[1807 - 1834] Napoleonic Wars, Liberalism, and Civil War

The year is 1807, and Portugal is caught in a vice. To the east, Napoleon Bonaparte, master of Europe, issues a stark ultimatum: close your ports to your oldest ally, Great Britain, or face invasion. To the west, the vast Atlantic, where the formidable British Royal Navy patrols, threatening to blockade and dismantle the sprawling Portuguese empire if they bow to France. For Prince Regent João, ruling in place of his mentally unstable mother, Queen Maria I, there is no right answer. The court in Lisbon, a world of powdered wigs, intricate silk gowns, and hushed political maneuvering, holds its breath. Portugal’s wealth, its very identity, is tied to the trade flowing from Brazil—a trade entirely dependent on British protection. The decision, when it comes, is one of the most audacious gambles in modern history. As General Junot’s French army marches towards Lisbon, not to conquer a king, but an empty throne. In a chaotic, rain-lashed spectacle, the entire Portuguese court—an estimated 10,000 to 15,000 nobles, ministers, servants, and the royal family itself—flees. A vast flotilla of ships, laden with the state treasury, priceless art, and the royal library, sets sail for the colony of Brazil. They leave behind a bewildered nation and a capital city open to the invaders. As the French troops entered Lisbon, they were met not with cannon fire, but with the sight of the last Portuguese sails disappearing over the horizon. The heart of the empire had been ripped out, relocated 5,000 miles away to Rio de Janeiro. For the Portuguese people left behind, life became a nightmare. The French invasions, three in total between 1807 and 1811, were brutal. The land was stripped bare. Churches were looted, farms burned, and civilians suffered unspeakable violence. But this was not just a French conquest; it became the Peninsular War, a savage, grinding conflict where Portuguese militias fought alongside British troops led by a stern and brilliant general, Arthur Wellesley, the future Duke of Wellington. It was here that military engineering produced a masterpiece of defense: the Lines of Torres Vedras. A massive, secret network of forts, redoubts, and cleared firing fields built across the Lisbon peninsula. In 1810, the French army, having marched the length of the country, ground to a halt before this impassable barrier, starving and exposed. It was a turning point, but one achieved at a terrible cost to the Portuguese countryside, which had been deliberately devastated in a scorched-earth policy to deny the French supplies. By 1811, the French were driven out for good, but peace did not bring normality. A strange and humiliating reality set in. King João, now King João VI, remained in Brazil, which he elevated to the status of a kingdom, equal to Portugal itself. Rio flourished, becoming the vibrant center of the empire, while Lisbon, the ancient capital, languished. The country was financially ruined, its governance effectively in the hands of a British regent, and its national pride deeply wounded. Portugal had become a colony of its own colony. This simmering resentment finally boiled over on August 24, 1820. In the bustling port city of Porto, with its granite buildings and riverside warehouses, a group of military officers and liberal merchants launched a revolution. They were men who had fought the French, who had been exposed to the new, electrifying ideas of the Enlightenment and the French Revolution—ideas of constitutions, of popular sovereignty, of a nation not just being the property of a king. They demanded a constitution and the return of the court. The revolution spread like wildfire, and King João VI had no choice. In 1821, after 13 years in the tropics, he sailed back to a Portugal he barely recognized, a nation demanding he surrender his absolute power. He reluctantly swore an oath to the new liberal constitution in 1822. But in securing one part of his empire, he lost the other. His son, Pedro, whom he had left behind as regent in Brazil, was surrounded by a Brazilian elite who had tasted power and had no desire to return to the status of a mere colony. On September 7, 1822, on the banks of the Ipiranga River, Pedro drew his sword and uttered the famous cry, “Independence or Death!” Brazil, the source of Portugal’s wealth for centuries, was gone forever. The economic shock was catastrophic; state revenue plummeted by over 80%. The loss of Brazil and the new liberal constitution tore Portuguese society in two. On one side were the Liberals—merchants, intellectuals, and army officers who believed in constitutional monarchy and progress. On the other were the Absolutists—the old nobility, the rural clergy, and the peasantry, who were deeply traditional and saw the King’s absolute power as divinely ordained. This ideological chasm was perfectly embodied by King João’s two sons. There was Pedro, the liberal, now Emperor of Brazil. And there was his younger brother, Miguel, a fierce and charismatic traditionalist who became the figurehead for the absolutist cause. When João VI died in 1826, the stage was set for the final, bloody act: a civil war. Pedro, as the eldest son, was the rightful heir, but he was ruling Brazil. He tried to compromise: he formally abdicated the Portuguese throne in favor of his seven-year-old daughter, Maria, on the condition that she would one day marry her uncle, Miguel, who would rule as regent and swear to uphold the liberal constitution. Miguel agreed. He swore the oath. And then, he broke it. Seizing absolute power in 1828, he declared himself king and unleashed a brutal reign of terror against his liberal opponents. The years that followed were known as the *Miguelismo*, a dark time of political persecution, executions, and exile. The conflict became known as the War of the Two Brothers. It was a tragic, intimate struggle that pitted cities against the countryside, and families against each other. Finally, in an astonishing move, Pedro abdicated his Brazilian throne, leaving it to his young son, and sailed to Europe. He assembled an army of liberal exiles and, with British and French support, landed in Porto in 1832. For nearly a year, his small force was besieged in the city, but they held out. The war raged across the country until, in 1834, the liberal forces triumphed. Miguel was defeated and exiled forever. The war was over. Liberalism had won, and the young Queen Maria II was placed on the throne. But the Portugal that emerged from these 27 years of turmoil was a shadow of its former self. It was scarred by war, politically fractured, economically crippled by the loss of Brazil, and haunted by the ghost of an empire it could no longer sustain. The old world of absolute monarchy was dead, but the new world of liberalism had been born in blood and fire, and its struggles were far from over.