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Portugal Dynastic Crisis
When João III died in 1557, the only surviving heir to
the
throne was his three-year-old son, Sebastião, who took
over the
government at the age of fourteen. Sickly and poorly
educated,
Sebastião proved to be mentally unstable, and as he grew
to young
manhood he developed a fanatical obsession with launching
a great
crusade against the Muslims in North Africa, thus reviving
the
Moroccan policy of Afonso V. In 1578, when he was
twenty-four
years old, Sebastião organized an army of 24,000 and
assembled a
large fleet that left Portugal on August 4 for
Alcázarquivir.
Sebastião's army, poorly equipped and incompetently led,
was
defeated, and the king, presumed killed in battle, was
never seen
again. A large number of the nobility were captured and
held for
ransom. This defeat, the most disastrous in Portuguese
military
history, swept away the flower of the aristocratic
leadership and
drained the coffers of the treasury in order to pay
ransoms.
Worse, it resulted in the death of a king who had no
descendants,
plunging Portugal into a period of confusion and intrigue
over
the succession.
With Sebastião's death, the crown fell to his uncle,
Henrique, the last surviving son of Manuel I. This solved
the
succession crisis only temporarily because Henrique was an
infirm
and aged cardinal who was unable to obtain dispensation
from the
pope to marry. There were several pretenders to the
throne, one
of whom was Philip II of Spain, nephew of João III.
When Henrique died in 1580, a powerful Spanish army
commanded
by the duke of Alba invaded Portugal and marched on
Lisbon. This
force routed the army of rival contender, António, prior
of Crato
and the illegitimate son of João III's son Luís. Portugal
was
annexed by Spain, and Philip II was declared Filipe I of
Portugal.
Data as of January 1993
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