction, and Portugal, that impecunious im- perialist, realized that it was peacocking in borrowed plumes.

Yea, seeing thee, Portugal, I mourn thy lot. How the great Lion of the Occident has lost his claws, and is as he were not. Nor do I mourn that most, 'tis painfullest to see thy Lion's mane omnipotent decayed and dwindled to a peacock's crest.

So had written Antero de Quental some years before. The new mood was one of grim determination so to set its house in order at home as to secure respect abroad ; and incidentally, as England was too strong to retaliate upon, to make reprisals against the English party in Portugal, that is to say, against the Crown.

It is difficult for self-satisfied and self-possessed people, such as ourselves, to understand the frenzied searchings of

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heart into which Young Portugal was cast by our casual • insolence. Undoubtedly, should we ever be so ill-advised as to behave thus to the Portuguese Republic, we shall have war declared on us. On this occasion the effect of our action was good in the end, though Lord Salisbury and our Conservative Government might not have considered it so, had they known what it would be, for we definitely launched the forces of reform in Portugal into Republicanism.

The indignant imperialism of Young Portugal was really injured nationalism. Not only they but the whole in- telligentsia realized that the government by royalist and rotativist interests had reduced Portugal from being an imperial power that could treat with other empires on an equal footing to becoming a petty principality that could not even count on the ordinary courtesies of international intercourse, but must take orders like a protectorate. If the Portuguese Crown could not get common courtesy from its . ancient ally, how could it count on the respect of its subjects ; how could it be considered worth its not inconsiderable contribution to the pecuniary embarrassment of the country ; how could it even be trusted not to sell the nation's colonies, as it had other national resources, in order to relieve its own pecuniary difficulties ?

The accusation of treason now raised against the king and his cabinets for their concessions to British and German claims in Africa was obviously unfair in itself, for no executive in the circumstances could have done otherwise ; but, then, none but a very weak and wasteful executive would have got into those circumstances. The Government found themselves forced to defend their weak colonial and foreign policy by minimizing the value of the colonies to Portugal, and thereby gave the Republicans the vantage-point of

262 Young Portugal

taking their stand in defence of the empire, its possessions and ideals. While it is possible that the king and his advisers . were mainly right in thinking, if they did so think, that the African colonies were not essential to the prosperity of Portugal — and while perhaps the Republicans were morally wrong in making the issue a ground for truculent attacks and accusations of treason, yet by the time the question of the sale of the colonies became actual the Republican rising of 1 89 1 had made the internal situation one of suppressed civil war- — and a la guerre comme a la guerre.

The effect of the ultimatum in weakening the monarchy was combined with a strengthening of the Republican movement by the fall of the Emperor of Brazil, and this from no personal fault or political defeat of the constitu- tional monarchy, but from a preference for the Republican principle. The relation of Brazil to Portugal is even more intimate than of the United States to the United Kingdom, and whereas Portugal is, economically speaking, already to a large extent an annex^ of Brazil, in matters of the mind Brazil is still to a large extent in the debt of Portugal. The establishment of republicanism in this vastly more pros- perous and populous Portuguese community overseas — a community that had no such cause for complaint against the results of its constitutional monarchy as had the mother country, made Portuguese republicanism at once a practical possibility. Republicanism was no longer a mere protestant principle and a profession of an unknown faith, but a, political programme and a procedure for reform. Just as^the Ameri- can Revolution contributed to our national liberties at the cost of our imperial possessions, so the collapse of a Portuguese Empire in South Africa and the conversion of a Portuguese Empire into a Republic in South America gave a moral

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stimulus and a political status to republicanism and reform in Portugal.

The debut of revolutionary republicanism was indeed insignificant enough. The republicans had still to learn that mere popular discontent with the powers that be and public approval of the principles of the opposition, are not enough to secure support for armed insurrection. Carlos, on his accession, had described his kingdom as a monarchy with no monarchists ; but when the republic was proclaimed at Oporto, January 31, 1891, it was a republic with no repub- licans. There was no sign of that simultaneous shout of acclamation that alone can make unorganized usurpation of power successful. The ease with which the rising was isolated and suppressed taught the republicans that to gain power they must rely on their own resources ; and that they should have either proceeded by peaceful penetration of the constitutional system until they had got hold of the reins and had the whip hand of the interests opposed to them, or should have organized an extra constitutional force sufficient to carry through a revolution. For the moment they had done no more than close against themselves for a time the avenue of constitutional action, while they had considerably aggravated the pitiable position of their country.

Close on this abortive revolution followed the last blow — financial repudiation. The failure of all attempts to restore the country's credit by regulating its finances had made this inevitable, but the shock, when it came, was none the less severe. We shall return to this repudiation later in its financial and economic aspects, and we have only to deal here with the effect of it in stripping the last rags of public respect from the existing regime and in the prospect it

264 Young Portugal

opened up of a foreign financial control being imposed on Portugal. While this last indignity was in the end so mitigated as to amount to little, the diplomatic struggle to avoid it and to deal with the dictatorial demands of foreign governments dragged on for years, and was an open sore to a people so keenly sensitive as are the Portuguese to their position before Europe.

For some time after this complicated catastrophe, to all outward appearances there was no change in Portuguese affairs. There was no improvement in its international position, and internal politics continued to ' rotate ' as ineffectively as before. But below the surface forces were now at work that on both sides were bound to lead either to revolution and a national renascence or to reaction and repression by anti-national foreign force.

A few words are all that the outward events on the surface are worth during this decade of suppressed and subterranean action from 1896 to 1906.

The ministry of Diaz Ferreira had tried to stave off repudiation by passing a measure for reducing salaries, including the civil list, and for raising taxation. Repudia- tion being none the less inevitable, this ministry fell ; while that of Hintze Ribeiro succeeded in effecting some econo- mies by reducing the army and thereby in pacifying some- what Portugal's creditors. But his comprehensive scheme for financial reform was successfully resisted by the capitalist and class interests it attacked, and he had to ask for a disso- lution in 1894. He was returned with a majority ; but even with this direct mandate in favour of his programme: he could do nothing, and gave way to a Progresista. ministry under Luciano de Castro in 1897. ^ e a l 80 failed in his attempt to regulate the budget, and thereafter it was clear

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to all that the constitutional system was powerless to deal with the class interests that were ruining the country.

Thereafter the Regenera dores and Progresistas continued to rotate, re infecta, though their regime was drawing to a close. The two constitutional parties which alternated in office were not so constituted as to be representative of the real political movements in Portugal or even of public opinion. Opinion originated in the towns, especially Lisbon — whereas the political machines of both Progresistas and Regeneradores relied for such support as was required on the ' bosses ' of the country towns, on the local magnates and municipal leaders, and on the clergy. Into this old bottle was now poured the new wine of the bitter radicalism and excitable nationalism of the urban professional class and proletariat. The governmental system might have stood the strain in a country requiring no very radical and urgent reforms ; but under pressure of political conditions in Portugal the two- party system rapidly broke up into a frenzy of faction. The parties had failed because they could not overcome the vis inertiae of vested interests ; the factions that followed failed because they dissipated their driving power in friction with each other.

Meantime if the reform movement could not force the government into financial reformation it could at least retard it in its road to ruin. One of the most costly methods of raising money had been that of pawning national revenues and resources to the German Jews of Lisbon. An especially insidious instance of this was the tobacco monopoly ; and the resistance raised against it for years by both Royalist and Republican reformers represented the principal appearance of that new force and feeling in politics which was to make rotativism impossible and revolution inevitable.

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In March 1906 Luciano de Castro and his Progresistas made way for the last time to Hintze Ribeiro and the Regeneradores ; but in vain, for the latter followed him into retirement in a few months. The solidarity of both parties had in fact broken up, a ' dissident ' faction under Jose Maria Alpoim detaching itself from the former, and another under Joao Franco from the latter. An even more ominous sign of the times was the election of Republicans by the populace of Lisbon and Oporto. The election of Dr. Bernardino Machado, the present President of the Republic, as Republi- can deputy for Lisbon was made the occasion of a Republican demonstration, and the instantaneous collapse of the Government as a result of somewhat severe repression by the executive of the demonstrations, showed how thin was the coating of constitutionalism covering the rising revo- lutionary and reactionary forces.

It is evident that about this time also King Carlos defi- nitely decided for or was drawn into a reactionary and unconstitutional policy. He can scarcely be criticized for this ; and the courage of his decision, if it was his, does him credit. For the system of constitutional monarchy had shown itself up to that point quite incapable of dealing with the national difficulties, and the inference was obvious that either the Constitution or the Crown had to go. He could not be expected to realize that the new factious' phase of politics, which for the time made the Constitution less effective for reform than ever, was a blowing off steam. If the new steam could have been turned into the old machinery all might yet have been well. Had he done nothing he would have had a few more years of power, and then a peaceable revo- lution, such as that of Brazil, would have pensioned him? §ff into the amenities of an English exile. But he was probably

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persuaded that he could carry through the indispensable re- forms if the constitutional obstacles to progress were, suspended for a time. Or failing such success, that the support of the aristocracy would retain in their loyalty the bulk of the army officers, while support from the plutocracy representing, as it already did, the resources of German financial, or even political assistance, would enable him to drive the Republican profes- sional class and urban proletariat into open and premature revolt such as could be crushed by armed force. The calcula- tion was correct enough in some respects. It was clear, for instance, that if the constitutional monarchy could not work with the rotativist and Royalist Cortes, it certainly could not do so with the Cortes without a party system containing a Republican element, and that the Crown must either enforce reforms dictatorially or suppress revolution drastically if the monarchy was to be saved. It was also clear that if the Republicans had no more actual force behind them than they had in 1 891, and no other programme than that of consti- tutional action, that this policy of unconstitutional reaction in the name of reform would undoubtedly defeat them — in the worst event, at the price of some further concessions to German 'pacific penetration'. But one mistake he made was in considering that Germany would do anything to secure a strong government in Portugal, seeing that however profitable and promising the new economic domination of Portugal by Germany might be, the collapse of the tottering Portuguese colonial empire that must come with the continuance of the struggle between rotativist Royalism and revolutionary Republicanism offered German ambitions for expansion a far more attractive prospect. Another and a worse mistake was in believing that he could unite his Royalist adherents in support of an unconstitutional regime

268 Young Portugal

that would effect those very reforms at the expense of the privileges and profits of the propertied class that they had so successfully blocked by constitutional political intrigue.

A third mistake was in believing that he was again opposed mainly by a few professors and their pupils, as in 1 89 1, and in thinking that the Republicans, whose prominent leaders had apparently preferred constitutional action by appearing in the Cortes, were still quite unprepared for revolution.

After the failure of 1891, while the Republican campaign outwardly pursued a constitutional course in literary propa- ganda and appeals to the electorate, its main force had taken an extra-constitutional channel. The Republicans had recog- nized long before the Royalists that reform could only be reached through revolution ; indeed their Republicanism was itself largely a result of that realization. Their collapse in 1891 had shown them to be, in so far as revolution was concerned, merely a party of leaders with no rank and file. Accordingly like all other revolutions, and especially like that of the Young Turks which this one resembled in many essentials, they pro- ceeded to build up the body of a revolutionary force round the dry bones of dead secret societies. Various forms of freemasonry had been used by Young Portugal in the days when all free thought was driven underground ; and the tradition, and to some extent the organization, of these had survived a generation of free speech and the franchise. One of these societies — the Carbonaria — had been founded in 1823 in imitation of the Italian organization, had been revived again in 1848, and being the lowest of the secret organizations had been least affected by a constitutional system which left disfranchised the eighty per cent, or so of illiterates. It was this Carbonaria organization that the Republicans converted after 1891 into as efficient an instru-

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ment for revolution as was that of the Committee of Union and Progress that the Young Turks were even then con- structing at Salonica. The object was the same in both cases : to control a sufficient proportion of the proletariat of the two principal towns and a sufficient majority of the non-commissioned officers to secure the effective action of the mob, the navy, and certain corps, and the passive neutrality of the bulk of the army. By 1906 the existence of this Republican organization was known ; but its real strength was probably underestimated, because it obviously realized that it was not yet ready for offensive action.

In May 1906 the reply of the Royalists to the election of Dr. Bernardino Machado was a repartee in kind. The king sent for the ' dissident ' Joao Franco, who had made himself head of a faction he called regenerador-liberal, and who was openly acclaimed by both the king and the upper class as the ' strong man ' who was to ' save the situation '. In August the Republicans retorted by electing four more of their leaders, including their two principal fighting men, Dr. Affonso Costa and Dr. A. J. de Almeida, the former notorious as the chieftain of the Carbonaria and the latter a hero of 189 1. These things being so, the end of the constitutional monarchy came in May 1907, when, Joao Franco having lost his majority, the king dissolved the Cortes, and it was recognized that the constitution was to be suspended and the country was to be governed by a dictator- ship.

The justification of illegality, whether public or private, is its success. Those who welcomed the initial success of the Royalist dictatorship, and they were at one time a very great majority of the English interested in Portugal, fell into their usual mistake of accepting as a ' strong ' government

270 Young Portugal

a government driven to take strong action ; and failed to see that, sound sportsman as was King Carlos, and strong man as was Joao Franco, there was no health or strength in their joint regime. It is not even necessary to consider whether these two could have coerced or cajoled Republicanism, because they never even succeeded in controlling Royalism. The condition precedent of success was that they should bring the class interests into line in acceptance of such reforms as should deprive Republicanism of its vantage points. Neither Joao Franco, a somewhat sinister personality, of no public or private standing and with few personal qualifications other than courage and consistency, nor the no less courageous and cynical King Carlos himself, could rally the Royalist ranks into voluntary renunciation of anything. The dic- tatorship set valiantly to work enforcing economies, most of them well advised — one or two ill advised, such as the in- crease of the civil list in substitution for irregular ' advances '. But not only was every economy resisted by Royalists and Republicans alike, but the resistance increased as it became evident that some results were being realized. After the deficit showed a distinct decrease, the dictatorship, that had never been intended to be more than a suspension of a much under-used franchise, was forced into a suppression of a much- abused freedom of speech. The suspension from publication of the leading organs of the various Royalist factions, as well as the Republican Mundo, showed that the dictatorship was in defiance of all forms of Portuguese public opinion. ■ -'- No doubt the dual opposition to the reforming dictatorship was largely actuated by motives deserving the diatribes^ in the foreign press against such opposition. If the-Royalis-ts had rallied to their king, if the revolutionary Republicans had rallied to a revolutionary reformer, if the people' -'of

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Portugal had rallied to a patriotic Portuguese, the odium and onus of the events that followed might have been avoided. - But the opposition was not all mere self-interest, either of privilege and property, or of parties and persons. The growing tradition of respect for constitutional forms and the gradual transfer of the ideal of loyalty from the prince to the nation have already been noticed. The resistance to the dictatorship was inspired by resentment at the usurpation of a prince whose record gave him no right to represent the nation and of a politician whose reputation had not even earned for him public respect.

