Prince Henry the Navigator during the conquest of Ceuta, glazed tile of
Jorge Colaço
Portuguese expansion into North Africa began in 1415 with a
massive military expedition against the Moroccan port-town of Ceuta, a short
sea-voyage from Portugal across the narrow Straits of Gibraltar. Various
explanations have been offered as to why the Portuguese leadership decided to
launch this expedition, the most important of which have been conveniently
summarised by Isabel and Paulo Drumond Braga.
Firstly, there were alleged strategic objectives such as
gaining a degree of control over the Straits, obtaining a port from which to
combat Muslim piracy and outmanoeuvring Castile; but there is little to suggest
any of these aims was of decisive importance in 1415. A second type of
explanation stresses the economic incentive. Ceuta was known to receive exotic
trade goods from trans-Saharan and trans-Middle Eastern caravans for which
reason it had already attracted attention from the Venetians and Genoese.
Perhaps Ceuta was also seen as a potential supplier of wheat – a commodity
Morocco produced in some abundance but Portugal needed to import. In any event,
merchant interests, particularly in Lisbon, were supposed to have strongly
favoured the expedition. Such explanations received wide credence especially in
the midto- late twentieth century, when the magisterial writings of Vitorino
Magalhães
Godinho were at their most influential.
A third kind of explanation sees the Ceuta expedition, which
was strongly supported by the service nobility, as primarily an extension of
the Iberian peninsula’s long tradition of Reconquest. Recent historiography has
tended to lean towards this view – and with good reason. The goal of Reconquest
had been integral to Iberian Christian life since well before the emergence of
the Portuguese kingdom in the time of Afonso Henriques. Moreover, although
Portugal had freed itself of occupation by the mid-thirteenth century, other
parts of the peninsula still remained in Muslim hands. Nor had the threat of
further invasions from North Africa disappeared. As recently as 1340 just such
an invasion had occurred, led by the Marinid sultan of Fez in person. In
response, the king of Portugal and much of the Portuguese nobility had combined
with their Castilian counterparts to impose a crushing defeat on the invaders
at the battle of Rio Salado, fought near Seville. This encounter took place
only seventy-five years before the Ceuta expedition, and in 1415 it certainly
still remained a vivid memory. Meanwhile, the Muslim kingdom of Granada
persisted – a beleaguered remnant of al-Andalus on peninsular soil, and in
Christian eyes a standing provocation.
The notion of Reconquest was not confined to the Iberian
peninsula only. The kings of Portugal, Castile and Aragon all claimed to be the
rightful heirs to an ancient Visigothic North Africa wrongfully taken from
their forefathers by Muslim conquerors in the early eighth century. Against
this background, a tacit understanding among the three allowed each to claim
the region of North Africa nearest to his own kingdom. In the case of Portugal,
this meant northwestern Morocco. So it is unsurprising that, in the decades
following Rio Salado, prosecuting the war against Islam remained firmly on Portugal’s
agenda. In fact, as Luís Filipe Thomaz points out, five successive papal bulls
were secured by Portuguese kings between 1341 and 1377 formally authorising
crusades against Muslims in either Granada orNorth Africa. Only the ravages of
the Black Death and repeated wars with Castile prevented these bulls from being
acted upon.
However, by the second decade of the fifteenth century, the
impact on Portugal of ‘plague’ had subsided and João I had established himself
securely on the Portuguese throne. In 1411, peace had been made with Castile,
and Portugal entered upon a period of economic recovery and political renewal.
Expeditions against Muslim targets consequently became more practicable – and,
from the crown and nobility’s viewpoints, had much to recommend them. Launching
a major attack against Muslims offered a restless, under-resourced nobility the
possibility of gaining honour and booty. The most obvious target was Granada,
and the Portuguese leadership at first seriously considered moving against that
kingdom. But Granada lay within the king of Castile’s zone of conquest and
could not be targeted without Castilian co-operation. Therefore, an alternative
was needed – which could be found only in nearby Morocco.
