At peace with Europe and patronised by England, did not João V employ at

least a portion of the daily increasing wealth which Brazil poured into

his hands to maintain the few colonies which still remained to him in

the Indies? He did nothing of the kind; and while the Mahrattas drove

the Portuguese from Sandomir, Salsette, Thana, Barcain, Senapour, and

Karanja, the Dutch, English, and French had every reason to claim the

domination of the Orient. In a short time the viceroys of the Indies, no

longer daring to inhabit the ancient palace of the Albuquerques and the

Castros, lived modestly in the small village of Panjim. What had become

of magnificent Goa, and Diu, and Calicut, queen of Malabar? They were

already nothing but ruins; a century had sufficed to reduce a powerful

empire to a pile of rubbish.

Far from devoting to useful enterprise the riches which fortune showered

upon him, João V let the navy, army, and administration constantly

decline. He seemed to have no other aim than to emulate the pomp of Louis

XIV; but he forgot that Louis reigned over France and that the latter

found all the elements of the luxury he displayed in the industry of

the kingdom, while Portugal could not obtain them except by exhausting

herself to the profit of foreigners. Such was João V’s generosity with

his courtiers, his mistresses, his feasts, and his buildings that, with

the great nobles following his example, poverty soon arrived, in spite

of America. It has been estimated that between 1699 and 1756 there

came from Brazil 2,400,000,000 francs, and that Portugal retained but

a very small portion. All the rest, that is to say nearly nine-tenths,

went to England, either in exchange for merchandise or as the price of

transporting the metal, which became hers after all.

It was not sufficient that England should levy such a tribute on

Portuguese indolence. Not less zealous for his religious practices than

for his pleasures, João V had the idea of establishing a patriarchal

legate at Lisbon, and before Rome could agree to this he had to expend

enormous sums. He did the same in order that Portugal might possess

under this legate a Latin church almost the equal of St. Peter’s, and

this contained not less than sixty-six mitred canons at a salary of

5,000 cruzados each. Add to this the construction of the magnificent

monastery of Mafra for three hundred monks, with its park twelve miles

in length, the gorgeous procession, the collections of pious books to

which the public was not allowed access, and what is worse still, the

_auto-da-fé_ which the Inquisition made him celebrate with great pomp,

and we can realise that he spent on all this appearance of religion at

least 500,000,000 francs. It is true that he was recompensed. Grateful

Rome granted him the title of “most faithful king” in 1748.

While such follies are discrediting the reign, is it permissible to

rehabilitate a prince because he founded a Portuguese academy or an

academy of history--because he softened the national manners almost to

enervation--because he introduced into his country French customs and

Italian music in place of a real civilisation whose establishment the

Inquisition would however never have tolerated? But how explain, on the

other hand, that far from cursing João V’s memory, the Portuguese have

always held it in great veneration? It was because the riches of Brazil

struck them all with the same giddiness as they struck him, because his

ostentatious piety conformed to the tastes of the nation, because if he

fought with his ministers and occupied himself more with theological

disputes than with government, he was accessible and kind to all his

subjects, and could use those happy words which too often take the place

of real merit.

The esteem given João V by Portugal seems to us to be his own

condemnation. What is war without greatness, peace without prosperity,

devotion without piety? And in these words we may sum up João’s reign.

We shall not dwell on the final extinction of the ancient Portuguese

liberties whose form had at least survived. João V never convoked the

cortes until public tranquillity was threatened with some blow, and yet

no one protested. The régime of the Inquisition had produced its usual

effect.

The last years of João V were as sad as the others had been brilliant.

Stricken with paralysis in 1744, he found a little relief in the baths

of Caldas da Raiñha, but this treatment soon ceased to benefit him, and

he could do nothing put pass the rest of his existence far from the

luxury and fêtes of which he had been so fond. Thenceforth the king of

Portugal was the Recollet Gaspard, who, with even less ability in the

art of government than his master, had at least the merit of proving

himself more economical. For some time João had contracted the costly

habit of having masses for all the Portuguese of whose deaths he could

learn. Gaspard took care to deceive him as to the deaths which occurred

in Lisbon, lest he should send, as they said, all the living to hell in

getting the dead out of purgatory.[f]

João died in July, 1750. By his queen, Maria Anna of Austria, João had

a numerous issue; but three children only survived him--Maria Barbara,

queen of Spain, his successor, José, and the infante Dom Pedro.[e]

THE REIGN OF JOSÉ I

[Sidenote: [1750-1751 A.D.]]

On September 7th, 1750, the new king was proclaimed with all the usual

pomp and circumstance. He found the treasury empty, the army existing

in name only; but, as someone has remarked with a certain semblance of

accuracy, he found the popular instincts directed towards commerce, and

a remarkable readiness to enter on a path of ameliorated industries.

But none the less the Methuen Treaty was at that time manifesting all

its consequences, and laid a spell of inertia on the most active minds,

even on those who, by their continual contact with a commercial and

manufacturing nation, were filled with dreams for their country of

improvements which only a strong and independent genius could bring about.

At this epoch Brazil had become an inexhaustible resource for the

mother-country in all financial embarrassments. December, 1750, witnessed

the arrival at Lisbon of the fleet, richly loaded, on which so many hopes

were built each succeeding year. From a generous impulse, for which the

colonies were most grateful to him, one of the new king’s first acts was

aimed at the political betterment of the rich province of Minas from

which he drew so much of his wealth; he abolished the poll-tax, which

was paid as a right of seigniory, and in 1751 he established at Rio de

Janeiro a tribunal of _relaçao_ [_i.e._, a court of appeal], a real and

well-felt advantage for that country, since in former times trials of any

importance lasted an eternity, being brought to Lisbon for judgment.

But with the question of important improvements, and the directing of

wide measures, the name of one other than the reigning sovereign flows

involuntarily from the historian’s pen--that of the great statesman

Pombal, who gave his country so mighty an impulse. To José belongs the

supreme merit of discerning the merits of this extraordinary man. There

is perhaps something of injustice in comparing the king with Louis XIII,

as is so frequently done; for he had at all events sufficient firmness of

character always to approve the acts of the man he had willingly chosen.

On January 19th, 1729, José I had married (during his father’s lifetime)

Doña Maria Anna Victoria, daughter of Philip V and Elizabeth Farnese.

This lady should have married Louis XV and had never become wholly

resigned to the bitterness of her memories. In politics she was not only

always opposed to France, but, later, she openly posed as a formidable

enemy to the powerful man to whose hands her royal husband had intrusted

the destinies of the nation.[g]

_The Great Minister Pombal_

[Sidenote: [1741-1755 A.D.]]

Sebastião José de Carvalho e Mello,[174] who was created count of Oeyras

and afterwards marquis of Pombal, whom we shall hereafter call by the

last and shortest name, had been introduced to King João V, who was a

person of a sickly constitution; he however made himself intolerable to

the king by his incessant fertility in plans and projects. In order to

remove him from the court, he was first sent on some trifling affairs

to London, and secondly upon business of graver importance to Vienna.

In these cities he became acquainted with the French philosophy and the

new theories of political economy and statecraft, and convinced that the

Jesuits, who exercised unlimited dominion in Portugal, and had the whole

system of instruction completely in their hands, had kept his countrymen

more than a century behind the spirit of the age. The queen of Portugal,

who was an Austrian princess, had the management of the government during

the very frequent attacks of absence of mind and incapacity under which

her husband laboured. Pombal had been employed by her in the execution

of affairs of various kinds in Vienna, and he no sooner married her

friend the countess Daun, than she resolved to recall him from his

embassy and to take him into the ministry in Lisbon.

King João died immediately after the arrival of Pombal in Lisbon, and it

was very easy for Pombal to make himself indispensable. The young king

was of an indolent character, shrunk from every effort, was licentious

and extravagant, but entertained a childish fear of his wife, from

whom he carefully concealed his amours. He was as superstitious as the

humblest peasant of his superstitious nation, he was as cowardly as

Pombal was courageous, and the latter kept him in such a continual state

of suspicion and anxiety that the king from fear resigned everything into

his hands in order to secure his favour and protection.

Wraxall,[i] who only first became acquainted with Pombal when he was

seventy years of age, speaks of his features, his giant build, and his

language as characteristic of all that energy which he had exhibited

for twenty-seven years in the public administration; it would appear

therefore as if nature had from the first designed him for a reformer

and dictator. In order to lessen and correct our ideas of the cruelties

which he practised in his reforms, we must remember that in Asia,

Africa, and southern Europe our cold and tedious morality is completely

unknown, and compensated for by warm feelings of religion, which take

heaven by violence; and, moreover, no one except a monarchical Danton

or Robespierre would have been able to snatch Portugal from its state

of powerless subjection to the institutions of the Middle Ages. Pombal

appeared to have been raised up to organise a monarchical system of

terror, and he alone could have succeeded in bringing Portugal nearer to

the other states of Europe and to the spirit of the new age.

The first contest of the minister after he was firmly seated in his

position was that with the order of Jesuits. The Jesuits were regarded

by him as a dangerous independent aristocracy, and as the guardians of

the secrets of the confessional of almost all the princes and nobles

of Europe, far beyond the reach of any secular arm. In Portugal, in

particular, the order, by the possession and use of great wealth acquired

by trade, and of a flourishing colony, threatened the complete oppression

of the state, which was entirely in its power. Shortly before Pombal

became minister the order of the Jesuits had obtained a temporal dominion

in Uruguay in America, secured for themselves all the privileges of

government and legislation, and threatened to draw the whole trade of

private individuals to themselves by various speculations and large

commercial adventures in the Antilles and the European ports. The order

was in ill-repute for its casuistry, by virtue of which regicide and

bankruptcy might be equally justified, as Arnauld and Pascal had proved

in the preceding century. The danger of allowing such an order first to

sustain speculators by its credit and then to allow them to fail, had

been so clearly proved in Pombal’s time in the superior courts in France,

that the parliament at that time zealously pressed for the abolition of

the order. The pope himself had issued very severe orders in 1741 against

the practices of slave-dealing, usury, and banking, in which the order

had engaged. In February, 1741, Benedict XIV published a bull, by which,

without naming the Jesuits in particular, all orders whatsoever and all

ecclesiastics were strictly forbidden to engage in any description of

trade or commerce, to exercise any temporal authority, or to interfere

with the sale or purchase of the converts. This bull failed in producing

its intended effect, and in December another was issued expressly

against the Jesuits. The latter, entitled _Immensa pastorum_, which is

remarkable as being the first manifesto published by the pope against

the order of Jesuits, was particularly directed against their conduct in

their missions in Asia and Africa, in Brazil and Paraguay.

The bold spirit of usurpation which the Jesuits continued to display,

notwithstanding the pope’s first bull, after having caused the _Immensa

pastorum_ to be launched against them, urged Pombal also to the adoption

of his first strong measures against this dangerous order. In their

missions in Paraguay, both in the portions which acknowledged Portugal as

their sovereign state as well as those which acknowledged the supremacy

of Spain, they had contrived to obtain complete possession of the secular

administration, by having secured for themselves the most extraordinary

privileges from the kings and queens of these nations, who were entirely

subject to their guidance and dominion. No Spaniard or Portuguese was

suffered to set foot in their missions without their special permission.

The pope in his bull, under threats of the greater excommunication,

forbade all and each, and the Jesuits expressly by name, to make slaves

of the Indians, to sell, exchange, or make presents of them, to separate

them from their wives and children, to despoil them of their property, or

to injure or molest them in any other way whatsoever.

Later, Spain ceded the district of Puy in Galicia and the seven

missions of the Jesuits in Paraguay, and obtained in return Colonia del

Sacramento. This exchange led to disputes with the Jesuits, and finally

even gave rise to military expeditions on the part of the Spaniards

and Portuguese against the Indians: the Indians themselves were highly

dissatisfied with the cession of Paraguay to Portugal. The active

resistance of the Indians led the Spaniards and Portuguese to meet force

by force, and a formal contest arose, which led to no very conclusive or

satisfactory results as long as the matter was wholly left to the three

thousand Spaniards and the thousand Portuguese who had been sent to aid

and carry into effect the objects of the commissioners; in the year 1753

Pombal adopted different measures. He sent a considerable army into

the district, gave the command of it to his brother, Francisco Xavier

Mendoza, conferred upon him the office of governor of the province, and

intrusted him secretly with full power to destroy and forever put an end

to the secular dominion of the Jesuits in this territory. The last part

of the commission was kept a profound secret, and Pombal also delayed

its execution till the death of the dowager queen of Portugal, who was

a blindly devoted adherent to the order. These severe measures against

the Jesuits were first carried fully into operation in the year 1755, in

which the capital of Portugal was visited and almost destroyed by one of

the most dreadful earthquakes which has ever occurred in Europe.[h]

_The Earthquake at Lisbon (November 1st, 1755)_

[Sidenote: [1755 A.D.]]