But so long as the army and the police obeyed orders and the navy remained passive the dictatorship could carry on for a time without public support, and might even count on crippling the many-headed opposition by cutting off some of its heads. The step from the closing of a Chamber to a coup d'etat is as inevitable as that from a coup d'etat to a civil war. Accordingly, in January 1908, the dictatorship struck its blow, and, on an accusation of conspiracy against the person of Franco, arrested first two Republican journalists, Joao Chagas and Franca Borges, and a week later the Republican deputies Almeida and Affonzo Costa, the chiefs of the Carbonaria. Riots at once followed in Lisbon and were promptly repressed with some loss of life. The next step was obviously that suspension of the personal guarantees of the individual which must follow the suspension of the con- stitutional guarantees of the community. A decree of the 31st of January suspended the ordinary judicial procedure in respect of the accused Republicans, and appointed a special tribunal for their trial, also giving the Executive power in any case to banish them. This was generally and probably correctly read as a revivalof the deportations to Africa that

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Miguel had used against the constitutionalists with such deadly effect.

The response of the Carbonaria to this attack on the persons of the elected of the people was a repartee in kind such as might have been anticipated, but clearly was not. A few days later, on King Carlos arriving in Lisbon from a country seat south of the Tagus, it was inferred in order to sign the decree of deportation, as he drove with the queen and the two princes, Luis and Manoel, out of Black Horse Square on his way to the palace, he and the heir, Prince Luis, were shot dead by three bystanders, Prince Manoel being slightly wounded. Of the three assassins, all Carbonarios, two were killed on the spot ; the third escaped, and eventually got to Brazil.

It is difficult to deal with so recent and ruthless a crime as this with historical detachment, especially in respect of the murder of Luis, a boy of great promise, who had, of course, played no part in the political conflict that cost him his life. But such detachment is indispensable if we are to have a correct idea of an occurrence which, however repellant, was but a logical link in a chain of events. Though the assassination undoubtedly came as a shock both to the Royalists, who should have prepared against it, and to the ' constitutional ' Republicans, who would willingly have prevented it, yet Portuguese public opinion was probably right in treating it from a political rather than from a moral standpoint. To us abroad, ignorant of the duel to the death that had been engaged in between the representatives of reaction and revolution, and of the Portuguese point of view as to deaths caused by such public duels, the absence of any public reaction against the perpetrators of the crime and of any sustained repudiation of it by the Republicans

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as a whole, convicted not only the whole of Young Portugal as accomplice to the crime, but the whole nation itself as condoning it. In a word, it lost to the Portuguese renascence the sympathy and support of its only ally at a time when the Anglo-Portuguese alliance was more than ever indis- pensable to the independence of Portugal and the integrity of its possessions. We simply added regicide to repudia- tion as another count in the indictment already drawn up by our public opinion against Portugal.

Fortunately there is as yet no bar of a world parliament before which peccant peoples can be summoned, or it would have gone hard with the Portuguese in 1908. On the ground that both parties were equally responsible for the resort to violence, no one would at that time have listened to a defence of homicide, nor could they then have argued in extenuation, as they can now, that the duel and its fatal issue was really a civil war, which brought about reforms that constitutional controversies had failed to effect. For, with the death of the king, not only did the dictatorship disappear, but the direction of affairs was thrown, after a very short interregnum, into the hands of those who alone could provide the moral, mental, and material force to restore the fortunes of Portugal. While on the one hand the assassination may only have anticipated that result at a price in national prestige that was excessive, yet on the other, if Carlos had succeeded as did Miguel in his reaction, it might have resulted in a quarter of a century of general civil war, open or suppressed. Whereas, therefore, European opinion at the time returned a verdict of wilful murder against the Portuguese Republicans, the judgement in the appeal court of history will probably be that it is well that all they who take the sword should perish by it,

1832.5 -,

274 Young Portugal

especially if they be princes ; and that the most important consideration in the death of a prince, whatever the circum- stances, is whether it is to the detriment or no of his people.

Evidence that the assassination of Carlos was unpre- meditated and not part of the revolutionary programme appears in the fact that the Republican organization was obviously caught by the crisis unprepared to exploit it. It is true that reasons of policy might have dictated post- ponement of the proclamation of the Republic to a more auspicious inauguration, but the real reason why King Manoel was allowed a peaceful and undisputed accession was that the Republicans were not ready. Events had moved too swiftly for them and they still had to consolidate on their side the mass of moderate opinion in Lisbon that would adhere to whichever was evidently the winning side, and to convert the majority in the garrisons and guardships to their cause.

It was, however, only a question of time before the Republic was proclaimed, for with the failure of the Royalist reform movement, the death of King Carlos, and the dis- missal of the dictator Franco by the queen, there was nothing opposing a Republican regime but civil vis inertiae and the tradition of loyalty to the sovereign in the army and navy. The constitutional monarchy, now more con- stitutional and less of a monarchy than ever, could offer the nation nothing but empty promises. The Cortes at once relapsed into the frenzy of faction that has nullified its functions ever since the end of the old routine rotativism, in 1906. No faction had any public force behind it, and no coalition of factions had any consistency, so that ministries followed one another at intervals of one or two months, or

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even weeks. The young king, a boy of eighteen, in no way mentally precocious, was kept as much as possible in the palace by his mother. The queen, whose piety and philan- thropy had never won her any popularity, was suspected of being in the hands of the Jesuits, those traditional traducers of Portuguese national liberties. Indeed, the principal political contribution of the Court of Manoel to the crisis was to put the king's opponents in a position to raise an effective anti-clerical agitation. King Carlos had been clever enough to keep the Crown clear of accusations of clericalism, though his court was ultramontane. No worse mistake could have been made at this juncture than the measure that was now introduced asserting the control of the bishops over the appointment of teachers, or the sup- pression that was now enforced of a Lisbon periodical, under orders from the Pope. On the other hand, no attempt was made to interfere with the Republicans, and they were content to bide their time.

But the respite given to the Crown was no long one. In the autumn of 1910 a ministry under Teixeira da Sousa had been in power since June, the seventh ministry in eighteen months, and the elections held in August had returned 89 Ministerialists, 41 Royalist opposition, and 14 Republican opposition. On September 23 King Manoel opened Parliament with a programme of reforms which left little to be desired other than some prospect of their being realized ; and he later attended a review at Busaco on the anniversary of Wellington's battle, where he was fairly well received by the army. But one political assassina- tion to the account of the Republicans had given a coup de jarrette to the hope of the monarchy, and another to the account of the Royalists was to give it the coup de grace.

t 2

276 Young Portugal

On October 3 Dr. Bombarda, a recent recruit to Repub- licanism from Royalism, was assassinated by a half-witted fanatic. The Republicans had by this time won over the greater part of official and industrial Lisbon, the guardships, and the Marines, together with the First Artillery and 16th Infantry Regiments of the garrison ; so the fighting section decided for immediate action. The course of the Revolution, however, suggests that there was more improvization on both sides than might have been expected in an event so long prepared for.

The insurrection was started that same day under the command of Admiral Candido dos Reis and, meeting with more opposition than had been expected, was that evening assumed to have failed. The admiral, in despair at the supposed disaster, committed suicide that same night, and several of the political leaders went into hiding. But the gunboats in the river having thrown a few shells in the course of the night over the palace, the young king, deserted by his advisers, who on their part had assumed the success of the Revolution, and ignorant of the real course of events, fled from the palace early in the morning of the fourth, and with the queen and the Duke of Oporto, his uncle, boarded the royal yacht at Ericeira, and steamed straight off to Gibraltar. Meantime the small Republican force under Lieutenant Machado Santos had held out in a building in the town called the Rotunda until the flight of the king became known, with the result that the further resistance to the Revolution that was being organized never materialized, and the Republicans were relieved to find that they were not defeated. The Republican political leaders then reappeared and resumed command ; whereas the king was beyond all possibility of recall by those still in arms in his

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cause ; consequently no further resistance was raised in any of the provincial Royalist centres.

It is a question whether the want of caution of Carlos or the want of confidence of Manoel did the greatest service to their country, and the least to their own cause. One thing is certain, that nothing but the general conviction that monarchy, constitutional or unconstitutional, was a lost cause, would have established a Republic in Portugal with only a few hours' fighting and at a cost of no more than about 100 killed and 500 wounded, and that had that conviction been given a year or two more to consolidate, even these casualties might have been avoided. A more constitutional and less casual advent of Republican institu- tions might also have avoided the series of Royalist risings that followed, by accustoming the public mind to the stability of such institutions and convincing their opponents that they had come to stay. But, anyhow, the Republic was proclaimed on the morning of October 5, 1910, and welcomed by the population of Lisbon as the opening of a new era.

The Republic professed itself to be the advent of a national renascence, a claim that was met at the time with derisive scorn in foreign political circles, and with a determination to disprove it on all counts and at all costs on the part of its political opponents at home. Of the Portuguese upper class there were, it is true, a few like Freire de Andrade, the colonial administrator, who put Portugal before party, and rallied to the Republic, no doubt with mental reserves ; and many more who, like the Marquis de Soveral, the dis- tinguished diplomatist, remained Royalist, but took no part in revolutionary reaction ruinous to his country.

But, from the landed class and the clergy as a whole, the

278 Young Portugal

Republic could expect nothing but intransigeance, tempered only by incompetence, and from the peasantry on nothing but indifference. On their own side an enthusiasm which expressed itself too effusively in eloquence, and an energy too often diverted into personal and party ambitions, did not seem likely to make up for a lack of experience in affairs, and of that esteem that can only come from an inherited public position or long public prominence. Therefore, while it is generally realized that in its five years of existence the Republic has scarcely been given a fair chance, no foreign publicist has as yet properly appreciated its extra- ordinary feat, not only in wearing down or winning over its adversaries but in profiting by circumstances so suc- cessfully that it can to-day claim to have realized a reasonable proportion of its ideals. Such a feat could never have been accomplished except by rulers representing a new national energy and enthusiasm, and to this extent the Republic of Portugal has justified its claim to be a national renascence.

In describing the difficulties successfully dealt with by the Republic during these five years, a distinction must be made between those that it inherited from a previous regime and those inherent to itself. It will be found that whereas those which it inherited bulk largest and were at first the most burdensome, they are all in a fair way of being successfully dealt with. Whereas others still insignifi- cant, but at present ineradicable, are really more ominous. Nevertheless, if the Republic can retain vitality long enough to relieve Portugal of the remaining damnosa hereditas of the previous regime, it will have fulfilled its function.

The Provisional Government at once set to work, with an energy explained in part probably by the necessity of

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getting the more urgent reforms administratively in action before party politics developed, to dissipate the energy and distract the unity of the revolutionary body. Even so during these first few months, while reforming decrees gave almost daily evidence of the activity of the Revolu- tion and their rigid enforcement gave satisfactory assurance of its reality, there were forces at work which seriously embarrassed the progress of the Republic and prejudiced its prestige.

One of these was its own fighting force, the so-called ' Carbonario ' revolutionary organization. This force had only had enough fighting to give it an excessive conceit of its own contribution to the Republic, and was difficult to control. It accordingly carried on the war against Royalism and defeated any chance there might have been of convert- ing the Royalist cause into a constitutional opposition by rioting round the Jesuit establishments in Lisbon, wrecking the offices of Royalist papers, and ransacking Royalist and Clerical clubs. These disorders have recurred at Lisbon at intervals since, generally in reprisal for the Royalist risings in the provinces. No doubt this organization, both in its revolutionary form as the fighting force and in its present political form as the machine of the Republican Democratic party, has rendered services to the Republic but for which there would undoubtedly be no Republic in Portugal to- day, yet the absorption of this force into the constitutional system has perhaps been unduly slow. For while it was the absence of any such organization that made the rotativist parties of the constitutional monarchy so powerless to put through the reforms they planned, and though without the Democrats and their leader, Dr. Costa, the Republic could not show half its record of Radical reforms ; yet the

280 Young Portugal

continual perfecting of this organization and the failure of any other to acquire any corresponding importance or competing power has delayed the development of con- stitutional government either in the form of the two- party system or as an improvement of the present system of government by groups. Meantime, however, yeoman's service was rendered by the bosses and henchmen of the ' Democratic Civil Groups ' as they called themselves, or by ' Costa's White Ants ' as they were called by their enemies, against two formidable forces that threatened the Republic. Of these enemies the least formidable but the most difficult to deal with was the annual Royalist rising. The proclamation of the Republic had caused a general exodus of the aristocracy and courtiers, some following the king to Richmond and others settling elsewhere in England, where their Catholic and class connexions enabled them to influence materially the press and public opinion against the Republic ; others went to Paris and got into touch there with the plutocracy of the Brazil Republic, which became the principal pecuniary support of the Royalist cause. This will seem strange until it is remembered that the wealthy Brazilians had been in the habit of coming over to Lisbon for the titles and Court favours denied them in their own Republic. Wealthy Brazilians were prepared to subscribe to a restoration of the Court of Portugal and of the fount of honour, much as they might to a reopening of the Opera. But the party of action of the Royalists, the younger and more active men, crossed the frontier into Spain, where they became a permanent menace to the frontier of Portugal and to its friendly relations with Spain. For whereas the Republic of Brazil lost no time in recognizing and re- inforcing in every way the Republic of Portugal, and could

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not be held responsible for snobbish subscriptions of Parisian Brazilians to Royalist funds, the monarchy of Spain obviously had a direct interest in discouraging the establishment of a Republic on the Iberian peninsula, and an indirect interest in driving an independent Portugal deeper into disorder. The British Government could not prevent a press cam- paign against Portuguese radicals and regicides, whereas the Spanish Government could have prevented, and subse- quently to some extent did prevent the use of its territory as a base for insurrectionary expeditions.

