Part 23

From a political point of view, the Methuen treaty assured the very existence of Portugal; in all times of danger it could now count upon the support of the great power whose interest it was to have an ally from whose country it could act against Spain. On March 7, 1704, the Archduke Charles arrived at Lisbon with a powerful English fleet under Sir George Rooke, conveying ten thousand English troops under the command of Henri de Ruvigny, Lord Galway. On April 30, Philip V. declared war against Portugal, and the English advanced with a subsidiary Portuguese army under the Count das Galveras and Diniz de Mello e Castro. The campaign was successful; the allies took Salvaterra and Valença, and Sir George Rooke surprised the important fortress of Gibraltar. In the following year but little was done on the Portuguese frontier, because the Archduke Charles had sailed round to Barcelona, and King Pedro, who felt himself to be dying, gave up all active interest in affairs, and made over the regency to his sister Catherine, Queen-dowager of England. Had he been conscious he might have heard of the great successes and reverses of the campaign of 1706. Lord Galway and Dom João de Sousa, Marquis das Minas, advanced into Spain, and after taking Alcantara, Coria, Truxillo, Placencia, Ciudad Rodrigo, and Avila in rapid succession, occupied Madrid on July 2, 1706. But they did not remain there long; the Spaniards rose in arms for Philip V., and in August, 1706, the allied army fell back as quickly as it had advanced. Dom Pedro, however, remained unconscious of these stirring events; he gradually sank, and died at Alcantara on December 9, 1706, leaving a reputation of having been one of the best of the kings of Portugal. The great interest of his reign is to be found in the gradual formation of the English alliance, which is the clue to the Portuguese history of the next century. It was commenced by the marriage of Catherine de Braganza to Charles II., strengthened by the action of Lord Sandwich and Sir Richard Southwell in making peace with Spain, and finally cemented by the Methuen treaty, and it is curious to note that the first link in this chain was forged by Louis XIV. and Mazarin in recommending the marriage of Charles II.

It is important to observe the position of Portugal in Asia and South America during the half-century which succeeded the “Sixty Years’ Captivity,” and to see how the despised discovery of Pedro Alvares Cabral was to more than take the place of the vaunted Asiatic connection commenced by the voyage of Vasco da Gama. The heavy blows struck by the Dutch and English against the Portuguese monopoly of the Eastern trade before the successful revolution in 1640, have already been noticed, and the ruin of the Portuguese in Asia was consummated by the Dutch during the long naval war which succeeded the attack upon their settlements in Brazil. The China trade had not attained very important dimensions, so the Dutch left the Portuguese undisturbed at Macao, but they destroyed their settlements in the island of Formosa, and the English absorbed what trade there was by their factory at Canton. It was the spice trade and the command of the Spice Islands, which the Dutch chiefly coveted, and of which they obtained a monopoly, which they practically retain to this day. After the foundation of Batavia, all the efforts of the Dutch were directed against Malacca, which, though in a decayed state, was yet mistress of no inconsiderable trade; twice they stirred up the Achinese to attempt the conquest of Alboquerque’s famous settlement, but the Portuguese beat off the natives, and it was not until 1640 that the Dutch destroyed the rival of Batavia. The Portuguese made no further effort to share the spice trade, and after the massacre of the English at Amboyna in 1624, the more dangerous rivalry of the merchants of that nation was also withdrawn. In India, the Dutch made a point of securing the pepper trade only, and left the English to absorb that of the products of Northern India, of the muslins of Dacca and the brocades of Ahmadabad and Surat. The Portuguese repulsed the Dutch from Goa in 1639, but these determined traders were not to be beaten; in 1662, in spite of the peace which had been concluded by the intervention of England, they took Cochin, the principal Portuguese station in Southern India, and by 1664 were masters of all the chief pepper ports on the Malabar coast. They were equally successful in Ceylon, where they captured Jafnapatam, the last important Portuguese port, in 1658; and in 1669, they expelled the Portuguese from the Coromandel coast likewise, and took S. Thomé and Macassar. In Northern India the English were the most formidable rivals of the Portuguese. After the capture of Hūglī by the orders of Shah Jehān, the Portuguese dropped all communication with Bengal, and the trade of that important province fell into the hands of the English. On the other side of India, the English were equally successful. Their victory off Surat had broken the prestige of Portugal, and the trade with Gujarāt, Kathiawār, and Sind was chiefly in their possession. So weak indeed had the Portuguese become, that Diu, the city immortalized by the brave deeds of Antonio de Silveira and João de Castro, was plundered by a band of Arabs in 1670; and Goa itself, “Golden Goa,” was only saved from the Marāthas of Sambajì, the son of Sivajì, by the timely aid of a Mogul army. On the other hand, the Portuguese Jesuits won a reputation almost as great as that of the Portuguese heroes; though the Inquisition still continued its horrid work at Goa, there were nobler missionaries than the inquisitors, and the name of João de Brito, who preached with unexampled success until his cruel martyrdom in Madura in 1693, deserves to be ranked with that of St. Francis Xavier himself. In Africa, the chief Portuguese ports were re-conquered by Salvador Correa de Sá e Benevides in 1648, but they were only of little value, since they had been maintained chiefly as stations on the road to India, and not for purposes of African trade. The Dutch made their resting-place at the Cape of Good Hope, which is the reason why Mozambique was left to the Portuguese; and they also took possession of the rich island which had been first sighted by Lourenço de Almeida, to which they gave the name of Mauritius, after Prince Maurice of Nassau. On the western coast the Portuguese retained Angola, the Cape Verde Islands, and their other possessions; but they lost St. Helena to the Dutch, who held it until it was captured by the English captain, Anthony Munden, in 1673, when it was made into a station of the English East India Company. With their possessions in Morocco, the Portuguese parted with the more willingness, since they were only a source of expense; and the cession of Ceuta to the Spaniards and of Tangier to the English was generally approved. Of Bombay the other territorial cession made to England on the marriage of Catherine de Braganza, little need be said, for though destined to become the capital of western India, it proved at first of so little value, that in 1668 Charles II. granted it to the East India Company for ten pounds a year.

