A Wind From the North (4 page)

It was in this way that Prince Henry was instrumental in deciding his father, and being involved in the expedition against Ceuta from the beginning. “It is quite true that all the King’s sons greatly wanted to see the project adopted and accomplished, but none of them desired it so strongly as Prince Henry… .” He had never yet seen the shores of Africa. He knew no more of Ceuta than did his father. Yet it was as if his destiny already urged him south toward the unknown land.

But if the initial reason that prompted the attack on Ceuta stemmed from a medieval idea of “knighthood with honor,” the way in which the expedition was prepared anticipated Ma-chiavelli. “[It is necessary to find out] the situation and plan of this city, the height and thickness of its walls, and the nature of its towers and turrets, so as to know what artillery will be required. Also the anchorages that exist there, and what are the prevailing winds for ships at anchor, and whether the beaches are open and sufficiently undefended to allow us to disembark without great risk, or whether the sea is deep enough for us to be able to fight directly from our ships.” Such might well have been the preamble to the initial requirements of D day. It was the directive issued by King John of Portugal in 1412.

To obtain this information would not be easy. The Moslem world was unremittingly hostile to Christian Europe. From the Moroccan shores of the Atlantic to the coastline of Turkey, their barrier was drawn—a barrier that shut off Europe from communication with the Far East, allowing from India and the distant Spice Islands only such merchandise as was approved by the Moslem rulers. Clearly, no Portuguese ship could sail openly into the harbor of Ceuta, land spies, and take soundings of the anchorage. Even in those days, however, there was a tacit agreement that ships carrying ambassadors from one power to another might be permitted to take in water and provisions at ports along their route. On what pretext could King John send an embassy to some Mediterranean power east of Ceuta?

At this time the widowed queen of Martino I of Sicily was looking for a husband. She had already sent ambassadors to King John, suggesting that he might consider his eldest son, Edward, as a suitable bridegroom for her. But King John, who had years before circumvented John of Gaunt’s attempts to involve him in the dispute over the Castilian succession, was not to be taken in by the lure of Sicilian entanglements. Sicily, though—. An idea came to him. He ordered his two finest galleys to be equipped for an embassy, and appointed Affonso Furtado in command, with the Prior of St. John as his coambassador.

“I have thought of a clever stratagem,” he said to his sons. “You know that the Queen of Sicily has already asked me whether I would consider Prince Edward as her husband? Now, I am going to reply. I am going to ask her if she would accept Prince Peter instead. There’s no danger of it! I know very well she will not consider anyone less than my heir. I shall send the two galleys with my ambassadors. Everyone will know the history of this negotiation, so the reason for their voyage will be well publicized. The Queen, of course, will turn down their proposals. But that doesn’t matter—the point is that the galleys will have occasion to pass Ceuta, both coming and going. The ambassadors will land there, and we shall be able to find out all we want to know about the city, its defenses, and its anchorages.”

The two ships left Lisbon and turned east out of the surge of the Atlantic into the tideless Mediterranean. On a fine summer day they dropped anchor beneath the walls of Ceuta and announced to the authorities that they wished to rest and provision before continuing their embassy to Sicily. They were given permission.

While the Prior concentrated on the defenses and dispositions of the city, Captain Furtado and his sailors surveyed the bay, noting where the rocks were fewest, and where soldiers might most easily be landed. When night fell, they hoisted out a boat and made a survey of the area: from Ceuta Bay on the west, round Almina Point, and so to the other bay on the east. The men rowed silently, the leadsman in the bows, Captain Furtado taking note of shoals and off-lying rocks.

The whole operation went off without a hitch. It was a masterpiece of co-ordination, and when the Captain and the Prior compared and cross-checked their notes, they found that they had between them all the information necessary for a seaborne attack on the great Moorish citadel. The galleys weighed anchor and turned east.

Under oar and sail, they made their way across the summer sea to Palermo and the waiting Queen. Their embassy was as fruitless as King John had known it would be. The Queen had no intention of marrying any of his sons except the heir to the throne.

