Page:Lisbon and Cintra, Inchbold, 1907.djvu/30

Rh governed Portugal as if it had been his heritage instead of the King's, whose personality he entirely eclipsed.

This was the man who saved the people of Lisbon in their extremity, showing a zeal and intrepidity in grappling the gigantic task that is beyond comparison. His colleagues no longer disputed his supremacy. The King placed entire confidence in him, the people obeyed him as if he were a god. He assigned separate districts to the magistrates, putting all the troops in the city and the whole of the police at their disposition, to succour the victims and extinguish the fires. For this purpose also he ordered the commanding officers at Evora, Setubal, Peniche and Cascaes to bring up their regiments without delay.

By these prompt measures many streets escaped the general conflagration, the dead were buried and hospitals established in various points. Every one helped his neighbour; nobles worked like simple burghers, the priests and monks were indefatigable, the royal princesses prepared lint and bandages with their own hands. Disorders necessarily followed the ruin of all conditions of life. The rogues of the city set fire to buildings that had remained intact. Theft, assault, in a word, brigandage, spread in hideous shape amidst the dying and dead, as amidst the living.

Carvalho arrested these horrors by severe measures. Thirty thieves taken in the act were hung in the environs of the town. The evils were checked promptly. Stringent penalties were published for the crime of leaving Lisbon at this juncture. The commandants of the forts at the river mouth were given special orders to hinder vessels from quitting the port. The flight of the inhabitants, the basis of a capital's prosperity, would have created irreparable loss to the country. To a debate in the Council on the 10