The Story of the Nations: Portugal

by H. Morse Stephens

The vacancy, which would be caused by the death of Charles II. of Spain, and the general scramble which seemed likely to take place for his dominions, were of more importance to King Pedro II. of Portugal, than to William III. of England, or Louis XIV. of France. He felt that he was utterly unable to cope with any of the great powers, and he commenced saving money for the general war which was certain soon to break out. In 1687, at the request of his minister and most intimate friend, the Duke of Cadaval, he consented to marry again, in order to have an heir to the throne. He selected for his second wife Maria Sophia of Neuburg, daughter of the Elector Palatine, greatly to the chagrin of Louis XIV., who hoped he would have chosen a French princess; and by her he had four sons. When the death of Charles II. became an event daily to be expected, he proclaimed his intention of remaining neutral, and refused, in consonance with the traditions of the House of Aviz, to be himself a candidate for the Spanish throne. Nevertheless, he increased his navy, placed his army on a war footing and repaired his fortresses, and in 1699, he had the pleasure of receiving the first important consignment of gold from Brazil, amounting to a ton and a half, which proved to him that he had a new source of revenue more productive than any taxes he could impose at home.

At last, on November 1, 1700, Charles II. of Spain died, and Louis XIV. in accepting the throne for his grandson, made his famous declaration, “There are now no longer any Pyrenees.” King Pedro carried his complaisance so far as to acknowledge Philip V., as king of Spain, and he even sheltered a French fleet under the Count de Chastenau in the Tagus, against the assaults of the English admiral, Sir George Rooke. But he soon saw that, as he feared, it was impossible for him to remain neutral, and the insolence of Cardinal Porto Carrero, who spoke of him to King Philip as “the rebel duke of Braganza,” and the information that there was a secret treaty, which promised French help for the subjugation of Portugal, made Pedro II. decide to enter into a yet closer alliance with England. This was exactly what the great Whig ministry wanted, and, in 1703, the Right Honourable John Methuen was sent to Lisbon with full powers to negotiate a political and commercial treaty with Portugal.

On December 27, 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. At Lisbon a regular English “factory” was established, and at Oporto a large colony of English wine merchants and shippers carried on business operations, which doubled the prosperity of the beautiful city on the Douro. The steady influx of English capital increased the wealth of Portugal, and the vineyards of the Entre-Minho-e-Douro became proverbial for their prosperous and industrious peasantry; while, on the other hand, the importation of English goods gave means of comfort and luxury to the Portuguese people which distinguished them in the eyes of all travellers of the last century from the Spaniards and Italians. To this day the beautiful porcelain from the famous English works at Worcester and Derby, Chelsea and Bow, is to be found in Portuguese cottages; and the English people have not lost their taste for port and St. Michael’s oranges.

From a political point of view, the Methuen treaty assured the very existence of Portugal; in all times of danger it could now count upon the support of the great power whose interest it was to have an ally from whose country it could act against Spain. On March 7, 1704, the Archduke Charles arrived at Lisbon with a powerful English fleet under Sir George Rooke, conveying ten thousand English troops under the command of Henri de Ruvigny, Lord Galway. On April 30, Philip V. declared war against Portugal, and the English advanced with a subsidiary Portuguese army under the Count das Galveras and Diniz de Mello e Castro. The campaign was successful; the allies took Salvaterra and Valença, and Sir George Rooke surprised the important fortress of Gibraltar. In the following year but little was done on the Portuguese frontier, because the Archduke Charles had sailed round to Barcelona, and King Pedro, who felt himself to be dying, gave up all active interest in affairs, and made over the regency to his sister Catherine, Queen-dowager of England. Had he been conscious he might have heard of the great successes and reverses of the campaign of 1706. Lord Galway and Dom João de Sousa, Marquis das Minas, advanced into Spain, and after taking Alcantara, Coria, Truxillo, Placencia, Ciudad Rodrigo, and Avila in rapid succession, occupied Madrid on July 2, 1706. But they did not remain there long; the Spaniards rose in arms for Philip V., and in August, 1706, the allied army fell back as quickly as it had advanced. Dom Pedro, however, remained unconscious of these stirring events; he gradually sank, and died at Alcantara on December 9, 1706, leaving a reputation of having been one of the best of the kings of Portugal. The great interest of his reign is to be found in the gradual formation of the English alliance, which is the clue to the Portuguese history of the next century. It was commenced by the marriage of Catherine de Braganza to Charles II., strengthened by the action of Lord Sandwich and Sir Richard Southwell in making peace with Spain, and finally cemented by the Methuen treaty, and it is curious to note that the first link in this chain was forged by Louis XIV. and Mazarin in recommending the marriage of Charles II.

