The Story of the Nations: Portugal

by H. Morse Stephens

XVII.
THE ERA OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION—THE PENINSULAR WAR.

WHEN Dom John took the government of Portugal into his hands in 1792, popular attention was concentrated throughout Europe on the progress of the French Revolution. The interest excited in Portugal was as great as it was everywhere else, for the ideas, which were at the bottom of the most important movement of modern times, had been eagerly received in the literary circles of Lisbon. It is absurd to suppose that there was any great democratic party in the country, for as long as the administration was well carried on, and taxes were not oppressive, the mass of the people were absolutely indifferent as to the nature of the government. It was different with regard to the more educated classes, who had been brought up in the doctrines of the encyclopædists, and who had read Rousseau and Diderot, Voltaire and Montesquieu. These men were sceptical about the advantages of a benevolent despotism; they had studied the history of their own nation, and knew that in former days, before the discovery of gold in Brazil, the Cortes had been frequently summoned, and they desired that it should meet regularly, and that the Portuguese people should once more take a part in legislation by means of its old representative assembly. Some of them went further, and inspired by the example of the great American Revolution, dreamed of a republic, while others adopted all the fantastic political and social ideas of Rousseau. But these men were mere theorists; they were to be found only among a small circle of educated noblemen and bourgeois in Lisbon and Oporto; and their fancies were quite unknown to the mass of the population. These were the men who hailed with joy the capture of the Bastille, and the proceedings of the Constituent Assembly, and who openly expressed their sympathy with the new order of things in France.

The government failed to understand that these sympathizers would not be able to follow the example of the French revolutionary leaders, so long as the general population of Portugal was contented and happy, and like all the absolutist monarchs of Europe, Dom John heard with the utmost horror of the events passing in Paris, and feared that they would be imitated in Lisbon. In his terror of the spread of “French principles,” he began to persecute their admirers although they had never dreamed of acting or conspiring, and he thus made martyrs of the holders of the new opinions, which were only propagated the more rapidly by his tyrannical behaviour. In his crusade against the sympathizers with the French Revolution, Dom John found his chief ally in Diogo Ignacio de Pina Manique, the Intendant of Police, who believed that by his vigour he should obtain the ascendency formerly held by Pombal, and who proceeded therefore to work upon his master’s fears. His first measure was to issue an edict against aliens, under which he expelled two Frenchmen, Pierre Noel and Pierre Louis Fontaine, and kept a strict and irritating surveillance over Edward Church, the United States Consul, and Jacome Ratton, a merchant of Lisbon, whom he declared to be the fomenters of discontent and the leaders of a conspiracy. Against Portuguese subjects, Pina Manique acted with still more severity; Francisco Coelho da Silva, the father of Portuguese liberalism, was thrown into prison; other men of letters were suspected and often prosecuted, including the poets, Nascimento and Du Bocage, the botanist Avellar Brotero, and the historian Correa da Serra; many noblemen of liberal principles were watched by spies, and the Duke of Lafoẽs, the great patron of literature, was expelled from Court, because he was a friend of Broussonet, the French chemist. The men whom the Intendant of Police most abhorred were the Freemasons whom he hated, because their society was secret, and by his attempt to suppress all their lodges he made them actively democratic, and the chief promoters of “French principles.” It was no wonder that this conduct excited attention in France, and when in January, 1793, three months after the proclamation of the French Republic, the Girondin deputy, Kersaint, inveighed against England in the Convention, he abused Portugal also, and spoke of that country as a province of England.

Dom John, not satisfied with thus combating “French principles” at home, believed it to be a holy duty to join in the general war against France, and he therefore rejected the advice of the English ministry to remain neutral, and sent his Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, Luis Pinto de Sousa Coutinho, to Madrid to beg leave to send an army to join in the invasion of France. It need hardly be said that the Spanish minister, the Count of Florida Blanca, was only too glad to accept assistance, and a treaty of alliance between the two countries was signed at Aranjuez on March 25, 1793. It was vain for the French revolutionary leaders to protest that they had not injured Portugal and to ask for neutrality; the French Ambassador, M. d’Arbaud, was ordered to leave Lisbon; a corps of five thousand men under General João Forbes-Skelater was sent to join the Spanish army in the invasion of Roussillon; and a squadron of eight ships of war under the Marquis of Niza joined the English fleet in the Mediterranean. The Portuguese contingent served gallantly in the Eastern Pyrenees from November, 1793, to 1795, and shared alike in the success of General Ricardos, and the defeats of General La Union and General Urrutia, but nevertheless the Spanish Court under the influence of the handsome but worthless guardsman, Godoy, did not hesitate to desert its ally, and made a separate treaty with the French Republic at Basle in July, 1795. Dom John began to believe that the war against the French Republic could not be holy, since the Most Catholic king had made a treaty with France, and he promptly sent Dom Diogo de Noronha to Paris to sue for peace. But the Committee of Public Safety had no idea of making terms with him; the treaties signed at Basle had been part of a deliberate policy, which was to convert Prussia and Spain into allies of the Republic, and to unite all three against Austria, England, and Portugal, which was regarded as a province of England, and the Portuguese ambassador was dismissed immediately. After the Convention ceased its long session and the Directory was appointed, Dom John made another effort for peace, and sent Antonio de Araujo de Azevedo, the head of what may be called the French party at the Court of Lisbon, to Paris. He met with no better reception than his predecessor, and when after the treaty of San Ildefonso, by which Spain declared war against England in 1796, came the news of a secret convention between the French ambassador at Madrid, General Pérignon, and Godoy, Prince of the Peace, by which Portugal was to be divided between those two powers, and Spanish troops were being massed upon the Portuguese frontier, the English party in the Portuguese ministry gained the upper hand, and urgent supplications were sent to England for help.