Very different from this tale of decay is the history of the Portuguese in Brazil during the same period, and the comparison shows clearly of how much greater value is a colony than a dominion conquered and held by the sword. The loyalty of the Portuguese colonists was shown by their expulsion of the Dutch with hardly any assistance from the home government, and the bonds of kinship enabled the Portuguese to maintain their power in South America without the establishment and maintenance of powerful armies. Indeed, one of the most valuable lessons taught by the history of the daughter country, is that the less interference the mother country makes in the affairs of its colony, the better it will be for both countries. The material prosperity of Brazil in the seventeenth century was due to the fact that during that period the colony was essentially agricultural, and that there was therefore time for a large and industrious population to collect, before gold was discovered in large quantities. The production of tobacco and sugar was the staple employment of the inhabitants, and the rapid development of these resources caused the growth of a large fleet, not only to carry these commodities to Europe, but to import the thousands of negro slaves, who worked in the plantations. And it is here well to remark that at this time the Portuguese settlers made no attempt to enslave the native Brazilians, who were protected by the Jesuits and by edicts of the king, but considered it perfectly just and right to make use of negro slaves. This wise behaviour and the conduct of the Jesuits, who laboured assiduously among the natives, placed them on friendly terms with their conquerors, who soon began to intermarry with them. Owing to this friendly relationship the interior of the continent was gradually opened up, and at last gold was discovered in large quantities. It was fortunate for the Portuguese that it had not been discovered before, for otherwise they would certainly have lost their colony during the “Sixty Years’ Captivity,” but at this time they were too strongly planted to be expelled, and had besides the potent protection of the English navy. The first discovery of gold on a large scale took place in 1699, and the arrival of the first cargo at an opportune juncture gave King Pedro the means he required for setting his army on foot. It must be remembered that at this time there were no Californian or Australian gold fields, and that the discovery of gold in Brazil was of more importance than it would be now. King Pedro prepared to work this source of wealth in a prudent manner; he did not attempt to make the gold fields a royal monopoly, which the independent inhabitants of the captainships would not have allowed, but demanded one-fifth of the total registered yearly export. This left enough profit for the gold searchers, and as the yearly revenue of the crown of Portugal from this source was at least £300,000, it may be imagined that the kings of Portugal were well able to maintain a splendid court at Lisbon in spite of the loss of the Asiatic trade. No story is more interesting than this growth of Brazil into the most valuable possession of Portugal; the land, which was at first inhabited by convicts, surpassed in wealth the dominion won by the noblest sons of the country.

XVI.

PORTUGAL IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. THE MARQUIS OF POMBAL.