One possibility was Ceuta, an ancient city located on the
southeastern fringe of the Straits of Gibraltar. Ceuta had been briefly
occupied by the Visigoths, first in the mid-sixth century and probably again in
the early eighth century. In 711, it had served as the springboard for Tariq’s
expedition against Visigothic Hispania, as it did for subsequent Islamic
invasions up to and including that of the Almohads. Ceuta was also one of just
three places on the Moroccan side of the Straits that possessed fairly secure
anchorages, the other two being Tangier and Al-Ksar as-Saghir. Since 1309 it
had been nominally within the sultanate of the Marinids of Fez; but Marinid
authority was by this time weak and was exercised only loosely. Ceuta was
therefore a semi-autonomous city run largely by its own merchant elite.
After long and careful preparation, João
I’s expedition against Ceuta was launched in the summer of 1415. The Cronica da
tomada de Ceuta by Gomes Eanes de Zurara, which was written a generation later
in 1449–50 at the request of King Afonso V, is the only literary source that
describes the expedition and its background in substantial detail. Zurara was
Fernão
Lopes’s successor as royal archivist, and his account of the taking of Ceuta
was intended as a continuation of Lopes’s chronicle of the reign of João
I. It is couched in terms of a panegyric of the military nobility who took part
and of Prince Henrique in particular. But Zurara’s work nevertheless used
contemporary documents and was well informed. All modern accounts of the
campaign are based primarily on Zurara, although Peter Russell has recently
shown that a number of letters written to King Fernando I of Aragon in 1415 by
a secret agent in Lisbon are also relevant. The Ceuta expedition was
enthusiastically supported by the three older sons of João I and most of the court
nobility. Among its most articulate advocates was João Afonso de Alenquer, the
king’s vedor da fazenda. He allegedly stressed the wealth Ceuta derived from
the desert caravans – gold and slaves from sub-Saharan Africa, silks and spices
from the East via Egypt – as well as cattle, grain and cloth from its own
hinterland. Magalhães Godinho follows António Sérgio in arguing that the Ceuta
enterprise was adopted largely on the advice of João Afonso, acting as a
spokesman for Lisbon merchant interests. However, both Thomaz and Russell doubt
that Afonso ever played such a role, seeing him instead as a nobleman promoting
nobles’ interests.
The expedition assembled in late July 1415 at the port of
Lagos in the southwestern Algarve. It consisted of perhaps about 20,000 men and
was formally led by João I himself – although operational command was entrusted
to his three oldest sons, Princes Duarte, Pedro and Henrique. That so many male
members of the royal family participated personally in such a dangerous enterprise
was quite exceptional. The expeditionaries themselves were overwhelmingly
Portuguese, but also included contingents of English, French, German and other
foreign mercenaries. In August the fleet of over 200 disparate transports
crossed to North Africa. However, on arrival off Ceuta it found that the town’s
governor had already prepared his defences. The expedition therefore
temporarily drew off – and the governor, believing the threat had passed, then
dismissed many of his men.
A few days later the fleet returned to Ceuta, catching the
defenders by surprise. Many fled, there was little resistance and on 22 August
the expeditionaries broke into the largely abandoned city and duly sacked it.
According to Zurara, the looters destroyed much of value in the warehouses.
They sliced open bags of spices, spilling pepper and cinnamon into the street,
where they were trodden underfoot and filled the air with their pungent odours.
When order had been restored the victors celebrated a triumphant Te Deum in the
principal mosque that had been swiftly converted into a makeshift church. The
three royal princes duly received their knighthoods, and, for all the
Portuguese present, it was an occasion resonant with symbolism. Later a story
gained credence that on the night Ceuta fell a ghostly Afonso Henriques
appeared, dressed in armour, to the canons of Santa Cruz in Coimbra – and
declared he and his son Sancho had led the Portuguese forces to victory.
After Ceuta had been captured and thoroughly looted King João
I convened a council to decide what to do with it. Should the Portuguese occupy
the city permanently and use it as a springboard for further North African
conquests – or should they merely dismantle its defences and then withdraw?
Fatefully, the decision was made that Ceuta be retained. Indeed, this had
almost certainly been João’s intention from the start. Why otherwise would he have
mounted so large and expensive an enterprise? Dom Pedro de Meneses was selected
as captain and governor, beginning a long association between Morocco and the
Meneses family – one of the earliest instances of a noble family achieving
advancement and profit from overseas service. The king, the princes and most of
the expedition then returned to Portugal, leaving behind a garrison of about
2,500 soldiers. The whole operation was over within less than two weeks; but it
started a Portuguese commitment in Morocco that would last in one form or
another for 350 years.
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