Luis Costa e Sousa

s of the papers proposals received by call for papers and blind review evaluated by the members of Scientific Committee. PAINEL 1 – CENTRO E PERIFERIAS: GOVERNAR À DISTÂNCIA Sergio Hernández Suárez Los primeros intentos del control commercial Canario-Americano: el primer juzgado de Indias en Canarias

No dia 2 de Janeiro de 1573, uma sexta-feira, o rei D. Sebastião saiu de Évora com uma "luzida" comitiva. Ao longo de quase dois meses percorreu as principais localidades do Alentejo e Algarve, com o objectivo de avaliar o estado da organização militar nesta região. Trata-se de uma viagem inédita no contexto português, pois nenhum outro monarca se havia deslocado a

Isidoro de Almeida dominou o tríptico fortificação/arquitectura/arte
militar, numa época em que o conhecimento da guerra se fragmentava em
torno destes três temas. Da sua obra arquitectónica ficam para a
posteridade a capela-mor da igreja de São Domingos em Coimbra e o
claustro do convento da Graça em Lisboa. Da obra escrita, perdura o seu
“quarto livro das instruções militares”, parte de um tratado de grande
fôlego que nada ficaria a dever à tratadística contemporânea. A obra escrita deste notável algarvio iria ocupar um lugar privilegiado como referência da tratadística portuguesa de Quinhentos.

What is actually known about the Portuguese army that fought the 1578 Moroccan campaign? Despite the vast bibliographic production concerning the reign of King D. Sebastião and in particular about his final “jornada” to Morocco that culminated with the battle of Alcácer Quibir. This paper summarizes the information the sources provide on the organizational process of the expedition and composition of the Portuguese army, highlighting all the historiograpphc gaps and the new research vectors provided by the project MOVING CITY.

It is intended to analyse the battle of Alcacer Quibir in the context of 16th century military art, in regard with the following items: 1) highlight the components of the conceptual process and operational practices, pointing out some points of contact with the process of architectural design; 2) to analyze the planning of the order of battle design, its relation with the organization of the marching column, and its transposition to the final battle array.

The dominance of the Atlantic was a primary objective of the Spanish sovereign, and therefore the conquest of the islands of the archipelago of the Azores was essential. It was a long exercise, only carried out after three military expeditions that lasted for another three years. One of the greatest naval battles of the entire Sixteenth century was fought, and several thousand men were sent to the Azores with a fleet that comprised dozens of galleys, a ship not meant to sail on the high seas of the Atlantic. The iconographic representations will be confronted with well-known chronicles of this event. These documents provide two distinct narratives: the image of a remote battlefield located int the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, and at the same time highlighted the leadership of the commander of one of the most notable military expeditions of the 16th century: the marquis of Santa Cruz, Don Alvaro de Bazan.

O “livro de Valo” é a tradução do tratado escrito por Battista della Valle que marcou, juntamente com a “Arte militar” de Maquiavel, o início do surto de textos sobre a “coisa da guerra”. Della Valle era, ao contrário de Maquiavel, um “soldado prático”, pelo que o seu “libro” articula a tradição da guerra clássica com as inovações técnicas introduzidas na guerra do Renascimento, estabelecendo o padrão para a tratadística “de re militari” que floresceu em Itália, sobretudo a partir da segunda metade do século XVI. A tradução portuguesa, datada da segunda metade do século XVI é um texto particularmente importante não só no ponto de vista militar, porque demonstra a actualidade e pertinência da “escola militar italiana” no contexto das reformas militares sebásticas, mas também como testemunho da ligação entre os registos gráfico e narrativo praticado em Portugal no século XVI, cuja temática – bélica – se revelou tão cara às ambições do jovem rei D. Sebastião.

The concept of military revolution was formulated in the middle of the xx Century, but the issue is still somewhat far from the Portuguese historiography. Most works have been focused in the impact on the colonial space, leaving to the continental military reality to a reflection on the causes of its inexistence. It is a fact that between 1474 and 1580 military confrontation was absent from Portugal... or almost absent, because war that does not end on the battlefield: De re militari was a kind of umbrella for a wide range of themes, a whole corpus of Knowledge that fully developed along the sixteenth century. And in Portugal there is much to say about War in the last quarter of that century. Even the paradigmatic aspect of military confrontation, the pitched battle also took place at the very near of the Portuguese southern region, the “Algarve D’além mar". Here, European soldiers fought the European war, with and without success; and that was the result of the reforms undertaken by D. Sebastião, that definitively changed the shape of a still medieval military structure.

