From a political point of view, the Methuen treaty assured the very existence of Portugal; in all times of danger it could now count upon the support of the great power whose interest it was to have an ally from whose country it could act against Spain. On March 7, 1704, the Archduke Charles arrived at Lisbon with a powerful English fleet under Sir George Rooke, conveying ten thousand English troops under the command of Henri de Ruvigny, Lord Galway. On April 30, Philip V. declared war against Portugal, and the English advanced with a subsidiary Portuguese army under the Count das Galveras and Diniz de Mello e Castro. The campaign was successful; the allies took Salvaterra and Valença, and Sir George Rooke surprised the important fortress of Gibraltar. In the following year but little was done on the Portuguese frontier, because the Archduke Charles had sailed round to Barcelona, and King Pedro, who felt himself to be dying, gave up all active interest in affairs, and made over the regency to his sister Catherine, Queen-dowager of England. Had he been conscious he might have heard of the great successes and reverses of the campaign of 1706. Lord Galway and Dom João de Sousa, Marquis das Minas, advanced into Spain, and after taking Alcantara, Coria, Truxillo, Placencia, Ciudad Rodrigo, and Avila in rapid succession, occupied Madrid on July 2, 1706. But they did not remain there long; the Spaniards rose in arms for Philip V., and in August, 1706, the allied army fell back as quickly as it had advanced. Dom Pedro, however, remained unconscious of these stirring events; he gradually sank, and died at Alcantara on December 9, 1706, leaving a reputation of having been one of the best of the kings of Portugal. The great interest of his reign is to be found in the gradual formation of the English alliance, which is the clue to the Portuguese history of the next century. It was commenced by the marriage of Catherine de Braganza to Charles II., strengthened by the action of Lord Sandwich and Sir Richard Southwell in making peace with Spain, and finally cemented by the Methuen treaty, and it is curious to note that the first link in this chain was forged by Louis XIV. and Mazarin in recommending the marriage of Charles II.

It is important to observe the position of Portugal in Asia and South America during the half-century which succeeded the “Sixty Years’ Captivity,” and to see how the despised discovery of Pedro Alvares Cabral was to more than take the place of the vaunted Asiatic connection commenced by the voyage of Vasco da Gama. The heavy blows struck by the Dutch and English against the Portuguese monopoly of the Eastern trade before the successful revolution in 1640, have already been noticed, and the ruin of the Portuguese in Asia was consummated by the Dutch during the long naval war which succeeded the attack upon their settlements in Brazil. The China trade had not attained very important dimensions, so the Dutch left the Portuguese undisturbed at Macao, but they destroyed their settlements in the island of Formosa, and the English absorbed what trade there was by their factory at Canton. It was the spice trade and the command of the Spice Islands, which the Dutch chiefly coveted, and of which they obtained a monopoly, which they practically retain to this day. After the foundation of Batavia, all the efforts of the Dutch were directed against Malacca, which, though in a decayed state, was yet mistress of no inconsiderable trade; twice they stirred up the Achinese to attempt the conquest of Alboquerque’s famous settlement, but the Portuguese beat off the natives, and it was not until 1640 that the Dutch destroyed the rival of Batavia. The Portuguese made no further effort to share the spice trade, and after the massacre of the English at Amboyna in 1624, the more dangerous rivalry of the merchants of that nation was also withdrawn. In India, the Dutch made a point of securing the pepper trade only, and left the English to absorb that of the products of Northern India, of the muslins of Dacca and the brocades of Ahmadabad and Surat. The Portuguese repulsed the Dutch from Goa in 1639, but these determined traders were not to be beaten; in 1662, in spite of the peace which had been concluded by the intervention of England, they took Cochin, the principal Portuguese station in Southern India, and by 1664 were masters of all the chief pepper ports on the Malabar coast. They were equally successful in Ceylon, where they captured Jafnapatam, the last important Portuguese port, in 1658; and in 1669, they expelled the Portuguese from the Coromandel coast likewise, and took S. Thomé and Macassar. In Northern India the English were the most formidable rivals of the Portuguese. After the capture of Hūglī by the orders of Shah Jehān, the Portuguese dropped all communication with Bengal, and the trade of that important province fell into the hands of the English. On the other side of India, the English were equally successful. Their victory off Surat had broken the prestige of Portugal, and the trade with Gujarāt, Kathiawār, and Sind was chiefly in their possession. So weak indeed had the Portuguese become, that Diu, the city immortalized by the brave deeds of Antonio de Silveira and João de Castro, was plundered by a band of Arabs in 1670; and Goa itself, “Golden Goa,” was only saved from the Marāthas of Sambajì, the son of Sivajì, by the timely aid of a Mogul army. On the other hand, the Portuguese Jesuits won a reputation almost as great as that of the Portuguese heroes; though the Inquisition still continued its horrid work at Goa, there were nobler missionaries than the inquisitors, and the name of João de Brito, who preached with unexampled success until his cruel martyrdom in Madura in 1693, deserves to be ranked with that of St. Francis Xavier himself. In Africa, the chief Portuguese ports were re-conquered by Salvador Correa de Sá e Benevides in 1648, but they were only of little value, since they had been maintained chiefly as stations on the road to India, and not for purposes of African trade. The Dutch made their resting-place at the Cape of Good Hope, which is the reason why Mozambique was left to the Portuguese; and they also took possession of the rich island which had been first sighted by Lourenço de Almeida, to which they gave the name of Mauritius, after Prince Maurice of Nassau. On the western coast the Portuguese retained Angola, the Cape Verde Islands, and their other possessions; but they lost St. Helena to the Dutch, who held it until it was captured by the English captain, Anthony Munden, in 1673, when it was made into a station of the English East India Company. With their possessions in Morocco, the Portuguese parted with the more willingness, since they were only a source of expense; and the cession of Ceuta to the Spaniards and of Tangier to the English was generally approved. Of Bombay the other territorial cession made to England on the marriage of Catherine de Braganza, little need be said, for though destined to become the capital of western India, it proved at first of so little value, that in 1668 Charles II. granted it to the East India Company for ten pounds a year.

