Winning the Algarve
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Da terra dos Algarves, que lhe fora Em casamento dada, grande parte Recupera co'o braço, e deita fora O Mouro, mal querido já de Marte. Este de todo fez livre e senhora Lusitânia, com força e bélica arte; E acabou de oprimir a nação forte, Na terra que aos de Luso coube em sorte.
Of the land of the Algarve, which had been given to him in marriage, he recovers a great part by his arm, and casts out the Moor, now out of favor with Mars. This king made Lusitania wholly free and her own mistress, with force and the art of war; and he finished crushing the strong nation in the land that fell by lot to the sons of Luso.
Camões traces the reign of Afonso III, who completed Portugal's reconquest by taking the Algarve from the Moors and making the kingdom whole.
The stanza closes Afonso III's reign with the conquest of the Algarve, the last Muslim-held corner of Portugal. Camões folds two claims into one: part of the region came as a marriage dowry, and the rest Afonso simply takes "co'o braço" — by the arm, by force. With the Moor expelled, the kingdom is finally whole, and Camões names it by its Roman name, Lusitânia, made "free and mistress" of herself.
What a first reader misses is how the marriage claim and the sword are quietly equated. The dowry gives the conquest a legal face, but the working verb is force, and the last line reframes the whole territory as "sorte" — a lot cast, a portion fate allotted to the descendants of Luso. Camões turns a thirteenth-century border war into destiny: the land was always meant to be theirs, and Afonso only collects what was owed.
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