Читать книгу The Story of the Nations: Portugal - H. Morse Stephens - Страница 9

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COUNT HENRY of Burgundy, his wife Theresa, and his son Affonso Henriques, were the three founders of Portugal, and they were all of them individuals of marked personality. They were typical figures of their epoch, possessing the curious mixture of virtues and vices which characterized the age of chivalry.

Count Henry was the second son of Henry, who was the third son of Robert, first Duke of Burgundy, and he was like his father and grandfather, a knight of the old French school, combining a passionate love for adventure and for war with an ambitious and self-seeking temperament. He had come to Spain to the assistance of the Christians, as much with the purpose of founding a dynasty as for the love of war, and from the first he turned his thoughts more to the hope of succeeding his father-in-law, Alfonso VI., in one at least of his kingdoms, than to carving a kingdom for himself out of the dominions of the Arab caliphs. He received his county of Portugal, the dowry of his wife, Theresa, illegitimate daughter of Alfonso VI., as a direct fief of the crown of Gallicia, one of the three kingdoms of his father-in-law. This kingdom Alfonso had granted, as a fief, not as a kingdom, to Count Raymond of Toulouse, who had married his legitimate daughter, Urraca, and Count Henry highly disapproved of being in some sort a feudatory of his fellow-adventurer. At first the jealousy between Henry and Raymond did not show itself; for Count Henry had to fight hard to defend his southern frontiers against the incursions of the Mohammedan general Seyr. To his help he summoned the chivalry of France, and the knights of his native country flocked to his assistance, and were promoted to high military positions and to feudal dignities by him. Battle succeeded battle without either side gaining any decisive victory, until after seven years’ hard fighting both Christians and Moors decided to rest awhile to recover from their exhaustion.

Count Henry was, however, too much the restless knight of the Middle Ages to remain quiet long. Since his Portuguese warriors were weary, and the battle-ground for miles on each bank of the Tagus was laid utterly waste, he could fight no longer in his own country against the unbelievers, and so hurried off in 1103 with Maurice, Bishop of Coimbra, to fight them in Palestine. For two years he served in the expedition known as the Second Crusade, and when he returned he was still ready for more fighting at home. His restlessness was typical of his epoch. The knights of the Crusades were always knights-errant, always in search of adventure, and never satiated with war. This spirit was encouraged by the Church, and while the Almoravide caliph Yūsuf was organizing his military forces for a fresh assault on the Christians, Count Henry, on the other hand, went off in search of adventure abroad, leaving his county under the government of his wife, Theresa.

Fortunately for Portugal, Theresa was a singularly able woman. Beautiful and accomplished, the idol of poets and musicians, and capable of inspiring the deepest devotion, she threw herself heart and soul into the task which her restless husband abandoned, and spent the years of his absence in training the Portuguese for fresh struggles. She too possessed all the faults and virtues of her epoch; passionate to a degree in every sense, she became the adored divinity of her nobles, and prepared herself during this brief regency for the longer regency of her widowhood. Her great aim at this time, as it was throughout her stormy life, was to make the Portuguese nobles regard themselves as Portuguese, and not as Gallicians, and thus prepare them to make their country independent. But though her chief endeavour was to heighten and animate the spirit of her nobles, she did not neglect other classes of her subjects; she encouraged the citizens of her cities in their ideas of municipal independence, and urged them to keep their fortifications in good repair, and to be ready to go forth to war under captains of their own choice, instead of under hereditary leaders from among the nobility. The result of this policy was that, in the next generation, the military retainers of the great nobles, who resided in their castles, went forth to fight side by side with the free citizens under their elected leaders, and that her son was able to lead two distinct classes of soldiers under his banners, who vied with each other in prowess against foreign foes, while they were a check upon each other at home, and could be played off against one another in case either class became dangerous to their suzerain.