SPECIMENS OF PORTUGUESE SILVER AND COPPER COINS.
SPECIMENS OF PORTUGUESE SILVER AND COPPER COINS.

Very different from this tale of decay is the history of the Portuguese in Brazil during the same period, and the comparison shows clearly of how much greater value is a colony than a dominion conquered and held by the sword. The loyalty of the Portuguese colonists was shown by their expulsion of the Dutch with hardly any assistance from the home government, and the bonds of kinship enabled the Portuguese to maintain their power in South America without the establishment and maintenance of powerful armies. Indeed, one of the most valuable lessons taught by the history of the daughter country, is that the less interference the mother country makes in the affairs of its colony, the better it will be for both countries. The material prosperity of Brazil in the seventeenth century was due to the fact that during that period the colony was essentially agricultural, and that there was therefore time for a large and industrious population to collect, before gold was discovered in large quantities. The production of tobacco and sugar was the staple employment of the inhabitants, and the rapid development of these resources caused the growth of a large fleet, not only to carry these commodities to Europe, but to import the thousands of negro slaves, who worked in the plantations. And it is here well to remark that at this time the Portuguese settlers made no attempt to enslave the native Brazilians, who were protected by the Jesuits and by edicts of the king, but considered it perfectly just and right to make use of negro slaves. This wise behaviour and the conduct of the Jesuits, who laboured assiduously among the natives, placed them on friendly terms with their conquerors, who soon began to intermarry with them. Owing to this friendly relationship the interior of the continent was gradually opened up, and at last gold was discovered in large quantities. It was fortunate for the Portuguese that it had not been discovered before, for otherwise they would certainly have lost their colony during the “Sixty Years’ Captivity,” but at this time they were too strongly planted to be expelled, and had besides the potent protection of the English navy. The first discovery of gold on a large scale took place in 1699, and the arrival of the first cargo at an opportune juncture gave King Pedro the means he required for setting his army on foot. It must be remembered that at this time there were no Californian or Australian gold fields, and that the discovery of gold in Brazil was of more importance than it would be now. King Pedro prepared to work this source of wealth in a prudent manner; he did not attempt to make the gold fields a royal monopoly, which the independent inhabitants of the captainships would not have allowed, but demanded one-fifth of the total registered yearly export. This left enough profit for the gold searchers, and as the yearly revenue of the crown of Portugal from this source was at least £300,000, it may be imagined that the kings of Portugal were well able to maintain a splendid court at Lisbon in spite of the loss of the Asiatic trade. No story is more interesting than this growth of Brazil into the most valuable possession of Portugal; the land, which was at first inhabited by convicts, surpassed in wealth the dominion won by the noblest sons of the country.

text decoration

text decoration

XVI.

PORTUGAL IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. THE MARQUIS OF POMBAL.

THE eighteenth century exhibits fewer features of interest than any other throughout the whole history of Portugal. The country remained in a political sense a mere province of England, and was bound by the Methuen treaty to take a part in all the wars in which England was engaged, and the importance of this arrangement became more and more evident, when France and Spain were united by the close connection brought about by the “Pacte de Famille.” The commercial relation was the cause of more intimacy between the people of the two nationalities than the political alliance, for it brought, as has been said, English merchants and English capital into Portugal. But notwithstanding this double bond of union the two allies remained entirely separate. The Portuguese remained a race of bigoted Catholics, and the English made no efforts to convert them. This difference of religion prevented any close alliance between the reigning houses of the two countries, such as had been brought about by the marriage of Charles II. to Catherine of Braganza, for any marriage with a Catholic princess would have been rejected by the statesmen and the people of England. While therefore existing as an independent nation under the protection of England, Portugal maintained its own national characteristics, and remained in other respects more like Spain than any other country. The little state was no longer in the vanguard of the march of European civilization; it felt that its great days were past, and was content to remain in stagnant quiet. For this reason, if for no other, the story of Portugal loses its interest in the eighteenth century, for it was illustrated by no great feat of arms, no national revolution or advance of national progress, and it was at this time that in every point of view, literary as well as political, it fell behind the other European nations. It was inevitable that it should be so; a nation which depended on another for its political independence, was not likely to produce heroes. It is strange that the influence of English example did not give rise to a movement for political freedom and representative institutions, but it was not so; the monarchy remained absolutist and was prevented from needing the support of the people by the wealth it derived from the gold and the diamond mines of Brazil, and the Cortes was not once summoned throughout the century. Yet this absolutism was not an unmixed evil, for it produced a great minister, the Portuguese Richelieu, in the Marquis of Pombal.

The reign of John V., the eldest son of Pedro II., who at once assumed the royal power from the regent Catherine, was, though it commenced in war, remarkable for the long continuance of peace. The War of the Spanish Succession was still raging in the peninsula, and the first campaign after the accession of the new monarch was marked by the great defeat inflicted on the English and Portuguese by the French and Spaniards at Almanza, on April 15, 1707, a battle in which it chanced that the English were commanded by a Frenchman, Henri de Ruvigny, Lord Galway, and the French by an Englishman James Fitz-James, Duke of Berwick. Nevertheless John V., who was a young man of seventeen, in spite of this disaster, kept true to the English alliance and the Methuen treaty, and left the management of affairs in the hands of his father’s minister and friend João de Mascarenhas, Duke of Cadaval. This able statesman bound the king more surely to the Anglo-Austrian alliance by marrying him to the Archduchess Marianna, daughter of the late Emperor Leopold I., who was escorted to Lisbon by a powerful English fleet under Admiral Sir George Byng, in 1708. The war continued, however, to go steadily against the allies, for the Spaniards had rallied enthusiastically around their Bourbon king, Philip V.; and on May 7, 1709, a Portuguese army under the Marquis of Fronteira was defeated on the banks of the Caia, by the Spaniards under the Marquis de Bay. Far more serious was the capture of Rio de Janeiro, by the French admiral, Duguay-Trouin, on September 23, 1711, which cut off all supplies from Brazil for more than a year. The war languished all over Europe after the accession of the Archduke Charles as Emperor, and on February 6, 1715, nearly two years after the treaty of Utrecht, peace was signed between Spain and Portugal, at Madrid, by the Secretary of State, Diogo de Mendonça, Count of Corte-Real.

