It is important to lay stress on this subject, because for many years the lower classes of the Portuguese people refused to believe that their sovereign was dead, a belief encouraged by the stratagem of a wounded noble on the evening of the fatal battle to gain admission into the city of Tangier by asserting that he was the king. It was this belief which led to the acceptance of the successive false Dom Sebastians, who played a part in the ensuing half century, and it had a still further influence upon the whole future of the Portuguese people. That the “Principe Encuberto” or Hidden Prince would appear again became a religion, and the sect of the Sebastianistas became a powerful body of fanatics. Their belief was fostered by the princes of the House of Braganza as patriotic, and whenever Portugal has been subject to a great strain, the Sebastianistas have always come to the front. Even at the present day they are not extinct, and Sir Richard Burton asserts that he has met with them in the interior of Brazil. It was this firm belief that gave point to the remark of Lord Tyrawley, in the English House of Lords in 1763: “What can one possibly do with a nation, one half of which expect the Messiah, and the other half their king, Dom Sebastian, who has been dead two hundred years?” The news of the terrible disaster of Alcacer Quibir was brought to Lisbon by the Admiral Dom Diogo de Sousa, and occasioned the most passionate lamentation. There was not a noble family which had not lost more than one of its representatives, not a patriot who failed to see that ruin was staring his country in the face. Deprived of soldiers, resources, and reputation at one fell blow, the Portuguese nation seemed stunned at the extent of its calamity. Even in India the same alarm was felt, and it is said that the brave Viceroy, Dom Luis de Athaide, died of a broken heart at the news. The Cardinal Henry was solemnly crowned king, but he was a feeble old man of sixty-six, who had to be fed like a baby, and he was quite incapable of facing the situation. He utterly refused to acknowledge any successor, or to express any opinion on the subject, and when he died on January 31, 1580, the Cortes which had been summoned to decide this important question was still sitting at Lisbon. With him ended for a time the separate existence of the Portuguese nation, and it is significant and interesting to observe that Camoens, the great national poet of Portugal, the poet who had immortalized its heroic epoch, died in a hospital of semi-starvation a few months before or after the Cardinal-king. It was well he did not live longer, for Portugal was to enter on the period of its “Sixty-Years’ Captivity,” and her proud sons, who had the patriotism of a Camoens in their hearts, would not have been able to bear the burden of subjection to a foreign king. [Illustration: text decoration] [Illustration: text decoration] XII. PORTUGUESE LITERATURE--CAMOENS.