as an independent State, lastly as an imperial Kingdom. Also, as the
earliest centre of Portugal was a harbour, and its earliest border a
river, there was a sort of natural, though slumbering, fitness for
seamanship in the people.

(2.) Again, in the alliance of the Crown with the towns, first formed by
Count Henry's wife Theresa in her regency after his death, 1114-28, and
renewed by her grandson Sancho, the City Builder, and by Affonso III.,
the "Saviour of the Kingdom," we have an early example of the power of
that class, which was the backbone of the great movement of expansion,
when the meaning of this was fairly brought home to them.

(3.) In the capture of Lisbon, in 1147, by Affonso Henriquez, Theresa's
son, at the head of the allied forces of native militia and northern
Crusaders--Flemish, French, German, and English--we have brought
clearly before us, not merely the facts of the gain of a really great
city by a rising Christian State, not merely the result of this in the
formation of a kingdom out of a county, but the more general connection
of the crusading spirit with the new nations of Europe. Portugal is the
most lasting monument of crusading energy; it was this that strengthened
the "Lusitanians" to make good their stand both against the Moors and
against Castille; and it was this which brought out the maritime bent of
the little western kingdom, and drew out its interest on the one and
only side where that could be of great and general usefulness. The
Crusades without and the policy of statesmen within, we may fairly say,
made the Portuguese ready to lead the expansion of Christendom, made
possible the work of Henry the Navigator. The foreign help given at
Lisbon in 1147 was only a repetition on a grand scale of what had long
been done on a smaller, and it was offered again and again till the
final conquest of the southern districts, between Cape St. Vincent and
the Guadiana (_c._ 1250), left the European kingdom fully formed, and
the recovery of Western Spain from the Moslem had been achieved.

[Illustration: Chart of the Mediterranean Sea by WILLEM BARENTSZOON.
Engraved in copper 1595. Almost unaltered copy of a Portolano from the
14th century. (Orig. size 418 x 855 m.m.). (SEE LIST OF MAPS)]

(4.) And when the Crusading Age passed away, it left behind an
intercourse of Portugal with England, Flanders, and the North Sea
coasts, which was taken up and developed by Diniz and the kings of the
fourteen