Nine o'clock at the Paço da Ribeira: the Restoration of 1 December 1640

On the morning of Saturday 1 December 1640, a string of closed carriages drew up at different points around the Terreiro do Paço, the great square on Lisbon's riverfront. The men inside were armed. They had confessed their sins the day before, and some of their mothers had helped them buckle on their weapons. They were waiting for the palace clock to strike nine.1 source1 source

So runs the fullest account of that morning, published in 1679 by Luís de Meneses, 3rd Count of Ericeira, a nobleman who later commanded the Portuguese artillery in the war and who wrote as a partisan of the new dynasty. In his telling the clock had never seemed so slow. At the first stroke, without waiting for the last, they jumped down and ran for the Paço da Ribeira, the royal palace where the vicereine, Margaret of Savoy, lived and where her Secretary of State, Miguel de Vasconcelos, kept his office.2 sources2 sources

One group pinned down the company of Castilian infantry on guard at the gate. Another climbed to the hall of the German halberdiers. There Miguel de Almeida, the oldest of the plotters, fired a pistol as the agreed signal and ran to the balconies with his sword in his hand, shouting to the square below: “Liberty, Portuguese! Long live King João the Fourth!”1 source1 source

The king they were cheering for was João, 8th Duke of Braganza, a great-great-grandson of King Manuel I. He was far away at his palace in Vila Viçosa, in the Alentejo, and would not hear the news for two days.2 sources2 sources

Portugal had not been conquered. It had been inherited. King Sebastião died in battle at Alcácer Quibir, in Morocco, in 1578 without an heir. His elderly great-uncle, Cardinal Henrique, became king and died without an heir in turn. Philip II of Spain claimed the throne, and his army under the Duke of Alba scattered the hastily raised force of the rival claimant, António, Prior of Crato, at Alcântara outside Lisbon on 25 August 1580. Ericeira puts that force at no more than 4,000 men; a modern account gives about 7,000.4 sources4 sources

At the Cortes of Tomar in 1581, the assembly of the kingdom's three estates, Philip promised that Portugal would keep its own laws, institutions and offices. For a generation the arrangement held. Portugal shared a king with Castile but remained a separate kingdom, which is why historians call the period a union of crowns, the Iberian Union, and not an annexation.3 sources3 sources

Things changed under Philip IV, who came to the throne in 1621 and ruled Portugal as Philip III. His chief minister, the Count-Duke of Olivares, needed money and men for wars across Europe. Orders came from Madrid for new taxes. According to Ericeira, the heaviest was a levy of 500,000 cruzados a year on top of the old ones, run by a special board that answered to Madrid, not Lisbon. Nobles were taxed on the pensions and offices the crown gave them, and the clergy were pressed for ever larger “gifts”.3 sources3 sources

In late 1634 Philip sent his cousin Margaret of Savoy, the Duchess of Mantua and a granddaughter of Philip II, to govern Portugal as vicereine; by Ericeira's account she took office in January 1635. Real power sat with two Portuguese officials related by marriage: Diogo Soares, Secretary of State for Portugal in Madrid, and his father-in-law in Lisbon, Miguel de Vasconcelos. Ericeira, writing for the victors, called Vasconcelos proud, harsh and an enemy of the nobility, a man who obeyed only the royal orders that suited him.5 sources5 sources

The first explosion came in Évora in August 1637. Riots against the tax known as the real de água and a new levy on salt spread through the Alentejo and the Algarve. In Évora the crown's magistrate, André de Morais Sarmento, summoned the two men who spoke for the townspeople, Sesinando Rodrigues and João Barradas, demanded their consent to the tax and showed them the officers he had ready to hang them. Sesinando Rodrigues went to a window and called for help to the crowd in the square, which answered with one cry: death to the magistrate.3 sources3 sources

The revolt, remembered in Évora as the Revolta do Manuelinho, dragged on for months. Madrid massed two armies on the border, at Badajoz and Ayamonte, and the Portuguese nobility did little to help. When it was over, the only noble Olivares praised was the Duke of Braganza, for the “suma fidelidad”, utmost loyalty, with which he had helped calm it. The riots faded, but they showed how thin the loyalty of the kingdom had worn.2 sources2 sources

Then Catalonia exploded. On 7 June 1640, the feast of Corpus Christi, about five hundred reapers who had come to Barcelona for work rioted, burned the houses of royal officials and killed the viceroy. The Corpus de Sang, the “Bloody Corpus”, began the Reapers' War against Philip IV. Madrid ordered the Duke of Braganza and the Portuguese nobility to join the king's campaign against the Catalans. In Ericeira's account, it was that order which made up the Duke's mind.4 sources4 sources

