Chapter II (4)

By another edict all gunpowder, artillery, fire-arms, and weapons of every kind, in the possession of merchants or other individuals, were ordered to be carried to the arsenal, and deposited there till the owner having obtained a licence for his ship to sail, should want to embark them. ♦OBS. PORT. P. 249.♦ As soon as they were delivered in, the best pieces of cannon were spiked and the musquets disabled. Such precautions were now become more needful for many reasons. May is the month in which[23] provisions are always dearest in Portugal; and at this time Buonaparte’s plots against Spain were drawing toward their completion, and the ferment which had arisen in that country extended to Portugal. The Spanish troops from Alemtejo were all removed to Lisbon, and so divided as to be completely within the power of the French; and to amuse the Portugueze people with hopes, reports were circulated that the contribution was remitted, and that the sequestered property would be restored. Halcyon days were now to succeed. ♦OBS. PORT. P. 262.♦ There was to be nothing but prosperity for Portugal. A deputation had been sent to Bayonne to offer the homage of their countrymen to Buonaparte. The persons appointed for this were either those who were thought dangerous in their own country, or useful in France. They were the Marquises of Penalva, Marialva, Valença, and Abrantes, father and son; the Counts of Sabugal and Arganil; Viscount de Barbacena, the Inquisitor-General, the Bishop of Coimbra, the Prior of Avis, D. Nuno Caetano Alves Pereira de Mello, D. Lourenço de Lima, Joaquim Alberto George, and Antonio Thomas da Silva Leitam. On the Prince’s birth-day, when the streets were strongly patroled lest that anniversary should call forth any expression of popular feeling, a letter from ♦LETTER FROM THE DEPUTATION.♦ this deputation was made public. It assured the Portugueze, that if any thing could equal the genius of the Emperor Napoleon, it was the elevation of his soul, and the generosity of his principles: that with a truly paternal affability he had manifested those principles in his use of the rights which circumstances gave him. His army had not entered Portugal as conquerors. He bore no enmity to their Prince, nor to the royal family; he sought only to connect them with the rest of Europe in the great continental system, of which they were to be the last and closing link, for he could not tolerate on the continent an English colony. It depended upon the Portugueze themselves to show, by their conduct in this respect, whether they were now worthy still to form a nation, or must be annexed to a neighbour, from whom so many causes tended to divide them. The Emperor knew and lamented the privations which, in common with the continent and America, Portugal endured during the temporary interruption of her commerce; but this was the consequence of a struggle, the result of which would amply compensate for them. The weight of the contributions had impressed his heart, and his goodness had dictated a promise that it should be reduced to just limits, compatible with their means. These intentions of the Emperor, the deputies said, would, they doubted not, excite in the Portugueze the greatest gratitude. They meantime would continue to fulfil near the person of the Emperor, and conformably to his orders, the duties of a mission which had no difficulties, since the goodness of Napoleon united with his wisdom to simplify their dearest interests.

♦JUNOT MADE DUKE OF ABRANTES.♦

Upon the publication of this letter, the heads of the first corporate bodies were made to understand, that they must wait upon Junot, whom Buonaparte had created Duke of Abrantes, and request him to transmit the expression of their gratitude to the Emperor for the gracious reception with which their deputies had been honoured. The Dean of the Patriarchal Church spoke in the name of the clergy; the _Desembargador do Paço_ and High Chancellor for the magistracy: both these speeches were remodelled by the intrusive government, and then printed; so that men who were groaning over the miseries of their country, were made appear to that country as if they crouched to lick the feet that trampled upon her. The Conde da Ega, one of the most devoted partizans of France, spoke for the nobles. Junot in reply told them, that Portugal, under the protection of the great Napoleon, would soon be replaced in that rank to which a Vasco da Gama and a Joam de Castro had raised it by their conquests; a Luiz da Cunha and a Pombal by their policy; and he desired that a Junta of the Three Estates might be assembled forthwith, to express the wishes of all classes in a manner worthy of the nation, and worthy of the monarch to whom they addressed themselves. ♦HE HOPES TO BE MADE KING OF PORTUGAL.♦ The intention of this meeting was, that the Portugueze should request to have Junot for their king, a business which Ega was to manage in the Junta. This intrigue was unexpectedly counteracted by another, of which Carrion de Nizas, a French officer of cavalry, M. Verdier, a French subject born and always resident in Portugal, and the Desembargador Francisco Duarte Coelho, are said to have been the prime movers. Carrion de Nizas had the reputation of being the best informed man in the French army. M. Verdier was a man of great knowledge and extraordinary talents, fond of the country in which he had passed his life, but too enlightened not to perceive and lament the abuses by which it had been debilitated and degraded. He was too far advanced in years, and too wise a man, to wish for those sudden and violent revolutions, of which the evil is great, certain, and immediate, and the good contingent and remote. Such a revolution however had occurred, and he was perforce involved in it, having been called from a numerous family at Thomar, ♦NEVES, T. II. C. 42.♦ where he had a large cotton manufactory, that Junot might avail himself of the knowledge which he was known to possess.