It is important to observe the position of Portugal in Asia and South America during the half-century which succeeded the “Sixty Years’ Captivity,” and to see how the despised discovery of Pedro Alvares Cabral was to more than take the place of the vaunted Asiatic connection commenced by the voyage of Vasco da Gama. The heavy blows struck by the Dutch and English against the Portuguese monopoly of the Eastern trade before the successful revolution in 1640, have already been noticed, and the ruin of the Portuguese in Asia was consummated by the Dutch during the long naval war which succeeded the attack upon their settlements in Brazil. The China trade had not attained very important dimensions, so the Dutch left the Portuguese undisturbed at Macao, but they destroyed their settlements in the island of Formosa, and the English absorbed what trade there was by their factory at Canton. It was the spice trade and the command of the Spice Islands, which the Dutch chiefly coveted, and of which they obtained a monopoly, which they practically retain to this day. After the foundation of Batavia, all the efforts of the Dutch were directed against Malacca, which, though in a decayed state, was yet mistress of no inconsiderable trade; twice they stirred up the Achinese to attempt the conquest of Alboquerque’s famous settlement, but the Portuguese beat off the natives, and it was not until 1640 that the Dutch destroyed the rival of Batavia. The Portuguese made no further effort to share the spice trade, and after the massacre of the English at Amboyna in 1624, the more dangerous rivalry of the merchants of that nation was also withdrawn. In India, the Dutch made a point of securing the pepper trade only, and left the English to absorb that of the products of Northern India, of the muslins of Dacca and the brocades of Ahmadabad and Surat. The Portuguese repulsed the Dutch from Goa in 1639, but these determined traders were not to be beaten; in 1662, in spite of the peace which had been concluded by the intervention of England, they took Cochin, the principal Portuguese station in Southern India, and by 1664 were masters of all the chief pepper ports on the Malabar coast. They were equally successful in Ceylon, where they captured Jafnapatam, the last important Portuguese port, in 1658; and in 1669, they expelled the Portuguese from the Coromandel coast likewise, and took S. Thomé and Macassar. In Northern India the English were the most formidable rivals of the Portuguese. After the capture of Hūglī by the orders of Shah Jehān, the Portuguese dropped all communication with Bengal, and the trade of that important province fell into the hands of the English. On the other side of India, the English were equally successful. Their victory off Surat had broken the prestige of Portugal, and the trade with Gujarāt, Kathiawār, and Sind was chiefly in their possession. So weak indeed had the Portuguese become, that Diu, the city immortalized by the brave deeds of Antonio de Silveira and João de Castro, was plundered by a band of Arabs in 1670; and Goa itself, “Golden Goa,” was only saved from the Marāthas of Sambajì, the son of Sivajì, by the timely aid of a Mogul army. On the other hand, the Portuguese Jesuits won a reputation almost as great as that of the Portuguese heroes; though the Inquisition still continued its horrid work at Goa, there were nobler missionaries than the inquisitors, and the name of João de Brito, who preached with unexampled success until his cruel martyrdom in Madura in 1693, deserves to be ranked with that of St. Francis Xavier himself. In Africa, the chief Portuguese ports were re-conquered by Salvador Correa de Sá e Benevides in 1648, but they were only of little value, since they had been maintained chiefly as stations on the road to India, and not for purposes of African trade. The Dutch made their resting-place at the Cape of Good Hope, which is the reason why Mozambique was left to the Portuguese; and they also took possession of the rich island which had been first sighted by Lourenço de Almeida, to which they gave the name of Mauritius, after Prince Maurice of Nassau. On the western coast the Portuguese retained Angola, the Cape Verde Islands, and their other possessions; but they lost St. Helena to the Dutch, who held it until it was captured by the English captain, Anthony Munden, in 1673, when it was made into a station of the English East India Company. With their possessions in Morocco, the Portuguese parted with the more willingness, since they were only a source of expense; and the cession of Ceuta to the Spaniards and of Tangier to the English was generally approved. Of Bombay the other territorial cession made to England on the marriage of Catherine de Braganza, little need be said, for though destined to become the capital of western India, it proved at first of so little value, that in 1668 Charles II. granted it to the East India Company for ten pounds a year.