Denis[g] quotes a letter from Pedegache, who was an eye-witness of the

horror: “On the 1st of November, 1755, with a quiet atmosphere and a very

clear sky, the earth shook, but so slightly that everyone fancied the

vibration was due to some rapidly moving vehicle. This first trembling

lasted two minutes; after two minutes’ interval there was a repetition

of the trembling, but so violent a one that the greater number of the

houses began to crack and to fall down: this second trembling continued

for upwards of ten minutes. By that time the dust was so great as to

obscure the sun. Then came a shock so awful that the houses which were

still standing fell with a deafening crash. It seemed as if the earth

were returning to chaos. The tears and cries of the living, the sighs and

groans of the dying, the shuddering of the earth, the total darkness, all

added to the horror of the scene. But at last, after twenty minutes, all

became quiet. One thought then filled every mind--flight, and a refuge

in the country. But our cup of misery was not yet full. Scarcely had we

begun to breathe again when fire broke out in different parts of the

town.[175] The wind, which was very boisterous, fanned the flames and

left no room for hope.

“Possibly something might have been done to check the fire had not the

town been threatened with wide submergence by the sea; at all events the

terrified inhabitants easily persuaded themselves that this danger was in

store for them, seeing waves breaking furiously over places far removed

from the shore. Several people believing that they would find a certain

amount of safety on the water ventured on it; but the waves drove the

vessels on shore, grinding them one against another, then drawing them

seawards with merciless violence as though they would swallow them and

the miserable beings clinging to them.

“During all these days our terror has never abated, for the shocks are

incessant. On Friday, November 7th, at five o’clock in the morning,

there was a shock so violent we imagined our troubles were about to

recommence; but happily it was followed by no disastrous consequences.

The movement was regular, like that of a rolling vessel. What caused such

devastation on the first day was that all the movements were contrary

and so exactly opposed to each other that the walls parted with the

utmost facility. I have noticed that the strongest shocks are always at

daybreak. They say that the sea came up nine feet higher than the highest

tide ever remembered in Portugal. On Sunday morning, November 2nd, I

saw with the utmost amazement the Tagus, which in some reaches is more

than two leagues wide, almost dried up on the city side; the other side

was a feeble little stream through which one could see the bed. Almost

the whole of Portugal has felt this scourge; the kingdom of Algarve,

Santarem, Setubal, Oporto, Mafra, Obidos, Castanheira--indeed all the

towns within twenty leagues are destroyed. I write to you from the depths

of the country, for there is not a habitable house left. Lisbon has

vanished!”

Everyone, from the monarch down to the meanest beggar, had something

to deplore. In the town of Lisbon alone thirty thousand persons had

perished, and, if one can trust the calculations which were made

later, the losses in valuable furniture and in hard cash reached the

enormous total of £91,360,000 or $456,800,000. In short, such were the

results of this terrible catastrophe that more than twenty years after

Dumouriez[k] was still able to say: “Lisbon is an appalling agglomeration

of overturned palaces, burned churches, of rubbish such as one sees when

a fortification has been blown up. In many places one walks over the

sites of houses, in streets contrived on the rubbish thrown up on either

side to allow of roadway being made. Here and there one sees reared up

isolated houses, and ruins as grotesque, as grimly beautiful, as the

remains of Greek and Roman buildings.”[g]

[Sidenote: [1756-1757 A.D.]]

The whole population of Lisbon continued throughout the winter in

tents or huts in the fields. The distress was extreme in every part of

Portugal, and called forth, as has been already stated, the pity of all

neighbouring nations. In Spain, Ferdinand deeply sympathised in his

queen’s sorrow for her countrymen, and repealed the existing prohibitions

of exporting some of the necessaries of life, and the heavy duties

imposed upon the export of others, as related to Portugal. In England,

though the claim might be less, more was done. George II applied to

parliament for the means of relieving a people so severely afflicted; and

the sum of £100,000 [$500,000] was immediately granted for that purpose.

The ministers expended it in corn and other articles of provisions or

indispensable necessaries, which were shipped off without a moment’s

delay to the desolated city. The Portuguese felt gratitude both for the

benefits conferred and for the kindly fellow-feeling that had prompted

the act; and the old ties of friendship between England and Portugal seem

to have regained much of their previously decaying strength.[b]

_Pombal and the Jesuits_

The measures which Pombal adopted on account of and after the earthquake,

although in themselves prudent and humane, were enforced in a severe

and arbitrary manner. He caused the public granaries to be thrown open,

because hundreds of persons who had not been buried under the ruins,

or killed by the falling buildings, were wandering about like ghosts

and dying from hunger. He adopted measures for the immediate import of

grain from all quarters, abolished the duties on corn, and strictly

forbade the export of provisions of any description. The water-conduits

which had been destroyed were also immediately restored and carefully

maintained.[176] The indescribable misery which resulted from this

calamity gave occasion to murders and plunder in such a country as

Portugal. Pombal applied remedies for this evil also, but by the use

of most horrible means. Thieves and robbers, regardless of the most

imminent dangers, and urged by their covetousness, ventured into streets

which were masses of ruins, and carried away property from churches,

palaces, and private houses before the very eyes of the inhabitants, who

were trembling for their lives. To put an end to this fearful system of

plunder, the minister ordered guards to be placed at all the outlets

from the city and in every street, and summary justice to be executed

upon everyone who either refused or was unable to give a satisfactory

account of what he was carrying. Hundreds of gallows were erected around

the circuit of the city which was filled with the dead and the dying,

and with persons robbed of all their property and means even of present

existence; and on these gallows 350 people were hanged within three days.

At the very moment at which Pombal proved himself to be a delivering

angel, and was devoting his labours day and night to the public

preservation and the restoration of order, the clergy, and especially

the Jesuits, endeavoured to expose him to the hatred of the people as

an enemy of God. Sermons were preached against him from every pulpit,

and a report was industriously put into circulation that the whole of

their misfortunes, and even the earthquake itself, was a visitation of

the divine wrath on account of Pombal’s conduct towards the clergy. The

Jesuits alleged that Pombal had roused the tumult in Oporto to involve

them in its consequences.

[Sidenote: [1757-1758 A.D.]]

At Pombal’s instigation. King José now signed the severe decree by which

all Jesuits were banished from the court, which the minister caused to

be executed after his own fashion. On the night between the 19th and the

20th of September, 1757, Pombal caused all the Jesuits at the court, then

in Belem, at some distance from the capital, to be removed and conducted

to Lisbon, and their places at court were immediately occupied by other

ecclesiastics. This step against the court confessors was immediately

followed by others against the whole order and its constitution.

In order to justify the steps taken against the Jesuits, and to

induce all the monarchs in Europe to regard them as decided enemies

of the temporal power of princes, Pombal had recourse to a remarkable

expedient, which excited great attention throughout the whole of Europe.

He published a manifesto against the order, which was eagerly read at

all courts, produced a great effect in Austria, and enabled Kaunitz to

prevail upon Maria Theresa to adopt many measures to which she never

would have consented except for Pombal’s publication.

Both these criminatory reports were sent to the Portuguese minister in

Rome (October, 1757), and he was instructed to seek and obtain from Pope

Benedict XIV, who was then mortally ill, a complete reform of the order;

and as early as February, 1758, a new and urgent note on the same subject

was presented to the papal court. The pope yielded to the solicitation

and issued a brief in April, by which the patriarch, Cardinal Saldanha,

was appointed to examine and reform the abuses of the order in the

kingdom of Portugal.[h]

_A Plot to Assassinate the King_

Whilst the Jesuits and their accusers were battling before the tribunal

of the visitor, a plot to murder the king was organised at Lisbon, in

1758, by two of the noblest families in the realm, the motives to which,

as is often the case, were enveloped in obscurity; whence it was easy to

implicate the Jesuits, whether guilty or not, in the criminal design.

The duke of Aveiro, the chief conspirator, who had been a great favourite

of João V, was descended from Dom Jorge, that natural son of João II whom

his father had endeavoured to substitute to his cousin Emmanuel as his

successor; and a daughter of the duke’s was married to the eldest son

of his confederates, the marquis and marchioness of Tavora.[177] It has

been surmised that the king, whose gallantries were notorious, was upon

too intimate a footing with the young marchioness of Tavora, and that

the two families resented such a stain upon their honour; it has been

also surmised that the old marchioness, a woman of imperious temper and

uncontrollable passions, was exasperated at having been refused a dukedom

for her husband; and finally, it was alleged at the time that these two

noble families were merely the tools of their Jesuit confessors, who

sought by the king’s death to quell the proceedings against their order.

What can be stated with certainty is that a young lady, a distant

relative of the Tavora family, who resided with the old marchioness, was

found dead, pierced with wounds and wrapped in a sheet, in one of the

streets of Lisbon; that no judicial inquiry into the circumstances of her

death took place (a mode of connivance not uncommon when suspicion of

crime attached to powerful families); that soon afterwards, as the king

was returning to the palace at night, from the residence of one of his

mistresses [the marchioness of Tavora], several shots were fired at the

back of his carriage, one of which wounded him; and that the coachman,

instead of going forwards to the palace, instantly turned his horses’

heads, and drove to the house of the king’s surgeon. It is believed that

by this step he saved his master’s life, as he thus avoided two or three

other parties of assassins who were lying in wait on the road to the

palace.

[Sidenote: [1758-1759 A.D.]]

Some weeks elapsed ere the perpetrators of this outrage were detected,

during which time Aveiro and Tavora were assiduous in their visits to the

royal invalid. But in the end Pombal obtained a clew to the plot. A great

number of persons were seized and imprisoned; and in January, 1759, as it

is alleged, after a very arbitrary and unsatisfactory trial, the duke,

the marquis, his two sons, and several other persons were broken on the

wheel; the old marchioness, in consideration of her sex, was beheaded,

and the young marchioness was shut up for life in a convent. Many persons

were banished, and others imprisoned for life.

One of the conspirators is said, whilst under the torture, to have

accused three Jesuits as the instigators of the conspiracy, but to have

retracted this accusation upon the scaffold. Of these three Jesuits, one

was tried for heresy, not treason, convicted, and executed; the other

two were not even brought to trial; but Pombal took the opportunity to

charge the crime upon the whole order, as the fruit of its principles

and doctrines--an imputation to which their earlier conduct rendered

the order but too obnoxious. He issued orders for the confiscation of

their property, and the seizure of their persons, throughout Portugal

and the colonies, as advisers and instigators of regicide, and for the

investigation of their doctrines. In the month of September of this same

year they were finally proscribed and banished.

_The Exile of the Jesuits_

The missionary fathers were torn from the reductions, and with all

Jesuits who could be found in Brazil, old and young, even the patients

in their infirmaries, were stowed on board ship, without any of the

conveniences, or scarcely any of the necessaries of life, like the

unfortunate negroes in slave vessels, and transported to Europe. Upon

reaching the mouth of the Tagus, some were landed and thrown into the

Lisbon prisons, where they languished during the remainder of José’s

reign; others were sent forward to Italy, where they were landed upon

the papal territories, and left to find their way to the houses of their

order. It is said, however, that an allowance was made from Lisbon for

their support, and that Pombal often complained of the extraordinary

longevity of his Jesuit pensioners.[178]

Pombal, who really appears to have been partly actuated by disgust at the

slavery, however easy, in which the fathers had held their converts, and

to have desired to place the Indians upon a level with their Portuguese

masters, now endeavoured at once to effect this equalisation.[179] The

scheme, if not extravagant, was at least premature.

In Portugal likewise, Pombal, though he succeeded better, attempted too

much; and by his injudicious endeavours to secure to the Portuguese the

profit made by foreign, and especially English merchants, he merely

harassed and injured the trade of the country, without at all advancing

the end at which he aimed. That end was in fact unattainable. To deprive

the enterprising capitalist of his profits is very possible, but not so

to transfer them to the indigent, ignorant, or unenterprising. Pombal

moreover involved Portugal in a quarrel with Rome, by his endeavour to

subject the clergy to a lay tribunal, a sort of board of conscience, when

accused of high treason, or other state crimes. Prior to this rupture,

a papal dispensation had been obtained for one of those incestuous

connections so frequent in the peninsula, and more especially in

Portugal. José had no son; and to insure the undisputed succession of his

eldest daughter, Donna Maria, it was deemed expedient to marry her to her

uncle, his younger brother, Dom Pedro. The dispensation was obtained, and

the marriage celebrated in 1760.

_War with Spain_

[Sidenote: [1759-1763 A.D.]]

The two Bourbon monarchs, Louis XV of France, and Charles III of Spain,

being involved in the Family Compact War, now required the king of

Portugal to join them against England, Charles kindly offering Spanish

troops with which to garrison the Portuguese fortresses against British

aggression. Unprepared as he was for war, he therefore boldly refused

to desert his old ally; the Bourbon ambassadors quitted Lisbon (a

step nearly tantamount to a declaration of war), and a Spanish army

immediately invaded Portugal.

During a peace of forty-eight years the Portuguese army had been

neglected. The troops did not amount to twenty thousand men, and this

small number were ill-armed, and worse disciplined. It is not surprising

that Braganza, Miranda, Torre de Moncorvo, and Almeida fell in rapid

succession before the invaders, whilst the greatest alarm spread

throughout the country.

But the genius of Pombal rose with the emergency. From England he

obtained supplies of arms, troops, and especially of officers; and

he appointed the count of Schaumburg-Lippe, a German general of

considerable reputation,[180] to the chief command of the Portuguese

army. Schaumburg-Lippe showed real talent by adapting his measures to

the nature of the forces that were to execute them. By his direction

the armed peasants defended the mountain passes; and the English

brigadier-general Burgoyne successfully performed several surprises and

small expeditions, which, if in themselves of little moment, served to

revive the spirits of the Portuguese army, and being combined with the

annoyance given by the peasantry, checked the progress of the Spaniards.