The first of these was the incursion in September 191 1 into North Portugal of a Royalist force under Pablo Couceiro. Both in the character of its leader — a soldier of the crusader type, in its object — the restoration of King Manoel, and in its operations — the raising of provinces known to be predominantly Royalist in sentiment — this first insurrection commands respect as a legitimate gamble of double or quits. Its complete failure, however, due to the inefficiency of its own arrangements, the indifference of the population, -the complete control of the situation by the ' Carbonario ' intelligence organization, and the unexpected administra- tive and military strength exhibited by the Republican Government, convinced all patriotic Portuguese, among them Couceiro himself, that the Royalist cause was for the time hopeless. It is unfortunate for the prospects of Royalism that more Royalists did not take the view of Couceiro ; for the picture of this Don Quixote riding gloomily at the head of his troop of enthusiasts in their aimless wanderings through the mountain mists of the frontier ranges, made a fitting closing scene for the tragedy of the Braganzas. Unfortunately, the Royalists, for the most part, went the way of all emigres who having lost contact with their own

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countrymen, associate themselves with foreign govern- ments against that of their own country. The later risings accordingly show a difference both in motive and in method. They now become obscure in their object other than that of weakening the Republican Government, and rely more and more on the support of Spain and the Central Powers — a support that became more subterranean as the Republic of Portugal secured abroad first official and finally public recognition. For this reason the ' Miguelists ' who looked to Spain and the Central Powers, took the lead of the ' Manoelists,' who in spite of Manoel's marriage to a German princess, relied on the sympathy of the English upper class ; and there were even factions in favour of annexation to Spain or of becoming a German protectorate under a Prussian prince. At the same time the procedure of open invasion over the Spanish frontier by a fighting force for the purpose of raising the country, tended to become mere plotting of mutinies in garrisons and secret tampering with the troops, for the purpose of embarrassing the Government. These plots had never any prospect of success, and the principals ran little risk, while the ignorant participants were invariably ruined. The rising of the summer of 1912 was more insurrection than incursion, and the principal, Joao d' Almeida, a Portuguese under Austrian protection, was caught and imprisoned. In October 191 3 a Royalist plot centring round one Azevedo Coutinho, broke out in small provincial disorders, the ringleaders, as usual, making dramatic escapes abroad while the rank and file of ignorant peasants were left to pay. So insignificant were the results and so complete the Govern- ment control of the situation that the Royalist press showed an inclination to repudiate foreign responsibility and ascribe

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it to agents provocateurs. But the motive in promoting such attempts, hopeless as they were, was clear enough, and was already rather the discrediting and disabling of any Govern- ment in Portugal in the interest of foreign colonial ambitions than the restoration of the monarchy in the interest of Manoel or Miguel. Moreover, this object was to a large extent attained, for the chief embarrassment to the Re- public from these risings lay in the resentment they caused among the Radicals, in the consequent repressive measures forced on the Government, and in the resulting reaction on a foreign press prepossessed against the Republic. For, while the energy and efficiency of the ' Carbonario ' in- telligence service could be relied on to render such attempts hopeless even before they were attempted, this very energy was itself an embarrassment, filling the prisons with suspects from the lower classes, rendering life a burden to those of the upper classes suspected of Royalism, and making reprisals for every rising in wreckings and ransackings of newspaper offices and clubs at Lisbon, with an ever-recurrent risk of worse — for example the assassination of the Royalist officer, Lieutenant Soares.

The moderate Government did its best to restrain the damaging activities of its zealots and correct the bad impres- sion they caused. No penalties were enforced worse than a short imprisonment, even against revolutionaries taken under arms. Such imprisonment, without trial, under unsuitable and often insanitary conditions, was a hardship no doubt, but in the moral and material circumstances of mobs clamouring for vindictive treatment of their class- enemies, of few and ill-found prisons, and of a new regime fighting with reaction, there was certainly no justification for the clamour raised in our press against the inhumanity

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of the Republican Government. They avoided on the one hand the mistake of making martyrs of their enemies by hanging them, and on the other that of giving them more rope than was just enough to let them hang themselves.

On the third anniversary of the Republic, October 191 3, a decree released all persons prepared to ask for it, just in time to make room for the ' suspects ' of the October rising. A second amnesty in February 19 14, the first act of the ministry of Dr. Bernardino Machado, was uncon- ditional and complete, all political prisoners being released and only eleven ringleaders banished for ten years, and even this sentence was repealed a year later. The subsequent activities of the reaction after the outbreak of war, such as the Mafra incident and the coup d'etat, belong to a later chapter, in which they will be found to have acquired altogether the character of a German manoeuvre and to have lost altogether that of a Royalist movement.

If the Royalists were indirectly a difficulty to the Republic, the ' Reds ' were for a time a direct danger to it. Their activities in strikes not only disturbed the peace but dis- organized the whole economy of the country. If the Republic had not succeeded in checking these irresponsible revolutionaries the results would have been more fatal than a defeat by the reactionaries.

There comes, of course, a point in every revolution as in every form of war where a sufficient proportion of the principles or property at issue has been secured and there is a struggle for power between the practical plain man and the impassioned man of the mountain. But there was more than this between the Constitutional Republicans and the Red or Radical Republicans of Portugal. An industrial proletariat had for a generation been developing in Portugal

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285

under a Government that not only afforded it no protection against exploitation but did not even allow it to protect itself by organization and strikes. Before the revolution the rights of labour were regulated in Portugal by the Civil Code, based on Roman law and the Code Napoleon. Trade unions had obtained bare toleration under a degree of 1891, but strikes were still a contravention of the penal code. Portugal was at this time with one exception, Russia, the only- country in Europe where striking was a crime. Consequently, when the Republican Provisional Government legalized striking the result was naturally enough an excessive and exaggerated use of the new liberty by labour organizations that had no training in its use and were disposed to exploit the millennium to their material advantage. The great increase of labour troubles that immediately followed the revolution was only indirectly a result of it, but they were none the less debited to its discredit and added to its diffi- culties. 1 One most serious feature in this phenomenon was

1 The number of Portuguese strikes during the years 1903-13 (compiled from Boletin do Trabalbo Industrial) were as follows :

Strikes. Strikers.

1903 ...... 27 —

1904 ...... 10 —

1905 1906 1907

1909 1910 1911 1912

For a detailed review of these strikes see As Greves, F. E. da Silva, Coimbra, 1912.

II

2,300

10

9,150

10

5,200

10

1,100

13

1,650

36

11,000

42

25,670

13

7,73°

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the extraordinarily rapid growth of Syndicalism. This was partly due to the growth of Syndicalism being at this period at its height in Europe generally and partly to the suitable soil it found in Portugal. In 191 1, the difficult first year of the Republic, Lisbon was threatened with a general stnke, and local strikes were epidemic everywhere. This phase passed of itself ; but later the movement took on a more organized and dangerous form, and about the time that the Royalist movement became negligible, the Re- publicans were seriously menaced by a revolution in favour of a ' Radical Republic '. In January 1912 a revolutionary strike in Lisbon was only quelled by the declaration of martial law and the arrest of over a thousand Syndicalists. The ' Reds ' could at any moment by their control of the railways prevent the conveyance of troops, and the centre of their organization in Lisbon was a regular citadel, well supplied with bombs and small arms. Fortunately, matters reached this head during the ministry of Dr. Affonzo Costa, who by a free use of troops ended the syndicalist control of the railways, and with the help of the ' Carbonarios ' succeeded in peacefully disarming the ' Reds ' of Lisbon and breaking up their organization.

The third difficulty of the Republic was more intimate than either of these. It lay in the complete disintegration of the Republican party as a political factor the moment it had the political field to itself. This disintegration did not become obvious until the provisional government, under the presidency of that distinguished litterateur, Dr. Theo- philo Braga, had given way to the constitutional Republic with Dr. Manoel de Arriaga as President, in August 191 1. The constitution was unfortunately devised to meet what

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the example of the constitutional monarchy and of the South American republics had shown to be the most serious dangers in principle, with the result that it contained certain practical disadvantages. Thus the president is elected for four years only, not being re-eligible ; and Congress cannot be dissolved for three years, senators being elected for six years, one-half renewable at each election. An electoral law was to secure independence of the election from the Government of the day, but its passage was repeatedly postponed. Under this regime the Premier, or President of the Council, as he is called, can make himself all-powerful, while the President is scarcely powerful enough.

No sooner was the Congress constituted than the faction fight for power between the party leaders began. As there were as yet no differences of principle and scarcely any of opinion in either chamber, in neither of which the Royalists or ' Reds ' had any place, there was nothing to check the passionate pursuit of personal ambition.

The proceedings of Congress, in fact, were resumed much at the stage where the development of the old monarchical Cortes had been broken off. The leading politicians each had his group of partisans and his party name, and his object was to lobby and logroll with other groups until there was an aggregation large enough to get a majority and form a government. But there was now even less reality under- lying this game than before, because the Royalists and ' Reds ', the only real opposition, were not represented, and there was in fact only one political party that had any existence in the country outside Congress — the ' Carbonario ' organization, now transformed into the Democratic party under Dr. Affonzo Costa. The other groups consisted of ' Evolutionists ' under J. A. de Almeida, of ' Unionists ' under

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Brito Camacho, and ' Independents ' under Machado Santos. The ' Democrats ', having monopolized the full progressive programme of Republican radicalism, the ' Evolutionists ' were compelled to adopt a more moderate colour, while the ' Unionists ' stood for little more than the personality of Brito Camacho, the ' Cato ' of the Republic, and a policy of holding the balance between the two larger groups. The ' Independents ' and their leader came nearer to a real opposition, as they were dissatisfied with the poli- tical situation in general and that of their own party in particular.

Republican dissatisfaction with the political situation was legitimate, for the political training and traditional procedure that were necessary for successful parliamentary government were conspicuously wanting, and it looked as though the Republican Congress was going to be as hopeless a machine for reform as the monarchist Cortes. The first necessity of efficient government was an adequate period of power for the ministry ; but whereas during the ten years that preceded the revolution there were ten changes of government, during the five years that succeeded it there were twelve.

Yet the cause of instability was really quite different under the Republic, and lay not, as before, in attempts to break up the two-party system of Regeneradores and Pro- gresistas, but in attempts to break up the one-party system of the democrats. No government could stay in office without the support of the democrats, and Costa commanded not only a majority of Congress but control of the elections. On the other hand, the other groups could and would make government by Costa and the democrats impossible by obstinate obstruction, or, as a last resort, by refusals to remain in Congress. The appeal, in fact, lay not to the

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electorate by way of elections, but by way of embarrassing and even endangering the Republic.

The new Government, that of Joao Chagas, was not radical enough for the Democrats, and lasted only ten weeks. The first Royalist rising and the growing labour troubles reconsolidated factions a little, and another coalition ministry, of Augusto de Vasconcellos, lasted from November 191 1 to June 1912. The difficulties of the Republic, especially that of finance, continued to call for urgent action, and nothing very practical was accomplished. The Demo- crats got restive again, and another coalition combination came in under Duarte Leite in June. This was no better than its predecessor, and it became clear that the power would have to be put directly into the hands of the Demo- crats. In January 191 3 Affonzo Costa became Premier and held office for just a year, in which term he undoubtedly succeeded in getting the Republic out of the worst of its difficulties. His financial achievement will be described later; and his success in balancing the budget and paying off the external floating debt which gave foreign Jews the whip- hand of the Portuguese Government was at the time the most practical realization of its promises that the Republic had achieved. He could not have done this had his power been any less than that of a dictatorship ; but we see that his ' dictatorship ' differs from that of the royalist Joao Franco, who preceded him, or from the ' militarist ' Pimento de Castro, who came later, in that all constitutional forms were rigidly respected by Costa but rejected by them, and that he represented a majority of the politically-minded population, namely the middle and lower classes, but they a minority of the upper class. Moreover, his constructive success in reform was so sensational and stimulating that it

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would have justified more drastic action with Congress than he ever attempted. The mistake that he made, or that was made by his party in spite of him, was, rather, in using his power and the prestige of his success to strengthen the some- what narrow and sinister basis of his party machine, instead of boldly transferring this base to the people themselves. This distrust of the democracy caused his fall, for the opposition that would have been powerless had he sought his support direct from the polls were prepared to make things impossible for him so long as he relied on his party machine. During his first months of power he had to look for a sufficient majority to the support of Brito Camacho and the Unionists ; but by-elections held in November, under Democratic auspices, to fill a number of vacancies, returned Democrats with only two exceptions, and thereby relieved Costa of dependence on Brito Camacho and put into his power the possibility of exercising a similar sole dispensation over the approaching presidential and general elections. The Republican leaders may be excused if, in spite of the un- equalled services of Costa and the Democrats in saving the Republic from Royalists, Reds, and foreign Jews, it was not prepared to entrust so much power to him ; especially as, since the by-elections, he had broken with the austere Brito Camacho. Costa accordingly became, during the winter of 1912-13, as suspect and odious to his Unionist, Evolutionist, and Independent colleagues as was Caesar himself ; while they in their turn seemed to good Democrats, conscious of having saved the Republic, even less patriotic than Royalists. The Democrats now had in coalition against them all the other Republican groups in the Chamber, as also a majority in the Senate, the President, the whole upper class furious with the land laws and new taxation, the Royalists now filtering

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back into a political situation that offered them a good opening, the clergy outraged at the Law of Separation, the high finance that saw itself likely to be both paid off and made to pay up, and both socialists and syndicalists, whose revolutionary action had just at that very juncture been finally suppressed. This issue between a successful dictatorship observing constitutional forms and a democracy without constitutional remedy resulted in conflicts between groups in the Chamber, between the Chamber and the Senate, and between the Premier and the President, that made Costa's position impossible, and with great common sense he gave way and provided a vice-gerent ; though not before the Republican opposition had compromised them- selves by a brotherhood in arms with Royalism and a breach with constitutionalism. The constitutional relations be- tween the Senate and the Chamber were strained by a con- troversy between Costa and a crypto-royalist Senator Joao de Freitas, and those between President and Premier by a circular letter sent by the former in excess of his powers to the Premier and leaders of the Opposition calling for a release of all political prisoners, a revision of the Law of Separation, and a non-partisan regulation of the elections. This programme, good in itself, and better as removing the grievances of Royalists and of Reds, of the clergy and of the politicians, was adopted by Costa, and in January 1914 Dr. Bernardino Machado, who, with great prudence, had kept out of the early chaos of the congressional cosmogony as ambassador to Brazil, was summoned by Costa, as a personal friend, to deal with a situation that called for all the natural adroitness a nd diplomacyof the present President. His services as Premier during this critical year, in keeping the machinery of government oiled and operating, are not

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inferior to those of Dr. Costa, who first raised steam enough to move it. It was, fortunately for Portugal, this com- bination of its strongest administrator and its most skilful statesman that had to face the crisis in which Portugal was plunged by the European War.

Dr. Bernardino Machado took office in February 1914 and at once began his work of reconciliation. Under his diplomatic direction of affairs the crisis in Congress was tided over, while the release of all the imprisoned Royalists by a general amnesty should have terminated the civil warfare. Thereby, at some cost to the radical reconstruction in social and financial reform, the political position of Portugal, both at home and abroad, was greatly improved. The Revolution had thus entered its last chapter and was reaping the first fruits of its success when the European War again put the whole situation in question.

Those who have read the preceding chapters will under- stand how it came about that in August 1914 the reform party — the Republicans — at once pronounced for our cause — the measure of their radicalism being the measure of their militarism ; while, the more reactionary Royalists preferred the cause of our opponents. The ' Democrats ' were for instant and insistent belligerency, whereas the other Republican factions were either for postponing action until we asked for it or for a benevolent neutrality. On the other hand, the ' Miguelites ' made no concealment of their pro- Germanism, and carried with them into the German camp the whole fighting force of royalism with a programme of a restoration under German protection, or even under a German prince. The ' Manuelites ' and a small moderate section resident in England were professedly pro-ally, though without severing connexions with their pro-

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German confreres. Finally, those Royalists who had rallied to the Republic saw the best interests of Portugal in neutrality.

It was evident from the first that the insistence of the Radicals on belligerency would impose a severe strain on the whole structure of the new regime. The call to a crusade on behalf of the lesser nations was popular with the press and reading public, whose intellectual sympathies were all with France, as their political sense was with us ; but as the full force of the enemy's war-engine developed and our first failures showed our usual initial inadequacy, public opinion turned more to a benevolent neutrality, such as by its benevolence would maintain the British alliance and by its neutrality would prevent a breach with Germany, or at least postpone it until it could be of some practical use to the allied cause. This policy was, moreover, that which at the time best responded to the requirements of our rulers. These failed to see that by allowing our Army and Navy to exploit the generous military offers of the Portuguese party in power without encouraging any corresponding military enthusiasm for the cause in the Portuguese people, they were putting an unfair strain on the position of their friends. We find consequently, during the autumn of 1914, a cooling off in the Portuguese public enthusiasm for our cause not wholly attributable to our military difficulties and deficiencies.

