in Brazil during the same period, and the comparison shows clearly of
how much greater value is a colony than a dominion conquered and held by
the sword. The loyalty of the Portuguese colonists was shown by their
expulsion of the Dutch with hardly any assistance from the home
government, and the bonds of kinship enabled the Portuguese to maintain
their power in South America without the establishment and maintenance
of powerful armies. Indeed, one of the most valuable lessons taught by
the history of the daughter country, is that the less interference the
mother country makes in the affairs of its colony, the better it will be
for both countries. The material prosperity of Brazil in the seventeenth
century was due to the fact that during that period the colony was
essentially agricultural, and that there was therefore time for a large
and industrious population to collect, before gold was discovered in
large quantities. The production of tobacco and sugar was the staple
employment of the inhabitants, and the rapid development of these
resources caused the growth of a large fleet, not only to carry these
commodities to Europe, but to import the thousands of negro slaves, who
worked in the plantations. And it is here well to remark that at this
time the Portuguese settlers made no attempt to enslave the native
Brazilians, who were protected by the Jesuits and by edicts of the king,
but considered it perfectly just and right to make use of negro slaves.
This wise behaviour and the conduct of the Jesuits, who laboured
assiduously among the natives, placed them on friendly terms with their
conquerors, who soon began to intermarry with them. Owing to this
friendly relationship the interior of the continent was gradually opened
up, and at last gold was discovered in large quantities. It was
fortunate for the Portuguese that it had not been discovered before, for
otherwise they would certainly have lost their colony during the “Sixty
Years’ Captivity,” but at this time they were too strongly planted to be
expelled, and had besides the potent protection of the English navy. The
first discovery of gold on a large scale took place in 1699, and the
arrival of the first cargo at an opportune juncture gave King Pedro the
means he required for setting his army on foot. It must be remembered
that at this time there were no Californian or Australian gold fields,
and that the discovery of gold in Brazil was of more importance than it
would be now. King Pedro prepared to work this source of wealth in a
prudent manner; he did not attempt to make the gold fields a royal
monopoly, which the independent inhabitants of the captainships would
not have allowed, but demanded one-fifth of the total registered yearly
export. This left enough profit for the gold searchers, and as the
yearly revenue of the crown of Portugal from this source was at least
£300,000, it may be imagined that the kings of Portugal were well able
to maintain a splendid court at Lisbon in spite of the loss of the
Asiatic trade. No story is more interesting than this growth of Brazil
into the most valuable possession of Portugal; the land, which was at
first inhabited by convicts, surpassed in wealth the dominion won by the
noblest sons of the country.
[Illustration: text decoration]
[Illustration: text decoration]
XVI.
PORTUGAL IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. THE MARQUIS OF POMBAL.
The eighteenth century exhibits fewer features of interest than any
other throughout the whole history of Portugal. The country remained in
a political sense a mere province of England, and was bound by the
Methuen treaty to take a part in all the wars in which England was
engaged, and the importance of this arrangement became more and more
evident, when France and Spain were united by the close connection
brought about by the “Pacte de Famille.” The commercial relation was the
cause of more intimacy between the people of the two nationalities than
the political alliance, for it brought, as has been said, English
merchants and English capital into Portugal. But notwithstanding this
double bond of union the two allies remained entirely separate. The
Portuguese remained a race of bigoted Catholics, and the English made no
efforts to convert them. This difference of religion prevented any close
alliance between the reigning houses of the two countries, such as had
been brought about by the marriage of Charles II. to Catherine of
Braganza, for any marriage with a Catholic princess would have been
rejected by the statesmen and the people of England. While therefore
existing as an independent nation under the protection of England,
Portugal maintained its own national characteristics, and remained in
other respects more like Spain than any other country. The little state
was no longer in the vanguard of the march of European civilization; it
felt that its great days were past, and was content to remain in
stagnant quiet. For this reason, if for no other, the story of Portugal
loses its interest in the eighteenth century, for it was illustrated by
no great feat of arms, no national revolution or advance of national
progress, and it was at this time that in every point of view, literary
as well as political, it fell behind the other European nations. It was
inevitable that it should be so; a nation which depended on another for
its political independence, was not likely to produce heroes. It is
strange that the influence of English example did not give rise to a
movement for political freedom and representative institutions, but it
was not so; the monarchy remained absolutist and was prevented from
needing the support of the people by the wealth it derived from the gold
and the diamond mines of Brazil, and the Cortes was not once summoned
throughout the century. Yet this absolutism was not an unmixed evil, for
it produced a great minister, the Portuguese Richelieu, in the Marquis
of Pombal.
