Prince Enrique

The full name of Prince Enrique (1394 ~ 1460) is don alfonso enrique, also known as Prince Henry. Prince Enrique is the third son of Portuguese King John I, and his mother is English. Enrique is famous for his outstanding talent and pioneering spirit. He is a key figure in the process of Portugal's rise, the most visionary and strategic leader in Portuguese history, and also a key figure in the era of geographical discovery. He is called "the first hero in the era of great navigation". It is called "sailor" because it has set up a navigation school to reward navigation. With his support, the Portuguese fleet plundered blacks, gold and ivory from the west coast of Africa to Guinea, and successively occupied the Madeira Islands.

In fact, Prince Enrique did not go to sea, but went to Ceuta, Morocco with the Royal Fleet in 14 15. I have been quiet and practical since I was a child. I like learning and devote myself to the set goals. After he arrived in Ceuta with the fleet, he studied a lot of historical documents and accumulated valuable navigation materials. He is convinced that there are still many unknown continents on the earth waiting for people to discover. Therefore, a grand vision was formed in his mind. He believes that a new era in Portuguese history is about to begin.

After returning from Ceuta, Enrique devoted himself to sailing. Far from the luxurious and comfortable court, he gave up his marriage and family life and chose Sagres near the desolate Cape San Vicente in the southwest corner of Portugal to settle down, where he founded a navigation school and observatory. He recruited famous cosmologists and mathematicians from abroad and studied a large amount of information collected. After that, a dock was opened in Sagres to build ships.

After years of research, training and preparation, Enrique sent a fleet to sail for the first time in 14 18, and discovered Santos Island in Madeira Islands that year and Madeira Island the following year. Later, his fleet discovered the Azores.

Since 1930s, Enrique has been challenging the limits of human navigation at that time. He carefully selected Portugal's first-class explorers and brave sailors. Under his careful planning and deployment, these loyal captains and crew members successively discovered Guinea, Senegal, Cape Verde and Sierra Leone.

According to historical records, Enrique has repeatedly called on his captain to live in harmony with the indigenous people in the discovered land, and advocated peaceful colonization there. This is what people later called the great geographical discovery. Later, driven by material interests such as searching for gold and selling slaves, the Portuguese royal family turned the great discovery of navigation into conquest and plunder by force and evolved into cruel colonial rule and oppression.

/kloc-in the first half of the 0/5th century, the achievements of Portuguese navigation discovery shocked Europe. Enrique is admired not only by the Portuguese, but also by the Europeans. Europeans respectfully call him a navigator, while Portuguese affectionately call him Prince Enrique and Prince of Navigation. His contribution to mankind far exceeds the great achievements of a navigator. Jaime Cortesao, a Portuguese historian, said: We can't forget the world significance of this event, because it is related to the past, that is, the Portuguese were inspired by the past experience of other peoples, and its consequences greatly promoted the birth of new mankind.

The Portuguese love and worship Enrique so much that his image is regarded as sacred. Legend has it that he is a pure and serious monk, putting aside all his personal feelings and desires, never occupying precious time for trifles and delaying his sailing career.

Enrique 1460 died of illness at Sagres, his sailing base, at the age of 66. Historians have commented that the importance of his life and career is immeasurable, not only for Portugal but also for Europe as a whole. Since he sailed, everyone who has made important geographical discoveries has followed in his footsteps.

In order to show their eternal admiration for him, the Portuguese people built a monument for him and set up the Order of Prince don alfonso enrique in recognition of cultural figures at home and abroad who have made contributions to Portugal. The name of Prince Enrique will always be associated with Portugal's maritime career and great maritime discoveries. Prince Enrique is the third prince of King Joao I of Portugal. It is said that his birthdates indicates that he will "undertake a great and noble expedition, and more importantly, he will discover mysterious things that others can't see". Enrique studied strategy and tactics, diplomatic art, state management, ancient and modern knowledge and read widely since he was a child. As a prince, Henry longed for a life of adventure and fighting. At the same time, he is a devout Christian. In his view, it is the duty of Christians to attack the Moors, explore the unknown and bring Christianity there. Prince Enrique has never been married. He is rigorous and firm, and leads a simple life.

14 15, Enrique personally raided Ceuta, and the Moors didn't know it beforehand. As a result, Ceuta was captured in just one day and only eight Portuguese were killed. Later generations regarded this as the beginning of the outward expansion of the Portuguese and Europeans.