Accordingly, at the approach of winter, the invaders retired within their

own frontiers, evacuating all their conquests. This campaign constituted

nearly the whole of the Spanish share of the Seven Years’ War in Europe;

the rest was confined to contributing a few auxiliary troops to the

French armies. In America, Spain was more successful against Portugal,

the governor of Buenos Ayres again making himself master of Colonia del

Sacramento, with booty of £4,000,000 [$20,000,000], besides numbers of

richly laden English merchant vessels.

On the 10th of February, 1763, a treaty of peace was signed at Paris

between France, Spain, and England, including the restoration of Colonia

del Sacramento to Portugal.

Upon the restoration of peace, José and Pombal resumed their patriotic

labours for improving the internal condition of Portugal. With the

assistance of Schaumburg-Lippe they remodelled, increased, and

disciplined the army. They similarly reformed the state of the navy.

They established a more efficient police, and abolished the _Indices

Expurgatorios_, or prohibitory lists of books of the Inquisition, which

banished from Portugal many good and really philosophical works. They did

not indeed give liberty to the press, but established a board of censure,

combining royal with prelatical and inquisitorial judges, by which all

publications were to be examined. The verdicts of this board, if still

somewhat illiberal, were far less so than the bigoted decisions of the

uncontrolled Inquisition. Nay, it is even said to have admitted some

free-thinking works, and condemned many books written in support of the

more extravagant pretensions of the papal see. To this board, moreover,

all schools were subjected. Pombal introduced great ameliorations into

the constitution and forms of the University of Coimbra, where, till

then, degrees in law, medicine, and divinity had been granted, without

any real examination of the proficiency of the candidates.

Pombal likewise somewhat limited the right of entailing property, carried

throughout the peninsula to a ruinous extent, diminished the excessive

number of monasteries, imposed restrictions upon the admission of

novices, and endeavoured to abolish the odious distinctions between the

“old” and “new” Christians, by repealing the tax laid especially upon

the latter. On the other hand, Pombal sought to encourage agriculture by

ordering all vineyards to be destroyed that were planted upon good arable

land; he cramped commerce by injudicious attempts to encourage domestic

manufactures, by establishing exclusive commercial companies, by passing

sumptuary laws, and by various embarrassing regulations.[b]

_Schlosser’s Estimate of Pombal_

[Sidenote: [1750-1777 A.D.]]

One of the very first acts of his administration was to abolish the

yearly exhibition of burning men for heresy (_auto-da-fé_); limits were

set to the power of the Inquisition in general, and the infliction of

all punishments, or cases involving punishments, were referred to the

decisions of the secular tribunals. The conventual and religious houses

were strictly forbidden to bring, or cause to be brought, young women of

good fortune from the Brazils and to receive them into their convents,

with a view of enriching their several orders. Restrictions were soon

placed upon the nobility also, as had been previously done upon the

clergy. Pombal behaved towards the high nobles precisely as Charles XI

of Sweden had done towards the same class in his kingdom, with this

exception--that the latter rested the defence of his conduct upon the

declaration of the estates of the realm. In the Portuguese possessions

on the coasts of Asia, Africa, and America, whole districts, lordships,

and large estates which at first belonged to the crown had come into

the hands of private families, as was also the case in Sweden in the

seventeenth century; all these alienations were reclaimed, and all the

estates which had come either by gift or occupancy into the hands of

private individuals were resumed by the crown, and the families who were

thus arbitrarily and violently deprived of their properties received very

inadequate compensation.

By this resumption of crown lands which had been long in the possession

of the nobility, the members of this body lost much of their influence

and power, and the measures must be allowed to have been executed with

great rigour. Imprisonment and death were arbitrarily inflicted upon

all those who showed themselves discontented with the scientific and

philosophic system of government of the prime minister. The first years

of Pombal’s administration may be very fitly compared to the times of

terror during the French Revolution; for the whole of the dreadful and

subterraneous prisons, and all the towers and castles were filled with

prisoners of state.

Should it be asked how it was possible that the cowardly, superstitious,

and weak king could approve of such a revolutionary method of proceeding,

this will be best explained by calling to mind that, from the time of the

disputes with the Jesuits, he lived in a continual state of fear, not

only of the order, but of his nobility and of his brother Dom Pedro. He

had therefore completely thrown himself into the arms of his minister,

who surrounded the king and himself with guards, relying upon whose

protection the weak king rejoiced that by the instrumentality of his

minister he was able to exercise a dominion uncontrolled by the people or

the nobles, such as was enjoyed by Louis XIV or Frederick of Prussia.

Pombal’s measures with respect to trade, commerce, industry, and

agriculture were neither the best nor free from selfish views; but

they roused up the Portuguese and awakened them from the slumber and

idleness of their monkish life, although this rousing was frequently

not performed with a very gentle hand. We shall therefore attribute no

higher importance to the school of commerce established by Pombal, to

the solemn and public examinations which were held in his presence, and

to the public attention which he thereby roused, than that he opposed a

school of practical life to the prevailing monkish institutions, and a

secular celebration which bore upon education and life to ecclesiastical

processions. He also contributed very largely to the improvement of

agriculture in the province of Alemtejo, although we should feel by no

means disposed to undertake the defence of all those measures which

he adopted with this view; the same may be said of the great canal of

Oeyras and of the fair established in the same place. He provided for the

security of the city repeatedly destroyed by earthquakes; he provided an

abundant supply of water by means of magnificent conduits, and erected

numerous noble public edifices. But the means, however useful, were

not the less tyrannical and cruel. The unfortunate inhabitants whose

dwellings had escaped the terrific power of the earthquake were obliged

to pull down their houses and build them up again at their own cost,

according to a prescribed plan and on a given scale, if, either in their

external appearance or by their situation, they interfered with Pombal’s

magnificent plan of broad streets and beautiful houses. Travellers were

struck with admiration at his immense architectural structures, the

arsenal, the exchange which was connected with it, and the market-house,

and it was said there was nothing in Europe of their kind to be compared

with these buildings; but, in fact, the only real glory in the matter

was that Pombal’s buildings were all erected in the taste and style of

the new age, whereas those of João V retained all the characteristics

of the Middle Ages; for the exchange and the market-house were wholly

destitute of merchants and wares, and there was no suitable army or fleet

to correspond to the arsenal.

Pombal was at that time the object of the most deadly hatred as a

tyrant in the nation which he was desirous of reforming; this alone was

sufficient to render everything hateful which originated with him amongst

a people whose condition he was indeed unable immediately to improve, but

whom he annoyed, provoked, and tormented by means of his state police and

his numerous and detested decrees. He durst not, in consequence, venture

out of his house without a guard, and was obliged to have recourse to

the most hateful means of maintaining the respect due to his station

and rank. Wraxall,[i] who, as regards hearsays, mixes together truth and

falsehood, stories, footmen’s reports, and lies of all kinds, but who is

deserving of credit when he speaks as an eye-witness, informs us that,

as late as the year 1772, he found all the prisons full of unfortunate

individuals, some of whom had been buried in these living graves for

fifteen years.

The advantages therefore which Portugal gained through Pombal’s

administration, and which were loudly celebrated through the whole of

Europe, rested upon a very unstable foundation. The most remarkable

of these advantages were: security from assassination, which Lisbon

had never enjoyed before the time of Pombal’s rule; the rebuilding and

adornment of the capital; cleanliness of the streets; a free trade in

books; an academy which deserved well of the friends of the sciences;

a disciplined army, etc. All these momentous changes and creations,

however, wholly depended for their continuance upon the absolute power of

the minister, and that again upon the life of the king. As long as José

lived, Pombal maintained his influence, and pursued the same energetic

course both towards priests and soldiers. He put limits to the number of

brotherhoods and ecclesiastical orders, and availed himself of the aid of

his sister, who was herself a nun, to carry his reforming principles even

into the nunneries. Military affairs he conducted in the same manner,

for he never hesitated to cashier whole regiments if they transgressed

his army regulations respecting discipline, or suffered themselves to be

guilty of acts of injury or violence towards their officers, who were

gathered from all nations and countries.

The king, who was nearly eighty years old, no sooner became seriously

ill than Pombal foresaw his fate, for the queen was appointed regent

and he was kept far removed from the sick-bed of the monarch. He

therefore, shortly before José’s death, which took place in February,

1777, preferred a request to the regent to be relieved from his official

duties, and appealed, as a reason for his request, to his advanced

age and his bodily infirmities. In this remarkable document he gives

a brief but comprehensive statement of the whole of the arrangements

and condition of all the departments of the government at that time.

No person who reads this paper can fail to be pleased with the ability

which it displays and to admire its author, who had raised the financial

condition of the country to a degree of prosperity which it had not

reached for centuries; he appended a paper to his petition for leave to

retire from public life, in which a correct account is not only given of

the diamonds in the royal cabinet, but in which it is stated that a sum

of 76,000,000 cruzados in hard cash [about £6,400,000 or $32,000,000] was

deposited in the royal treasury.

THE NEW QUEEN AND REACTION

[Sidenote: [1777-1785 A.D.]]

The king however died before the regent had returned her answer; he was

succeeded by his daughter, Donna Maria I, to whom Pombal preferred his

request anew on the 1st of March, 1777, which was granted to him by a

decree of the date of the 4th of the same month, drawn up in a kindly

spirit. The regent, at the end of February, had already released from

imprisonment several of the clergy and persons of distinction who had

been incarcerated as being implicated in the conspiracy against the

king’s life, under the appearance of having taken this step by her

husband’s command: in the beginning of March everything was changed.

The new and unholy marriage which was celebrated in the royal family,

for which the pope had granted a dispensation, may be regarded as a

preliminary announcement of the return to the old order of things: this

marriage, now solemnised, had been commanded by the king immediately

before his death. It appeared as if it were not enough that the reigning

queen should be married to her own paternal uncle, but the son of this

marriage must be further allied with his mother’s sister, Donna Maria

Benedicta.

The whole history of this incestuous family furnishes proofs enough that,

although the pope might sanction and bless such marriages for money, they

had the stamp of retribution upon them. This was soon evident in the

case of the new queen Donna Maria. Immediately after her father’s death

she assumed the reins of government, which she shared with her husband

Dom Pedro; soon afterwards, however, she exhibited traces of insanity,

and at a later period became completely mad. As her unsoundness of mind

was closely connected with her excessive superstition, she did not wait

for Pombal’s removal from the presidency of the council, which took

place a few weeks afterwards, but immediately proceeded to take steps

for the restoration of all those religious abuses which had previously

existed in the kingdom. She restored to the papal nuncio and the saints

of the Jesuits all the honours and distinctions which they had previously

enjoyed among the people. The nuncio immediately played again the

character of a spiritual monarch; and the pope received half a million

of florins as an indemnification for the expense to which he had been

put by the support of the Jesuits who were landed at Cività Vecchia. The

estates of the ridiculous patriarchate were given back; the holidays,

confraternities, and tribunals of the Middle Ages restored, and those

saints of the Romish church who had been the enemies of all temporal

sovereigns were again reinstated in the honours of the church and the

calendar. This was the case with Gregory VII, Ignatius Loyola, Francis

Xavier, and Francis Borgia, whose names had been erased from the calendar

by the orders of Pombal. All this took place long before Pombal received

permission to retire from his official duties.

Hundreds were liberated from their subterranean dungeons, among whom were

bishops, grandees of the kingdom, and members of families of the first

distinction, and especially the sixty Jesuits who had been restored to

freedom upon the command of the queen; all these combined and allowed the

weak-minded lady no rest or peace till she let loose her jurists upon the

reformer, with the forms and formulas of their Byzantine criminal law,

of which its codes furnish abundance, for the torment of all those who

are unfortunate enough to live in countries in which Byzantine justice is

honoured. Some idea of the number and power of the minister’s enemies at

court may be deduced from the fact that he had hunted forth whole crowds

of that court mob which, under all sorts of titles and pretences, had

wasted or spent on themselves and their pleasures the revenues of the

kingdom, or sacrificed them to his own creatures; and that again he had

not only met the expenditure, but accumulated a large reserve-fund in the

treasury of a kingdom whose exchequer had always been previously empty.

In the royal treasury he kept always on hand 40,000,000 cruzados, and in

the tithe exchequer 30,000,000, which was a thing long unheard of in the

history of Portuguese finances.

Pombal shared the fate of all those who have ever attempted to carry

through a revolution or even a reform by means of violence and severity;

the cruelty, criminality, and violence of their measures rouse every

human feeling against them to such an extent that neither sense nor

gratitude remains for the various beneficial changes which they have

effected. The numbers of prisoners who were released from their dreadful

captivity and dungeons at the king’s death furnish but too strong

proofs of the strict applicability of this principle to Pombal, and of

the severities which he exercised under pretence at least of serving

the interests of humanity, and promoting the cause of knowledge and

improvement. In the very first days of the new government 500 human

beings came forth from their cells as from their graves, who had never

been brought before any legal tribunal, and their number was afterwards

increased to 800. When it was determined to prosecute the marquis, it was

alleged by his enemies that during his administration 9,640 men had been

banished or incarcerated, of whom 3,970 had been completely innocent, and

of the rest only 800 then remained alive. For four years (from 1777-1781)

Pombal was prosecuted before the courts by individuals who brought

actions against him for false imprisonment and damages, and a prosecution

was not commenced against him, on account of his administration of the

state, till he had been first baited and hunted down by the lawyers.

