Ksar el-Kebir is a medium-sized city in northern Morocco, 110km south of Tangier. It is the place where, on 4 August 1578, Portugal’s ‘Golden Age’ of discovery, crusade and conquest came to a shattering end. A 24,000-strong invasion force that had arrived to overthrow the country’s Muslim rulers was cut to pieces. Sebastian, the Portuguese King who led the force and who died on the field of battle, was killed.
Sebastian’s extraordinary reign began when he was just three years old. He came to this position against the odds. He had several older brothers but all predeceased him. His father, King John III, died before his son’s birth and, almost as soon as the infant arrived in the arms of his mother Queen Joana, there was national rejoicing and confidence that the boy born to be king would usher in a new age of Portuguese victories, replacing the uninspiring period of drift under his two predecessors.
Surviving through infancy – unlike his brothers – seemed to confirm that predetermined destiny. The young Sebastian was educated by Jesuit priests steeped in counter-reformation theology. Sebastian himself became convinced that he was indeed God’s chosen instrument, bound to a sacred mission to overthrow Islam and re-establish global Christianity. Anxious to get underway, he began assuming kingly duties as a teenager, ending the regency of his great uncle, Cardinal Henrique.
Once Sebastian reached this point, the court’s principal preoccupation was to get him married and busy securing the succession. But their efforts were constantly frustrated by Sebastian’s complete lack of interest, as he preferred the company of impetuous young nobles who, like him, sought vigorous physical activity and had a restless thirst for daring and adventure.
Looking back to an earlier period of conquest and crusade, Sebastian urgently sought to rekindle the lost glories of that period. Like those who had gone before him, such as Prince Henry the Navigator, his mind settled on Morocco. Wiser heads in the court sought to dissuade him, given the mixed results of those earlier endeavours, but nothing could shake his resolve.
An irresistible opportunity came in 1576, when the recently deposed King of Morocco, Abu Abdallah Mohammed, sought Portuguese help to overthrow his usurper, Abd al-Malik. Sebastian, at last, had the excuse for an invasion. By 1578, he had assembled a vast but diverse military force ready to set sail and initiate his sacred mission. After making landfall at Asilah, south of Tangier, Sebastian led his troops across land in the searing summer heat, heading towards the Muslim forces. The two armies met at Ksar el-Kebir, with the resulting annihilation of Sebastian and his troops.
All the hopes invested in the boy king by his expectant country evaporated on the news of his defeat and death. The mission of crusading conquest was over. Having dismissed every candidate in a long parade of eligible princesses, in favour of time with his strapping young noblemen, Sebastian died without an heir. The resulting political vacuum was fatal.
Initially, Cardinal Henrique resumed his regency and sought to secure the throne himself. But he, too, lacked an heir. He swiftly asked the Pope for permission to set aside his vows of celibacy, and secure a wife and heir. But Pope Gregory sat on the matter and Henrique died before the holy father got round to replying. There were then multiple claimants to the throne. The contest was finally resolved by the throne falling into the hands of Phillip II of Spain, thereby ending the House of Avis, which had ruled Portugal since the fourteenth century, and with it, the country’s independence.
Sebastian, with his messianic zeal, had sought to burnish Portugal’s ‘Golden Age’ with renewed crusading conquests. Instead, his disastrous venture in Morocco had destroyed his country’s military prowess and ultimately cost it its independence. He shaped his country’s future – but in entirely the opposite way he had intended. Portugal slid into its ‘Tarnished Age’. The most far-flung outposts of the empire proved indefensible. Naval supremacy and trading monopolies were challenged. The alliance with England became strained.
The country’s Spanish rulers showed little commitment to their new realm and were themselves overthrown by Portuguese nobles in 1640, who restored a monarchy under the House of Braganza, which lasted until 1910.
But this combination of turmoil and neglect weakened the state. Many of the country’s royal rulers were lacking in vision and statecraft. Part of the myth of the boy King Sebastian was that he would one day return to save his country in its hour of need. Portugal certainly needed a strong figure to take control and get back on track. But it was no gilded youth who came forward; instead, it was an opportunistic minister.
James Plaskitt is a retired politician who was a member of the British parliament from 1997 until 2010. He now lives in the Algarve.
Next month: The Marquis of Pombal
Main image: Supposed portrait of D. Sebastião by Alonso Sánchez Coello (c. 1574–1578), on view at the San Telmo Museum in San Sebastián, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
