Later Life
After attaining his majority in 1568, Sebastian dreamed of a great crusade against the kingdom of Morocco, where over the preceding generation several Portuguese way stations on the route to India had been lost.
A Moroccan succession struggle gave him the opportunity, when Abu Abdallah Mohammed II Saadi lost his throne in 1576 and fled to Portugal, where he asked for King Sebastian's help in defeating his Turkish-backed uncle and rival, Abu Marwan Abd al-Malik I Saadi.
Sebastian met during the Christmastide of 1577 with his uncle, Philip II of Spain, at Guadalupe in Spain. Philip refused to be party to the crusade as he was negotiating a truce with the Turks, though he promised a contingent of Spanish volunteers.
Despite having no son and heir, King Sebastian in 1578 embarked on his crusade. The Portuguese army of 17,000 men, including a significant number of foreign mercenaries (hired from the Holy Roman Empire, the Netherlands, Spain, and the Italian States), and almost all of the country's nobility, sailed at the beginning of June from Lisbon, visited Cadiz, where they expected to find the Spanish volunteers, who failed to appear, then crossed into Morocco.
Read more about this topic: Sebastian Of Portugal
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