At length a severe final judgment was pronounced against the marquis,

now in his eighty-second year. In August, 1781, the queen overruled

the decision of the courts, and limited the punishment to a public

disapproval of the manner in which he had discharged the duties of his

office, and banishment from the court.

Almost every improvement or change which had been effected by Pombal had

disappeared before his death, which took place in 1782. Priests and monks

of all colours, Jesuits, now called ex-Jesuits, want of police, filth,

insecurity for life and property, and a total relaxation of military

discipline again appeared; but the whole effects of his exertions and

labours could not be rooted out. Murphy[l] who visited Portugal in 1789,

found many changes in the old Portuguese life, and every change which

he mentions is referred to Pombal. He further boasts that Portugal was

indebted to this celebrated minister for an institution of which England

was long destitute; in England hundreds of unfortunate debtors were

continually to be found languishing in the public prisons at the suit

of some heartless and intolerant creditor. In 1744 Pombal issued an

ordinance, which since that time has continued to be the law in Portugal,

by which, on the one hand, debtors were freed from personal arrest or

imprisonment at the suit of their creditors,[181] and the means were

given to the latter by which obtaining possession of the property of

their debtors was rendered as easy as it had previously been difficult.[h]

The strict friendship subsisting between Spain and Portugal had been most

beneficial to the former during the war with England (1779-1783). Not

only had the Portuguese harbours afforded neither shelter nor assistance,

as of old, to the hostile British fleets, but the Portuguese flag had

been the means of transporting the wealth of America to Spain; and it

is said that when the English ministry had projected an expedition

against Peru, whilst distracted by Tupac Amaru’s revolt, its execution

was prevented by a remonstrance from the court of Lisbon, representing

that, in case of an invasion of the Spanish dominions, Portugal was

bound by treaty to take part in the war. Charles, duly sensible of these

advantages, sought to strengthen the ties of relationship and friendship

by those of wedlock; and in 1785 his fourth son, Don Gabriel, married

the infanta Marianna Victoria of Portugal, and Dom João, the queen of

Portugal’s second son, the eldest Spanish infanta, Carlota Joaquina.

[Sidenote: [1785-1799 A.D.]]

This last union was the more agreeable to Charles, inasmuch as Dom

João had a very fair chance of eventually succeeding to the crown, the

incestuous union of his eldest brother with his aunt having proved

barren. But it was not the youngest of this ill-assorted pair that was

destined to be the survivor. Three years after Dom João’s marriage,

the prince of Brazil himself, whom the bigoted prejudices of the queen

had not suffered to be inoculated, died of the smallpox, and Charles’

son-in-law became prince of Brazil in his stead. Queen Maria had, in

1786, lost her uncle-husband, Pedro III, but he had interfered little

with her government, and his death had therefore no effect upon public

affairs.

The queen appears to have been really anxious to promote the prosperity

of her kingdom. When the Peace of Versailles had relieved her from the

embarrassments consequent upon her intimate connection with two hostile

belligerents, she endeavoured to strengthen the old friendship with

England by concluding a commercial treaty, at the same time that she

maintained her new relations of friendship and commerce with the Bourbon

courts.[b]

THE REGENCY AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

The queen now began to show signs of an insanity which took a religious

form and in which she suffered all the agonies of her vivid belief that

she was doomed to eternal fire. Her confessors endeavoured to comfort her

by milder applications of their doctrines, but from 1788 the government

was more and more taken out of her incapable hands by Dom João, who was

not, however, fully constituted regent until 1799.

Meanwhile the ferment of the French Revolution had stirred all Europe,

and Portugal indirectly. We have already described the embroilment of

Spain. Portugal endeavoured to keep a strict neutrality, but her treaties

with Spain and England enabled them to enforce their demand for aid.[182]

She added nine sail of the line to the British fleet, and five thousand

infantry under General Skelater to the Spanish armies. These troops

shared the easy successes of the first rush across the Pyrenees and the

bitter disasters of the following repulse. Spain now, in 1795, signed a

treaty of alliance with France, and Portugal applied for terms, but was

rejected as “a mere province of England”; the ambassador at Paris was

ordered out of the country, and on showing some delay was thrown into

prison, where he remained for months.

[Sidenote: [1799-1807 A.D.]]

Portugal was now driven to open alliance with England, against whom Spain

declared war in 1796. At the same time Dom João learned that Napoleon

and the Spanish prime minister Godoy had agreed to conquer and divide

Portugal as a spoil of war. The English voted £200,000 [$1,000,000]

to Portugal and sent six thousand men under Major-General Sir Charles

Stuart. These with a native army of some forty thousand men placed under

the prince of Waldeck frightened off Spanish invasion, whereupon Stuart

and the English troops withdrew. Little had happened thus far except the

loss of some commerce to French privateers. In 1799 Dom João formally

assumed the regency and tried vainly to secure the favour of Napoleon,

who would listen to nothing less than the payment of a heavy tribute,

breach of the alliance with England, the closing of Portuguese ports to

English ships, the surrender of a portion of Portuguese territory to

Spain. As alternative to these hard terms made under the name of Spain,

war was offered. Dom João accepted the latter alternative, and proclaimed

war on Spain, February 10th, 1801.

As related in the Spanish history, Portugal was invaded by the Spanish

at once, and with such ease that, by June 6th, João was glad to accept

the Peace of Badajoz at the cost of ceding Olivenza to Spain. Napoleon,

however, required more, and sent troops which extorted a tribute of

£1,000,000 [$5,000,000] and the cession of Portuguese Guiana to France.

Napoleon’s representative at Lisbon was General Lannes (or Lasnes) who at

first provoked great hatred by his insolent bearing, but later procured

a large influence over João and secured the dismissal of the ministers

of English sympathies. In 1804 he was succeeded by General Junot who

accepted a treaty of neutrality which gave Portugal quiet for some years,

while Napoleon went on from great to greater.

The English tried to break the Portuguese peace with France, but

could succeed in nothing more than keeping her ports open in spite of

Napoleon’s continental system against English trade. By 1807, however,

Napoleon was master enough of the East to turn again to Portugal and by

the Treaty of Fontainebleau (October 29th, 1807), resumed his project of

dividing it among Godoy, the king of Etruria, and himself. The terrified

João offered every sacrifice for peace, going so far as to order from his

realm every British subject and to close his ports to England, though

this meant commercial ruin to Portugal. But Napoleon, pretending that the

submission was too late, sent forward his troops under General Junot.[a]

THE INVASION OF THE FRENCH (1807 A.D.)

The Treaty of Fontainebleau contained all the decisions respecting

the campaign against Portugal, and the partition of that kingdom. The

Spaniards were to reinforce the army of the Gironde with twelve thousand

men; at the same time to invade the north of Portugal with forty thousand

men; and to give orders for another army to enter Algarve under Solano.

In terms of the treaty, Lisbon and the whole centre of the country were

to fall to the share of France, a part of the northern division was to be

given as compensation to the queen of Etruria, and a sovereign territory

to be formed in the south for Godoy. The part not allotted by the treaty

to any of the three parties just mentioned was to be the subject of

future negotiations, when possession of the whole was obtained.

Notwithstanding the imminent danger, the prince-regent had neither taken

measures for defence, made preparations for setting sail to Brazil, nor

even for the removal of the rich stores in the arsenals and magazines

of the capital. The prince and his whole court would have been taken by

surprise in Lisbon by the French rapidly advancing on the capital through

Beira, had not a swift sailing ship brought a copy of the _Moniteur_ to

Lisbon, in which Napoleon, who supposed that his army was long since in

that city, too hastily expressed his triumph by the declaration: “The

house of Braganza has ceased to reign.”

The army of the Gironde was under the command of Marshal Junot, who

gained his ensign’s commission by an act of great presence of mind

displayed under the eyes of Napoleon at the siege of Toulon, although he

was in reality possessed of very small military capacity. He had been

in Lisbon as ambassador, and still held that title, never having been

formally recalled; the troops under his command, however, contained

but very few men who could be thoroughly relied upon, for this army

of the Gironde had been very hastily drawn together. The prime of the

French army was at that time still in Germany (September, 1807) and in

Prussia, and the first army, as well as that by which it was succeeded,

consisted of a mixture of soldiers and officers, who, on the landing of

the English and the outbreak of the Spanish rising, proved wholly unequal

to maintaining the glory gained by the grand army; this was not at first

perceived. Junot wished to collect and organise his army, seeing it was

composed of very different elements, when he suddenly received orders to

march direct upon Lisbon in order to surprise the prince-regent in his

security. We may form some idea of the rapidity with which he prosecuted

his march, from the fact that he had taken twenty-five days to march from

Bayonne to Salamanca, where he arrived on the 12th of November; while,

on the other hand, he reached Alcantara as early as the 17th, and was in

Abrantes on the 23rd, about eighty miles from Lisbon.

The difficulty of the march, the pathless and rough character of the

districts through which he led the army were indescribable; but no

measures whatever were adopted by the Portuguese for resistance or

even to increase the difficulty of the journey. A great portion of the

army fell a sacrifice to the difficulties of the march, or to want,

in neighbourhoods where no idea could be entertained of any kind of

sustenance or cover. Many had fallen into pits, others perished in the

attempt to cross running streams; but the immense loss in men was taken

into no account whatever. As a reward for the rapidity of his march,

Junot received the title of the duke of Abrantes, although he reached

Lisbon with only a small part of his army [about two thousand men] at the

end of November, and a long time elapsed before all the stragglers joined

their respective corps.

THE THRONE MOVES TO BRAZIL

[Sidenote: [1807-1814 A.D.]]

The prince-regent was at length induced, by the number of the _Moniteur_

which was sent to him, to throw himself into the arms of the English,

whose ships were lying in the Tagus, and, under their protection, to save

himself by setting sail for Brazil. He took his departure from the Tagus

on the 29th, under English convoy, with eight ships of the line, three

frigates, three brigs, and a considerable number of transports, in order

to remove the seat of his government to Brazil.[183] The well-stored

arsenal, from whose treasures the whole French army was afterwards

clothed and provided, fell without diminution into the hands of the

French, in consequence of his precipitate departure. Junot’s advanced

guard even reached Belem in time enough to capture some ships of war

which had been detained by contrary winds, and were still within reach of

the guns of the fort.

The second army, which was assembled at Bayonne to reinforce Junot’s

corps, was still stronger than the first; but the whole of Europe deeply

condemned Napoleon’s want of honour, and was angry with the French

sophists and cringing flatterers who ventured to defend and to praise the

emperor’s policy in the use of this army. At the very moment in which he

concluded a treaty with Spain against Portugal, and was using one part of

the Spanish army under Bernadotte in Denmark, and was alluring the second

to Portugal, he caused a body of troops to be assembled at Bayonne,

but not to march against Portugal, as he had announced. It soon became

obvious that Napoleon planned to take possession of Spain in the midst of

peace.

The Spaniards who had assisted Junot in the conquest of Portugal having

withdrawn into their own country, the French general had scattered

his troops from Algarve and Oporto, and had done everything which

could render the sojourn of the French in their country intolerable

to the Portuguese. Napoleon immediately laid a contribution of

100,000,000 francs on Portugal; the people were obliged, besides, to

pay 600,000 francs to Junot, which the emperor had assigned to him as

governor-general; and Junot raised 5,000,000 more on his own account.

Napoleon not only drew away the national troops from Portugal and took

them into his own army, but appeared desirous of playing the same

constitution-comedy with the Portuguese in Bayonne as he had played with

the Spaniards. He sent for a number of the notables as deputies, but

retained them in hostages; and they were afterwards placed in a very

dangerous position, when, given up by him, they became suspected by their

own countrymen. The only favour which he granted them was to remit forty

of the hundred millions of contribution which he had at first imposed.

In small matters, every officer in Portugal played the despot and

oppressor.[h]

THE PENINSULAR WAR

[Sidenote: [1807-1809 A.D.]]

Portugal now became, like Spain, hardly more than the arena where English

armies under the duke of Wellington fought a desperate and protracted war

with the French under various leaders. The full details of this conflict,

known as the Peninsular War, will be found in the history of Spain.

For some years it was impossible to distinguish between the military

interests of Spain and Portugal, their common safety resting on the

destruction of Napoleon and the success of British courage and British

plans. In these the Spaniards and Portuguese played small part, according

to the British histories, except to harass French communications by their

guerillas and harass British security by their intrigues and jealousies.

But there is something to be said for the natives. The French democratic

principles had made some progress in Portugal, and the cowardly and

stupid king who fled to a colony and left his country for a foreigner

to defend was not of much inspiration. In fact patriotism found here

little to cling to except the rocks and vines, and those would remain

in any case, whoever ruled. Between the world-shaking Napoleon and the

weak-minded, England-serving poltroon whom monarchic heredity had with

its usual felicity placed on the throne, there was small choice to the

Portuguese, and the historian should be sparing of his blame for the

impassivity of the nation.

