Maria II: the queen born in Rio who fought for her throne

On 4 April 1819, in the palace of São Cristóvão in Rio de Janeiro, Leopoldina of Austria gave birth to her first child, a girl. She was named Maria da Glória. Her father was Pedro, the eldest son and heir of King João VI, so the baby was styled Princess of Beira, the title of the heir's eldest child.3 sources3 sources

The court was in Brazil because the royal family had sailed for Rio when Napoleon's armies invaded Portugal in 1807, and it was still there. So Lisbon learned of the birth months late. On 26 July 1819 the Gazeta de Lisboa, the official newspaper, announced the birth of a Princess of Beira and ordered the celebrations.2 sources2 sources

Nobody in Rio could have guessed that this child would be the only Portuguese monarch born in the Americas, or that she would spend her life crossing the Atlantic and fighting for a crown. She was, in turn, Princess of Beira, Princess Imperial of Brazil, Princess of Grão-Pará and, from the age of seven, Queen of Portugal.2 sources2 sources

By the time Maria was three, the empire had split. João VI went home to Lisbon in 1821 and swore to the bases of a liberal constitution. Pedro, left behind as regent, declared Brazil independent in 1822 and became its emperor, and his daughter became Princess Imperial. Portugal recognised the new state in 1825.4 sources4 sources

When João VI died on 10 March 1826, nobody publicly disputed that Pedro was his heir. But Pedro could not wear both crowns: Brazil, jealous of its new independence, would not accept a king of Portugal as its emperor. On 29 April he granted the Portuguese a Constitutional Charter, and on 2 May he abdicated the Portuguese crown in favour of his daughter. The succession crisis has its own article; here what matters is the small print.2 sources2 sources

The abdication had two conditions. The kingdom, and Miguel himself, must swear the Charter, and Miguel must marry Maria, his niece. Until both were met she was queen in name only, and the historian Fátima Bonifácio calls it a half-abdication, or not even that.2 sources2 sources

Miguel, living in Vienna, swore the Charter there on 4 October 1826, and on 29 October the marriage contract between the seven-year-old queen and her uncle was signed, once the Pope had granted a dispensation for their close kinship. Leopoldina worried about her daughter's future. If only she could go to Austria, she wrote to her own father, the Emperor Francis, in May 1826: “she is a good girl and has excellent qualities, but I deeply fear the flatteries.” Leopoldina died before the year was out, an event with its own article.4 sources4 sources

The plan was for Miguel to govern as regent from 1827, when he turned 25, and marry Maria when she came of age. He landed in Lisbon on 22 February 1828 and four days later swore loyalty to his niece and the Charter. On 13 March he dissolved the Chamber of Deputies. The old Cortes of the three estates, meeting at the Ajuda palace from 23 June, proclaimed him king, and in early July he took the crown as an absolute monarch and annulled the Charter.5 sources5 sources

Maria had already left Rio. On 5 July 1828, aged nine, she sailed for Europe with the Marquis of Barbacena, bound for Vienna and her uncle. At Gibraltar on 3 September an emissary told them what Miguel had done. Barbacena, fearing that taking her on to Vienna might compromise the liberal cause, took her to Britain instead, where many exiled liberals had gathered. She reached London on 7 October.1 source1 source

King George IV received her on 22 December 1828 with the honours due to a reigning queen, a reception that Miguel's Gazeta de Lisboa tried to play down. His ministers were cooler. The Foreign Secretary, Lord Aberdeen, insisted that her marriage to Miguel was a condition for any settlement. Barbacena wrote to Pedro that consenting to it would be consenting to the murder of his daughter, of the Charter and of the loyal Portuguese who had followed her.2 sources2 sources

Only one corner of the kingdom held out for her: the island of Terceira, in the Azores, defended by the 5th Battalion of Caçadores. Once a month she travelled to the Portuguese embassy in London, where diplomats paid their respects and exiles, among them the writer Almeida Garrett, kissed her hand. In England, aged ten, she embroidered a large blue and white standard for the battalion on Terceira. It is now owned by the town council of Angra do Heroísmo, and blue and white remained the colours of the constitutional monarchy until 1910.3 sources3 sources

With the diplomacy stuck, Barbacena decided she was better off back in Brazil. On 30 August 1829 she sailed from Portsmouth with his new bride, Amélie of Leuchtenberg, and Amélie's brother Auguste, and reached Rio on 16 October. Meanwhile a liberal regency, appointed by Pedro in June 1829, finally installed itself on Terceira in March 1830.3 sources3 sources