The reign of John V., the eldest son of Pedro II., who at once assumed
the royal power from the regent Catherine, was, though it commenced in
war, remarkable for the long continuance of peace. The War of the
Spanish Succession was still raging in the peninsula, and the first
campaign after the accession of the new monarch was marked by the great
defeat inflicted on the English and Portuguese by the French and
Spaniards at Almanza, on April 15, 1707, a battle in which it chanced
that the English were commanded by a Frenchman, Henri de Ruvigny, Lord
Galway, and the French by an Englishman James Fitz-James, Duke of
Berwick. Nevertheless John V., who was a young man of seventeen, in
spite of this disaster, kept true to the English alliance and the
Methuen treaty, and left the management of affairs in the hands of his
father’s minister and friend João de Mascarenhas, Duke of Cadaval. This
able statesman bound the king more surely to the Anglo-Austrian alliance
by marrying him to the Archduchess Marianna, daughter of the late
Emperor Leopold I., who was escorted to Lisbon by a powerful English
fleet under Admiral Sir George Byng, in 1708. The war continued,
however, to go steadily against the allies, for the Spaniards had
rallied enthusiastically around their Bourbon king, Philip V.; and on
May 7, 1709, a Portuguese army under the Marquis of Fronteira was
defeated on the banks of the Caia, by the Spaniards under the Marquis de
Bay. Far more serious was the capture of Rio de Janeiro, by the French
admiral, Duguay-Trouin, on September 23, 1711, which cut off all
supplies from Brazil for more than a year. The war languished all over
Europe after the accession of the Archduke Charles as Emperor, and on
February 6, 1715, nearly two years after the treaty of Utrecht, peace
was signed between Spain and Portugal, at Madrid, by the Secretary of
State, Diogo de Mendonça, Count of Corte-Real.
As soon as John V. began to mark out a policy for himself, after the
death of the Duke of Cadaval, he showed his distaste for war. He refused
to join in the war against Cardinal Alberoni, the famous minister of
Spain, and avoided as far as possible any combination which might lead
to the rupture of peace. The only expedition he sent out was a fleet,
which he equipped at the Pope’s bidding to join the Venetians in their
struggle against the Turks, and which, under the command of Lopo Furtado
de Mendonça, Count of Rio Grande, defeated the Mohammedans off Cape
Matapan in 1717. The main effort of King John’s foreign policy was to
combine a firm adherence to the Methuen treaty with friendly relations
with Spain, by which he hoped to avoid war. For this purpose he always
kept on the best of terms with the English ambassadors at Lisbon,
notably with Lord Tyrawley; and in 1729 he closely allied himself with
the new dynasty in Spain. His daughter, Donna Maria Josepha de Braganza,
was married to Don Ferdinand, eldest son of Philip V., who succeeded to
the throne of Spain as Ferdinand VI.; while the Spanish infanta, Donna
Marianna Victoria de Bourbon, was married to the heir-apparent of
Portugal, Dom Joseph. With the papacy John V. remained on the best of
terms; he lent enormous sums of money to successive popes out of the
wealth of Brazil, and in return received rewards, which were of no real
value, but which were such as he highly esteemed. Lisbon was divided
into two dioceses; the Archbishopric of Lisbon was erected into a
patriarchate; the patriarch was allowed to officiate in vestments
resembling those of the Pope, and his canons in imitation of those of
the cardinals; and, finally, in the last year of his reign, the title of
“Fidelissimus,” or “Most Faithful,” was conferred upon the kings of
Portugal, to correspond with those of “Most Christian” and “Most
Catholic,” attributed to the kings of France and Spain respectively.
