Timeline of Portuguese history (Fourth Dynasty)

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This is a historical timeline of Portugal.

Fourth dynasty: Bragança

17th century

• 1640, December 1: a small group of conspirators storms the Palace in Lisbon and deposes the Spanish Governor,
  João IV of Portugal, despite deep personal reluctance, by popular acclaim and at the urging of his wife. His entire reign will be dominated by the struggle to establish and maintain independence from Spain. Francisco de Lucena
  , secretary to the governing council of Portugal for the past 36 years and thus the most experienced bureaucrat in the country, smoothly changes his loyalties and becomes chief minister of the restored monarchy.
• 1641 The Inquisition attempts to derail the national restoration by giving its support to a counter-revolution mounted by a duke, a marquis, three earls and an archbishop. The plot fails, quelled by Francisco de Lucena, who has the ringleaders executed, but it initiates a 28-year-long war of independence against Spain punctuated by frequent internal threats to the stability of the new regime. Meanwhile, the Dutch renew their attack on Angola and capture the most extensive Portuguese slaving grounds in Africa, including the Angolan port of Luanda. The Portuguese garrison flees upriver while trying to decide whether to declare continuing loyalty to the Habsburgs, accept Dutch rule or declare for João IV. They choose the House of Bragança and appeal to the Portuguese colony of Brazil for help in fending off African and Dutch attacks on their enclave. Salvador de Sá, leader of Rio de Janeiro, persuaded by the Jesuits in Brazil, also declares for King João and responds to the Angolan appeal.
• 1644 – Elvas withstands a nine-day siege by Spanish troops.
• 1648 – The Brazilians under Salvador de Sá land in Angola, expel the Dutch and restore the African colony to Portugal.
• 1654 – Anglo-Portuguese treaty between João IV and Oliver Cromwell signed at Westminster. João agrees to prevent the molestation of the traders of the English Protector; they are allowed to use their own bible and bury their dead according to Protestant rites on Catholic soil. The Brazilians drive the Dutch out of the great plantation colonies of the north-east, re-establishing the territorial integrity of Portugal's South American empire.
• 1656 – Death of João IV after a reign of 15 years. His Queen now reigns as Regent for their son, Afonso VI of Portugal. She seeks an accommodation with Spain. Portugal loses control of Colombo in Ceylon when it is captured by the Dutch.
• 1659 – The Treaty of the Pyrenees ends Spain's long war with France, and Spanish troops are freed once more to suppress the Portuguese ‘rebellion’. The Spaniards besiege Monção and are driven off by the Countess of Castelo Melhor.
• 1660 – On the restoration of Charles II in Britain, the Queen-Regent re-negotiates the treaty of 1654. Portugal is allowed to recruit soldiers and horses in England for the fight against Spain; and to seek out 4,000 fighting men in Scotland and Ireland and charter 24 English ships to carry them. The expeditionary force is to be issued with English weapons on arrival in Portugal and guaranteed religious freedom of worship.
• 1661 –
  Bombay
  . Servicing the wedding debt burdens the Portuguese exchequer for the next half-century, and this marriage with a Protestant monarch is deeply unpopular with that section of the Portuguese nobility which favours alliance with France.
• 1662 – In a palace coup d'état in Lisbon a restive younger faction of the nobility, supported by the young Afonso VI, overthrows the Queen Regent and installs the 26-year-old Luís de Vasconcelos e Sousa, 3rd Count of Castelo Melhor as ‘dictator’ to prosecute the war with Spain. The adolescent (and possibly retarded) king is married to a French princess and the young dictator models his government on the royal absolutism of the Bourbon dynasty. Opposition to this pro-French absolutism (from the King's sister the Queen of England, and his younger brother Prince Pedro) is swept aside, and Castelo Melhor initiates the final, successful phase of the Portuguese war of restoration with the aid of the Franco-German Marshal Schomberg, who brilliantly commands an international mercenary army against the Spanish forces.
• 1665 – 17 June, Portugal is finally victorious at the Battle of Montes Claros, in which Schomberg defeats the Spanish army under the Prince of Parma; Spain ceases to make war, but peace will not be signed for another three years.
• 1667 – Castelo Melhor and his Francophile party are overthrown in a new palace revolution. Prince Pedro, leader of the Anglophile party, becomes Regent for Afonso VI, who is declared incapable of governing and removed to the Azores. The French alliance is rejected, though Pedro shores up his political position by marrying his brother's estranged Queen. Castelo Melhor flees into exile (ironically, to England).
• 1668 – Peace treaty with Spain ends nearly 30 years of war. Spain restores to Portugal all her former possessions and territory with the exception of Ceuta in Morocco. Portugal remains economically weak, however, agriculturally undeveloped and dependent on British grain and trade goods generally, especially woven cloth. The Count of Ericeira, economic adviser to the Prince Regent, advocates the development of a native textile industry modelled on Flemish lines. ‘Factories’ are established at Covilhã with easy access to flocks of sheep and clean mountain water, but are highly unpopular with both town consumers and traditional weavers. Meanwhile, Portuguese attempts to develop a silk industry are fiercely resisted by the French, who wish to monopolize that market.
• 1683 – Death of Afonso VI.
  Pedro II
  becomes king.
• 1690 – Suicide of Luís de Meneses, Count of Ericeira.
• 1692 – Great drought disrupts Portuguese silk production.
• 1697 – Discovery of gold in the interior of São Paulo province, Brazil.

