of male tax-paying property owners. Judicial power was exercised by the courts; executive power by the ministers of the government; and moderative power by the king, who held an absolute veto over all legislation.
Discontent
The traditionalist party of the landowners and the
Ferdinand VII in Spain (1823) who was eradicating all the Napoleonic innovations. In February 1828, Miguel returned to Portugal, ostensibly to take the oath of allegiance to the Charter and assume the regency. He was immediately proclaimed king by his supporters, who pressed him to return to absolutism. A month after his return, Miguel dissolved the Chamber of Deputies and the Chamber of Peers and, in May, summoned the traditional Cortes of the three estates of the realm to proclaim his accession to absolute power.[3] The Cortes of 1828 assented to Miguel's wish, proclaiming him king as Miguel I of Portugal
and nullifying the Constitutional Charter.
Rebellion
This alleged usurpation did not go unchallenged by the Liberals. On May 18, the garrison in
), and the Constitutional Charter. The rebellion against the absolutists spread to other cities. Miguel suppressed these rebellions, and many thousands of Liberals were either arrested or fled to Spain and Britain. There followed five years of repression.
Meanwhile, in
George Rose Sartorius on 8 July 1832.
In July 1832, with the backing of Liberals in Spain and England, an expedition led by king Pedro landed near Porto, in the Landing at Mindelo, which the Miguelites abandoned and where, after military activities including the Battle of Ponte Ferreira, Pedro and his associates were besieged by Miguelite forces for nearly a year. To protect British interests, a naval squadron under Commander William Nugent Glascock in HMS Orestes was stationed in the Douro
, where it came under fire from both sides.
In June 1833, the Liberals, still encircled at Porto, sent to the
Miguelites began again in earnest in early 1834, a year marked by the end of Spanish support which had changed sides to the liberals in 1833. Meanwhile, the Liberal army had suffered a sound defeat at Alcácer do Sal, which proved that, despite the Duke of Terceira's recent march from Faro to Lisbon, the south was still loyal to the Miguelites. In the southernmost region of Continental Portugal, the region of Algarve, a man known as Remexido, hidden in the mountainous terrain around São Marcos da Serra
, became a legend as a guerrilla loyal to the legitimist, antiliberal Miguelites until well after the end of the Liberal Wars.
restored the Constitutional Charter, but he died September 24, 1834. In truth this was the official peace, but Miguellist groups were still in action until the 1840s.