Portuguese Diplomacy and International Developments in Europe
Diplomasia Portugueza e Dezenvolvimentos Internasionais na Europa
Duarte II and Izabel sought, despite wishing to maintain peace with Espanha, to move as far away from its influence as much as it was possible without alienating them. To that end, they sought to improve diplomatic and commercial relations with other European countries.
With Izabel I da Inglaterra [
Elizabeth I of England], the Portuguese’s diplomatic strategy had to be well thought out as on one hand, it was an allied country and on the other hand, it was a country of Protestants whose relations with Espanha and the Santa Sé [
Holy See] were very bad. A secret agreement was signed between the Portuguese diplomat Afonso Mendes Neves and the government of Izabel I which pledged both countries to maintain the commercial relations as they have been until then. Portugal also allowed English ships to sell spices and other luxury items after acquiring them in Lisboa for good prices and English investors were also invited to invest in the Corporasão das Armadas da Índia [
Corporation of Indian Armadas] and the English privateers were forbidden from attacking Portuguese ships with heavy penalties if they did not comply.
With Fransa, Duarte went to great lengths to solve the problems that Portugal had with this country, such as piracy and privateering off the Asores, Madeira and Brazil, as well as the existence of pirate nests in the latter, something that worried many local officials. The Portuguese King had been a staunch supporter of the marriage of his late cousin Sebastião to Margarida de Valuá [
Margaret of Valois], which unfortunately never happened, and as such he was very interested in finding a French Princess to marry his son João Duarte to but there was none of suitable condition available. The solution found was to elaborate trade agreements along the lines of those arranged with Inglaterra and Toscânia that would hopefully reduce the need for the French merchants to illegally obtain spices and luxury items at the expense of Portugal. Duarte and Izabel gave King Henrique III da Fransa diplomatic and economic support to surpass the terrible civil war he was involved in against Protestants and staunch Catholics. In exchange for this valuable support, Henrique III forbade attacks on Portuguese ships and Portuguese possessions, but unlike the English privateers who accepted Izabel I’s commands, many French captains did not respect the royal command, especially the Protestant ones, so the problem persisted.
Henrique III da Fransa [Henri III de France]
All progress went down the drain when Henrique III was assassinated in 1589 by a Catholic fanatic. The King’s death led to the end of the House of Valuá in the male line which meant that a succession crisis arose and the civil war now assumed dynastic contours. According to the Salic Law that prevented women from inheriting, the new King would be the Protestant Henrique de Burbom [
Henry of Bourbon], King of Navarra, the closet male relative to the now-deceased King, but the French Catholic League, an alliance created to defend Catholic interests together with Filipe II de Espanha did not accept Henrique de Burbom as the King of Fransa for obvious reasons and contested his claim. Portugal chose to stay away from the conflict hoping that the situation would be resolved with the least damage to Portuguese interests.
Since Portugal could not produce enough cereals to feed its people, especially in Lisboa and North Africa, it had to import huge quantities of cereals to keep the country running smoothly. One of the major exporters of cereals was the Comunidade Polaco-Lituana [
Commonwealth of Poland-Lithuania] a nation that Portugal had some diplomatic ties but the Royal couple decided to improve further in hopes of reducing the price of wheat and other cereals. They sent a diplomat to the court of Estêvão I Batóri [
Stephen Báthory] and Ana I Jaguelão [
Anna Jagiellon] and achieved satisfying results yet not the ones they were aiming for and so they searched for different solutions such as cutting the intermediaries’ roles in favour of sending Portuguese ships to Polish ports like Guedansque [
Gdansk] and Conisberga [
Königsberg] or to Hamburgo where a Portuguese firm existed and could act as a warehouse. These expeditions were financed by the Crown, Izabel’s controlled Médisis Agency in Lisboa and other merchants.
This change of policies regarding the cereal trade began harming Dutch interests who until then were responsible for bringing wheat to Lisboa. Unlike the Habsburgos who blocked trade with the revolting provinces of the Terras Baixas [
Netherlands], Portugal did not and even opened a firm in Amesterdão [
Amsterdam] by 1586 in which cereals began being collected and stored as well. The Dutch invested high quantities of money in the Corporasão das Armadas da Índia [
Corporation of the Indian Armadas] and the sugar trade not to mention that they actively sought Portuguese salt which was indispensable for them.