As soon as John V. began to mark out a policy for himself, after the death of the Duke of Cadaval, he showed his distaste for war. He refused to join in the war against Cardinal Alberoni, the famous minister of Spain, and avoided as far as possible any combination which might lead to the rupture of peace. The only expedition he sent out was a fleet, which he equipped at the Pope’s bidding to join the Venetians in their struggle against the Turks, and which, under the command of Lopo Furtado de Mendonça, Count of Rio Grande, defeated the Mohammedans off Cape Matapan in 1717. The main effort of King John’s foreign policy was to combine a firm adherence to the Methuen treaty with friendly relations with Spain, by which he hoped to avoid war. For this purpose he always kept on the best of terms with the English ambassadors at Lisbon, notably with Lord Tyrawley; and in 1729 he closely allied himself with the new dynasty in Spain. His daughter, Donna Maria Josepha de Braganza, was married to Don Ferdinand, eldest son of Philip V., who succeeded to the throne of Spain as Ferdinand VI.; while the Spanish infanta, Donna Marianna Victoria de Bourbon, was married to the heir-apparent of Portugal, Dom Joseph. With the papacy John V. remained on the best of terms; he lent enormous sums of money to successive popes out of the wealth of Brazil, and in return received rewards, which were of no real value, but which were such as he highly esteemed. Lisbon was divided into two dioceses; the Archbishopric of Lisbon was erected into a patriarchate; the patriarch was allowed to officiate in vestments resembling those of the Pope, and his canons in imitation of those of the cardinals; and, finally, in the last year of his reign, the title of “Fidelissimus,” or “Most Faithful,” was conferred upon the kings of Portugal, to correspond with those of “Most Christian” and “Most Catholic,” attributed to the kings of France and Spain respectively.

These are the only points of interest, which mark John V.’s long reign of forty-four years, and as the last thirty-five of these years were years of peace, it may well be said, happy is the reign which has but little history. But it must not be thought that he therefore left no impression upon his country. On the contrary, he did much to imprint his name on its history. He showed a tendency, like so many other princes of the eighteenth century, to imitate Louis XIV. He spent much money in building, and among his most famous efforts in this direction are the patriarchal church at Lisbon, the superb convent at Mafra, and the great aqueduct which still supplies Lisbon with water. He was a munificent patron of literature and the arts, and founded the Academy of History at Lisbon in 1720. He loved music and the theatre, and spent great sums in importing singers and dancers from Italy and actors from France. He took an intelligent interest in the administration of his kingdom, and for the better despatch of business formed three secretaryships of state for the home, foreign and war, and colonial and naval, departments instead of one, and he took a particular pride in his navy, and founded the naval arsenal of Lisbon. One other fact also may be recorded to his credit, that in 1725 he obtained a Bull from Pope Benedict XIII., allowing all prisoners of the Inquisition to employ counsel to defend them, and ordering that all sentences of the Holy Office should be communicated to and confirmed by the king in council. This excellent monarch had a paralytic stroke in 1742, and for the last eight years of his reign, until his death in 1750, the kingdom was governed by the queen, and the Cardinal da Cunha, Patriarch of Lisbon.

The reign of King Joseph, which lasted from 1750 to 1777, is made famous by the administration of the Marquis of Pombal, the greatest minister who ever ruled Portugal, and one of the greatest of eighteenth-century statesmen. The king, though a man of real ability himself, interfered but little in politics, and left the management of affairs entirely in the hands of the minister, whose greatness he was the first to perceive. The relationship between the monarch and his subject resembles that between Louis XIII. and Richelieu, and does honour to both parties. In everything—in his great internal administrative reforms, in his financial schemes, in the reorganization of the army, in the abolition of slavery, and in the struggle with the Jesuits, which ended in the suppression of that famous order—King Joseph supported his minister. Pombal broke the power of the nobility, and made the king more absolute than ever, and he exalted the royal prerogative, while using it for his measures of reform; while, in return, the king maintained the minister in power, in spite of the vehement protests and wily intrigues of the Roman Catholic clergy, and the opposition of his wife.

Sebastião José de Carvalho e Mello, better known by his later title of the Marquis of Pombal, was a man of more than fifty years of age when his patron succeeded to the throne, and he himself entered office. His father, Emmanuel de Carvalho, was a country gentleman of moderate wealth, but by his mother, Theresa de Mendonça, he was related to some of the noblest families of Portugal, to the Almeidas, the Mellos and the Mendonças. He was born at Soure, on May 13, 1699, and after receiving his education at the University of Coimbra, he entered the army as a private. He found neither pleasure nor profit in a military career in time of peace, and after leaving the service, he led the life of a man about town in Lisbon. His handsome face, great bodily strength, and proficiency in athletic exercises, made him popular in all circles of society in the capital, in spite of his comparative poverty, and he especially distinguished himself, if distinction it may be called, among the “Mohocks,” who infested the streets of Lisbon. There seemed no prospect of his ever making any mark in life, when in 1733 he made himself the talk of the town by his elopement with, or rather his abduction of, a lady of the highest rank, Donna Theresa de Noronha, niece of the Count of Arcos. His wife’s family were at first most indignant, but at last they relented, and in 1739 the bravo of the streets of Lisbon was, by their influence, appointed ambassador to the Court of England. It is some consolation for men of advanced years to remember that the greatest of Portuguese ministers was forty years of age before he ever received official employment. In London Sebastião de Carvalho turned over a new leaf, and devoted himself to the serious study of politics, and he carefully investigated the English system of government and the causes of England’s commercial prosperity. From London he was removed to the Court of Vienna in 1745, and he there married, on the death of his first wife, a daughter of Count Daun, the famous Austrian general. On this occasion King John V. was pleased out of compliment to the victor of Kolin, to grant Sebastião de Carvalho letters of nobility, which entitled him to the prefix Dom; and in 1750 the ambassador was recalled to Portugal and appointed Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs. While he was on his way home John V. died, and when Carvalho reached Lisbon King Joseph had already ascended the throne.