When Count Henry returned from Palestine in 1105, he became united with his former brother-in-arms, Count Raymond of Gallicia, by a common feeling of jealousy. Both looked forward to inheriting portions of King Alfonso’s dominions, and were extremely suspicious lest the old monarch should favour his natural son, Sancho, whose mother was a Moorish princess, Zaida, daughter of Ibn Abbad, Emīr of Seville. In their dislike for Sancho they were encouraged by the priests, to whom Alfonso’s affection for a Moorish woman was abhorrent, and an agreement was made between the brothers-in-law by an ambitious French monk, named Hugh of Cluny, afterwards Bishop of Oporto, to oust the son of the infidel. This peaceful arrangement had no result, owing to the death of Count Raymond in 1107, followed by that of young Sancho at the battle of Uclés with the Moors in 1108, and finally by the death of Alfonso VI. himself in 1109.

The king’s death brought about the catastrophe. He left all his dominions to his legitimate daughter, Urraca, with the result that there was five years of fierce fighting between Henry of Burgundy, Alfonso Raimundes, the son of Count Raymond, Alfonso I., of Aragon, and Queen Urraca, during which the Almoravides quietly consolidated their power and prepared for a fresh attack upon the Christians. Nothing proves more certainly that the crusading spirit was often only a cloak for personal ambition than this terrible internecine war, in which princes and nobles changed sides and broke their plighted words with a recklessness supposed to be distinctive of a most abandoned age. While they fought with each other, the Mohammedans advanced. The Almoravide Ali, who had succeeded his father, Yūsuf, in Spain and Morocco, reconquered Talavera and Madrid, and laid siege to Toledo, while his famous general, Seyr Ibn Abi-Bekr, reconquered the Moorish emīrs of the western towns, who had revolted, and in 1112 besieged Santarem, which then formed the southernmost outpost of the county of Portugal. Before he took it however, Seyr died, and Count Henry, who had been forced to come south in order to meet the invaders, once more returned to continue his wars with the Christian princes. Only one incident in Count Henry’s march against the Mohammedans deserves record, and that is the refusal of the citizens of Coimbra to admit their count into their city, or to follow him to the front, unless he confirmed the privileges granted to them by Donna Theresa, and granted them certain fresh concessions. Henry was forced to grant them, and on the death of Seyr, he again advanced into Spain, and joined in further intrigues. These did not last long, for on May 1, 1114, Count Henry died at Astorga, not without a suspicion that he had been poisoned by Queen Urraca, leaving his wife Theresa as regent during the minority of his son, Affonso Henriques, who was but three years old.

Theresa, who made the ancient city of Guimaraens her capital, devoted all her energies to building up her son’s dominions into an independent state; and under her rule, while the Christian states of Spain were torn by internecine war, the Portuguese began to recognize Portugal as their country, and to cease from calling themselves Gallicians. This distinction between Portugal and Gallicia was the first step towards the formation of a national spirit, which grew into a desire for national independence. The people were the same in origin, and spoke the same language. The province of Gallicia had both in Roman and Gothic times spread as far south as the Tagus, and no distinction had been made between the Gallicians of the north and south until Alfonso VI. had given Count Henry his large domain. It was Donna Theresa who first tried to make the distinction more marked. Count Henry had looked upon his county as a step to the succession to the kingdom of Gallicia, if not to the two kingdoms of Leon and Gallicia. Donna Theresa, on the other hand, looked upon Portugal as an independent country, and desired rather to extend her frontiers at the expense of Gallicia than to succeed to the throne of that kingdom.