Amesterdão in the Late 16th Century
There were several attempts by Portugal to obtain rights for their citizens in the revolting provinces but the Calvinist Dutch were quite apprehensive in granting anything to Catholics because they viewed them all as possible traitors that could favour Espanha and therefore this refusal was poorly seen by the Portuguese Crown. Also noteworthy were the attempts to get closer to other Protestant countries such as Dinamarca [
Denmark], Suésia [
Sweden] and Escósia [
Scotland] but also the Orthodox Império Ruso [
Russian Empire] that until then was forgotten by Portugal.
The Anglo-Spanish War and the Eighty Years War (1585-1595); the Invincible Armada:
The assassination of Guilherme o Tasiturno [
William the Silent] in 1584 and the Fall of Antuérpia [
Antwerp] in 1585 prompted the Dutch separatists to ask for Izabel I da Inglaterra's support to protect them from the Spanish. Izabel accepted the request because she feared that the recovery of the northern provinces of the Terras Baixas [
Netherlands] by the Spanish would threaten Inglaterra. Through the Treaty of Nansutxe [
Nonsuch], Izabel granted the Dutch with men, horses and subsidies but refused the sovereignty that they offered her. In turn, the Dutch gave her four key locations to be manned by English troops along the frontline.
Filipe II took this action as a declaration of open war by Inglaterra against his rule of the Terras Baixas and so he ordered all English ships in Spanish ports to be seized by the local authorities. The British retaliated with attacks against the Spanish fishing industry at Terra Nova [
Newfoundland], which achieved good results. Various Spanish possessions in America were also attacked and plundered and the English officially joined the Dutch rebels in the Eighty Years War.
On February 8, 1587, Maria I da Escósia [
Mary I of Scotland] was executed in Inglaterra at the behest of Izabel, an action that scandalized Catholic Europe, including Portugal. This was the final stab against the fragile peace between Espanha and Inglaterra as Filipe II finally decided to invade Inglaterra and place a Catholic monarch on the English throne. The Royal couple of Portugal openly criticized Izabel’s deed and imposed some sanctions but refused to partake in any war against as they knew it would harm their trading interests with the Far East, Brazil and Europe and therefore the economy of Portugal.
Queen Izabel I da Inglaterra [Elizabeth I of England]
Filipe, thirsty for the help of the powerful Portuguese Navy pressured Portugal, especially by threatening the betrothal between Princess Leonor Izabel de Portugal and Prince Filipe de Espanha but Duarte II remained firm in his decision to not wage war against Inglaterra. He allowed Portuguese ships to join the Spanish fleet as mercenaries at their captains’ responsibilities and not the Crown’s. About 9 large galleys and carracks together with a few dozens of smaller vessels joined the Invensível Armada this way.
The English were not going to let the Spanish amass the largest fleet without a fight and so the English privateer Fransisco Draque [
Francis Drake] sank about 30 Spanish ships at the Bay of Cádiz by mid-April 1587 and another 15 ships while returning to Inglaterra, delaying Filipe’s plans by more than a year, prompting the Spanish King to seriously consider if he had the necessary means to invade Inglaterra. As he obtained Papal Sanction from Sisto V on July 29, 1587, Filipe ignored his doubts and decided to go forward with his planned invasion, assembling a huge armada of about 104 ships, 8 000 soldiers and 15 000 sailors at Santander. This number would increase once the Duke of Parma’s army embarked on the Terras Baixas.
As Álvaro de Bazã [
Álvaro de Bazán], the highly experienced naval commander died in February 1588, the command of the expedition was given to Alonso Péres de Gusmão, the Duke of Medina Sidónia who was relatively inexperienced. Meanwhile, the English captains Carlos Hauárde [
Charles Howard] and Fransisco Draque led a war of attrition against the Spanish fleet as it sailed towards its destination, preventing it from taking any English port from which the invasion could begin. The Spanish were forced to retire towards Calé [
Calais] without getting any base in Inglaterra.
While the armada was in Calé, it was a victim of a joint ambush from the English and Dutch navies, the Battle of Gravelinas. In this battle, the English took advantage of the greatest weakness of the Spanish naval strategy: the Spanish preferred to board their enemy’s ships instead of sinking them with bombardments so the English simply needed to stay away from the Spanish vessels to neutralize them. But they went further, they bombed the Spanish ships as well, with everything they had available and so they won the engagement.