On their return to Lisbon the ambassadors were received in open court and the King and his councilors heard the Queen’s rejection of Prince Peter. That news, he was well aware, would quickly find its way out into the streets of Lisbon, and so to the waterfront, and so via traders and merchants back to Granada, Castile, and Ceuta itself. Any doubts as to the authenticity of the King of Portugal’s recent embassy would soon be set at rest.

Afterward, the King sent privately for Captain Furtado and the Prior of St. John. So confident were they of the accuracy of their findings, and so certain that the city could be taken from the sea, that they had arranged to play a joke on the King. When he eagerly asked the Captain for his views, the latter embarked on a rambling tale of how, as a youth, he had been told by an old Arab that the city of Ceuta would one day fall to a king of Portugal, and that this would be the beginning of the end of the Moorish power in Africa. (Curiously enough, the Mallorcan mystic Ramon Lull in the thirteenth century had indeed prophesied that the Portuguese would one day capture Ceuta and circumnavigate Africa. It may be that Captain Furtado was retelling some version of this story current at the time.) In any case, the King was in no mood for old wives’ tales. He had evolved a brilliant stratagem for spying out Ceuta, and here was Captain Furtado rambling on like an old woman by the fireside. He shrugged his shoulders and turned impatiently to the Prior.

“What news have you, my Lord Prior? Something a little more definite, I hope?”

“Sire, I have seen much. But I can tell you nothing until you have had brought to me four things: two sacks of sand, a roll of ribbon, a half-bushel of beans, and a basin.”

King John scowled. “Don’t you think we have had enough stupidity with the Captain here and his prophecies? If this is a jest, then the time for it is over. Tell me what you have seen.”

“It is not my habit to jest with your Lordship. I only repeat that I can say nothing until I have the things I have asked for.”

The King turned angrily to his sons. “Look at the answers I get from men whom I thought reliable! I ask them about their mission, and one babbles about astrology, and the other talks as if he were a magician demanding the tools of his trade!”

But there was something in the Prior’s manner that convinced the princes that the old man was not merely joking. The sand, the beans, and the ribbon were sent for, and the Prior went away with them into another room. Still mystified, the King waited impatiently. After a long time the door was opened.

“Now, my Lord, you may see the result of our observations.”

With the simple materials at his disposal the Prior had constructed a relief map of the Strait of Gibraltar, showing the anchorages of Ceuta, and its fortifications and defenses. There across the strait they could see where Algeciras lay, its bright bay, the Rock of Gibraltar, and the foothills of southern Spain. And there to the south lay the target—Ceuta, with the thickness of the walls on the seaward side indicated by lines of tape. There was Mount Hacko, and Almina Point; and then the city itself, with its buildings marked by beans, and the lines of its streets etched in the sand.

This is the first time in history that we hear of the use of such a model in the planning of war. King John’s subtlety in devising a means for his spies to enter Ceuta had been paralleled by the inventiveness of the Prior of the Hospital of St. John.

The King and his sons gathered round. Prince Henry stared intently at the contour map as if he would engrave every feature of it on his memory.

“You see,” said the Prior, “the main anchorage lies to the west, the Bay of Ceuta itself. There is a good beach free of

rocks at this point, just at the eastern end of the city. On the other side of the peninsula to the east, round Desnaricado Point—where there is a fort—you see this second bay? Captain Furtado investigated that also. It is suitable for landing small boats and men.”

The Portuguese would be able to make a two-pronged attack from either side of the city, cutting it off from the fortress on Mount Hacko. The neck of the peninsula, where the two bays swirled in toward each other, was only about half a mile wide. If the landings were made simultaneously, their troops should be able to join forces quickly.