When Congress was summoned, on August 7, in special session, the emergency produced an enthusiasm and a unanimity which was somewhat deceptive, and the Premier easily secured full powers on a pronouncement of policy that was pro-ally though unprovocative. The first instalment of support to us was pacific enough, being no more than the signing of our long-delayed Treaty of Commerce, which

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put us more or less on an equality with Germany ; though even so it only came into force in September 1916. We on our part renewed a popular relationship, interrupted since the Revolution to the detriment of our prestige in Portugal, by sending a cruiser on a visit of courtesy to Lisbon in September. The next Portuguese measure, though military, was still non-committal, and consisted in increasing the garrisons of the African colonies contiguous to German territory. More marked was the next step — our acceptance in October, for use in France, of an offer, as a free gift, of a considerable portion of the Portuguese artillery ; which led to a definite invitation in November from the British Govern- ment to take part in the war. Congress, summoned in a second special session on November 23 to consider this invitation, again gave its unanimous support to the pro-ally policy of the Premier, and sanctioned the mobilization of a division apart from colonial reinforcements ; but the moment for sweeping the country into war was past. The enemy had had time to develop his strength, and with his usual strategic insight had already carried the war into Por- tugal. It was fortunate for Portugal that material strength and political strategy are not enough to win a war of peoples. The strategy of neutralizing Portugal by reviving civil dissension was obvious enough to have called for some precaution ; but probably the strength of Germany in Portugal was not realized at the time. The great advantage our enemy had was that his purpose was sufficiently served by keeping Portugal neutral, as this would preserve his shipping interned in Portuguese ports and provide him with Portuguese foodstuffs through the neutral ports of the North Sea. For such a policy he could count on receiving support or sympathy not only from those who favoured his

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cause, but also from such Portuguese who, measuring Portu- gal's possible contribution as a belligerent against its probable consequences, considered belligerency an unsound national policy. Such neutralists were, moreover, a controlling element in the Government. Besides President Arriaga — an active pacifist — owing to the coalition character of the Ministry all the more important posts other than the Premier- ship were held by neutralists. The Foreign Minister, Freire d'Andrade, a rallied Royalist, even did his best to compensate for minor contraventions of the neutral proprieties in our favour by especial courtesies to our enemies ; while neutral proclivities of the Ministers of War, Marine, and the.Colonies checked at every turn the pro-ally policy of the Government. Neutralism, moreover, though represented by a small minority in Congress, undoubtedly reproduced the point of view of the urban proletariat, the peasantry, and many of the privates. Their hearts had not been stirred nor their homes imperilled, and for a war of policy there was little to attract in the Belgian ' matadouro ' or the African guerrilla. To these negative neutralists must be added the more posi- tive — such as Royalists ready to risk national independence and to welcome a German-Spanish occupation for the chance of overthrowing the Republic, Republican factions ready to risk a Royalist restoration for the chance of overthrowing the Democrats, and Conservative, capitalist, and commercial in- terests ready to risk civil war for the chance of overthrowing Radical reform.

The first months of the war passed in the belligerents of the Government trying to carry the neutralists with them into some act that would provoke a German declaration of war — while the neutralists and pro-Germans outside the Government were doing what they could to embarrass this

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policy. As early as October 20 small military mutinies had been excited by Royalists in Mafra and other garrisons, which in spite of their futility postponed belligerency while proving by their failure that the people would not purchase neutrality at the price of Royalism. On the other hand, there was no popular protest when the Minister of Marine imprisoned Leote de Riego, a political naval officer, for pro- ally propaganda. It was, in fact, evident that the Govern- ment could not carry the country into war, though war would at once have carried the country into united support of the Government.

On December 7 was published an army order, dated November23, definitely committing Portugal to co-operation on the Western Front, and by December 9 Dr. Bernardino Machado had been forced out of office. The dissent of his neutralist colleagues from the principle of his belligerent policy and the distrust of the Democratic congressional majority for his cautious procedure, combined with the defec- tion of President Arriaga, created a crisis no diplomacy could longer defer. He was succeeded by a purely Democratic Government under V. H. de Azevedo Coutinho, and there- upon all semblance of national unity disappeared. By December 18 all the opposition factions had left the Chamber and the Unionists, under Brito Camacho, had renounced their seats. It became evident that it would require a civil war to carry Portugal into the war for civilization.

Yet there was no want of warning as to the danger that threatened the Portuguese Republic from its failure to present a solid front to its enemy. On the very day that the ' Cato ' of the Republic had recourse to unconstitutional opposition a German punitive expedition had inflicted severe

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loss on the Portuguese in Angola, at Naulilla. But the main blow was to be struck in Lisbon, and the neutralists, under German guidance, showed considerable statecraft. They did not make the mistake made by the ' belligerents ', for want of British support, of letting their extremists override their moderates. Owing to the congressional majority being ' belligerents ' Congrsss was on our side, and action against them could only be in the nature of a coup d'etat, but owing to their also being Radicals and odious to the upper class, and owing to the monopoly of power which the Radical organization enjoyed through the ' Democratic ' party having driven the Republican opposition into unconstitutionalism, such a coup d'etat could be given a conservative and even a constitutional colour. This was, indeed, done so cleverly that the unconstitutional dictatorship set up as the result of a German intrigue was welcomed as a saving of society by many British, whose business it was to know better.

The conspiracy to restore German control in Portugal began with a meeting of ministers and ex-ministers sum- moned by President Arriaga on January 15, which, while professing to be a move to restore unity, seems rather to have been a manoeuvre to put the ' belligerents ' in a false position. It was followed on January 19 by a deputation to the President on the part of officers of the Lisbon garrison hostile to the Government — many of them being Royalists. The deputation was intercepted and sixty officers arrested ; whereupon the President, on January 23, without consulting the Government, published an official note declaring his intention of receiving such deputations. The Ministry submitted their resignation in protest against this unconsti- tutionalism and asked the President to suspend civil guaran- tees and declare martial law, so that they might restore

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discipline. This was refused, and the same evening the President entrusted the Government to the pro-German general, Pimento de Castro, whose authority with the army was considerable, while the Royalist neutralist, Freire d'Andrade, again became Foreign Minister. Not only the Democrats, but all the congressional parties, were excluded from power, and the new Ministry had a predominant military element with more than a suspicion of pro-German and Royalist proclivities. Its nominal policy was to restore national unity ; but its real object was to preserve neutrality and to prepare a Royalist restoration through the army. As both President Arriaga and the Premier, Pimento de Castro, have since published their reminiscences, we are able to judge impartially the inwardness of the coup d'etat, and to appreciate fully the insight of the British censorship under which our national press sang paeans over the success of our reactionary enemies and the overthrow of our Radical allies. Though the coup d'etat ultimately failed, as must all conspiracies against the liberties of a free people, yet it did not fail for any want of cleverness in its inception on the part of our enemies, nor for any want of crassness in our reception of it.

It has already been said that the passion of loyalty to the Crown, once strong in Portugal, was replaced by a passion of loyalty to the State as represented by Congress ; and this feeling survived the disappointment when Congress failed to embody the high ideals of the national renascence, even as the older feeling could survive a bad king. Portugal was accordingly profoundly shocked by the coup d'etat and by its consequences — as when the venerable Dr. Bernardino Machado was met at the door of Congress by bayonets, or when the national representatives were forced to hold

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hurried meetings in the suburbs, or when the German success was received with the ill-concealed exultation of anti-constitutional interests, financial and political. Prepara- tions for a restoration of constitutional government by force were at once put in hand, though the hold over the army exercised by the ' dictatorship ' through the disaffected officers delayed its outbreak until the spring, and forced it to base itself on naval action.

At three in the morning of May 14, 1915, the guns of the fleet gave the signal, and by that evening the constitutional forces under Leote de Riego had mastered Pimento de Castro's troops and the dictatorship was overthrown. The loss of life and damage was small ; but the effort, combined with the evidence that the whole of the navy and of the ' civil elements ', as well as the greater part of the army were Constitutional and Republican, revived in the restored regime that national unity it had lost since the revolution. The summer passed in reconstruction and reconciliation. Dr. Arriaga had, of course, resigned, and General Pimento de Castro took refuge in Germany. A provisional presidency of Dr. Braga, called on a second time for that difficult office, preluded the election of Dr. Bernardino Machado in August. The first Prime Minister, Dr. Joao Chagas, Minister in Paris, and one of the founders of the Republic, was shot by the crypto-Royalist Senator, de Freytas, and was succeeded by a Ministry of Affairs under Dr. Jose de Castro. The Demo- crats, having secured a majority at the elections, under conditions such as gave their opponents no ground for com- plaint, Dr. Costa returned to power in November, and could resume a belligerent policy with general consent, or at any rate without the possibility of opposition. But Germany met thesePortuguese belligerents half way,for the British blockade

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had by now made Portugal useless as a source of supply, while the course of the campaigns in Europe gave Berlin hopes of an early settlement in which Portuguese Africa might con- veniently be included. The sixty ships in Portuguese ports were the only consideration in favour of peace, and when these were seized by Portugal, in February 1916, to fill the gaps in the Allied shipping caused by the first submarine campaign, little deference was paid to the formulae by which the Portuguese Government did their best to legalize and alleviate the blow. On March 9 came the German declara- tion of war — a long denunciation of Portugal's breaches of neutrality. The Anglo-Portuguese alliance^ like most real associations in international relations, is not adequately expressed in any diplomatic document ; but in future this recital by our most formidable foe of the aid and comfort given us by Portugal will serve as a worthy record of the most ancient alliance in modern history between two free peoples. May it remind us also that Portugal had to free itself by two insurrections before it could give that alliance worthy expression ; and may we remember, when we are again free to set our own house in order, that we on our part have much to do before we are worthy of alliance with a people who have known how to fight for their own free- dom while fighting for that of others.

As these words are written the long-delayed Portuguese division is landing in France. What they will win for Portugal thereby is for the next chapter, but they have already secured a full measure of sympathy with Portugal's renascence and our future firm support of its reformed regime. This history of Young Portugal could have no more fitting close than such a crusade — foretold as it was by the prophet of the Revolution, Guerro Junqueiro :

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Dashed down by traitor lances to the ground and seven times pierced, low doth our country lie : Youth Ministrant, oh come, anoint each wound, and kiss her hands, wind her with garlands round, she shall not die.

The courtier crew, servile and libertine, they have no ears to hear our country's cry. Youth Militant, thou madcap heroine, strap on your sabre, shoulder your carabine, she shall not die.

Bear all her pain, nor count the cost at all, bring her your life's blood, though 'tis brought in vain : Youth Martyr, beautiful, heroical, Go to death singing, die, and Portugal shall live again.

Portugal and the Peace

Au fond des cieux un point scintille, regardez, il grandit, il brille, il approche enorme et vermeil. Republique universelle, tu n'es encore que l'etincelle, demain tu seras le soleil.

Victor Hugo.

The Portuguese Republic, by enlisting in our cause, has secured both our hearty recognition of its claim to represent a new Portugal, and our future recognition of its claim to co- operate in a new Europe. But really both these rights rest on a firmer foundation than mere military co-operation. The Republic's claim to be a new Portugal cannot be denied in view of its record during the five years from the Revolution to the War ; its claim to be partner in a new Europe must be admitted in view of its having been the first State to realize that national renascence which alone will make a new Europe possible. It has since been followed in this new birth by the giant States of China and Russia, and the list is happily not yet closed. For it will no doubt be found elsewhere that when social misery and national humiliation bring about such a revival as that in Portugal and Russia, Republicanism is the only political ideal with sufficient com- pelling and co-ordinating force to unite the various pro- gressive elements long enough for the necessary effort.

Portugal and the Peace 3°3

If Republicanism is to be the new motive principle in internal and international reconstruction, it concerns us much to learn just what it has practically effected for Portugal, before considering what part we can properly assign to the new Portugal in a new Europe.

In reckoning up the actual achievements of the Republic, we must remember in what depth of disaster it took over affairs. Nearly twenty years before the revolution Guerro Junqueiro wrote : ' The Republic is more than a form of government, it is the last rally of a nation against death.'

The question whether the nation can now be considered convalescent cannot be answered by a mere list of new laws. It would be necessary to examine how far these laws were enforced and whether they had given good results. These results again must largely depend on the manner in which the national vitality responds to the stimulus of better laws and administration.

Thus in the matter of education, the efforts of the Republican regime seem already to be seconded by a national desire for literacy. The constitution of a Ministry of Education and the increases in the educational budget, are indications of these efforts. Illiteracy is being combated by ambulatory schools for adults, and the percentage of illiterates, which was 82 per cent, in 1900 and 77*4 per cent, in 191 1, is already estimated to be down several points. In 1910 there were 5,500 primary schools, and in 1914 there were nearly 7,000, with over 900 more teachers. Besides this there were instituted 125 ambulatory schools and 160 night classes. The grants to secondary education in the estimates have been raised from 370,000 dol. to over 400,000 dol., and for superior schools from 450,000 dol. to about 725,000 dol. The grants for museums, libraries, con-

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servatoires, art schools, &c, have been considerably increased with excellent results.

The best way, perhaps, of enabling foreign opinion to judge of the reality of those social reforms which cannot have a demonstrable effect on economic prosperity for some time, will be to indicate certain regions in which improve- ment was badly needed and may be expected first to appear.

One principal and primary cause of the difficulties of Portugal is that which is peculiar to minor States and small businesses in an age of Great Powers and big corporations. Although Portugal has everything requisite to prosperity — an industrious peasantry and an intelligent professional class, a good soil and climate, and a situation secluded from international trouble — it has fallen behindhand in develop- ment. This is partly because of bad management and excessive unreproductive administrative expenditure ; partly because the whole affair is on so small a scale that the turn- over, so to say, is not enough to keep the plant up to date in a go-ahead age.

The former disadvantage has been largely reduced by the Revolution, which has reconstructed the management on cheaper lines. A comparison between expenditures under the Monarchy and those under the Republic shows that a saving of £1,500,000 annually, or about one- twelfth of the total expenditure, has been made on civil list and such-like charges ; nor does this represent the whole saving. Moreover, there has been a considerable recovery of national capital through the restoration of Church property ; as, for instance, the £2,500,000 worth of State bonds in ecclesiastical ownership which have reverted to the State. On the other hand, the Revolution has not as yet decreased the cost of the public services, and there is

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still a disproportionate burden of salaried and pensioned officials. Officialism — the relationship between the desire of the middle classes to get Government employment and the democratic control of Government — is a deeply-rooted social and political difficulty, but none recognize more clearly than the Portuguese that it must be dealt with. 1 The public services in Portugal are said to cost 30 fr. per head, as compared with 24 fr. in France, 10*5 fr. in the United Kingdom, and 6 fr. in Switzerland. There are over 50,000 persons in Government employment, or about 10 per cent., and costing about .£2,500,000 annually. In comparing this burden with that of the monasteries the historian, Oliveira Martins, writes : ' The monastery became a department. The porter was kept on, the brother became a clerk, the rector an under-secretary, and now on all sides we hear the solemn chanting of the departmental choirs.'

