33.3 Europe: a.d. 1801 to 1900  (Page 12/27)

The Spanish-American War developed in 1898, secondary to the long-standing insurrection in Cuba, with the American press sympathetic to the rebels. When a United States ship, the U.S.S. Maine, was mysteriously blown up in Havana Harbor, war was formally declared. When that war ended and the treaty signed in Paris, the last of Spanish America was lost. (Ref. 68 , 8 , 55 ) (Some additional information about Spain is to be found in the next section on PORTUGAL)

Portugal

As the century opened Portugal was ruled by Pedro III, under the regency of his mother, Maria I. Trouble with the French led to a humiliating treaty in 1801 by which Portugal had to renounce treaties with England and pay heavy indemnities. Then when Spain temporarily allied with France, it was Manuel de Godoy, Spanish chief minister and lover of the Spanish Queen Maria Luisa, who invited Napoleon's aid in the dismemberment of Portugal. A French army under General Andoche Junot crossed into Spain and then a combined French and Spanish force took off for Portugal. The Portuguese royal family, including the Prince Regent Dom Joao, with 15,000 courtiers, took off for Brazil under protection of the British fleet. As Junot entered Lisbon he immediately imposed an indemnity of 100 million francs. (1807). In the meantime, however, the new Spanish King Joseph, put on the throne by Napoleon, had met with stiff local opposition and in 1808 two French divisions, mistakenly believing they were surrounded by greatly superior forces, had surrendered and 22,800 of them were interned on the island of Cabrera, where hundreds of them died of starvation or disease. The English government, now realizing that Junot's forces in Lisbon could not be reinforced from Spain, sent Sir Arthur Wellesley (the future Duke of Wellington) to Portugal with a fleet and army. He was soon joined by bands of Portuguese infantry and on August 21, 1808 he completely defeated Junot's army as it came out of Lisbon. This was the Peninsular War, which we have mentioned previously. The British forces were supplied by sea, using techniques developed during the American Revolution. In a crucial battle just outside Lisbon in 1810-11 the well-fed British troops pushed back some 250,000 starved French soldiers. All of this allowed Portugal to again be in alliance with England and by 1814 Wellington had even helped the Spanish push the French out of Spain, also.

But Portugal's troubles were not over. A liberal revolution against the regency broke out in 1820 and Joao VI returned from Brazil. His forces stopped the insurrection but he accepted a liberal constitution in 1822 in the same year that Brazil declared its independence under Pedro I, who was Joao's elder son. In spite of these things, Portugal made progress, with sanitary reforms, the building of railroads, telephone lines and schools and the abolition of slavery in her colonies. In the last half of the century under Pedro V and Louis I of the House of Coburg-Braganza, there was respite from civil strife, but there were political and financial troubles resulting from long civil wars which had raged during the middle years of this period. There were two opposing factions of professional politicians, the Regenerators and the Progressives and they developed a system of rotating power, with a resulting sterile, pseudo-parliamentary system. At Louis' death in 1889 sporadic revolts, strikes and conspiracies returned. Louis' son Carlos I (Charles) even tried in 1900 to support a dictatorship under Joao Franco, head of the Regenerator party, but this caused a violent reaction, and in 1908 Carlos and the heir apparent were shot in a public square in Lisbon. (Ref. 55 , 68 , 119 , 38 )