The Story of the Nations: Portugal

by H. Morse Stephens

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.

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.