Chapter 4 of Prince Henry the Navigator, The Hero of Portugal and of Modern Discovery This is a LibriVox recording. A LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org Recording by Dion Giants, Celtic City, Utah Prince Henry the Navigator by Charles Raymond Beasley Chapter 4 Maritime Exploration, Circa 1250-1410 Italian, Catalan, French and English sailors were the forerunners of the Portuguese in the 14th century and the latter years of the 13th and as in land travel so in maritime the republics of Italy, Amalfi, Pisa, Venice and Genoa were the leaders and examples of Europe. Just as the Italian Dante is the first great name in the new literatures of the west, so the Italian Doria's and Vivaldi and Malicelli are the first to take up again the old Greek and Phoenician enterprise in the ocean. Since Hanno of Carthage and Pharaoh Neco's Tyrians there had been nothing in the nature of a serious trial to find a way round Africa and even the knowledge of the western or fortunate islands so clear to Ptolemy and Strabo had become dim. The Vikings and their crusader followers had done nothing south of Gibraltar Straits but while the crusades were still dragging along a weary and hopeless warfare under St. Louis of France and Prince Edward of England, discovery began again in the Atlantic. In 1270 Lancelot Malicello found the Canaries. In 1281 or 1291 the Genoese galleys of Tadesio Doria and the Vivaldi trying to go by sea to the ports of India to trade there reached Gozora or Cape Naun in Barbary, the southern Ultima Thule and according to a later story sailed the sea of Genoa, Guinea to a city of Ethiopia where even legend lost sight of them for in 1312 nothing more had been heard. From the frequent and emphatic references to this attempt in the literature of the later Middle Ages it is clear that the daring Genoese drew upon themselves the attention of the learned and mercantile worlds as much as one would naturally expect. For these men are the pioneers of Christian explorations in the southern world, the precursors of all the ocean voyages that led to the discoveries of Prince Henry, Dagoma, Columbus and Magellan, the first who directly challenged the disheartening theories of geographers such as Ptolemy, the inaction and traditionalism of the Arabs and the elaborate falsities of storytellers who in the absence of real knowledge had a grand opening for terrible fairy tales. The first age if so it may be called of South Atlantic and African voyages was purely Italian. The second was chiefly marked by the efforts of the Spanish states to equip fleets and send out explorers under Genoese captains. In 1317 the Genoese Emmanuel Pesanja became admiral of Portugal. In 1341 three ships manned by Portuguese and other Spaniards with some Italians put out from Lisbon in search of Malicello's rediscovered islands granted by the Pope to Don Louis of Spain in a bowl of November 15, 1334 and now described from the original letters of Florentine merchants and partners in the venture of 1341 by Boccaccio. Land was found on the fifth day after leaving the Tagus, July 1. The fleet stayed till November and then brought back four natives and products of the islands. The chief pilot thought these were near 900 miles from Sevilla and we may fully suppose that the Archipelago of 13, now first explored and described represents the fortunate islands of Greek geography, the canaries of modern maps and that the five chief islands with their naked but not quite savage people with excellent wood houses and flocks of goats, palms and figs, gardens and corn patches, rocky mountains and pine forests were our pharaoh Palma, Gomera, Grand Canary and Tenerife. The last they took to be 30,000 feet high with its white scarped sides looking like a fortress but terrified at signs of enchantment they did not dare to land and returned to Spain leaving the islands of the rediscovered to be visited as a convenient slave depot by merchants and pirates from the peninsula till the Norman conquest of Bethancourt in 1402. The voyage of 1341 gained much by attempting little. The Catalan voyage of 1346 which followed close upon it was something of a return to the wilder and larger schemes of the first Genoese. On August 10, 1346, Jamie Ferrer left Majorca to go to the river of gold but of the said galley says the Catalan map of 1375 no news has since been heard. On the same map however the explorer's boat is sketched off the Cape Finastera of West Africa and there is after all some ground for supposing this to be nothing more than a mercantile venture to the Gold Coast of Guinea which was becoming known to the traders of Nismas, Marseille and the Christian Mediterranean by the caravan traffic across the Sahara. Even Prince Henry began in the same way. Guinea was his halfway house for India. About the same date circa 1350 as the Catalan voyage is the book of the Spanish friar of the voyage south to the river of gold which gives a more than half fabulous story of travel first by sea beyond Cape's Naan and Bohador then by land across the heart of Africa to the mountains of the moon, the city of Mele where dwelt Prestor John and the Euphrates which comes from the terrestrial paradise where behind some real notes of Barbary coasting perhaps gained from the Catalons of 1346 there is little but a confused transcript of Idrisi's geography yet this was one of the books which helped to fix the notion of a double Nile northern and western, a Nile of Egypt and a Nile of the blacks with a common source in the mountains of the moon upon the Christian science of the time as the Arab geographers had fixed it upon Islam. The next piece of Atlantic exploration was a romantic accident in the reign of Edward III an Englishman named Robert Machin eloped with Anne de Arfit from Bristol, circa 1370 was driven from the coast of France by a northeast wind and after 13 days sided an island, Madeira, where he landed his ship was swept away by the storm his mistress died of terror and exhaustion and five days after Machin was laid beside her by his men who had saved the ship's boat and now ran her upon the African coast they were enslaved like other Christian captives of the Barbary Corsairs but in 1416 a fellow prisoner named Morales of Sevilla an old pilot was ransomed with others and sent back to Spain on his way Morales was captured by a Portuguese captain Xerco the servant of Prince Henry the rediscoverer of Madeira and through this the full story of Machin and his island came to be known in the court of the navigator prince who promptly made his gain of the new knowledge a lasting one by the voyage of Xerco in 1420 last among the immediate predecessors of Prince Henry's semen come the French in the 17th century it was claimed on newly found evidence that between 1364 and 1410 the men of Dieppe and Rowan opened a regular trade in gold, ivory and malagette pepper both the coast of Guinea and built stations at Paddy Paris, Paddy Dieppe and La Mina which they named from the precious metal found there but all this is more than doubtful and the genuine Norman voyage of De Bethancourt in 1402 shows us nothing but the Canaries and the northwest coast of Morocco Cape Naan or Cape Bohador was still the European closest on the African coast the French senior was stirred up to attack the fortunate islands by two events first in 1382 one Lopez a captain of Sevilla sailing to Galicia was driven by a tempest to Grand Canary and lived among the natives seven years till he and his men were denounced to stop this intrigue they the 13 Christian brothers whose testament reached Bethancourt 12 years later were all massacred news of this and of the voyage of a Spaniard named Bacara to the same islands at the same time reached Rochelle about 1400 and found several French adventurers ready for a trial the chief of these Jean de Bethancourt Lord of Grainville and Godeford de La Salle a needy knight started in July 1402 to conquer in the sea a new kingdom for themselves though the leaders quarreled and Grand Canary beat off all attacks the enterprise was successful in the main and several of the islands became Christian colonies the first step towards the colonial empires of the great European expansion as the record of Bethancourt's chaplains is the first chapter of modern colonial history but nothing is clearer in this tract than its limitations the French colonialists as late as 1425 seemed to know nothing of the African coast beyond Cape Bohador they look upon the Canaries rather as an extension of Spain and of Europe than as the beginning of a new world they are anxious to get to the river of gold and traffic there but they do not know the way saved by report de Bethancourt had been to Bohador himself and if things in that country are such as they are described in the book of the Spanish friar he meant to open away to the river of gold or the friar says it is only 150 leagues from Cape Bohador and the map proves the same which is only a three days voyage for sailing boats whereby access would be gained to the land of Pruster John whence come so many riches but as yet our Normans are only eager to know the state of the neighboring countries both islands and terra firma they do not know the coast beyond the utmost Cape of Bohador which had taken the place of the first Arab Finastera Cape Naan, Naan or Naam as the limit of navigation we are now at the very time of Prince Henry himself his first voyage was in 1412 de Bethancourt died in 1425 and it is quite needless to follow out at length the stories however interesting of sporadic navigation in other parts of the European seas between 1380 to 95 the Venetian Zeni sailed in the service of Henry Sinclair Earl of the Orkneys to Greenland and brought back Fisher stories which read like those of Central America of its man eating caribs and splendid barbarism somewhat earlier about 1349 Ivar Bardsen of Norway paid one of the last of Christian visits to the Arctic colonies of Greenland the legacy of the 11th century now sinking into ruin but neither of these voyages gives us any new knowledge of the unknown which was now being pierced not from the north and east but from the south and west both in land travel and sea voyages we have traced the progress of western exploration and discovery up to its hero the real central figure both in the history of Portugal and of the European expansion a little remains to be said on the other lines of preparation for his work in scientific theory and national development from the age of the Crusades Chapter 5 of Prince Henry the Navigator the hero of Portugal