We proposed to focus on the iconographic component of the Relatione do Co. Stefano Angarano de la guerra di Portogallo L’anno 1580, whose drawings illustrate the three aspects that characterize the operational performance of a military force: the shape of the military camp, the organization of the march column and the army’s itinerary. It is a rather unusual text that comprises the graphic description of a military camp associated with the design of the organization of the march column describing the same military event, the invasion of Portugal by the Spanish army in 1580.

O período da "Monarquia Dual" foi o desiderato de um esforço reorganizativo que, de facto, recua ao início do século XVI, mas que tomou a forma definitiva durante o reinado de D. Sebastião. As reformas militares sebásticas foram o culminar de um longo processo que se prolongou por mais de meio século, e que se pode resumir à criação das chamadas "companhias de ordenança". Pretendia-se que estas unidades militares como núcleo organizativo de qualquer situação de alarme militar, quer defensivo quer ofensivo. A organização de soldados em unidades militares de efetivo estável, determinado por diploma régio, não foi uma criação do século XVI, mas a persistência no tempo-situação tornada possível pelo intensificar dos conflitos durante os séculos XV e XVI-iria propiciar o progressivo estabelecimento de um corpo de oficiais cada vez mais complexo, com a consequente profissionalização da atividade bélica 2 .

We proposed to focus on the iconographic component of the Relatione do Co. Stefano Angarano de la guerra di Portogallo L’anno 1580, whose drawings illustrate the three aspects that characterize the operational performance of a military force: the shape of the military camp, the organization of the march column and the army’s itinerary. It is a rather unusual text that comprises the graphic description of a military camp associated with the design of the organization of the march column describing the same military event, the invasion of Portugal by the Spanish army in 1580

The writings of European travellers who journeyed to
Morocco in the 16th century are a particularly rich source
altogether but the Descripción by Jorge de Henin stands
out as a truly exceptional document in view of how
he combines with other Christian chroniclers. Henin
mentions the ransom of António de Saldanha, the
author of the Crónica de Almaçor, and his text combines
with the Relación by Diego de Torres and the Descriptión
by Mármol Carvajal, not just in terms of the addressed
subjects but in geographical and chronological terms as
well. Torres and Henin were also alfaqueques (redeemers)
in the service of the Portuguese Crown, a curious – or
perhaps not so curious – coincidence. Moreover, and
as if this complementarity wasn’t of itself a remarkable
and critical fact for a comprehensive comparative
analysis, the Descripción includes iconography, a true
rarity among 16th-century chronicles. Thus, I owe Rui
Loureiro for his generosity and Luís Falcão Fonseca
for his diligence, and even more so because it will
finally be possible to essay an approach that combines
graphic representations and textual descriptions, using
virtually unpublished material. This paper is meant to
be a starting point, based upon texts by Henin, António
de Saldanha, Juan Baptista, Mármol de Carvajal and
Diego de Torres. Another first class source is Marsigli’s
treaty L’Etat Militaire de l’Empire Ottoman (1732), a
chronological outlier but nevertheless an essential
source both in terms of text and iconography.

The "Alcácer Quibir: margens e contra-margens" conference is the consequence of several research projects, some already under development, while others submitted to application. After working over the theme of sixteenth century warfare, having established several contacts with other researchers from various investigation centers, the resulting scientific exchanges has shown that this theme still has enormous potential for multidisciplinary development. The understanding of the political and cultural fractures that occurred during the sixteenth century Mediterranean geography is still crucial to understand many contemporary events that are taking place within this region.

The concept of military revolution was formulated in the middle of the xx Century, but the issue is still somewhat far from the Portuguese historiography. Most works have been focused in the impact on the colonial space, leaving to the continental military reality to a reflection on the causes of its inexistence. It is a fact that between 1474 and 1580 military confrontation was absent from Portugal... or almost absent, because war that does not end on the battlefield: De re militari was a kind of umbrella for a wide range of themes, a whole corpus of Knowledge that fully developed along the sixteenth century. And in Portugal there is much to say about War in the last quarter of that century. Even the paradigmatic aspect of military confrontation, the pitched battle also took place at the very near of the Portuguese southern region, the “Algarve D’além mar". Here, European soldiers fought the European war, with and without success; and that was the result of the reforms undertaken by D. Sebastião, that definitively changed the shape of a still medieval military structure.

