1. The Regency of D. Carlota Joaquina
Princess Carlota Joaquina, although favorable to the Spanish Crown (to which she was directly related), was deeply distrustful of “Jacobin” France and fearful of Great Britain, the two countries who were, respectively, the masters of the land and of the seas in Europe. She anxiously cultivated the alliance with Spain - represented by her own father, King Carlos VI - already conscious that this meant subservience to their much more powerful Iberian neighbor, and possibly enmity with the United Kingdom, a very dangerous game that in one way or another could threaten the very existence of the kingdom. Nevertheless, she harbored a genuined belief that the renovation of the alliance between Portugal and Spain would prevent the penetration of the revolutionary disease in the Iberian Peninsula, with the preservation of the traditional Christian values among its peoples.
Princess Carlota Joaquina of Spain, Regent of Queen Maria of Portugal
Yet, her blundered attempts of maintaining a neutral policy in the convoluted geopolitics of Europe abused the patience of the recently proclaimed
Emperor of the French, Napoléon Bonaparte, whose relations with the King Carlos IV of Spain would soon break down due to mutual distrust and diverging geopolitical interests.
France made it painfully clear that it was entirely willing to invade Portugal and dethrone the Bragança dynasty if they failed to participate in the war effort against Britain, providing troops and ships to join the French forces. Spain, on the other hand, sought to maintain its influence on the western neighbor through the reign of Carlota Joaquina, which in a near future might allow a second Iberian Union, and rapidly grew resentful of France’s threats of intervening in Portugal, at the same time it made a concerted effort to maintain amiable relations with the "Caesar of Paris".
At the same time, though, Portugal’s faltering behavior quickly alienated Britain – who had been, until that turbulent century, Portugal’s most reliable ally. The exasperated tone of the diplomatic contacts between Lisboa and London through 1801 to 1805 aggravated the division between the former allies, and the British government made it clear to the Portuguese Crown that whoever was not on their side was their enemy, and would be treated accordingly. The only way to salvage their alliance would be to declare war against Spain and France.
In 1804, Princess Carlota Joaquina uncovered a palatine plot aiming her imprisonment and the restoration of Prince João - her stranged husband - as the ruling regent. In desperation, she pleaded the help of the Spanish forces in Setúbal and coordinated a great purge in the administration, imprisoning various ministers, noblemen and bureaucrats under vague accusations of treason. In April 1804, D. Rodrigo de Sousa Coutinho – Portugal’s most able and respected statesman – was incarcerated, with many other decision-makers forming the so-called “English Party” in the government, under vague accusations of treason and conspiracy.
Prince João was still anguishing in the palace of Mafra, and only discovered about the attempted coup against his wife after it had already been suppressed. With dismal silence, he read the letter signed by the princess-regent, in the name of his own mother, Queen Maria, that forced him into unofficial exile to Madrid. Assured that this was a measure to ensure the prince’s own safety against the revolutionary factions inside Portugal, and that he would be the most welcomed guest in the court of his father-in-law, the King of Spain, Prince João was conducted to his presence in the same month, and from there sent to Ciudad Real, once again imprisoned in a gilded cage.
Afterwards, the Great Britain recalled the ambassador in Lisboa, and diplomatic relations between the nations broke down. This state of affairs, of intense paranoia in the Lusitanian court, coupled with the arrival of new Spanish regiments to Lisboa, Porto and Braga, made it clear to the poor citizens of Portugal that their country was on the verge of collapse. They didn’t know, however, that Fate had reserved the greatest tragedy for the next year.
2. Britannia Rules the Waves
In 1805, the French Empire was yet again at war, against the third coalition of great powers that sought to destroy the unstoppable revolution sparked in Paris. This alliance would break apart before the year came to end, after the French Grand Armée destroyed the combined Austrian and Russian armies in
Hustopeče, thus ensuring the surrender of Vienna. These victories would provoke the dissolution of the millennia-old Holy Roman Empire and effectively end the coalition, forcing the Emperors of Austria and of Russia into unconditional surrender.
Nevertheless, the details of this continental campaign and of the amazing battles, interesting as they are, have little relevance to this chronicle, as we must diverge our attention to another remarkable episode: Napoléon’s greatest defeat since his ascension to power, the naval
Battle of Huelva.
In that fateful year, Napoléon of France had resolved to undertake an invasion of Great Britain. However, the Channel was entirely controlled by the Royal Navy, and most of the French ports were blockaded by His Majesty's Ships. To disrupt their maritime defenses and allow the transportation of the French army to Britain, a mighty fleet of French and Spanish ships from the Mediterranean Sea attempted to trespass a British sea blockade positioned just west of the Pillars of Hercules.
Three Portuguese warships had to be entrusted to the Spanish navy to appease the Emperor of the French, who had expressly threatened to invade Portugal if they failed to assist in the war effort against Great Britain. Realizing that Spain wouldn’t oppose the advance of an invading French army, the desperate Princess Carlota Joaquina was harshly admonished by her father, the King of Spain, to end the farce of “neutrality” and comply to the French interests.
In September 1805, Princess Carlota Joaquina, the whole Lusitanian nobility and thousands of citizens of Lisboa prayed for God’s deliverance against “Perfidious Albion” in the cathedral of the capital, while the allied warships under Pierre-Charles Villeneuve were intercepted by the numerically inferior fleet under the brilliant
Admiral Horatio Nelson. In this famous engagement, off the coast of the Spanish city of Huelva [3], the British fleet obtained a legendary victory over their enemy. Afterwards, Admiral Nelson returned to London, where he received the highest honors of the state.
This triumph ensured the complete domination of the British in the seas, and the French Emperor abandoned his plans of invading the home islands, forcing him to resort to the precarious “Continental Blockade” policy, enforced upon the other European powers by the threat of French retaliation.
