Immediately after the proclamation of the Constitution of 1822, the Austrian and Russian ambassadors had taken their departure and now that intervention in Spain had been definitely determined on by the Congress of Verona, one of the queen’s adherents, the count of Amarante, raised the standard of revolt at Villa Real, on the northern bank of the Douro in the province of Tras-os-Montes, where the family of Silveira, to which he belonged, possessed estates. The rebellion was made in the name of absolutism or, as the phrase went, in the name of regeneration. The enterprise did not succeed, and the insurrectionists were driven across the Spanish border, though still hoping for the support of the French who had now arrived on the scene. This hope was delusive, for the duke of Angoulême and his government had to consider the susceptibilities of England. That power, already provoked by the treatment of Spanish concerns at the Congress of Verona, looked distrustfully at the development of events in the peninsula, and took a special interest in Portuguese matters; only the regency at Madrid gave them as much assistance as possible.

[1823-1826 A.D.]

But there was no need for direct interference. The new Portuguese constitution had not effected what it had promised; long before this the fickle humour of this passionate, ignorant, and idle people had veered round. In particular the party opposed to the constitution had successfully worked upon the troops and the liberal cause had no one, no regular party, and only a few individual men in whom reliance could be placed. Thus in May, 1823, Dom Miguel was able openly to declare against the constitution. He withdrew from the capital, collected troops, and soon that same Sepulveda who had been one of the principal instigators of the revolution of 1820 marched to the prince’s headquarters at Villafranca at the head of several thousands.

Thither on the 30th of May the king himself was conducted by mutinous troops, and from thence on the 3rd of June issued a proclamation in which he declared the “infamous cortes” dissolved and the “pure monarchy” established. Two days later he returned, an absolute monarch, to the capital he had left as a constitutional ruler. Of the members of the dismissed cortes a number had escaped to England, though the king himself nourished no thoughts of vengeance. The adherents and promoters of the counter-revolution were rewarded: Count Amarante, for instance, was made marquis of Chaves; the cloisters were restored and their property was given back, a new ministry was formed under Count Palmella and a junta appointed to indicate those dispositions of the cortes which were incompatible with the monarchical principle. For a time Dom Miguel, who had been appointed commander-in-chief of the army, was praised throughout Europe as the hero of the reaction.

On the 18th of June Queen Carlota also returned to Lisbon. This infamous woman detested her husband, who on his part had good reason to dread her fury which stopped at nothing. She was now bent on raising to his place her son Miguel who promised to be a prince after her own heart. A system of monarchical terrorism according to the ideas of this worthy pair was impossible so long as the mild Dom João was reigning; the utmost that could be managed was a wretched assassination, like that of which the king’s moderate counsellor, the marquis of Loulé, was the victim; the reins had therefore to be snatched from him by a coup d’état.

On the 30th of April, 1824, Dom Miguel caused the leaders of the moderate party to be arrested. The king’s minister, at whom the blow was really aimed, found time to escape on an English man-of-war which lay at anchor in the Tagus. Thither on the 9th of May the king, who had little confidence in his unnatural son, also fled, being assisted by the English and French ambassadors. But this time the overstrained bow broke in the hands of the absolutist party. They had forgotten to reckon with one factor on which they were accustomed to count too securely. The common people of the capital regarded their sovereign with something like idolatry; and when, from his place of refuge, the king disclosed the criminal designs of those who should have stood closest to him, Miguel found himself suddenly forsaken by all and threatened by many, so that nothing was left him but to go himself to his father and implore his pardon. He was now for a time held in custody on the English vessel.

His “inexperienced youth” might be made a pretext for securing his pardon, for he was indeed, although a practised sinner, only twenty-two years old; but it was thought expedient to send him to travel abroad. He betook himself through France to Vienna, to prepare himself, under Metternich’s eye, for a subsequent continuation of his rôle. His mother was banished to a cloister which suited her but ill; she resisted, under the pretence of illness, and is said to have even taken the last sacraments to prove her sickness. The question of the form of government was then so far settled that on the 4th of June, 1824, the king, acting on English advice, granted a constitution by which the cortes were re-established in their ancient form and division into three estates, the cortes of Lamego, as they were called from their place of assembly. The country now remained undisturbed till the king’s death, which took place on the 10th of May, 1826, and placed the two thrones of Portugal and Brazil to a certain extent at the disposal of his eldest son Dom Pedro, who was conducting the government in Rio de Janeiro.

PORTUGAL RECEIVES A NEW RULER AND A NEW CONSTITUTION

[1826 A.D.]

But to hold them both had become an impossibility since the events of 1820, and a treaty effected through English mediation in 1825 had expressly provided that the two crowns should never again be united on one head, thus confirming the work of the Brazilian cortes of 1822 which declared the country’s independence of Portugal. On the 23rd of April, 1826, the new ruler granted the Portuguese an extremely liberal constitution, the Charta de ley and renounced his European throne in favour of his daughter Maria da Gloria. He endeavoured to counteract the danger to which her claims might be exposed from his younger brother, Dom Miguel, by assigning the child, then only seven years old, as wife to the uncle who was seventeen years her senior and by making the validity of his own resignation depend on the condition that Miguel should swear to the Charta and accept the marriage; until this should be completed Pedro’s own rights were reserved, and since owing to the difference of age between the couple the marriage could not take place for some time, he intrusted the government to his sister Isabella Maria as regent.