The Sixteenth century military theory and practice was deeply influenced by concepts of harmony and beauty, such as was art and architecture. Battle formations were designed with precise geometric configurations, observing a strict symmetry, and built according to a rigorous mathematics. No longer meant to be individual warriors, soldiers went to battle as pieces in this larger scheme.
The Portuguese military reality was not away from those tendencies. The war they fought around the globe displayed many of the operational novelties used in Europe, and the reign of young king Sebastian culminated all previous efforts to modernize the military power. Even if it was a true anti-climax with the disastrous defeat of Alcazar Qubir, it was, nevertheless, the true end of Middle Ages in Portugal.

The men involved in the rediscovery of classical inheritance were also deeply committed to the so called «military revolution». Many artists and architects had a crucial role in the invention of the angled bastion, the key element of the fortification system, so war itself was also changed by artistic concepts.  The conduct of battle went on to rely on aesthetic principles, graduations obeying the criteria such as symmetry, or the troop formations – known to the portuguese as «esquadrões» –  were built upon a rigorous mathematic and geometric operations. Representing the three-dimensioned reality implied the invention of  the linear perspective method. Its roots went far behind to the times of Giotto’s empirical approaches but, nevertheless, the geometrical-mathematical conceptual basis in the fourteenth and sixteenth century had a more «scientific» approach. It extended to various activities, and so war was deeply influenced by mathematics and geometry, just as Art and Architecture. Shooting a cannon was no longer possible without calculating angles of fire and trajectory lines; the design of an angular bastion relied on geometric construction; and forming soldiers into battle required intricate arithmetic operations. The war thus earned the status of «nuova scientia» for relying in perspective and mathematics, which were already consolidated in the «Quadrivium» of liberal arts. 
The reign of D. Sebastião was confirmation of a growing militarization of the Portuguese society. Tridentine directives implied a new plain architecture that later was to became the «estilo chão», and war was also subject to a conceptual narrowing strictly focusing on the fighting effectiveness. The soldiers, no longer individual combatants, were a simple piece of the larger military building, the «esquadrão». Its construction implied mathematical and geometrical principles, the same rules needed for designing the longitudinal plan of a building.
The military reforms implemented by D. Sebastião were profound and crossed various areas, such as operational, legislative and theoretical. Nevertheless, they did not appear as an isolated effort. One man palyed a key part in those reforms, Isidoro de Almeida, establishing a bridge between the past Reforms of King D. João III, and the later Filipe I. Almeida had an overall knowledge of the war, including the fortification, the art of «esquadronar», eventually the artillery, and even of architecture. He was a war veteran as well as a military writer, so his understanding was both practical and theoretical. His military treatise was the first published in Portugal during the sixteenth century (1573), and remained so until the book of Luís Mendes de Vasconcelos published in 1612.
The institutional aspect was no less important. D. Sebastião’s ordinances exceeded the time period in which they were imposed, surviving the death of the monarch. The 1570 legislation continued to provide the recruitment during Spanish rule, obviously under foreign control the same way as Spanish garrisons occupied the principal Portuguese fortresses. Nevertheless, war remained almost exclusively in the hands of Portuguese nobles in the colonial space. The irregular nature of warfare continued in the vast regions of the Empire. Surely the enemies allowed looser military formations, but that approach was also a military necessity because of the completely different characteristics such as climate, topography, and the forces involved. Still, soldiers also fought in regular formations if the situation required, as we can see in some accounts of the war in Angola or in Ceylon.
The irregular warfare and the European doctrine were merged, combined with the offensive «à outrance» that Boxer intended to generalize as the sole fighting method of the Portuguese. Half a century later, during the «Guerras da Restauração» in the seventeenth century, the racially heterogeneous Brazilian forces were the victors against the regular armies of W.I.C, just as the Portuguese armies vanquished the Spanish forces in the regular European battlefield.

