Portugal now became, like Spain, hardly more than the arena where English armies under the duke of Wellington fought a desperate and protracted war with the French under various leaders. The full details of this conflict, known as the Peninsular War, will be found in the history of Spain. For some years it was impossible to distinguish between the military interests of Spain and Portugal, their common safety resting on the destruction of Napoleon and the success of British courage and British plans. In these the Spaniards and Portuguese played small part, according to the British histories, except to harass French communications by their guerillas and harass British security by their intrigues and jealousies.

But there is something to be said for the natives. The French democratic principles had made some progress in Portugal, and the cowardly and stupid king who fled to a colony and left his country for a foreigner to defend was not of much inspiration. In fact patriotism found here little to cling to except the rocks and vines, and those would remain in any case, whoever ruled. Between the world-shaking Napoleon and the weak-minded, England-serving poltroon whom monarchic heredity had with its usual felicity placed on the throne, there was small choice to the Portuguese, and the historian should be sparing of his blame for the impassivity of the nation.

Furthermore the English commander Wellington was notoriously domineering; and the English troops, according to their own historian and their general himself, showed some of the most atrocious examples of drunken insubordination and bestial ferocity in the history of human war. Few of the Portuguese could be blind to the fact that England, in spite of her lofty tone, was really in Portugal for commercial and not for altruistic reasons, and that the war was purely a wrestling-match for commerce and power between two giants, France and England, with little regard for the Lilliputians they might trample in their struggle. It behooves the reader, then, not to follow the bias of either pro- or anti-Napoleonic historians in their common tone of contempt for the alleged pusillanimity of the Spanish and Portuguese.

The fact must be remembered that Spain and Portugal had nothing or next to nothing definite to fight for, as “loyalty” in each country meant little more than a desire to shed blood and money for a monarch of third-rate virtue and first-rate imbecility. It may be said, however, that the verdict of English historians is much more favourable to the Portuguese soldiers than to the Spanish. A brief outline of events will serve here for the history of Portugal, in view of the chapter already given in the history of Spain.

On the flight of the royal family to Brazil, a council of regency was appointed to carry on affairs. The disgust at João was so great that the French general Junot met almost no resistance, but rather welcome as the bringer of freedom and democracy. The council of regency submitted to him at Lisbon. His first acts were to seize the treasury and disband the Portuguese army; on the other hand he forbade the Spanish their expected plunder and he raised the Portuguese Legion of troops who served with fidelity and bravery under Napoleon in other countries down to his defeat at Waterloo.

Having disarmed Portugal by easy measures and false hopes, Junot suddenly announced the end of the dynasty of Braganza, substituted French for Portuguese governors everywhere, and formed a new ministry and a new regency, largely French, with Junot at the head as president, eventually, he hoped, as king of Portugal. Spain had been similarly duped and given a French king, Joseph Bonaparte. Spain responded by rebellion; Portugal, after nine months of submission to Junot, rose and butchered the French in large numbers. Revolutionary juntas took the government and appealed to England for aid, receiving in response both men and money as well as generals, chief among them the Irishman, Sir Arthur Wellesley, later and better known as the duke of Wellington. Portugal was in England’s eyes, according to Canning’s own words, merely the fulcrum for the lever of England to wrench Napoleon from his power.

After some hindrance, due to division of command, Wellesley was able to march forward; he defeated Laborde at Roliça (or Roriça) August 17th, 1808, and four days later dealt Junot himself such a blow at Vimeiro that he surrendered all his strongholds and his troops on the condition that the English carry the army and its spoils safely back to France on their own ships. This so-called Convention of Cintra, concluded some miles from Cintra, was carried out, but provoked a storm of rage in England.

The French being thus transported, as by Aladdin’s carpet, out of Portugal, Dom João’s regency was re-established and found abundant ground for dispute with the junta of Oporto, and later with the English officers and diplomats. England sent J. C. Villiers as ambassador, and Beresford to organise the native armies. He did his work with skill, and ten thousand Portuguese were taken into English pay. Hardly had Junot’s army been evicted from Portugal when another French army under Soult came over from Spain, which was full of French troops. Soult drove back all resistance and took Oporto, whence Wellington expelled him May 12th, 1809. Wellington then entered Spain and beat “king” Joseph Bonaparte and his marshal Victor at Talavera.

Meanwhile there were endless disputes with the regency, who seemed to divert the moneys England sent until the troops were hampered almost to helplessness, and the English generals were driven frantic. Sir Charles Stuart was finally at England’s insistence added to the regency, and something less inefficient resulted. The people were, however, not altogether convinced of their duty to play “fulcrum” indefinitely to the Archimedean lever of England. They were not cheered by having to dig those famous and enormous lines of defence at Torres Vedras, and they were still less encouraged in being compelled to devastate their own country and retire with the English troops behind breastworks, before the terrible army Napoleon sent under Masséna in 1810.

But while Wellington kept under cover and guarded Lisbon doggedly, Portuguese militia under Antonio de Silveira and various English officers made it increasingly hard for Masséna to subsist his troops. Trant took Coimbra, and in 1811 Masséna was forced to retire or starve. Wellington was now reinforced, and following Masséna cautiously, bested him at Sabugal, April 3rd, 1811. But the year was one of great anxiety to Wellington. England could afford few supplies and the Portuguese regency was more prolific of complaints and quarrels than of provisions. But, though compelled to keep on the defensive, the Iron Duke showed a menace he hardly felt. The war hovered on the borders of Portugal and went generally to French advantage in Spain.

Wellington gradually, and by a patience as great as his skill in emergency, gained the upper hand, and forcing his way into Spain, took Madrid August 12th, 1812. He was later forced out by French adroitness and made a retreat, which, as described in the history of Spain, is infamous in British annals for the outrageous and inexcusable misbehaviour of the troops. Wellington berated his army in violent terms, and though he was not made the more popular thereby, his troops were somewhat sobered. He now received full power from the court in Brazil, and at the same time was made chief of the Spanish armies, with the whole peninsula under his command. He at once assumed the offensive with a vigour that answered the violent criticism his alleged timidity had provoked in England as well as in the peninsula and France. His victories, coinciding with Napoleon’s disastrous Moscow campaign, drove the French out of the peninsula and led him into France, where the Peninsular War was ended with Napoleon’s abdication.

PORTUGAL AN ENGLISH PROVINCE

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.)

Meanwhile Dom Pedro, left behind in Brazil, had smiled upon those who desired independence of the mother-country which had long been but a blood-sucking vampire. By his complacency Dom Pedro won the privilege of leading the revolt against his own father and becoming the first emperor of Brazil with a liberal constitution back of him. Portugal made only the feeblest effort at resistance and Brazil was thenceforward independent. Its fuller history will be found in the later volume devoted to Spanish America.

The easy surrender of the richest of her colonies exasperated the absolutists still more against the pliant João, and Portugal proceeded to echo the almost incredible Spanish motto, “Hurrah for chains!”; to grow frantic for despotism; to curse those who tried to limit the power of oppression, and to exhibit the spectacle—no less astounding for being so common in history—of a people shedding its blood to destroy its own liberties.a

FOOTNOTES