and of modern discovery this is a LibriVox recording a LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org recording by Dion Jones Salt Lake City, Utah Prince Henry the Navigator by Charles Raymond Beasley Chapter 5 geographical science in Christendom from the first Crusades circa 1100 to 1460 before the Crusades of the 11th and 12th centuries the scientific geography of Christendom as we have seen was mainly a borrowed thing from the 9th century to the time of the medieval and Christian Renaissance in the 11th 12th and 13th centuries the Arabs were the recognized errors of Greek science and what Franks or Latins knew of Ptolemy or Strabo was either learnt or corrected in the schools of Cordova and Baghdad but when the Northmen and the Holy War with Islam had once thoroughly aroused the practical energies of Christendom it began to expand in mind as well as in empire and in the time of Prince Henry in the 15th century a Portuguese could say our discoveries of coasts and islands and mainland were not made without foresight and knowledge for our sailors went out very well taught and furnished with instruments and rules of astrology and geometry things which all mariners and map makers must know in fact compass, astrolab, timepiece and charts were all in use on the Mediterranean about 1400 just as they were to be found among the Arab traders of the Indian Ocean in this section it will be enough to glance hastily at the latter and growingly independent science of Christendom from the time that it seized merely to follow the lead of Islam and thought and even invented itself in another chapter we have seen something of the lasting and penetrating influence of Greek and Muslim and Hindu tradition upon the western thought which has conquered by absorbing all its rivals we must not forget that some original self-reliant work in geographical theory not less than in practical exploration is absolutely needed to explain the very fact of Prince Henry and his life a student's life far more even than a statesman's and after all the invention of instruments the drawing of maps and globes the reckoning of distances is not less practical than the most daring and successful travel for navigation the first and prime demand is a means of safety some power of knowing where you stand and where to go such as was given to sailors by the use of the magnet prima d'etnatis usum magnetis amalfis says the Berticelli of Palmero but the earliest mention of the black ugly stone in the west is traced to an Englishman Alexander Neckum a monk of Saint Albans writing about 1180 on the natures of things tells us of it as commonly used by sailors not merely as the secret of the learned when they cannot see the sun clearly in cloudy weather or at night and cannot tell which way their prow is tending they put a needle above a magnet which revolves till its point looks north and then stops so the satirist in his bible of about 1210 were as safe a point to steer by in faith as the north star in sailing which mariners can keep ahead of them without sight of it only by the pointing of a needle floating on a straw in water once touched by the magnet it might be supposed from this not merely that the magnet was in use at the end of the 12th century but that it had been known by the savants much earlier yet when Dante's tutor Brinetto Latini visits Roger Bacon at Oxford about 1258 and is shown the black stone he speaks of it as new and wonderful but certain if used to awake suspicion of magic it has the power of drawing iron to it and if a needle be rubbed upon it and fastened to a straw as to swim upon water the needle will instantly turn towards the pole star but no master mariner could use this nor would the sailors venture themselves to see under his command if he took an instrument so like one of the infernal make it was possibly after this that the share of Amalfi came in it may have been Flavio Giorgia or some other citizen of that earliest commercial republic of the Middle Ages which filled up so large a part of the gap between two great ages of progress who fitted the magnet into a box and by connecting it with the compass card made it generally and easily available this it certainly was before Prince Henry's earliest voyages where he takes its use for granted even by merchant coasters and hugging the shore no nothing of chart or needle in any case it would seem that prejudice was broken down and the Mariner's compass taken into favor at least by Italian seamen and their Spanish apprentices in the early years of the 14th century or the last years of the 13th and that when the Dori is set out for India by the ocean way in 1291 then fleet sailed for the western islands in 1341 they had some sort of natural guide with them besides the stories of travelers and their own imaginings about the same time circa 1350 mathematics and astronomy began to be studied in Portugal and two of Henry's brothers King Edward and the great Regent Pedro left a name for observations and scientific research thus Pedro in his travels through most of Christendom collected invaluable materials for discovery especially an original of Marco Polo and a map given him at Venice which had all the parts of the earth described whereby Prince Henry was much furthered good maps indeed were almost as valuable to him as good instruments and they are far clearer landmarks of geographical knowledge there are at least seven famous charts either left to us or described for us of the 14th and early 15th centuries which give a pretty clear idea of what Henry's own age and his fathers thought and knew of the world some of which we believe to have been used by the Prince himself and each of which follows some advance in actual exploration first of all comes the Venetian map of Marino Sanuto drawn about 1306 and putting into map form the ideas that inspired the first Italian voyages in the Atlantic on this the south of Africa is washed by the sea as the Vivaldi had hoped to find it but the old story of a central zone uninhabitable from the heat still finds a place helping to keep up the notion of the tropical seas always kept boiling by the sun that held its own so long besides this in Sanuto's map there is no evidence that anyone had really been coasting Africa Henry is not anticipated and can hardly have been much helped by this very hypothetical leap in the dark but the Florentine map of 1351 called the Laurentian Marino is to all appearance a record of the actual discoveries of 1341 and 1346 and a wonderful triumph of guesswork if it is nothing better for Africa is not only made an island but the main outline of its coast is fairly drawn in its western corner the headlands, bays and rivers are laid down as far as Bohador and the three groups Atlantic islands Azores, Canaries and Madeira appear together for the first time beyond this names grows scarce and on the great indent of the Gulf of Guinea enormously exaggerated as it is there is nothing to show for certain any past discovery which suggests that this map was made for two purposes first to record the results of recent travel and secondly to put forward geographical theories based upon tradition and inference what men of old had told and what men of the present could fancy long after the Italian leadership in exploration had passed westward Italian science kept control of geographical theory the Venetian maps of the brothers Pizzagani in 1367 and of the Convent at Morano in 1380 and 1459 and the work of Andrea Bianco in 1436 and 1448 are the most important of medieval charts after the Laurentian and along with these must be reckoned that mentioned above as given in 1425 to 8 to Henry's brother Don Pedro on his visit to Venice this treasure has disappeared but it was said by men of Henry's day and after time who saw it in the monastery of Alcabaca to show as much or more discovered in time past than now if their account is even an approach to the truth it was in itself proof sufficient of the supremacy and almost monopoly of Italians in geographical theory with 1375 and the Catalan map of that year which especially refers to the Catalan voyage of 1346 and may be taken as one result of the same we come to Spanish parallels but until the death of Henry in 1460 Italian draftsmen were in possession and from Maro's great map of 1459 the evidence and result in great measure of the navigator's work could only be drawn by Venetians for the men whose discoveries it recorded but there is one other point in Italian map science which is worth remembering at a time when most schemes of the world were covered with monsters and legends when cartography was half mythical and half miscalculated the coasting voyagers of the Mediterranean had brought their Portolani sea charts to a very different result and how was this did they get right as it were by chance they never had for their object says the great Swedish explorer and draftsman Baron Nordenskold to illustrate the ideas of some classical author of some learned prelate or the legends and dreams of feats of chivalry within the court circle of some more or less lettered feudal Lord they were simply guides to mariners and merchants in the Mediterranean seaports they were seldom drawn by learned men and small enough in return was the attention given them by the learned geographers the men of theory in the 15th and 16th centuries but these plans of practical seaman are a wonderful contrast in their almost present day accuracy to the results theory let loose as we see them in Ptolemy and the Arabian geographers and in such fantasies as the Hefford Mopamunde so well known in England map sketches of this sort were unknown to Greeks and Romans as far as we can tell the old parapley were sailing directions not drawn but written and the only Arabian coast chart known to us was copied from an Italian one but from the opening of the 12th century if not before the western Mediterranean was known to Christian seaman to those at least concerned in the trade and intercourse of the great inland sea by the help of these practical guides from the middle of the 13th century when the use of the compass began on the coast of southern Europe Portolani began to be drawn with its aid and by the end of the same century by the time of our Hefford map circa 1300 these charts had reached the finish that we see and admire in those left to us from the 14th century four of the 498 specimens of this kind of practical map now left to us there is not one of earlier date of the year 1311 among these specimens not merely the mass of materials but the most important