As business develops, and education becomes more available generally, and better adapted to requirements, this form of middle-class pauperism will improve. Technical education, to which much attention is being given, should be specially helpful.

Finance has been shown to have been the incubus which the constitutional monarchy failed to exorcise, and to which it fell a victim, and the better success of the Republic has been asserted. This success can only be realized by reviewing what the state of Portuguese finance was at the time of the Revolution.

Portugal had for over a century been involving itself deeper and deeper in a vicious circle of national finance. A dead weight of debt, due to misgovernment, and doubled

1 Anselmo de Andrade, Portugal Econ., page 469 ; Mar. de Carvalho, Port. Financ.,p. 27 ; I. de Magalhaens, Incompetencia burocratica, passim. 1832.5 X

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and redoubled by maladministration, produced annual deficits, and they in turn added to the dead-weight debt until the charges could be no longer met. Then came repudiation, loss of credit, and borrowing from new sources on still more onerous terms. At the Revolution the capital value represented £18 nominal value per head of the population, or £13 12s. market value, and a total charge of 15/. per head (i.e. 12s. for interest, 2s. for redemption, and is. for loss on exchange). This represented in the days before the war a per capita burden second only to that of wealthy France, and far heavier than that of Great Britain. Moreover, the debt was dead weight, i.e. it represented wastage, not investment in remunerative enterprise, and a large proportion of it was never realized at all. Thus of the nine loans floated between 1862 and 1866 to a nominal value of £46,700,000, only a sum amounting to about 42 per cent, was realized, the remainder representing the cost of borrowing. Of the amount realized a still smaller per- centage was put to remunerative use in increasing the national resources and revenues in railways and other public works. Thus of the total £108,865,295 raised by 3 per cent, loans, less than 20 per cent, seems to have been spent on public works. 1 Well might a financial-authority 2 say, ' the money represented by the public debt was squandered by the Government.'

The history of the debt falls into three chapters. In the first we find the country emerging from the Peninsular Wars with a load of dead-weight debt that it could not possibly carry through the turmoil of the civil wars. Interest was defaulted in 1841, and in 1845 a more or less

1 A. V. de Rocha, Finangas em Portugal, 1913, p. 1902.

2 Tomas Cabreira, problema financeiro, p. 86.

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compulsory conversion was effected. Another was opposed in 1852, but finally effected in 1856, and thus closes this first war chapter of the debt, leaving it at the moderate total of about eleven million sterling. In the second chapter the country has acquired the usual credit abroad of a European State with a constitutional Government and exploits it extravagantly. Between 1856 and 1892 over ^200,000,000 was borrowed abroad in 3 per cent, to 5 per cent, stock on the security of the national credit. If we estimate the remunerative investment in railways and public works at a quarter of this total we shall probably be over the mark. In 1890 this chapter closed with the Brazilian crisis and the collapse of Barings, the two principal foreign financers of Portugal. The overstrained structure of Portuguese national credit collapsed, no fresh loan could be raised, and national bankruptcy ensued. The Act of February 26, 1892, reduced by a third — under the guise of an income tax — the interest on the internal debt, and that on the external debt was, by a decree of June 13, reduced by two-thirds. The internal debt-holders had no remedy, and still remain under this regime in spite of many proposals for regularizing the situation by a conversion. The external debt-holders opened negotiations through the foreign Governments concerned, which were protracted for ten years. In 1902 a conversion of the external debt was arranged, and it was divided into three series, giving the holders respectively one-half, two-thirds, and three-quarters of their original holding, and assigning the customs revenues as security for the charge under control of a Public Debt commission. Portugal was, moreover, successful in prevent- ing this commission having any foreign diplomatic or representative character, such as that set up in Turkey dx

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Greece. Thus ended the second chapter of foreign borrow- ings on the national credit.

The third chapter, from 1892 to 191 2, represents an exploitation of internal credit and a pawning of national resources and revenues to foreign financiers, and it is need- less to point out that this was no less detrimental to the national credit and far more dangerous to the national cause than formal funded loans from the foreign public. The financial situation becomes more and more obscure, and it is even often difficult to distinguish between funded internal debt, floating debt, and the farming of revenues and privileges. In these twenty years the only formal foreign loans were those raised on the much-contested tobacco monopoly in 1 89 1 and 1896, producing about £6,000,000, an internal redeemable debt which raised some £7,000,000, and levies on the national pawnshop (Caixa de Depositos) and Land Bank (Credito Predial) producing some £2,000,000 more. But the most important source of subsidy was the Bank of Portugal and the foreign bankers. The obligations to the bank must rank partly as funded debt in respect of the permanent overdraft of £5,000,000, partly as floating debt in the periodic advances made by the bank, amounting in 191 2 to £9,000,000, and partly as the farming of privileges, such as the issue of paper currency, which represent another £4,000,000. To this we must add over £10,000,000 of paper currency, only 10 per cent, of which is secured by cash, an excessive amount for so poor a country, even allowing for peculiarities in its currency requirements. Finally comes the floating debt in Treasury Bills and short-term loans by Lisbon bankers, which in 1900 amounted to £9,000,000, and in 1912 to £18,000,000. We have, then, for this period some £60,000,000 of fresh

Portugal and the Peace 309

debt of the worst class. If we allow £15,000,000 of this for costs and the same amount for remunerative investment, and distribute the remaining £30,000,000 over the twenty years in paying for an annual deficit averaging really about £1,500,000 instead of £500,000 as the budgets suggest, we shall have a rough idea of the national economy of Portugal at the time when the reform took hold. Something had to be done if only because there was no credit, national or special, left to pledge and nothing to sell but the colonies, a policy against which the Revolution itself was in part a protest.

It was to this situation that Dr. Costa succeeded in January 191 3, and which he had morally and to some extent materially changed by January 1914. His reforms gave a good start to the two main financial tasks that lie before the Republic — redemption of the debt by the restoration of credit and riddance of the deficit by reform of the administrative system. Nothing much could, of course, be attempted at this stage in the way of debt redemp- tion ; and what was accomplished, namely the redemption of the external floating debt, seems on close investigation to have been really a conversion of this most objectionable and onerous form of floating debt into a semi-funded form. The external floating debt has been described by Dr. Costa as ' the nightmare of patriotic financiers ', and he also has revealed the use made of it to force the ruinous terms of the tobacco loans on the monarchist Government. 1 It stood at just over £2,000,000 when he paid it off, trans- ferring the debit, it would seem, to the Government account with the Bank of Portugal. This was a sound and skilful operation carried through without interference with the 1 Dr. Affonzo Costa, Les Fin. Port., pp. 4 and 39.

310 Portugal and the Peace

regular redemption of the funded debt or any increase of the ordinary floating debt. His success with the budget was even more sensational. The actual average annual deficit of the previous regime has been assessed above at about £1,500,000, instead of the £500,000 admitted in the budget, the real deficit being difficult to determine, partly because the complicated French system of public accountancy is followed. The budgets during the first three years of the Republic showed deficits averaging over £1,500,000, and the estimates for 191 3-14 were presented with a deficit of £1,692,800. Dr. Costa then came to power, recast the budget in a few days, and reduced the deficit to £687,200, and during the six months converted the deficit into a small surplus of £195,800. The budget he himself pre- sented after a year's strenuous reform showed a surplus of £678,600, a sufficient margin in a budget of which the total receipts are some £16,000,000. Of course these results were received with scepticism, but they stand investigation, and are, moreover, confirmed by the similar success secured in administering the accounts of previous budgets. Thus, under the improved yield of revenues and the reduction of expenditures due to these reforms, the budget of 191 2-1 3, which was passed with a deficit of over £1,500,000, was closed with a small surplus.

The reforms were not only administrative for two useful legislative measures were passed, one of which prohibited a precarious practice by which debt could be increased by a mere departmental instruction, and the other, the ' break ' law (Lei travao), prevented the equally ruinous practice of Congress in destroying the balance of the budget by voting ' extraordinary credits ' into it without providing revenue to meet them. Finally, Dr. Costa crowned his services by

Portugal and the Peace 3 11

publishing in Portuguese and French a full and fair state- ment of the real condition of the national finances.

It has unfortunately not been possible to maintain this high standard of efficiency in Portuguese financial administra- tion, because the outbreak of the European war and a renewal of domestic disturbance due to it disorganized every- thing. But it has, nevertheless, shown once for all that Republican Portugal can pay its way, and any political party which in future fails to make it do so can be held responsible.

But the financial future of Portugal now no longer rests only on the overburdened shoulders of poor 'Ze Povinho. The participation of Portugal in the war, though it has over- thrown the Republican programme of Peace, Retrenchment, and Reform, has restored the national credit that has been in abeyance since 1892. Indeed it would not be too much to say that now the credit of London stands behind that of Lisbon. This, of course, revives the old danger of excessive and extravagant borrowing, but on the other hand reopens the possibility of an efficient exploitation of Portugal's as yet unexplored national and imperial resources.

If the balance-sheet of a government, as shown in the budget, is a fair indication of good or bad government, then the balance-sheet of a nation gives an even better insight into the prosperity and progress of a people. Unfortunately, difficult as it is to reduce to a few leading facts the labyrin- thine figures in State accounts, it is even more difficult to estimate the true incomings and outgoings of a people and its dependent populations. The following balance-sheet of Portugal is therefore presented with every reserve, and principally as the best method of giving as shortly as possible a picture of the very peculiar economic conditions of the Portuguese Empire.

312

Portugal and the Peace

Commercial Balance-sheet of Portugal Outgoings

Excess in value of imports for consumption over exports of local production (average for 1910-12) 1 .

(a) External funded; debt, interest and re-

demption charges for 19 12

(b) External floating debt, interest and re-

demption charges for 191 2

(a) Foreign investments in Portuguese rail-

way shares and bonds 2 .

(b) Foreign investments : gas, trams, elec-

tricity, telephones, mines, &c. .

(a) Foreign freight on about 1,000,000 tons 3

(b) Foreign passage-money on emigrants and

tourists,, about 75,000 persons 4 . Foreign missions and armaments, &c. . Portuguese abroad .....

Total

In 1,000,000 Dollars.

37i 7i

4-

60

1 Excess of imports over exports in 1912, by tariff classes :

Importation Exportation

for of Native

Consumption. Products. In 1,000 In 1,000 Dollars. Dollars.

2 ^i 3)94'

33.659 7.89 6 6,976 1,170

16,020 19,769

6,393 145

6,919 2,293

132 —

2 These estimates are based on those published by M. Edmond Thery in the liconomiste Europeen of 19 12.

3 Table No. 17 of Comercio y Navegacao shows that Portuguese shipping took only 309,552 tons of 1,448,413 tons shipped.

4 Authorized emigration 88,929, which with unauthorized and travellers equals, say, 100,00b, of which at least 75 per cent, travelled in foreign vessels.

I. Live animals II. Raw Materials

III. Textiles, &c. . .

IV. Food-stuffs .

V. Machinery and instruments VI. Manufactures VII. Tare •.

Portugal and the Peace 3 X 3

In

Incomings 1,000,000

1. Re-exports of colonial produce (average for Dollars.

1910-12) 14!

2. (a) Returns on three-quarters of total funded

foreign debt, held by Portuguese . . 6

(b) Returns on one-half of total floating debt,

held by Portuguese .... J-

3. Returns on 60 per cent, foreign investments

held by Portuguese . . . . I \

4. Return on Portuguese capital invested abroad \\

5. Freight to Portuguese on foreign shipments \

6. Foreigners in Portugal .... 1

7. Brazilian and North American remittances,

including profits of the Rio financial agency ...... 30

8. Unaccounted for ..... if

Total ..... 60

A glance at this balance-sheet shows that a full half of the national incomings consist of remittances from Portuguese emigrants in Brazil and New England, and that a quarter of the whole is represented by re-exports of colonial produce. Portugal is, in fact, paying its way by exporting its own citizens and the produce of its colonies. In other words, instead of the Portuguese population producing its own food and sufficient surplus of produce raw or manufactured to pay its creditors abroad, and for such commodities as it cannot produce at home, it is dependent on foreign supplies for its food, and pays for this and the rest by exporting its own national labour and by exploiting the native labour of its imperial possessions.

Here is an economic embroglio that will test the strength and staying power of the republican renascence. For

314 Portugal and the Peace

these are no recent conditions. The two staple foods of the Portuguese, bread and bacalhao (dried cod), are and long have been, the former largely and the second altogether, foreign imports. We find in Hakluyt (vol. vi, p. 520), 'Though the countryside of Portugal do sqme years find themselves corn, yet are they never able to victual the least part of their city of Lisbon.' Taking the latest information we find that the deficit in the native supply of cereals is about one- third of the total consumption, 1 and that in the supply of wheat the deficit is even more serious, averaging about one-half of the consumption. Since 1899 the importation of cereals is under Government con- trol, and an annual decree fixes how much may be imported and the duty to be paid. All Portuguese home-grown wheat must be bought at prices fixed by law according to quality ; the wheat is made into flour under regulation and the flour into bread, also under regulation, to be sold at fixed prices, weights, and qualities. This artificial regime has various awkward results. One is that the very great variation in the revenues from the import duty on cereals is disturbing to the budget ; . while speculation on the amount to be admitted and the duty to be fixed turns the food of the country into a gambling counter for a small ring of specu- lators. Consequently a bad harvest in Portugal means a bonus to the Treasury and a bonanza to the wheat ring. Moreover, the protection of native agriculture has not as

1 E9a de Campos, Riqueza national, 1914, p. 247.

2 The duties collected from the importation of cereals were as follows :

Dollars. 1910 1,817,800

1911 ....... 171,900

1912 ....... 689,400

1913 (first six months) .... 1,992,800

Portugal and the Peace 3*5

yet resulted in any marked increase in acreage or improve- ment in productive power. Portugal, in the proportion of wheat raised per hectare, still stands below Russia at the bottom of the scale. 1 The regime has, however, had its advantages under war conditions by facilitating regulation of the national food supply.

In the vicious economic circle in which Portugal is enclosed, as by an evil enchantment, excess of rural emigra- tion lies between deficiency of food production and the excess of foreign debt. The strength of Portugal in one respect and its weakness in another lies in the population being still mainly agricultural, and emigration is neces- sarily mainly from the northern provinces where the peasantry is the most prolific, the most progressive, and the most prosperous. The rate of emigration is highest from the less fertile inland fringe of these provinces, and least from the centre and south, and it began to take disquieting proportions coincidently with the financial collapse in the early nineties. The pressure of a direct taxation dispro- portionately heavy on the peasant, the rise in prices due to the highest tariff in Europe and an inconvertible paper currency, the absence of capital for land development and the want of alternative employment in industry, has been driving abroad not only the surplus population, but even the necessary race-stock. The close relationship between the increase of emigration and the increase both of food prices and of the inconvertible currency, can be traced with con- siderable precision. The decrease of emigration noticeable in the years before the war was probably only due to the financial crisis in Brazil reducing the main demand for

1 v. Tear Book of Dept. oj Agriculture, U.S.A., 1912, p. 568 ; and Estatistica do Trigo, 1910.

