Chapter IV: João IV to João VI (2)

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.]