Chapter V

], and to that history the reader is referred for an account of the obscure and indecisive, however destructive, wars between the two kingdoms.

[Sidenote: [1372-1376 A.D.]]

During these transactions proposals were frequently made for restoring permanent harmony by matrimonial alliances. At first Ferdinand cast his eyes on the infanta Leonora of Aragon, whom he engaged to marry; but, with his usual fickleness, he escaped from the obligation. He next promised to raise a daughter of Henry of Trastamara, also named Leonora, to the Portuguese throne. When the time approached for the celebration of this marriage, Ferdinand fell passionately in love with one of his own subjects--a Leonora like the rest.[142] To beauty of the finest order, Leonora added a sprightliness which charmed and a wit which captivated him; but these were far inferior to her ambition, and unsupported by one single principle of honour or virtue. She was already the wife of Dom João Lourenço da Cunha, lord of Pombeiro. “Of that we are well aware,” said Ferdinand; “but they are related by blood, and they married without a dispensation: the engagement may easily be annulled.” Proceedings for the cassation of the marriage were instituted in the ecclesiastical courts; and as the husband offered no opposition to them,--doubtless because he had no wish to contend with a plaintiff whose cause was backed by legions of soldiers,--it was declared null. Not considering himself safe in Portugal, Dom Lourenço fled into Castile, evidently little afflicted at the loss of an unprincipled woman.[143] There is reason to believe that it was Ferdinand’s original intention to make her his mistress; but she had too much policy to become the tool of one whom she had resolved to rule; and she assumed the appearance of so much modesty, that to gain his object he was forced to marry her.

But this marriage was strictly private--a precaution adopted as well to stifle the murmurs of his subjects as to prevent the indignant remonstrances of Henry. It was, however, suspected, and the very suspicion produced great dissatisfaction throughout the kingdom--nowhere so great as in the capital. A mob, formidable from its numbers, assembled in the streets, and headed by a tailor, proceeded to the palace to reproach the king for his imprudence. Ferdinand said that he had neither married nor intended to marry Leonora. This declaration satisfied the mob; who, however, insisted that he should take an oath the following day to the same effect in the church of Saõ Domingos--a promise which he readily made. At the time appointed, they proceeded to the church, but found to their mortification that, during the night, the king and Leonora had fled to Santarem. In the height of their fury they apostrophised both in no measured terms. Their insulting conduct so incensed the queen that she procured a royal order for the arrest and execution of the tailor and his chief associates. The fear which this act of severity struck into the people emboldened the king to publish his marriage. The nobles and prelates now hastened to court, to recognise their new queen. All readily kissed her hand with the exception, of Dom Diniz, son of Pedro and Iñes de Castro, who accompanied his refusal in open court with expressions of contempt. Ferdinand drew his poniard, and would doubtless have laid his obnoxious brother at his feet, but for the interference of two nobles who arrested his arm. Even João, the grand-master of Aviz, a natural son of the late king, who is about to perform so memorable a part in the national history, bowed before the triumphant Leonora. To render her power more secure, she began to act with great policy, disarmed hostility, and secured to herself an undisturbed possession of her new dignity.

The insult to the royal family of Castile involved in this imprudent marriage was one of the causes which led to the hostilities that followed--hostilities in which the country was laid waste, from Badajoz to Lisbon, and that capital invested. On the conclusion of peace, in 1373, which was cemented by the marriage of a natural daughter of Ferdinand with a natural son of Henry, tranquillity visited the kingdom for some years; but the Portuguese court, through the ambition and wickedness of the queen, was often distracted and disgraced. As Ferdinand had only a daughter--the princess Beatrice--by Leonora, and as no hopes of future issue appear to have been entertained, the infante João, brother of the king, (not the bastard of that name who was the grand-master of Aviz, but the eldest surviving son of Pedro and Iñes de Castro), was regarded as the presumptive heir to the crown. To set him aside from the succession was now the object of the queen. Fortunately for her purpose, the imprudence of the prince presented her with the means. Struck with the personal charms of Donna Maria, sister of the queen, he privately married her. The step was not hidden from Leonora; who, so far from betraying her knowledge of it, and to lull her intended victim into profound security, proposed to the infante the hand of her own child, and with it the throne of Portugal. As she expected, her offer was declined; but she was resolved to move heaven and earth rather than see her sister and brother-in-law in the possession of supreme power. The former she appears to have hated: her destruction was certainly planned with demoniacal coolness. Sending one day for the infante, she assumed the appearance of intense affliction; assured him that she knew of his marriage with her sister; but that regard for him and his honour, as well as for the honour of the royal family, would not permit her to conceal that sister’s depravity. “You are betrayed, prince!” was the substance of her address. “Maria loves another, to whom she grants her favours!”

[Sidenote: [1376-1381 A.D.]]

