At the end of the century Portugal’s prosperity stood high. In 1792, owing to the Queen’s failing reason, her son João took over the reins of government. The Queen lived till 1816, and the Regent then became King João VI till his death ten years later. The greater part of his rule, as Regent and King, was fraught with a series of disasters which from prosperity dashed Portugal into distress and despair, and threatened her very existence as a nation. The two causes which contributed most to her ruin were the invasion of Portugal by the French armies of Napoleon, and the declaration of the independence of Brazil, with which Portugal had hitherto had a monopoly of trade. Portugal, as England’s ally, and the possessor of excellent seaports, could not hope to escape Napoleon’s attention. In vain she attempted to maintain her neutrality, even to the extent of wishing to close her harbours against and yet remain the ally of Great Britain. But the treaty of Fontainebleau in October, 1807, between Napoleon and Godoy, made it clear that whatever hope there was for Portugal consisted in her old alliance. By this treaty Portugal was to be divided into three parts, and to cease to be an independent country. Junot advanced rapidly upon Lisbon, and the Regent and Royal Family set sail for Brazil, accompanied by many of the noble and wealthy families of Portugal. The land of Portugal itself remained for years the scene of warfare, for, although the convention of Cintra in 1808 freed it from its immediate invaders, other armies followed and were only slowly forced northwards by the genius and persistency of Wellington.

Wellington himself was not unpopular in Portugal, but with Beresford, who was appointed Commander-in-Chief of the Portuguese army under the regency which governed Portugal during the King’s absence in Brazil, it was otherwise. His punctual discipline was hated, and a growing number of Portuguese, filled with the ideas of the French Revolution, nourished a hope of freeing their country from what they considered the undue interference of the foreigner, and the dominion of what appeared to be obsolete and reactionary methods. In 1817 a plot of General Gomes Freire de Andrade against Beresford proclaimed to all the world how necessary discipline was for Portugal. The plot was discovered, and Gomes Freire was executed. But three years later a revolution broke out. Beresford, who had been absent in Brazil, was refused a landing on his return, the Regency was overthrown, and a new Constitution drawn up. King João VI returned in the following year from Brazil. In 1822 Brazil pronounced itself independent and chose the King’s popular and liberal-minded son, Pedro, to be its ruler. King João was disposed to accept some kind of constitution, and entrusted the Conde de Palmella with the drawing up of a constitution less radical than that of 1820. He had, however, counted without the Queen Carlotta and his son, Dom Miguel. They succeeded in overthrowing the constitutional party, and King João VI was obliged to take refuge from his own son on an English man-of-war in 1823. In the following year, with the help of the Powers, he succeeded in restoring his authority, and Dom Miguel was banished. King João died two years later.

His eldest son, Pedro, as Emperor of Brazil, renounced the throne of Portugal in favour of his daughter, Maria II da Gloria, then a small child. In the hope of healing the strife which bade fair to be the irremediable ruin of Portugal, he decided that his brother Miguel should act as Regent and marry his niece, under condition of swearing to accept the Constitution. Dom Miguel came to Portugal—o rei chegou, o rei chegou—and under cover of accepting the Constitution had himself proclaimed King (in June, 1828), while his niece and betrothed wife was being educated in Paris. A vigorous persecution of Liberals and Constitutionalists followed. Thousands of them left the country as exiles, others suffered cruel torments in prison, and others were executed: and more seeds of that mutual hatred and vindictiveness were sown between Portuguese and Portuguese which a century was unable to root out. Pedro returned from Brazil to fight for his daughter’s throne, and reached the Azores in the spring of 1832. Two years later Miguel, who in spite of all his faults possessed many good qualities, and was beloved by the Portuguese people, was finally defeated at Thomar and by the treaty of Evora renounced the throne. King Pedro himself died in the same year. In 1836 Queen Maria was married to Prince Ferdinand of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha. Her reign was embittered by military pronunciamentos in favour of a more radical or more moderate constitution, and, in 1852, a year before the Queen’s death, the Duke of Saldanha succeeded in imposing a constitution which remained in force for some years. He himself continued to be the make-weight in Portuguese politics until 1871, when after a brief term of office he was overthrown in turn by the Conservatives and sent as Ambassador to London, where he died in 1876.

After Queen Maria’s death, the enlightened and art-loving King Consort Ferdinand ruled on behalf of his son, Pedro V, until he was pronounced to be of age in 1855. The new King died in 1861, and was succeeded by Luiz I (1861-89), during whose reign the unpatriotic strife between Liberal and Conservative politicians, Progressistas and Regeneradores, went on unabated.

It is not pleasant to dwell on the fate of a country, once as glorious as any in Europe, now torn and harassed by party feuds, personal ambitions, false ideas of liberty, artificial and purely formal conceptions of Constitutionalism, misgovernment and corruption, neglect, indifference, despair.

Luiz I was succeeded in 1889 by his son, Carlos I, whose reign began as it ended, disastrously for Portugal. In the very year of his accession, the house of Braganza was driven from Brazil, which declared itself a Republic. In the following year a colonial question between Great Britain and Portugal led to the presentation of an ultimatum by Great Britain, and what was ignorantly regarded as the King’s weakness inspired an abortive republican rising at Oporto in 1891. In the following year Portugal’s credit was laid in the dust by a formal declaration of bankruptcy. The events of these four years were sufficient to disgust anyone with the business of king. The King, under the Constitution, had really little power to interfere. The Queen, Marie Amélie, daughter of the Comte de Paris, was looked upon askance as a friend of the religious orders, and her courage and charity awakened no response of chivalry in the hearts of the Portuguese. The position came to be this: that every kind of support was refused to the Monarchy, which was then bitterly criticised and attacked by those who, had they supported it loyally, might have made it a success. It was “a Monarchy without any monarchists,” said King Carlos.