18th century

• 1700 – Brazil now producing 50,000 ounces of gold per year.
• 1703 – Sir John Methuen negotiates a Military Treaty with Portugal on 16 May, giving Britain an entry to Portugal at a time when the Bourbon dynastic alliance of France and Spain appears to threaten English access to the Continent. This is followed on 27 December by the commercial Methuen Treaty, signed to stimulate trade with Britain. This (which lasts until 1810) opens up new markets for Portuguese wine but helps to destroy the native textile industry by letting in British cloth at preferential rates. The fashion for Portuguese wine in Britain (which has banned the import of French wine due to the war of the Spanish Succession, which will last until 1714) makes the wine trade so profitable and competitive that over the next 40 years inferior wines, often adulterated and artificially coloured are passed off as the genuine article – giving ‘port’ a bad name.
• 1705 – Brazil is now producing 600,000 ounces of gold per year. For the second time in its history, Portugal controls one of the greatest gold-producing sources in the world.
• 1706 —
  João V of Portugal becomes king. He presides over a great flowering of Portuguese art and culture underpinned by the fabulous wealth provided by Brazilian gold. Social and economic reform are neglected for the next 40 years, and the pious King indulges in a penchant for fabulously expensive building. The Portuguese royal family is now the wealthiest in Europe and João V even considers moving his throne and court to Rio de Janeiro. The taxation of the Brazilian trade brings in an enormous personal revenue to the monarch and he is able to construct an absolutist regime similar to that of the French Kings, concentrating on pomp and ceremony at court. There is however no attention to the impoverished national agriculture, inadequate transport, neglected merchant navy and minimal industrial development of the country since corn and cloth can easily be exported, foreign ships can be hired and ‘every problem in Portugal can be solved by the King’s gift of a little basket of gold coins bearing his effigy’. Meanwhile, the Brazilian gold rush continues and civil war breaks out between the mining camps of Portuguese immigrants lately come to the north of the country and the Paulistas
  of southern Brazil who discovered the gold in the first place.
• 1717 – Beginning of construction of the great palace-monastery of
  Escorial
  . The elegance of the suites and courtyards are matched by the costliness of the furnishings in more than 1,000 rooms. The scale of the buildings and formal gardens is stupendous in relation to the impoverished countryside around it. However the roped gangs of forced labourers and the military regiment which controls them provides local employment throughout a generation, particularly in the servicing of the 7,000 carts and wagons and feeding of draught animals.
• 1732 – Disaster at Elvas: lightning strikes the gunpowder magazine in the castle. The explosion and fire kill 1500 people and destroy 823 houses.
• 1735 – Completion of the palace-monastery at Mafra.
• 1742 – João V orders the construction in Rome of the
  Capela de São João Baptista for installation in the Igreja de São Roque to honour his patron saint and to requite the Pope, whom he has persuaded to confer a patriarchate on Lisbon. For its size, this is reckoned the most expensive building ever constructed. Designed by the papal architect Vanvitelli, and using the most costly materials available including ivory, agate, porphyry and lapis lazuli, the chapel is erected in the Vatican
  in order that the Pope may celebrate Mass in it before it is dismantled and shipped to Portugal.
• 1750 — Death of João V. His son
  Sebastião de Melo, Marquis of Pombal
  , embarks on a programme of reform to drag Portugal into the 18th century.
• 1752 – Building of the
  Queluz
  .
• 1755 – The
  Belem. The Customs House is flooded and the India House and the English Factory destroyed, so that no trade can legitimately be conducted. The King proves himself able in crisis management and his illegitimate half-brothers, the royal dukes, organize defence, security, the burying of the dead and the continuance of religious observance. The disaster is described by Voltaire
  in Candide. Rebuilding begins immediately under the vigorous direction of Pombal, who now consolidates his position as Portugal's enlightened despot and leading statesman. It is decided to reconstruct Lisbon as the finest city in Europe, on the grid plan already adopted in the leading cities of Spanish America.
• 1759, January 13 — All members of the Távora family are executed for high-treason and attempted regicide by orders of the Marquis of Pombal.
• 1762 – 1763 — Spanish invasion of Portugal stopped with the help of Great Britain.
• 1777 —
  Pedro III of Portugal
  . Pombal is dismissed.
• 1792 — João assumes royal responsibilities due to the declining mental health of his mother, Maria I of Portugal.
• 1799 — João officially becomes Prince regent