examples not merely 413 out of 498 but all the more famous and perfect of the 498 are Italian the course begins with Viscontes chart of the year 1311 and with Dulserts of 1339 and the outlines are faithfully reproduced for instance in the great Dutch map of the Berentzoon circa 1594 for the type once fixed in the 14th century recurs steadily throughout the 15th and 16th the type was so permanent because it was so reliable every part of the Mediterranean coast was sketched without serious mistake or disproportion from a modern point of view while the fullness and detail of the work gave everything that was wanted by practical seamen of course this detail was in the coastlines river mouths and promontories it only touched the land features as they touched the seas for the Portolani were never meant to be more than mariners charts and became less and less trustworthy if they tried to fill up the inland spaces usually left blank for this we must look to the highest class of medieval theoretical maps those founded on Portolani but taking into their view land as well as water and coastline and such were the celebrated examples we have noticed already End of Chapter 5 Chapter 6 of Prince Harry the Navigator of Portugal and of modern discovery this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org Prince Harry the Navigator by Charles Raymond Beasley Chapter 6 Portugal to 1400 1095 to 1400 Henry the Navigator is the hero of Portugal as well as of discovery the chief figure in his country's history as well as the first leader of the great European expansion and the national growth of 300 years is quite as much a part of his life quite as much a cause of his forward movement as the growth of Christendom towards a living interest in the unknown or half-known world around the chief points of interest in the story of Portugal are first the stubborn restless independence of the people always rising into fresh vigor after a seeming overthrow and secondly their instinct for seamanship which Henry was able to train into exploring and colonizing genius there was no physical justice in the separate nationality of the western kingdom of Lisbon any more than of the eastern kingdom of Barcelona Portugal was essentially part of Spain as the united provinces of William of Orange were essentially part of the Netherlands in both cases it was only the spirit and endurance of the race that gave to some provincials the right to become a people while that right was denied to others and Portugal gained that right by a struggle of 300 years which was first a crusade against Islam then a war of independence against brother Christians of Castile last of all a civil strife against rebels and anarchists within in the 12th century the five kingdoms of Spain were clearly marked off from the Muslim states and from one another by the end of the 15th there is only the great central realm of Isabella and the little western coast kingdom of Immanuel the Fortunate the heir of Prince Henry nations are among our best examples of the survival of the fittest and by the side of Poland and Eragon we may well see a meaning in the bare and tiresome story of the medieval kingdom of Portugal the very fact of separate existence means something that has kept on ruling itself for ten generations though its territory was never more than one fourth of the peninsula nor its numbers more than one third of the Spanish race from the middle of the 12th century Portugal has stood alone with less right to such independence from any distinction of place or blood than Ireland or Navarre fighting incessantly out from north, east and south and keeping down the still worst foes of its own household but the meaning of the growth of the Portuguese power is not in its isolation its stubbornly defended national distinction from all other powers but in its central and as it were unifying position in modern history as the guide of Europe and Christendom which marks the real difference between the middle ages and our own day for Henry the navigator breathed into his countrymen the spirit of the old Norse rovers that boundless appetite for new knowledge new pleasures, new sights and sounds which underlay the exploration of the 15th and 16th centuries the exploration of one half of the world's surface the finding of a new continent in the south and in the west and the opening of the great sea routes around the globe the scientific effects of this starting from the new proof of a round world won by a Portuguese seaman, Magellan and the political effects also beginning with the first of modern colonial empires founded by Dagama, Cabral and Albuquerque are two widespread passing reference in this place but this reference must be connected with the true author of the movement for if the industrial element rules modern development if the philosophy of utility as expressing this element is now our guide in war and peace and if the substitution of this for the military spirit is to be dated from that dominion in the Indian seas to realize the designs of Henry if this be so the Portuguese become to us through him something like the founders of our commercial civilization and of the European empire in Asia by the opening years of the 15th century Portugal in a Catholic rather than a classical renaissance had already entered upon its modern life some three generations before the rest of Christendom but its medieval history is very much like that of any other of the five Spanish kingdoms like the rest, Portugal had joined in driving the moors from the Asturias to Andalusia in the 200 years of successful western crusade in the same time between the death of the great vizier Almanzor the last support of the old western caliphate and the overthrow of the African moors who had supplanted that western caliphate between those two points of Muslim triumph and Christian reaction the Portuguese kingdom had been formed out of the county granted in 1095 by Alfonso the sixth of Leon to the free lands Henry of Burgundy for the next 300 years 1095 to 1383 under his descendants who reigned his kings in Guimarães or Lisbon we may trace a gradual but checkered national rise to the revolution of 1383 with two prominent movements of expansion and two relapses of contraction and decline first comes the formation of a national spirit by Count Henry's widow Donna Teresa and her son Afonso and Hickeys who from a lord of Coimbra and Uporto dependent on the kingdom of Galicia or of Leon becomes the first free king of Portugal his victories over the moors in taking Lisbon 1147 and winning the day of Urique 1139 are followed by the first wars with Castile and by the time of quiet organization in his last years under the regency of his son the city builder the building and planting of Sancho is again followed by the first relapse into the weakness of Afonso II and the turbulent minority of Sancho II constitutional troubles begin with the first Sancho's quarrel with Innocent III and with the appearance of the first national Cortes under Chancellor Julian the second forward movement starts with Afonso III who saves the kingdom from anarchy and conquers the Algarves on the south coast from Islam who first organizes the alliance of crown and people against nobles and clergy and in the strength of this defies the interdict of Urban IV Geniz his bastard son for whose legitimation he had made the same struggle with Rome follows Afonso III in 1279 and with him begins the wider life of Portugal her navy and her literature her agriculture, justice and commerce the second relapse may be dated from the Black Death 1348 which threatened the very life of the nation and left behind a sword of chronic weakness the national spirit seemed worn out court intrigue and political disaster the order of the day the church and Cortes alike effect and useful only against themselves but in the revival under a new leader John the father of Prince Henry and the new dynasty the house of Avice and its royal race of famous infants in the years that follow the revolution of 1383 the older religious and crusading fervor is joined with the new spirit of enterprise of fierce activity and the Portugal thus called into being is a great state because the whole nation shares in the life and energy of a more than recovered liberty before the age of King Genese before the 14th century there's little enough in the national story to suggest the first state profession of discovery and exploration in Christian history but we must bring together a few of the suggestive and prophetic incidents of the earlier time if we are to be fully prepared for the later one the port the port of Galicia from the formation of the county or march of Henry of Burgundy seems to have given the district its name of Portugalia at one time as a military frontier against Islam then as an independent state lastly as an imperial kingdom also as the earliest center of Portugal was a harbor and its earliest border a river there was a sort of natural though slumbering fitness for semen ship in the people two again in the alliance of the crown with the towns first formed by Count Henry's wife Teresa in her regency after his death 1114 to 1128 and renewed by her grandson the city builder and by Afonso the third the savior of the kingdom we have an early example of the power of that class which was the backbone of the great movement of expansion when the meaning of this was fairly brought home to them three in the capture of Lisbon in 1147 by Afonso Enrique's Teresa's son at the head of the allied forces of native militia and northern crusaders Flemish, French, German and English we have brought clearly before us not merely the facts of the gain of a really great city by a rising Christian state not merely the result of this in the formation of a kingdom out of a county but the more general connection of the crusading spirit with the new nations of Europe Portugal is the most lasting monument of crusading energy it was this that strengthened the Lusitanians to make good their stand both against the Moors and against Castile and it was this which brought out the maritime bent of the little western kingdom and drew out its interest on the one and only side where that could be of great in general usefulness the crusades without and the policy of statesmen within we may fairly say made the Portuguese ready to leave the expansion of Christendom made possible the work of Henry the navigator the foreign help given at Lisbon in 1147 was only a repetition on a grand scale of what had long been done on a smaller and it was offered again and