These are the only points of interest, which mark John V.’s long reign
of forty-four years, and as the last thirty-five of these years were
years of peace, it may well be said, happy is the reign which has but
little history. But it must not be thought that he therefore left no
impression upon his country. On the contrary, he did much to imprint his
name on its history. He showed a tendency, like so many other princes of
the eighteenth century, to imitate Louis XIV. He spent much money in
building, and among his most famous efforts in this direction are the
patriarchal church at Lisbon, the superb convent at Mafra, and the great
aqueduct which still supplies Lisbon with water. He was a munificent
patron of literature and the arts, and founded the Academy of History at
Lisbon in 1720. He loved music and the theatre, and spent great sums in
importing singers and dancers from Italy and actors from France. He took
an intelligent interest in the administration of his kingdom, and for
the better despatch of business formed three secretaryships of state for
the home, foreign and war, and colonial and naval, departments instead
of one, and he took a particular pride in his navy, and founded the
naval arsenal of Lisbon. One other fact also may be recorded to his
credit, that in 1725 he obtained a Bull from Pope Benedict XIII.,
allowing all prisoners of the Inquisition to employ counsel to defend
them, and ordering that all sentences of the Holy Office should be
communicated to and confirmed by the king in council. This excellent
monarch had a paralytic stroke in 1742, and for the last eight years of
his reign, until his death in 1750, the kingdom was governed by the
queen, and the Cardinal da Cunha, Patriarch of Lisbon.
The reign of King Joseph, which lasted from 1750 to 1777, is made famous
by the administration of the Marquis of Pombal, the greatest minister
who ever ruled Portugal, and one of the greatest of eighteenth-century
statesmen. The king, though a man of real ability himself, interfered
but little in politics, and left the management of affairs entirely in
the hands of the minister, whose greatness he was the first to perceive.
The relationship between the monarch and his subject resembles that
between Louis XIII. and Richelieu, and does honour to both parties. In
everything--in his great internal administrative reforms, in his
financial schemes, in the reorganization of the army, in the abolition
of slavery, and in the struggle with the Jesuits, which ended in the
suppression of that famous order--King Joseph supported his minister.
Pombal broke the power of the nobility, and made the king more absolute
than ever, and he exalted the royal prerogative, while using it for his
measures of reform; while, in return, the king maintained the minister
in power, in spite of the vehement protests and wily intrigues of the
Roman Catholic clergy, and the opposition of his wife.
Sebastião José de Carvalho e Mello, better known by his later title of
the Marquis of Pombal, was a man of more than fifty years of age when
his patron succeeded to the throne, and he himself entered office. His
father, Emmanuel de Carvalho, was a country gentleman of moderate
wealth, but by his mother, Theresa de Mendonça, he was related to some
of the noblest families of Portugal, to the Almeidas, the Mellos and the
Mendonças. He was born at Soure, on May 13, 1699, and after receiving
his education at the University of Coimbra, he entered the army as a
private. He found neither pleasure nor profit in a military career in
time of peace, and after leaving the service, he led the life of a man
about town in Lisbon. His handsome face, great bodily strength, and
proficiency in athletic exercises, made him popular in all circles of
society in the capital, in spite of his comparative poverty, and he
especially distinguished himself, if distinction it may be called, among
the “Mohocks,” who infested the streets of Lisbon. There seemed no
prospect of his ever making any mark in life, when in 1733 he made
himself the talk of the town by his elopement with, or rather his
abduction of, a lady of the highest rank, Donna Theresa de Noronha,
niece of the Count of Arcos. His wife’s family were at first most
indignant, but at last they relented, and in 1739 the bravo of the
streets of Lisbon was, by their influence, appointed ambassador to the
Court of England. It is some consolation for men of advanced years to
remember that the greatest of Portuguese ministers was forty years of
age before he ever received official employment. In London Sebastião de
Carvalho turned over a new leaf, and devoted himself to the serious
study of politics, and he carefully investigated the English system of
government and the causes of England’s commercial prosperity. From
London he was removed to the Court of Vienna in 1745, and he there
married, on the death of his first wife, a daughter of Count Daun, the
famous Austrian general. On this occasion King John V. was pleased out
of compliment to the victor of Kolin, to grant Sebastião de Carvalho
letters of nobility, which entitled him to the prefix Dom; and in 1750
the ambassador was recalled to Portugal and appointed Secretary of State
for Foreign Affairs. While he was on his way home John V. died, and when
Carvalho reached Lisbon King Joseph had already ascended the throne.
[Illustration: THE MARQUIS OF POMBAL.
