[1640 - 1807] Restoration and Riches: The House of Braganza

In the cold dawn of December 1st, 1640, a conspiracy sixty years in the making reached its boiling point. For three generations, Portugal had been a reluctant jewel in the Spanish Habsburg crown, its global empire managed from Madrid, its national pride simmering under foreign rule. But on that day, a small group of nobles known as the Forty Conspirators stormed the royal palace in Lisbon. They threw the hated secretary of state, Miguel de Vasconcelos, from a window and proclaimed the Duke of Braganza as their rightful king. He would become John IV, the first monarch of a new dynasty, and his ascension ignited a grueling 28-year war of restoration against a powerful Spain. To secure his throne, John IV looked abroad, forging a crucial alliance with England. This pact was sealed with the marriage of his daughter, Catherine of Braganza, to King Charles II, a union that famously gifted the English crown the territories of Bombay and Tangier, altering the map of global power forever. The initial decades of Braganza rule were fraught with uncertainty. The long war drained the treasury, and the court was a nest of intrigue, culminating in the tragic reign of John IV’s son, Afonso VI. Unstable and easily manipulated, Afonso was eventually deposed in a palace coup orchestrated by his own brother, who would rule first as regent and then as King Pedro II. It was under Pedro that Portugal’s fortunes would change so dramatically that it would reshape the kingdom and astound all of Europe. In the 1690s, deep within the interior of their vast Brazilian colony, in a region that would soon be named Minas Gerais, or 'General Mines,' explorers struck gold. It was not a trickle, but a deluge. This discovery was followed by an even more dazzling find: diamonds. For the next century, Brazil would fuel an unprecedented river of wealth flowing directly into the coffers of Lisbon. The sheer scale of this bonanza is difficult to comprehend. It is estimated that during the 18th century, over 1,000 tons of gold and three million carats of diamonds were extracted from Brazil, making the Portuguese king, John V, one of the wealthiest monarchs on the continent. Known as 'the Magnanimous,' John V sought to project an image of absolute power and piety, rivaling that of his contemporary, Louis XIV of France. He poured his Brazilian riches into stone and gold leaf, initiating a building frenzy of staggering opulence. The ultimate expression of his ambition was the Mafra National Palace. A fusion of palace, basilica, and convent, this colossal baroque complex, built between 1717 and 1755, required a workforce of up to 50,000 men. Its sheer scale was a statement: 1,200 rooms, over 4,700 doors and windows, and two bell towers housing the world’s largest collection of carillons. Inside its magnificent library, bats were famously employed to protect the ancient tomes from insects. Across the country, church interiors were transformed with 'talha dourada,' intricate, gilded woodwork that covered every surface in a shimmering testament to imperial wealth. Yet this golden age was a gilded cage for most. While the nobility and high clergy lived in luxury, the vast majority of Portugal's population remained mired in rural poverty, their lives dictated by the harvest and the unwavering authority of the Church, whose power was still enforced by the watchful eye of the Inquisition. On the morning of November 1st, 1755, All Saints' Day, the churches of Lisbon were filled to capacity. The air was still, the sky clear. At approximately 9:40 AM, the ground began to tremble. This was no mere tremor. For what felt like an eternity—somewhere between three and six minutes—the earth convulsed with terrifying violence. Eyewitnesses described seeing the city's grand stone buildings 'dance' before they crumbled into dust. Massive fissures, some five meters wide, ripped through the city streets. Those who survived the initial shock and ran towards the open space of the Tagus riverfront for safety were met with an even greater horror. The sea had retreated, exposing the riverbed littered with lost cargo and old shipwrecks. Then, it returned. Three enormous tsunami waves, some reaching a height of 20 meters, surged into the downtown Baixa district, obliterating everything in their path. As if this cataclysm were not enough, the candles lit in the city's churches for the holy day toppled in the chaos, igniting fires that quickly merged into a firestorm. The blaze raged for five days, consuming what the earthquake and tsunami had spared. By the time the smoke cleared, an estimated 85% of Lisbon was destroyed, and tens of thousands—perhaps as many as 60,000—were dead. The disaster sent a philosophical shockwave across Europe, challenging Enlightenment-era optimism and prompting thinkers like Voltaire to question the very nature of God and a rational universe. From this smoldering ruin stepped 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 King Joseph I's chief minister, Pombal surveyed the devastation not with despair, but with chilling resolve. His immediate orders were pragmatic and ruthless: “Bury the dead and feed the living.” He set up field hospitals, organized relief efforts, and had gallows erected to summarily execute looters, swiftly restoring order. But his vision went far beyond simple recovery. Pombal saw the ruined city as a blank slate upon which to build a new, modern Portugal. Under his direction, the Baixa was rebuilt as a masterpiece of enlightened urban planning. Its elegant grid of streets and uniform, neoclassical facades were not just an aesthetic choice; the buildings incorporated the world’s first large-scale, seismically resistant architectural designs, a system known as the 'Pombaline cage.' Pombal’s ambition was to remake not just a city, but the very structure of Portuguese society. Wielding his power with an iron fist, he systematically dismantled the influence of his rivals. In 1758, he used an alleged assassination attempt on the king to implicate and brutally execute leading members of the powerful Távora noble family, a chilling message to the old aristocracy. A year later, he expelled the entire Jesuit order from Portugal and its empire, confiscating their immense wealth and breaking their stranglehold on education. He centralized the state, modernized the economy, reformed the university, and, in a landmark decree in 1761, abolished slavery in mainland Portugal—though the institution would persist in Brazil for another century. Pombal was the Portuguese Enlightenment personified: rational, progressive, but utterly autocratic. His era of reform came to an abrupt end with the death of Joseph I in 1777. The new monarch, Queen Maria I, a woman of deep piety who despised Pombal, promptly dismissed him in a movement known as the 'Viradeira' or 'the turnabout.' But the world Pombal had helped to create could not be entirely undone. As the 18th century drew to a close, Queen Maria descended into religious melancholy and madness, and her son, John, took the reins as regent. He inherited a kingdom rebuilt from the ashes, but one now facing a new and terrifying threat from across the Pyrenees. The tremors of the French Revolution were being felt all over Europe, and the shadow of Napoleon Bonaparte was lengthening, forcing the House of Braganza towards a decision that would once again change its destiny forever.