14 17, the Moorish army surrounded Ceuta, and Enrique led reinforcements to Ceuta, where he stayed for three months, which changed the history of the world. During these three months, Enrique learned from prisoners of war and commercial population that there was an old and busy commercial road that could cross the Sahara desert. After 20 days, he can reach the "green countries" with dense forests and fertile land, namely today's Guinea, Gambia, Senegal, southern Mali and southern Niger, from which he can get African pepper, gold and ivory. The Portuguese have no experience of crossing the desert by land. Prince Enrique has a bold idea to reach a "green country" by sea. This idea was endorsed by King Joao I.

Enrique is not interested in politics. He went to Portugal's southernmost tequila province, far from Lisbon, the political center, as governor, and settled in Sagrish, a small village near Cape San Vicente, which became the starting point for his exploration in strange places in the next few decades. Prince Enrique's contribution to navigation is not to explore personally, but to promote exploration vigorously. He founded a navigation college there to train domestic sailors and improve navigation technology; Establish an observatory to attract geologists, cartographers, mathematicians and astronomers from all over the world to study and make plans and schemes; Collect extensively the documents on geography, meteorology, trade winds, ocean currents, shipbuilding, navigation, etc., and analyze them for your own use; Travel libraries have been established, including The Travels of Marco Polo, and many maps have been collected and new maps have been drawn. He funded mathematicians and craftsmen to improve and manufacture new navigation instruments, such as compass, quadrant (instrument for measuring altitude, especially altitude) and horizontal marker (simple astrolabe for measuring latitude) imported from China. In sailing, the ship is the most important. Because of the different navigation conditions between the Mediterranean and the Atlantic, ships sailing in the Mediterranean are not suitable for sailing in the Atlantic. Therefore, Enrique devoted his greatest energy to shipbuilding, and he took many preferential measures to encourage shipbuilding: all ships with a tonnage of 100 tons or more can get wood from the royal forest free of charge, and any other necessary materials can be imported duty-free. In the case of insufficient currency at that time, duty-free imports had to pay a considerable price. After hard work, we reached 1440 and finally built a ship suitable for sailing in the Atlantic Ocean. This is a dhow. The purpose of using jib is to make the ship sail against the wind. We just need to adjust the angle of the sail, instead of relying on the wind direction as before. This kind of ship is shallow, light, flexible and fast, and can sail close to the coast without having to stay away from the coast in order to avoid reefs and sandbars, which is particularly important in the navigation for the purpose of exploring strange coasts.

14 19 or 1420, Enrique sent his first expedition, with only one sailboat, to the south to find Guinea. The ship was blown to the west by the wind, and the Madeira Islands were discovered in this way. Prince Enrique later claimed that the islands belonged to Portugal and sent a colonial fleet in 1420. Later, it became the foothold and material supply station of the Portuguese expedition. His next target was the Canary Islands, but Portuguese soldiers were defeated by the locals. Prince Enrique later failed several times. Later, Portugal gave up the ownership of the Canary Islands and gave it to the Spanish. In the following years, Prince Enrique sent many expeditions to explore from two directions. One direction is to go south along the coast of Africa, and the other direction is to leave the coast and sail deep southwest to find more islands. 1427, the fleet exploring the southwest discovered the Azores. 1432, Prince Enrique sent 16 ships, hundreds of people and a priest to colonize the Azores with dozens of livestock. The discovery and colonization of Azores have an important influence on Portugal's future exploration and colonization, because its distance from Portugal is almost equal to 1/3 of Portugal's distance across the Atlantic to America.

1433, King Joao I died and Enrique's younger brother Duarte succeeded him. Enrique then focused on exploring south along the African coast. The first obstacle of this route is Cape Bohal, which is located on the African continent just south of the Canary Islands. At that time, the south of Cape Bohal was a completely unknown world to Europeans. There are many reefs, huge waves and mysterious rapids. Arabs call this sea area "dark green ocean" in fear. On the map of medieval Arabia, on the coast slightly south of Cape Bohal, there was a Satan's hand sticking out of the water. 1434, after more than a dozen attempts, Prince Enrique's expedition finally survived under the leadership of captain Jill Ennis. Later, the captain boasted that sailing in the dark green ocean was as easy as sailing in domestic waters. Surara, a contemporary Portuguese historian, called it a feat. In the following year, Ines went out to sea again and reached the south of Cape Bohal 100 nautical mile. They found footprints of people and camels on the beach there, which proved that there was life in this area. 1436, they arrived at a place called Neo de Oro, where they found placer gold, thinking that this is the golden river that Europeans have been looking for. In fact, it is not even a river, but a small bay with little value.

