Yet Dom Henrique was not a mere slave-trader. The capture of slaves was destined to subserve a greater purpose-the conversion of Ghana into a Christian dependency of Portugal, to be administered by the military Order of Jesus Christ. In Portugal this Order had succeeded to the property and functions of the dissolved Order of the Temple, and Dom Henrique was its Governor. His project was in substance similar to that carried out by the Teutonic Order in conquering and christianising the heathen Prussians; and the Order of Christ corresponded in its function to the Orders of Santiago and Alcantara, which were actively engaged in ridding Spain of the Moors. Dom Henrique’s scheme represents the final effort of the crusading spirit; and the naval campaigns against the Muslim in the Indian seas, in which it culminated, forty years after Dom Henrique’s death, may be described as the Last Crusade. We shall see that Albuquerque, the great leader of this Crusade, who established the Portuguese dominion in the East on a secure footing, included in his plan the recovery of the holy places of Jerusalem. The same object was avowed by Colombo, who thought he had brought its attainment within measurable distance by the successful voyage in which he had sought to reach the Far East by way of the West.
A curious geographical illusion served as a background and supplement to the scheme. The Senegal river, which fertilises Bilad Ghana, and is the first considerable stream to the southward of the Pillars of Hercules, was believed by Arab geographers to flow from a lake near those in which the Nile originated, and was itself described as the “Western Nile.” The eastern branch of the true Nile flowed through the Christian kingdom of Abyssinia; and if the “ Western Nile” could also be christianised from its mouth to its supposed source-no insuperable task, for Bilad Ghana had not fallen under the sway of Islam- Christian Europe would join hands with Christian East Africa, the flank of the Mohammadan power would be turned, and European adventure would have unmolested access to the Bed Sea and the ports of Arabia, India, and China. How far in this direction the Iffante’s imagination habitually travelled, is uncertain. His immediate object was to subjugate and convert the not yet Islamised heathen in the North-west of Africa, beginning with the Senegal river, and to create here a great Portuguese dependency, the spiritualities of which were, with the consent of the Holy See, to be vested in the Order of Jesus Christ, and were destined to furnish a fund for the aggrandisement of the Order, and the furtherance of its objects.
In recent times Dom Henrique has been named Prince Henry the Navigator,-a title founded on the supposition that his expeditions mainly aimed at the extension of nautical enterprise for its own sake, or had for their conscious though remote object the discovery of the sea-route to India and the westward exploration of the Atlantic Ocean. It has even been stated that the town founded by him on the southernmost point of the Sacred Promontory, the westernmost angle of which bears the name of Cape St Vincent-a town now represented by the little village of Sagres-was the seat of a school of scientific seamanship, and that his aim was to train up for the national service a continuous supply of intrepid and accomplished sailors, destined in the third and fourth generation to perform the memorable feats associated with the names of Da Gama and Magalhaes. All this must be dismissed as illusory, and the picturesque title “ the Navigator” is calculated to mislead. There is nothing to show, or even to suggest, that Dom Henrique was ever further away from Portugal than Ceuta and its immediate neighbourhood, or that he had formed any plans for the extension of ocean navigation beyond a point long previously reached by the Genoese, or ever thought of the route round the southernmost point of Africa as a practical route to India. A more truthful clue to the aims of his life occurs near the beginning of his last will, wherein, after invoking “my Lord God” and “my Lady Saint Mary for that she is the Mother of Mercy,” he beseeches “my Lord Saint Louis, to whom I have been dedicated from my birth, that he and all Saints and Angels will pray God to grant me salvation.” The model of conduct and policy affected by Dom Henrique was the heroic and sainted French King who had flourished two centuries before. Louis, after ascertaining by disastrous experience the impracticability of driving the Saracens from the Holy Land and Egypt, had sought to convert the Sultanate of Tunis into a dependency of France as the first step in recovering northern Africa for Christendom. In some respects the plan of Dom Henrique was easier of achievement than that of Louis. Islam having not yet overspread Bilad Ghana, it would be far less difficult to conquer and convert its undisciplined savages to the Gospel, than to drive a wedge into the heart of Mohammadan North Africa by the conquest of Tunis. Both schemes were late offshoots of the crusading spirit; Dom Henrique’s plan was among its last manifestations. As in the case of the later Crusades, this plan was largely inspired by political objects. The Villa do Iff’ante on the Sacred Promontory was destined to be the maritime centre of the united empire of Peninsular Portugal and Greater Portugal-the latter comprising the Madeira group and the Azores, together with Bilad Ghana, and whatever else the Iff’ante might annex to the ancient dominion of Portugal and Algarve. It was a sacred spot; for hither the Christians of Valencia had fled, seven centuries before, from the terrible Abd-ur’rahman Adahil, carrying with them the body of St Vincent, from whose last burial-place the westernmost promontory of Europe thenceforth took its name.
In 1441, twenty-six years after the capture of Ceuta, and the year after Terceira, the first among the Azores to be discovered, had been reached, a sudden impetus was given to the Iffante’s project. Antam Goncalvez had sailed to the Rio do Ouro for sealskins and oil. Having secured his cargo, he landed with nine armed men on the shore of the inlet, and after a desperate struggle with a solitary naked African succeeded in wounding and capturing him. To this feat he added that of cutting off a female slave from her party, and securing her also. Shortly afterwards Nuno Tristam, a knight highly esteemed by Dom Henrique, arrived at the Rio do Ouro with a caravel, intending to explore the coast beyond Angra de Cintra in search of captives. Fired by the exploit of Goncalvez, Tristam landed, marked down a party of natives, and after killing several captured ten men, women, and children, including a personage who ranked as a chief. After exploring the coast, with no further success, as far as Cape Branco, Tristam followed Goncalvez to Portugal, where they joyfully presented to the Iffante the long-desired first-fruit of his projects. Chroniclers dwell complacently on the joy experienced by the Iffante, commensurate not to the value of the slaves actually taken but to the hope of future captures, and on his pious rapture at the prospect of saving the souls of so many African heathen. Dom Henrique now sought and obtained from the Pope a special indulgence for all who should fight under the banner of the Order of Christ