feverish impatience at Villa Viçosa for news of the great undertaking,
and on the following day, Sunday, December 2nd, Dom Jorge de Mello
arrived, after travelling all night, and hailed the Duke and Duchess as
King and Queen of Portugal. The neighbouring country was devoted to the
duke and his family and joyfully received the news of his accession, and
Affonso de Mello took possession of Elvas, the strongest city in
Portugal, in the name of John IV., without any bloodshed. On December
3rd the new sovereign entered Lisbon amidst general rejoicings, and on
December 15th he was solemnly crowned in the Cathedral of Lisbon. Never
was a sudden revolution more successful. From Oporto to Faro the people
everywhere rose in rebellion; the Spanish arms were torn down; the
Spanish garrisons were expelled, and John IV. was hailed with
acclamation. A Cortes was summoned to meet at Lisbon for the first time
since 1619, and on January 19, 1641, John IV. was declared King of
Portugal, as the rightful heir of Emmanuel “the Fortunate,” and the
whole Cortes swore to obey him, and recognized his eldest son, Dom
Theodosio, as heir to the throne. The new sovereign determined to meet
his loyal people half way, so he declared that his patrimonial estates
were sufficient to meet the expenses of his royal household, and that
the revenues of the Crown lands should for the future be spent on
national needs. He bestowed important posts and orders on the leading
conspirators, and bribed Don Fernando de la Cueva to surrender the
fortress of S. Julian, the only place which resisted his authority. The
last person to be informed of this sudden and successful revolution was
the former king, Philip IV. of Spain and III. of Portugal. His courtiers
all feared to tell him the news, and when it became necessary to break
it to him, the Count-Duke Olivares accomplished the feat with his usual
adroitness. “Sire,” he said to the king with a pleased countenance, “I
have to congratulate you on a most fortunate event. Your Majesty has
just obtained a powerful duchy, and some magnificent estates.” “By what
means,” answered the astonished monarch. “The Duke of Braganza,” said
Olivares, “has madly allowed himself to be seduced by the populace, who
have proclaimed him King of Portugal. His vast estates are therefore
forfeited, and become the property of your Majesty, who, by the
annihilation of this family, will in future reign securely and peaceably
over that kingdom.”
Olivares had every reason to speak with confidence, for there could be
no doubt that Portugal, weakened by her long subjection, could do little
or nothing to resist the power of Spain, if it could be fully employed.
But, fortunately for the independence of Portugal, Spain was distracted
by the Catalan rebellion and foreign war, and was unable to exert her
strength for the time being. Both the new king and his advisers felt,
however, that it would not be wise to count too much or too long upon
this fortunate circumstance, and he sent ambassadors all over Europe to
inform the foreign sovereigns of the revolution, and to beg for their
help and alliance. The old Chancellor Oxenstiern, who governed Sweden
after the death of her warrior monarch, Gustavus Adolphus, during the
minority of Queen Christina, promptly recognized the accession of the
new dynasty, and welcomed it as another breach in the power of Spain.
Charles I. of England, after some delay, also recognized John IV., but
he was too much occupied by his quarrels with the Parliament to pay much
attention to foreign politics. The Dutch received the news of the
revolution with joy, and compared it to their own successful rebellion
against Spain, and they at once concluded a treaty with Portugal, and
promised to send assistance. But it was to France that John IV. looked
with most confidence for help; he remembered the secret emissaries of
Richelieu and their lavish promises; and on January 22, 1641, three days
after his coronation, he sent two of his most accomplished courtiers,
Francisco de Mello and Antonio Coelho de Carvalho, on a special mission
to Paris. They were received with much cordiality by the great cardinal,
who understood how thoroughly Spain must be crippled by the Catalan and
Portuguese rebellions, and, to their surprise, also by the Queen of
France, Anne of Austria, the sister of Philip IV. De Mello ventured to
hint his surprise at this hearty reception, when the queen made a famous
reply: “True it is, that I am the sister of his Catholic Majesty, but
am I not also the mother of the Dauphin?” Their negotiations ended in
the conclusion of an offensive and defensive treaty between France and
Portugal, signed on June 1, 1641, by which the King of France promised
to make no peace with Spain until the independence of Portugal was fully
recognized. These embassies and treaties ended in the arrival of a
strong French fleet, under the command of the Chevalier de Brézé, in the
Tagus, on August 7, 1641, followed by a Dutch fleet, under Admiral
Gylfels, on September 10th.