THE MARQUIS OF POMBAL. (From a Print in the British Museum.)
THE MARQUIS OF POMBAL.
(From a Print in the British Museum.)

At first the new Secretary of State held no higher rank than his colleagues, but his abilities soon became evident to the king, and his conduct at the time of the great earthquake of Lisbon gave him unbounded ascendency over the mind of the monarch. This terrible catastrophe took place on November 1, 1755. The population of the city was collected in the churches listening to the solemn services of All Saints Day, when the first shock of earthquake was felt; it was followed at intervals by three others, which laid half the city in ruins. Most of the unfortunate people, who managed to escape from the falling houses and churches, rushed to the quays. But the disturbance affected the sea also; an immense tidal wave swept the quays, and washed off thousands of the fugitives, while the ships in the river were driven on shore. No element of horror was missing, for fires broke out in all parts of the wrecked city, and the scum of the populace rushed hither and thither, murdering and robbing those whom the calamities of nature had spared. At this fearful juncture the king and Carvalho showed the greatest courage and a most unshaken firmness of demeanour. To the demands of the monarch as to what was to be done, the minister answered laconically, “Bury the dead and feed the living,” and for eight days and nights he lived in his carriage, driving from place to place, whithersoever his presence was needed, and repressing disorder. The news of the disaster spread all over Europe; at least thirty thousand people, according to some accounts one hundred thousand people, lost their lives, and foreign nations were not backward in assisting the remnant of the people of Lisbon. In England the pity felt was keener than anywhere else, owing to the close relationship between the two nations, and large sums of money and great quantities of provisions were promptly despatched from London to Portugal. The catastrophe made an extraordinary impression on the minds of all contemporaries; in London over twenty accounts were published within the year, apart from notices in magazines, and Voltaire in his “Candide” gave a full and, on the whole, very accurate description of it.

Carvalho’s energy at this time established his reputation with the king, and he felt able to commence his campaigns against the nobility and the Jesuits. In order that he might have his time free for matters of such importance he was made Prime Minister in 1756, with power over all departments of administration, and his friend, Luis da Cunha, was appointed Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs in his place. Of his long series of administrative reforms, and his efforts to improve the condition of the country, which were spread over his government of twenty-seven years, it will be better to speak as a whole; but a special description must here be given of his campaign against the Jesuits, which brought about the suppression of that famous order. It is not necessary to speculate on the various motives, which induced Carvalho to attack the Jesuits, but the principal cause lay in the fact that they were wealthy and powerful, and therefore a dangerous force in an absolutist monarchy. It must be remembered that the Jesuits of the eighteenth century formed a very different class of men to their predecessors. They were no longer intrepid missionary pioneers, but a corporation of wealthy traders, who made use of their spiritual position to further the cause of their commerce. They had done a great work in America by opening up the interior of Brazil and converting the natives, and their administration of Paraguay, one of the most interesting achievements in the whole history of Christianity, was without doubt a blessing to the people. But by the middle of the eighteenth century they had gone too far. It was one thing to convert the natives of Brazil, and another to absorb much of the wealth of that country, in doing which they prejudiced not only the Crown, but the Portuguese people, whom they kept from settling in the territory under their rule. Whether it was a sufficient reason for Carvalho to attack the order because it was wealthy and powerful, and had departed from its primitive simplicity, is a question for every one to decide for themselves, but that this was the reason, and that the various excuses alleged by the admirers of the great minister are without foundation, is an undoubted fact. On September 19, 1757, the first important blow was struck, when the king’s Jesuit confessor was dismissed, and all Jesuits were forbidden to come to Court. Carvalho, in the name of the King of Portugal, also formally denounced the order at Rome, and Benedict XIV., the then Pope, appointed the Cardinal de Saldanha, a friend of the minister, Visitor and Reformer of the Society of Jesus. The cardinal did not take long in making up his mind, and May 15, 1758, he forbade the Jesuits to engage in trade.

An attempt upon the king’s life, which shortly followed this measure, gave the minister the opportunity he wanted for urging the suppression of the famous society. The history of the Tavora plot, which culminated in this attempt is one of the most mysterious affairs in the whole history of Portugal, and from the many contradictory accounts which have been published, it is almost impossible to arrive at the exact truth. But it is certain that the Jesuits and the nobles had no reason to love the king and his minister, and it is hardly to be wondered at that their opposition resulted in violent measures. The great nobles had been systematically deprived of all political power since the accession of King Joseph, for Carvalho, like Richelieu, distrusted them, and preferred to employ men of his own rank in life or of bourgeois descent in public business in preference to noblemen and their relations. The three leaders of the plot were the Duke of Aveiro, a descendant of John II., and one of the greatest noblemen in Portugal, the Marquis of Tavora, who had filled with credit the post of Governor-general of India, and the Count of Atouguia, a descendant of the gallant Dom Luis de Athaide, the defender of Goa; but the heart and soul of the conspiracy was the Marchioness of Tavora, a beautiful and ambitious woman, who was bitterly offended because her husband had not been made a duke. The confessor of this lady was a Jesuit named Gabriel Malagrida, who is by some authors treated as a half-insane fanatic, and by others as a dangerous intriguer, incensed by the attacks of Carvalho upon his order. Whether Malagrida was innocent or guilty, whether he was mad or sane, whether the Tavoras were incited by religious or political motives, or merely by a desire for private revenge, whether all these noblemen, and especially the Duke of Aveiro, were not merely accused in order to allow Carvalho to strike a blow at the nobility, whether, finally, all those who were punished were victims of the minister or really guilty, are questions which cannot be determined here. The evidence on all sides is most contradictory, and all that is certain is that the king was fired at and wounded on the night of September 3, 1758; and that in the following January, the three noblemen who have been mentioned, the Marchioness of Tavora, Malagrida with seven other Jesuits, and many other individuals of all ranks of life, were arrested as implicated in the attempt to murder. The laymen had but a short trial, and, together with the marchioness, were publicly executed ten days after their arrest.