(_From a Print in the British Museum._)]
At first the new Secretary of State held no higher rank than his
colleagues, but his abilities soon became evident to the king, and his
conduct at the time of the great earthquake of Lisbon gave him unbounded
ascendency over the mind of the monarch. This terrible catastrophe took
place on November 1, 1755. The population of the city was collected in
the churches listening to the solemn services of All Saints Day, when
the first shock of earthquake was felt; it was followed at intervals by
three others, which laid half the city in ruins. Most of the unfortunate
people, who managed to escape from the falling houses and churches,
rushed to the quays. But the disturbance affected the sea also; an
immense tidal wave swept the quays, and washed off thousands of the
fugitives, while the ships in the river were driven on shore. No element
of horror was missing, for fires broke out in all parts of the wrecked
city, and the scum of the populace rushed hither and thither, murdering
and robbing those whom the calamities of nature had spared. At this
fearful juncture the king and Carvalho showed the greatest courage and a
most unshaken firmness of demeanour. To the demands of the monarch as to
what was to be done, the minister answered laconically, “Bury the dead
and feed the living,” and for eight days and nights he lived in his
carriage, driving from place to place, whithersoever his presence was
needed, and repressing disorder. The news of the disaster spread all
over Europe; at least thirty thousand people, according to some accounts
one hundred thousand people, lost their lives, and foreign nations were
not backward in assisting the remnant of the people of Lisbon. In
England the pity felt was keener than anywhere else, owing to the close
relationship between the two nations, and large sums of money and great
quantities of provisions were promptly despatched from London to
Portugal. The catastrophe made an extraordinary impression on the minds
of all contemporaries; in London over twenty accounts were published
within the year, apart from notices in magazines, and Voltaire in his
“Candide” gave a full and, on the whole, very accurate description of
it.
Carvalho’s energy at this time established his reputation with the king,
and he felt able to commence his campaigns against the nobility and the
Jesuits. In order that he might have his time free for matters of such
importance he was made Prime Minister in 1756, with power over all
departments of administration, and his friend, Luis da Cunha, was
appointed Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs in his place. Of his
long series of administrative reforms, and his efforts to improve the
condition of the country, which were spread over his government of
twenty-seven years, it will be better to speak as a whole; but a special
description must here be given of his campaign against the Jesuits,
which brought about the suppression of that famous order. It is not
necessary to speculate on the various motives, which induced Carvalho to
attack the Jesuits, but the principal cause lay in the fact that they
were wealthy and powerful, and therefore a dangerous force in an
absolutist monarchy. It must be remembered that the Jesuits of the
eighteenth century formed a very different class of men to their
predecessors. They were no longer intrepid missionary pioneers, but a
corporation of wealthy traders, who made use of their spiritual position
to further the cause of their commerce. They had done a great work in
America by opening up the interior of Brazil and converting the natives,
and their administration of Paraguay, one of the most interesting
achievements in the whole history of Christianity, was without doubt a
blessing to the people. But by the middle of the eighteenth century they
had gone too far. It was one thing to convert the natives of Brazil, and
another to absorb much of the wealth of that country, in doing which
they prejudiced not only the Crown, but the Portuguese people, whom
they kept from settling in the territory under their rule. Whether it
was a sufficient reason for Carvalho to attack the order because it was
wealthy and powerful, and had departed from its primitive simplicity, is
a question for every one to decide for themselves, but that this was the
reason, and that the various excuses alleged by the admirers of the
great minister are without foundation, is an undoubted fact. On
September 19, 1757, the first important blow was struck, when the king’s
Jesuit confessor was dismissed, and all Jesuits were forbidden to come
to Court. Carvalho, in the name of the King of Portugal, also formally
denounced the order at Rome, and Benedict XIV., the then Pope, appointed
the Cardinal de Saldanha, a friend of the minister, Visitor and Reformer
of the Society of Jesus. The cardinal did not take long in making up his
mind, and May 15, 1758, he forbade the Jesuits to engage in trade.
An attempt upon the king’s life, which shortly followed this measure,
gave the minister the opportunity he wanted for urging the suppression
of the famous society. The history of the Tavora plot, which culminated
in this attempt is one of the most mysterious affairs in the whole
history of Portugal, and from the many contradictory accounts which have
been published, it is almost impossible to arrive at the exact truth.
