Whoever glances, from the Tagus River or the village of Alhandra, at the ridged landscape where some of the first fortifications of the Torres Vedras defensive lines are still located today, will be able to see, on the top of the mountain, the imposing pink marble column supporting the sculpture of the warrior Hercules, part of the Commemorative Monument of the Lines of Torres Vedras, included in the set classified in 2019 as a National Monument.
Set in a landscape observatory par excellence over the town of Alhandra, and with a privileged view over the Tagus River and the marshlands of Vila Franca de Xira, it is an admirable place to visit the Linhas de Torres Vedras region in this municipality. The site is part of the itinerary of the thematic route “The Defence of the Tagus”, which is part of the Lines of Torres Vedras Historical Route and is equipped with informative signage addressing the history of the monument, as well as the defence of the Tagus in its relationship with the Lines of Torres Vedras and the combats and movements of troops during the Third French Invasion.
While trying to trace the chronology of the monument, we can identify, at the very onset of the entire process - which dates back to the beginning of the second half of the XX century - the figure of Joaquim da Costa Cascais, then an Artillery Lieutenant Colonel, who had been commissioned to write about the history of the Peninsular War. This gave him the idea of materializing the commemoration of the feats of this event, transmitted to the Marquês de Sá da Bandeira, at the time Minister of War, and proposing, at the first instance, the construction of a monument in Buçaco, recalling the battle that was fought there on September 27, 1807, in the context of the Third French Invasion to the national territory.
Allied to the purpose of Costa Cascais was the desire of Sá da Bandeira to build a monument near Alhandra with reference to the Torres Vedras Lines, even before the raising of the Buçaco Monument.
Joaquim da Costa Cascais is thus in charge of forming the project for a monument to be built near the village of Alhandra, to commemorate the defence of the Lines of Torres Vedras, using for this purpose an existing column shaft in Pêro Pinheiro.
Presented in an official letter dated 3 August 1874, accompanied by a drawing and respective budget (in the amount of 10,700$000), the project for the Alhandra monument would be approved at the end of that month.
The column shaft would first be removed from Pêro Pinheiro and transported to the railway station in Lisbon. The conto de réis that Costa Cascais had budgeted for the trip of this stone element to the place intended for its implantation would prove, upon arrival in Alhandra, in December, to be insufficient, as rental costs of carts and yoke of oxen still had to be considered.
Documentation at the time also shows the occurrence of a storm, in February 1876, which caused great damage to the road destined for the transport of the column between the Alhandra station and its implantation site (Forte da Boavista, military work no. 3). This road, completed in July 1883, along with the monument and the barracks, is described as being 700 meters long and 12 meters wide, and bordered by 314 olive trees.
In March 1879, the Defence Commission of Lisbon and its Port produced a coloured plan of the monument and its surroundings and realized that at that time there were no longer any traces of the Forte da Boavista.
On the occasion of the Centenary of the Lines of Torres Vedras, two plaques in honour of José Maria das Neves Costa and Richard Fletcher were placed at the base. The first was responsible for the topographical and cartographic works of the territory north of Lisbon, which later the Duke of Wellington would come to determine was the ideal place for the implementation of the Lines of Torres Vedras. Fletcher, a Briton, would be put in charge by Wellington of the construction work of the defensive military system.
During the Evocations of the Bicentennial of the Lines of Torres Vedras, the Municipality of Vila Franca de Xira placed, next to the 1911 plaques, a third one, dedicated to the efforts of the Portuguese people in the construction of the Lines.
A column almost eight meters high can be seen, on a pedestal, crowned by a statue of a Hercules by the sculptor Simões de Almeida, one of the first statuaries of the time. Simões de Almeida would oversee the work – for which he would supply the stone – for the sum of 1:000$000 réis, to be paid in three instalments and executed in 18 months.
The sculpture – measuring about two meters and weighing more than twenty-four tons – presents characteristics of classic works, reminding Joaquim da Costa Cascais of Farnese's Hercules.
We are, therefore, before a figure whose sculptural treatment portrays a robust hero, with a muscled figure, bearing, in the image of the Hercules of Classical Antiquity, three of his main attributes: the beard, the club and the skin of the Lion of Nemea - the first of his Twelve Works – which he begun to use as a trophy.
To the column shaft – coming from Pêro Pinheiro and certainly taken from some other unfinished order – Costa Cascais decides to add a capital and column of the Doric order. The author conceives in the project a pedestal where the column should rest, raised on two steps, to give greater height to the whole.
Still maintaining the symbolic perspective of this monument, it is essential to mention the choice of the monument's legend: Nec Plus Ultra – 1810 – Linhas de Torres Vedras.
Nec Plus Ultra, understood here as "No More Beyond", determines and marks the location of the monument, at the start of the first of the Torres Vedras Defence Lines – in representation of the entire barrier that these came to constitute – and which came about to prove insurmountable for the French troops commanded by General Massena during the Third French Invasion, between October and November 1810.
The idea of crowning the architectonic whole with a sculpture of the mythological figure of Hercules – which he considers ‘worthy, without a doubt, to figure in a National Monument, and proper to develop the artist's genius’ - has a clear relationship with one of the columns that antiquity narrated about that hero, seeking in this specific case to symbolize ‘the strength and courage of the allied armies, holding in the Lines of Torres Vedras the numerous and fierce phalanxes of Napoleon 1st’.
Joaquim da Costa Cascais would thus synthesize the various symbolic aspects that preside over the entire Monument of the Lines of Torres Vedras, and that make it not only an undisputed work of art but, above all, mark the deserved tribute to one of the most efficient defensive military systems in European History, and of all who contributed in any way to its existence.