again to the final conquest of the southern districts between Capes and Vincent and the Guadiana around 1250 left the European kingdom fully formed and the recovery of western Spain from the Muslim had been achieved. Four and when the crusading age passed away it left behind an intercourse of Portugal with England, Flanders and the North Seacoasts which was taken up and developed by Geniche and the kings of the 14th century till under the new royal house of Avice in the boyhood of Henry the navigator this maritime and commercial element had clearly become the most important in the state the main interest even of government so from the first mercantile treaty of 1294 between the traders of Lisbon and London we feel ourselves beyond the mere fighting period and before the death of Geniche 1325 there is a good deal more progress in the same direction. The English Treaty of Exchange is followed by similar ones with France and with Flanders while for the protection of this commerce as well as to prove his fellowship or his rivalry with the maritime republics of Italy Geniche the laborer king built the first Portuguese navy founded a new office of state for its command and gave the post to a great Genoese sailor Emmanuel Pesanha 1317 with the new lord high admiral begins the Spanish Italian age of ocean voyages and the rediscovery of the canaries in 1341 is the first result of the alliance in 1353 the old treaty of 1294 as enlarged and safeguarded by fresh clauses signed in London as if to guard against future trouble in the dark days then hanging over Portugal for the next generation 1350 to 1380 the national politics are bound up with Spanish intrigues and lose nearly all reference to that larger world to which the kingdom was recalled by the revolution of 1383 the overthrow of Castile on the battlefield of Aljubahota and the accession of John of Aviz once more intensely narrowly national one might almost say provincial in peninsular matters Portugal then returned to its older ambition of being not a make weight in Spanish politics but a part of the greater whole of commercial and maritime Europe almost seizing to be Spanish she was by that very transfer of interest from land to sea fitted for her special part to open up those wastes of tide no generation opened before it was through a love affair that the crisis came about Ferdinand the handsome the last of the house of Burgundy to reign in Lisbon became the slave of the worst of his subjects the evil genius of himself and his kingdom for her sake he broke his marriage treaty with Castile 1372 and brought down the vengeance of Henry of Trastamara whom the black prince of England had fought and seemed to conquer at Navarrete the end had foiled all his enemies Pedro the crew Ferdinand of Portugal and Prince Edward of Cressy and Poitiers for Leonor's sake Ferdinand braved the great riot of the Lisbon mob when Fernand Vasquez the tailor led his followers to the palace burst in the gates and forced from the king and oath to stand by the Castilian marriage he had contracted for her sake and broke his word to his artisans as he had broken it to his nobles and his brother Monarch Leonor herself the people hunted for in vain through the rooms and corridors of the palace she escaped from their lynch law to Santarim the same night Ferdinand joined her safe in his strongest fortress he gathered an army and forced his way back into the capital the mob was scattered Vasquez and the other leaders beheaded on the spot then without more delay the king of Portugal married his paramour in the face of her husband of Castile and of his own people loss are nil said the rhyme when kings will but though nobles and people submitted in the lifetime of Ferdinand the storm broke out again on his death in October 1383 during the last 10 years the queen had practically governed and the kingdom seemed to be sinking back into a province of Spain Ferdinand's bastard brother John, master of the Knights of Avice and father of Henry the navigator was the leader of the national party and Leonor had in vain tried to get rid of him silent and dangerous as he was she forged some treasonable letters in his name and procured his arrest then as the king would not order him to execution without trial she forged the warrant too and sent it promptly to the governor of Evora Castle where the master lay in prison but he refused to obey without further proof and John escaped to lead the national restoration on the death of Ferdinand his widow took the regency in the name of her daughter Beatrice just married to the king of Castile it was only a question of time this coming subjection of Portugal unless the whole people rose and made monarchy and government national once more and in December 1383 they did so under John of Avice the patriots cut to pieces the queen's friends and made ready to meet her allies from Castile on the battlefield of Aljubarrota on August the 14th 1385 the struggle was decided Castile was finally driven back and the new age of the new dynasty was fairly started the Portuguese people under King John I and his sons Edward, Pedro, Henry and Ferdinand passed out of the darkness of their slavery into the light and life of the new age the founder of the house of Avice John the king of good memory is the great transition figure in his country's history for in his reign the age of the merely European kingdom is over and that of discovery and empire begins that is the limits of territory and of population as well as the type of government and of policy both home and foreign his reign are permanent in themselves and as the conditions of success they lie at the root of the development of the next hundred years even the drift of Portuguese interests seawords and southwards is decided by his action his alliance with England his encouragement of trade his wars against the Moors for by the middle of his reign by the time of the Siltaconquest 1415 his third son Prince Henry had grown to manhood yet King John's personal work 1383 to 1433 is rather one of settlement and the providing of resources for future action than the taking of any great share in that action his mind was practical rather than prophetic common sense rather than creative his regeneration of the court and trade and society in public service of the kingdom he fitted his people to play their part to be for a time the very foremost men of all this world first of all he founded a strong centralized monarchy like those which marked the 15th century in France and England in Russia the spirit the aim of Louis XI of the Tudors was the same as that of John I of Portugal to rule as well as govern in every department over all persons in all causes as well ecclesiastical as civil within their dominions supreme the master of avis had been the people's choice the Lisbon populace and their leaders had been among the first who dared to fight for him but he would not be a simple king of parliaments he preferred to reign with the help of his nobles for though he distrusted feudalism he dreaded courtes to more so while in most of the new monarchies of Europe the subjection or humiliation of the baronage was a primary article of policy John tried to win his way by lavish gifts of land while resolutely checking feudalism in government curtailing local immunities and guarding the liberties of the towns against noble observers we shall see the results of this in the life of Prince Henry at present there is only space to notice the general fact the other lines of John's home government his reform of criminal procedure his sanction of the vernacular in legal and official business in place of latin his attempt to publish the first collection of portuguese laws his settlement of the court in the true national capital of Lisbon are only to be linked with the life of his son as helping one and all of them towards that conscious political unity on which Henry's work was grounded the same was the result of his foreign policy which was nothing more than the old state rules of geniche systematic neutrality in Spain and a commercial alliance with England and the northern nations with the common sense securities of the restored kingdom but they played another part than one of mere defense and drawing out the seamanship and worldly knowledge and even the greed of portuguese traders in the marks of Bruges in London the school masters of husbandry to Europe Henry's countrymen met the travelers and merchants of Italy and Flanders and England and the Handstowns and gained some inkling of the course and profits of the overland trade from India and the further east first as in Nismas and Montpellier they saw the Malaget pepper and other merchandise of the Sahara and Guinea caravans the Windsor and Paris treaties of 1386 and 1389 the marriage of John himself with Philippa daughter of old John of Gaunt time honored and time serving Lancaster and the consequent alliance between the house of Aviz and the house of our own Henry IV our proofs of an unwritten but well understood triple alliance of England, Flanders and Portugal which had been fostered by the crusades and by trade and family politics and through this friendship had come into being what was now the chief outward activity of portuguese life and interest in commerce which was the beginning of a career of discovery and colonization lastly besides good government besides saving the kingdom and keeping it safely in the most prosperous path Portugal owed to King John and his English wife the training of their five sons Edward the eloquent Pedro the great regent Henry the navigator John the constable Ferdinand the saint the cousins of our own Henry V Henry of Azencourt Edward the heir of John the great and his unfortunate successor 1433-1438 unlucky as most literary princes but deserving whatever courage and honesty and the best gifts can deserve was a good ruler a good son a good brother and a good lawyer a good writer as a pupil of his father's great chancellor John of the rules he has left a tract on the ordering of justice as a king two others on pity and a loyal counselor as a cavalier a book of good writing sumo to our purpose he was always at the side of his brother Henry helped him in his schemes and brought his movement into fashion at a critical time when enterprise seemed likely to slacken in the face of unending difficulties but the navigator's right handman was his next brother Pedro the traveler who after visiting all the countries of western Europe and fighting with the teutonic knights against the heathen Prussians brought back to Portugal for the