But it is certain that the Jesuits and the nobles had no reason to love
the king and his minister, and it is hardly to be wondered at that their
opposition resulted in violent measures. The great nobles had been
systematically deprived of all political power since the accession of
King Joseph, for Carvalho, like Richelieu, distrusted them, and
preferred to employ men of his own rank in life or of bourgeois descent
in public business in preference to noblemen and their relations. The
three leaders of the plot were the Duke of Aveiro, a descendant of John
II., and one of the greatest noblemen in Portugal, the Marquis of
Tavora, who had filled with credit the post of Governor-general of
India, and the Count of Atouguia, a descendant of the gallant Dom Luis
de Athaide, the defender of Goa; but the heart and soul of the
conspiracy was the Marchioness of Tavora, a beautiful and ambitious
woman, who was bitterly offended because her husband had not been made a
duke. The confessor of this lady was a Jesuit named Gabriel Malagrida,
who is by some authors treated as a half-insane fanatic, and by others
as a dangerous intriguer, incensed by the attacks of Carvalho upon his
order. Whether Malagrida was innocent or guilty, whether he was mad or
sane, whether the Tavoras were incited by religious or political
motives, or merely by a desire for private revenge, whether all these
noblemen, and especially the Duke of Aveiro, were not merely accused in
order to allow Carvalho to strike a blow at the nobility, whether,
finally, all those who were punished were victims of the minister or
really guilty, are questions which cannot be determined here. The
evidence on all sides is most contradictory, and all that is certain is
that the king was fired at and wounded on the night of September 3,
1758; and that in the following January, the three noblemen who have
been mentioned, the Marchioness of Tavora, Malagrida with seven other
Jesuits, and many other individuals of all ranks of life, were arrested
as implicated in the attempt to murder. The laymen had but a short
trial, and, together with the marchioness, were publicly executed ten
days after their arrest.
King Joseph certainly believed that the real culprits had been seized,
and in his gratitude he created Carvalho, Count of Oeyras, and
encouraged him to pursue his campaign against the Jesuits. On January
19, 1759, the estates belonging to the society were sequestrated; and on
September 3rd, all its members were expelled from Portugal, and
directions were sent to the viceroys of India and Brazil to expel them
likewise. The news of this bold stroke was received with admiration
everywhere, except at Rome, and it became noised abroad that a great
minister was ruling in Portugal. The elder Pitt, who was anxious that
Portugal should join in the Seven Years’ War, publicly acknowledged the
ability of the Count of Oeyras, and at his demand apologized for the
infraction of the law of nations, which had been committed by the
English Admiral Boscawen’s attack upon the French squadron under La
Clue, in the Portuguese harbour of Lagos.
The Count of Oeyras had no desire to take part in the general war raging
in Europe, and refused to accede to Pitt’s wishes, until the King of
Spain, according to the arrangement of the “Pacte de Famille,” attacked
Portugal, as being a declared enemy of the Franco-Spanish alliance owing
to the Methuen treaty with England. The Spaniards under the Marquis of
Sarria invaded the northern provinces of Portugal in 1762, and captured
in rapid succession the towns of Miranda, Braganza, and Almeida. Then
the Count of Oeyras appealed to the English statesman, and not in vain.
English soldiers and munitions of war were at once despatched to Lisbon,
and, at the special request of the minister, a general in English pay,
the Count of Lippe-Buckeburg, with some English officers and sergeants,
were sent to reorganize the Portuguese army as Schomberg had done in the
century before. The Count of Lippe, assisted by the energy of the
Portuguese minister, quickly formed the Portuguese troops into a
disciplined army, and on the arrival of Brigadier-General John Burgoyne,
a gallant cavalry officer, who had distinguished himself at Belle-isle,
but who is better known in English history from his surrender at
Saratoga, to take command of the English troops, the allied army
advanced. They were uniformly successful; the Spaniards lost all their
former advantages; they were defeated at Valencia de Alcantara, where
the English took three standards and a Spanish general; and on October
5th Burgoyne stormed the entrenched camp of Villa Velha, and ended the
campaign. The Spaniards were now quite ready to give in, and on February
10, 1763, peace was signed between Portugal and Spain. The Count of
Oeyras had learnt a lesson from the contrast between the two campaigns,
and when Burgoyne and his English soldiers returned to England, the
Count of Lippe-Buckeburg was requested to remain, and he not only
reorganized the Portuguese army, but put all the Portuguese fortresses
on the Spanish frontier, and especially Elvas, in thorough repair,
according to the received ideas of fortification.