At this very time, before the first king of the House of Braganza had
been a year upon the throne, a serious conspiracy was in progress, which
had for its aim the re-establishment of the power of Spain. This
conspiracy was almost entirely the work of one man, Dom Sebastião de
Mattos de Noronha, Archbishop of Braga, and Primate of Portugal. This
prelate had not been in any way interfered with by the new government,
but he felt that he had lost the power which he had enjoyed during the
viceroyalty of the Duchess of Mantua, and he had never forgiven the
danger in which his life had been placed on the day of the outbreak of
the revolution in Lisbon. He first engaged the Marquis of Villa Real,
and his son, the Duke of Caminha, to join him. Their family boasted of
royal blood, and ranked next to that of the Duke of Aveiro in the
kingdom of Portugal, and they felt indignant that no important posts had
been conferred upon them for their acquiescence in the revolution. The
marquis was won over by a promise that he should be the Viceroy of
Portugal, if the conspiracy succeeded, and his son threw himself so
heartily into the project that the whole plot is generally known as the
“Caminha conspiracy.” The other chief laymen engaged were the Count of
Armamar, the nephew of the primate, the Count of Ballerais, Lourenço
Peres de Carvalho, keeper of the treasury, who feared to lose the
lucrative post which he had held so long under the Spanish domination,
and Antonio Correa, the confidential clerk of the murdered Vasconcellos,
who had been severely wounded in the outbreak of December 1st. A far
more important ally than any of these noblemen and officials, was the
Grand Inquisitor of Portugal, Dom Sebastião de Tello, Bishop of Leiria,
who was persuaded to promise the “novães Christiãos,” or half-converted
Jews, a cessation of all persecution if they would join in overthrowing
John IV. They, on their part, were ready to assist because the new
monarch had absolutely refused to make any concessions to them for fear
of offending the Pope. The arrangements were soon made; it was settled
that the “novães Christiãos” were to set fire to the palace on August
5th; that the king was to be stabbed in the confusion which would ensue;
and that the Duchess of Mantua should be released from her convent, and
again placed in power. The Count-Duke Olivares gladly acquiesced in all
the schemes of the treacherous archbishop, and despatches giving all the
details of the plot were entrusted to a converted Jew named Baese, to
send to Madrid. These despatches fell into the hands of Marquis of
Ayamonte, a Spanish nobleman, and a relation of the new Queen of
Portugal, who was acting as intermediary between John IV. and his
brother-in-law, the Duke of Medina Sidonia, and the marquis promptly
sent them to Lisbon. Forewarned was forearmed, and on August 5th, the
day fixed for the rising, all the leaders of the conspiracy were
arrested. Baese confessed, when put to the torture, and on August 29th
all the noblemen concerned, including the Marquis of Villa Real and the
Duke of Caminha, were publicly executed at Lisbon, while the Primate and
the Grand Inquisitor were condemned to imprisonment for life.
This severe punishment did not check the ardour of the friends of Spain,
who were chiefly officials and discontented nobles, and numbered few
adherents among the people, and in 1643 a new plot was discovered,
headed by Francisco de Lucena, Secretary of State, who was promptly
executed. In spite of these difficulties, the government managed to get
together an army; it was neither well-disciplined nor well-equipped, but
popular enthusiasm took the place of experience, and on May 26, 1642,
the Portuguese under the command of Mathias de Alboquerque, defeated a
Spanish army under the Baron de Molingen at Montijo. This victory, which
was loudly compared to that of Aljubarrota, was, in truth, of no great
importance from a military point of view, but it invigorated the spirit
of the Portuguese people, and encouraged them to persist in fighting for
their independence. From every quarter of the globe news arrived that
the old Portuguese possessions had declared for John IV. Mozambique, Goa
and the possessions in India, Malacca, and Macao, all threw off the
domination of Spain, and prepared to send money and men to Lisbon; while
Brazil, the most valuable possession of the Portuguese crown, since the
Dutch had taken possession of the Asiatic trade, began a gallant
struggle for the House of Braganza, a struggle which brought about a war
with the Dutch in Europe, and lost the Portuguese the assistance which
had been promised them in 1641 by the arrival of the fleet under
Gylfels.
The story of the great dominion acquired for the Dutch in South America
by Count Maurice of Nassau has been told; and the wealth received by the
Dutch West India Company from his efforts was only inferior to that of
the Dutch East India Company. The Count had managed matters on a large
scale; he had built or strengthened forty-five fortresses; he commanded
a regular army of three thousand men and a fleet of ninety ships; and he
sent over to Holland no less than twenty-five thousand chests of sugar a
year. But in spite of his success he recognized that this dominion
depended on the sword; the Dutch were not good colonists, for they never
thought of making their homes in Brazil, but always of returning some
day to Holland; and all the European settlers and planters in the five
captainships held by the Dutch were of Portuguese descent. Further, the
native Brazilians were on more friendly terms with the Portuguese than
the Dutch owing to the labours of the Jesuits among them. Count Maurice
of Nassau saw therefore that it was impossible to oust the Portuguese
and replace them by Dutch settlers, so he established a dominion,
resembling that of the English in India, which rested for its keystone
upon the military possession of the country and the maintenance of
strong garrisons in the various fortresses. It need hardly be said that
the Portuguese of all the various captainships freely communicated with
each other, and so wise and prudent was the administration of Count
Maurice that the Portuguese settlers in his captainships were envied by
those who remained under the power of Spain.