King Joseph certainly believed that the real culprits had been seized, and in his gratitude he created Carvalho, Count of Oeyras, and encouraged him to pursue his campaign against the Jesuits. On January 19, 1759, the estates belonging to the society were sequestrated; and on September 3rd, all its members were expelled from Portugal, and directions were sent to the viceroys of India and Brazil to expel them likewise. The news of this bold stroke was received with admiration everywhere, except at Rome, and it became noised abroad that a great minister was ruling in Portugal. The elder Pitt, who was anxious that Portugal should join in the Seven Years’ War, publicly acknowledged the ability of the Count of Oeyras, and at his demand apologized for the infraction of the law of nations, which had been committed by the English Admiral Boscawen’s attack upon the French squadron under La Clue, in the Portuguese harbour of Lagos.

The Count of Oeyras had no desire to take part in the general war raging in Europe, and refused to accede to Pitt’s wishes, until the King of Spain, according to the arrangement of the “Pacte de Famille,” attacked Portugal, as being a declared enemy of the Franco-Spanish alliance owing to the Methuen treaty with England. The Spaniards under the Marquis of Sarria invaded the northern provinces of Portugal in 1762, and captured in rapid succession the towns of Miranda, Braganza, and Almeida. Then the Count of Oeyras appealed to the English statesman, and not in vain. English soldiers and munitions of war were at once despatched to Lisbon, and, at the special request of the minister, a general in English pay, the Count of Lippe-Buckeburg, with some English officers and sergeants, were sent to reorganize the Portuguese army as Schomberg had done in the century before. The Count of Lippe, assisted by the energy of the Portuguese minister, quickly formed the Portuguese troops into a disciplined army, and on the arrival of Brigadier-General John Burgoyne, a gallant cavalry officer, who had distinguished himself at Belle-isle, but who is better known in English history from his surrender at Saratoga, to take command of the English troops, the allied army advanced. They were uniformly successful; the Spaniards lost all their former advantages; they were defeated at Valencia de Alcantara, where the English took three standards and a Spanish general; and on October 5th Burgoyne stormed the entrenched camp of Villa Velha, and ended the campaign. The Spaniards were now quite ready to give in, and on February 10, 1763, peace was signed between Portugal and Spain. The Count of Oeyras had learnt a lesson from the contrast between the two campaigns, and when Burgoyne and his English soldiers returned to England, the Count of Lippe-Buckeburg was requested to remain, and he not only reorganized the Portuguese army, but put all the Portuguese fortresses on the Spanish frontier, and especially Elvas, in thorough repair, according to the received ideas of fortification.

On the conclusion of this short war, the Count of Oeyras once more turned his attention to the Jesuits, and in 1764 the Jesuit priest Malagrida was burnt alive, not as a traitor, but as a heretic and impostor, on account of some crazy tractates he had written. The man was regarded as a martyr, and all communication between Portugal and the Holy See was broken off for two years, while the Portuguese minister exerted all his influence with the Courts of France and Spain to procure the entire suppression of the society, which he hated. The king supported him consistently, and after another attempt upon his life in 1769, which the minister as usual attributed to the Jesuits, King Joseph created his faithful servant Marquis of Pombal, by which title he is best known to fame. The prime ministers of France and Spain cordially acquiesced in the hatred of the Jesuits, for both the Duc de Choiseul and the Count d’Aranda had something of Pombal’s spirit in them, and imitated his policy; in both countries the society, which on its foundation had done so much for Catholicism and Christianity, was proscribed, and the worthy members treated with as much rigour as the unworthy; and finally in 1773 Pope Clement XIV. solemnly abolished the Society of Jesus. King Joseph did not long survive this triumph of his minister, for he died on February 24, 1777, and the Marquis of Pombal, then an old man of seventy-seven, was at once dismissed from office.

BULL FIGHT. (From “Les Royaumes d’Espagne,” &c. La Haye, 1720.)
BULL FIGHT.
(From “Les Royaumes d’Espagne,” &c. La Haye, 1720.)

