A Wind From the North (15 page)

Peter was probably the most intellectually distinguished of the brothers. He was a Latin scholar like his father. He had translated one of Cicero’s works, as well as Colonna’s treatise on the principles of monarchy, and Marco Polo’s book of travels for Prince Henry. Something of a philosopher, a poet in his own right, and a moralist, Prince Peter was a navigator in the ocean of the mind—a more treacherous ocean than his brother’s Atlantic. In politics and affairs of state he represented the liberal “golden mean,” strengthening King Edward where he was irresolute, and attempting to moderate Prince Henry where he was impetuous. The fact is that to his contemporaries Henry—especially in his youth—seemed to be a fire-eater who needed a lot of restraint. It was only after the burning drive of youth was spent, and after a bitter taste of defeat, that Henry dedicated himself entirely to the conquest of the sea.

Prince Peter had something of Henry’s strength without his fanaticism, and something of King Edward’s sensitivity without his weakness. If he was intellectually the most developed of the brothers, he was also the best balanced. But, like many intelligent men who can see both sides of a case, this ability was to prove more of a curse than a blessing. Of life itself he had written: “We should consider the archer with his frail arrow who, if he wishes to hit his target, must aim high so that it fall in the right place. But we and our desires, we always fall short of our noblest dreams… .”

Such a philosophical acceptance of human weakness would not have appealed to Henry. Yet even if they disagreed about campaigns in Morocco, they had much in common, and Peter’s knowledge of the Levant and the Middle East must have been unfailingly stimulating to Henry. Prince Peter had much to say of Prester John, of the spice trade, and of what he had learned about the Far East from merchants and princes who traded there. As the Spanish poet Juan de Mena wrote of him:

Never was there before or since

A man who knows

The silks and secrets of the East,

Its islands, hills, its heats and snows,

Like you, my Prince.

The Count of Barcellos was one who rallied to Prince Peter’s camp in opposition to the Tangier expedition. So too did Prince John, the fourth of the brothers, who had won his spurs under Henry’s command during the second expedition to Ceuta. Prince John had noted on that occasion how eager his elder brother had been to attack Gibraltar, and how he had been stopped only by the command of the King. In contrast to his devout family, John was something of a cynic, and distrusted the religious justifications for a crusade against the Moors. If King Edward or Henry raised the argument that the Pope looked favorably on such enterprises, Prince John retorted, “Send a thousand gold coins to any of the cardinals and he will give you papal indulgences with far greater blessings!” Their sister, Princess Isabel, was in no way involved. She had married Philip the Good of Burgundy in 1429, and was now far away in the rich and splendid court at Dijon—whence she wrote, asking Prince Henry to come and stay with her. It is fascinating to speculate on what would have been Henry’s reactions to the pleasure-loving and cultured court of his brother-in-law. The two men would certainly have had one thing in common, a devotion to the medieval concept of chivalry. (Philip the Good founded the Order of the Golden Fleece in the year of his marriage, and was engaged in preparing an expedition against the Turks at the time of his death.)

While the royal family was almost evenly divided over Tangier, the youngest son of King John, Prince Fernando, was an active advocate of it. Bom in 1402, Fernando had been too young to take part in either of the previous campaigns in Morocco, and it was his eagerness to earn himself knighthood as his brothers had done that precipitated the crisis. It was he who repeatedly pressed King Edward to sanction the expedition, and it was after one of these outbursts that the King pleaded with Prince Henry:

“For the love of God, do not arouse Prince Fernando! But try rather to calm him down!”

His words fell on deaf ears, for it seemed natural to Henry that his youngest brother should wish to earn knighthood on the field of battle. It also coincided with his own plans.

“Africa!” he cried. “The Romans knew its value. Africa is the gateway to the empire of the world! Ceuta is nothing by itself—but once the whole coastline is ours, we shall have a second Portugal!”

