Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 19.djvu/571

Rh HISTORY.] PORT U-G A L 549 Vasconcellos, count of Castel Melhor. The queen retired to a convent chagrined, but Castel Melhor continued her policy, and formed the English soldiers, who had arrived under the earl of Inchiquin, some French and German volunteers and mercenaries, and the newly-organized Portu guese levies into a powerful army, of which Schomberg was the real, though not the ostensible, commander. With this army a series of victories were won, which caused Affonso VI. to be surnamed &quot;Affonso the Victorious,&quot; though his own successes, such as they were, were con fined to the streets of Lisbon. On 8th June 1663 the count of Villa Flor with Schomberg by his side utterly defeated Don John of Austria, and afterwards retook Evora ; on 7th July 1664 Pedro Jacques de Magalhaes defeated the duke of Ossuna at Ciudad Rodrigo ; on 17th June 1665 the marquis of Marialva destroyed a Spanish army under the marquis of Carracena at the battle of Monies Claros, and Christovfio de Brito Pereira followed up this victory with one at Villa Vicosa. These successes entirely broke the power of Spain, and peace was only a matter of time, when Castel Melhor decided to increase both his own power and that of Portugal by marrying the king to a French princess. Such an alliance was highly approved of by Louis XIV., and the bride selected was Marie Franchise Elisabeth, Mademoiselle d Aumale, daughter of the duke of Savoy -Nemours and grand daughter of Henry IV. of France. The marriage was celebrated in 1666 ; but Castel Melhor found that, instead of increasing his power, it worked his ruin. The young queen detested her husband, and fell in love with his brother Dom Pedro ; and after fourteen months of a hated union she left the palace and applied for a divorce on the ground of non-consummation to the chapter of the cathedral- church of Lisbon, while Dom Pedro shut up King Affonso in a portion of the palace and assumed the regency. He was recognized as regent by the cortes on 1st January 1668, and at once signed a peace with Spain on 13th February, by which the independence of Portugal was re cognized in return for the cession of Ceuta. This peace, signed at Lisbon, was chiefly negotiated by the earl of Sandwich and Sir Richard Southwell, the English ambas sadors at Madrid and Lisbon. On 24th March the queen s divorce was pronounced and confirmed by the pope, and on 2d April she married the regent. His rule was gladly submitted to, for the people of Portugal recognized his sterling qualities, which compared favourably with those of the unfortunate Affonso VI. Castel Melhor fled to France, and the king for Dom Pedro only called himself &quot; regent &quot; was imprisoned, first in the island of Terceira and then at Cintra, till his death in 1683, the very same year in which the queen also died. ed II. As long as Affonso VI. lived, Dom Pedro s power was not thoroughly established, but in 1683 he was proclaimed king as Pedro II. His reign was marked by good internal administration, the breaking out of the War of the Spanish Succession, and the Methuen treaty. His good adminis tration kept him from being short of money, and enabled him to dispense with the cortes, which never met between 1697 and 1828; but the war of the succession almost emptied his treasury. He had in 1687, at the earnest request of the duke of Cadaval, his most intimate friend, consented to marry again in order to have an heir, and had selected Maria Sophia de Neuburg, daughter of the elector palatine, rather to the chagrin of Louis XIV., who, in the prospect of the death of Charles II. of Spain, had counted on the support of Pedro s first wife, a French princess, and who now sought to form a strong party at the court of Lisbon. He was so far successful that on the death of Charles II. King Pedro not only recognized Louis XIV. s grandson as Philip V. of Spain but in 1701 protected a French fleet in the Tagus under the count of Chastenau against Sir George Rooke. The great Whig ministry of England was not likely to submit to this desertion on the part of England s ancient ally, and sent the Right Honour able John Methuen in 1703 to Lisbon with full powers to make a treaty, both political and commercial, with Portugal. On 27th December 1703 he signed the famous Methuen treaty, by which Portuguese wines were to be imported into England at a lower duty than those from France or Germany, in return for a similar concession to English textile fabrics. The immediate result was that Pedro acknowledged the archduke Charles, and the ulterior that Englishmen drank port wine instead of claret or hock throughout the last century, while the Portuguese imported nearly everything they wanted from England and remained without manufactures. On 7th March 1704 Sir George Rooke arrived at Lisbon, convoying 10,000 English troops under Lord Galway and the archduke Charles himself. The English army at once advanced with a Portuguese auxiliary force and took Salvaterra and Valenca. In the following year but little was done on the Portuguese frontier, because the archduke had sailed round to Barcelona, and Dom Pedro, who was slowly dying, handed over the regency to his sister Catherine, queen-dowager of England. Had he been conscious he might have learned of the great successes of the allied army under Joao de Sousa, marquis das Minas, and Lord Galway, who in rapid succession took Alcantara, Coria, Truxillo, Placencia, Ciudad Rodrigo, and Avila, and even for a short time occupied Madrid, and of their equally rapid retreat ; he never recovered sufficiently, however, to know of these movements ; he gradually sank, and died at Alcantara on 9th December 1706. The long reign of John V., who assumed the royal John V. state at once from the regent Catherine, resembles the reign of John III. At its commencement he left the power in the hands of his father s friend, the duke of Cadaval, who continued Dom Pedro s policy and prosecuted the war against Philip V. Cadaval bound the king more surely to the Anglo- Austrian party by marrying him to the archduchess Marianna, daughter of the deceased emperor Leopold L, who was escorted to Lisbon by an English fleet under Admiral Byng in 1708. Yet the war itself did not go favourably for the allies in Spain, for the Spaniards had become enthusiastic partisans of Philip V. ; and in 1709 a Portuguese army under the marquis of Fronteira was beaten at Caia, while in 1711 Duguay Trouin took and sacked Rio de Janeiro, afterwards the capital of Brazil. The war languished all over Europe after the accession of the archduke Charles to the empire, and on 6th February 1715, nearly two years after the treaty of Utrecht, peace was signed between Portugal and Spain at Madrid by the secretary of state, Lopes Furtado de Mondonca, count of Corte-Real. The king, as soon as he began to pay more attention to affairs, exhibited his attach ment to the papacy, and in 1717 sent a fleet at the pope s bidding on a crusade against the Turks, which won a naval victory off Cape Matapan. The king declined to join the war against Alberoni, and disclosed a tendency to imitate Louis XIV., especially in building. The only indication of policy he showed was his determination to maintain peace by a close alliance with Spain : his daughter Maria Barbara was married to the infant Don Ferdinand, eldest son of Philip V., who succeeded to the throne of Spain as Ferdinand VI., while the Spanish infanta Marianna was married to the Portuguese heir-apparent, Dom Joseph. The enormous sums of money which John V. lent to the pope, to the real impoverishment of his country, brought him rewards which were of no real value, but which were such as be highly esteemed ; namely, the archbishopric of