Unfortunately, João, who was unacquainted with her real character, and who could not suppose her capable of deliberately destroying a sister, implicitly believed her; and in the madness of his rage, hastened to Coimbra, where the princess then abode. She met him with her usual smiles, and, on being repulsed, falteringly demanded the cause. “Because,” replied the infuriated husband, “you have divulged our marriage and sacrificed my honour.” “Bid your attendants retire,” pleaded the poor woman, “and I will satisfy you.” “I come not to hear your excuses,” João returned furiously, “but to punish your guilt,” and at the same time his dagger found a way to her heart. She fell into the arms of her weeping attendants, while he mounted his horse and fled. The cause of all this wickedness affected inconsolable grief, threw herself at the royal feet, and cried for vengeance on the murderer. But whether she found the king averse to justice, or whether she feared the indignation of the infante, who, sooner or later, would become acquainted with the innocence of Maria, she suddenly changed her proceedings, and obtained permission for him to return to court. But there everyone shunned him--no one more eagerly than Leonora; so that, seeing his hopes of Beatrice at an end, he retired into the province of Entre-Douro-e-Minho, where he was soon acquainted with the bloody perfidy of the queen. Having reason to distrust his safety, he fled into Castile, his heart torn by remorse for the fate of one whom he had passionately loved, and whose bleeding image was incessantly before him.

Though on the accession of Juan I of Castile Ferdinand readily renewed the peace between the two crowns, and consented to marry his daughter Beatrice to the heir of the Castilian, his characteristic fickleness was such that he soon resolved to resume hostilities. To engage the duke of Lancaster in his cause, he sent a trusty messenger to England, Dom João Ferdinand Andeiro, who concluded a league with the Plantagenet. To conceal this negotiation from the world, especially from the Castilian, he pretended great anger with Andeiro, whom he arrested, and confined to the fortress of Estremos. During his agreeable captivity in this place, he was frequently visited by the disguised king, who was sometimes accompanied by the queen, and was made to unfold the conditions he had contracted, and solicited for his advice. As his person was unexceptionable, his address elegant, and his manners prepossessing, he soon won so far on the credulous Leonora that she became the willing partner of his lust, and still more of his ambition. In the hostilities which followed the arrival of the earl of Cambridge, he was released, and, by her influence, was invested with the lordship of Ourem.

[Sidenote: [1381-1383 A.D.]]

Ferdinand at length saw that the affections of his queen were estranged from him, and transferred to Andeiro. Yet--such was his deplorable weakness!--he met both with constrained smiles, and deputed both to be present at the marriage of his daughter Beatrice with Juan of Castile. On this occasion the favourite appeared with a splendour which might have become a sovereign prince, but which filled the beholders with indignation or envy. The perpetual sight of a faithless wife and her insolent paramour was at length too much even for the feeble Ferdinand. In the agony of his feelings he one day opened his heart to the grand-master of Aviz, who he knew hated Andeiro, and with whom he planned that minion’s assassination. But his own death, the result alike of constitutional weakness of frame and mental suffering, saved him from the guilt of murder. The reign of this sovereign was one of the most deplorable that ever afflicted Portugal. The wars with Castile,--wars lightly undertaken and ingloriously conducted,--and the consequent invasions of his territory by his more powerful neighbours, impoverished his people.[h]

FOOTNOTES

[135] According to the _Chronicon Lusitanum_,[d] the _Chronicon Complutense_,[e] and other authorities, Lisbon and Cintra were taken by Alfonso. They must, however, have been soon recovered by the Moors.

[136] That Henry, whose extraction has given rise to much disputation, was of the family of the first duke of Burgundy, and of the royal blood of France, is indisputable from a MS. discovered in the monastery of Fleury, according to La Clède.[f]

[137] Lemos[g] endeavours to vindicate the character of Theresa from the charges imputed to her: the same vain effort, as the reader will remember, has been made by the Castilian writers in favour of Urraca.

[138] “_Mas o rei mandando fazer as mortes indistintas, sem differenca de sexo, e idade; o horror dos gemidos, o tropel da genté, o clamor das mulheres, a meninos, o escuro da noite causan hum espanto tao geral._”--LEMOS.[g]

[139] On this occasion Alfonso, with no more than sixty horsemen, is said to have encountered five hundred horsemen of the Almoravids, and forty thousand foot; and, what is more, to have defeated them! (See _Chronicon Lusitanum_.[d]) These prodigious relations were admitted without scruple by the earlier historians of Portugal.

[140] [According to some authorities Diniz did not rebel at all, but was an exemplary son, and was present at his father’s death-bed.]

[141] [Like all other romantic events, this story has attracted the critics, their chief objection to it being the fact that the contemporary historian Lopes,[l] who describes the death of Iñes with much detail, has nothing to say of the exhumation and coronation. But such negative argument must be cautiously used and historians have not yet annulled the story of Iñes.]

[142] “This name proved terrible to the king,” says Lemos.[g] This name, indeed, in all the three cases, is a most singular coincidence: it did not prove terrible, however it might be pernicious to the interests of the kingdom.

[143] To disarm ridicule by braving it, and to prove how little the affair had affected him, the exiled husband attached to each side of his cap a golden horn.

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