More than a year of argument and controversy followed before King Edward finally agreed to the expedition. Unlike the first great venture against Ceuta, the preparations for Tangier took place in an atmosphere of doubt, skepticism, and reluctance. Most important of all, the secrecy with which King John had so brilliantly shrouded his objective in 1415 was totally ignored by his successors. It was common knowledge that Tangier was the objective, and the Moors were prepared accordingly. Sala-ben-Sala, who had been governor of Ceuta in 1415, now held a similar post in Tangier. This time he was unlikely to be deceived about the Portuguese intentions.

Even while the preparations for Tangier were occupying him, Prince Henry did not neglect to follow up the success of Gil Eannes. Courtiers at Lisbon might laugh and say that he had discovered nothing more than a farther stretch of desert. But while they still derided his expeditions, they were uneasy—unwilling, perhaps—to accept that their small, easily comprehended world might only be part of something infinitely greater. In the year immediately after the rounding of Cape Bojador, he sent Eannes back again, accompanied this time by an oared galley under the command of Affonso Gongalves Baldaia, his cupbearer.

“Go farther!” he ordered.

After long days at sea they passed the cape once more. The small square-rigged bark stumbled in the long swell, and the galley’s crew were uneasy at their oars. Neither of the ships was really suitable for this type of work, and it was experience gained in early voyages like this that led to the evolution of the caravel.

Beyond Bojador the coast still trended to the southwest. As far as the men could see, there was nothing but the monotonous red-bronze sand, rising here and there into small hills, which seemed to smoke when the wind came scorching off the desert. They dropped anchor in a small bay 80 miles south of Bojador, a desolate place without vegetation or any sign of life. And then the first sailors to land on the beach came running back with the news: “There are tracks in the sand!”

Men and camels had passed along this coast. It was the first hint the Portuguese had had that there was any life beyond the dread cape. If they brought nothing else back to the Prince this year, they could at least confirm that he was right in his belief—there were other men living south of the Moroccan Moors. There was another compensation to the voyage. They found the bay full of gurnards, their ugly, angular heads at variance with the goodness of their firm flesh. Angra dos Ruivos, Gurnard Bay, they called it—a name it bears to this day—and turned homeward with their news.

Next year only one ship was sent out, the galley under Baldaia’s command. Prince Henry could spare no more, for there was a great shortage of ships. Every available vessel was being fitted out and made ready for the assault on Tangier. This time Baldaia was determined to bring back something more tangible from the mysterious coastline. Henry had again ordered him to go farther south.

“Tracks of men and camels,” he had said, “suggest that there is a town not far away—or else they were merchants on their way to some seaport. Go as far south as you can. Try to bring me news of the land. If you can capture one of the inhabitants, bring him back with you.”

Dropping Cape Bojador 170 miles astern, the galley came down the shimmering coastline and anchored in a large inlet. From its shape, Baldaia and his men assumed that they were in the mouth of a river, so they called it the Rio de Ouro, “River of Gold.” They thought that at last, perhaps, they had reached the fabulous lands where spices and precious metals were as common as prickly pear in Portugal. The bay where they anchored they called the Bay of Horses, for it was here that they disembarked the two horses that Prince Henry had provided for the exploration of the coast. Two young noblemen volunteered to make the first reconnaissance, and rode away down the sandbanks of the inlet. Baldaia and the seamen watched them as they disappeared into the unknown country. They saw the dust cloud behind their horses spurt up and hang yellow in the still air.

The scouts were away all that night, and in the morning when they returned, it was seen that one of them was wounded in the foot. They had a strange and exciting tale to tell. About ten miles inland they had come upon a group of nineteen men. Remembering the Prince’s orders to try to bring back a captive, they had at once given chase. But the natives, who were armed with assegais, had fought them off all day, wounding one of the Portuguese in the course of the skirmish. It was an inconclusive affair, but it certainly confirmed that the coastline was inhabited.

Next day Baldaia and some of the crew went ashore, determined on capturing one of the strangers. They found nothing but the trampled sand where the fight had taken place, dried blood on the hot stones (some of the natives had been wounded), and a few pathetic belongings. The Africans had wisely taken to flight. They might indeed have cried with Rimbaud:

“Les blancs debarquent. Le canon! II faut se soumettre au bapteme, s’habiller, travailler.”