The eighteenth century exhibits fewer features of interest than any other throughout the whole history of Portugal. The country remained in a political sense a mere province of England, and was bound by the Methuen treaty to take a part in all the wars in which England was engaged, and the importance of this arrangement became more and more evident, when France and Spain were united by the close connection brought about by the “Pacte de Famille.” The commercial relation was the cause of more intimacy between the people of the two nationalities than the political alliance, for it brought, as has been said, English merchants and English capital into Portugal. But notwithstanding this double bond of union the two allies remained entirely separate. The Portuguese remained a race of bigoted Catholics, and the English made no efforts to convert them. This difference of religion prevented any close alliance between the reigning houses of the two countries, such as had been brought about by the marriage of Charles II. to Catherine of Braganza, for any marriage with a Catholic princess would have been rejected by the statesmen and the people of England. While therefore existing as an independent nation under the protection of England, Portugal maintained its own national characteristics, and remained in other respects more like Spain than any other country. The little state was no longer in the vanguard of the march of European civilization; it felt that its great days were past, and was content to remain in stagnant quiet. For this reason, if for no other, the story of Portugal loses its interest in the eighteenth century, for it was illustrated by no great feat of arms, no national revolution or advance of national progress, and it was at this time that in every point of view, literary as well as political, it fell behind the other European nations. It was inevitable that it should be so; a nation which depended on another for its political independence, was not likely to produce heroes. It is strange that the influence of English example did not give rise to a movement for political freedom and representative institutions, but it was not so; the monarchy remained absolutist and was prevented from needing the support of the people by the wealth it derived from the gold and the diamond mines of Brazil, and the Cortes was not once summoned throughout the century. Yet this absolutism was not an unmixed evil, for it produced a great minister, the Portuguese Richelieu, in the Marquis of Pombal.

The reign of John V., the eldest son of Pedro II., who at once assumed the royal power from the regent Catherine, was, though it commenced in war, remarkable for the long continuance of peace. The War of the Spanish Succession was still raging in the peninsula, and the first campaign after the accession of the new monarch was marked by the great defeat inflicted on the English and Portuguese by the French and Spaniards at Almanza, on April 15, 1707, a battle in which it chanced that the English were commanded by a Frenchman, Henri de Ruvigny, Lord Galway, and the French by an Englishman James Fitz-James, Duke of Berwick. Nevertheless John V., who was a young man of seventeen, in spite of this disaster, kept true to the English alliance and the Methuen treaty, and left the management of affairs in the hands of his father’s minister and friend João de Mascarenhas, Duke of Cadaval. This able statesman bound the king more surely to the Anglo-Austrian alliance by marrying him to the Archduchess Marianna, daughter of the late Emperor Leopold I., who was escorted to Lisbon by a powerful English fleet under Admiral Sir George Byng, in 1708. The war continued, however, to go steadily against the allies, for the Spaniards had rallied enthusiastically around their Bourbon king, Philip V.; and on May 7, 1709, a Portuguese army under the Marquis of Fronteira was defeated on the banks of the Caia, by the Spaniards under the Marquis de Bay. Far more serious was the capture of Rio de Janeiro, by the French admiral, Duguay-Trouin, on September 23, 1711, which cut off all supplies from Brazil for more than a year. The war languished all over Europe after the accession of the Archduke Charles as Emperor, and on February 6, 1715, nearly two years after the treaty of Utrecht, peace was signed between Spain and Portugal, at Madrid, by the Secretary of State, Diogo de Mendonça, Count of Corte-Real.

As soon as John V. began to mark out a policy for himself, after the death of the Duke of Cadaval, he showed his distaste for war. He refused to join in the war against Cardinal Alberoni, the famous minister of Spain, and avoided as far as possible any combination which might lead to the rupture of peace. The only expedition he sent out was a fleet, which he equipped at the Pope’s bidding to join the Venetians in their struggle against the Turks, and which, under the command of Lopo Furtado de Mendonça, Count of Rio Grande, defeated the Mohammedans off Cape Matapan in 1717. The main effort of King John’s foreign policy was to combine a firm adherence to the Methuen treaty with friendly relations with Spain, by which he hoped to avoid war. For this purpose he always kept on the best of terms with the English ambassadors at Lisbon, notably with Lord Tyrawley; and in 1729 he closely allied himself with the new dynasty in Spain. His daughter, Donna Maria Josepha de Braganza, was married to Don Ferdinand, eldest son of Philip V., who succeeded to the throne of Spain as Ferdinand VI.; while the Spanish infanta, Donna Marianna Victoria de Bourbon, was married to the heir-apparent of Portugal, Dom Joseph. With the papacy John V. remained on the best of terms; he lent enormous sums of money to successive popes out of the wealth of Brazil, and in return received rewards, which were of no real value, but which were such as he highly esteemed. Lisbon was divided into two dioceses; the Archbishopric of Lisbon was erected into a patriarchate; the patriarch was allowed to officiate in vestments resembling those of the Pope, and his canons in imitation of those of the cardinals; and, finally, in the last year of his reign, the title of “Fidelissimus,” or “Most Faithful,” was conferred upon the kings of Portugal, to correspond with those of “Most Christian” and “Most Catholic,” attributed to the kings of France and Spain respectively.