The King was smiling now. He paid a willing tribute to the skill of his two “ambassadors,” as the Prior went on to show him how the fertile land lay in a crescent at the back of the city—gardens and fields of sugar cane, lime and orange groves round the foot of Mount Musa, and crystal-clear springs forming the oasis. They could see where the caravan routes converged from east and west on the coast. They knew already that Ceuta was one of the finest fishing ports in the Mediterranean, and this alone was an inducement to a nation whose prosperity was largely dependent on the sea. There, at the meeting place of the Atlantic and Mediterranean, the sea was rich in fish. The tunny fishery of Ceuta was famous. (It was the Arabs who had first discovered how to catch these great fish, in nets laid out from the shore at the season when they close the coast to spawn—a method still practiced in the once Arab-dominated countries of Sicily and Spain.) Coral abounded off the headland, and the coral jewelry of Ceuta was one of its exports.

The King and his sons saw at once what the capture of Ceuta could mean to their country. As the Prior answered their questions, they were already planning the attack and dreaming of the spoils. Prince Henry remained silent with his arms folded across his chest, and absorbed the details of the relief map. This new method of accurately depicting the unknown shore and coastline fascinated him. If it is true that “to see the general in the particular is the very foundation of genius,” Prince Henry gave evidence of this ability all his life. The known shape of a headland, the accurately measured latitude of a bay—these were particulars from which he could deduce a Grand Design that was beyond the comprehension of other observers.

The means whereby their objective was kept secret could also have served as a model for any campaign in the succeeding centuries. The Queen, of course, had to be told, and her assent obtained for her sons’ and her husband’s participation in the venture. This in itself was not difficult. The daughter of the House of Lancaster made only the one request, that she should personally hand their swords to her sons before they embarked.

There was one other man who had to be let into the secret, and that was the Constable of Portugal, Nuno Alvares Pereira, the general under whose command the Portuguese forces had won their victory at Aljubarrota. Here again the King made use of a clever ruse. Had he sent for the Constable in audience at the palace, his councilors and courtiers would soon have guessed that something was in the wind—for, unless a war was contemplated, why should the King send for the head of his armed forces? Nuno Pereira was living in well-earned retirement on his estates, so the King and the three princes set out on a hunting expedition in Alentejo near Pereira’s home. What could be more natural than that one day the Constable should come out to meet them? The King and his military adviser met, and during a stroll under the shadowing cork trees of Montemor the project was broached. Pereira saw at once what the capture of Ceuta and the establishment of a Portuguese base in North Africa could mean to his country. He was enthusiastic.

Now, as the orders went out to the mint, to the shipwrights, to the armorers, the ropemakers and sailmakers, the victualers and ships’ chandlers, there began the most difficult operation of all—to conceal the destination of the expedition. That Portugal was preparing for war could no longer be disguised from anyone. Already foreign merchants and ships’ captains, who in those days often acted as agents for their countries, were passing on the news. There were Moors in Lisbon too, engaged in trade between Portugal and Granada. France and Italy, Granada, Castile, Aragon, Sicily, and even England and Holland were quickly told, “The Portuguese are preparing for war.”

“Who at that time could speak of anything but arms and munitions of war? For the King had written to all the lords, nobility, and men of property, telling them that he was preparing a fleet and that his sons Prince Peter and Prince Henry would be in command of it….” He ordered them to put themselves at the disposal of the princes. He told them how much they were expected to contribute, and what forces they were expected to raise. He did not tell them where they were going. But once the news was out that the country was on a war footing, the endless questioning began. Where was the expedition bound for? Was it for the Holy Land, or against Granada, or Castile?

For three years the country was occupied in the preparations. Everywhere men were busy. The rhythmic clash of hammers told where armorers forged casques and breastplates, and the ceaseless tapping where they riveted greaves and doublets. The swordsmiths, overworked at their delicate craft, were tempering steel blades and fashioning the tangs of swords, which goldsmiths, jewelers, and engravers would turn into instruments of beauty.

The chandlers’ and victualers’ stores were noisy with the cries of coopers casking biscuits, and boxing sun-dried fish. Along the banks of the Tagus and on the shores of the fishing ports, the long silver lines of fish lay out to dry under the bright sun. In Lisbon the hum of activity was so great that in the quiet villages along the river the ceaseless clamor was heard even above the noise of daily life.