João I of Portugal
João I ruled Portugal from 1385 to 1433, founded the House of Aviz, and secured the country's independence from Castile. Born in 1357, he was an illegitimate son of Pedro I, and was made Master of the military Order of Aviz as a child. The crisis came in 1383 when Fernando I died leaving only a daughter married to the king of Castile. Rather than accept a Castilian union, the Lisbon townspeople and much of the merchant class supported João; he killed the queen's favourite at the palace and was acclaimed defender of the realm, and the cortes at Coimbra elected him king in April 1385 on an argument advanced by the jurist João das Regras. Castile invaded. On 14 August 1385 at Aljubarrota, a Portuguese force of perhaps 6,500 under the constable Nuno Álvares Pereira, with English longbowmen, defeated a Castilian army several times its size that attacked uphill into a prepared position of ditches and stakes. The victory settled Portuguese independence for two centuries. He signed the Treaty of Windsor with England in 1386, still in force and the oldest alliance in the world, and married Philippa of Lancaster, John of Gaunt's daughter, the following year. Their children became known as the illustrious generation and included Duarte, Pedro and Henry the Navigator. In 1415 he took Ceuta in Morocco with a large fleet, the first European possession in Africa of the age — a foothold that is conventionally treated as the beginning of Portuguese overseas expansion, though it never paid for itself. He rewarded the towns and the new nobility that had supported him, and died in 1433.
- Lived: 1357 CE – 1433 CE
- Nationality: Portuguese
- Roles: king, military_leader, head_of_state
