At length, in 1807, having defeated the armies of Austria, Prussia, and Russia, Napoleon again turned his thoughts to his projects for the annihilation of Portugal, which had become more than ever a thorn in his side, since it refused to co-operate in his Continental System for the commercial ruin of England. He resolved at first to act with Spain and Godoy, as Pérignon and Lucien Bonaparte had done, and on the 29th of October, 1807, he signed the Treaty of Fontainebleau, by which it was agreed that Portugal should be conquered by the combined armies of France and Spain, and that the northern provinces of the country should be given to the King of Etruria, in exchange for his Italian kingdom, which Napoleon desired to annex, while the southern districts were to be formed into an independent kingdom for Godoy, Prince of the Peace, and the central provinces were to be held by France. The signature of this treaty was followed by immediate action. Junot moved rapidly across Spain with a French army, and in conjunction with a Spanish force, under General Caraffa, invaded Portugal along the line of the Tagus, while General Taranco and General Solano, with two other Spanish armies occupied the Entre Minho e Douro and the Alemtejo. With amazing rapidity Junot accomplished his march, and the Portuguese people hardly realized that war was imminent, until on the 29th of November, Colonel Le Cor rushed into Lisbon with the news that French soldiers were in possession of Abrantes. This alarming intelligence completely unnerved the Prince Regent, who listened to the strongly-worded advice of Sir Sidney Smith, the commander of an English squadron in the Tagus, to abandon his capital for Brazil, and to leave the English to defend Portugal. Dom John believed this the best course to pursue, and after naming a Council of Regency, he went on board an English ship with his wife, Donna Carlotta Joaquina, his two sons, Dom Pedro and Dom Miguel, his six daughters, and his unhappy mother, Queen Maria Francisca, whose disordered brain seemed to understand what was going on, and whose resistance to the efforts to remove her was painful to observe. The English ships had hardly left their moorings in the Tagus, when Junot at the head of two thousand wearied French soldiers, who had survived the fearful fatigue of his rapid march, entered Lisbon on the 30th of November, 1807.
Nothing shows more certainly the great advance of what were called “French principles”—that is to say, of democratic ideas—in Portugal during the last few years, than the cordial reception which Junot received. At Santarem he was welcomed by a deputation of the Freemasons of Portugal, who had been made by persecution, as in other continental countries, a secret society for the propagation of democratic ideas; the army made no attempt to resist; neither villages nor towns rose in insurrection; and the Council of Regency, which consisted of the Marquis of Abrantes, the Marquis of Olhão, General Francisco da Cunha e Menezes, General Francisco Xavier de Noronha, Principal Castro, and Pedro de Mello Breyner, President of the Treasury, instantly submitted. The people of Lisbon had been disgusted with the wavering and unpatriotic policy of the Prince Regent; they complained with reason that he had wasted time in diplomacy instead of preparing for defence; they contrasted his yielding to Spain at the Treaty of Badajoz with the gallant conduct of John I., and the successful wars of John IV.; and they looked upon his departure for Brazil as a base desertion of his country. For all these reasons they welcomed the French, and the democratic leaders hoped that the Emperor Napoleon would annex their country, and grant it representative institutions. Junot at first acted with the greatest prudence; he certainly raised two millions of francs in Lisbon by requisition, and seized all the money in the royal treasury, but at the same time he gratified the Portuguese people by refusing to give the Spaniards any of the plunder, and he encouraged them in the belief that the Emperor would not destroy their independence. His next step was to disband the whole Portuguese army, and to quarter French troops in all the more important cities and fortresses. Not satisfied with this, Junot then raised a powerful Portuguese force, consisting of two divisions of infantry, two regiments of çaçadores or light infantry, and three regiments of cavalry, which he despatched to France under the command of Lieutenant-General Dom Pedro de Almada, Marquis of Alorna, and Major-General Gomes Freire de Andrade. This force which was known as the Portuguese Legion, contained all the most disciplined officers and soldiers of the nation, and did gallant service under Napoleon throughout the French campaigns in Spain, Germany, and Russia, and the remnant of it served under his standards at Waterloo. Thus freed from the presence of the most dangerous element of resistance, Junot began to show his own disposition. He now made no effort to conciliate the Portuguese democrats, and laughed at their idea of a Portuguese constitution; he hoisted the tricolour flag on the Citadel of St. George; he divided the country into military governments under his generals; and finally on the 1st of February, 1807, he issued a proclamation “that the House of Braganza had ceased to reign.”