O “livro de Valo” é a tradução do tratado escrito por Battista della Valle que marcou, juntamente com a “Arte militar” de Maquiavel, o início do surto de textos sobre a “coisa da guerra”. Della Valle era, ao contrário de Maquiavel, um “soldado prático”, pelo que o seu “libro” articula a tradição da guerra clássica com as inovações técnicas introduzidas na guerra do Renascimento, estabelecendo o padrão para a tratadística “de re militari” que floresceu em Itália, sobretudo a partir da segunda metade do século XVI. A tradução portuguesa, datada da segunda metade do século XVI é um texto particularmente importante não só no ponto de vista militar, porque demonstra a actualidade e pertinência da “escola militar italiana” no contexto das reformas militares sebásticas, mas também como testemunho da ligação entre os registos gráfico e narrativo praticado em Portugal no século XVI, cuja temática – bélica – se revelou tão cara às ambições do jovem rei D. Sebastião.

The battle of Alcântara was the culmination of an invasion that used powerful military means, both land and naval. Without external help, D. António, Prior of Crato, could only count on his own resources: a kingdom bloodied by the overwhelming losses suffered two years earlier, and impoverished by the enormous effort expended in preparing that fatal
Moroccan expedition. Adding to this fragility, the détente between Portugal and Spain since the beginning of the century left the land border hopelessly unguarded. In the aftermath of the death of King Sebastião, the presence of spies, undercover agents and sympathizers allowed a detailed record of the poor state of Portugal’s defenses. The invasion plan, carried out by the extraordinary organizer and military commander D. Fernando de Toledo, Duke of Alba, took advantage of this precious information to carry out a swift campaign. Still, the progression that proved unstoppable faced a series of obstacles that became increasingly difficult to overcome as Spanish troops approached the final goal: Lisbon, the undisputed head of the Kingdom of Portugal, and whose possession was decided on the 25th of August 1580.

The men involved in the rediscovery of classical inheritance were also deeply committed to the so called «military revolution». Many artists and architects had a crucial role in the invention of the angled bastion, the key element of the fortification system, so war itself was also changed by artistic concepts. The conduct of battle went on to rely on aesthetic principles, graduations obeying the criteria such as symmetry, or the troop formations – known to the portuguese as «esquadrões» – were built upon a rigorous mathematic and geometric operations. Representing the three-dimensioned reality implied the invention of the linear perspective method. Its roots went far behind to the times of Giotto’s empirical approaches but, nevertheless, the geometricalmathematical conceptual basis in the fourteenth and sixteenth century had a more «scientific» approach. It extended to various activities, and so war was deeply influenced by mathematics and geometry, just as Art and Architecture. Shooting a cannon was no longer possible without calculating angles of fire and trajectory lines; the design of an angular bastion relied on geometric construction; and forming soldiers into battle required intricate arithmetic operations. The war thus earned the status of «nuova scientia» for relying in perspective and mathematics, which were already consolidated in the «Quadrivium» of liberal arts. The reign of D. Sebastião was confirmation of a growing militarization of the Portuguese society. Tridentine directives implied a new plain architecture that later was to became the «estilo chão», and war was also subject to a conceptual narrowing strictly focusing on the fighting effectiveness. The soldiers, no longer individual combatants, were a simple piece of the larger military building, the «esquadrão». Its construction implied mathematical and geometrical principles, the same rules needed for designing the longitudinal plan of a building. The military reforms implemented by D. Sebastião were profound and crossed various areas, such as operational, legislative and theoretical. Nevertheless, they did not appear as an isolated effort. One man palyed a key part in those reforms, Isidoro de Almeida, establishing a bridge between the past Reforms of King D. João III, and the later Filipe I. Almeida had an overall knowledge of the war, including the fortification, the art of «esquadronar», eventually the artillery, and even of architecture. He was a war veteran as well as a military writer, so his understanding was both practical and theoretical. His military treatise was the first published in Portugal during the sixteenth century (1573), and remained so until the book of Luís Mendes de Vasconcelos published in 1612. The institutional aspect was no less important. D. Sebastião’s ordinances exceeded the time period in which they were imposed, surviving the death of the monarch. The 1570 legislation continued to provide the recruitment during Spanish rule, obviously under foreign control the same way as Spanish garrisons occupied the principal Portuguese fortresses. Nevertheless, war remained almost exclusively in the hands of Portuguese nobles in the colonial space. The irregular nature of warfare continued in the vast regions of the Empire. Surely the enemies allowed looser military formations, but that approach was also a military necessity because of the completely different characteristics such as climate, topography, and the forces involved. Still, soldiers also fought in regular formations if the situation required, as we can see in some accounts of the war in Angola or in Ceylon. The irregular warfare and the European doctrine merged, combined with the offensive «à outrance» that Boxer intended to generalize as the sole fighting method of the Portuguese. Half a century later, during the «Guerras da Restauração» in the seventeenth century, the racially heterogeneous Brazilian forces were the victors against the regular armies of W.I.C. Just as the Portuguese armies vanquished the Spanish forces in the regular European battlefield.