On 12 October 1640, Ericeira writes, a handful of nobles met at the house of Antão de Almada: Miguel de Almeida, the master of the royal hunt, Jorge de Melo, Pedro de Mendonça, António de Saldanha and João Pinto Ribeiro, the agent who managed the Duke of Braganza's affairs in Lisbon. They resolved to free the kingdom and to offer the Duke the crown.1 source1 source

The Duke had every reason to hesitate. His grandmother, Catarina, Duchess of Braganza, had claimed the throne herself in 1580, so his family's claim was a serious one, but he had a great deal to lose. Pedro de Mendonça carried the offer to Vila Viçosa, and later Pinto Ribeiro rode there himself. The answer he brought back was that Lisbon should begin, quickly, and bring in as many people as it could.2 sources2 sources

In the last days of November the plotters met at night in Pinto Ribeiro's rooms in the Duke's Lisbon palace, leaving their carriages in different streets and keeping the lights low. They fixed the day: Saturday 1 December. Through a priest they had sounded out the leaders of Lisbon's guilds, who promised support but, frightened by what had happened at Évora, would not move until the nobility had declared itself. The Archbishop of Lisbon, Rodrigo da Cunha, was told and approved.1 source1 source

Some wanted to seize the castle of São Jorge first, but it held more than five hundred soldiers. They chose the palace instead. One party would take the Castilian guard, one would hold the German halberdiers, one would proclaim the new king from the windows, and one would kill Vasconcelos, both to stop his orders and to give the crowd a sign.1 source1 source

Inside the palace the plotters swept through the halberdiers' hall, knocking the guards' halberds to the floor before the soldiers could reach them. A party ran down the corridor towards the Secretary of State's rooms. At its end they met Francisco Soares de Albergaria, a senior city magistrate, coming out of the office. When they cried “Long live King João!”, he drew his sword and answered “Long live King Philip!” They shot him in the throat. He died within hours.1 source1 source

Vasconcelos had been warned that morning that nobles were gathering in the square. He brushed the warning aside, then got out of bed and locked himself in his office. The plotters broke down the door and found the room empty. They feared he had escaped into the neighbouring Casa da Índia until an enslaved woman of the household pointed to a cupboard full of papers.1 source1 source

António Telo fired into it. Vasconcelos stumbled out wounded and was cut down, and the plotters threw him, still alive, from a window into the Terreiro do Paço. The crowd that had gathered at the noise fell on the body. In an instant, Ericeira wrote, the man everyone had feared became the object of everyone's contempt. He was later buried at the request of the clerk of the Misericórdia, Lisbon's charitable brotherhood.1 source1 source

Another party forced its way to the vicereine's apartments. They found Margaret of Savoy at a window, calling on the people below to rescue her. Respectfully, Ericeira says, they made her step back. She tried to go down to the square; they stopped her. Then she spoke to them.1 source1 source

They answered that they knew no king but the Duke of Braganza. When she kept insisting, Carlos de Noronha told her to withdraw before they lost their respect for her. “To me? And how?” she asked. By making Your Highness, he replied, leave by that window if she would not go through this door. She went to her oratory and signed the order they put before her, telling Luis del Campo, who commanded the castle, to make no move. He obeyed, though he suspected it had been forced from her, and the guns above the city stayed silent.2 sources2 sources

The streets had emptied at the first noise, and for a while the plotters feared the city would not follow. It did. The Archbishop came out from the cathedral, the city council's president opened his doors, and Álvaro de Abranches carried the city's banner through the streets. The prisons were opened. A galley in the river took three Castilian ships without a fight. Within three hours, Ericeira writes, the city was calm again, and by noon the shops were open as on any other day.1 source1 source

By noon the nobles had named governors, the archbishops of Lisbon and Braga among them, to rule until the king arrived, and sent couriers to every city and large town. Santarém acclaimed João before its letter arrived. Coimbra celebrated and Porto hesitated for a few hours. At Viana the townspeople had to storm the castle held by Castilian infantry, and at Setúbal the fort of São Filipe and the Outão tower held out for eight days. Cascais fell on 10 December and the fortress of São Julião, which guarded the mouth of the Tagus, on 12 December.1 source1 source

