Francisco de Almeida

“ Or if they do not attempt Alemtejo, I think they will attempt advancing in three columns by Castello Branco from Coria and Placencia, and from Guinaldo, etc., by Sabugal, and in our front by Celorico or Guarda, endeavouring to unite beyond the Sierra de Estrella. In this case we shall come into play immediately. Almeida, I think, they will merely mask by a strong [151] Corps, and leave in their rear. If they succeed, the place must fall of course. If not, there is not force enough in it to annoy them. ”

“ Almeida’s statesmanship was to a great extent sound. The Portuguese could never penetrate far inland; throughout the 16th century their settlements were confined to the coasts of Asia, Africa or America, and the area they were able effectively to occupy was far less than the area of their empire in the 20th century. A Chinese critic, quoted by Faria y Sousa, said of them that they were like fishes, “remove them from the water and they straightway die.” It is thus absurd to speak of a “Portuguese conquest of India” ”

“ The death of his son disturbed his sound judgment and transformed his former opinions of a statesman to blood-thirsty furies, attested by the devastation of the coast of Guzerat. He yielded also to the intrigues and slanders of the captains who had come from Ormus, recently conquered by Albuquerque and ruled with the terrible wildness of his titanic enterprises. They scoffed at the viceroy who had just finished his term of office, and at Albuquerque, already appointed from Lisbon to succeed him; and treacherous accounts of the excesses of the wise Almeida had already reached the court. ”

“ Had Badajos held out some time longer this diversion might have been of some consequence, as Ciudad Rodrigo would have been much distressed for provisions, and Almeida not in the safest state of defence. As it is, all he has got has been his trouble for his pains, great sufferings to his army, and a hasty retreat before an army but very little superior in numbers to his own. ”

“ Within two hours of the second letter Ney sent in the third, which was no mere protest, nor even a mere refusal to move, but [p. 177] an open declaration of his intention to march back to Almeida. ‘I warn your Excellency that to-morrow I shall leave my positions of Carapichina and Cortiço, and échelon my troops from Celorico to Freixadas, and on the day after they will be between Freixadas and Almeida. ”

“ On arriving at Lisbon, his first care was to present his letters to Almeida and Mendoça; he also sent for Lemos and Correa, whom he had long secured in the interest of his master. These were rich citizens, who had served all the principal offices of the city, employed a considerable number of artificers, and were highly esteemed by the people. ”

“ Almeida and Elvas, the two chief fortresses of the realm, were safe in the hands of French garrisons. The provinces might rise, but without lavish help from Spain or England they could not put in the field an army of even 10,000 men, for assemblies of peasants armed with pikes and fowling-pieces are not armies, and of field-artillery there was hardly a piece outside Lisbon, Elvas, and Almeida. Nor was there left any nucleus of trained soldiers around which the nation might rally: the old army was dissolved and its small remnant was on the way to the Baltic. ”

“ Too great confidence, either in the allied strength or the weakness of the garrison, most probably led him to adopt an imperfect system of blockade, which led to mortifying results. His dispositions were entirely erroneous. It is true that the right face of Almeida was vigilantly watched—but there, no movements could have been made with any prospect of succeeding—while the left unfortunately, was overlooked—and the banks of the Aqueda and bridge of Barba del Puerco, on the direct route to the French outposts, were left unguarded. ”

“ Albuquerque wished to establish a real Portuguese empire, which should rest upon the possession of Portuguese colonies owning the direct sway of the King of Portugal. Almeida thought it sufficient to command the sea, and that the only land stations should be a few factories in commercial cities, defended by fortifications against all assaults. Almeida therefore was quite satisfied that the fortresses he had built at Cannanore, Cochin, and Quilon were all that was needed ”

“ Of this danger he was well aware, but judged it worth risking, in view of the importance of holding the best possible position for covering the siege of Almeida. No battle-ground that was ever chosen is destitute of some fault. ”