In her efforts to promote the unity of Portugal and its independence of Gallicia, Donna Theresa was warmly seconded by her people, and especially by the inhabitants of the cities whom she favoured, while among the ruling classes she had the support of the clergy and the opposition of the greater part of the nobility. Most of her nobles owned great estates in both Gallicia and Portugal, for the feudal grants of land conquered by the Christian kings from the Mohammedans were generally made to noblemen, who had led large contingents to their help. These nobles were naturally opposed to a separation between Portugal and Gallicia, which would make them feudatories to two different lords, and often oblige them in case of disputes between their suzerains to sacrifice one of their properties. On the other hand, the Portuguese bishops were suffragans of the reconstructed archbishopric of Braga, and owed no obedience to any Gallician bishop; indeed, they were especially hostile to the wealthiest of them, the powerful bishop of the great pilgrim city of Santiago da Campostella. It has been said that many of the Christian bishoprics continued to exist during the Moorish occupation, and had a continuous history from the first conversion of the people to Christianity, but some had lapsed owing to the poverty of their sees. The advance of the Christian princes, which was due as much to religious as to political motives, brought about the re-establishment of the bishoprics which had lapsed, and the increased endowment of those which had continued to exist. The new bishops held a very different position from their predecessors. They were not the poor shepherds of poor flocks, in a land ruled by infidels, but powerful barons, holding great estates on military tenure, who united the influence of their sacred rank to their temporal power. The metropolitan of these Portuguese bishops was the Archbishop of Braga, and it was naturally his policy to support the independence of the county of Portugal, for it was better for him to be the head of the Church of an important county than to be merely one of the archbishops of the kingdom of Gallicia. This was the attitude taken up by the first great Archbishop of Braga, Mauricio Burdino, a Frenchman, and the companion in Palestine of Count Henry, who had promoted him from the bishopric of Coimbra to the metropolitan see. In it he was supported by Hugh, Bishop of Oporto, the most wealthy of his suffragans, and the history of the ensuing century gives many instances of the patriotism of the Portuguese bishops, and of their efforts to promote and maintain the independence of the new state.

COIMBRA. (PRESENT STATE.) (After a Photograph.)

The regency of Donna Theresa was marked by many struggles, the history of which it is now difficult to trace, but throughout them all, the growing unity of Portugal can be perceived. She took a keen interest in the politics of Gallicia, for she hoped to extend her frontiers to the north, and in 1116 she led her forces in person to the assistance of Diogo Gelmires, Bishop of Santiago da Campostella, and the Count de Trava, who had headed a rising, intended to depose Queen Urraca, and to place her young son Alfonso Raimundes at once upon the throne of Gallicia. In this war Theresa took the towns of Tuy and Orense, and the warrior countess met, in the course of it for the first time, the young hidalgo, Don Fernando Peres de Trava, with whom she fell passionately in love, and whose history was for the future to be linked with hers. In 1117 the Moors, under their caliph Ali in person, invaded her dominions, and besieged her in Coimbra, but she succeeded in beating them off, and spent the following years in peace and quiet, in the constant company of her lover, whom she made governor of Coimbra and Oporto, and Count of Trastamare; while to his elder brother, Bermudo Peres de Trava, she gave the hand of her second daughter by Count Henry, the Donna Urraca, and the governorship of Viseu.

But this quiet enjoyment of peace and love was not long allowed to the beautiful ruler of Portugal. Her half-sister Urraca, the Queen of Castile, Leon, and Gallicia, had been hitherto too much engaged in fighting with her second husband, Alfonso I. of Aragon, to pay any attention to her; but she too was a warrior princess, and in 1121 she ordered Theresa to surrender the city of Tuy. Theresa refused, and Urraca led an army against her, which defeated the Portuguese at Tuy, and eventually the queen took the Countess of Portugal prisoner after a long siege of the castle of Lanhoso. It seemed as if the nascent independence of Portugal was about to be crushed, but Bishop Gelmires came to the assistance of Theresa, who had done so much for his friends and relatives, the De Travas, and threatened to attack Urraca unless she made peace with her half-sister. Urraca was forced to comply, and the treaty of peace which was then signed marks another stage in the growth of the independence of Portugal, for in it Donna Theresa is styled Infanta, and treated as the equal of Queen Urraca, who further promised to cede to her the cities and districts of Toro, Zamora, and Salamanca.