Pedro de Mendonça and Jorge de Melo carried the news to Vila Viçosa, arriving on Monday 3 December as the Duke was going in to hear a sermon. He set off for Lisbon by coach with a few companions and no troops. On Wednesday he reached Aldeia Galega on the south bank of the Tagus, and on the morning of Thursday 6 December he crossed the river and landed at nine at the quay of the Casa da Índia, next to the palace. The governors were not expecting him so soon.1 source1 source

On Saturday 15 December a stage was built in the Terreiro do Paço, level with the palace balconies. João came down to it wearing the royal insignia, with the court officers in their traditional places, and received the oath of obedience. The Cortes he summoned met in Lisbon from 28 January 1641. They confirmed the acclamation, swore in his son Teodósio as heir and agreed 1.5 million cruzados, shared among the three estates, to raise and keep an army of 14,000 men. The Fundação Batalha de Aljubarrota gives a higher target of 20,000 foot and 4,000 horse.3 sources3 sources

The Cortes also set down in writing why the kingdom had been entitled to throw off its king. The argument, borrowed from theologians and lawyers, was that power came from the people, who could withdraw it from a tyrant. Their Assento listed the charges against Philip.1 source1 source

Margaret of Savoy was moved to the palace at Xabregas and then to the convent of Santos, where she was treated with respect. In June 1641 João's government ordered her out of Lisbon, first to the castle of Montemor-o-Novo and then, on second thoughts, to Torres Vedras. In late August she crossed the border at the Caia bridge near Elvas and was received at Badajoz with an artillery salute, the last vicereine of Portugal.2 sources2 sources

Taking Lisbon was the easy part. Keeping the crown took twenty-eight years. For the first two decades Spain was tied down in Catalonia and in its war with France, and the fighting along the border was mostly raids, sieges and plunder. The cost climbed fast: by 1642 the levy agreed in Cortes had risen to 2.4 million cruzados, for an army of 16,000. The fortresses on the main invasion route from Madrid, Elvas, Campo Maior and Olivença above all, had first call on the money.3 sources3 sources

Most of the big battles were fought in the Alentejo, on the road from Madrid to Lisbon. A Portuguese army under Matias de Albuquerque won at Montijo, across the border in Extremadura, on 26 May 1644. In January 1659 another broke the Spanish siege of Elvas. Once Spain was free of its wars in Europe and Catalonia, it turned its full weight on Portugal, and lost again at Ameixial in 1663, at Castelo Rodrigo in 1664 and at Montes Claros on 17 June 1665.2 sources2 sources

The war was also fought by diplomats. João IV died in 1656, and his widow, Luísa de Gusmão, ruling as regent, opened the talks that led to an alliance with England: on 21 May 1662 their daughter Catarina married Charles II of England, bringing Bombay and Tangier as her dowry. Charles also mediated the peace with Spain and stood as its guarantor. It was concluded in Lisbon on 13 February 1668; the Torre do Tombo dates the Spanish king's signature to 5 January, in Madrid. Spain recognised the independence of Portugal and its overseas possessions, except Ceuta, which stayed Spanish.3 sources3 sources

The day was first officially commemorated in 1823, at a ceremony in Belém presided over by King João VI. The Sociedade Histórica da Independência de Portugal, founded in 1861, made it its cause, and in 1886 an obelisk to the Restorers was raised in the square in Lisbon that now bears their name.2 sources2 sources

The Republic, proclaimed in October 1910, kept the date and gave it a new job. Its new green-and-red flag, approved on 29 November, was presented two days later on the first Flag Day, the 270th anniversary of the Restoration. Army cadets mounted a guard of honour over it outside City Hall. In torrential rain, schoolboys, clubs, sailors and cadets marched down the Avenida da Liberdade and around the Restauradores monument, where the new flag had been raised. Not everyone liked it: the poet Guerra Junqueiro had argued for keeping the old blue and white.2 sources2 sources

The Estado Novo dictatorship always preferred 1 December to the republican 5 October, and democracy kept it. Then, in 2012, with Portugal under its international bailout, a change to the Labour Code dropped four public holidays from 1 January 2013: 1 December, 5 October, Corpus Christi and All Saints' Day. The Church had agreed to give up two religious holidays only if two civil ones went too, and the law promised a review within five years.4 sources4 sources

The review came sooner. A new government restored all four holidays by Law 8/2016, published on 1 April 2016 and in force the next day, so 1 December was a day off again that year after three years as a working day.2 sources2 sources