use of discovery that great mass of suggestive material and written in maps and plans and books which was used for the first ocean voyages of Henry's sailors on his judgment and advice more than of any other men Henry relied and after Edward's death it was due to him as regent that the generous support of the past was more than kept up that so many ships and men were found for the rounding of Cape Verde and that Edward's son and heir Afonso V was trained in the mind of his father and his uncle to be their successor in leading the expansion of Portugal and of Christendom John and Ferdinand, Henry's two younger brothers are not of much importance in his work though they were both of the same rare quality as the elder infanches and the worst disaster of Henry's life the Tangier campaign is closely bound up with the fate of Fernand Prince but as we pass from the earlier story of Portugal to the age of its great achievements it would be hard to doubt or to forget that the mother of the navigator was also of some account in the shaping of the heroes of her house through her at least the Lusitanian Prince of Thompson's line is half an Englishman the Lusitanian Prince who, heaven inspire to love of useful glory roused mankind and in unbounded commerce mixed the world End of Chapter 6 Chapter 7 of Prince Henry the Navigator the hero of Portugal and of modern discovery this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings ring the public domain for more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org Prince Henry the Navigator by Charles Raymond Beasley Chapter 7 Henry's position and designs at the time of the first voyages 1410-1415 then from ancient gloom emerged the rising world of trade the genius then of navigation held in hopeless sloth had slumbered on the vast Atlantic deep for idle ages starting, heard at last the Lusitanian Prince heaven inspired to love of useful glory roused mankind and in unbounded commerce mixed the world Thompson Seasons Summer 1005-1012 the third son of John the Great and of Philippa was the infant Henry Duke of Vizil master of the order of Christ governor of the Algarves March the 4th 1394 who might have traveled from court to court like his brother Pedro but who refused all offers from England Italy and Germany and chose the life of a student and a seaman retiring more and more from the known world that he might open up the unknown after the capture of Ceuta in 1415 he planted himself in his naval arsenal at Sagres close to Lagos town and Cape St. Vincent and for more than 40 years till his death in 1460 he kept his mind upon the ocean that stretched out from that rocky headland to the unknown west and south twice only for any length of time did he come back into political life for the rest though respected as the referee of national disputes and the leader and teacher of the people his time was mainly spent in thinking out his plans of discovery drawing his maps adjusting his instruments sending out his ships receiving the reports of his captains his aims were three to discover to add to the greatness and wealth of Portugal and to spread the Christian faith one he was trying to find a way round Africa to India for the sake of the new knowledge itself and for the power which that knowledge would give as his mind was above all things interested in the scientific question it was this side which was foremost in his plans he was really trying to find out the shape of the world and to make men feel more at home in it a great unknown round the little island of civilized and habitable world might be lightened he was working in the mist that so long had hung round Christendom chilling every enterprise thus the whole question of the world and its shape its countries and climates its seas and continents on every side of practical exploration was bound to be before Prince Henry as a theorist the practical question which he helped to solve was only a part of this wider whole did this Africa stretching opposite to him in his retreat at Sagres never end till it reached the southern whole or was it possible to get round into the eastern ocean since Ptolemy's map had held the field it had been heresy to suppose this but in the age of Greek and Phoenician voyages it had been guessed by some and perhaps even proved by others the Tyrians whom Pharaoh Neco sent down the Red Sea more than 600 years before Christ brought back after three years a story of their finding Africa an island and so returning by the west and north through the Straits of Gibraltar the same tradition after a long time of discredit was now reviving upon the maps of the 14th century and in spite of the terrible stories of the Arabs Henry was able in the first years of the 15th to find men who would try the forward hope of a direct sea route from Europe to the Indies we have seen how far the charts and guidebooks of the time just before this had advanced Christian knowledge of the world how the southern coastline of Asia is traced by Marco Polo and how even Madagascar is named though not visited by the same traveler the Florentine map of 1351 proves that a fairly true guess of the shape of Africa could be made even before a persistent exploration began with Henry of Portugal the Arab settlements of the east coast of Africa and their trade with the Malibar coast though still kept as a closed monopoly for Islam had thoroughly opened up a line of navigation that was ready as it were for the first Europeans who could strike into it and press the Moorish pilots into a new service discovery was thus anticipated when the coasts of west and south had once been rounded beyond this, the vague knowledge of the Guinea coast already gained through the Sahara-Caravan trade was improved by the Prince himself during his stay at Ceuta into the certainty that if the great western hump of Africa beyond Bojadur could be passed, his caravans would come into an eastern current passing the gold and ivory coast which might lead straight to India and at any rate would be connected to overland traffic with the Mediterranean 2. Again Henry was founding upon his work of exploration an empire for his country at first perhaps only thinking of the straight sea passage as the possible key of the Indian trade it became clearer with every fresh discovery that the European Kingdom might and must be connected by a chain of forts and factories with the rich countries for whose sake all this barren coast were passed in any case and in the eyes of ordinary men the riches of the east were the plain and primary reason of the explorations science had its own aims but to gain an income for its work it must promise some definite gain and the chief hope of Henry's captains was that the wealth now flowing by the overland routes to the Levant within time as the prize of Portuguese Deering go by the waterway without delay or fear of plunder or Arab middlemen talisman and oportum this would repay all the trouble and all the cost and silence all who murmured for this Indian trade was the prize of the world and for the sake of this Rome had destroyed Palmyra and attacked Arabia and held Egypt and struggled for the mastery of the Tigris for the same thing half the wars of the Levant had been waged and by this the Italian republics Venice Genoa and Pisa had grown to greatness 3 Lastly Henry was a crusader with Islam and a missionary with a heathen of him fully as much as of Columbus it may be said that if he aimed at an empire it was a Christian one and from the time of the first voyages his captains had orders not nearly to discover and to trade but convert till his death he hoped to find the land of Praster John the half true half fabulous Christian priest king of the outer world who long cut off from Christendom by the Mohammedan states at this time many things were drawing western Europe towards the east and towards discovery the progress of science and historic knowledge the records and suggestions of travelers the development of the Christian nations the position of Portugal and the spirit of her people all these lines met as it were Henry's time and nation and person and from that meeting came the results of Columbus and the Gama and Magellan in the earlier chapters we have tried to trace the preparation along these slowly converging paths for the discoveries of the 15th century we started with that body of knowledge and theory about the world which the Roman Empire bequeathed to Christendom the early middle ages was worked upon by the Arabs and we gained some idea from the sayings of Muslim geographers and from the doings of Muslim warriors of the Hingens as well as of the help that Islam gave to European expansion we saw that during the great struggle of Christianity and of the old order with barbarism the chief energy of our western world in discovery or extension took the shape of pilgrimage then as time went on it was possible to see that the Saracens who had begun as destroyers in the south were acting as teachers and civilizers upon Europe that the Viking who has pirates in the north seemed raised up to complete the ruin of Latin civilization were really waking it into a new activity in the crusades this activity which had already founded the kingdom of Russia on one side and touched America on the other seemed to pass from the northern seamen into every Christian nation and every class of society and with the conversion of the northmen their place as the discoverers and leaders of the Christian world fitted in with the other movements of Mediterranean commerce war and devotion even the pilgrims of the crusading age were now no longer distinctive they were often as individuals members of other classes traders fighters or travelers who after gaining a firm foothold in Syria began the exploration of the further east the three great discovering energies of the 13th and 14th centuries in land travel, navigation and science were all seen to be results in whole or in part of the crusades themselves and in following the more important steps of European travel and trade and proselytism from the Holy Land to China it became more and more evident that this practical finding out of the treasures of Cathay and the Indies was the necessary preparation for the attempts of Genoese and Portuguese to open up the sea route as another and a safer way to the source of the same treasures lastly the intermittent and uncertain ventures of the 14th century seamen Italian, Spanish, French or English to coast round Africa or to find the Indies by the southern route to reach a definite end without any clear plan of means