After issuing this proclamation the French took entire possession of Portugal; the alcaides were dismissed, and the French generals ruled with absolute authority as military governors. A new regency was formed, which included several Frenchmen, notably Junot himself as president, General Herman, M. Lhuillier, and Viennot de Vaublanc as Secretary-General; and a new ministry was constituted of friends to the French alliance, consisting of Pedro de Mello Breyner at the Home Office, Azevedo at the Treasury, the Count of Sampaio at the War Office, and Principal Castro at the Ministry of Justice. Junot then began to intrigue for the throne of Portugal; he knew well that Napoleon had no intention of carrying out the terms of the treaty of Fontainebleau; and he did not see why, after his successful campaign, he should not receive this great reward. He posed as a patron of letters, and was elected President of the “Academia Real das Sciencias” in the place of the Duke of Lafoẽs; he changed his attitude towards and made extravagant promises to the radical party; and in the hope of succeeding the Braganzas, he reduced Napoleon’s requisition of forty millions of francs to twenty millions, on his own authority. The chief agent, through whom he negotiated, was a lawyer, named José de Scabra, who got up a deputation to visit Napoleon, headed by the Grand Inquisitor, the Bishop of Leiria, to ask for the nomination of Junot as King of Portugal. These efforts of Junot’s were, however, of no avail. The tyranny of his generals, and their treatment of the Portuguese as a conquered people; the atrocities which the French soldiers committed, and their deliberate insults to the dearest sentiments of a proud nation, far outweighed the effect of Junot’s policy. General Thomières, for instance, plundered the great abbey of Alçobaça, and destroyed the corpses of the early kings of Portugal; and General Loison trampled on the people, and put down a little riot at Mafra with most frightful cruelty. There were exceptions to this behaviour of course. General Travot and General Charlot made themselves popular by their just administration; but, as a rule, the conduct of the French generals was rapacious in the extreme. At this moment, when the Portuguese people were quivering with indignation, came the news of the rebellion in Spain, and of the victory of Baylen. The Spanish general, Bellesta, who commanded at Oporto in succession to General Taranco, seized the French governor, General Quesnel, and handed him over to a Portuguese junta, and then marched away into Gallicia. It was on the 18th of June, when the French had held Portugal for about nine months, that this great event occurred. Antonio José de Castro, Bishop of Oporto, was declared president of the “junta” of that city. The example was followed from Braga to Faro; everywhere the French officers were murdered or expelled, and independent “juntas” were formed. At this juncture the Portuguese people felt that they could not resist France by their own strength; and the Bishop of Oporto appealed to the old ally of Portugal, England, for assistance.
The English Government willingly listened to this appeal; they had long wished for a base on the Continent from which to act against Napoleon by land, and, in the words of Canning, “the arm of Great Britain became the lever, and Portugal the fulcrum, to wrench from its basis the power that had subdued the rest of Europe.” In the previous year, a force under Colonel Beresford had occupied Madeira, but up to this time, no attempt had been made to dislodge the French from Portugal itself. On the receipt of this appeal from Oporto however, a small army, which had been collected at Cork under the command of Lieutenant-General the Honourable Sir Arthur Wellesley, for an expedition to South America, was ordered instead to proceed to Portugal; reinforcements were collected at Ramsgate and Harwich, and a division under Major-General Brent Spencer was ordered to sail from Gibraltar to join him. A Lusitanian Legion was also formed out of the Portuguese who happened to be in England, and despatched to Portugal under the command of Colonel Sir Robert Wilson and Colonel Mayne. It was indeed time that help should arrive; all the best troops and most skilled officers had been sent out of Portugal in the Portuguese Legion to join the Grand Army of France, and the undisciplined peasants and apprentices hastily collected by the “juntas” were easily defeated in many places by the French veterans. Sir Arthur Wellesley landed at the mouth of the Mondego River, and advanced southwards upon Lisbon. He first defeated Laborde’s division at Roliça on the 17th of August, 1808; and, after receiving reinforcements, he routed Junot himself at Vimeiro on the 21st of August. These victories were followed by the Convention of Cintra by which Junot agreed to evacuate Portugal and surrender all the fortresses in his possession, on condition that his troops and their plunder should be transported safe to France. This convention, however disappointing from a military point of view to the English authorities, was eminently satisfactory to the Portuguese people, who saw themselves delivered from the French, as speedily as they had been conquered by them.
The former Council of Regency, nominated by the Prince Regent before his departure, was re-established at Lisbon, and at once began to quarrel with the “junta” of Oporto, but both bodies perceived how dependent they were on the English Government, and the Regency sent Domingos Antonio de Sousa Coutinho to London to ask that an English ambassador with full powers should be accredited to Lisbon, and that Sir Arthur Wellesley might be appointed to reorganize their army. In compliance with these requests the Right Honourable J. C. Villiers was sent as ambassador to Lisbon, and, as Sir Arthur Wellesley could not be spared, Major-General Beresford, who had learnt the Portuguese language, when governor of Madeira, was sent to command and discipline the Portuguese troops. Meanwhile, Portugal was again exposed to the attacks of the French; when Sir John Moore advanced to Salamanca, he had left very few English troops behind, and Napoleon ordered three French armies to invade the country by different routes. Of these armies only one actually entered Portugal, that from the north under the command of Marshal Soult. Parties of the Lusitanian Legion, under Sir Robert Wilson and Baron Eben, made a spirited resistance, and even the unorganized Portuguese levies, under General Antonio de Silveira, showed courage, if not discipline; but their efforts were in vain, and Soult occupied Oporto. Fortunately for the Portuguese, Soult, like Junot, was led away by the idea of becoming King of Portugal, and did not advance on Lisbon, while Lapisse and Victor did not support him by entering the Beira and the Alemtejo, as they had been ordered to do, and this delay gave time for Sir Arthur Wellesley to reach the Tagus with a powerful English army. On the 12th of May, 1809, he drove Soult out of Oporto, and into Gallicia; and after this success he invaded Spain, and defeated Joseph Bonaparte and Marshal Victor at the battle of Talavera.