These are the only points of interest, which mark John V.’s long reign of forty-four years, and as the last thirty-five of these years were years of peace, it may well be said, happy is the reign which has but little history. But it must not be thought that he therefore left no impression upon his country. On the contrary, he did much to imprint his name on its history. He showed a tendency, like so many other princes of the eighteenth century, to imitate Louis XIV. He spent much money in building, and among his most famous efforts in this direction are the patriarchal church at Lisbon, the superb convent at Mafra, and the great aqueduct which still supplies Lisbon with water. He was a munificent patron of literature and the arts, and founded the Academy of History at Lisbon in 1720. He loved music and the theatre, and spent great sums in importing singers and dancers from Italy and actors from France. He took an intelligent interest in the administration of his kingdom, and for the better despatch of business formed three secretaryships of state for the home, foreign and war, and colonial and naval, departments instead of one, and he took a particular pride in his navy, and founded the naval arsenal of Lisbon. One other fact also may be recorded to his credit, that in 1725 he obtained a Bull from Pope Benedict XIII., allowing all prisoners of the Inquisition to employ counsel to defend them, and ordering that all sentences of the Holy Office should be communicated to and confirmed by the king in council. This excellent monarch had a paralytic stroke in 1742, and for the last eight years of his reign, until his death in 1750, the kingdom was governed by the queen, and the Cardinal da Cunha, Patriarch of Lisbon.

The reign of King Joseph, which lasted from 1750 to 1777, is made famous by the administration of the Marquis of Pombal, the greatest minister who ever ruled Portugal, and one of the greatest of eighteenth-century statesmen. The king, though a man of real ability himself, interfered but little in politics, and left the management of affairs entirely in the hands of the minister, whose greatness he was the first to perceive. The relationship between the monarch and his subject resembles that between Louis XIII. and Richelieu, and does honour to both parties. In everything--in his great internal administrative reforms, in his financial schemes, in the reorganization of the army, in the abolition of slavery, and in the struggle with the Jesuits, which ended in the suppression of that famous order--King Joseph supported his minister. Pombal broke the power of the nobility, and made the king more absolute than ever, and he exalted the royal prerogative, while using it for his measures of reform; while, in return, the king maintained the minister in power, in spite of the vehement protests and wily intrigues of the Roman Catholic clergy, and the opposition of his wife.

Sebastião José de Carvalho e Mello, better known by his later title of the Marquis of Pombal, was a man of more than fifty years of age when his patron succeeded to the throne, and he himself entered office. His father, Emmanuel de Carvalho, was a country gentleman of moderate wealth, but by his mother, Theresa de Mendonça, he was related to some of the noblest families of Portugal, to the Almeidas, the Mellos and the Mendonças. He was born at Soure, on May 13, 1699, and after receiving his education at the University of Coimbra, he entered the army as a private. He found neither pleasure nor profit in a military career in time of peace, and after leaving the service, he led the life of a man about town in Lisbon. His handsome face, great bodily strength, and proficiency in athletic exercises, made him popular in all circles of society in the capital, in spite of his comparative poverty, and he especially distinguished himself, if distinction it may be called, among the “Mohocks,” who infested the streets of Lisbon. There seemed no prospect of his ever making any mark in life, when in 1733 he made himself the talk of the town by his elopement with, or rather his abduction of, a lady of the highest rank, Donna Theresa de Noronha, niece of the Count of Arcos. His wife’s family were at first most indignant, but at last they relented, and in 1739 the bravo of the streets of Lisbon was, by their influence, appointed ambassador to the Court of England. It is some consolation for men of advanced years to remember that the greatest of Portuguese ministers was forty years of age before he ever received official employment. In London Sebastião de Carvalho turned over a new leaf, and devoted himself to the serious study of politics, and he carefully investigated the English system of government and the causes of England’s commercial prosperity. From London he was removed to the Court of Vienna in 1745, and he there married, on the death of his first wife, a daughter of Count Daun, the famous Austrian general. On this occasion King John V. was pleased out of compliment to the victor of Kolin, to grant Sebastião de Carvalho letters of nobility, which entitled him to the prefix Dom; and in 1750 the ambassador was recalled to Portugal and appointed Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs. While he was on his way home John V. died, and when Carvalho reached Lisbon King Joseph had already ascended the throne.