Pitt and Grenville were only too glad to comply; for they regarded Portugal as affording an important base of operations in the peninsula. The House of Commons voted Portugal a subsidy of £200,000; a force of six thousand men was despatched under the command of Major-General the Honourable Sir Charles Stuart, which deterred the Spaniards from attempting an invasion, and the Prince of Waldeck, like the Count of Lippe-Buckeburg in former days, was sent to re-organize the Portuguese army. This policy caused the French Directors to hesitate, and they signed a treaty of peace with the Portuguese ambassador Antonio de Araujo de Azevedo; but to their wrath and surprise, Dom John refused to ratify the treaty, on which the Directors imprisoned the Portuguese ambassador in the Temple. In the ardour of his alliance with England, the prince for a year or two threw himself into the hands of the English party at his Court, and on the death of Martinho de Mello e Castro, he appointed Rodrigo de Sousa Coutinho, the leader of that party, to the Secretaryship of State for the Marine and Colonies. Yet the English party could not win the day entirely. The prince wavered; at his request Sir Charles Stuart and the English army were withdrawn; and he made another attempt to make peace with France through the mediation of Spain. This was the situation of affairs when Dom John formally declared himself Regent in 1799, as it became obvious that the Queen Maria Francisca would never recover the use of her faculties; and in the same year General Napoleon Bonaparte made his coup d’état of the 18th Brumaire, and became ruler of France with the title of First Consul.

The accession of Napoleon to power was of no advantage to Portugal; from the very first he showed his hatred of the little country; no amount of submission could win his friendship; he persisted in regarding Portugal, as the Convention, the Committee of Public Safety, and the Directory had done, as a province of England; and he thoroughly understood what an important base of operations it afforded to the English armies. Hardly was Napoleon firmly seated in office, when he despatched his brother Lucien Bonaparte to Madrid in the year 1800 with directions to negotiate with Portugal. He was to insist on the abandonment of the English alliance, on the opening of Portuguese ports to France and the closing of them to England, on the grant of special commercial advantages to French merchants, on the extension of French Guiana to the Amazon, on the cession of a part of Portugal to Spain until the recovery from the English of Trinidad and Minorca, and on the payment of a large sum of money, and he was authorized to offer Spain the assistance of French troops if these hard terms were rejected. The Prince Regent did reject them and declared war against Spain on February 10, 1801, and twenty-two thousand French veterans at once entered the peninsula under the command of Bonaparte’s brother-in-law, General Leclerc. The campaign was a very short one; the French soldiers never came into action, but in the month of May the Spaniards took Olivença, Juromenha, and Campo Mayor, laid siege to Elvas, and defeated the Portuguese in two engagements at Arronches and Flor da Rosa. The Portuguese sued for peace, and on June 6, 1801, a treaty was signed at Badajoz, by which Olivença and the surrounding district was ceded to Spain, followed by another at Paris, by which French Guiana was extended to the Amazon. Napoleon was very dissatisfied with the peace of Badajoz, for he aimed at nothing short of the extinction of the independence of Portugal, and it was many months before he consented to ratify the treaties. Meanwhile an English force under Colonel Henry Clinton had occupied Madeira, and a force of the English East India Company’s troops garrisoned Goa. The pride of the people of Portugal was deeply wounded by the loss of Olivença, which had been an integral part of Portugal ever since the days of Affonso Henriques, and they lost no opportunity of showing their contempt for the Prince Regent and his advisers. Their wrath was kindled against the French, and from this time forth, the mass of the people who did not care for politics, but who did understand the meaning of national disgrace, was ready to dare anything against the nation which had brought about the disintegration of the fatherland.

The Treaty of Amiens gave Europe a moment’s breathing space; the English evacuated Madeira, and the Prince Regent determined on a policy of absolute neutrality. But Napoleon was not to be moved; he had determined on the destruction of Portugal, and it was with the full expectation that he would irritate the Portuguese into declaring war, that he sent General Lannes, one of the most courageous, but one of the roughest and least educated of his generals, as ambassador to Lisbon. Lannes acted in accordance with the expectations of his chief; he insulted the Portuguese Court; he failed to observe the most ordinary customs of diplomatic courtesy; and he finally demanded the instant dismissal of all the ministers who belonged to the English party, and especially of Pina Manique, the Intendant of Police, because he had in former days prosecuted the admirers of the French Revolution. The Prince Regent obeyed, both from fear of France and dislike of the high-handed naval policy of England; and Antonio de Araujo de Azevedo, the head of the French party, became Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, with the Count of Villa Verde, and the Viscount of Anadia as his colleagues, and Lucas de Scabra da Silva succeeded Pina Manique. Even this humble and prompt submission did not satisfy Napoleon, and in 1804 he replaced General Lannes by General Junot whom he ordered to insist upon Portugal’s declaring war against England. For a time, however, he thought it wise to postpone his designs against the country, which he regarded as the most vulnerable province of England, while he was engaged in his great campaigns in Germany, and he even signed a treaty of neutrality with the Portuguese Government. The English were not inclined to submit to this, and in 1806, Admiral the Earl of St. Vincent, General the Earl of Rosslyn, and General Simcoe were sent to Lisbon to remind the Prince Regent of the ancient alliance between the two countries, and to promise ample assistance if Portugal would declare war against France. Dom John declined, and on the advice of his ministers, treated the English ambassadors with something like contempt.