♦THE JUIZ DO POVO PROPOSES TO ASK FOR A KING OF BUONAPARTE’S FAMILY.♦

Whatever may have been the motives of the French officer in opposing Junot’s pretensions to the crown, those of M. Verdier, and the Portugueze who acted with him, cannot be mistaken, and ought not to be condemned. Unlikely as it appeared that the House of Braganza should recover the throne, they desired in this dissolution of government, to build up the best system which circumstances seemed to allow; and for this purpose they drew up a paper which they entrusted to the Juiz do Povo, Jose de Abreu Campos, that he might produce it at the assembly. The Junta of the Three Estates was but a mere name which might give colour to the proceedings of Junot; the Juiz do Povo was little more; but one name served well in array against another, and moreover this had a popular sound with it, favouring that order of things which these persons were properly desirous of restoring. Accordingly when the deputies of the clergy and the various bodies corporate assembled in the mock Junta, and some person, after the Conde da Ega’s speech, would have answered for the Juiz do Povo, Campos spoke boldly and honestly for himself. He declared that he did not assent to what was going on, and that he had no authority to assent, for he was not a representative of the people. What was proposed could not be their wish, as the paper with which he had been entrusted would show. He then, amid the confusion which his unlooked-for opposition occasioned, produced and read a paper to this effect: that the Portugueze, looking upon France as their mother country, inasmuch as the first conquerors of Portugal from the Moors were French, and mindful of the aid which they had received from France when they recovered their independence in 1640, acknowledged with all gratitude the protection which the greatest of monarchs at this time offered them: they desired a constitution and a constitutional king, who should be a prince of the imperial family; the constitution with which they should be content was one in all things like that which had been given to the duchy of Warsaw, with only an alteration in the mode of electing the national representatives, which should be by chambers. The better to conform with their ancient customs, they desired that the Catholic and Apostolic Roman religion might be the religion of the state, requiring the admission of all the principles established by the last Concordat with France, whereby the free and public enjoyment of all modes of worship was tolerated: that there should be a minister specifically charged with the department of public instruction: that the liberty of the press should be established as it then was in France, because ignorance and error had caused their decay: that the legislative power should be divided into two houses, and communicate with the executive: that the judges should be independent, and the Code Napoleon established: that causes should be publicly tried with justice and dispatch: that all property held in mortmain should be set free: that the public debt should be paid, for which means were not wanting: and that the number of public functionaries, who in the general change must be displaced, should all receive decent and equitable pensions, and upon every vacancy be ♦NEVES, T. II. C. 42.♦ preferred, provided they were duly qualified.

♦FATE OF THE MOVER OF THIS SCHEME.♦

Junot and the sycophants who hoped to figure at his court were incensed at this opposition to their project. They easily overpowered the Juiz do Povo in the meeting, and the Intendant of Police was then instructed to find out the persons who had instigated him. M. Verdier in consequence was sent back to Thomar in disgrace. This was what he would most have wished, could he have returned to that tranquillity and domestic happiness which he was wont to enjoy. But the crimes of his countrymen were visited upon him. In the tumults which ensued, the people among whom he had lived so long, and by whom he had been deservedly loved and respected, imagined that as a Frenchman he must needs be a partizan of France, and he was compelled to return to Lisbon for safety. There, as long as the French continued in Portugal, he remained under the inspection of the police, a prisoner by Junot’s orders in his own house. Upon the restoration of the legitimate government, the part which he had taken was remembered as a crime, and he was ordered to leave the kingdom. The forms of justice had long been dispensed with in Portugal; and a man who had violated no allegiance, who had broken no law, who had offended in no point of honour or of duty, was marked for punishment, when those who had sinned in every point were overlooked. Junot however had little leisure to enjoy his dreams of royalty; he was roused from them by the events in Spain, to which it is now necessary to recur.