To analyse the internal reforms and general measures of improvement introduced into Portugal by Pombal is almost impossible in a single paragraph, so far-reaching were his endeavours, so unlimited his energy. He has often been compared with Richelieu, chiefly, it seems, because of his rigorous suppression of the Tavora plot; but the men whom he really resembled were the benevolent despots and their ministers who abounded in Europe before the outbreak of the French Revolution. He firmly believed that the greatest happiness of a people depended upon the maintenance of an absolutist monarchy, which could do more good than representative institutions, and his struggle with the Jesuits was mainly due to the fact that they were so wealthy and independent, especially in Brazil, as to hamper the power of the Crown. The class of statesmen and politicians to which he belonged included such monarchs as Frederick the Great of Prussia, the Emperor Joseph II., Leopold, Grand Duke of Tuscany, and Charles III. of Spain, and such great reforming ministers as Aranda in Spain and Tannucci in Naples; and like them he believed that real good could only be done by an absolute monarch, who had the interests of his people at heart. The greatest evidence Pombal gave of this royal concern for the people was in the famous decree of May 25, 1773, by which slavery was abolished in Portugal, or rather by which grandsons of slaves, and all children of slaves born after that date, were declared free, and which at the same time abolished all distinctions between “old” and “new” Christians, by which latter term the descendants of the converted Jews and Mohammedans were still called, and made all Portuguese subjects alike eligible for civil, military, and ecclesiastical offices. In Brazil, however, he made no attempt to put down slavery, believing, like all his contemporaries, that negroes were made on purpose to be slaves; but even there he repeated and enforced the edicts against making slaves of the natives of the country. In matters of internal administration he advocated and maintained efficiency and economy, and at one blow in 1761 he swept away more than three-quarters of the petty offices which hampered the administration of justice. The law courts were made accessible, and lawsuits cheap; and in 1769 he robbed the Inquisition of its power by making it an open and public court, subject to the rules which regulated other courts. In matters of police he showed the same vigour, and by stern repression prevented the machinery of the law from being used to further private revenge. He recognized the importance of education, and reorganized the University of Coimbra in 1772 by abolishing the teaching of the dark ages which still continued there and introducing the modern element; and though he expelled the great teaching order of the Church, he maintained the educational establishments of the Jesuits, and turned their college at Lisbon into a school for the training of the young nobility. Of the reforms in the army, which he carried out with the help of the Count of Lippe-Buckeburg mention has already been made, and he was equally energetic with regard to the navy, over which department he placed the most energetic of his subordinates, Martinho de Mello e Castro. Nor was the great minister careless of more material affairs; he showed a taste for architecture and building; under his superintendence the part of Lisbon which had been ruined by the earthquake rose from its ashes in redoubled beauty, adorned with fine streets, squares, and buildings, generally designed by the famous Portuguese architect Joaquim Machado de Castro. He did not neglect to encourage agriculture and viniculture, which must ever be the source of livelihood of the greater number of the Portuguese people, and he introduced the silkworm into the northern provinces, and made special regulations for the management and encouragement of the bold fishermen of the Beira and the Algarves. In his attempt to introduce manufactures the Marquis of Pombal was not so successful; the Portuguese are not a manufacturing people, and the system of protection which he enforced only roused the opposition of English merchants, who protested against it as a breach of the Methuen treaty, and made manufactured articles dearer than they had been during the first half of the century. Yet some of the native industries which he established or protected were not unworthy of his care, and the glass-works of Leiria, the lace of Vianna, and the potteries of Aveiro enjoyed a great and deserved reputation. In commercial matters he showed the result of the lessons he had learnt during his official residence in London, for he founded the Royal Bank of Portugal in 1751, and established the Oporto Wine Company, against which infraction of their monopoly the English wine merchants loudly inveighed. He encouraged trade with Brazil by granting concessions to the gold seekers and planters of that great colony; and the importation of gold, sugar, and tobacco brought back to Lisbon some of the prosperity of the sixteenth century. In Asia he was clear-sighted enough to perceive that any attempt to contend for a share of the Indian or the spice trade was bound to be of no avail; but he was the first of Portuguese statesmen to perceive the value of the little settlement of Macao in the Canton river. Most of the Chinese trade, which had been yearly growing in value, was in the hands of the factory of the English East India Company at Canton, but the jealousy of the Chinese Government was such that the Company had no assured position there. But Macao was a free port; most of the factors and writers of the East India Company resided there, and Pombal, seeing that the tea trade passed through Portuguese territory, greatly encouraged it, and took care that it should pay due toll to the Portuguese authorities and contribute to the wealth of the Portuguese Crown. Nor was the great minister insensible to literature and the fine arts. He founded the “Arcadia de Lisboa” in 1757, for the propagation of the teachings of the school of the French encyclopædists; and it was under his influence and protection that Diogo Barbosa Machado compiled his “Bibliotheca Lusitana” and Damião Antonio de Lemos wrote his “Historia de Portugal,” a work which stands midway between the naïve annals of Bernardo de Brito and Antonio Brandão, and the modern scientific histories of Alexandra Herculano and Rebello da Silva. Of music he was particularly fond; he persuaded the king to build the opera house at Lisbon, and to invite the famous singer Caffarelli, the confidant of the King of Spain, to sing there, and to him was dedicated the best Portuguese opera, the “Alessandre nell’ Indie” of David Peres.

Such were some of the reforms, schemes, improvements, and tastes of the great minister; they made him the friend of his sovereign and the adored of the people; but, on the other hand, his persecution of the Jesuits and his rigorous treatment of the leading noblemen, whom he had often imprisoned without trial, made him many personal enemies, and when his patron died he knew that his own fall was at hand. King Joseph had died without male issue, and was succeeded on the throne by his eldest daughter, Donna Maria Francisca, who had married in 1760 her own uncle Dom Pedro, a younger brother of King Joseph. By this arrangement it was hoped that all disputes as to the accession would be avoided; the husband and wife were crowned together, and coins were struck in the joint names of Maria I. and Pedro III. Both the king and the queen were feeble and weak-minded, and the reins of government fell into the hands of the widow of King Joseph, Donna Marianna Victoria, a fanatical Catholic who had always resented the influence of Pombal and opposed his policy. By her advice the great minister was at once dismissed from office and ordered to send in his accounts, while his enemies were released from prison. Their names will show how powerful was the enmity he had to expect, for among them were Dom Miguel de Annunciacão, Bishop of Coimbra; Dom João Amberto de Noronha, Count of San Lourenço; Dom João de Almeida Portugal, Marquis of Alorna, a former Viceroy of India, and brother of the Marquis of Tavora; Dom Martinho de Mascarenhas, son of the executed Duke of Aveiro; Dom José, illegitimate brother of the late king and Grand Inquisitor of Portugal; Antonio de Andrade Freire, the Chancellor; Dom Frederico de Sousa Holstein; and Dom João de Braganza, Duke of Lafoẽs. These men at once surrounded the new sovereigns and gave utterance to complaints against Pombal; the proceedings in the case of the Tavora plot were reversed, and the prosecution of the late minister pressed on with bitter hostility. Yet his enemies hardly dared to condemn such a benefactor to his country to any severe penalty, and after being driven about from pillar to post for four years, the old man, now more than eighty years of age, was condemned to be banished twenty leagues from Court. Had his relentless persecutor, the widow of King Joseph, been alive, his punishment would doubtless have been more severe, and, as it was, the queen dared not pass such a light sentence until after her mother’s death. The old minister did not long survive his disgrace, and died at Pombal on May 8, 1782, at the age of eighty-three. To the credit of Pedro and Maria let it be admitted at once that in consideration of his father’s long and eminent services the young Marquis of Pombal was fully confirmed in all the honours and estates which had been conferred upon the minister by King Joseph.

