Accusations of embezzlement, intrigue, and corruption were renewed against Thomar which served to disconcert his friends. April 8th, 1851, the duke of Saldanha succeeded in raising two battalions. It was from Oporto that the signal for the revolt came. It extended from there to Coimbra and then to Lisbon, when it found a leader even in the prime minister’s brother, Sylva Cabral. Some personal resentment had ranged this unhappy personage with the bitterest adversaries and calumniators of the count of Thomar. Forced finally to hand in his resignation, he was exiled. The count of Thomar took his departure, with regret at leaving his reforms uncompleted, and without the wealth, of whose accumulation his enemies so persistently accused him. As for the queen, she tried vainly to soften the rough blow which royalty itself had received. Neither the conquerors of the count of Thomar, nor Lord Palmerston, nor Sir Henry Seymour, powerfully supported by an English fleet, would consent to spare her any of the bitterness of her defeat. They signified their wish that she should solemnly retract all the acts of the preceding ministry, that she should remove the king from the command of the army, restore Marshal Saldanha to his post of major-domo, and even accept him as prime minister in place of the marshal the duke of Terceira, whom she had been forced to substitute for the count of Thomar. What could she do against this triumphant power? Donna Maria agreed to everything, and a few days later Saldanha entered Lisbon amid flowers and cries of enthusiasm, which the fickle populace lavished upon every victory.[e] In 1852 the charter was revised to suit all parties; direct voting, one of the chief claims of the radicals, was allowed, and the era of civil war came to an end.[f]
When, under Saldanha’s more vigorous rule, peace was beginning to settle over the land, the queen died on November 15th, 1853, at the age of thirty-five. Her husband Ferdinand of Saxe-Coburg became regent for his minor son, who mounted the throne of Portugal on September 17th, 1855, as Dom Pedro V.[186]
PEDRO V (1855-1861 A.D.)
[1855-1862 A.D.]
There was still that dream of uniting Spain to Portugal, but when the proposition was made to Pedro V, he replied: “They think to flatter my ambition and believe that I shall favour them; they are mistaken. Besides the reasons of propriety, policy, and honour which should restrain me, there are considerations which I must not forget—yes, I—if others do forget them. They do not reflect that if the house of Braganza mounts the throne of the peninsula, Portugal would be nothing but a Spanish province, and that our nationality would be absorbed. But I, who am the first of the Portuguese, the first citizen of a country which occupies an honourable place in the history of humanity—I should be a faithless vicar, if I favoured such a project. These people are even our great enemies, for they prevent many useful enactments which might be for the common good of the two peoples—for example, the development of international communication, progress in the material interests of the countries, and the unity of weights, measures, money, and customs regulations.”[g]
The only political event of any importance during the reign of Dom Pedro V, who in 1857 married the princess Stephanie of Hohenzollern, was the affair of the Charles et Georges. This French ship was engaged in what was undoubtedly the slave-trade, though slightly disguised, off the coast of Africa, when it was seized by the authorities of Mozambique, and, in accordance with the laws and treaties against the slave-trade, its captain, Roussel, was condemned to two years’ imprisonment. The emperor Napoleon III, glad to have a chance of posing before the French people, and counting on his close alliance with England, instantly sent a large fleet to the Tagus under Admiral Lavaud, and demanded compensation, which, as England showed no signs of assistance, Portugal was compelled to pay. The whole country, especially the city of Lisbon, was ravaged by cholera and yellow fever during this reign, itself evidence of the extreme neglect of all sanitary precautions; and on November 11th, 1861, the king, who refused to quit the pestilence-stricken capital, died of cholera, and was speedily followed to the grave by two of his brothers, Dom Ferdinand and Dom João.[f]
THE REIGN OF LUIZ (1861-1889 A.D.)
The development of affairs in Portugal now took a decidedly liberal course. The Portuguese government had recognised the new Italian monarchy already in June, 1861, and the following year King Luiz had married Princess Maria Pia, the daughter of King Victor Emmanuel. On December 22nd, 1861, Dom Luiz took the oath to the constitution and, since the people were alarmed at the frequent number of deaths in the royal family, the government laid before the cortes a law controlling the regency and another which declared princesses also to be eligible for the throne and thus put still further off the danger that a descendant of Dom Miguel might succeed to the throne of Portugal.
[1862-1868 A.D.]