Affonso de Albuquerque was born at Alhandra, a beautiful village about eighteen miles from Lisbon, in 1453. He was brought up at the court of King Affonso V, where he is said to have been a page. He was certainly educated with the king's sons, and became in his early years a friend of Prince John, afterwards John II. He was not only a thorough master of his own language, which, as his despatches show, he wrote with force and elegance, but he also studied Latin and Mathematics. The latter science was an especial favourite of his and very useful to him during his voyages, in assisting him to master the technicalities of navigation, so that he could, in time of need, act as a pilot. The court of Affonso V was {45} well calculated to stir the knightly spirit of a lad. The king himself was known as _El Rey Cavalleiro_ or the _Chivalrous King_; his one delight was in war, and he was never tired of reading the romances of mediaeval chivalry and trying to follow the example of its heroes. King Affonso V had also a great taste for literature: he founded the famous library at Evora, and his answer to the chronicler, Acenheiro, who asked how he should write the chronicle of his reign, illustrated his disposition; for he answered simply, 'Tell the truth.' In 1471 Affonso de Albuquerque, then a young man of eighteen, served in King Affonso's third expedition to Morocco, in which the Portuguese took the cities of Tangier, Anafe, and Arzila. In the last of these towns he remained for some years as an officer of the garrison. This was an excellent school for the training of an officer, and Albuquerque there learnt not only his military duties but his hatred for the Muhammadans. It was in the garrisons in Morocco that the Portuguese soldiers and captains, who were to prove their valour in the East, served their apprenticeship to war; and the ten years which Albuquerque spent there were not years thrown away. In 1481, when his friend John II succeeded to the throne, Affonso de Albuquerque returned to Portugal, and was appointed to the high court office of Estribeiro-Mor, which is equivalent to the post of Master of the Horse or Chief Equerry. This office he held throughout the reign of John II, and his close {46} intimacy with that wise and great king ripened his intellect and trained him to thoughts of great enterprises. John II was always thinking of the direct sea route to India; Albuquerque shared his hopes, and there can be no doubt that the grand schemes for establishing Portuguese influence in Asia which he afterwards conceived, had their origin in his intimacy with _The Perfect King_. He served on the fleet sent to the Gulf of Taranto to defend King Ferdinand of Naples against an invasion of the Turks; and in 1489 he commanded the defence of the fortress of Graciosa, on the coast of Morocco, against an attack of the Moors.