Furthermore the English commander Wellington was notoriously domineering;

and the English troops, according to their own historian and their

general himself, showed some of the most atrocious examples of drunken

insubordination and bestial ferocity in the history of human war. Few of

the Portuguese could be blind to the fact that England, in spite of her

lofty tone, was really in Portugal for commercial and not for altruistic

reasons, and that the war was purely a wrestling-match for commerce and

power between two giants, France and England, with little regard for

the Lilliputians they might trample in their struggle. It behooves the

reader, then, not to follow the bias of either pro- or anti-Napoleonic

historians in their common tone of contempt for the alleged pusillanimity

of the Spanish and Portuguese.

The fact must be remembered that Spain and Portugal had nothing or next

to nothing definite to fight for, as “loyalty” in each country meant

little more than a desire to shed blood and money for a monarch of

third-rate virtue and first-rate imbecility. It may be said, however,

that the verdict of English historians is much more favourable to the

Portuguese soldiers than to the Spanish. A brief outline of events will

serve here for the history of Portugal, in view of the chapter already

given in the history of Spain.

On the flight of the royal family to Brazil, a council of regency was

appointed to carry on affairs. The disgust at João was so great that the

French general Junot met almost no resistance, but rather welcome as the

bringer of freedom and democracy. The council of regency submitted to

him at Lisbon. His first acts were to seize the treasury and disband the

Portuguese army; on the other hand he forbade the Spanish their expected

plunder and he raised the Portuguese Legion of troops who served with

fidelity and bravery under Napoleon in other countries down to his defeat

at Waterloo.

Having disarmed Portugal by easy measures and false hopes, Junot suddenly

announced the end of the dynasty of Braganza, substituted French for

Portuguese governors everywhere, and formed a new ministry and a new

regency, largely French, with Junot at the head as president, eventually,

he hoped, as king of Portugal. Spain had been similarly duped and given

a French king, Joseph Bonaparte. Spain responded by rebellion; Portugal,

after nine months of submission to Junot, rose and butchered the French

in large numbers. Revolutionary juntas took the government and appealed

to England for aid, receiving in response both men and money as well as

generals, chief among them the Irishman, Sir Arthur Wellesley, later and

better known as the duke of Wellington. Portugal was in England’s eyes,

according to Canning’s own words, merely the fulcrum for the lever of

England to wrench Napoleon from his power.

[Sidenote: [1808-1814 A.D.]]

After some hindrance, due to division of command, Wellesley was able to

march forward; he defeated Laborde at Roliça (or Roriça) August 17th,

1808, and four days later dealt Junot himself such a blow at Vimeiro that

he surrendered all his strongholds and his troops on the condition that

the English carry the army and its spoils safely back to France on their

own ships. This so-called Convention of Cintra, concluded some miles from

Cintra, was carried out, but provoked a storm of rage in England.

The French being thus transported, as by Aladdin’s carpet, out of

Portugal, Dom João’s regency was re-established and found abundant

ground for dispute with the junta of Oporto, and later with the English

officers and diplomats. England sent J. C. Villiers as ambassador, and

Beresford to organise the native armies. He did his work with skill, and

ten thousand Portuguese were taken into English pay. Hardly had Junot’s

army been evicted from Portugal when another French army under Soult

came over from Spain, which was full of French troops. Soult drove back

all resistance and took Oporto, whence Wellington expelled him May 12th,

1809. Wellington then entered Spain and beat “king” Joseph Bonaparte and

his marshal Victor at Talavera.

Meanwhile there were endless disputes with the regency, who seemed to

divert the moneys England sent until the troops were hampered almost to

helplessness, and the English generals were driven frantic. Sir Charles

Stuart was finally at England’s insistence added to the regency, and

something less inefficient resulted. The people were, however, not

altogether convinced of their duty to play “fulcrum” indefinitely to the

Archimedean lever of England. They were not cheered by having to dig

those famous and enormous lines of defence at Torres Vedras, and they

were still less encouraged in being compelled to devastate their own

country and retire with the English troops behind breastworks, before the

terrible army Napoleon sent under Masséna in 1810.

But while Wellington kept under cover and guarded Lisbon doggedly,

Portuguese militia under Antonio de Silveira and various English officers

made it increasingly hard for Masséna to subsist his troops. Trant took

Coimbra, and in 1811 Masséna was forced to retire or starve. Wellington

was now reinforced, and following Masséna cautiously, bested him at

Sabugal, April 3rd, 1811. But the year was one of great anxiety to

Wellington. England could afford few supplies and the Portuguese regency

was more prolific of complaints and quarrels than of provisions. But,

though compelled to keep on the defensive, the Iron Duke showed a menace

he hardly felt. The war hovered on the borders of Portugal and went

generally to French advantage in Spain.

Wellington gradually, and by a patience as great as his skill in

emergency, gained the upper hand, and forcing his way into Spain,

took Madrid August 12th, 1812. He was later forced out by French

adroitness and made a retreat, which, as described in the history of

Spain, is infamous in British annals for the outrageous and inexcusable

misbehaviour of the troops. Wellington berated his army in violent

terms, and though he was not made the more popular thereby, his troops

were somewhat sobered. He now received full power from the court in

Brazil, and at the same time was made chief of the Spanish armies, with

the whole peninsula under his command. He at once assumed the offensive

with a vigour that answered the violent criticism his alleged timidity

had provoked in England as well as in the peninsula and France. His

victories, coinciding with Napoleon’s disastrous Moscow campaign, drove

the French out of the peninsula and led him into France, where the

Peninsular War was ended with Napoleon’s abdication.

PORTUGAL AN ENGLISH PROVINCE

[Sidenote: [1814-1825 A.D.]]

The gratitude Portugal was impelled to feel met a shock when the English

at the Congress of Vienna refused to insist on the restoration by

Spain of Olivenza, of which Portugal had been robbed by Napoleon and

the Spanish in 1801. The bitterness was increased by the harshness of

the regency, in which Beresford and Stuart still held sway, though the

war was over. Beresford had his racial faculty of irritating the Latin

peoples by his cold and severe manner and ruthless severities. He was

commander-in-chief of the armies. A third of the officers were English,

and two-thirds of the country’s revenues were spent on the military.

Portugal was in fact if not in theory only an English province. To the

amazement of all, João, who had committed the novel feat of carrying his

capital from the mother-country to a colony during a war, showed himself

still more original when the war was finished; for he declined to bring

back his capital. The life at Rio de Janeiro seems to have fascinated

him. Portugal drew most of its wealth from the Brazils and he preferred

and enjoyed it nearer the source. Worse yet, after taking to Rio some

fifteen thousand persons when he fled, he kept persuading the chief

nobles and wealthiest merchants to move to Brazil.

In 1816 he became the nominal, as he had long been the actual, king, for

his insane mother died at Rio, March 20th of that year, and the regent

was crowned in the colony as João VI and meekly acknowledged at home. But

still he remained away, resigned Olivenza easily, and called forty-five

hundred war-tried Spanish soldiers over to Brazil, where under Le Cor

they put down a rebellion, which broke out again in 1825 and succeeded as

the republic of Uruguay.

João VI was unpopular with his beckoning people, and his own queen,

Donna Carlota Joaquina, was undermining him in favour of Dom Miguel,

her younger son, who was not believed to be also his. His admittedly

legitimate and elder son, Pedro, was also against him and his absolutist

principles. Thus while the queen had in 1805 promised Portugal a

constitution, Dom Pedro was a lover of Brazil and a well-wisher to the

schemes for its separation from the mother-country.

THE REVOLT AND RECALL OF THE KING

In this unusual tangle of politics the cry of “Portugal for the

Portuguese!” began to grow. The only man who could be said to approach

popularity was General Gomes Freire de Andrade, who had served under

Napoleon throughout the wars, and whose deep hatred of the English had

found new fuel, seeing his country and his fellow-soldiers so rigorously

governed by the foreigner who had come with promises of freedom. He

conspired with others for a rising, but his plans were exposed and he and

ten comrades put to death by the regency. The martyrdom, as it seemed, of

Freire and his men embittered the country, and it needed only the absence

of Beresford (who took ship to Brazil to extract money for the army from

the absentee king) to show the way.

August 4th, 1820, the city of Oporto revolted, appointed a provisional

junta in the king’s name, and demanded a session of the cortes.

Freemasonry principles had been at work, and aided the ripening of the

plans. Lisbon similarly rose and chose a junta, which combined with

that of Oporto and convoked the cortes. While the cortes was adopting a

constitution similar to Spain’s, the English officers were expelled from

the country. Beresford, returning, was forbidden to land and compelled

to return to England. The new cortes was of democratic persuasion; it

clean-swept the remnants of feudalism and put an end to the still-living

Inquisition. The “Constitution of 1822” limited the powers of the king

to a veto of measures furthered by the annual assembly, promised a free

press, universal suffrage, and other decencies of civilisation.

As elsewhere the first sign of emancipation provoked the horror of the

Holy Alliance, the ambassadors of Prussia, Austria, and Russia withdrew

from the country polluted with such free ideas, and England demanded with

a new urgence that João VI return to Lisbon. He came back July 3rd, 1821,

but before he was permitted to land promised to accept the constitution,

to which he took oath October 1st, 1822, thus outraging the sensibilities

of the clergy, who abhorred any trend towards liberty. His queen and Dom

Miguel refused to accept the constitution and were ordered out of the

country; but the queen, pretending to be ill, was allowed to remain,

and busied herself drawing together conspirators known as “Cringers.” In

1823 the French invaded Spain to quell the Spanish revolt against the

Nero-like Ferdinand. The absolutists in Portugal chose the moment to rise

against the Constitution of 1822, General Silveira being the leader.

THE LOSS OF BRAZIL (1822 A.D.)

[Sidenote: [1822-1823 A.D.]]

Meanwhile Dom Pedro, left behind in Brazil, had smiled upon those who

desired independence of the mother-country which had long been but a

blood-sucking vampire. By his complacency Dom Pedro won the privilege of

leading the revolt against his own father and becoming the first emperor

of Brazil with a liberal constitution back of him. Portugal made only the

feeblest effort at resistance and Brazil was thenceforward independent.

Its fuller history will be found in the later volume devoted to Spanish

America.

The easy surrender of the richest of her colonies exasperated the

absolutists still more against the pliant João, and Portugal proceeded to

echo the almost incredible Spanish motto, “Hurrah for chains!”; to grow

frantic for despotism; to curse those who tried to limit the power of

oppression, and to exhibit the spectacle--no less astounding for being

so common in history--of a people shedding its blood to destroy its own

liberties.[a]

FOOTNOTES

[173] [“On December 27th, 1703, the famous Methuen Treaty was signed, by

which Portuguese wines might be imported into England at a lower duty

than those from France and Germany, in return for a similar concession

to English manufactured goods. The immediate result of this treaty was

that King Pedro acknowledged the archduke Charles, the English candidate,

as king of Spain, and that he gave the English a base of operations in

the peninsula. The ulterior result was that Englishmen in the eighteenth

century drank port wine instead of claret and hock, while the Portuguese

imported everything they wanted beyond the bare necessaries of life from

England. This was an advantage to both nations, for Portugal is eminently

an agricultural country with neither the teeming population nor the

materials necessary for manufactures, while England obtained a friendly

province from which to import the wine and produce of a southern soil,

and a market for the sale of the products of her manufactories. The close

connection thus formed went deeper than mere commerce; it established

a friendly relationship between the two peoples, which was of infinite

advantage to the smaller nation.”--STEPHENS.[d]

We shall see later that the Portuguese felt the treaty less a blessing

than an incubus on their power to develop manufactures of their own.]

[174] [Pombal was born in 1699 of a wealthy and well-connected family,

entered in the army as a private, but saw no service and retired; he

then led a life of roistering notoriety, and had eloped with a niece of

the count of Arcos. He was forty years old before he had an official

position, and fifty-one before he became minister to the king.]

[175] [This was blamed to incendiaries, though it was inevitable that

in such a falling of walls many houses should be set on fire without

human aid, though humankind were ready enough to seize the chance for

loot. A large part of the people fled to the quays to escape the falling

buildings, but there a great tidal wave found them and sweeping the

wharves clean drowned men, women, and children in thousands. Voltaire’s

_Candide_ includes a notable account of the catastrophe. Estimates of

the loss run from fifteen thousand to one hundred thousand lives; thirty

thousand being the most generally accepted.]

[176] [When the king in despair asked Pombal what was to be done, he

replied, “Bury the dead and feed the living”; he is said to have spent

eight days and nights in his carriage hurrying from place to place.]

[177] [Lord Mahon[j] says: “His majesty had debauched, besides the

marchioness of Tavora, both the wife and the daughter of the duke of

Aveiro.”]

[178] [See also the history of Spain for the account of the expulsion

that resulted from Pombal’s initiation.]

[179] [By this celebrated decree of May 25th, 1773, grandsons of slaves

in Portugal and all children born after that day were declared free, and

all civil restrictions on the “New Christians” or the converted Jews and

Moors were forever removed.]

[180] [It is recorded, as a proof of the skill with which the count

had trained his artillery men, and of his confidence in them, that he

celebrated the king of Prussia’s birthday in 1759, by giving a dinner to

his officers, in his tent; the flag at the top of that tent being aimed

at during the whole entertainment as a mark for cannon-balls. It is not

added with what degree of appetite the officers dined.[j]]

[181] [The credit for fully ending imprisonment for debt is, however,

usually given to the later ministers and the queen Maria.]

[182] H. M. Stephens,[d] however, represents Dom João as so zealous for

the reduction of the French that he forced his aid upon England and Spain

counter to the advice of the English ministry.

