[1139 - 1383] House of Burgundy and the End of the Reconquista

We begin in the year 1139. The land we now call Portugal is not yet a kingdom, but a county—a fractious, sun-scorched strip of land on the western edge of Iberia, beholden to the powerful King of León and Castile. It is a frontier, a battleground. To the south, the sophisticated Moorish taifas, the fractured remnants of a once-mighty caliphate, still hold rich cities and fertile lands. To the north and east, other Christian kingdoms are locked in the same centuries-long struggle: the *Reconquista*, the Reconquest. In this crucible, a man named Afonso Henriques, the Count of Portugal, decides that being a vassal is not his destiny. He is the son of a Burgundian knight and a Leonese princess, a man with ambition burning in his veins. In 1139, on the plains of Ourique, he faces a vast Almoravid army. The odds are impossible. Legend tells us that on the eve of the battle, Christ appeared to Afonso in a vision, promising victory. Whether divine intervention or sheer tactical genius, his small force shatters the enemy. In the aftermath, his soldiers, smelling blood and victory on the hot wind, lift him on his shield and proclaim him king. *Rei Afonso I*. This was the birth of a nation, declared on a battlefield. But a king's word is not enough. For years, Afonso wages a two-front war: south against the Moors, and north against his own cousin, the King of León, who sees him as an upstart rebel. In 1143, with the Pope’s mediation, the Treaty of Zamora is signed. His cousin finally recognizes him as king. Portugal is on the map. But the true prize, the ultimate recognition, would take decades. It wasn't until 1179 that Pope Alexander III, with the Papal Bull *Manifestis Probatum*, finally sealed Portugal’s status as a kingdom under divine protection. Afonso, now known as "the Conqueror," was relentless. Supported by opportunistic crusaders on their way to the Holy Land, he captured the strategic city of Lisbon in 1147 after a brutal four-month siege. Imagine the city: a labyrinth of narrow streets, fragrant with spices and sea salt, now echoing with the clang of steel and the cries of the besieged. Its fall was a turning point. The kingdom now had its future capital. The foundation was laid, but a nation is more than just borders drawn in blood. Afonso's son, Sancho I, understood this. Known as "the Settler," he was less a conqueror and more a builder. While the warrior nobles, clad in chainmail and fueled by a desire for land and glory, might win the territory, it was the common people who had to hold it. Sancho granted charters, called *forais*, to new towns, giving them a degree of self-governance. He invited foreign settlers and religious orders like the Templars and Hospitallers, granting them huge tracts of land in the dangerous border regions in exchange for defending them. For a peasant family, this was a terrifying opportunity: leave the relative safety of the north for a plot of your own, where you would live with a hoe in one hand and a sword in the other, always listening for the sound of raiders. Life was hard. Most of the population were peasants, their lives dictated by the seasons and the local lord or monastery they owed service to. They lived in simple wattle-and-daub huts, the smell of woodsmoke a permanent fixture in the air. Their clothes were coarse wool tunics, their diet a monotonous cycle of bread, cabbage, and whatever they could forage. High above them, in fortified stone castles with thick walls and narrow arrow-slits, lived the nobility. It was a rigidly hierarchical society, held together by oaths of fealty and the shared mission of the Reconquista. By the mid-13th century, under Afonso III, the end of that mission in Portugal was in sight. In 1249, his forces captured Faro, the last major Moorish stronghold in the Algarve. The name itself, *al-Gharb*, is Arabic for "the West." For the first time, Portugal’s continental borders were established, looking almost exactly as they do today. The Reconquista was over for Portugal, a full 250 years before it ended for Spain. This newfound peace ushered in a golden age of development under King Dinis, known as "the Farmer King." He was a pragmatist. Instead of pouring money into foreign wars, he invested it in the land. He ordered the draining of swamps to create fertile farmland and, in a stroke of incredible foresight, commanded the planting of a vast pine forest near the coastal city of Leiria. Its purpose was twofold: to act as a barrier against the encroaching sand dunes and to provide a future supply of timber for shipbuilding. King Dinis, in the 13th century, was planting the seeds of Portugal’s 15th-century Age of Discovery. He was also a man of culture. He made Portuguese the official language of the court, replacing Latin, and in 1290 founded the university that would eventually settle in Coimbra, one of the oldest in the world. His court was a center for troubadours, and he himself was a celebrated poet. This was a time of burgeoning identity, where the sound of the Portuguese language began to fill not just the marketplaces, but the halls of power and learning. But peace and poetry cannot always hold a kingdom together. The end of the Burgundian dynasty was drenched in passion and blood. It came in the form of a love story that has haunted Portugal for centuries: that of Crown Prince Pedro and his lover, Inês de Castro. Pedro was married to a Castilian princess for political reasons, but his heart belonged to Inês, his wife’s lady-in-waiting. Their love was a public scandal that threatened the stability of the throne. Fearing the influence of her Castilian family, Pedro’s own father, the king, consented to her murder. While Pedro was away, three assassins stabbed Inês to death. When Pedro became King Pedro I, his grief had curdled into a terrible, cold rage. He hunted down two of the assassins and, in a public ceremony, had their hearts ripped from their bodies—one from the chest, one from the back—as he watched. His vengeance wasn't complete. In a final, macabre act, he had Inês’s body exhumed, dressed in royal robes, and placed on a throne beside him. He then forced the entire nobility of Portugal to kneel and kiss the skeletal hand of their dead queen. This was the family that would lead Portugal into its greatest crisis. The last Burgundian king, Ferdinand I, died in 1383 with no male heir. His only child, a daughter named Beatrice, was married to the King of Castile. Under the marriage treaty, the crown would pass to them. For the merchants of Lisbon, for the common people, for the nobles who had fought for two centuries to forge a separate identity, this was unthinkable. To be absorbed by their powerful neighbor was a fate worse than death. The throne of Portugal was vacant. The kingdom held its breath. A shadow fell across the young nation, a shadow that wore the crown of Castile. The people looked for a champion, for someone to defy the treaty and save the realm. And in the ensuing chaos, an illegitimate son of the vengeful King Pedro, a man named John, the Master of the Order of Aviz, would step from the shadows. The House of Burgundy was at an end, but the story of Portugal was about to enter its most defining chapter.