to that end and the revival in theoretical geography which was trying at the same time to fill up the gaps of knowledge by tradition or by probability seemed to offer a clear contrast and a clear foreshadowing also of Prince Harry's method even his nearest forerunners in seamen ship or in map making were strikingly different from himself they were too much in the spirit of Ptolemy and of ancient science they neglected fact for hypothesis for clever guessing and so their work was spasmodic and unfruitful or at least disappointing it was true enough that each generation of Christian thought was less in fault than the one before it but it was not till the 15th century till Henry had set the example that exploration became systematic and continuous to Marco Polo and men like him we owe the beginnings of the art and science of discovery among the learned to the Portuguese is due at least the credit of making it a thing of national interest and of freeing it from a false philosophy to find out by incessant an unwaring search what the world really was and not to make known facts fit in with the ideas of some thinker on what the world ought to be this we found to be the main difference between cosmos or even Ptolemy and any true leader of discovery for a real advance of knowledge fancy must follow experiment and no merely hypothetical system or universe as shown in holy scripture would do any longer we have come to the time when explorers were not Ptolemics or Strabonians or scripturists but naturalists men who examine things of fresh for themselves these various objects are all involved in the one central aim of discovery but they are not lost in it to know this world to live in and to teach men the new knowledge was the first thing which makes Henry what he is in universal history his other aims are those of his time and his nation but they are not less a part of his life and he succeeded in them all if in part his work was for all time and in part seem to pass away after a hundred years that was due to the exhaustion of his people what he did for his countrymen was realized by others at the start the inspiration was his own he persevered for 50 years 1412 to 1460 till within sight of the goal and though he died before the full result of his work was seen it was nonetheless his do when it came we find his results put down to the credit of others but if Columbus gave Castile and Leon a new world in 1492 if Dagerma reached India in 1498 if Gia's rounded the Cape of Tempests or of Goodhold in 1486 if Magellan made the circuit of the globe in 1520 to 1522 their teacher and master was nonetheless Henry the navigator and of Chapter 7 Chapter 8 of Prince Henry the navigator the hero of Portugal and of modern discovery this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org Prince Henry the navigator by Charles Raymond Beasley Chapter 8 Prince Henry and the capture of Silta 1415 we have seen how the Kingdom of Portugal itself was almost an offspring of the Crusades they had left behind them a thirst for wealth and for a wider life on one side and a broken Muslim power on the other which opened the way and stirred the enterprise of every maritime state we know that Lisbon had long been an active center of trade with the Hanse towns Flanders and England and now the projected conquest of Silta and the appeal of the conqueror of Aljubarrota for a great national effort found the people prepared a royal prince could do what a private man could not in Portugal more fully developed than any other Christian kingdoms was ready to expand abroad without fear at home even before the conquest of Silta in 1410 or 1412 Henry had begun to send out his caravals past Cape Non which had so long been with Cape Bojador the Finisteri of Africa the first object of these ships was to reach the Guinea coast by outflanking the great western shoulder of the continent once there the golden ivory and slave trade would pass away from the desert caravans to the European coasters then the eastern bend of Africa along the bites of Benin and Biafra might be followed to the Indies if this were possible as some had thought if not the first stage of the work would have to be taken up again till men had found and had rounded the southern Cape the outflanking of Guinea proved to be only a part of the outflanking of Africa but it was far more than half the battle just as India was the final prize of full success so the Gold Coast was the reward of the first chapter in that success but of these earlier expeditions nothing is known in detail the history of the African voyages begins with the war of 1415 and the new knowledge it brought to Henry of the Sahara and the Guinea Coast and of the tribes of Tawny Moors and Negroes on the Niger and the Gambia in 1414 when Edward was 23 Pedro 22 and Henry 20 King John planned an attack on Siltah the great Moorish port on the African side of the streets of Gibraltar the three princes had all asked for knighthood their father at first proposed to celebrate a year of tournaments but at the suggestion of the treasurer of Portugal John Afonso Jalenker he decided on this African crusade instead for the same strength and money might as well be spent in conquests from the Muslim as in shamfights between Christians so, after a reconnoitering the place and lulling the suspicions of Aragon and Grenada by a pretense of declaring war against the Count of Holland King John gained the formal consent of his nobles at Torres Vedras and set sail from Lisbon on St. James Day July 25th 1415 as foretold by the dying Queen Philippa 12 days before that splendid woman who had shared the throne for 8 and 20 years and who had trained her sons to be fit successors of her husband as the leaders of Portugal and the examples of all Christians was now cut off by death from a sight of their first victories her last thought was for their success she spoke to Edward of a King's true vocation to Pedro of his nightly duties in the help of widows and orphans to Henry of a general scare for his men on the 13th the last day of her illness she roused herself to ask what wind was blowing so strong against the house and hearing it was the north sank back and died exclaiming it is the wind for your voyage that must be about St. James Day it would have been false respect to delay the spirit of the Queen the Crusaders felt was with them urging them on by the night of the 25th of July the fleet had left the Tagus on the 27th the Crusaders anchored in the Bay of Lagos and mustered all their forces 33 galleys 27 triremes 32 byremes and 120 penises and transports carrying 50,000 soldiers and 30,000 eriners some nobles and merchant adventurers from England France and Germany took part it was something like the conquest of Lisbon over again a greater armada and a much smaller prey on the 10th of August they were off Algeziras still in Moorish hands as part of the Kingdom of Granada and on the 12th the lighter craft were over on the African coast a strong wind nearly carried the heavier into Málaga Ceuta, the ancient Scepta once repaired by Justinian was the chief port of Morocco the center of commerce for the trade routes of the south and east as well as the center of piracy for the Barbary Corsairs it had long been an outpost of Muslim attack on Christendom now that Europe was taking the offensive it would be an outpost of the Spanish crusade against Islam the city was built on the ordinary model in two parts a citadel and a port town the center covered the neck of a long peninsula running out some three miles eastward from the African mainland and broadening again beyond the eastern wall of Ceuta into a hilly square of country it was here just where the land began to spread and form a natural harbor that the Portuguese had planned their landing and to this point Prince Henry with great trouble brought up the heavier craft the strong currents that turned them off to the Spanish coast proved good allies of the Europeans after all for the Moors who had been greatly startled at the first signs of attack and had hurried to get all the help they could from Fez and the upland now fancy the Christian fleet to be scattered once for all and dismissed all by their own garrison while the Portuguese had been afreshed to action by the fiery energy of King John Prince Henry and his brothers on the night of the 15th of August the feast of the assumption the whole armada was at last brought up to the roads of Ceuta Henry anchored off the lower town with his ships from Porto and his father though badly wounded in the leg rode through the fleet in a shellop preparing all his men all that was to be given at daybreak Henry himself was to have the right of first setting foot on shore where it was hoped the quays would be almost beard of defenders for the main force was brought up against the castle and every Moor would rush to the fight where the king of Portugal was leading while these movements were being settled in the armada all through that night Ceuta was brilliantly lighted up as if unfet the governor in his terror could think of nothing better than to frighten the enemy with the show of an immensely populous city and he had ordered a light to be kept burning in every window of every house as the morning cleared and the Christian hosts saw the beach and harbor lined with Moors shouting defiance the attack was begun by some volunteers who forgot the princess claim Juan Huigol Salvis was the first to land and clear a passage for the rest the infanches Henry and Edward were not far behind and after a fierce struggle the Muslims were driven through the gate of the landing place back to the wall of the city here they rallied under a negro giant who fought naked but with the strength of many men Christians to the earth with stones at last he was brought down by a land thrust and the crusaders forced their way into Ceuta but Henry as chief captain on this side would not allow his men to rush on plundering into the heart of the town but kept him by the gates and sent back to the ships for fresh troops who soon came up under Fernandes da Taíji who cheered on the princess this is the sort of tournament for you here you are getting a worthier knighthood than you could win at Lisbon meantime the king with Dom Pedro had heard of Henry's first success while still on shipboard and ordered an instant advance on his side after a still closer struggle than that on the lower ground the moors were routed and Pedro pressed on through the narrow streets just escaping death from the showers of heavy stones off the housetops till he met his