The
Anglo-Portuguese Treaty, signed on
June 13, 1373, marked the earliest formal
recognition of an alliance that
already had roots more than 200 years old and which has remained in effect, with a brief hiatus ever
since. That makes the relationship by far the
oldest in force alliance in the world.
Friendly
relations started as Christian Portugal was
beginning to establish itself. Back in
1147 a joint army of Norman, English, Scottish, Flemish, Frisian, and German
Crusaders arrived at the port of Porto
in June of that year after bad weather forced the fleet that had departed
from Dartmouth to seek shelter on
their way to Jerusalem. Once there Portuguese King Alfonso I presented them with a Papal document authorizing the extension of the Second Crusade to include the Reconquista of the Iberian
Peninsula. The king negotiated an
agreement with the visiting knights and
men at arms for them to join him in
a siege of Moorish Lisbon in exchange
for the right to loot and plunder the city and hold its nobles for ransom. 17,000 Crusaders joined
with Alfonso’s 7,000 man force to lay siege
to the city. After four months the
Moors surrendered and true to their words the Crusaders sacked the city with the
zeal and efficiency. Many of the knights
found the city so attractive that thy stayed land settled there. Others participated in the conquest of the towns of Sintra, Almada, Palmela and Setúbal. Their decedents
merged sh with the Portuguese nobility
providing blood links between the countries.
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| The Moors surrender the English led Crusaders after the Siege of Lisbon. |
An informal alliance between England and
Portugal was formed in 1294. It was
officially sealed with 1373 treaty between King
Edward III of England and King
Ferdinand and Queen Eleanor
pledging “perpetual friendships, unions [and] alliances” between the two nations. By
this this time both nations had established themselves as sea faring countries with similar interests in trade, access to European ports, and fisheries.
In
1385 a crisis that began with the death of Portuguese King Ferdinand I died in 1383 leaving no male heir. His daughter, Princes Beatrice had been wed to King Juan I of Castile who then laid claim to the Portuguese
throne. Portuguese nobles and
particularly the powerful merchants of
Lisbon refused to recognize the
claim and selected João or John, the Grand Master of the Aviz Order and a bastard son of Peter I, as Rector and Defender of the Realm.
John called upon English support and was sent a force of yeoman longbow men who trained the
Portuguese in the new tactics that had defeated the French at Crécy in1346
and Poitiers 1356. The
effective use of the bowmen and Portuguese crossbowmen
against an advancing force of heavy
cavalry squeezed into a narrow front
defeated an invading Castilian in April 1384 at the Battle of Atoleiros.
The
following year King Juan personally led a massive new invasion army accompanied
by 2000 French heavy knights, plus allies from Aragon and Italian
principalities. At the Battle of Aljubarrota 6,500 Portuguese
and 100 critical English bowmen destroyed the Castilian joint force of more
than 31,000. King John was forced to run
for his life, deserting his un-horsed
chivalry. About 5000 invaders were killed outright
in the battle and almost as many including hundreds of captured French knights
who were hacked to death as prisoners
and fleeing stragglers who were attacked by villagers and peasant.
John
was crowned undisputed King of Portugal establishing the new Aviz dynasty. He was naturally grateful to his English
allies. When the ambitious John of Gaunt, son of the late king Edward III of England and father of the
future King Henry IV, landed with an
army in Galacia, a kingdom north of
Portugal whose ruler was a vassal of
Juan of Castile, to press a flimsy claim on the Castilian throne, the Portuguese monarch was glad to lent him support.
John
of Gaunt’s venture petered out, however, when expected support from dissident Castilian
nobles failed to materialize. He
accepted what amounted to a large bribe and
annual pension to renounce his
claims on the Castilian throne and go away.
On the way out, by way of thank you he
gave his daughter Philippa of Lancaster to
be the bride the Portuguese king.
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| The marriage between King John I of Portugal and Philippa of Lancaster. |
Close
relations were further enhanced with the new Treat of Windsor in 1386 which said:
It is cordially
agreed that if, in time to come, one of the kings or his heir shall need the
support of the other, or his help, and in order to get such assistance applies
to his ally in lawful manner, the ally shall be bound to give aid and succor to
the other, so far as he is able (without any deceit, fraud, or pretense) to the
extent required by the danger to his ally’s realms, lands, domains, and
subjects; and he shall be firmly bound by these present alliances to do this.
As
the new queen Philippa had extraordinary influence. Not only did she promote English interests
and trade—cod and woolens for wine, cork, salt, but she introduced the manners and formality of a Norman Court
to Lisbon, there by strengthening her husband’s position as a truly national
ruler with a compliant aristocracy. More important yet, she gave birth to five sons and insisted
on the finest education for each. These
sons would fortify the Aviz Dynasty lead
to Portugal’s Golden Age as a world
power.