The Battle of Gravelinas
Damaged from the English bombardment, the armada was forced to sail further north, by turbulent currents bypassing Escósia and Irlanda so it could return to Espanha. It was in this catastrophic return that most ships were lost, the invasion was a total failure.
Izabel tried to capitalize on the Spanish disaster so that she could force Filipe II to negotiate peace on favourable terms for Inglaterra. To achieve this, she needed to fully destroy the Spanish armada and cut off the supply of silver from the Americas so she organized her own armada, prepared and financed through a stock company that arranged 80 000£ and between 10 000 to 19 000 soldiers. The command was given to both Fransisco Draque and João Noreis [
John Norreys] who gave the order to leave Plimate [
Plymouth] on April 13, 1589. Like its Spanish counterpart, it suffered from the fury of the elements and was delayed by almost two weeks, being forced to bypass Santander where the majority of the Spanish ships were being repaired.
On May 4, the British captured and looted part of Corunha and defeated a small relief fleet. However, when they attacked the upper part of the city they were defeated and had to leave. They docked several days later in Lisboa to refuel but King Duarte, fearing Spanish reprisals, especially while he was negotiating the marriage of Princess Leonor granted them only one day in Lisboa. Fueled, Fransisco Draque sailed north again, avoiding the Spanish fleet that came after him and sacked Vigo and Pontevedra which offered far less resistance than Corunha. As they returned to try their luck against Corunha once again, they were met by the sizable Spanish fleet that had been following them which forced the Battle of the Coast of Corunha. Despite winning the battle, Draque’s fleet had lost several ships and most of the crew was falling ill so considering this and the fact the rest of the Spanish fleet could appear at any moment, he decided to withdraw back to Plimate [
Plymouth].
Fransisco Draque [Sir Francis Drake the Famous English Privateer]
Inglaterra managed to weaken Espanha further but it was not the total annihilation that the Queen expected. Furthermore, the looting revenues were not as high as expected either especially considering the expedition drained the English treasury considerably, the expedition like its Spanish counterpart was a failure. However, indirectly the English forced the Spanish to divert money and resources to rebuild its navy so as to not allow the Império Otomano to take action now that the country was weakened and this delayed payments to the huge Spanish army in the Terras Baixas which caused riots and benefited the Dutch. The Spanish managed to rebuild their armada with 12 new giant galleons, making the Spanish Navy stronger than before 1588. However, Filipe grew cautious after the failure and began brooding different ways to defeat Inglaterra nevertheless the failed invasion was a huge blow to Espanha’s prestige.
After controlling the revolting soldiers, Alexandre de Farnese, the Duke of Parma laid siege against Berguém-no-Sóm [
Bergen op Zoom], a Dutch city manned by English troops but he was defeated and the morale of the Dutch and the English increased dramatically. In the following year, part of the English forces went to Fransa to support the Protestants in their struggle against the Catholic League. In 1590, a joint Anglo-Dutch force took Breda while the Duke of Parma was also in Fransa to support the Catholic League. The Estatuder da Holanda e Zelândia [
Stadtholder of Holland and Zealand], Maurísio de Nasau [
Maurice of Nassau], took advantage of the tide of successes and the absence of Farnese to recover a variety of lost territories and with the conquest of Groninga [
Groningen] in the summer of 1594, the Spanish were expelled of the northern Terras Baixas.
Portugal managed to stay away from the conflict and was deeply involved in finding a peaceful solution acting as a mediator between both belligerent countries. From those 9 ships that partook in the Armada, only 2 remained mostly undamaged and three were heavily damaged. As promised the Crown helped no captain. The constant presence of English and Spanish ships off the Asores was, however, an attack against Portuguese sovereignty of these islands, which led Duarte II, under pressure from his son, Prince João Duarte, to protest against the situation but despite promises to end those conflicts, nothing changed.
I would like to thank all those answers to my question, they were very helpful. Also, these International Developments weren't too different from OTL because I'm not a fan of TLs where there are so many butterflies that things end up far too different from OTL. I like changes but with a thin connection to OTL hence why there haven't been too many changes yet. As the reigns go by, the changes will be in bigger quantities but for now, it's like this.