It need hardly be said that the fall of Pombal left many aspirants to his high place. The three Secretaries of State, Martinho de Mello e Castro, Thomas Xavier de Lima Brito, Viscount of Villa Nova de Cerveira, afterwards Marquis of Ponte de Lima, and Ayres de Sá e Mello; the Intendant of the Treasury, Pedro José de Noronha, Marquis of Angeja; and the Intendant of Police, Diogo Ignacio de Pina Manique, had all been trained in official work by Pombal, and were all eager to succeed their master in power. None of them, however, were successful, for the great nobles who had been recalled to Court were determined to have no such supreme ruler again over them, while they were too jealous of each other and too inexperienced in affairs to take office themselves. Matters went on therefore at the commencement of the new reign much as they had done under the management of Pombal; his spirit remained amongst the ministers, and in such measures as the commercial treaty with Russia, the lighting of Lisbon by oil lamps, and the abolition of imprisonment for debt, the impulse he had given to all reforms is clearly to be seen. The “Arcadia de Lisboa” was indeed allowed to disappear, but in its place the Duke of Lafoẽs established the “Academia Real das Sciencias” in 1779, which did even better work for literature by its publication of the works of the early Portuguese chroniclers. In carrying out these measures the king and queen had little share; Pedro III. was a silly and vicious man, and Maria Francisca was a woman of weak intellect, completely subservient to her confessor, Ignacio de San Caetano who found her greatest happiness in raising vast sums of money and sending them to the Latin convent at Jerusalem. The only important event in which they took a part was their conference with the Court of Spain at Badajoz in 1785, when an arrangement was come to about the disputed frontier in South America; and when Dom John, the second son of Pedro and Maria, was betrothed to Donna Carlotta Joaquina, grand-daughter of Charles III. of Spain. In the following year Pedro III. died, and his death, followed as it speedily was by those of her confessor and of her elder son, Dom José, who had married his aunt, Donna Maria Benedictina, completely upset the small amount of intellect possessed by Maria Francisca. It was observed in 1788 that she was quite unfit to transact any business; and in 1792, when the progress of the French Revolution was setting all Europe in a blaze, Dom John found it necessary to take the management of affairs into his hands, though he was not declared regent until 1799.

To turn from the history of Portugal in the eighteenth century to the history of the Portuguese possessions in India is a melancholy task; for these possessions instead of being a source of pride were a source of expense and anxiety to the home government, and they were maintained rather from a recollection of ancient greatness and as a base for mission work than for any actual advantage derived from them. In 1739 Bassein, the “Capital of the North” as it was called, a city which had been second only to Goa in commercial and political importance, was captured by Chimnājī Apā, a Marātha general, after a three months’ siege, and with it fell Thana and all the possessions of the Portuguese on the north-west coast except Daman and Diu. In 1741 the Marāthas and the Bhonslās of Sawantwārī over-ran the country round Goa and threatened the city, but in the moment of difficulty, the Marquis of Louriçal arrived with twelve thousand men, and first defeated the Marāthas at Bardez, and then made Khem Sawant, the ruler of Sawantwārī, tributary. His successes were followed by those of the Marquis of Castello Novo, who captured Alorna, Tiracol, Neutim, Rarim, and Satari; and the Marquis of Tavora, who took Sadashivgarh.

But the Portuguese Government had no desire to make fresh conquests which it would need fresh supplies of money from home to defend, and the Count of Ega was ordered to surrender most of the conquered towns to their former owners. Meanwhile commerce had entirely deserted the Portuguese possessions, which were given over to the Church; and Captain Hamilton in his travels, after speaking of the poverty of the Portuguese inhabitants, says that he counted no fewer than eighty churches and convents in Goa, and that there were no less than thirty thousand priests in the city and territory. Revenue there was none, and the two thousand European soldiers who defended the ancient capital of Alboquerque had to be paid out of the Portuguese treasury. The last blow was given to what little commerce still remained by Pombal’s suppression of the Jesuits, and in 1759 “Golden Goa,” which had become unhealthy and ruinous, was left to priests and monks, and the seat of government was removed to Panjim. Pombal, with his practical insight, saw that nothing was to be made out of the Portuguese possessions in India, and spent all his efforts in Asia in promoting the prosperity of Macao; and in 1794, when Portugal was in difficulties in Europe, the Viceroy of Goa asked for the protection of English troops, and Goa was garrisoned by the English East India Company throughout the continuance of the great war with France.

Very different was the history of Brazil during this century: while India was a source of expense, Brazil was the great source of wealth to the Portuguese treasury, and was to be the refuge of the royal family when it became impossible for it to remain longer in Lisbon. Throughout the century there was a steady influx of immigrants to Brazil from Portugal, and the population of the great colony rapidly increased in numbers. Most of these immigrants settled down as sugar or tobacco planters, and the labour upon the plantations was completely in the hands of the negro slaves, who were imported in vast numbers. The trade in slaves was kept entirely in the hands of Portuguese merchants, in spite of the efforts of the English slavers, and was not only looked upon as a lucrative calling, but as the chief employment for the Portuguese sailors. It was this trade alone which made it worth while for the Portuguese Government to keep up its establishments on the coast of Guinea, and Pombal encouraged it as the only means of supplying Brazil with labourers. The slaves in Brazil were not treated unkindly; their masters were bound to feed them; and were not only allowed, but were obliged to sell them their liberty, on the offer of a certain fixed sum of money. These freed slaves and the mulattoes, who were very numerous, often accumulated considerable wealth, and were treated as citizens in every respect, except that they could not hold any civil or municipal office. They were even enrolled as soldiers, but the mulatto regiments were kept distinct from the European, and officered from among the wealthy members of their own class. The native Brazilians were treated even more favourably, and by the great decree of 1755 they were not only forbidden to sell themselves as slaves, but were made citizens in every respect, and allowed to receive their education at the University of Coimbra. The importance of the discovery of gold in the interior has been mentioned, and the revenue to the Portuguese Crown from the king’s fifth, in spite of much fraud, was estimated at £300,000 a year. The opening up of the interior led, about the year 1750, to the conquest of the Paulist Republic. This curious little state had been formed round the city of St. Paul about the commencement of the eighteenth century by fugitives from Brazil and from the more oppressive Spanish Governments of Chile and Peru. The town was originally founded far up in the heart of the virgin forests beyond the jurisdiction of the Portuguese and Spanish officials, where the inhabitants led a wild, romantic life, tempered only by lynch law. But by degrees the march of civilization brought them in contact with the Portuguese Government, and the discovery of diamonds in the vicinity led to the suppression of the little republic. This discovery of diamonds further increased the wealth of the Portuguese Crown, and in addition to the royal right to every diamond above twenty carats weight, the king was estimated to make an income of £100,000 a year by a contract entered into with a syndicate of English diamond buyers. Nor were other precious stones lacking, for rubies, emeralds, and topazes were all discovered in such large quantities in the latter half of the eighteenth century as to seriously lower their price. The great colony was ruled most wisely; only a few of the superior officers were sent from Portugal, and most offices were filled from among the settlers themselves. It was not even found necessary to send troops from Portugal, for a regular army of sixteen thousand men, and a militia of over twenty thousand were easily raised and paid in the country itself. The only troubles which beset the colony were caused by the indefiniteness of its boundaries, and Portugal found it necessary to yield much territory, which has since developed into wealthy and prosperous republics to the encroachments of Spain. Its importance was recognized by the title of Prince of Brazil granted to the eldest son of the King of Portugal since the days of John IV., and it became a safe refuge for the exiled royal family when events in Europe made it necessary for it to fly from Lisbon.