“ But, not realizing the fearful strength that lay behind the French cavalry advance, he resolved to treat himself to a rearguard action, and not to [p. 260] go till he was pushed. On a survey of the ground it is easy to understand the temptation, for it would be hard to find a prettier battlefield for a detaining force, if only the enemy were in no more than moderate strength. A long double-headed spur runs down from the high plateau on which Almeida stands to the Coa. ”

“ But by a desperate effort Almeida, the Portuguese viceroy, collected all his forces for a final blow, and succeeded in winning a magnificent naval victory which once and for all firmly established the Portuguese power in India. Two years afterwards Almeida's rival and successor, Alfonso de Albuquerque, gained possession of Goa (1510) , and this city became the centre of their Indian dominion, which now included Ceylon and the Maldive Islands, together with the Malacca and Malabar coasts. ”

“ Constantly at its head, encouraging and directing it, he was within sight of every man in his division.
Masséna having laid waste the country in his retreat, the pursuit had to be relaxed on account of the difficulty of obtaining provisions. By 5 April 1811 the whole of Portugal, with the exception of Almeida, had been freed from French troops at the point of the bayonet, and the allied army invested Almeida. On 2 May Masséna advanced on Almeida. The battle of Fuentes d'Onoro followed on the 5th, when the principal share in the fighting once more fell to Picton's division. ”

“ A version of the entire Scriptures from the Vulgate was published in twenty-three volumes 12mo at Lisbon, 1781–83 by Dr. Antonio Pereira de Figueiredo. This was re-edited and published at Lisbon, 1794–1819. An earlier version was that of Almeida, a Portuguese missionary in Ceylon, who became a convert to Protestantism at the close of the seventeenth century. (See note on p. 98.)
[12] If Cintra is the Alhambra of Portugal, Mafra is the Escurial. The famous convent was, moreover, founded by John V. in fulfilment of a vow. ”

“ Almeida, Ciudad Rodrigo, and Badajoz, fell into the hands of the British general, then Lord Wellington. His successes were, however, obtained with great difficulty and loss of his soldiers, through the inadequate supply of material to his army by the home authorities. Every fortress which was not strategically abandoned by the French, was won by the skill of the general-in-chief, and the recklessness of life shown by his soldiers, in spite of the want of almost every appliance proper for an army. ”

“ The shipbuilding of the Moors depended on the teak forests of Calicut; the Eastern trade enriched both Turk and Mameluke, and the Sultan of Egypt levied duty amounting to L290,000 a year. Therefore he combined with the Venetians to expel the common enemy from Indian waters. In 1509 their fleet was defeated by the Viceroy Almeida near Diu, off the coast of Kattywar, where the Arabian seaman comes in sight of India. It was his last action before he surrendered power to his rival, the great Albuquerque. Almeida sought the greatness of his country not in conquest but in commerce. ”

“ It may be remarked, by the way, that nothing in all the geography of Portugal seems more astonishing than that there should not be a fourth alternative road, one down the long valley of the Zezere, which, running in a straight line from Belmonte to Abrantes, looks on the map as if it ought to be a main artery of communication, and seems to indicate the obvious road to Lisbon from Almeida, since a straight line drawn between these points would run along the river for some forty miles. ”

“ In this disposition, and with this design, he was admitted to Almeida; who, without suspicion of her danger, was exposed to the severest trial, in which every passion concurred to oppose her virtue: she was solicited by all the powers of subtilty and desire, under the appearance of a lover whose tenderness and fidelity had been long tried, and whose passion she returned with equal constancy and ardour ”

“ GARRETT, JOÃO BAPTISTA DA SILVA LEITÃO DE ALMEIDA, Visconde de Almeida-Garrett (1799–1854) , perhaps the greatest Portuguese poet since Camoens, was of Irish descent. Born in Oporto, his parents moved to the Quinta do Castello at Gaya when he was five years old. The French invasion of Portugal drove the family to the Azores, and Garrett made his first studies at Angra, beginning to versify at an early age under the influence of his uncle, a poet of the school of Bocage. ”

