Vaz da Veiga (Tristão)

While Dom Francisco de Portugal, Count of Vimioso, was still alive and captain-donatary (capitão-donatário) of Machico, Philip II granted that captaincy to Tristão Vaz da Veiga on 25 February 1582. On 19 October 1585 he appointed him governor-general of this archipelago, and Vaz da Veiga took up the post on 22 November of the same year. It was the payment for the treason that Tristão Vaz da Veiga had committed against his homeland.

Gaspar Frutuoso says that heaven and earth are full of his ‘heroic deeds and glorious victories, from Japan to China, from Malacca to the Ganges, from the Ganges to the Tagus and from the Tagus to the ends of sea and land’. Many authors have written about Tristão da Veiga, and all are unanimous in extolling his martial valour and the heroic actions he performed; the author of ‘Longing for the Homeland’ (Saudades da Terra) devotes fifty long pages to him in the warmest and loftiest panegyric. Yet after so many glorious exploits, which did so much to raise the prestige of the Portuguese name in the East, Tristão Vaz blackened the memory of his deeds. He went over to the enemies of his homeland and basely and treacherously surrendered the fortress of São Julião da Barra, which guarded the entrance to the harbour of Lisbon, thereby hastening the fall of Portugal under the Castilian yoke.

Pinheiro Chagas says that the ‘new governor, who had earlier sold his services to António, Prior of Crato, did not hesitate to hand over the maritime keys of Lisbon to the Spanish general for the modest reward of an annual income of three thousand cruzados and the town (vila) of Machico on the island of Madeira’.

This reward was increased, as has already been said, by the important post of governor-general of the Madeira archipelago, and we do not know whether he received any other payments for his most vile treason.

He was the third governor-general of this archipelago during the period of Spanish rule, and it must be admitted that in this office he rendered excellent service, above all in driving off, with prompt and vigorous relief, the attempts of various corsair ships that from time to time sought to attack this island.

Tristão Vaz da Veiga was a great-grandson of João Gonçalves Zarco and a grandson of Dona Beatriz Gonçalves da Câmara, the discoverer’s daughter, who married Diogo Cabral. He died in 1604 or shortly before, aged about 67.