It a rare historical occurrence that a single battle could have such a decisive impact, as it happened with the confrontation between Moroccans and Portuguese in 1578. For Portugal the  disaster of Alcácer Quibir meant the loss of independence, for the Moroccan Saadi dynasty it turned the beginning of a golden age, that brought the control of the Songhay Empire, deep into Africa. We still stumble in old opinions and prejudices, and little has been investigated on the extensive planning of this military intervention, which began with the profound reform of military institutions initiated by Dom Sebastião, whose forms of recruitment and mobilization would last for two centuries.

Esta expedição permite rever algumas afirmações sobre a desactualização do conhecimento militar no Portugal quinhentista. De facto, Cristóvão da Gama parece dominar a arte militar que os castelhanos então desenvolviam nos campos de batalha da Europa.
Desde a organização dos soldados em unidades militares fixas, à sua disposição ordenada no terreno, não esquecendo a utilização do armamento mais moderno, todo este conhecimento militar parece ser perfeitamente dominado pelo filho mais novo de Vasco da Gama.
Um aspecto curioso foi o apetrecho da coluna com um trem de carros artilhados que permitiam proteger os soldados em marcha, ao mesmo tempo que serviam como bastiões fortificados quando construído um acampamento.
Nem a componente estratégica parece ter sido descurada. A campanha foi iniciada com a captura de um ponto estratégico fundamental, seguido de outro onde se acumularam armas que posteriormente permitiram a sobrevivência da expedição, mesmo depois da morte do seu comandante.

Das representações da guerra e seus actores A imprensa e a difusão do livro na era do Renascimento Antonio Espino Lopez (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona) Representações nas escritas de guerra dos homens e das ações bélicas (1578-1613) Ana Paula Avelar (Universidade Aberta e CHAM-NOVA/FCSH) A noite em contexto militar português no Norte de África (1415-1521) Paulo M. Dias (IEM-NOVA/FCSH) 1576: Filipe II e D. Sebastião em Guadalupe. Aspectos cerimoniais Ana Isabel Buescu (CHAM-NOVA/FCSH) Nos palcos de guerra no Além-Mar (sécs. XVe XVI). Recortes de participação das mulheres.

O Regimento de Guerra de Martim Afonso de Melo é um texto fundamental para o estudo da teoria e pratica militar em Portugal no século XVI, que ainda carece de anáilise quanto ao conteúdo e, sobretudo, sobre a biografia do seu autor. É obectivo disponibilizar o texto original transcrito por Caetano de Sousa, bem como outro trabalho da época que poderá ajudar a contextulaizar uma obra fundamental da escrita "De Re Militari" em Portugal.
Publicação subsidiada ao abrigo do projecto "De Re Militari - Da escrita da guerra à imagem do campo de batalha no espaço português (1521-1621)" (PTDC/ART-HIS/32459/2017), financiado pela FCT – Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia.

At a time when the new angular proposals were already imposed in Italy, mainly in the interventions of the Sangallo brothers, it is interesting to note that the first formal theorization made by Dürer in 1527 does not contemplate a single example of the angular form. This design was still considered viable until 1522, the date of the fall of the St John fortress of Rhodes, which had one of the most impressive sets of circular typology. In Portugal, the circular forms remained a constructive option until the 1540s, from which the circular and semi-circular bastions of Diu (c.1538), Ormuz (c.1540), and the fortress of Safim (1540) stand out. In the territory of continental Portugal the circular fort of Peniche (1557-58) seems to close this "circular cycle".