“ Living by marauding, even though it was organized marauding, such as we have been compelled to authorize, has in no small degree weakened discipline, which is in the greatest need of restoration [231] .’ All this was very true, but it had been equally true on March 22nd, when Masséna gave his orders for the march on Plasencia. The root of his failure lay [p. 182] neither in the state of Almeida, nor in the demoralized condition of the army, but in the fact that he had directed his troops to execute a movement which was impossible without magazines to live upon, or roads to march upon [232] . ”

“ Almeida might long have defied any efforts which the Portugueze or the Spaniards in that quarter could have made against it; it was, however, gladly delivered up, in conformity to the convention, and the garrison were marched to Porto, under a British escort, there to be embarked. ♦Tumults at Porto.♦ On the day of their arrival, they employed themselves in converting as much of their plunder as possible into money: purchasers were not wanting, and their market continued the whole day and night, horses being the ostensible articles. ”

“ However, on his journey to the kingdom he landed on the coast of Kaffraria, and was killed by the natives with assegais and javelins.
His plan of government, though wise, was chimerical, for India itself was insanity. Only a man of genius like Albuquerque could make the doomed enterprise great. Only a saint like Castro could save the Portuguese valour from the stain of positive ignominy. Dominion, as Almeida conceived it, was not to despoil; it was armed protection extended to a commerce, free on one side, and the monopoly of the state or appanage of the crown on the other. ”

“ He had moreover discharged more than 2,000 additional sick upon Portugal ere he began field operations: they were encumbering the hospitals of Almeida and Lamego when Cradock appeared. The 10,000 men fit for service were scattered all over Portugal: the two battalions, which had just come back from Spain, and the two others which had been too late to join Moore, were in the north, at Almeida and Lamego [231] . One battalion was in garrison at Elvas [232] . Six lay in Lisbon, as also did the whole of the cavalry and guns [233] : two were on the march from Abrantes to Almeida [234] . ”

“ It was not till the following autumn that a proper siege-train was organized for the Anglo-Portuguese army. Almeida could only be attacked by the weapon of famine; Badajoz, which was beleaguered at the same time, had to be battered with a few guns borrowed from the ramparts of the neighbouring fortress of Elvas. The British army had now been two years in Portugal, yet Wellington still lacked the materials for conducting the smallest offensive operation against strongholds in the hands of the French. ”

“ Albuquerque, Almeida, and the heroic Pacheco, who like a fabulous Paladin, withstood whole armies with his single arm, and who died unregarded and unnoticed by his ungrateful sovereign in a hospital in Lisbon, were no more; the disinterestedness, the honour and humanity, that distinguished the administration of Albuquerque, was not imitated by his successors. He had taken Goa, and founded an empire, which the corrupt government of Portugal has caused us to inherit. The local governors too often sought only to enrich themselves ”

“ NOTE ON ALMEIDA AND THE BRIDGE OF THE COA
The small circular town of Almeida has never recovered from the disaster of 1810. The population does not fill up the area within the walls: open spaces are frequent, and some of the more important buildings—especially the old palace of the governor—stand in ruins. Others show solid seventeenth- or eighteenth-century masonry on the ground floor, and flimsy modern repairs above, where the upper stories were blown away by the explosion. The cathedral has never been properly rebuilt, and is a mere fragment. ”

“ One of the accusations of his captains was that he wished to make himself King of Ormuz.
They little knew their man. To expect Albuquerque, whose dreams of conquest were as wide and magnificent as those of Alexander, to vegetate as King of Ormuz was a mistake as colossal as to believe that Napoleon could be content to rule Elba. There can be no doubt that Albuquerque was unjustly treated by men incapable of understanding him, all the more so in that Almeida’s term of office was up and by right it was Albuquerque and not he who should have been governing India. ”

“ God would punish his evil ways some time—in His own time—they said among themselves, and they watched his actions alike with wonder and amazement. Could this fiend be a priest of the Holy Church of Christ and His tender-loving mother, whom in their simple faith they adored?
Dom Diego's colleague was a very different person. Francis d'Almeida, a Franciscan friar, was a very personation of a devout and humble follower of his order. It was some years since he had left Portugal, and on his arrival he applied himself with great assiduity to the study of the native languages. ”