[1814-1825 A.D.]
The gratitude Portugal was impelled to feel met a shock when the English at the Congress of Vienna refused to insist on the restoration by Spain of Olivenza, of which Portugal had been robbed by Napoleon and the Spanish in 1801. The bitterness was increased by the harshness of the regency, in which Beresford and Stuart still held sway, though the war was over. Beresford had his racial faculty of irritating the Latin peoples by his cold and severe manner and ruthless severities. He was commander-in-chief of the armies. A third of the officers were English, and two-thirds of the country’s revenues were spent on the military. Portugal was in fact if not in theory only an English province. To the amazement of all, João, who had committed the novel feat of carrying his capital from the mother-country to a colony during a war, showed himself still more original when the war was finished; for he declined to bring back his capital. The life at Rio de Janeiro seems to have fascinated him. Portugal drew most of its wealth from the Brazils and he preferred and enjoyed it nearer the source. Worse yet, after taking to Rio some fifteen thousand persons when he fled, he kept persuading the chief nobles and wealthiest merchants to move to Brazil.
In 1816 he became the nominal, as he had long been the actual, king, for his insane mother died at Rio, March 20th of that year, and the regent was crowned in the colony as João VI and meekly acknowledged at home. But still he remained away, resigned Olivenza easily, and called forty-five hundred war-tried Spanish soldiers over to Brazil, where under Le Cor they put down a rebellion, which broke out again in 1825 and succeeded as the republic of Uruguay.
João VI was unpopular with his beckoning people, and his own queen, Donna Carlota Joaquina, was undermining him in favour of Dom Miguel, her younger son, who was not believed to be also his. His admittedly legitimate and elder son, Pedro, was also against him and his absolutist principles. Thus while the queen had in 1805 promised Portugal a constitution, Dom Pedro was a lover of Brazil and a well-wisher to the schemes for its separation from the mother-country.
THE REVOLT AND RECALL OF THE KING
In this unusual tangle of politics the cry of “Portugal for the Portuguese!” began to grow. The only man who could be said to approach popularity was General Gomes Freire de Andrade, who had served under Napoleon throughout the wars, and whose deep hatred of the English had found new fuel, seeing his country and his fellow-soldiers so rigorously governed by the foreigner who had come with promises of freedom. He conspired with others for a rising, but his plans were exposed and he and ten comrades put to death by the regency. The martyrdom, as it seemed, of Freire and his men embittered the country, and it needed only the absence of Beresford (who took ship to Brazil to extract money for the army from the absentee king) to show the way.
August 4th, 1820, the city of Oporto revolted, appointed a provisional junta in the king’s name, and demanded a session of the cortes. Freemasonry principles had been at work, and aided the ripening of the plans. Lisbon similarly rose and chose a junta, which combined with that of Oporto and convoked the cortes. While the cortes was adopting a constitution similar to Spain’s, the English officers were expelled from the country. Beresford, returning, was forbidden to land and compelled to return to England. The new cortes was of democratic persuasion; it clean-swept the remnants of feudalism and put an end to the still-living Inquisition. The “Constitution of 1822” limited the powers of the king to a veto of measures furthered by the annual assembly, promised a free press, universal suffrage, and other decencies of civilisation.
As elsewhere the first sign of emancipation provoked the horror of the Holy Alliance, the ambassadors of Prussia, Austria, and Russia withdrew from the country polluted with such free ideas, and England demanded with a new urgence that João VI return to Lisbon. He came back July 3rd, 1821, but before he was permitted to land promised to accept the constitution, to which he took oath October 1st, 1822, thus outraging the sensibilities of the clergy, who abhorred any trend towards liberty. His queen and Dom Miguel refused to accept the constitution and were ordered out of the country; but the queen, pretending to be ill, was allowed to remain, and busied herself drawing together conspirators known as “Cringers.” In 1823 the French invaded Spain to quell the Spanish revolt against the Nero-like Ferdinand. The absolutists in Portugal chose the moment to rise against the Constitution of 1822, General Silveira being the leader.
THE LOSS OF BRAZIL (1822 A.D.)
[1822-1823 A.D.]