[183] [With him went his wife and six children and his insane mother

the queen, who violently resisted for some time the efforts to get her

aboard.]

[Illustration]

[Illustration]

CHAPTER V. THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

[Sidenote: [1822-1900 A.D.]]

Immediately after the proclamation of the Constitution of 1822, the

Austrian and Russian ambassadors had taken their departure and now that

intervention in Spain had been definitely determined on by the Congress

of Verona, one of the queen’s adherents, the count of Amarante, raised

the standard of revolt at Villa Real, on the northern bank of the Douro

in the province of Tras-os-Montes, where the family of Silveira, to

which he belonged, possessed estates. The rebellion was made in the name

of absolutism or, as the phrase went, in the name of regeneration. The

enterprise did not succeed, and the insurrectionists were driven across

the Spanish border, though still hoping for the support of the French

who had now arrived on the scene. This hope was delusive, for the duke

of Angoulême and his government had to consider the susceptibilities

of England. That power, already provoked by the treatment of Spanish

concerns at the Congress of Verona, looked distrustfully at the

development of events in the peninsula, and took a special interest

in Portuguese matters; only the regency at Madrid gave them as much

assistance as possible.

[Sidenote: [1823-1826 A.D.]]

But there was no need for direct interference. The new Portuguese

constitution had not effected what it had promised; long before this

the fickle humour of this passionate, ignorant, and idle people had

veered round. In particular the party opposed to the constitution had

successfully worked upon the troops and the liberal cause had no one, no

regular party, and only a few individual men in whom reliance could be

placed. Thus in May, 1823, Dom Miguel was able openly to declare against

the constitution. He withdrew from the capital, collected troops, and

soon that same Sepulveda who had been one of the principal instigators

of the revolution of 1820 marched to the prince’s headquarters at

Villafranca at the head of several thousands.

Thither on the 30th of May the king himself was conducted by mutinous

troops, and from thence on the 3rd of June issued a proclamation in which

he declared the “infamous cortes” dissolved and the “pure monarchy”

established. Two days later he returned, an absolute monarch, to the

capital he had left as a constitutional ruler. Of the members of the

dismissed cortes a number had escaped to England, though the king himself

nourished no thoughts of vengeance. The adherents and promoters of the

counter-revolution were rewarded: Count Amarante, for instance, was

made marquis of Chaves; the cloisters were restored and their property

was given back, a new ministry was formed under Count Palmella and a

junta appointed to indicate those dispositions of the cortes which were

incompatible with the monarchical principle. For a time Dom Miguel, who

had been appointed commander-in-chief of the army, was praised throughout

Europe as the hero of the reaction.

On the 18th of June Queen Carlota also returned to Lisbon. This infamous

woman detested her husband, who on his part had good reason to dread her

fury which stopped at nothing. She was now bent on raising to his place

her son Miguel who promised to be a prince after her own heart. A system

of monarchical terrorism according to the ideas of this worthy pair was

impossible so long as the mild Dom João was reigning; the utmost that

could be managed was a wretched assassination, like that of which the

king’s moderate counsellor, the marquis of Loulé, was the victim; the

reins had therefore to be snatched from him by a _coup d’état_.

On the 30th of April, 1824, Dom Miguel caused the leaders of the

moderate party to be arrested. The king’s minister, at whom the blow

was really aimed, found time to escape on an English man-of-war which

lay at anchor in the Tagus. Thither on the 9th of May the king, who had

little confidence in his unnatural son, also fled, being assisted by

the English and French ambassadors. But this time the overstrained bow

broke in the hands of the absolutist party. They had forgotten to reckon

with one factor on which they were accustomed to count too securely. The

common people of the capital regarded their sovereign with something like

idolatry; and when, from his place of refuge, the king disclosed the

criminal designs of those who should have stood closest to him, Miguel

found himself suddenly forsaken by all and threatened by many, so that

nothing was left him but to go himself to his father and implore his

pardon. He was now for a time held in custody on the English vessel.

His “inexperienced youth” might be made a pretext for securing his

pardon, for he was indeed, although a practised sinner, only twenty-two

years old; but it was thought expedient to send him to travel abroad.

He betook himself through France to Vienna, to prepare himself, under

Metternich’s eye, for a subsequent continuation of his rôle. His mother

was banished to a cloister which suited her but ill; she resisted,

under the pretence of illness, and is said to have even taken the last

sacraments to prove her sickness. The question of the form of government

was then so far settled that on the 4th of June, 1824, the king, acting

on English advice, granted a constitution by which the cortes were

re-established in their ancient form and division into three estates, the

cortes of Lamego, as they were called from their place of assembly. The

country now remained undisturbed till the king’s death, which took place

on the 10th of May, 1826, and placed the two thrones of Portugal and

Brazil to a certain extent at the disposal of his eldest son Dom Pedro,

who was conducting the government in Rio de Janeiro.

PORTUGAL RECEIVES A NEW RULER AND A NEW CONSTITUTION

[Sidenote: [1826 A.D.]]

But to hold them both had become an impossibility since the events

of 1820, and a treaty effected through English mediation in 1825 had

expressly provided that the two crowns should never again be united

on one head, thus confirming the work of the Brazilian cortes of 1822

which declared the country’s independence of Portugal. On the 23rd of

April, 1826, the new ruler granted the Portuguese an extremely liberal

constitution, the _Charta de ley_ and renounced his European throne in

favour of his daughter Maria da Gloria. He endeavoured to counteract the

danger to which her claims might be exposed from his younger brother, Dom

Miguel, by assigning the child, then only seven years old, as wife to

the uncle who was seventeen years her senior and by making the validity

of his own resignation depend on the condition that Miguel should swear

to the _Charta_ and accept the marriage; until this should be completed

Pedro’s own rights were reserved, and since owing to the difference of

age between the couple the marriage could not take place for some time,

he intrusted the government to his sister Isabella Maria as regent.

She proclaimed the new constitution, which was sufficiently liberal;

in it the king retained only a certain power of intervention and

arbitration, with no immediate influence on legislation; but liberality

in the constitution was a very doubtful advantage in a country which was

still so unripe for freedom, and an article which guaranteed freedom of

religious worship roused the spiritual caste, who had no difficulty in

representing to the ignorant country people and the numerous class of

petty rural nobility whose interests were compromised by the new _Charta_

that the new constitution was a work of the devil. However, a first

attempt at a rising by the marquis of Chaves was suppressed, and in 1826

the regent was able to open the chambers.

But, supported by the apostolic party in Spain, Chaves returned. A

formidable rebellion arose simultaneously in the north and south and

gained such alarming proportions that the regent felt herself compelled

to call in the aid of England. And this time not in vain. On Friday

evening, December the 8th, 1826, the English government received the

despatch. George Canning, the guiding spirit of that government, had

long since declared that he would suffer no Spanish intervention of any

sort in the country so long allied to England; on the 11th the regiments

under General Clinton were on the march to their places of embarkation,

and on the 12th the great minister made that great speech in the lower

house which echoed throughout the world and lent to events in that remote

corner of the continent, in themselves of little significance to the

destinies of Europe, a far-reaching importance much above their immediate

value.

Canning made use of the occasion to justify his whole policy--a peace

policy, but one which must yield to treaty obligations entered into

towards a country long allied with England; the contingency provided for

by the treaty had now arisen and it would be a pitiful quibble to say

that this was not a case of Spanish intervention because the troops which

had risen against the legal government of Portugal were Portuguese: “They

are Portuguese troops, but they are armed by Spain. We will not uphold by

force or against the will of the country the constitution which Portugal

has given herself, but neither will we permit others to overthrow it

by force and against the will of the country.” His words were meant to

alarm and warn the Spanish government; but they also alarmed all those

who had long been forcibly intermeddling with the internal politics of

other states in behalf of principles opposed to liberty and friendly to

absolutism.

[Sidenote: [1826-1832 A.D.]]

Canning pursued his policy with moderation. He showed the strength of a

giant without using it in a giant’s fashion. On the 1st of January the

English army corps under Clinton landed at Lisbon, and eleven English

ships of the line cast anchor in the mouth of the Tagus. The news of

their arrival sufficed to prevent the further spread of rebellion. The

marquis of Chaves with ten thousand men stood ready for battle on the way

to Coimbra. The constitutional troops, about seven thousand in number,

marched against him; on the 9th of January a battle was fought which

lasted till darkness fell. But in the night the news of the approach of

the English spread amongst the Miguelites; this was enough to scatter

their army. The English had no need to take action. Their mere presence

facilitated the subjection of the rebels by the constitutional generals,

Saldanha and others, and the Spanish government, which had understood

Canning’s speech, disarmed those who thronged across the border and

delivered their weapons to the Portuguese authorities.

DOM MIGUEL SEIZES THE POWER (1827 A.D.)

Thus far England had interfered in response to the queen-regent’s request

for aid. Meantime Dom Miguel had taken the oath to the constitution, and

had been betrothed to his niece; on the 5th of July, 1827, Dom Pedro

appointed him regent of the kingdom. On the 22nd of February, 1828, after

having presented himself in London, where he insinuated himself with the

ministry, now no longer guided by a Canning, he landed at Lisbon. At a

solemn meeting of the estates he repeated his oath, appointed a moderate

ministry and kept himself in the background. But it was observed that the

criers who daily shouted in front of the palace, “Long live the absolute

king!” were no longer driven away or punished as they had been at first

and that the constitutional officials and officers had been replaced by

adherents of the opposite party; and after the withdrawal of the English

troops, whose task was ended after the disbandment of the Spanish corps

of observation on the frontiers, he threw off the mask.

On the 13th of March the chamber of deputies was dismissed, and a

commission appointed to consider a new election law. On the 3rd of May

the governor summoned the three estates of the realm, the “cortes of

Lamego,” according to the ancient ordinances. It was now seen whither

this true son of his mother was steering. In face of proceedings

so manifestly in excess of the existing rights of the regent, the

ambassadors of the powers provisionally laid down their offices, and the

troops in Oporto rose in defence of the rights of their lawful ruler, Dom

Pedro IV. There was no lack of recruits; the number of the constitutional

troops increased to seven thousand, but there seems to have been a want

of resolute leaders, some of them having taken their departure at Dom

Miguel’s first move. The last-named had meanwhile assembled his forces;

the mob and the country people armed, and on the 24th of June the

constitutional troops suffered a defeat at the hands of the Miguelites

under Povoas, in the neighbourhood of Coimbra. They retreated to Oporto,

where some of the leaders of the constitutionalists, the marquis of

Palmella, and the generals Saldanha, Villaflor, and Stubbs, who had now

returned from their flight, in vain endeavoured to rally the disheartened

army. Nothing was left to them but to escape from absolutist vengeance by

a second flight; the remains of the constitutional army, four thousand

strong, crossed into Spanish soil and Miguel’s troops marched into Oporto.

The seizure of the throne could now be completed undisturbed. The new

estates which had met at Lisbon, passed, each for itself, the resolution

that, according to the fundamental laws of the kingdom, Dom Miguel had

been called to the throne. On the 7th of July they paid their homage

to the usurper as king. Thus the country was delivered over to the

tyranny of a man who for baseness of disposition might compete even

with a Ferdinand, and who actually surpassed the latter in coarseness

and brutality. Incarcerations, judicial murders, deportations were the

order of the day, and reached figures of frightful magnitude. It was a

despotism which relied on the mob and the clergy for support; yet the

fashion in which Dom Miguel had stolen the crown had been too openly in

the very face of the principle of legitimacy to allow of his recognition

by the powers; the Spanish ambassador alone remained in Lisbon.

[Illustration: DOM MIGUEL DE BRAGANZA]

All Portugal submitted; only on the island of Terceira, one of the

Azores, the governor Cabrera had upheld the rights of Dom Pedro and his

daughter. Repeated attempts of the usurper to subdue the island were

frustrated. The leaders of the constitutional party collected there, and

there in March, 1830, Dom Pedro established a regency composed of the

marquis of Palmella, the lawyer Guerreiro, and General Villaflor, who

took possession of the whole group of islands in the name of the lawful

government of Portugal.

By injuries to English and French subjects the barbarous reign of

violence which prevailed under Dom Miguel soon added the enmity of those

two powers to its native opponents. They exacted compensation and the

humiliation of the usurper encouraged the party opposed to him which now

found further and more energetic support. For in April, 1831, a revolt in

Brazil had obliged the emperor Dom Pedro to resign his throne in favour

of his son, Dom Pedro II, who was still a minor. In Europe a task lay

ready to his hand: that of assisting his daughter Maria da Gloria to her

throne, and at the same time freeing Portugal from her tyrant.

Countenanced by England and France, the duke of Braganza, as Dom Pedro

now called himself, obtained a small land-force and a fleet, and with

these he appeared at Terceira in March, 1832. With seventy-five hundred

men he sailed thence to Portugal, landed in the neighbourhood of Oporto,

and on the 8th of July obtained possession of this rich commercial city.

But he did not succeed in rousing the country to enthusiasm in his cause.