But this attitude of mind changed, when the news arrived of the
successful revolution of December, 1640. Dom Antonio Telles da Silva,
the Portuguese Governor-General at once proclaimed King John IV. at San
Salvador, and the Portuguese in the Dutch captainships felt an immediate
desire to join their brethren. Matters of European policy however
prevented them from striking a blow at once; John IV. could not afford
to make enemies of the Dutch, and one of the terms of his alliance with
them was that matters should remain exactly as they were in Brazil for
ten years. However the Portuguese colonists had not to wait ten years
owing to the ungrateful behaviour of the Dutch themselves. The Dutch
West India Company could not appreciate the political ideas of Maurice
of Nassau; these traders wanted large profits and not a great empire;
they were disgusted at the amounts spent on the fortresses and the army,
and in 1644 they recalled the great man whose ideas were too grand for
them to fathom. Immediately on his departure, matters went from bad to
worse in the Dutch captainships. His successors, a committee of
merchants, neglected the fortresses, and aroused the hatred of the
Portuguese sugar planters by their exactions, and though they sent home
an unparalleled amount of sugar and money for one year, it was the only
year they remained in office; for in 1645 the whole of the Portuguese
colonists in the Dutch captainships burst into insurrection. It was in
vain for the Dutch authorities to complain to Dom Antonio Telles da
Silva; he answered that it was not his fault if the Portuguese revolted;
they did not do so under his orders or directions; and the Portuguese
ambassador at the Hague made the same assertion in the name of the king.
Seldom has an insurrection been so rapidly successful; Antonio Moniz
Barreto and Antonio Teixeira de Mello speedily reduced the province of
Maranham, and João Fernandes Vieira, a self-made man and originally a
butcher’s boy, occupied the whole of the province of Pernambuco, and
drove the Dutch into their capital. The neglected fortresses were easily
taken, and soon the Dutch held no place, but the Recife. It was in vain
for Holland to declare war against Portugal, and to send great armaments
to Brazil; the national movement was too strong to be resisted; the
Dutch won some naval victories but could gain no fresh foothold in the
country, and in 1655 the island of the Recife was abandoned after a ten
years’ siege, and a King of Portugal once more reigned over the whole of
Brazil.
Great as was the triumph of the revolt in Brazil, it at first filled the
heart of the King of Portugal with alarm, for it deprived him of an
ally in Europe on whose valuable assistance he had firmly relied.
Everywhere he looked in vain for help. Sweden could do nothing; England
was torn by civil war; and in France his ally, Cardinal Richelieu, had
been succeeded as supreme minister by Cardinal Mazarin. John IV.
instinctively felt that he could not depend upon Mazarin, who would
certainly throw him over, if a peace should be made between France and
Spain, and in his despair he made an offer to resign his throne to a
French prince, who should bring ample assistance from France. The nature
of this offer is best told in a letter from Mazarin to the Duke of
Longueville, dated October 4, 1647. “The King of Portugal,” wrote the
Cardinal, “after having maturely considered the state of affairs, is
disposed to resign his crown and retire to the Azores, and to offer his
kingdom to any one whom the Queen of France shall select, believing
himself strong enough to have such a person recognized as king and
obeyed by all the people of Portugal. He only desires that the person
selected should be a prince who may expect powerful help from France,
and that he shall have the means to make such an alliance with his
eldest son, as may eventually secure the succession of the kingdom to
the latter. He proposes M. the Duke of Orleans and Mademoiselle, or M.
the Prince, or you and your daughter.”[29] This strange offer of
abdication came to nothing, and it may well be doubted if John IV. would
have had the power to introduce a foreign prince in this way; and if he
had succeeded, Mazarin would have abandoned Portugal with equal
certainty even if a French prince had been on its throne. Though this
scheme failed, John IV. still hankered after help from France; he
offered his daughter, Donna Catherine de Braganza with a large dowry
both to the Duke of Beaufort and to the young Louis XIV., and he also
promised large sums of money to the avaricious cardinal for his own use.
Years passed on, occupied with these various schemes and entreaties for
assistance, and it was not until John IV. threatened to make peace at
any price with Philip IV. that Mazarin’s trusted agent, the Chevalier de
Jant, signed an offensive and defensive alliance with Portugal on
September 7, 1655.[30]
[Illustration: JOHN IV.
