[1640 - 1820] Restoration and Absolute Monarchy

The year is 1640. For sixty long years, the crown of Portugal has rested on the head of a Spanish king. The once-mighty Portuguese empire, a pioneer of global exploration, has become a secondary player in a vast Habsburg domain, its colonies threatened, its people resentful. But on the cold morning of December 1st, a spark ignites. A small group of conspirators, known as the Forty Conspirators, storm the royal palace in Lisbon. With cries of “Liberty!” and “Long live King John IV!”, they depose the Habsburg regent, Margaret of Savoy, and effectively end the Iberian Union. The man they proclaimed king, the Duke of Braganza, was the wealthiest nobleman in Portugal and a descendant of the old Portuguese royal line. He accepted the throne, not out of burning ambition, but a heavy sense of duty. This single, audacious act plunged Portugal into a war for its very existence. The Portuguese Restoration War would rage for the next twenty-eight years, a brutal, attritional conflict fought mainly along the Spanish border. It was a war of sieges, raids, and scorched earth, draining the nation’s coffers and demanding immense sacrifice from a populace desperate to reclaim its sovereignty. Spain, though a declining power, was still a formidable giant. Yet, through cunning diplomacy—securing a crucial alliance with England sealed by the marriage of Catherine of Braganza to King Charles II—and sheer tenacity on the battlefield, the Portuguese held on. The final, decisive victories at Ameixial in 1663 and Montes Claros in 1665 shattered Spanish hopes of reconquest, and in 1668, Spain finally recognized Portugal’s independence with the Treaty of Lisbon.

With independence secured, Portugal entered a new era. The 18th century dawned, and with it, a river of gold began to flow across the Atlantic from its vast colony, Brazil. The discovery of enormous gold deposits in the Minas Gerais region transformed the Portuguese monarchy. Under King John V, who reigned from 1706 to 1750, the Crown was entitled to the 'quinto real'—a royal fifth of all precious metals extracted. This tax flooded the royal treasury with unprecedented wealth, averaging over 1,500 kilograms of gold per year at its peak. John V, an admirer of France’s Louis XIV, sought to emulate the Sun King's grandeur. He became an absolute monarch in style and substance, a figure of immense power and piety who ruled without summoning the traditional parliament, the Cortes, for his entire 44-year reign. The wealth of Brazil funded staggering displays of opulence. The king commissioned the magnificent Mafra National Palace, a colossal baroque complex combining a palace, a basilica, and a convent. It was a project of such scale that, at its height, it employed over 50,000 workers and nearly bankrupted the state, swallowing gold as fast as the Brazilian mines could produce it. Lisbon’s skyline glittered with new, gold-laden churches, and the king patronized the arts and music, bringing Italian opera composers and architects to his court. Yet, beneath the gilded surface, this wealth did little to alter the fundamental structure of Portuguese society or foster broad economic development. The gold paid for imported luxury goods and monumental construction, while the country’s own industries and agriculture languished.

Then, on the morning of November 1st, 1755, disaster struck with unimaginable force. It was All Saints' Day, a major holy day, and Lisbon’s churches were filled with the faithful. At approximately 9:40 AM, the ground began to heave. A cataclysmic earthquake, now estimated to have had a magnitude of 8.5 or higher, shook the city for several terrifying minutes. The tremors were so powerful they were felt as far away as Finland. In Lisbon, ornate stone churches, top-heavy with bell towers, collapsed onto their congregations. Thousands were killed in an instant. Survivors who scrambled to the open space of the city's waterfront for safety were met by a new horror. The sea had receded, exposing the riverbed littered with lost cargo and old shipwrecks. Then, about forty minutes after the quake, a series of tsunami waves, some reportedly reaching 20 meters high, surged up the Tagus River, smashing the port and sweeping through the flattened downtown area. To complete the apocalypse, the thousands of candles lit in homes and churches for the holy day, now toppled, ignited fires that raged for five days, turning what was left of the medieval city into a smoldering ruin. An estimated 85% of Lisbon's buildings were destroyed. The death toll was staggering, with modern estimates ranging from 30,000 to 50,000 souls, making it one of the deadliest earthquakes in history. The event sent philosophical and theological shockwaves across Europe, challenging the Enlightenment-era belief in a benevolent God and a rationally ordered world.

From the ashes of this catastrophe emerged one of the most formidable and controversial figures in Portuguese history: Sebastião José de Carvalho e Melo, better known by his later title, the Marquis of Pombal. As the chief minister to King Joseph I, who was so terrified by the quake he refused to ever sleep in a walled building again, Pombal seized control with an iron will. His response to the chaos was legendarily pragmatic: “Bury the dead and feed the living.” He organized relief efforts, imposed price controls to prevent looting, and set about the monumental task of rebuilding. Under his direction, the destroyed medieval heart of Lisbon was remade into the Baixa Pombalina, a grid of wide streets and elegant squares. Its buildings incorporated the world’s first large-scale, seismically resistant construction—a flexible wooden framework known as the 'gaiola pombalina' or Pombaline cage, designed to 'shake but not fall'. But Pombal’s vision extended far beyond architecture. He was a ruthless modernizer, an apostle of enlightened despotism. He used the post-earthquake crisis to consolidate state power, breaking the influence of his great rivals: the old aristocracy and the powerful Jesuit Order. He accused prominent noble families, like the Távoras, of a conspiracy against the king, leading to their brutal public execution in 1759. He expelled the Jesuits from Portugal and its empire in the same year, seizing their wealth and extensive network of schools. Pombal reformed the economy, the educational system, and the military, dragging Portugal, often kicking and screaming, towards the modern era.

The world, however, was on the cusp of even greater upheaval. The French Revolution of 1789 unleashed ideas of liberty and nationalism that would soon arrive at Portugal's doorstep, borne on the bayonets of Napoleon's armies. After Pombal's fall from power following the death of King Joseph I, Portugal found itself in a perilous diplomatic position, caught between its historic alliance with Great Britain and the demands of an aggressive, expansionist France. Napoleon issued an ultimatum: Portugal must close its ports to British ships and join his Continental System. The Prince Regent, John, ruling in place of his mentally ill mother, Queen Maria I, hesitated. Napoleon’s patience ran out. In late 1807, a French army under General Junot crossed the Spanish border and marched on Lisbon. Facing imminent capture, the Prince Regent made an unprecedented and audacious decision. On November 29th, 1807, the entire Portuguese royal court—the royal family, government officials, archives, treasury, and some 15,000 courtiers and staff—boarded a vast fleet in the Tagus estuary. Escorted by British warships, they set sail for Brazil, transferring the seat of the empire across the Atlantic just two days before Junot’s soldiers marched into a leaderless and bewildered capital. An era had ended. The king was gone, an enemy army occupied the land, and Portugal's future was now inextricably tied to the great global conflict of the Napoleonic Wars and the burgeoning aspirations of its own colossal colony.