Philippa’s
eldest son, Duarte, wrote books on morality and religion became king in 1433. Pedro,
who travelled widely and had an interest in history, was Regent from
1439 to1448 after Duarte died of the plague
in 1438. Ferdinand the Saint Prince became a crusader d in the attack on Tangiers in 1437. Perhaps most importantly, Henrique, known to history as Prince Henry the Navigator the instigator and organizer of the Portugal’s early voyages of discovery which in turn led to a world girdling empire in the Atlantic, in Africa, Asia, and
South America.
Through
those glory years the English-Portuguese Alliance held firm, cemented by both
nation’s rivalry with and fear of rising united Spain.
A
sixty year disruption of the alliance occurred when the Spanish House of Hapsburg established the
Portuguese Philippine Dynasty after the
House of Aviz petered out. Philip II of Spain assumed the
Portuguese throne as Philip I of
that country. Dynastic union meant a de facto end of Portuguese independence
and placed it in the camp of England’s greatest enemy.
The Iberian
Union ended when the Portuguese rebelled against Philip III (Philip IV of
Spain) and set John, 8th Duke of
Braganza, a descendent of one line of the Aviz, on the throne as King John
IV. After the Portuguese Restoration War, 1640-1668 and the firm establishment of
Portuguese independence and the Restoration in England, the old
alliance was back in force as if it had never gone out effect.
Over
the tumultuous centuries that followed the alliance would be repeatedly
invoked.
During
the War of the Spanish Succession,
1701–1714 following the death of the last Spanish Hapsburg, Charles II, Portugal was initially
aligned with France. But after the major English and Allied victory at the Battle of Blenheim, in which distant
Portugal was not directly involved at all, the traditional alliance was invoked
and Portugal changed sides. It actively
joined a war in which it had previously been principally and onlooker. Lisbon was opened to the Royal Navy and Austrian
Hapsburg Arch Duke Charles, crowned Spanish
King in Vienna, arrived in the
country to lead a large Allied army in an invasion of Spain to combat the
French backed Bourbon claimant. Portuguese
troops fought alongside the Austrians, English, other Allies, and Spanish
nobles who rallied to the cause. In the
end of the long and complicated war Bourbon Philip V did sit on the Spanish throne, Gibraltar was in the hands of the English, and the French lost much
of their holdings in North America and
Caribbean spice islands. The Portuguese gained the favor of the
ascending world power, England and the protection of its Navy for their
maritime trade.
During
the Seven Years War, the world-wide war ignited, as you might
recall, by an attack by Virginia militia
Colonel George Washington on French and native forces near present day Pittsburgh,
the Spanish launched an invasion of Portugal in 1762. The English responded with thousands of
troops reinforcing the Portuguese army.
The combined forces repeatedly routed and nearly destroyed the Franco-Spanish Army. In
South America the Spanish and Portuguese fought to a virtual draw,
but due the disastrous defeat of Spain in Europe, Portugal was able to regain
lost territories and even claim some Spanish lands.
During
the Napoleonic Wars, Portugal tried
to maintain neutrality while continuing to trade with England and her colonies. In reprisal Spanish and French forced again
invaded, nearly overrunning the country and sending King John VI to seek refuge in the Viceroyalty of Brazil, transported by the Royal Navy. Portuguese forces and irregulars joined in the guerilla campaign against the French,
fought principally in Spain and supported the Duke of Wellington’s victorious army. With Brazil the seat of the Empire during the war, its status and
power grew. Eventually, in 1822 it would
become an independent Kingdom when Regent Prince
Dom Pedro refused to return to the mother county and proclaimed himself Emperor of Brazil.
In
the tumultuous aftermath of the Napoleonic wars, the Portuguese Civil War erupted in 1828 caused by the rival claim to
the throne by two brothers, Dom Pedro of Brazil and Miguel. Neither Brazil nor
Portugal desired a united crown so Dom Pedro relinquished his claim to his
daughter Maria and a liberal Constitutional Council. Miguel, with the support of Portugal’s autocratic
nobility and of France, raised an army that bloodily defeated the liberals and instituted
a notoriously repressive five year rule by Miguel. In 1832 Dom Pedro arrived via London and
landed a large army at Porto with the aid and protection of the Royal
Navy. The United Kingdom recsognized Maria and the Liberals and were responding under the old treaties and
alliances. By 1834 Miguel was forced to
renounce his claim to the crown and Maria was restored.
