This shock was supplied by the African expedition of Dom Sebastian and its disastrous result, and Portugal was then an easy prey to the ambition of Philip II. of Spain. The reign of Dom Sebastian has therefore a pathetic interest to posterity: the romantic character of the young king; his gallantry, and his death on the field of battle; and the sudden end of the house of Aviz, which had seemed so powerful, have contributed to make this reign one of the best known to students of general history in the whole annals of Portugal. To contemporaries this sudden collapse of the kingdom, which a few years before had seemed so great, appeared nothing short of marvellous, and political philosophers were never weary of dwelling on this extinction and finding reasons for it. Rabid Protestants argued that it was all due to the Inquisition; humanitarians agreed that it was a punishment for the high-handed conduct of the Portuguese “conquistadores” in the East; shortsighted historians attributed it entirely to the defeat of Dom Sebastian in Africa. But more careful inquiry has shown that the seeds of decline had long been planted, and that the fall of Portugal from her high estate was due to the exhaustion of her vital energies and to the rapid depopulation of her territory in Europe. No country can continue to exist and be a power, which sends forth all its best energies to foreign lands and foreign continents, and becomes exhausted at home; it might as well be expected that a man should be vigorous when his heart is hopelessly diseased. Portugal was thus already rapidly decaying, when an infant of three years old became its monarch. Three times before in its history minors had succeeded to the throne, but in each case wise regents had governed the country, and the minorities had been marked by advance not retrogression. The first King of Portugal, Affonso Henriques, was but three years old, when he succeeded to his country; but the wisdom of his mother, Donna Theresa, during his minority paved the way for his subsequent success. Sancho II. was but a boy when he became king; but the great Bishop of Lisbon, by his self-abnegation, made his minority a triumph. Affonso V. had also been a child sovereign; but his uncle, the great Duke of Coimbra, ruled so wisely, that the king’s coming of age proved to be a disaster, not an advantage, to the country. But there were no such regents for the minority of Dom Sebastian: his grandmother was Spanish to the core, and loved Spain more than Portugal; his heir-presumptive was his great-uncle Dom Henry, Cardinal and Grand Inquisitor of the kingdom. [Illustration: LISBON IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY. (_From Braun and Hohenberg’s Civitates orbis terrarum, 1574._)]