For the Portuguese, the loss of the ships was damaging enough, considering the poor state of their navy, and the fact that the ships “borrowed” to the Spanish fleet were some of the best war vessels available, but the political consequences were the most devastating. Until then, despite nominally allied to the Kingdom of Spain and formally recognizant of the French hegemony, the Kingdom of Portugal had not participated in any military operations against the Britain – and, even under the threatening pressure of Napoléon, freely allowed British ships in its ports and coasts –, which preserved at least the hope of a future restoration of the diplomatic friendship between the nations.
In late November 1805, before the news came about the Napoléon’s decisive victory over the Third Coalition in Austria, Princess Carlota Joaquina received the last British delegation in Lisboa,
declaring war between the Kingdom of Portugal and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. The British gave her an ultimatum to salvage the countries’ relationship: Portugal would have to cede its entire war fleet, as well as all of its colonies, and immediately declare war on Spain and France.
D. Carlota Joaquina did not even have time to refuse the unacceptable terms imposed by the Londoner delegation. Her short reign had been too unpopular, and now she was widely hated by the Portuguese population.
Fearing for her life, she fled the palace of Queluz in the last week of 1805 with her sons, daughters, her mother-in-law, the insane Queen of Portugal, and personal servants, as soon as the news came that the population of Lisboa had risen in full rebellion against her rule, demanding her imprisonment and the return of Prince João as the regent. She had been regularly corresponding with Francisco Javier Castaños, the commanding officer of the Spanish regiment in Setúbal, so he was informed about the departure of the Portuguese Royal Family to Madrid and immediately marched to repress the riot. In the last line of the letter, the miserable princess pleaded the Spanish troops to be gentle and kind to “
their Iberian brothers, the peaceful children of Portugal”.
Lisboa was overrun by the Spanish forces and the revolt was bloodily terminated. General Francisco Javier Castaños created an “administrative council” to rule the nation in the name of King Carlos IV of Spain, allegedly to safeguard the people of Portugal against the nefarious and antichristian Jacobin ideas. Desolated, the Portuguese lamented their ruin and cried for the eviscerated corpses of rioters hanged in public squares.
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In February 1806, the inhabitants of Porto, in northern Portugal, were awakened in a dark night by the sounds of cannon-shots. A British fleet of eight ships of the line and other minor warships directed by Admiral Sir William Sidney Smith bombarded its harbor and various coastal buildings. After three days of consecutive fire, a British regiment disembarked and invaded the city’s arsenal. Without any opposition, they took away every artillery piece, firearm and ammunitions from the city’s arsenal.
In the next week, they met with the feeble Portuguese fleet off the port of Lisboa, whose fourteen ships, in precarious condition, made a poor effort to defend the capital. After a quick engagement, the defending ships were encircled and forced to surrender the entire fleet. As the sun set, the proud metropolis of the Portuguese Empire – embellished and enlightened after a devastating earthquake that had ruined it barely 50 years earlier – was again reduced to a desolate ruin, but this time by the wrath of the most formidable maritime power the world had ever seen.
British warfleet near the Belém Tower, in Lisboa
Four days of fire raining from the sky converted the capital of the Portuguese Empire into a smoldering wreckage. The whole population had already been evacuated by the Spanish military officers in the previous day, so there were almost no human casualties, but the infrastructural damage was catastrophic.
The last chapter of this unrestrained campaign of destruction was the shelling of Cádiz, the main port in southwestern Spain. Differently from what happened in Lisboa, the citizens of Cádiz had no time to move away, and thousands perished in the destruction.
Through March 1806, this British expedition sailed along the coast of Africa, occupying Madeira and destroying naval bases in the Spanish Canaries. After the insignificant garrison of Portuguese Cabo Verde was forced to capitulate and accept the British hegemony, Admiral Sidney Smith’s fleet immediately departed for Brazil, intending to secure it for His Majesty, the King of Great Britain and Ireland.
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Historical notes: IOTL, there was indeed two distinct factions inside the Portuguese court that tried to influence Prince-Regent João’s policies: the “English Party”, thus called because they insisted solidifying the alliance with the United Kingdom, championed by Dom Rodrigo de Sousa Coutinho, and the “French Party”, led by Antônio Araújo de Azevedo whose members thought that Portugal would only be safe if they obtained Napoléon’s favor. Historically, the “English Party” prevailed, and it was D. Rodrigo Coutinho that organized the transfer of the court to Brazil.
The Battle of Hustopeče is an alt-version of the Battle of Austerlitz, Napoleon’s decisive victory over the combined Austrian and Russian armies (“the Battle of the Three Emperors”) that finished the Third Coalition. Despite the fact that the battle was found in a different place than OTL, you can imagine that the details of the battle are very similar to Austerlitz, as are its consequences.
Similarly, the Battle of Huelva is nothing more than an alt-version of the Battle of Trafalgar, which happened near Cádiz, in Spain, not far from Huelva. The details of the battle are similar, but an important divergence is that Adm. Horatio Nelson survives the battle, differently from OTL.
IOTL, Admiral Sidney Smith was one of the British naval officers in the bombardment of Copenhagen (1807), in which the recalcitrant Kingdom of Denmark had its capital assaulted, and its fleet captured by the United Kingdom in an effort to prevent France from obtaining a fleet able to invade de home islands. In addition, the Royal Navy was indeed instructed to bombard Lisboa and capture the Portuguese fleet if they failed to preserve the alliance. This drastic measure was not taken only because Prince-Regent João of Portugal made a secret arrangement with the British government to transfer the court to Brazil in late 1807, thus cementing the Anglo-Portuguese alliance, but it was a close call.