In the summer of 1833 his means were exhausted and only a bold decision

availed to give a new turn to the undertaking, which, just in itself,

had degenerated into a mere aimless adventure. By a loan raised in the

city of Oporto he settled the demands of an English free-lance, named

Sartorius, who was in his service, and replaced him by Captain Charles

Napier. With the latter there embarked a corps of three thousand men

under the duke of Terceira, General Villaflor, to try their fortune in

the southern province of Algarve. The result exceeded all expectation;

the province went over to the cause of Dom Pedro and the queen, and as

the ships were on their way back to Oporto, Napier attacked Dom Miguel’s

fleet off Cape St. Vincent and won a complete victory. Five ships of

war with 280 cannon fell into his hands, and those on board, thirty-two

hundred soldiers and sailors, entered Dom Pedro’s service. The news

encouraged the duke of Terceira to venture a march on Lisbon, and this

bold action also succeeded. Queen Maria da Gloria was proclaimed in the

city, and four days later Dom Pedro also entered the town and took over

the regency in his daughter’s name.

[Sidenote: [1832-1834 A.D.]]

But the new government was by no means securely established. The regent

understood little of Portuguese matters and, as always in these southern

revolutions, the victorious party were strangers to the moderation

required to restore tranquillity to the country. Dom Miguel had preserved

the greater part of his army and its ranks were swelled by the peasants

who were completely subjected to him and the priests, and by a numerous

and continually multiplying rabble. This army maintained itself in the

neighbourhood of Coimbra and on the upper Tagus; frequently it even

penetrated to Lisbon and thus the two representatives of priest-ridden

absolutism, Dom Miguel and Don Carlos, stood opposed to the two minor

queens, whom chance had made the representatives of the principle of

liberalism.

It was in Portugal that matters first came to an issue. To England,

Portugal was the most important country as Spain was to France, and for

both powers a real neutrality was an impossibility. A complete victory

for Dom Miguel, signified to England--apart from the indignation which

must be excited by that monster’s system of rule--the complete loss

of her influence in Portugal, and at the same time the destruction of

the constitutional principle which naturally had the sympathies of

the English nation and the Whigs who were then in power, and which

was identified with the government of those classes of society whom a

commercial people like the English must necessarily consider. And England

had already long since broken through her neutrality.

In regard to the government of France, the position was similar:

Louis Philippe was the natural ally of Queen Isabella, whose claims

to the throne rested, like his own, on a violation of the principle

of legitimacy. But the victory of the Portuguese pretender would of

necessity lead to that of the Spanish claimant whose cause had equal

chances in its favour, and moreover there could not be a better

opportunity of opposing a liberal solidarity on the part of the western

powers to the legitimatist solidarity of the eastern, and thus confirm

the stability of the new throne of France. This community of interests

brought about the conclusion of a quadruple alliance between Portugal and

Spain, England and France (12th of April, 1834), by which the regents

of Portugal and Spain agreed to expel the two pretenders, and for this

object a Spanish corps was to co-operate with the Portuguese troops;

the undertaking was to be supported by England with her warships and by

France, if necessary, with troops.

[Sidenote: [1834-1835 A.D.]]

The result was soon apparent. On the 12th of May Dom Miguel’s army was

defeated by the united Spanish and Portuguese army at Asseiceira and

on the 26th the two allies, Dom Miguel and Don Carlos, surrounded by a

superior force, capitulated at Evora in the province of Alemtejo. The

former took a money payment, which he might squander anywhere but in

Spain and Portugal, promised to respect his niece’s rights and retired

from the scenes, taking ship for Genoa. Don Carlos went to England.

Affairs quieted down in Portugal. Dom Pedro summoned the cortes and

restored the Constitution of 1826; monastic and knightly orders and

various abuses were abolished; the Jesuits had to leave the country;

but the establishment of the new order of things was completed with

moderation and without revenge, and above all the law was treated with

respect. On the 18th of September in that year the estates declared the

queen, though only fifteen, to be of age, since the state of the regent’s

health did not permit of his attending to business. On the 24th Dom Pedro

died at the age of thirty-seven.[b]

MARIA II (1834-1853 A.D.)

Donna Maria was sixteen years old at her father’s death. The cortes

believed nevertheless that it ought to declare the majority of the queen,

which she would not have attained according to the charter until her

eighteenth year. Donna Maria hastened to put all her confidence in the

duke of Palmella. Senhor de Palmella and his friends, while they brought

great support to the government, did not make up for the strength of

which it had been deprived by Dom Pedro’s death, and did not disarm any

adversary. The position of the entire Portuguese ministry with regard

to England was truly intolerable; placed between an imperious national

sentiment and unconquerable necessities it was at all times accused by

the opposition of sacrificing the country’s interests to those of an

insatiable ally. The question of customs duties and the renewal of the

treaties furnished the enemies of the ministry with national weapons, for

nothing was so unpopular in Portugal as the lowering of the tariff and

free trade.

In spite of the enormous expenditure due to civil war and the general

ruin, the raising of loans contracted in London easily covered at first

the deficit in the treasury. The abundance of money was such that they

even foolishly employed specie to retire a paper currency in circulation

since the time of João V. This false prosperity had no other result than

to close all eyes to the dangers of the future. At the beginning of 1835

the minister of finance was compelled to admit an enormous deficit. The

government was unable to borrow any longer nor even increase their taxes.

It became necessary to have recourse to expedients and to set out on the

deplorable road of anticipations.

Officials’ salaries and officers’ pay were no longer regularly paid, and

the number of malcontents grew in proportion to the impossibility of

satisfying them. The army and the national guard of Lisbon were entirely

in the clutches of the secret societies. The internal dissensions among

the ministers led several of them to associate themselves with clubs and

to seek in the anarchist party a passing point of support against their

colleagues; for, while all attacks were directed against Palmella, and

especially Carvalho, there were in the space of one year eight changes of

cabinet. The motives of these changes were always of a personal nature,

and were to be found in the intrigues of the clubs which often crossed

and clashed with those of other clubs.

[Sidenote: [1835-1837 A.D.]]

Upon this state of affairs there broke the revolt of La Granja, which

served as a signal for a similar movement in Portugal. For more than

a year alarming symptoms had been showing themselves. The chamber of

deputies had refused the chief command of the army to the queen’s first

husband, Prince Augustus of Leuchtenberg. After four months of marriage

he succumbed to a short illness.[c] In less than a year the queen

remarried. Her second husband was Prince Ferdinand of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha,

nephew of the Belgian king. He obtained the chief command of the army,

which made matters more difficult as he was unpopular.[a]

Then the queen ordered the dissolution of the cortes at the moment when

all the Spanish juntas were in insurrection. The government was playing

with the frivolity and light-mindedness of the people when, on the 9th

of September, 1836, the newly elected deputies from Oporto arrived in

Lisbon. They all belonged to the radical party. A band of musicians

advanced to meet them, the city was illuminated, and enthusiastic cheers

filled the streets and byways. By the end of the evening the ministers

became alarmed at the demonstration and sent out a battalion to restore

order. The soldiers fraternised with the people and all cried, “Down with

the ministers; long live the Constitution of 1822.” This excited mob,

really more joyous than hostile, made its way to the palace and sent the

surprised queen a deputation ordering her to dismiss the ministers and

adhere to the constitution.

The queen refused to obey, and rejected the revolutionists’ commands. A

little later she resigned herself to the necessity, and she burst into

tears. The count of Lumiares, Bernardo de Sá da Bandeira, and Passos were

named ministers, and the queen promised to convoke the cortes according

to the forms of the Constitution of 1822, in order that they might recast

the fundamental law of the kingdom.

Passos planned out a pantheon, issued a thousand regulations relating

to libraries and museums, and abolished bull-fights through motives of

philanthropy. Bernardo de Sá destroyed all that he could, his principle

being that things would arrange themselves afterward as well as they

could and what was once overthrown would never be re-established.

November 3rd a few persons of the court tried to work a

counter-revolution. The queen secretly betook herself to the castle

of Belem, from which place she called the army and the people of the

court around her and abjured the forced oath she had taken on the 10th

of September. This scheme, bad and unpracticable in itself, presented

one difficulty among many others which had not been seen by the prime

movers of the plot. Belem is separated from Lisbon by a little river,

and the constitutionalists in seizing the bridge of Alcantara cut off

all communication between the castle and the partisans of the charter.

The hostile attitude of his Britannic majesty’s warships intimidated no

one. The constitutionalists strengthened their love of the constitution

with their hatred for England, and this time the people of Lisbon seemed

led by a common sentiment. At the end of three days the queen renounced

her dangerous project and returned to the city amid bonfires and the

enthusiastic acclamations of the people.

This unlucky and abortive affair proved three things: the solidity of

Donna Maria’s throne, which was never for one moment shaken by this

foolish experiment; the aversion of the people for the English yoke;

and the hatred of the radicals towards a few political men. Freire was

assassinated at the bridge of Alcantara. On the 18th of January, 1837,

after four months and a half of dictatorial power, exercised according

to the statutes of the constitution by Bernardo de Sá and Passos, the

constituent cortes met at Lisbon. According to the law of 1822 it formed

a single chamber and was elected by almost universal suffrage. The 6th

of May the cortes submitted the basis of the constitution and sixty-four

votes against sixteen declared for absolute veto, the two chambers and

the leading principles of all fundamental laws.

[Sidenote: [1837-1838 A.D.]]

This was the opportunity for its enemies, and the baron de Leiria, who

commanded in the north, raised the banner of insurrection on the 12th

of July. Several garrisons, more important for the names of the towns

than for the number of the soldiers, rose up to cries of “Long live the

charter!” Marshal Saldanha proceeded to Castello Branco. The duke of

Terceira soon joined him, and for a month the two insurgent marshals

overran the country without opposition. The Lisbon government confided

extraordinary powers to the viscount de Sá and the baron de Bomfim.

These two officers, with the constitutional forces, attacked the

marshal’s troops at Rio Mayor on the 28th of August, and, although

on both sides they had had more than six weeks in which to make

preparations, neither of the armies counted eight hundred men. But the

soldiers were more prudent than their leaders. After a slight infantry

skirmish in which the Portuguese nobility had sensible losses to deplore,

the two marshals gave the order to charge to their little squadron and

the viscount de Sá advanced at the head of his troops. The cavalry

on both sides stopped at fifty paces, replaced their sabres in the

scabbards, and having fraternised returned faithfully to the flags of

their respective commanders. The latter saw themselves compelled to sign

an armistice, and the marshals retired to the north to rejoin baron de

Leiria who still held out in the suburbs of Valencia.

Forces were equal and victory depended on the side that would get hold

of the corps which, having served in the army of Queen Christina, was

returning to Portugal under the orders of the viscount das Antas. This

general decided in favour of the constitutionals, and, after a bloody

fight at Ruivaes on the 20th of September, the remains of the chartist

army was obliged to take refuge in Galicia.

But the evil which no constitution could remedy was growing day by

day. On the 14th of October bankruptcy was declared--the necessity of

paying the victors had drained the last drop of the state’s finances.

The body of workmen at the arsenal, who for two weeks had been giving

unequivocal signs of discontent, openly rebelled on the 13th of March,

1838. Baron Bomfim surrounded the arsenal buildings by a line of troops

and the rebels fired first upon the soldiers. This was truly a critical

moment for Portugal. The cortes were opposed to any vigorous measures and

clung to the side of the insurrection. But the fate of the ministers was

nevertheless bound to the maintenance of order, and Bernardo took his

stand boldly. He marched with Baron Bomfim against the rebels, who were

completely defeated after a furious and bloody combat. After this time

the arsenal party, as it was called, attempted fresh insurrections and

more than once threatened the peace of the kingdom, but the events of the

13th of March had irrevocably fixed the government’s position. Besides,

when on the 4th of April the queen took an oath to the new constitution

and proclaimed a general amnesty for the past, the chartists and the

moderate portion of the constitutionalists found themselves naturally

united against the more radical faction. Afterwards they were almost

completely confused under the name of the “friends of order.”[b] On the

16th of September, 1837, Queen Maria had given birth to a son. This

greatly improved the queen’s position, but the king-consort continued

very unpopular, and the condition of affairs encouraged Dom Miguel

to seek aid in London. But he sought in vain and returned to Rome.

Discontent was still rife in Portugal, cabinets played see-saw, and in

August, 1840, the 6th regiment of the line mutinied and shot its colonel.

Meanwhile England was pressing its claims for £375,475 [$1,807,475]

for commissariats in 1826 and for half-pay for the British officers

who had served under Wellington and Beresford. The claim provoked only

indignation in Portugal. In 1841 Spain came in for hostility.[a]

[Sidenote: [1835-1842 A.D.]]

In 1835 the navigation of the Douro had caused considerable excitement

between Spain and Portugal, which nearly led to a war between the two

countries. There appeared in the _Gazette de Madrid_ a violent article

against Portugal, also an insulting one against Donna Maria II. Saldanha

gave the Spanish government forty-eight hours to make reparation,

notifying it that in the event of refusal a Portuguese fleet should

fire the towns from Cadiz to Barcelona. Apology was made. Portugal had

difficulties also with Denmark, when Saldanha requested the Portuguese

minister to leave, if, after three days, satisfaction was not given. The

Danish minister was recalled, but Saldanha obtained his wishes.

England complained that Portugal was too complaisant to France and the

United States, and forgot her old ally, and declared she felt disposed to

occupy the Portuguese Indian possessions on account of claims. Saldanha

went to London with instructions to do as he pleased. Lord Palmerston

told him to tell his government that England acceded to his desire to

modify the convention, for his sake, and not for that of the Portuguese

government.

