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The victory of Aljubarrota was due perhaps even more to the grand Constable of Portugal, Dom Nuno Alvares Pereira, than to the king himself, and, like the king, the Constable commemorated the victory by founding a monastery, a great Carmelite house in Lisbon.
On his death in 1383, Portugal was within an ace of falling into the clutches of Castile, but the Cortes conferred the kingship on a bastard of the royal house, John, Master of the Knights of Aviz; and he, aided by five hundred English archers, inflicted a crushing defeat on the Spaniards at Aljubarrota, the Portuguese Bannockburn.
As the glorious pile of Batalha commemorates the victory of Aljubarrota, so the splendid church and monastery of Belem mark the spot where Vasco da Gama spent the night before he sailed on his epoch-making voyage. But it was not gold that raised the noblest memorial to Portugal's greatness: it was the genius of Luis de Camoens.
Dom Diniz, Affonso III.'s son, carried on the work of settling the country, building castles and planting pine-trees to stay the blowing sands along the west coast. From that time on Portugal was able to hold her own, and was strong enough in 1387 to defeat the king of Castile at Aljubarrota when he tried to seize the throne in right of his wife, only child of the late Portuguese king, Fernando.
Maria da Victoria or Batalha, that is Battle, at a place then called Pinhal in a narrow valley some nine or ten miles north of Aljubarrota and seven south of Leiria.
The attempt of King Juan of Castile to conquer the country was repelled by João, a natural son of the preceding king of Portugal, and in 1385 he became king, and freed Portugal from any danger on the side of Castile by his victory at Aljubarrota.
So a great Cortes was held at Coimbra, and Dom João, grand master of the Order of Aviz, and the son of Dom Pedro and Dona Thereza Lourenço, was elected king. The new king at once led his people against the invaders, and after twice defeating them met them for the final struggle at Aljubarrota, near Alcobaça, on 14th August 1385.
The cup is quite plain and small, but on the wide-spreading base are eight enamels of Our Lady and of seven of the Apostles. The finest of all the objects in the Guimarães treasury is the reredos, taken by Dom João I. from the Spanish king's tent after the victory of Aljubarrota, and one of the angels which once went with it.
The battle raged all day till at last the Castilian king fled with all his army, leaving his tent with its rich furniture and all his baggage. Before the enemy had been driven from the little town of Aljubarrota, the wife of the village baker made herself famous by killing nine Spaniards with her wooden baking shovel a shovel which may still be seen on the town arms.
Of the later additions which give character to the cloister and to the Capellas Imperfeitas nothing can be said till the time of Dom Manoel is reached. Besides building Batalha, King João dedicated the spoils he had taken at Aljubarrota to the church of Nossa Senhora da Oliviera at Guimarães, which he rebuilt from the designs of Juan Garcia of Toledo.
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