In literature the Portuguese writers of the eighteenth century followed and imitated the French authors of the reigns of Louis XIV. and Louis XV. instead of striving to develop the characteristics of their own nation. The “Academia Real de Lisboa,” the “Academia Real de Portugal,” the “Arcadia de Lisboa,” and the “Academia Real das Sciencias,” which succeeded each other at short intervals, were all attempts to imitate the French Academy and its offshoots, and though they did good work in encouraging research and rewarding literary endeavour, they failed, as such institutions generally do fail, to produce great writers and thinkers. At the beginning of the eighteenth century, before the academies exercised their influence, the only literary productions in Portugal were lyric poems of no great merit, which were much admired by the members of numerous little literary clubs resembling the Italian arcadias, and which were chiefly imitations of the forms of verse most in vogue in France and Italy. But during the rule of Pombal a more healthy spirit appeared; the works of the French encyclopædists and their contemporaries were studied instead of tricks of versification, and a new departure was made alike in poetry and prose. The new poets did not confine themselves to lyrics; they attempted epics, dramas, and eclogues, all more or less based upon an imitation of the French, but yet possessing a more truly national ring than the lyrics of their predecessors. All these poets were not lovers of Pombal; the great minister was too heedless of hurting their susceptibilities and too sparing of his pensions for that; and the best known among them, Antonio Diniz da Cruz e Silva, who was termed the Portuguese Boileau, vehemently attacked the great man after his fall. The influence exerted by this poet on the progress of Portuguese literature was, however, slight compared to that of his successors, Francisco Manoel de Nascimento and Manoel Maria Barbosa du Bocage, whose followers under the names of the “Filintists” and “Elmanists” preached freedom from the rigour of the French canons of criticism, and adherence to national forms. Epic poetry was not neglected, though none of its writers can compare with the great Camoens, whose “Lusiads” were several times reprinted with notes during this century. The fame of the great Portuguese epic was indeed spread abroad throughout Europe; it was translated into French by Duperron de Castera and by the French critic La Harpe; into Dutch by L. S. Pieterzoon; and into English by Mickle who, as a translator of their master-poet, was cordially received at the Portuguese Court in 1780. Nor was the drama forgotten; the Portuguese stage was held by tragedies after the French classical model, the subjects of which were generally borrowed from the annals of the country, of which the titles of the three tragedies of Du Bocage, “Viriato,” “Affonso Henriques,” and “Vasco da Gama,” may be cited as a proof. In prose, the most valuable work was done in history, and the editions of the old Portuguese chroniclers, Ruy de Pina, Azurara, Fernão Lopes, and Acenheiro, edited for the “Academia Real das Sciencias,” by José Correa de Serra still remain the standard editions. Nor was science neglected in the country of Pedro Nunes; Bartholomeu de Gusmão is asserted to have discovered ballooning in 1709, years before the Montgolfiers commenced their experiments; and the botanists Felix de Avellar Brotero and Antonio Correa da Silva, to mention but one department of scientific activity, were well known throughout Europe, and were members of most of the scientific societies of the time. In the arts mention has already been made of David Peres, the musical composer, and of Joaquim Machado de Castro, the architect; the latter was in addition the best sculptor of his country, and Domingos Antonio de Sequeira, as a painter, will compare favourably with most of the contemporary artists in Europe.

But though the influence of France is to be perceived in every department of literature until the revival of national poetry by Nascimento and Du Bocage, the Portuguese people remained, owing to the Methuen treaty, on much more intimate terms with the English. The royal family might hanker after matrimonial alliances with Spain, a great minister, like Pombal, might resent the absorption of Portuguese trade by England; but, for all that, the people felt how close were their bonds with the English nation. Mention has been made of the influx of English capital, of the wine merchants of Oporto, and the English factory at Lisbon, and also of the power exercised by the English ambassadors. But there was a closer bond than that; Portugal became the sanitarium for England; it was to Portugal that the seekers after a milder climate resorted as they would now do to the Riviera, and it was to Lisbon that the great English novelist, Henry Fielding, to mention but one of many invalids, was sent; it was in Lisbon that he died, and he is buried in the cemetery of the English factory there. These were the bonds that bound the two peoples together, and the Portuguese people were justified in counting upon the armed help of England in the terrible struggle which they were now to pass through.

text decoration

text decoration

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.

A PORTUGUESE MERCHANT, WITH HIS WIFE AND MAID-SERVANT. (From Murphy’s “Travels in Portugal”, 1795.)
A PORTUGUESE MERCHANT, WITH HIS WIFE AND MAID-SERVANT.
(From Murphy’s “Travels in Portugal”, 1795.)

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.