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| A cartoon mocks John Bull as a bully threatening an old and enfeebled Portugal and it little King. |
The
long cherished alliance was strained almost to the breaking point in 1890. Portugal
claimed a large swath of territory between it African colonies of Angola on
the west coast and Mozambique on the Indian Ocean on the basis of discovery,
exploration, and territorial
continuity. But the claims ran
counter to British interests,
particularly Cecil Rhodes’s powerful
British South Africa Company, the African Lakes Company and British missionaries—Protestant—operating in the region. The
British were near the height of their Imperial
power and nearly drunk with a
sense of entitlement and invincibility. Egged on by Rhodes and pressed at home by the
Church of England and Methodists who were determined not only
to save native souls, but save them from Portuguese Catholicism, British government issued the Ultimatum of 1890 demanding that the Portuguese evacuate troops
from key posts and effectively claimed sovereignty over the territory. The ultimatum stated:
What Her Majesty’s
Government require and insist upon is the following: that telegraphic
instructions shall be sent to the governor of Mozambique at once to the effect
that all and any Portuguese military forces which are actually on the Shire or
in the Makololo or in the Mashona territory are to be withdrawn. Her Majesty's
Government considers that without this the assurances given by the Portuguese
Government are illusory. Mr. Petre [British legate in Lisbon] is
compelled by his instruction to leave Lisbon at once with all the members of
his legation unless a satisfactory answer to this foregoing intimation is
received by him in, the course of this evening, and Her Majesty's ship
Enchantress is now at Vigo waiting for his orders.
That was a none-to-veiled threat that Lisbon would
be shelled by the Royal Navy unless it immediately acceded. The by this time much weakened Portuguese had
no choice to bow to the haughty British.
They were force to sign an 1890 Treaty
of London which ceded much of the disputed territory. But the Portuguese Parliament refused to ratify
it and popular street demonstrations
in Lisbon brought down the
government. Rhodes also opposed the
treaty because he coveted more territory.
He sent his private company troops into the area and attacked Portuguese
garrisons inflicting heavy casualties.
The British government bowed to Rhodes demands and drafted a second
treaty which gave Rhodes his land and compensated Portugal with remote
territory along the Zambesi River.
The Portuguese people never forgave this national
humiliation. It festered in public
resentment for 20 years and was the primary cause of the Republican Revolution of 1910.
That followed the assassination of
un-popular King Carlos I and his
heir, Prince Luís Filipe in
1908. The new republican government was
naturally hostile to the British.
When World
War I broke out four years later the Republican government was loath to
come to the aid British and tried to
maintain neutrality. But when the
Germans attacked Portuguese East Africa
the country had to appeal for help the British and troops based in South
Africa. Once in the war Portugal even
contributed some troops to the Allies
fighting on the Western Front in
France.
In World War II Portugal once again tried to maintain neutrality, with
British approval. Both countries knew
that Portugal’s entry into the war would result in an invasion by Spain and Franco’s battle hardened and modern army and air forces against which Portugal would have been helpless. That would have brought Spain into the war on
the side of the Axis. From total control of the Iberian Peninsula,
it would have poured troops into North
Africa linking up with the Italians in
Libya and pushing south as well as
east. The British also prized neutral Portugal
as a window on an otherwise hostile continent and a place from which to launch espionage and covert operations. But in
1943 as German submarine warfare in
the Battle of the Atlantic was wreaking
havoc with convoy operations supplying
beleaguered Britain. It invoked the old alliance
and was granted use of the Azores for
Naval operations and a base for anti-submarine air patrols. In addition thousands of heavy bombers and transports refueled there on the way from North America to Britain.
In the postwar years, Portugal and Britain maintained a close
relationship. In 1959 Portugal joined
the European Free Trade Association
(EFTA), a British dominated alternative
trade organization to what was then known as the Common Market which also included Austria, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and Switzerland. In 1973 Britain abandoned the EFTA and
Portugal and Denmark followed it into the European
Economic Community (EEC.)
When India in 1961invaded Portuguese
India, by then reduced to the coastal enclaves of Goa, Daman, and Diu, it
invoked the treaty and appealed for British aid. The British sensibly did not want to engage in
a war with its former colony, which had one of the largest armies in the
world. The best that they could do was
offer Portugal diplomatic support.
It was Britain’s turn to invoke
the alliance in 1982 when the Azores once again offered support for the Royal
Navy in the Falklands War with Argentina. It has not been invoked for military
operations since.
But Portugal has joined the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and
therefore its military and defense cooperation
with Britain occurs mostly in that context.
Politically they are aligned through membership in the European Union as well.
But after 642 up and down years,
the Anglo-Portuguese Alliance
remains in effect.
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