316 Portugal and the Peace

labour ; though the new conditions, economic and financial, created by the war, which have temporarily redressed the trade balance and restored foreign exchange, will give the Republican Government an opportunity of stopping this drain on the nation's life. But in the end it can only yield to better social and financial administration, for which the measures of reform in taxation, land ownership, and educa- tion already passed by the Republican Government will serve as a sound foundation. The ambition of the Portu- guese reformers is to make Portugal pay its way economically as well as financially, and redress its balance of trade by exporting the manufactured products for which the industry, taste, and technical skill of the people so admirably equips them.

As has been pointed out, the main export of the Portu- guese, next to their own peasants, is re-exportation of the produce of native labour in the colonies. This brings us to the question of the relationship between the Portuguese nation and the Portuguese Empire, a matter so intricate and delicate that it is perhaps a mistake to try and deal with it within the limits allotted to it here. It must, how- ever, be adequately dealt with if we are to understand Portugal's part in the war, because Portugal has entered this war as an Empire for imperial reasons as well in its character as a nation for national reasons.

The precedent of Spain suggests that Portugal, as a nation, would probably have benefited in the end by the loss of the colonies, in spite of the loss of the economic asset of the colonial produce that now makes so important an item in the trade balance. This would have been all the more so in that if colonial produce has contributed considerably to squaring the national balance-sheet, colonial subsidies have

Portugal and the Peace 3*7

contributed even more considerably to queering the national budget.

The estimated deficits in the colonial budgets give no good basis for calculating the amount spent on the colonies, for various reasons ; but a careful calculation of this amount by a competent authority 1 puts the total spent from 1870 to 1912 at 76,032 contos (about £15,000,000). This con- stitutes a serious sum in Portuguese finance, even if small compared with the outlay of other colonial powers; and the greater part was spent on unremunerative purposes. For it will be seen that over half this outlay went on adminis- trative expenses, of which a large though indeterminable proportion was properly a local charge. Moreover, this drain on the budget still continues, though owing to the general improvement in colonial economic conditions, the colonial budgets lately instituted now as a general rule show surpluses with two small exceptions — Timor and Guinea — and one very large exception, Angola ; these being the least-developed colonies. The others have either recovered from relapses, like Cape Verde or India, or are steadily in surplus like San Thome, Principe, or less so, like Mozambique.

In developing the vast tracts of the African continent that have fallen to Portugal as founder's shares, so to say, in the European partition of Africa, the main difficulty has always been the want of capital and of colonial adminis- trators. The ruling class in Portugal, exhausted by the initial effort of occidental conquest and of oriental crusades, and degenerating for centuries, could not even supply the

1 A. R. de Almeida Ribeiro, Colonial Minister of the Republic, who was charged with the colonial reorganization (see Administrafao Fmanceira das Prov. Ultr., 1914).

318 Portugal and the Peace

home service with able and honest officials. As the national spirit of adventure was almost dead, the colonies were left to get on as well as they could. Even so, there have been colonial administrators of ability ; and indeed, when the resources of Portugal are compared with those of the other colonizing Powers, it is surprising to find how much has been done, especially since the Revolution, not only to make the colonial possessions profitable, but also to make them worthy of a naturally humane people.

The internal colonial problems which faced the Republican Government on its accession fell into two categories : the question of the relationship of the Portuguese Government to the natives, and the question of its relationship to the colonists. On the successful solution of these two problems directly depended the trade between the two countries, as well as serious indirect reactions on the future of the Portu- guese Empire. It is, therefore, worth while examining in some detail the way in which these two questions have been dealt with.

It is unnecessary to review the conditions of recruitment and employment of native labour in the cocoa plantations of San Thome and Principe under the previous regime, which caused a press campaign hostile to Portugal, and led to the renunciation by certain prominent British manu- facturers of the purchase of the produce of those islands. But it is noteworthy that the effect of this subordination of business interests to moral instincts was considerable enough to produce a marked decline in the trade between the two countries and in the prosperity of the islands, until fresh markets in Germany were developed. Nor is it possible to review in detail the measures taken by the Portuguese Government by the regulation of recruitment

Portugal and the Peace- 3 I 9

of employment and of repatriation in order to remove this reproach. The present system has now for some time been under careful and impartial observation, and reports on its result indicate that a satisfactory solution has been found, and that, with a continuance of adequate administra- tion, no further trouble need be feared. All the more so, in io,i4when the colonial reforms of the revolution took shape, there appeared a general Codifying Act, embodying all the various protective provisions relating to contract labour. 1 Further, in the organic acts of the colonies, which will next be dealt with, is found a regulation of the peculiar civil status of natives, 2 placing them under the direct administration of the governor, i. e. of the Home Govern- ment, while it recognizes their right to be under their own customs. In fact, in so far as legislation by the Home Government can provide, the status of natives in Portuguese colonies, whether in their homes or working abroad under contract, seems now to be satisfactory.

Passing now to the other question of the relationship between the Home Government and the colonial settlers, we find that the year 1914 has brought a re-orientation of policy and a revision of the principles of colonial policy in this respect which amount to a revolution.

While Portugal does not seem to have gone to such extremes in centralizing its colonial administration as did France, the oversea provinces had never acquired any formal recognition of local rights, and such original organs of local government as had grown up had been extinguished

1 The Act of October 14, 1914. The preamble contains a review of policy concerning Government relations with natives, of considerable interest.

2 Civil Organic Act, August 1914, paras. 18, 22, and 38.

320 Portugal and the Peace

by the centralizing policy of the latter part of the last century. There had been no charters to the original colonists, and the policy of the Colonial Pact of the eighteenth century was that of a mere mercantile exploitation for the benefit of Lisbon. The fiscal councils (Juntas de Fazenda), which might have become a nucleus of self-governing institutions, were abolished by a decree of December 30, 1888, and with them went the power of contracting colonial loans and other practical exercises of independent status. Independence, especially in this matter of finance, was looked on as the initial step to secession, and the metro-* politan fiscal system was imposed on the colonies, tant bien que mal. This carried with it the French system of a division of colonial governmental authority between the administrative power under the governor, and the financial power under the treasurer. There was consequently endless local friction, and no unity of control, nor was there any authority in the metropolitan government capable of taking effective action in the interests of the colonies. The Colonial Office was a mere department in the Ministry of Marine, and the colonies were in every respect, no more than their designa- tions described — -oversea provinces.

In the all-important financial relationship, centralization became merely a euphemism for confusion. There was a colonial budget, including all the colonies together, but there was no definition of what were central and what colonial charges or revenues, and no distinction between the colonies. Such as it was, this budget seldom passed until long after the opening of the year, whence more confusion. Any surpluses were at first simply absorbed for home purposes, but of late years a practice had grown up of transferring funds from colonies with a surplus to colonies

Portugal and the Peace 321

with a deficit. This invidious proceeding first obtained legal recognition in the budget of 1885-6, and seemed to have little to recommend it either on grounds of policy or procedure. During the nineties, with the growing prosperity of the cocoa islands, it was freely resorted to, but did not relieve the mother country of a steady drain for the making good of colonial deficits. This charge appeared in the budgets under various headings, and for various amounts, but its varying amount cannot be considered as any clue to the development or decline of the colonies, as the descrip- tion and dimensions of it were chiefly regulated by con- siderations of budget convenience.

As a result of this confusion and centralization, the condition of the colonies in the nineties was such as to justify to some extent those statesmen who considered their retention only as a drain on and a disturbance of the national economy, and contemplated their alienation with equani- mity. 1

Considered from a political point of view, the dilemma that faced the new Republic in respect of their colonies was the choice of two policies. The one previously followed was that of keeping them as oversea provinces in complete dependence on the mother country. This gave some immediate advantage to the national balance-sheet by

1 For example, writers such as Pedro Diniz, Antonio Inez, Mousinho de Albuquerque, Edouardo Costa, Rodriguez de Freitas, Oliveira Martins and other statesmen supported proposals for selling the colonies, which in 1888 and 1891 were brought forward as a Bill by Ferreira d' Almeida. The anticipated purchaser was Germany, and the estimate for Macao, Timor, India, Guinea and Mozambique was 25,000,000/. sterling. The choice of colonies and of customer and the coincidence with the colonial dispute with the United Kingdom suggests a probable explanation of this last proposal.

1832.5 y

322 Portugal and the Peace

retaining for Lisbon the commerce and control of their produce, but also caused serious prejudice to their develop- ment. This was all the more serious in that their backward condition had become a reproach to Portugal, an incentive to separatist agitation in the colonies, and an excuse for foreign interference. The other policy, that of giving the colonies self-government and financial independence, and opening them up to foreign capital, might in the end cost Lisbon its profitable control of the colonial trade, and leave only the sentimental tie as a safeguard against foreign financial penetration, which latter might end in political predominance.

This dilemma, which threatened Portugal with loss of her colonies in either case, was increased by the fact that the only two capitalist Powers likely to finance the development of Portuguese Africa were the United Kingdom and Ger- many. The former alone would not have been feared, 'but was less ready to put up money than was Germany, for the latter had in view presumably the acquisition of reversionary interests. It seemed possible that the loss of status suffered by Portugal owing to repudiation and revolution, and the desire to conciliate Germany, might induce the United Kingdom to agree to a delimitation of business interests in Portuguese Africa which would be a preliminary to par- tition. To provide openings for foreign capital without giving any to foreign control was the task which was heavily taxing the ability of Portuguese statesmen when the war swept the board.

The provisional government of the Republic included colonial self-government in its programme, and lost no time in making a start. It was indeed high time, for the colonial agitation for self-government, stimulated by the

Portugal and the Peace 323

revolution at home, had become insistent and, in the case of Angola, almost menacing. Accordingly, beginning at the easiest end, the first colonial reform was the constitu- tion of the colonial ministry whereby a central authority was established capable of securing proper consideration for colonial interests. Another step was taken in the decree of May 27, 191 1, which defined the respective financial responsibilities of the mother country and the colonies, and gave the latter a financial status as of right. Further, the budget of 1912-13 gave each colony a separate budget, and a separate subsidy when necessary. These reforms, however, did not go beyond questions of procedure, and left principles of policy unchanged.

A revolution in principle has now been realized and recorded in two organic Acts passed on August 15, 1914. Their effect may be summed up as promoting the oversea provinces to a status and autonomy ranking with that of our Crown colonies ; but they seem, very properly, to have been framed rather as a development of than as a departure from the previous regime, and rather as a means of dealing with difficulties and disadvantages already experienced than as an adoption of any foreign system.

The first Act regulates the civil institutions of the central and colonial administration ; the second regulates their financial and commercial relations. The Act itself is in each case very brief, but is accompanied by principles upon which the colonial constitutions now in preparation must be based. These colonial constitutions are to be approved within a year.

The principles annexed to the Civil Organic Act define restrictively the rights of interference of the home Govern- ment, and determine the relationship of the colonial

y 2

324 Portugal and the Peace

minister to the colonial governors ; the powers and position of the colonial governor which were previously insufficient are made satisfactory, and an embryo colonial legislature appears in a Government council composed of official and elected members in such proportion as the colonial con- stitution provides. The administrative system is completed by district governors, with district councils and municipal chambers.

The Financial Act is even more important, and introduces an even greater revolution of the existing regime. Thus Article I of the Act establishes colonial financial autonomy — with the unavoidable exception of the territory adminis- tered by chartered companies — and this principle is very fully and fairly developed in the subsequent provisions.

The economic relationship between the home country and the colonies is also revised, but without a radical change of principle. The difficulties of any drastic change are very great, though the demand for such change is even greater than in respect of the administrative relationship. The monopolist and mercantilist principle of the traditional colonial policy have their most practical expression in the preferences and prohibitions imposed by the home country on the colonies. Thus, colonial products on importation into Portugal enjoy a 50 per cent, reduction of import duties, but Portuguese products got a 90 per cent, reduc- tion in the colonies — a preference all the more profitable that the Portuguese tariff is practically prohibitive in many products. This differential preference is now replaced by an even preference establishing a mutual 50 per cent, reduction of duties. Another burdensome preference imposed on the colonies was that in favour of Portuguese shipping. This had the double object of promoting the

Portugal and the Peace 325

national mercantile marine and of preserving Lisbon's position as the centre of deposit, of warehousing, of dis- tribution, and of financing of the colonial trade. For this purpose the ocean coasting trade between Portugal and West Africa, as well as the petty coasting trade generally, is reserved to the national flag by an Act of January 23, 1905, and a 20 per cent, reduction of duties is granted to foreign products imported into the colonies via Lisbon. These measures have been effective in diverting to Lisbon almost the whole trade of the cocoa islands, of Guinea, and of Angola. The consequence is that these colonial exports play a very important part, as has been shown, in reducing the economic trade balance against Portugal. It is pre- sumably considered that the home country cannot at present afford to give up the advantages of this somewhat artificial arrangement, and it is accordingly maintained, with only a reference to its possible modification in unlikely contingencies. Subject to certain considerable restrictions, the colonies will now have control of their customs duties, and they can reduce the disadvantages of the restrictions by lowering duties if their budgets allow.

It is evident, therefore, that the Republic made an effort towards putting the Portuguese Empire on a reformed basis. But this effort did not free the Republic from the dilemma that whether it followed a liberal or an imperial policy in respect of its colonies, it seemed likely to lose them in either case. If it kept them in complete political and economic dependence, their backward condition would excite separatist agitation in the colonies themselves and excuse altruistic intervention from outside. If they were given political and economic autonomy they would be exposed until they attained a certain maturity and

326 Portugal and the Peace

prosperity to the risk of foreign pacific penetration and financial control. The first clanger, that of altruistic inter- ference, was the lesser of the two, coming as it did mainly from Great Britain ; the second, originating in German colonial expansion, was more formidable. When some years ago it became known that the two had come to an under- standing and that Great Britain and Germany had defined their economic spheres of interest in the Portuguese colonies, the end of the Portuguese Empire and of the Anglo-Portu- guese alliance seemed at hand.

We have seen that the Anglo-Portuguese alliance suffered a serious eclipse at the critical time in Portuguese affairs when the colonial disputes culminating in the British ultimatum of January 1891 caused a deep wound to the national sensitiveness of the Portuguese ; while the financial crisis of 1892 and the reductions of interest on the foreign debt no less offended British business sensibilities. As a consequence, during the later years of the Monarchy, the British alliance, the Court camarilla, and the Society of Jesus had formed a trinity which was the object of constant attacks by Young Portugal and by the Republican opposition. Fortunately, no sooner was the revolution accomplished than the statesmanship of its authors showed them that the British alliance was not only innocuous but indispensable. The position of Republican and restoration parties towards the British alliance was eventually transposed and the more extreme Republicans became the most enthusiastic of our friends. Unfortunately, British public opinion as represented in the London press was not so flexible and continued to show itself indifferent, if not ill-disposed, towards Portugal until the war made us appreciate the moral value of support from an independent and intellectual democracy.