brothers in a mosque or square adjoining in the center of Ceuta then the conquerors scattered for plunder and came very near losing the city altogether but for the dogged courage of Henry who twice broke up the Muslim rally with a handful of men at last holding a gate on the inner wall between the lower town and the citadel with 17 himself the 18th Ceuta would have been lost after it had been gained both Henry and Pedro were reported dead such as the end of soldier must not fear was all their father said as he stayed by the ships under the lee of the fortress waiting like Edward III at Cressy for what his sons would do but towards evening it was known throughout the army that the princes were safe that the poor town had been gained and that the moors were slipping away from the citadel Henry, Edward and Pedro held the council and settled to storm the castle next morning but after sunset a few scouts sent out to reconnoiter reported that all the garrison had fled it was true the governor who had despaired all along of holding out was no sooner beaten out of the lower city than he sat for example of a strategic movement up the country when the Portuguese appeared at the fortress gate with axes and began to hew it down only two moors were left inside they shouted out that the Christians might save themselves that trouble for they would open it themselves and the standard of Saint Vincent patron of Lisbon was planted before dark came upon the highest tower of Ceuta King John offered Henry for his gallant leadership the honors of the day and the right to be knighted before his brothers but the prince who had offered at the beginning of the storm to resign his command to Edward as the eldest bagged that those who were before him in age might have their right to be first in dignity as well and the three infanches received their knighthood in order of birth each holding in his hands their sword that the queen had given him on her deathbed it was the first Christian right held in the great mosque of Ceuta now purified as the cathedral and after it the town was thoroughly and carefully sacked from end to end the plunder of golden silver and gems, stuffs and drugs was great enough to make the common soldiers reckless of other things the great jars of oil and honey and spices and all provisions were flung out into the streets and a heavy rain swept away what would have kept a large garrison and plenty the great nobles and the royal princes took back to Portugal some princely spoils Henry's half-brother now Count of Barcelos afterwards more famous and more troublesome as Duke of Bragança chose for his share some six hundred columns of marble from the governor's palace Henry himself gained in Ceuta a knowledge of inland Africa of its trade routes and of the gold coast that encourage him to begin from this time the habit of coasting voyages his earlier essays in exploration had been attempt like the unconnected and occasional efforts of Spanish and Italian Deer Devils it is from this year that continuous ocean sailing begins from the time of his stay in Ceuta Henry works steadily and with foresight towards a nearer goal well foreseen a first stage in his wider scheme which had been traversed by men he had known and talked with they had come into Ceuta from Guinea over the sea of the desert he would send his sailors to their starting point by the longer way over the desert of the sea thus the victory at Ceuta is not without a very direct influence on our subject and for the same reason it was important that the conquerors instead of raising the place decided to hold it when most of the council of war were for a safe and quick return to Portugal one noble, Pedro de Mineses a trusted friend of Henry's struck upon the ground impatiently a stick of orange wood he had in his hand by my faith with this stick I would defend Ceuta from every morisco of them all he was left in command and thus kept open as it were to Europe and to the Prince's view one end of a great avenue of commerce and intercourse which Henry aimed at winning for his country when his ships could once reach Guinea the other end of that same line was in his hands as well the King and the Prince's left Ceuta in September of the same year September the 2nd, 1415 but Henry's connection with his first battlefield was not yet over Mineses found after three years sole command that the moors were pressing him very hard the King of Granada had sent 74 ships to blockade the city from the sea and the troops of Fizz were forcing their way into the lower town Henry was hurriedly sent from Lisbon to its relief while Edward and Pedro got themselves ready to follow him if needed from Lagos and the Algarve Coast but Ceuta had already saved itself as the first succurs were sailing through the straits of Gibraltar Mineses contrived to send them word of his danger the burbers on the land side had mastered Almina on the eastern part of the merchant town while the Granada galleys had closed in upon the port itself at this news Henry made the best speed he could but he was only in time to see the route of the moors directly they sighted the relief coming through the straits the same appearance struck a panic into the enemy's fleet and only one galleys stayed on the African coast to help their lendsmen who were thus left alone and without hope of succour on the eastern hills of the Ceuta peninsula cut off by the city from their Berber allies when Henry landed Almina had been one back and the last of the Granada Muslims cut to pieces from that day Ceuta was safe in Christian hands but the prince after spending two months in the hope that he might find some more work to do in Africa planned a daring stroke in Europe Islam still owned in Spain the Kingdom of Granada too weak to reconquer the old western caliphate but too strong as the last refuge of a conquered and once imperial race to be an easy prey of the Spanish kingdoms and in that kingdom Gibraltar the Rock of Turric was the most troublesome of Moorish strongholds the Mediterranean itself was not fully secured for Christian trade and intercourse while the European pillar of the western straits was a Saracen fort if Portugal was to conquer or explore in northern Africa Gibraltar was as much to be aimed at as Ceuta both sides of the straits Calpi and Abila must be in her hands before Christendom could expand safely along the Atlantic coasts so Henry in the face of all his council determined to make the trial on his voyage back to Lisbon but a storm broke up the fleet and when it could be refitted and reformed the time had gone by and the prince obeyed his father's repeated orders and returned at once to court for his gallantry and skill in the storm of Ceuta he had been made Duke of Vizil Lord of Covilhan when King John first touched his own kingdom after the African campaign Etta Vira on the Algarve coast with his brother Pedro who shared his honors as Duke of Coimbra and Lord of the Lands hence forward known as the Infantado or Principality Henry thus begins the line of Dukes in Portugal and among the other details of the war his name is especially joined in the English fleet which he had enrolled as a contingent of his armada while recruiting for ships and men in the spring of 1415 in the same way as English cruisers had passed Lisbon just in time to aid in its conquest by Afonso Henriquez the great first king of Portugal in 1147 so now 27 English ships on their way to Syria were just in time to make their first conquest abroad lastly, the results of the SELTA campaign in giving positive knowledge of western and inland Africa to a mind like Henry's already set on the finding of a sea route to India have been noticed by all contemporaries and followers who took any interest in his plans but it was not merely caravan news that he gained in these two visits of 1415 and 1418 both Azurada the chronicler of his voyages and Diego Gomes his lieutenant the explorer of the Cape Verde islands and of the Upper Gambia are quite clear about new knowledge of the coast now gained from Moorish prisoners not only did the prince get news of the passage of merchants from the coasts of Tunis to Timbuktu and to Cantor on the Gambia he was able to guide him to seek the lands by the way of the sea but also the Tony Moors or Azenagis his prisoners told him of certain tall palms growing at the mouth of the Senegal or Western Isle by which he was able to guide the caravans he sent out to find that river by the time Henry was ready to return from SELTA to Portugal for good and all for his mind the five reasons for exploring Guinea given by his faithful Azurada first of all was his desire to know the country beyond Cape Bojadu which till that time was quite unknown either by books or by the talk of sailors second was his wish that if any Christian people or good ports should be discovered beyond that Cape he might begin a trade with them that would profit both the natives and the Portuguese for he knew of no other nation in Europe who trafficked in those parts thirdly he believed the Moors were more powerful on that side of Africa than had been thought and he feared there were no Christians there at all so he was feigned to find out how many and how strong his enemies really were fourthly in all his fighting with the Moors the Christian prince to help him from that side of further Africa for the love of Christ therefore he wished if he could to meet with such last was his great desire for the spread of the Christian faith and for the redemption of the vast tribes of men lying under the wrath of God behind all these reasons Azurada also believed in a sixth and deeper one which he proceeds to stayed with all gravity the ultimate and celestial cause of the prince's work four as his ascendant was Aries that is in the house of Mars and the exaltation of the sun and as the sad Mars is in Aquarius which is the house of Saturn it was clear that my lord should be a great conqueror and a searcher out of things hidden from other men according to the craft of Saturn in whose house he was end of chapter 8 chapter 9 of Prince Henry the navigator the hero of Portugal and of modern discovery this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org Prince Henry the navigator by Charles Raymond Beasley chapter 9 Henry Settlements at Sagrish and First Discoveries chapter 1428 whatever the prince owed to his stay at Silta beyond the general suggestion and encouragement to take up a life profession of discovery it was at any rate put into practice on his second and last return 1418 from that time to the end of his