Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 19.djvu/570

Rh 548 PORTUGAL [HISTORY. west coast of Africa ; and even the Danes struck a blow against the monopoly of the Portuguese by building a factory at Tranquebar. To make up for these losses, what had Portugal received from Spain ? The promises made to the cortes at Thomar were all broken ; the cortes was only summoned once in 1619 to recognize Philip, the eldest son of King Philip III., as the heir to the throne on the occasion of his only visit to Lisbon ; Lerma and Olivares, the all-powerful ministers of Philip III. and Philip IV., appropriated to themselves large territories within the realm of Portugal ; and, whenever it was pos sible, Spaniards were installed in Portuguese bishoprics and civil offices. At last a blow was struck against this supremacy of Spain in the revolution of 1640 and the elevation of the house of Braganza to the throne of Portugal. Things had been tending towards a revolution for a long time, but the final impulse came from the energy of certain noble men, conjoined with the weakness of Spain and the hope of assistance from France. Revolt of The general discontent was shown by risings in Lisbon Portu- in 1634 and in Evora in 1637, where for a short time the guese. mo k ru i ec i the c jty. an^ wnen Spain was hampered by the Catalan revolt and the French war, the opportunity seemed favourable for the Portuguese. The difficulty was to find a leader ; the eighth duke of Braganza, grand son of the infanta Catherine, daughter of Dom Edward, was a pleasure-loving, easy-tempered man, fond of music and hunting, quite happy in his palace at Villa Viosa ; but the energy of his wife, Luiza de Guzman, Castilian though she was, secured his passive co-operation, and his confidential adviser, Joao Pinto Ribeiro, soon formed a powerful band of conspirators among the Portuguese noblemen, when the news arrived in 1640 that the arriere-ban of Portugal was summoned to fight against the Catalans. Portugal was at that time under the nominal government of Margaret of Savoy, duchess of Mantua, who was surrounded with Spaniards and Italians ; but the real government was in the hands of the tyran nical secretary of state, Miguel de Vasconcellos de Brito. Ribeiro had no difficulty in collecting together many daring and discontented noblemen, of whom the chief were Miguel de Almeida, Pedro de Mendona Furtado, Antonio and Luis de Almada, Estevao and Luis da Cunha, Rodrigo and Emmanuel de Sa, and Jorge de Mello ; and the archbishop of Lisbon himself, Rodrigo da Cunha, if not actually a conspirator, certainly must have had a know ledge of what was going on through his relatives the Almadas and Da Cunhas. The plot was carefully elabo rated, parts being assigned to the leading conspirators, and the day fixed was the 1st of December. The plot was completely successful ; the archbishop of Lisbon was appointed lieutenant-general of the kingdom, with Almeida, Mendonga, and A. de Almada for councillors, and expresses were sent off to the duke of Braganza to inform him of all that had passed and to offer him the crown. He was at first unwilling to accept the honour thrust upon him, but the duchess, on whom a prophecy that she should be a queen had had a great effect, persuaded him to go to Lisbon, John IV. where he was crowned as King John IV. on 13th Decem ber 1640. The whole of Portugal at once rose and ex pelled the Spaniards, and on 19th January a full cortes met at Lisbon, which recognized King John as king of Portugal, and his son Theodosius as heir-apparent. The Portuguese knew well that, in spite of the Catalan rebellion and the terrible wars in which Spain was engaged, they were not strong enough to maintain their independ ence without foreign help, and at once sent ambassadors to France, Holland, and England. Richelieu was charmed with the success of the revolution, hoping to make Portugal a thorn in the side of Spain, such as Scotland had been to England in former days, and he at once sent a fleet under De Breze to the Tagus ; the Dutch also sent a fleet under Gylfels ; but Charles I. of England was too much occupied with his quarrels with his parliament to do more than merely recognize the new king. The Portuguese were at first successful, owing to the many wars in which Spain was involved, and, after the defeat which Mathias de Albuquerque inflicted on the baron of Molingen at Montijo on 26th May 1644, felt at their ease in spite of the serious plot of the duke of Caminha and the archbishop of Braga, until it became obvious that Mazarin would desert them without compunction if it suited his purpose. The old Portuguese colonies at once declared for their fatherland, and this brought about a colonial war with Holland, in which indeed the Portuguese generals won many successes, but which deprived them of the assistance of the Dutch in Europe. Mazarin s refusal to insist on their independence at the congress at Miinster, though he protected their envoys against the Spaniards, made them despondent ; and a very curious letter of Mazarin s (4th October 1647), offering the crown of Portugal to the duke of Longueville, exhibits at once the feeble character of John IV., the despair of the Portu guese, and their dependence on France. Mazarin s deser tion did not at first do great harm, for the war between France and Spain continued, though peace was made Avith the empire. In the midst of this universal war John IV. died in 1656. As the prince of Brazil, Dom Theodosio, the eldest son of Affon the late king, had predeceased him, his second son Affonso, VI - a boy of thirteen, succeeded to the throne as Affonso VI. under the regency of his mother. The queen-regent, who had always been more energetic than her husband, deter mined to pursue the war with Spain with more vigour and summoned Marshal Schomberg to organize her armies. The result of Schomberg s presence soon appeared, and on 14th January 1659 Dom Antonio Luis de Menezes, count of Cantanhede, Avon a victory over Don Luiz de Haro at Elvas. This victory in one way injured the Portuguese cause, for it so incensed Don Luiz de Haro that, during the famous conferences at the Island of Pheasants with Mazarin which led to the signature of the treaty of the Pyrenees in 1659, he not only would not hear of any intercession for the Portuguese but insisted on the in sertion of a secret article in the treaty to the effect that France would promise to entirely abandon them. Neither Mazarin nor Louis XIV. intended to keep this secret article and give up the advantage of having such a useful ally in the Peninsula, and they accordingly looked about for some means to evade it. England offered the oppor tunity ; Charles II. was seeking a wife and gladly accepted the suggestion that he should marry Catherine of Braganza, sister of the king of Portugal, both because Portugal had sheltered his cousins Prince Rupert and Prince Maurice in 1650, and because the colonial cessions which the queen- regent offered as her daughter s dowry would be very popular in England. The marriage was accordingly agreed upon in 1661, and in 1662 the earl of Sandwich came to bring the bride from Lisbon, while the English occupied Tangiers, Bombay, and Galle as her dowry, and promised to send troops to Portugal, and to make peace between the Dutch and the Portuguese. Before, however, the English soldiers arrived and the final struggle with Spain began, a family revolution had taken place in Portugal. The young king, a feeble vicious youth, was very wroth that his mother had exiled a favourite valet to the Brazils, and by the advice of two noblemen about his person suddenly declared himself of age in 1662 and transferred the government to the able hands of Luis de Sousa e