Portugal and the Peace 327

During the last decade in Europe conditions were such that moral values were overlooked somewhat in international relations ; which seemed everywhere and for ever to be regulated by material considerations. The material value to us of the Portuguese alliance had been declining for over a century through the development of vast markets and sources of supply in the Americas and in the Far East, and by the giant growth of the world's industry and commerce which relegated Portugal to comparative insignificance. But with the new century the world's business reached a point where a return was being made to the by-products and way-stations, passed over in the time of sensational output and of rush for the larger centres of demand. In this latter phase we overlooked the importance of Portugal as a convenient way-station on the great South Atlantic trade route ; and with this neglect came the opportunity of rivals ready to exploit any opening left by those earlier in the field.

To German enterprise Lisbon offered two opportunities. The first was that of capturing the markets of Portugal itself by means of cheap freights on their South Atlantic and Mediterranean lines, cheap credits through local agents, and cheap goods through dumping of surplus protected products. The second and the most important was the opportunity of getting economic control of large tracts of Africa under Portuguese sovereignty by establishing a financial predominance in Lisbon. 1 The German exploita- tion of Portugal began with the closing years of the last century, and its course is interesting to trace as an indication of the deadly danger to a centralized Empire such as that

1 The same policy can be observed in a more developed form in respect of Constantinople and Asia Minor.

328 Portugal and the Peace

of Portugal caused by financial embarrassment with its consequences in high tariffs and want of capital.

A high tariff regime gives an obvious opening for an active foreign Power to alter in its own favour the com- merce and therewith the political relationships of a smaller State. The Portuguese tariff of 1892 was the highest tariff in force before the war. 1 Dictated by fiscal difficulties, and partly also by the protectionist principles then generally prevalent, it has been as unsatisfactory a form of taxation as any of the even more antiquated direct taxes ; but, like them, is now very difficult to alter or abolish. The new tariff arrangements of 1908 were adopted with a view to having an instrument more efficacious in getting favourable treatment for Portuguese exports, especially wine, than could be got under the old single-column tariff of 1892. Thus three tariffs were established : a penal tariff, the normal tariff, and a conventional tariff.

The German Empire was at that moment trying to effect an economic establishment of German influence on the Atlantic sea-board, and at once took advantage of this opportunity of making good the checks she had received in the attempt to ' penetrate ' Madeira and Morocco. The attempt to penetrate Madeira in the form of a con- cession obtained from the monarchy for the establish- ment of a sanatorium there had failed under British pressure on Portugal. So, realizing that Madeira could not be absorbed against the determined opposition of the Western Sea Powers, Germany, with great diplomatic skill,

1 A report of the Minister of Finance submitted in February 1906 showed how heavily this tariff fell on the poorer consumers. Thus the duties on wheat that year worked out at 40 per cent, ad valorem, those on dried cod at 27 per cent., on sugar 146 per cent., on rice 60 per cent.

Portugal and the Peace 329

used the position acquired there for strengthening its hold on Portugal. Part of the compensation for cancellation of the Hohenlohe Concession in Madeira took the form of a commercial treaty which gave Germany preferential treatment over Great Britain. Under this treaty, signed on November 30, 1908, to come into force on June 6, 1910, Germany gave Portuguese wines most-favoured-nation treatment, and also the much-coveted monopoly of the terms ' Port ' and ' Madeira ', which afforded protection against inferior foreign imitations. The schedules as to r-eductions in Portuguese duties annexed to the treaty were complicated in their operation ; but the general result seems to have been to favour German imports into Portugal rather more than Portuguese imports into Germany — though both have made remarkable advances. From this date until the war the trade of Germany was pressing to the front. Not content with the advantages secured in the treaty, the German Government took every opportunity of pro- moting trade with Portugal, and was well seconded by the enterprise of its capitalists, by the energy of its merchants, and by the local experience of its business representatives. If we compare the respective positions of British and German trade with Portugal in, say 1890 and 1910, we see that this campaign of the Germans in Portugal, though commercially speaking not so successful as is generally supposed, yet promised before long to substitute the Germans for our- selves as the predominant Power in Portugal.

The extent to which this German campaign for the national and colonial trade was a simple and natural com- mercial development, or, on the other hand, had a political purpose in securing the reversion of the African colonies, can only be guessed. But it is to be noted that the colonial

330

%Portgual and the Peace

trade has a peculiar financial importance to Portugal at present, and that control of it carries with it a commanding influence in the affairs of the mother country. This arises from the fact that Portugal imports far more for consump- tion than it exports of native products, the balance against her for the five-year period 1908-12 being about 35,000,000/. (180,892 contos). The total re-exportation of colonial produce for the same period was about 12,250,000/. (67,066 contos), or more than one-third of this deficit. Of this re- exportation, the staples are cocoa, coffee and rubber to more than 90 per cent., and these come almost entirely from San Thome and Angola.

Of this colonial produce 85 per cent, was redistributed

thus :

Contos.

Germany ...... 20,293

United States ..... 10,886

United Kingdom .... 6,497

Netherlands 6,168

Denmark ...... 3>°7i

Russia ...... 2,686

The Germans had therefore become before the war larger purchasers of Portuguese products than the United Kingdom, and will probably retain this position after the war, if only for the natural reason that they are a northern people with a market for southern produce even larger than that of the United Kingdom, while, unlike the British, they have few sources of supply under their own control in their colonies. So long as Germans buy Portuguese colonial pro- duce, they must pay for it either with surplus manufactures or with surplus capital, as they have hitherto done, and they will therefore, normally, continue to control the financial centre of the colonial trade. And, so long as that centre

Portgual and the Peace 331

remains at Lisbon, there will be a danger of their dominating Portugal, and of their eventually acquiring the Portuguese colonies. Portugal can only prevent this by so developing the vitality and nationality of the colonies that annexation of them becomes as impossible astheDutchfound that of Brazil.

It is this imperialist economic expansion that the re- settlement of international relationships after the war must provide against, if we are to have the full period of peace that will then be due to the world. In respect of African territories it can only be provided against by an inter- nationalization of interests — by some neutralization of the national character of the various colonies — British, FrencL German, Portuguese, Belgian, Spanish.

The colonial reforms of the Portuguese Republic and its military and naval co-operation have, without question, placed Portugal on a footing of full equality with the other allies. Nothing can be required of Portugal that is not equally required of Great Britain in respect of territorial contribution to such a scheme. But besides this Portugal must not be required to contribute more than its propor- tional share ; and if the African territories that would be required from Portugal for the foundation of an inter- nationalized and neutralized Federation of Central Africa should prove to be more than that contributed by any other State, which would depend on the boundaries given to .the Federation, and if the loss of revenue to Portugal should prove to be more than it has gained in other respects, which will depend on the financial relationship in which we stand to Portugal after the final settlement, then some compensation must be given to Portugal. For in any case we must secure the free consent of the Portuguese Government to the arrangement.

332 Portgual and the Peace

Whether such consent can be obtained will depend very much on how the matter is handled. An appeal to the Portuguese people to join the other peoples of Europe in surrendering their imperial privileges in Central Africa for the better security of the future peace of the world, might possibly arouse a response in Portugal that would permit the Government to take a course that would otherwise imperil the Republic. The Government itself would probably not be unwilling to renounce burden- some responsibilities for African administration in return for a relief from debt charges that are crushing the life out of Portugal itself. Finally, an appeal to Portugal to join the Great Powers in renouncing imperialism in Africa might be reinforced by a concession to Portuguese nation- alism. For instance, Portugal might be given its Alsace- Lorraine — the only ' Lusitania irredenta "• — that district of Olivenca that was reft from its eastern frontier at the last European settlement. Whether Spain could be induced to give it up, or rather whether we should be prepared to pay the price that Spanish nationalism would require of' us for it, is another question.

If the Portuguese people can, without prejudice to their national pride, be freed from that burden of colonial depen- dencies and of debt charges that has impoverished and depopulated them while exposing them to constant insult and injury, and if the Portuguese Republic be given the place to which it is entitled in the new Europe and the new Africa that we hope may arise from the war, then Portugal will not have cause to complain of the results of its loyal allegiance to its ancient ally.

RULERS OF PORTUGAL

The House of Burgundy.

date

Affonzo Henriquez (Count of Portugal 1 1 14), King . . . . mo

Sancho I ' the City- Builder ' 11 85

Affonzo II 'the Fat' 1211

Sancho II 1223

Affonzo III ' of Boulogne ' 1248

Diniz ' the Labourer ' . . . . . . . . .1279

Affonzo IV ' the Brave ' 1325

Pedro I 'the Severe' ......... 1357

Ferdinand ' the Handsome ' ........ 1367

The House of Aviz.

John I ' the Great ' 1385

Edward ........... 1433

Affonzo V ' the African ' ........ 1438

John II ' the Perfect ' 1481

Emmanuel ' the Fortunate '........ 1495

John III . . . . . . . . . .1521

Sebastian ........... 1557

Henry ' the Cardinal ' ......... 1578

The Spanish -Dominion.

Philip I (Philip II of Spain) I5 8o

Philip II (Philip III of Spain) i 59 8

Philip III (Philip IV of Spain) ,621

The House of Braganza.

John IV r 6 40

Affonzo VI .......... i6c6

Pedro II (Regent 1667) i68j

JohnV , I?0 6

J ose P h . 1750

334 Rulers of Portugal

DATE

Maria I and Pedro III 1777

Maria I 1786

John VI (Regent 1799) 1816

Maria II (da Gloria) 1826

(Miguel, 1828; Pedro IV, 1833) 1826

Maria II 1834

Pedro V 1853

Luis I 1861

Carlos I 1889

Manoel ............ 1908

The Portuguese Republic.

President Theophilo Braga ........ 1910

President Manoel de Arriaga . . . . . . .1911

President Theophilo Braga (ad interim) ..... 1915

President Bernardino Machado ....... 1915

INDEX

' Academias ' of the eighteenth cen- tury, 239. Affonzo Henriquez, first King of Portugal, 21, 60-8, Si, 95.

Affonzo II, ' the Fat,' 70, 71.

Affonzo III,' of Boulogne', Pretender and King, 72.

Affonzo IV, ' the Brave ', 76.

Affonzo V, 'the African ', 105-8.

Affonzo VI, 'the hooligan', 175.

African colonies and Germany, 258- 61 ; deportations, 271.

Aguiar, 257.

Alcacer Kebir, defeat and death of Sebastian, 139.

Alcantara, Alva defeats Antonio, 142.

Alcobaca, convent of, 21, 22, 58, 69, 79, no.

Alfarobeira, battle of, 106.

Alfonzo, King of Castile, wars with, 60, 61, 63.

Algarves, conquest of, 72 ; kingdom of, 208; slavery in, 117.

Alho, Affonzo Martin, envoy to Eng- land, 77.

Aljubarrota, defeat of Spain, 22,84, 94, 166.

Almanza, defeat of Anglo-Portu- guese, 183.

Almeida, Dr. A. J., 269, 271, 282, 287.

Almeira, Cortes of, 140.

Alpoim, Jose" Maria, 266.

Ameixial, defeat of Spain, 173.

Amelie, Queen, 274-6.

America, discovery of, 92. Amiens, Treaty of, 206. Amnesty of royalists, 284. Andrade, Freire d', 217, 277, 295,

297. Angola, deficit, 317 ; self-govern- ment, 323. Antonio, Prior of Crato, claim to

Crown, 159-43. Arabic, words, &c, 18, 56. Aranda, 195. ' Arcadians ' of eighteenth century,

239- Armada, defeat of, 142. Armed neutrality and Portugal, 203. Arriaga, Dr., President, 246, 286-

97- Arundel, Earl of, marries princess,

87. Aumale, Mdlle de, marries Affonzo

VI, 175, and Pedro, 176. Avila, 257.

Aviz, House of, 22, 104-6. Azores, discovered, 103; expedition

to, 228 ; expedition from, 329.

Badajos, peace of, 206.

Bailen, battle of, 211.

Ballads, translations from, 55, 77,

251. Baltic Confederacy and Portugal,

203. Barbosa, Ayres, 130. Batalha Abbey, 22, 46, 69, 73, 85,

90, 94, no. Beatrice, Queen, 78.

336

Index

Beatrice, Princess, 82.

Beira, province of, 96, 117, 256.

Belem, convent of, 23, no.

Belle Isle, Pedroite base, 229.

Beresford, Lord, 212-18.

Berwick, Duke of, 183.

Black Prince, betrothal of, 76.

Blake, Admiral, raids colonies, 171.

Boccage, Manoel de, eighteenth- century poet, 193.

Bombarda, Dr., assassinated, 276.

Bombay, ceded to England, 172.

Bonaparte, Joseph, 212.

Bonaparte, Napoleon, q. v.

Booth SS. Line, tours by, 50.

Borges, Franca, eighteenth-centnry poet, 271.

Braga, Dr. Theophilo : The rdle of Portugal, 40; personality of, 245 ; first presidency, 286 ; second, 299.

Braga, Archbishop of, seventeenth- century conspirator, 170.

Braga, town of, 42, 69.

Braganza, House of, 100-8, 219, 248.

Braganza, town of, IT.

Brazil, discovery, 112; inquisition, 119; emigration, 124, 256; Dutch occupation, 161 ; liberation, 169 ; gold, 182, 186, 187 ; Jesuits, 194-5 ; sugar, 198 ; part cession to France, 206 ; independencej 218; republic, 259, 262; royalism, 280.

British alliance, 6, 28, 86, 89, 97, 203, 203, 260, 326 ; expeditions, 71, 84, 205, 211 ; commercial treaty, 73, 293; trade, 327-30; ultimatum, 258, 260.

Budget, national, 255,310; colonial,

317- Bull fights, 30.

Bussaco, defeat of F'rench, 212 ; hotel, 46 ; review, 275.

Cabral, discoverer, 112; statesman 232.

Camacho, Brito, ' unionist ' politi- cian, 288, 290, 296.

Camara brothers, Jesuits, 136.

Camoens, sixteenth-century poet, 36,80; imperialist, 132; transla- tions from Lusiads, 37, 133.

Canning, Portuguese policy, 221-3.

Cao, Deogo, discoverer, in.

' Carbonario', political organization, 268-72, 279-83, 286, 287.

Carlos I, last king, reign, 249-77 \ murder of, 34, 272, 274; person- ality, 249 ; translation King Simon, 250.

Carlotta, Queen, eighteenth and nineteenth century, 209, 219,220.

Carthaginians, colonies of, 10, 48.

Castelmelhor, seventeenth-century statesman, 175.

Castilho, nineteenth-century poet, 239, 241.

Castlereagh, Portuguese policy, 217.

Castro, General Pimento de, premier, 289 ; dictator, 298-9,

Castro, Inez de, tragedy of, 78 ; translation of ballad, 80.

Castro, Jose, nineteenth-century politician, 299.

Castro, Luciano da, 264, 266.

Catholic League, 28.

Celt-Iberians, 12, 46, 48.

Censorship, British, and coup (Citat, 298.

Cetobriga, ancient settlement, 50.

Centa surrendered, 105 ; ceded, 175.

Chagas, Joao, republican politician, 271, 289, 299.

Charles II, marries Catharine of Braganza, 172.

Index

337

Charles II of Spain, succession to,

182. Charles V of Spain, British support,

131. Chartists, nineteenth-century party,

Chaves, 221.