life he became a recluse from the court life of Lisbon though he soon gathered round himself to the arrival court of science and seamanship the old sacred cape of the Romans then called Sagrish now the capes and Vincent of Nelson and modern maps was his chosen home for the next 40 years though he seems to have passed a good deal of his time in his sport of Lagos close by in 1419 King John made him governor of the Portuguese the southern province of Portugal and the new governor at once began to rebuild and enlarge the old naval arsenal in the neck of the cape into a settlement that soon became the princess town in Lagos his ships were built and manned and there and in Sagrish itself all the schemes of discovery were thought out the maps and instruments corrected the accounts of past and present travelers compared by the prince himself his results then passed into the instructions of his captains and the equipment of his caravals the sacred cape which he now colonized was at any rate a good center for his work of ocean voyaging here with the Atlantic washing the land on three sides he was well on the scene of action there were buildings on Sagrish headland as old as the 11th century Greek geography had made this the starting point of its shorter and continental measurements for the length of the habitable world and the Genoese whose policy was to buy up points of vintage on every coast were eager to plant a colony there but Portugal was not ready to become like the Byzantine Empire a depot for Italian commerce and Henry had his own reasons for securing a desolate promontory on this he now built himself a palace a chapel, a study an observatory, the earliest in Portugal and a village for his helpers and attendants in his wish to gain a prosperous result for his efforts the prince devoted great industry and thought to the matter at great expense procure the aid of one master Giacomi from Mallorca a man skilled in the art of navigation and in the making of maps and instruments and who was sent for with certain of the Arab and Jewish mathematicians to instruct the Portuguese in that science so at least says the Livy of Portugal at Sagres was thus founded anew the systematic study of applied science in Christendom it was better than the work of the old Greek university at Alexandria with which it has been compared because it was essentially practical from it our sailors says Pedro Nunes went out well taught and provided with instruments and rules which all map makers should know we would gladly know more of Henry's scientific work the good many legends have grown up about it and even his foundation of the chair of mathematics in the University of Lisbon or Coimbra our best evidence of the unrecorded work of his school has been doubted by some modern critics even by the national historian Alexandre Culano but to Prince Henry's study and science two great improvements on this side may be traced first in the art of map making secondly in the building of caravals and ocean craft the great Venetian map of Framauro of the Camel de Lis convent of Murano finished in 1459 one year before the navigator's death is evidence for the one Cadamos to his words as a practical seaman of Italian birth in Henry's service that the caravals of Portugal were the best sailing ships afloat and proved sufficient of the other on both these lines Henry took up the results of Italians and worked towards success with their aid as Columbus and the Cabots and Verrazano in later times represented the intellectual leadership of Italy to other nations Spanish England and France but had to find their career and resources not in their own commercial republics but at the courts of the new centralized kingdoms of the west where a paternal despotism gave the best hope of guiding any popular movement social or religious or political or scientific so in the earlier 15th century mariners like Cadamos to and Denoli scientific drotsman like Framauro and Andrea Bianco looked from Venice in Genoa to the court of Sagres and to the service of Prince Henry as their proper sphere where they would find the encouragement and reward they sought for at home and often sought in vain Henry's settlement of Capes and Vincent was not long without results the voyage of his captain John de Trasteau to the fruitful district of Gran Canary in 1415 was not in any sense a discovery as the conquest of John de Betancourt in 1402 had made these fortunate islands perfectly well known but the finding of Porto Santo and Madeira in 1418-1420 was a real gain for the match and story of the English landing in Madeira was a close secret which by good fortune passed into the princess' keeping but not beyond so that as far as general knowledge went the Portuguese were now fairly embarked upon the sea of darkness first came the sighting of the Holy Haven in 1418 and this year says Azurara two squires of the princess household named John Gonçalves Zarko and Tristão Vais eager for renown and anxious to serve their lord had set out to explore as far as the coast of Guinea but they were caught by a storm near the Lagos and driven to the island of Porto Santo this name they gave themselves at this very time in their joy at thus escaping the perils of the tempest Zarko and Vais returned in triumph to Sagres and reported the new found island to be well worth a permanent settlement Henry always generous took up the idea with great interest and sent out Zarko and Vais with another of his acres one Bartholomew Perestrello to colonize with two ships and products for a new country corn, honey the sugarcane from Sicily the Malvasi grape from Crete even the rabbit from Portugal on his first return voyage Zarko had captured the pilot Morales of Seville and from him the prince had gained certain news of the English landing in Madeira so it was with a definite purpose of further discovery that his captains returned to Porto Santo in 1420 with Morales as their guide now, as before Zarko appears as chief in command he had won himself a name at Ceuta and if the tradition be true had just brought in the first use of ship artillery the finding of Porto Santo was mainly credited to him sailing from Lagos in June 1420 the winner reached once again the fair haven of his first success then he was called to note a dark lion like a mark of distant land upon the southwest horizon the colonists he had left on his earlier visit had watched this day by day till they had made certain of it's been something more than a passing appearance of sea or sky and Morales was ready with his suggestion that this was Machin's island the fog that hung over this part of the ocean would be natural to a thick and dank woodland like that on the island of his old adventure Zarko resolved to try after eight days rest in Porto Santo and observing that the fog grew less toward the east of the cloud bank made for that point and came upon a low marshy deep which he called St. Lawrence Head then creeping round the south coast he came to the highlands and the forests of Madeda so named here now either as Gibarro says from the thick woods they found there or in the form of Machico from the first discoverer luckless Robert Machin for on landing the Portuguese guided by Morales soon found the wooden cross the grave of the Englishman and his mistress and he was there that Zarko with no human being to dispute his title took season of the island in the name of King John, Prince Henry and the Order of Christ embarking once more he then coasted slowly round from the river of the flint to Jackdaw Point and the chamber of the wolves where his men started a herd of sea calves so he came to the vast plain overgrown with fennel or funchau where the chief town of after days grew up a party sent inland to explore reported that on every side the ocean could be seen from the hills and Zarko after taking in some specimens of the native wood and plants and birds at funchau put back in the last days of August to Portugal he was splendidly received at court count of the chamber of the wolves and granted the command of the island for his own life a little later the commandership was made hereditary in his family Tristan Weiss the second in the princess commission was rewarded too the northern half of Madeira was given him as a captaincy and in 1425 Henry began to colonize in form Zarko as early as May 1421 had returned with wife and children and attendants and begun to build the port of Machico in the city of Funchau but this did not become a state affair until four years more had gone by but from the first the island by its export of wood and dragon's blood and wheat became to reward the trouble of discovery and settlement sugar and wine were brought to perfection after three years after the great seven years fire had burned down the forests and enriched the soil of Madeira it was soon after Zarko's return to Funchau that he first set fire to the woods behind the fennel fields of the coast to clear himself away through the undergrowth into the heart of the island the fire blazed and smoldered till it had taken well hold of the entire mass of timber that covered the upper country and the feeble resources of the first settlers could stop it and Madeira lighted the ships of Henry on their way to the south like a volcano till 1428 this was at least the common story as told in Portugal and it was often joined with another of the rabbit plague which ate up all the green stuff of the island in the first struggling years of Zarko's settlement and so prevented the export of anything but timber so much of this was brought into Portugal that Henry's lifetime is a landmark in the domestic architecture of Spain and from the trade of the wood island is derived the lofty style of building that now began to replace the more modest fashion of the Arabs a charter of Henry's dated 1430 10 years after the rediscovery of Madeira and reciting the names of some of the first settlers in his bequest of the island or rather of its spiritualities to the order of Christ on September 18th 1460 just before his death are the chief links between this colony and the home country in the next generation but in the history of institutions there are few more curious facts than the insistence of the prince on a census for his little nation first the family registers of the colonists were carefully kept and from these we see something of the wonder of men who were beginning human life as it were in a new land the first children born in Madeira a son and daughter of Irish Feira one of Zarko's comrades were christen, Adam and Eve End of chapter 9