Dom Miguel’s party in Portugal, as well as the _absolutos_ on the

continent, considered he had now another chance of returning to his

country. He left Rome for England, remaining some time, but he could

make no move, and returned again to Italy. In December, 1841, the

municipal elections commenced in Lisbon. There were now two great

contending parties, the _moderados_, who supported the ministry, and

the constitutionals, that of order; the pure Septembrists[184] were

considered as revolutionists or even republicans, and there were most

probably many Miguelites amongst them.[d]

CABRAL AND THE CHARTISTS IN POWER (1842 A.D.)

[Sidenote: [1842-1847 A.D.]]

In January, 1842, Portugal once more found herself face to face with the

sad prospect of revolution, and the leader no less a person than the

minister of justice, Costa Cabral, formerly one of the most ardent of

Septembrists, now entirely converted to Dom Pedro’s charter. Secretly

seconded by the king and by Dietz and Drummond, who composed the

occult government at Lisbon, he went to Oporto and thence to Coimbra,

proclaiming the abolition of the established constitution.

The queen, who was not in the secret of the plot, in vain confided its

repression to Palmella, Das Antas, and Bomfim. The duke of Terceira

pronounced in favour of Costa Cabral; Palmella took no action and the

revolution was brought to a head before anyone had seriously thought

of suppressing it. Costa Cabral completed his triumph with the promise

that the cortes would be immediately convoked for the revision of the

charter, and from that time it was he who reigned under the name of

the duke of Terceira, president of the council. It goes without saying

that Donna Maria was content to subscribe to everything she formerly

had opposed. Most docile, subject to the wishes of her husband and her

confessor, she had, moreover, never liked the constitution, and had

herself twice attempted to destroy it in 1837.

Sustained by the high protection of the court, by the servility of the

two chambers, by the friendship of his brother the governor of Lisbon,

and finally by the friendly neutrality of the Miguelites, for whom the

fall of the constitution would be nothing less than a triumph, Costa

Cabral had nothing to restrain him. And he was not the man to hesitate

before despotism. It was not sufficient that the tribune was almost

silenced; he soon affirmed his power by the promulgation of three

decrees which abolished almost the last of Portugal’s liberties. The

first concerned the judges, whose independence he destroyed; the second

delivered the officers over to the absolutism of the minister; the third

submitted all education to a censor and struck a death-blow at the

universities. Is there need to add that the press was not less abused,

and no longer had freedom but to praise?

It was not long before he went a little further. For a long time one

of the greatest plagues of the Portuguese administration was that they

could not exist without loans. They borrowed to meet even the ordinary

expenses, they borrowed to pay interest on the debt; they borrowed

for redemptions--all the while accumulating a more onerous burden.

Costa Cabral finally had his eyes opened to this state of affairs,

pointed it out to the queen, and while he himself was responsible for

twenty-three loans in three years, he dared undertake to get rid of them,

understanding well that irreparable ruin would be the result of the

continuation of such a policy. But whether the taxation he established to

reopen the true sources of prosperity to the finances of his country was

really too heavy, or the strangeness of the thing made it seem so, Costa

Cabral did not have the time to carry out and improve this great reform.

He had presumed too much on his own strength and the intelligence of the

people; no government was solid enough in Portugal to stand such a test.

THE SEPTEMBRISTS OVERTHROW COSTA CABRAL

[Sidenote: [1847-1850 A.D.]]

But from the day that Costa Cabral himself set the example of

insurrection, by rousing Oporto and Coimbra in the name of the charter,

all his former friends became allied to punish him as soon as possible

for his apostasy. Their leaders were Das Antas, Passos, Sá da Bandeira,

Loulé, and especially Bomfim, who represented the mixed party.

When he had furnished them an opportunity by the introduction of a new

tax which could not fail to arouse the anger of the peasants, they

induced the whole province of Minho to revolt; and the majority of

the other towns showing similar inclinations, Costa Cabral found it

impossible to hold up his head to the storm.[185] Cabral fled to Spain

with his brother the governor, under pretext of a year’s leave of absence

which the queen herself had granted him. During this time those whom he

had formerly exiled and despoiled succeeded to his high power.

But it was not for long. Costa Cabral had been in power at least four

years. Scarcely had his adversaries entered into possession of the

authority, when they had to contend with a new counter-revolution hatched

in the queen’s palace and soon supported by England, France, and Spain.

Donna Maria’s victory was also Costa Cabral’s, the latter in truth was

only awaiting the signal to reappear in Portugal, and (astonishing thing,

and one that shows well how superficial these agitations are!) he was

cordially received there. It seemed as if everybody was his friend.

Justice must be rendered Cabral in that, far from being intoxicated

with a victory as complete as it was unexpected, he appeared only

desirous of wiping it out--perhaps because he feared to raise again all

the resentment under which he had once succumbed, perhaps because he

preferred to hold back, or perhaps because, scorned plebeian that he

was, he feared to offend the aristocratic pride of the great families by

the immediate occupation of the highest office. He therefore refused the

ministry and, content with an anonymous supremacy, transferred the honour

to Pombal’s grandson, the old marshal the duke of Saldanha, January, 1848.

This policy of Costa Cabral’s showed itself still better at the moment

when Marshal Saldanha refused to retain the post which was a source

of trouble to him. Costa Cabral begged the duke of Terceira and

Duarte-Leitao to accept the presidency of the council, and it was only

upon their positive refusal that he decided to reassume it himself. If

nobody wanted it, how could he be blamed for taking it? Still, he tried

to disarm the anger that might be aroused at his accession by accepting

a feudal title which undoubtedly he cared little about. But was it

not better to defer solemnly to the unconquerable prejudices of the

Portuguese aristocracy by concealing a plebeian name under the pompous

title of the count of Thomar? However that might be, the new president of

the council used his power energetically for the reformation of abuses,

to complete the reconciliation of Portugal and Rome, to improve the state

of the finances, to stimulate agriculture and commerce, and to restore

the navy. Never, whatever might be said of it afterward, had Portugal

been so prosperous since the glorious era when Pombal had undertaken to

revive the glories of olden times. If this administration, rigorous but

able, could have maintained itself for only ten years, Portugal would

have lifted itself out of the abyss into which it was threatening to

disappear.

But unfortunately this was not to be. All his old adversaries,

disconcerted for a moment by the suddenness of his return, returned

on their side to their intrigues and their alliances. The Miguelites

irritated at his reforms, the great nobles offended at his supremacy, the

Septembrists indignant at what they called his apostasy, the journalists

embittered at the severities of his new law against the press (1850)--all

these combined to overthrow him again. There remained to find a leader,

and that did not take long. The marshal Saldanha was there, discontented

and anxious to avenge himself at any cost.

Having voluntarily left the ministry, the duke of Saldanha proclaimed

himself at first the friend and devoted adherent of the count of Thomar.

He even went so far as to say one day that in politics he and the count

were one and the same person. But constancy and fidelity were not

distinguishing qualities of the noble duke, and this effervescence of

friendship did not prevent his regretting the authority he had just given

up of his own accord. As his claims were admitted neither by the count

of Thomar nor his colleagues, he was thrown roughly into the ranks of

the opposition and his first declaration of hostilities was a virulent

attack upon the minister of war. Neither the chamber, the ministers, nor

the queen paid much attention to this, and the latter even dared to reply

that she did not allow her servants to give her advice, and especially

written advice, unless she asked it. This was a cruel allusion to the

post of first major-domo of the palace with which the duke was invested.

Thereupon Saldanha’s anger put him at the disposition of all those who

were willing to second his revenge.

[Sidenote: [1850-1855 A.D.]]

A not less seductive hope for Costa Cabral’s enemies was England’s

declared assistance. Lord Palmerston was at that time at the head of

foreign affairs, and no minister was ever more exclusively preoccupied

with the interests of England. At the first news of the reforms which

the Portuguese government had accomplished, or was meditating, he did

not lose an instant in encouraging its enemies, in overwhelming it

with threatening notes, in recommending a close friendship with the

Septembrists to the representatives of Great Britain, and even in sending

a fleet with provisions and money. If there were to be a Portuguese

renaissance, what would in truth become of England’s commercial supremacy

over that country, and through that country over the whole peninsula?

Accusations of embezzlement, intrigue, and corruption were renewed

against Thomar which served to disconcert his friends. April 8th, 1851,

the duke of Saldanha succeeded in raising two battalions. It was from

Oporto that the signal for the revolt came. It extended from there to

Coimbra and then to Lisbon, when it found a leader even in the prime

minister’s brother, Sylva Cabral. Some personal resentment had ranged

this unhappy personage with the bitterest adversaries and calumniators of

the count of Thomar. Forced finally to hand in his resignation, he was

exiled. The count of Thomar took his departure, with regret at leaving

his reforms uncompleted, and without the wealth, of whose accumulation

his enemies so persistently accused him. As for the queen, she tried

vainly to soften the rough blow which royalty itself had received.

Neither the conquerors of the count of Thomar, nor Lord Palmerston,

nor Sir Henry Seymour, powerfully supported by an English fleet, would

consent to spare her any of the bitterness of her defeat. They signified

their wish that she should solemnly retract all the acts of the preceding

ministry, that she should remove the king from the command of the army,

restore Marshal Saldanha to his post of major-domo, and even accept him

as prime minister in place of the marshal the duke of Terceira, whom

she had been forced to substitute for the count of Thomar. What could

she do against this triumphant power? Donna Maria agreed to everything,

and a few days later Saldanha entered Lisbon amid flowers and cries of

enthusiasm, which the fickle populace lavished upon every victory.[e] In

1852 the charter was revised to suit all parties; direct voting, one of

the chief claims of the radicals, was allowed, and the era of civil war

came to an end.[f]

When, under Saldanha’s more vigorous rule, peace was beginning to settle

over the land, the queen died on November 15th, 1853, at the age of

thirty-five. Her husband Ferdinand of Saxe-Coburg became regent for his

minor son, who mounted the throne of Portugal on September 17th, 1855, as

Dom Pedro V.[186]

PEDRO V (1855-1861 A.D.)

[Sidenote: [1855-1862 A.D.]]

There was still that dream of uniting Spain to Portugal, but when the

proposition was made to Pedro V, he replied: “They think to flatter my

ambition and believe that I shall favour them; they are mistaken. Besides

the reasons of propriety, policy, and honour which should restrain me,

there are considerations which I must not forget--yes, I--if others do

forget them. They do not reflect that if the house of Braganza mounts

the throne of the peninsula, Portugal would be nothing but a Spanish

province, and that our nationality would be absorbed. But I, who am the

first of the Portuguese, the first citizen of a country which occupies

an honourable place in the history of humanity--I should be a faithless

vicar, if I favoured such a project. These people are even our great

enemies, for they prevent many useful enactments which might be for

the common good of the two peoples--for example, the development of

international communication, progress in the material interests of

the countries, and the unity of weights, measures, money, and customs

regulations.”[g]

The only political event of any importance during the reign of Dom Pedro

V, who in 1857 married the princess Stephanie of Hohenzollern, was the

affair of the _Charles et Georges_. This French ship was engaged in what

was undoubtedly the slave-trade, though slightly disguised, off the coast

of Africa, when it was seized by the authorities of Mozambique, and,

in accordance with the laws and treaties against the slave-trade, its

captain, Roussel, was condemned to two years’ imprisonment. The emperor

Napoleon III, glad to have a chance of posing before the French people,

and counting on his close alliance with England, instantly sent a large

fleet to the Tagus under Admiral Lavaud, and demanded compensation,

which, as England showed no signs of assistance, Portugal was compelled

to pay. The whole country, especially the city of Lisbon, was ravaged

by cholera and yellow fever during this reign, itself evidence of the

extreme neglect of all sanitary precautions; and on November 11th, 1861,

the king, who refused to quit the pestilence-stricken capital, died of

cholera, and was speedily followed to the grave by two of his brothers,

Dom Ferdinand and Dom João.[f]

THE REIGN OF LUIZ (1861-1889 A.D.)

The development of affairs in Portugal now took a decidedly liberal

course. The Portuguese government had recognised the new Italian monarchy

already in June, 1861, and the following year King Luiz had married

Princess Maria Pia, the daughter of King Victor Emmanuel. On December

22nd, 1861, Dom Luiz took the oath to the constitution and, since the

people were alarmed at the frequent number of deaths in the royal family,

the government laid before the cortes a law controlling the regency and

another which declared princesses also to be eligible for the throne and

thus put still further off the danger that a descendant of Dom Miguel

might succeed to the throne of Portugal.

[Sidenote: [1862-1868 A.D.]]

Not a single Portuguese bishop appeared at the celebrated council at

Rome in 1862 and, in a document dated July 3rd, the pope had occasion

to complain that in the “lamentable state of the Catholic church in

Portugal” the bishops were too lukewarm and tolerant; he reminded them

that it was their duty to watch over the sheep intrusted to their care

so that--in the language of the curial--“they should not be devoured by

the ravenous beasts which make the surface of the earth unsafe to live

upon.” When some of the clergy took advantage of this to preach against

the government, they were reminded by a proclamation of the minister of

justice (August 2nd) that there were prisons in Portugal for such cases.

The ministers were of liberal colour; in April, 1863, an important law

was passed abolishing the right of primogeniture, an old evil of their

country; in May, 1864, a decision of the second chamber demanded that the

peers’ title should no longer be hereditary.[b]