(_From a Print of the Period._)]
This behaviour of France did not seriously concern Portugal so long as
the war between France and Spain continued to occupy the chief strength
of the Spanish armies; but on all sides, John IV. saw that he was
regarded abroad as a temporary monarch, ruling only until Spain had an
opportunity to crush him. From England he could get no help; Cromwell
showed his contempt for him and for the received principles of
international law, by ordering the trial and execution of Dom Pantaleone
de Sá, a lad of nineteen, and the brother of the Portuguese ambassador
Rodrigo de Sá, for murder and riot in London;[31] and his refusal to
surrender Prince Rupert and Prince Maurice in 1650 to Admiral Blake,
caused that gallant admiral to capture his ships and pillage his
colonies. On the other hand, the people of Portugal stood staunchly by
their legitimate monarch. Brazil recognized his authority and sent him
what help she could; the Indian and Chinese possessions contributed what
they could in money, and his great admiral Dom Salvador Correa de Sá e
Benevides defeated several Spanish fleets, and conquered Angola and the
former Portuguese possessions on the African coast.
In the midst of these perplexities, expecting daily to hear of the
conclusion of a peace between France and Spain, which should leave the
latter power free to crush him, King John IV., the first king of the
House of Braganza, died on November 6, 1656. His eldest son Dom
Theodosio, whom he had created Prince of Brazil, had predeceased him in
1653, and his heir was a boy of thirteen, weakly both in body and in
intellect. John IV. was not a great man; he is no more to be compared
with John “the Great” than the victory of Montijo is to that of
Aljubarrota; but his name and accession mark a great event. Hesitating
and undecided by nature, all his strength came from his queen; but for
her, he would never have been king of Portugal. But the revolution which
placed this mediocre man upon the throne is both interesting and
important; it shows how impossible it is for a nation which has once
been great to acquiesce in the loss of its independence. The heroic age
of Portugal was indeed past, but the victory of Montijo and the
insurrection in Brazil show that the people had recovered from the
inertness and sloth which had permitted Philip II. to establish the
power of Spain over them. The struggle with Spain was not concluded;
the hardest part of the contest was to come, yet the people, if not
their chosen monarch, never dreamed of failure. New and national
institutions arose under the direction of João Pinto Ribeiro to take the
place of the effete institutions of the Sixty Years’ Captivity; councils
of war and the colonies were organized at Lisbon; ships were built and
armies raised; new tribunals such as the “Junta do Commercio” were
erected. Nor were men of letters backward in encouraging the revival of
independence; Francisco de Sá de Menezes the poet, Antonio Vieira the
preacher, and Jacinto Freire de Andrade, the biographer of Dom João de
Castro, all showed the spirit of patriotism, and it is not unworthy of
notice that the first Portuguese newspaper, the _Gazeta de Lisboa_ was
established in 1641. The whole course of the Revolution of 1640 shows
that the people of Portugal in the seventeenth century were not unworthy
of their ancestors, and that they had learnt much, because they had
suffered much, during the “Sixty Years’ Captivity.”
[Illustration: text decoration]
[Illustration: text decoration]
XV.
THE ENGLISH ALLIANCE.
The death of John IV., and the accession of the boy Affonso VI., proved
to be anything but a disaster to the House of Braganza. The queen became
sole regent, and this energetic and able woman, who had always been the
courageous supporter of her weak husband, determined to prosecute the
war against Spain with redoubled vigour. She, too, hankered after a
close alliance with France, and distrusted the promises of Mazarin; but
she felt that it was no good to wait for allies until Spain was at
liberty to attack her, and now ordered the Portuguese army to take the
field. Hitherto, since the battle of Montijo, the war had languished,
and had been confined to skirmishes on the frontier, but the
queen-regent determined to renounce this policy and to invade Spain. Her
enterprize was not crowned with success, and the siege of Badajoz which
she attempted resulted in failure and defeat. It was obvious that the
Portuguese army, though full of gallant and loyal soldiers, was quite
undisciplined and unfit for any serious operation of war. This being the
case, the queen got her ambassador at Paris, the Count of Soure, to
engage Frederick, Count Schomberg, the most famous military adventurer
of his time, to enter her service, and to bring with him eighty officers
and four hundred non-commissioned officers, to organize and discipline
the Portuguese army. Schomberg, whose strange fate it was to serve under
nearly every leading monarch in Europe, and to die an English duke at
the battle of the Boyne, gladly accepted the queen’s offer. Like the
Count of Lippe-Buckeburg and Marshal Beresford in later days, he found
that the Portuguese made excellent soldiers, brave and amenable to
discipline, and the result of his labours appeared in the great victory
won by Dom Antonio Luis de Menezes, Count of Cantanhede, over the
Spaniards under Don Luiz de Haro, at Elvas, on January 14, 1659.
[Illustration: CATHERINE OF BRAGANZA.
(_From an Engraving by Faithorne._)]