One of those commercial interests was slavery, and in particular the traffic in human beings captured from Africa. Slavery had long before ceased to exist in Europe, but a new chapter in the history of the slave trade began in 1441, when one of Henry's captains presented him with fourteen slaves as a "gift." Many Portuguese favored the slave trade, which would grow in coming years, but Henry rejected it for both moral and practical reasons. On a practical level, he saw slavery as an unprofitable business, and on a moral level, he knew that it was not likely to produce many converts to Christianity.
During the 1450s, Henry's sailors continued to gather information about Africa while Henry himself became increasingly withdrawn from public contact. Yet he remained a crusader to the end, and his passions were stirred when in 1453 he learned that the Muslim Turks had conquered the Christian city of Constantinople (now Istanbul, Turkey), thus bringing an end to the Byzantine Empire. In 1458, the sixty-four-year-old Henry took part in a crusade, along with Afonso V, to take a town in Morocco held by the Muslims. Though the Portuguese were victorious in the battle, the tide of events was against them, and Morocco remained in the hands of the Muslims.
Henry knew he was dying, so he returned to Sagres in 1460 and made out his will. Unmarried, he had no children, and in any case, he left behind not a fortune but a considerable debt brought on by his years of investment without noMiddle Ages: Biographies
Ticeable returns. Yet through his efforts, he opened up the world to European explorers, and helped launch the Age of Discovery that was just then beginning to dawn.
World History
