Already foreign merchants and ships’ captains, who in those days often acted as agents for their countries, were passing on the news. There were Moors in Lisbon too, engaged in trade between Portugal and Granada. France and Italy, Granada, Castile, Aragon, Sicily, and even England and Holland were quickly told, “The Portuguese are preparing for war.”

“Who at that time could speak of anything but arms and munitions of war? For the King had written to all the lords, nobility, and men of property, telling them that he was preparing a fleet and that his sons Prince Peter and Prince Henry would be in command of it….” He ordered them to put themselves at the disposal of the princes. He told them how much they were expected to contribute, and what forces they were expected to raise. He did not tell them where they were going. But once the news was out that the country was on a war footing, the endless questioning began. Where was the expedition bound for? Was it for the Holy Land, or against Granada, or Castile?

For three years the country was occupied in the preparations. Everywhere men were busy. The rhythmic clash of hammers told where armorers forged casques and breastplates, and the ceaseless tapping where they riveted greaves and doublets. The swordsmiths, overworked at their delicate craft, were tempering steel blades and fashioning the tangs of swords, which goldsmiths, jewelers, and engravers would turn into instruments of beauty.

The chandlers’ and victualers’ stores were noisy with the cries of coopers casking biscuits, and boxing sun-dried fish. Along the banks of the Tagus and on the shores of the fishing ports, the long silver lines of fish lay out to dry under the bright sun. In Lisbon the hum of activity was so great that in the quiet villages along the river the ceaseless clamor was heard even above the noise of daily life.

The banks of the Douro and the Tagus were lined with craft refitting, taking aboard stores, rerigging, or newly launched and waiting for their masts and gear. Round the ships swarmed calkers, shipwrights, riggers, and sailmakers. The thump of the calking hammers was steady on the air, like the ceaseless dynamo of cicadas in midsummer. In the dusty ropewalks, under the eyes of the master ropemakers, the men spun the wheels. The long threads gathered, and twisted, and turned, forming the yarns of rope for standing and running rigging. In the Royal Ordnance, amid the smoke and smell of gunpowder, they were testing cannon and culverin. In the Royal Mint the hammers thudded, turning silver and gold into coin to pay the vast army of workmen, as well as the soldiers and sailors whom the princes were recruiting.

The slaughterers’ yards ran dark with blood as hundreds of cows and bullocks were dispatched. At their doors were piled great heaps of snow-white salt and tubs of brine for preserving the meat when it was put in cask. As the carcasses emerged from the slaughterhouses, one group of men seized them and began skinning them—the hides were needed for shoe leather, for leather doublets, and a hundred and one other things. The flayed carcasses then passed to the salters, and finally to the coopers who were waiting for them with barrels and casks.

At night the glare of Lisbon’s furnaces could be seen for miles around, casting eerie shadows over the hills behind the city. Molten iron spouted into casts of clay to form hollow bombards, or ran off into small sand castings where pike heads, ships’ fittings, and horse trappings were being formed. The red wine from the grapes of the Douro poured vivid into scoured barrels, while the greenish-yellow olive oil mounted high in vats. Tailors and weavers were as busy as the other tradesmen. It was a time when men went to war in silk and scarlet and rich embroidery. The colors and emblems of the nobility were emblazoned on the jerkins of their followers, and the standards of the great houses were worked with delicate needlework and silk threads. Carpenters were constructing chests for clothing, weapons, and victuals. They were making the mounts for cannon, and boxing the ammunition for the artillery. There was not a single trade that, in one way or another, was not involved in the preparations for war. The excitement mounted in the air like the tension of an impending thunderstorm.

Men who have lived through other wars know the strange exhilaration that seizes the heart when on every side is heard the rising hum of their country arming for battle.