For the next few years the careers of the half-sisters were singularly similar. Queen Urraca showered favours on her lover, Don Pedro de Lara, until her young son, Alfonso Raimundes, assisted by Bishop Gelmires, revolted against her; while Donna Theresa, with equal blindness, devoted herself to her love for Don Fernando Peres de Trava, and thus aroused the hatred of her boy-son Affonso Henriques and of Paio Mendes, who in 1121 had succeeded Mauricio Burdino as Archbishop of Braga. Her quarrel with Paio Mendes commenced in the year after he became archbishop, and well illustrates the attitude of the Portuguese bishops. As long as Theresa had remained the living symbol of Portuguese unity and independence the bishops had followed her, but as soon as she showed her love for a Gallician nobleman they turned against her. Paio Mendes was quite ready to lead the malcontents, for he was the brother of Count Sueiro Mendes of Oporto, surnamed the Great, who was the head of the purely Portuguese, as opposed to the mixed Portuguese and Gallician, nobility. In 1122 Archbishop Paio protested against the gift of so many important posts to Don Fernando, and the proud countess immediately cast him into prison. She was obliged in a few days to release him, for fear of a papal interdict; but she had made a bitter enemy, who was soon to have an opportunity for revenge.

The discontent with Theresa did not show itself openly until 1127, when Alfonso Raimundes, who had succeeded his mother Urraca in the preceding year, and taken the title of Alfonso VII., King of Castile, Leon, and Gallicia, invaded Portugal and forced Theresa to recognize him as suzerain, and to surrender her claims to Tuy and Orense. The citizens of Guimaraens, the capital of the county, at once declared Affonso Henriques of age, and competent to reign; but Alfonso VII. marched against the city, and Egas Moniz, the former tutor of the young count, who was its governor, in order to make peace, promised on behalf of his former pupil that he would ratify Theresa’s submission. Affonso Henriques, however, though only a boy of seventeen, absolutely refused to recognize the submission made by his mother and his tutor, and in 1128 he raised an army with the declared intention of expelling Donna Theresa and her lover from the country. In this movement the boy was encouraged by Archbishop Paio and his brother Sueiro Mendes, by one of his brothers-in-law, Sancho Nunes, by his half-brother, Pedro Affonso, an illegitimate son of Count Henry, by Emigio Moniz, and by Garcia Soares. Donna Theresa also collected an army, consisting chiefly of Gallicians, but she was defeated by her son at the battle of S. Mamede, near Guimaraens, and taken prisoner, and was shortly afterwards expelled, with Don Fernando, from the county she had ruled so long.

Thus ended the regency of Donna Theresa. She had not added a single town to her son’s dominions, for her early conquests had been recaptured by Queen Urraca and Alfonso VII. But she had done more for Portugal than making conquests. She had asserted its independence, and though she seldom called herself Queen, she never took any title less than that of Infanta. She had also prepared for the extension of Portugal towards the south at the end of her regency by encouraging the settlement of the orders of religious knights there. To the Knights Templars she had granted, in 1128, the frontier town of Soure; to the Knights of the Holy Sepulchre S. Payo de Gouvea, Lodeiro, and Paços de Penalva; and to the Knights of the Hospital, the town of Leça. From these beginnings great results were to arise during the reign of her son.

The last years of Theresa’s life were quite out of keeping with the brilliancy of her regency. After her expulsion she wandered about in the mountains of Gallicia with her lover until her death, in poverty, on November 1, 1130. Her body was taken to Portugal, and buried beside that of Count Henry, her husband, in the Cathedral of Braga, and both of them are reverenced by modern Portuguese as the founders of the independence of their country. Her history is a strange one. To political instincts and a capability for government which rank her among the most remarkable women of the whole period of the Middle Ages; to a manly courage, which inspired her to lead her soldiers in person to the fight and enabled her to withstand a Moorish siege, she joined the most feminine of qualities—that of entire devotion to the man she loved. Her love for Fernando Peres may have made her deviate from the path she should have followed as regent of Portugal, but it does not make her a less interesting character in the eyes of posterity. If she loved too greatly, she was greatly punished, and her death in exile more than atoned for the favour she bestowed on her lover. The task commenced by Count Henry and Donna Theresa was destined to be accomplished by one greater than either of them, by the hero of early Portuguese history, Affonso Henriques, who united his father’s restless and chivalrous valour with the political ability of his mother.