The first Europeans had made contact with the first unknown tribes of Africa, and the visitors came, as they would nearly always come, with swords in their hands. Not that these natives were at all peaceful by nature. They were Berbers, “the tawny Moors,” as the Portuguese were to call them—tall, good-looking men with dark hair and hazel eyes, with sometimes a blond among them. They were a “white” and not a Negro race. Traders and farmers, they lived, as they do to this day, in houses of untrimmed stone, often in mountain districts among fields laboriously terraced out of the parched slopes. A warlike people (they have never been completely subjugated), they showed a hostility to the early Portuguese navigators that added a further hazard to the passage of Africa. It is interesting to see that in the current Africa Pilot (1953), published by the Admiralty in London, this stretch of coast is one of the few places in the world that is still described in those words dear to romantic writers: “… The natives are reported to be hostile to strangers.”

Baldaia returned to Sagres with little to show for this first contact with the natives of the continent except for a few nets found farther down the coast, and the skins of some sea lions killed in the Bay of Horses. If Prince Henry was disappointed, he did not show it. After all, it had taken nearly fourteen years for him to find a man who would round Cape Bojador. The astrologers’ assessment of his character was accurate: “His rising sign was Aries, in the House of Mars … therefore, Mars was in Aquarius, which is the House of Hope, signifying that the Prince would occupy himself with brave discoveries and conquests, and especially with the unraveling of those secrets which are not for the eyes of other men.” It was in the exercise of the war god Mars that he now prepared to take the Portuguese fleet and army against the fortress of Tangier.

Before leaving Portugal, he was burdened down with advice from King Edward, some of it good, and some of it curiously irrelevant. What, for instance, could the King hope for by counseling Prince Henry “to make it your business to protect the virtue of chastity”? Prince Henry stood in no need of a reminder. One can only suppose that King Edward was afraid the Portuguese soldiers and sailors would behave in foreign ports as soldiers and sailors always have done.

“You know well how much Our Lord is pleased with this virtue,” the King went on, “and I would call to your attention the English habit in this matter. For, as you know, in time of peace they are very much occupied with their women, having them always around them—yet in time of war, to protect them the better, they will not allow them to come anywhere near the battlefields.” Presumably the King, with his eye on his English cousins, had noticed that—unlike the Continental armies—the English discouraged a long train of camp followers. This was for the practical reason that they would hinder their progress through the countries where they were campaigning. (Like so many other English habits and customs, it was based not on a love of virtue but on a sense of realism.)

Some of Edward’s advice, however, was pertinent. He suggested that his brother should divide the fleet into three, sending one part to Tangier, and the other two to nearby Alcagar and Arzila. In this way the Moors might have been made uncertain of the ultimate objective, and diverted their forces accordingly. What the King ignored, though, was the fact that Prince Henry’s fleet and army were too small to be successfully divided. He had asked for fourteen thousand men—and he got six thousand. He had asked for almost as many ships as the armada that had gone to Ceuta—he got a scratch fleet made up of what trading vessels could be spared, and as many as could be chartered from other countries.

One piece of advice that the King gave his brother might be engraved in letters of brass in every military academy of the world: “Keep one flank on the sea,” he ordered. “Whatever you do, you must maintain your lines of communication with the fleet. To receive provisions and reinforcements, and to be able to retreat if necessary—keep one flank on the sea.”

The importance of the long and meticulous planning that had gone into the assault on Ceuta was forgotten by King John’s sons. Twenty-two years had gone by, and they no longer remembered how nearly that first expedition had ended in disaster. If Prince Henry remembered Ceuta, it was only as the golden moment of youth when not only Africa but the whole world had seemed to lie within his grasp. His years of solitude, and his constant absorption in his dream of Africa, had increased a natural arrogance—acceptable in a young man, but not in a mature leader upon whom everyone depended. King Edward with his doubts and hesitations, Prince Peter with his balanced and profound mistrust of the scheme, were more adult in their approach to the campaign. Their brother was in many ways something of an adolescent. Obsessed with the fiery dream that God was with him, he still felt that the whole world could be taken by the sword in his right hand.