The Historical Nights Entertainment | Page 3

THE VERT GALANT The Assassination of Henry IV VI. THE BARREN WOOING The Murder of Amy Robsart VII. SIR JUDAS The Betrayal of Sir Walter Ralegh VIII. HIS INSOLENCE OF BUCKINGHAM George Villiers' Courtship of Anne of Austria IX. THE PATH OF EXILE The Fall of Lord Clarendon X. THE TRAGEDY OF HERRENHAUSEN Count Philip K?nigsmark and the Princess Sophia Dorothea XI. THE TYRANNICIDE Charlotte Corday and Jean Paul Marat

I. THE ABSOLUTION
Aftonso Henriques, first King of Portugal

In 1093 the Moors of the Almoravide dynasty, under the Caliph Yusuf, swept irresistibly upwards into the Iberian Peninsula, recapturing Lisbon and Santarem in the west, and pushing their conquest as far as the river Mondego.
To meet this revival of Mohammedan power, Alfonso VI. Of Castile summoned the chivalry of Christendom to his aid. Among the knights who answered the call was Count Henry of Burgundy (grandson of Robert, first Duke of Burgundy) to whom Alfonso gave his natural daughter Theresa in marriage, together with the Counties of Oporto and Coimbra, with the title of Count of Portugal.
That is the first chapter of the history of Portugal.
Count Henry fought hard to defend his southern frontiers from the incursion of the Moors until his death in 1114. Thereafter his widow Theresa became Regent of Portugal during the minority of their son, Affonso Henriques. A woman of great energy, resource and ambition, she successfully waged war against the Moors, and in other ways laid the foundations upon which her son was to build the Kingdom of Portugal. But her passionate infatuation for one of her knights--Don Fernando Peres de Trava--and the excessive honours she bestowed upon him, made enemies for her in the new state, and estranged her from her son.
In 1127 Alfonso VII. of Castile invaded Portugal, compelling Theresa to recognize him as her suzerain. But Affonso Henriques, now aged seventeen--and declared by the citizens of the capital to be of age and competent to reign--incontinently refused to recognize the submission made by his mother, and in the following year assembled an army for the purpose of expelling her and her lover from the country. The warlike Theresa resisted until defeated in the battle of San Mamede and taken prisoner.
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He was little more than a boy, although four years were sped already since, as a mere lad of fourteen, he had kept vigil throughout the night over his arms in the Cathedral of Zamora, preparatory to receiving the honour of knighthood at the hands of his cousin, Alfonso VII. of Castile. Yet already he was looked upon as the very pattern of what a Christian knight should be, worthy son of the father who had devoted his life to doing battle against the Infidel, wheresoever he might be found. He was well-grown and tall, and of a bodily strength that is almost a byword to this day in that Portugal of which he was the real founder and first king. He was skilled beyond the common wont in all knightly exercises of arms and horsemanship, and equipped with far more learning--though much of it was ill-digested, as this story will serve to show--than the twelfth century considered useful or even proper in a knight. And he was at least true to his time in that he combined a fervid piety with a weakness of the flesh and an impetuous arrogance that was to bring him under the ban of greater excommunication at the very outset of his reign.
It happened that his imprisonment of his mother was not at all pleasing in the sight of Rome. Dona Theresa had powerful friends, who so used their influence at the Vatican on her behalf that the Holy Father--conveniently ignoring the provocation she had given and the scandalous, unmotherly conduct of which she had been guilty--came to consider the behaviour of the Infante of Portugal as reprehensibly unfilial, and commanded him to deliver Dona Theresa at once from duress.
This Papal order, backed by a threat of excommunication in the event of disobedience, was brought to the young prince by the Bishop of Coimbra, whom he counted among his friends.
Affonso Henriques, ever impetuous and quick to anger, flushed scarlet when he heard that uncompromising message. His dark eyes smouldered as they considered the aged prelate.
"You come here to bid me let loose again upon this land of Portugal that author of strife, to deliver over the people once more to the oppression of the Lord of Trava?" he asked. "And you tell me that unless by obeying this command I am false to the duty I owe this country, you will launch the curse of Rome against me? You tell me this?"
The bishop, deeply stirred, torn between his duty to the Holy See and his affection for his prince, bowed his head and wrung his