nfidels had not made
war upon _him_, and Duarte, though more than ever cast down, had not the
courage to acknowledge that he had been hasty and foolish, and, bitterly
though he repented of his weakness, he allowed Enrique to equip fleets
in Lisbon and in Oporto.

* * * * *

But when, at the end of August 1436, the hour of departure arrived, the
king had recovered himself, and handed Enrique a paper of instructions
which would probably have changed the fate of the expedition had they
been followed. Unfortunately, Enrique was a headstrong man, and thought
that he _must_ know better than his stay-at-home brother, who had not
seen a battlefield for eighteen years. He had listened contemptuously to
dom Pedro when he pointed out that African conquests were both expensive
and useless, that the cities, even if taken, could never become part of
Portugal, and would always need garrisons to hold them, and smiled
scornfully at the statement that any Portuguese force besieging Tangier
would in its turn of a surety be besieged by a Moorish host, who would
gather men from all parts and have a supply of provisions constantly at
hand.

'Those whom the gods will to destroy they first infatuate,' says the
proverb, and no man was ever more infatuated than the infante dom
Enrique. The fourteen thousand men of which the king had spoken had
dwindled down to six thousand, and these were but half-hearted. Small as
the force was, dom Duarte had instructed Enrique to divide it into
three, in order to prevent the Moors from concentrating large numbers
upon one place. This counsel Enrique declined to follow, nor did he
attempt to surprise and take Tangier by assault, which might possibly
have been successful. Instead, he allowed the Moors to assemble a large
army and to put the town in a state of defence. Finally, he totally
disobeyed the wise counsel of Duarte to make his camp close to the sea,
where his ships lay at anchor, in order that provisions and a retreat
might be secured to them.

* * * * *

Having thus done all in his power to ensure defeat, only one thing
remained, and that was 'to die like good men with constant souls,' in
the words which the poet Calderon puts into the mouth of Fernando. Too
late Enrique perceived the snare into which his folly had led them, and
assembling his little army, gave orders that at night, when the Moorish
camp was quiet, they should cut the