As early as 134 1 year to 1346, Catalan and Portuguese navigators sailed 900 kilometers south along the west coast of Africa until they reached Bohado. The sailors are afraid to sail south again. They secretly returned to Europe on the pretext of meeting all kinds of terrible aborigines. The salt in the sea is too thick to cultivate. They also threatened that all Christians passing through Bohado would become black.

During the reign of Du Jiaerte, the king used the tax of Madeira Islands15 as the navigation fund. 1438 When Alfonso V ascended the throne, Regent Peizhuo gave Enrique the monopoly of navigation and trade south of Cape Bohal, and exempted all taxes on navigation income. In order to support Henry's missionary work in West Africa, the Pope appointed Henry as the head of the Order, and Enrique could control the funds of the Order at will. The above support ensures Enrique's abundant funds in navigation and is the driving force for the rapid advancement of navigation exploration. However, exploration is not for the sake of exploration, and prolonged exploration has not brought much benefit, so Enrique has been criticized more and more, thinking that the pursuit of the unknown is meaningless and unprofitable. 144 1 year, after dealing with the fiasco of attacking Tangier and the political struggle caused by it, Enrique returned to Sagrish and resumed his exploration on the African coast. This year, the expedition set a new record for sailing south: Cape Brown (now Cape Nouadhibou, Mauritania). In the same year, another expedition returned ten Muslim prisoners. This marks the beginning of the slave trade in Europe. Enrique saw this as an opportunity to quell criticism, so he organized a voyage for the purpose of plundering slaves in 1444, bringing back 235 slaves at a time and selling them outside Lagos, which was the beginning of the 400-year slave trade in evil Europe. Since then, the voyage organized by Enrique has paid equal attention to exploration, colonization and slave trade. At this time, the Portuguese royal family issued a charter to private explorers, allowing them to get everything they found, which means that for private people, as long as they pay a small amount of money and take risks, they can make a fortune; For the royal family, you can get benefits without paying the price. This set off a wave of private exploration in China. Soon, 25 ships will sail to the African coast every year. Of course, private exploration is not a real exploration because of its profit-seeking and unorganized nature, but only to obtain wealth in the discovered area. 1448, Prince Enrique sent someone to build a permanent fortress on Algin Island in Cape Brown as a trade transit point for Portuguese exploration. With the continuous expansion of African trade, Altun Island has become an important center for providing gold. The exploration finally paid off, and those criticisms went away, and even involuntarily turned past complaints into word of mouth.

1444, Tristan arrived near the Senegalese estuary in Cape Brown, where the coast became full of green. After more than ten years of sailing, Portugal finally reached a green country. After 1449, the sailors organized by Prince Enrique did not take geographical discovery as their task, but tried their best to explore some rivers that had been discovered, especially gambia river, in order to find Christian King John and gold. However, instead of finding John and gold, the sailors found some prosperous black kingdoms and heard that there was a bigger kingdom in the distance.

Prince Enrique died in 1460, marking the end of a great era of Portuguese navigation and exploration. Although Prince Enrique has only experienced four sea voyages in his life, and all of them are short voyages in familiar waters, he is still worthy of the title of "navigator". It was he who organized and funded the initial long-lasting and systematic exploration, and he also combined exploration with colonization, making exploration a profitable undertaking. In 40 years of organized navigation, Portugal has become the navigation center of Europe. They built a world-class fleet, possessed first-class shipbuilding technology and trained a large number of world-class explorers or navigators. None of this would have happened without Enrique. He pushed Portugal out of Europe and took risks in the unknown world. Padrao dos Descobrimentos, built in 1960, is located near Belem Tower and stands in the square by the sea. It has become a symbol of Portugal with extraordinary momentum.

This monument was built to commemorate the 500th anniversary of the death of the nautical prince Enrique. It is shaped like a ship with huge sails. The monument is engraved with statues of Enrique and 80 other sailors. Enrique stood at the bow, followed by his assistant Gamma. On both sides are some accompanying navigators, as well as famous generals, missionaries and scientists in Portuguese history. Commemorating Portugal's glorious history of exploring the ocean for 300 years is quite imposing.

On the ground in front of the monument, there is a map of the world engraved with the date of the discovery of the new continent. Standing at the top of the monument, overlooking the nearby scenery and harbor customs, it is beautiful and moving.