Wellington himself was not unpopular in Portugal, but with Beresford, who was appointed Commander-in-Chief of the Portuguese army under the regency which governed Portugal during the King’s absence in Brazil, it was otherwise. His punctual discipline was hated, and a growing number of Portuguese, filled with the ideas of the French Revolution, nourished a hope of freeing their country from what they considered the undue interference of the foreigner, and the dominion of what appeared to be obsolete and reactionary methods. In 1817 a plot of General Gomes Freire de Andrade against Beresford proclaimed to all the world how necessary discipline was for Portugal. The plot was discovered, and Gomes Freire was executed. But three years later a revolution broke out. Beresford, who had been absent in Brazil, was refused a landing on his return, the Regency was overthrown, and a new Constitution drawn up. King João VI returned in the following year from Brazil. In 1822 Brazil pronounced itself independent and chose the King’s popular and liberal-minded son, Pedro, to be its ruler. King João was disposed to accept some kind of constitution, and entrusted the Conde de Palmella with the drawing up of a constitution less radical than that of 1820. He had, however, counted without the Queen Carlotta and his son, Dom Miguel. They succeeded in overthrowing the constitutional party, and King João VI was obliged to take refuge from his own son on an English man-of-war in 1823. In the following year, with the help of the Powers, he succeeded in restoring his authority, and Dom Miguel was banished. King João died two years later.
THE CHURCH, BATALHA
Maria II da Gloria.
His eldest son, Pedro, as Emperor of Brazil, renounced the throne of Portugal in favour of his daughter, Maria II da Gloria, then a small child. In the hope of healing the strife which bade fair to be the irremediable ruin of Portugal, he decided that his brother Miguel should act as Regent and marry his niece, under condition of swearing to accept the Constitution. Dom Miguel came to Portugal—o rei chegou, o rei chegou—and under cover of accepting the Constitution had himself proclaimed King (in June, 1828), while his niece and betrothed wife was being educated in Paris. A vigorous persecution of Liberals and Constitutionalists followed. Thousands of them left the country as exiles, others suffered cruel torments in prison, and others were executed: and more seeds of that mutual hatred and vindictiveness were sown between Portuguese and Portuguese which a century was unable to root out. Pedro returned from Brazil to fight for his daughter’s throne, and reached the Azores in the spring of 1832. Two years later Miguel, who in spite of all his faults possessed many good qualities, and was beloved by the Portuguese people, was finally defeated at Thomar and by the treaty of Evora renounced the throne. King Pedro himself died in the same year. In 1836 Queen Maria was married to Prince Ferdinand of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha. Her reign was embittered by military pronunciamentos in favour of a more radical or more moderate constitution, and, in 1852, a year before the Queen’s death, the Duke of Saldanha succeeded in imposing a constitution which remained in force for some years. He himself continued to be the make-weight in Portuguese politics until 1871, when after a brief term of office he was overthrown in turn by the Conservatives and sent as Ambassador to London, where he died in 1876.
Pedro V.
After Queen Maria’s death, the enlightened and art-loving King Consort Ferdinand ruled on behalf of his son, Pedro V, until he was pronounced to be of age in 1855. The new King died in 1861, and was succeeded by Luiz I (1861-89), during whose reign the unpatriotic strife between Liberal and Conservative politicians, Progressistas and Regeneradores, went on unabated.
Luiz I.
It is not pleasant to dwell on the fate of a country, once as glorious as any in Europe, now torn and harassed by party feuds, personal ambitions, false ideas of liberty, artificial and purely formal conceptions of Constitutionalism, misgovernment and corruption, neglect, indifference, despair.