Cid, The, 56.

Cintra, Convention of, 211.

Cintra, Moorish remains, 52, 58.

Citania, ancient settlement, 46, 49.

Ciudad Rodrigo, Spanish defeat,

173-

Coasting trade, restrictions on, 325.

Coimbra, school and party, 241-6 ;

university and town, 8, 72, 74, 78,

83> 94, I9 2 > '93-

Colonial pact, eighteenth-century colonial policy, 320.

Colonies, labour, 31, 261 ; debt, 309 ; produce, 313, 330 ; budgets, 3!7, 3 20 > 323; reforms, 319, 323, 331; alienation, 316, 321, 331; neutralization, 331.

Columbus, Christopher, loss of ser- vices, 112.

Commerce, treaty with Great Britain,

73, 293. CongTess of the Republic, 253, 287,

288, 293, 294, 297.

• Constitutionalists ', nineteenth-cen-

tury party, 231. Corte Real, discoverer of Labrador,

112. Corte Real, Treaty of (1715), 183,

186. Cortes, of the Monarchy, 222-3,

253-5, 258,267,269,274,287. »•

also Thomar, Almeira, &c. Costa, Affonzo, republican premier

and reformer, 68, 269, 271, 279,

286-91, 299, 309-11. Couceiro, Pablo, royalist leader,

281.

Coup d'e'tat of 1914, 297.

Courts of Love, early monarchy, 82.

Coutinho, Azevedo, Royalist con- spirator, 282.

Coutinho, Victor Hugo de, premier, 296.

Crawfurd, Oswald, writer, 19, 67.

Crusades, 52, 62, 114, 137, 179, 187.

Debt, history of, 306 et seq. Democrats, republican party, 279,

287-99. Dens, Joao de, nineteenth-century

poet, 239, 240 ; translation, Life,

240. Diaz, Bartolomeo, discoverer, in. Diniz, King, ' the Worker", 72, 81,

93, 95- Discovery, age of, in. Drake, Sir Francis, expedition under,

63, 142. Dutch in Brazil, 161, 169.

Edouard, King, 101, 105.

Education, 303.

Edward I of England, 73.

Elvas, siege of, 71.

Emigration, 312-15.

Emmanuel, King, ' the Fortunate ',

109, 120. Ericeira, flight of monarchy, 276. ' Evolutionists ', republican party,

287, 288. Evora Monte, Convention of, 230.

Ferdinand, King, ' the Handsome ',

78-83, 94- Ferdinand of Aragon, 107. Ferdinand of Castile, 68. Ferdinand of Saxe-Coburg, King

Consort, p. 247. Ferdinand of Spain, 187. Fernando, ' the Constant Prince ',

100, 105.

1833 -5

338

Index

Ferreira, Diaz, 204.

Fielding, Henry, in Portugal, 185.

Fish girls, 10.

Fontainebleau, Treaty of, 208.

France and Portugal, 197, 204, 205,

208, 210, 211. Franco, Joao, monarchist dictator,

266-71, 274, 289. Freemasons, 209, 215. Freire d'Andrade. v. Andrade. Freitas, Joao de, reactionary senator,

291, 299. French Revolution, 179-206, 218,

235-

Gallegans, 9.

Gama,Vasco da, discoverer, 23,101, no, III.

Germany and Portugal, 236, 267, 328 ; and republic, 282, 294, 297 ; declares war, 306 ; and colonies, 258, 261, 322, 326, 327; trade, 329, 330.

Goa, 194-206.

Godoy, Prince of the Peace, 205, 208.

Gonsalvez, Nufio, 20.

Govea, 130.

Haro, Donna Mencia Lopez de, 72. Henry, King, inquisitor and cardinal,

131, 136, I4°- Henry,Prince, ' the Navigator', 98,

102, 103. Henry II of England, 70. Henry IV of England, 87. Herculano, Alexander, historian, 239. Holy Alliance, 28, 218, 220, 222.

Iberianism, 236, 243. Iberians, 9, 42, 44. Imperialism, 113, 117, 261. Inchiquin, Earl of, expedition under, 172.

Independents, republican party, 288. Inquisition, ji, 23, 26, 32, 119,

120, 124, 131, 186, 192-4. Ireland, 13, 46, 74. Isabel, Queen, 78.

Jesuits, foundation, 119; Brazil, 119, 137 ; abolished, 195 ; and the republic, 275, 299, 326.

Jews, persecution of, 120; con- spiracy, 170; German, 251-6, 265, 267.

John I of Aviz, ' the Great ', 69, 78,

83. 8 4, 8 7, 93, I°i-

John II, 'the Perfect', 108, in.

John III, no, 122, 131, 186.

John IV, of Braganza, 139, 166-71.

John V, 186, 188.

John VI, 204, 208, 209, 210-13, 218-21.

John of Austria, 172.

John of England, 69, 76.

John of Gaunt, 83, 84-7.

Joseph I, 187-92, 198.

'Junius', British envoy, 198.

Junot, marshal and envoy, 208-9, 211-213, 218.

Junqueiro, Guerro, Republican poet, 233, 244 ; translations, King Simon, 250; Mammon Bashaw, 251 ; Want, Waste, and Woe, 256 ; La Patria, 32 ; Young Portugal, 300.

Katherine, Queen, 136. Kinnoull, Lord, envoy, 198.

Laborde, French general, 211. Labour legislation, 285 ; native, 31,

3i8- Lamego, Cortes of, 66. Lancaster, House of, 11. Language, 7, 16-19. Lannes, marshal and envoy, 207.

Index

339

League of Neutrals, 203. Leiria, 72-82, 83-95. Leite, Duarte, politician, 289. Lencestre, II. Leonora, Infanta, 76. Lepanto, battle of, 154; ballad trans- lation, 155. Levant Company, foundation of,

Liberals, 27-32, 257.

Lisbon, growth of, 47, 62, 74, 9;, 113; treaty, 175; earthquake, 290, 192 ; French in, 182, 209 ; English in, 218, 225, 224; re- publicans, 266, 274, 216; strikes, 286.

Literature, 7, 13.

Lopez, Martin, discoverer, in.

Louis XIV of France, 1S2, 184, 188.

Louie, Duke of, nineteenth-century statesman, 220, 252.

Lucena, seventeenth-century states- man, 170.

Luis, King, 248.

Luis, Prince, 272.

Machado, Dr. Bernardino, 245, 246;

republican deputy, 266, 269 ;

Premier, 291 ; President, 299;

services, 292, 296, 298. Madeira, discovery of, 103, 206;

Germans in, 328, 329. Mafra, palace, 24, 58, 188 ; risings,

284, 296. •Magalhaens, discoverer, 112. Manoel, King, 272, 275, 276, 277,

280, 282. Manoelists, royalist party, 282, 292. Mantua, Duchesse, Spanish Regent,

167, 168. Maria da Gloria, Queen, 222, 223,

227, 228, 230, 232. Maria Francisca, Queen, 199, 204,

209.

Maria Isabella, Queen, 221. Maria II, Queen, 247. Marianna Victoria, Queen, 199. Martins, Oliveira, politician, 246,

3o5- Methuen Treaty, 47, 182-7. Metternich, Prince, and Portugal,

223, 229. Miguel, Dom, King, 219-30. Miguelists, royalist party, 282, 292. Moniz. Agas, fourteenth-century

statesman, 61. Montes Claros, Spanish defeat, 173. Montijo, Spanish defeat, 168. Moors, 9, 10, 21, 42, 52, 53, 56, 57,

61, 69, 70, 76, Si. Morning Post and Miguelists, 229. Morocco, fortresses of, 1 35; Germans

in, 328. Mnley, Morocco Sultans, 139. Mvncto, republican journal, 270.

Napier, history, quotations from, 214, 230.

Napoleon, 205-8, 210. v. Penin- sular War.

Nascirniento, Francisco de, eigh- teenth-century poet, 193.

Nassau, Count Maurice, in Brazil, 161, 169.

Naulilla, encounter with Germans, 297.

Naves de Tolosa, battle of, 1 70.

Neutrality in European War, 293,

295- Nova Zembla, discovery, ill. Nunez, Pedro, mathematician, 130.

Oeiras, Count of. v. Pombal. Olivares, Count - Duke, Spanish

statesman, 166, 167, 170. Olivenca district, cession of, 206 ;

claim to, 332. Omar, Emir, 6 1 .

34o

Index

Oporto, 43, 47, 69 ; British factory, 184, 197; rising against English, 218; for Maria, 223, 224; Pedro lands, 229; republic proclaimed, 263; republican election, 266.

Oppus, Archbishop, and the Moors, 52.

Ossorio, Bishop of, library sacked, 156.

Ourique, defeat of Moors, 61.

Palmella, castle of, 49.

Palmella, Duke of, nineteenth-cen- tury statesman, 220, 221, 228, 252.

Palmerston, Portuguese policy, 226, 228.

Papacy, Bull of 1725, 1S6; crusades,

179, 187; Portuguese policy, 6,

25-7, 8 4> »8, 195. 2 75 ; deca y

of, 13 c

Pedro I, 70, 78.

Pedro II, 176, 177, 1S2.

Pedro III, 199.

Pedro IV, Emperor of Brazil and King, 220, 222, 229, 230.

Pedro V, King, 247, 248.

Pedro, Prince Protector, 100, 106.

Pena Palace, 124.

Penella, battle of, 106.

Peninsular War, 203, 211 et seq.

Philip II of Spain, King ofPortugal, 26, 139, 141, 147-50, 152.

Philip V of Spain, 182, 183, 187.

Philippa, Queen, 86, 98.

Phoenicians, 10, 44, 50.

Pirates and Portugal, 135.

Pombal, J. de Carvalho, eighteenth- century statesman, 12, 26, 48

180, 189, 190; and Jesuits, 192-4, 195, 196; banished, 199.

Port wine, 185, 197, 329. 'Progresistas ', republican party, 258, 265, 288.

Prisoners, 33 ; political, 283, 284. Principe, 317; native labour, 318.

Quental, Antero de, republican poet, 235, 240, 242 ; translations from, 243, 260.

Radicals, 279, 283, 284. Reformation, 92, 117, 122, 124. 1 Regeneradores', nineteenth-century

party, 257-8, 265, 266, 288. ' Rei chegou', ballad, translation,

225, 228. keis, Candido dos, Admiral, 276. Republic, in Brazil, 2 59 ; in Portugal,

263, 274, 277, 278, 283,302. Republicanism, 262-6, 302. Republicans, election of, 266; pro- gramme, 267, 268 ; trial of, 271. Repudiation, financial, 263, 273. Resende, Andrea de, antiquarian,

50, 130. Resende, Garcia de, poet, 80. ' Revenge ', ballad, translation, 155. Revolution, American, 262 ; Turkish,

268 ; Portuguese, 276, 305. v.

French. Ribeiro, Bernardim, poet, 125, 130. Ribeiro, Hintze, nineteenth-century

politician, 264, 266. Ribeiro, Joao, seventeenth-century

reformer, 147, 168, 170, 189. Richelieu, Portuguese policy, 166. Richmond, royalists at, 280. Riego, Leote de, republican leader, •

296, 299. Rolica, battle of, 211. komans, 9, 10, 41, 44, 48, 52. Rooke, expedition under, 183. Rotativism, 254, 255, 264, 267. Royal Mail SS. Co., 43, 51, 90. Royalists, 28, 33, 267-8, 272, 275,

279-82, 284, 292. Russia, labour legislation, 285.

Index

34i

Sado, River, 49-71.

Sagres, promontory, 102, 156.

Salado, battle of, 76.

Salamanca University, 8.

Saldanha, Duke, nineteenth-century

statesman, 221, 229, 232, 233,

252, 258. Salisbury, Portuguese policy, 8, 260;

ultimatum, 258. San Ildefonso, treaty, 205. San Mamede, battle of (n 28),

60. San Salvador occupied by Dutch,

160. San Thome and native labour, 317,

318. Sancho I, King, 68, 69, 70, 76. Sancho II, King, 71. Santarem, siege of, 68. Santos, Machado, republican leader,

276, 288. Sartorius, Admiral, expedition

under, 230. Schomberg, expedition under, 173. Schools, 303. Sebastian, King, 136-9. Sebastianism, 144, 164, 202-4, 209,

215-

Separation, law of, 291.

Serpa Pinto, nineteenth-century

explorer, 258. Setubal, 49. Shakespeare, 125. Shipping, Portuguese, 312; German,

300. Silva, Antonio da, eighteenth-century

poet, 193. Simon of Dover, 63. Slavery, introduction of, 117;

abolished, Brazil, 137; abolished,

Portugal, 196. Smith, Sir Sidney, 209. Soarez, Lieutenant, murdered, 283. Soult, Marshal, 212.

Sousa, Teixeira de, nineteenth-cen- tury politician, 275.

Southey, Robert, author, 12, 18S, 192.

Soveral, Marquis de, royalist, 277.

Spain, 6, 8, 26, 78, 131, 158, 162, 167, 180, 183, 204, 206, 210, 236, 282.

Stephens, Morse, historian, 64, 67.

Stewart, de Rothesay, envoy, 2 12, 215-17, 222.

Strikes, 285, 286.

Stukely, Sir Thomas, expedition under, 138.

Syndicalism, 286.

Talavera, battle of, 213.

Tangier, siege of, 105 ; expedition,

138 ; cession, 172. Tariff, 315, 324, (1892) 328, (1908)

328. Tavora plot against Pombal, 195-6. Terceira. v. Villa Flor. Teresa, Queen, 59, 60, 64, 72. Tobacco monopoly, 265, 308. Thomar, 143, 148, 162. Toro, battle of, Spanish victory,

107. Torres Vedras, lines of, 212. Trade unions, 285. Trouin, Duguay-, 183. Troya, ancient settlement, 49, 50. Tuy, peace of, 61, 63. ' Twelve of England ', ballad, 87. Tyrawley, Lord, envoy, 187.

'Unionists', republican party, 287,

288. United States trade, 330. Urraca, Queen of Castile, 59. Utrecht, Treaty of, 183.

Valdevez, Tourney of, 63, 66, 88. Valdevez, Truce of, 63.

342

Index

Valenca, ballad of, translation, 55.

Vasconcellos, Augusto de, repub- lican politician, 289 ; seventeenth- century politician, 167.

Vicente Gil, sixteenth-century poet, 13, 21, 123-5; Auto da Alma, translation, 128-9; Auto da Feira, translation, 126 ; Barca do Inferno, translation, 128; Ex- hortacdo da Guerra, translation, 127; Pastoral, translation , 1 4.

Villa Flor, nineteenth-century general, 221, 228, 230.

Villa Flor, seventeenth-century general, 175.

Vimiera, battle of, 211.

Viseu, Duke of, 108. Visigoths, 9, 52.

Viterbo, Sousa, republican writer, To the Republic, translation, 39.

War, of 1914, 292, 294, 311. Wellington, Duke of, 211-13, 2I 5>

217, 223. Wheat, supply of, 314, 315. Wight, Earl of, expedition under,

Windsor, Treaty of, 22, 86, 87. Wraxall, Sir William, quotation from, 224.

Zamorra, Treaty of, 64

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