Brazil turned against its Portuguese-born emperor. On 7 April 1831 Pedro abdicated in favour of his five-year-old son, Pedro II, and six days later he left for Europe with Amélie and Maria to fight for his daughter. He never saw his Brazilian children again. The family landed at Cherbourg in June (Parques de Sintra gives the 10th, Fátima Bonifácio the 19th), and after a stay in London Maria settled in Paris with her stepmother and, later, her baby half-sister Maria Amélia.5 sources5 sources

With an army raised among the exiles and on Terceira, Pedro landed at Mindelo, north of Porto, on 8 July 1832. Miguel's troops besieged him in Porto for about a year, through hunger, cholera and typhoid. In July 1833 a liberal force under the Duke of Terceira marched up from the Algarve, beat Miguel's troops on the south bank of the Tagus and entered Lisbon unopposed on the 24th. Maria arrived from France on 22 September.4 sources4 sources

The war ended the next spring. On 22 April 1834 Britain, France, Spain and Portugal signed the Quadruple Alliance to defend the thrones of Maria II and of the young Isabel II of Spain, and on 26 May Miguel's commanders accepted the Convention of Évoramonte, the subject of its own article. Miguel went into exile for good.2 sources2 sources

Pedro governed as regent, but his health was failing. On 18 September 1834 the Cortes declared his daughter of age, at 15, and the next day she presided over her first council of ministers at Queluz. On 24 September Pedro died at Queluz, in the room where he had been born. His daughter had lost her mother at seven and her father at fifteen.3 sources3 sources

A queen regnant needed heirs. The Patriarch of Lisbon annulled the betrothal to Miguel, and in September 1834 both chambers let the government set aside the article of the Charter that forbade the queen to marry a foreigner. The Duke of Palmela later wrote that when he raised the matter in council, she answered at once, of her own accord, that she wanted to marry Auguste de Leuchtenberg, her stepmother's brother, as her father had intended.2 sources2 sources

They were married by proxy on 1 December 1834 and in person in Lisbon on 26 January 1835. Auguste, a grandson of the Empress Joséphine, died that March of a severe throat infection, two months after the wedding. On 1 January 1836 Maria was married by proxy to Prince Fernando of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, who reached Lisbon that April; his life, from king consort to builder of the Pena palace, has its own article.4 sources4 sources

By every account the second marriage was happy. Maria wrote before the wedding that she seemed to like him already without knowing him, and the couple exchanged letters with pressed flowers when apart. Over 17 years she gave birth eleven times. Seven children reached adulthood, among them two kings, Pedro V and Luís I, and the queen took a close interest in their education.3 sources3 sources

Victory did not bring peace. The liberals split into a moderate wing, loyal to Pedro's Charter, and a radical wing that wanted something closer to the Constitution of 1822. On 9 September 1836 a revolution restored the 1822 Constitution, and its supporters became known as setembristas. In November the queen backed a palace coup to undo it, the Belenzada, which failed.3 sources3 sources

A constituent Cortes, sitting from January 1837, wrote a compromise between the 1822 Constitution and the Charter. The queen swore the Constitution of 1838 at a solemn session on 4 April 1838, her nineteenth birthday. It lasted less than four years. On 27 January 1842 António Bernardo da Costa Cabral staged a coup to restore the Charter, which came back into force on 10 February.3 sources3 sources

Costa Cabral, as minister of the kingdom, in effect the interior minister, dominated government from 1842 to 1846 and tried to modernise a country with archaic institutions. His reforms reached deep into village life: roads paid for by local councils and taxpayers, a new land register for taxation, and public health rules that required burial in cemeteries outside the towns.2 sources2 sources

In the spring of 1846 the peasants of the Minho, in the far north, rose against them, in the revolt known as the Maria da Fonte. The army would not crush it, the Duke of Terceira deserted Costa Cabral, and in May 1846 the government fell and the Cabral brothers fled abroad. Fátima Bonifácio argues that the revolt was less the direct cause of the fall than the army's defection and a bankrupt treasury.3 sources3 sources

A government under the Duke of Palmela followed. On the night of 5 to 6 October 1846, in the palace coup remembered as the Emboscada, the ambush, the queen dismissed Palmela and handed power to Marshal Saldanha. The north rose again, this time under a revolutionary junta in Porto, and a second civil war began, the Patuleia. Miguelist bands joined in from Spain.4 sources4 sources

It was ended from outside. The queen's government invoked the Quadruple Alliance. After a failed attempt at mediation, Britain and Spain blockaded Porto by sea while a Spanish army under General Manuel Gutiérrez de la Concha crossed the border, with French ships also in Portuguese waters. On 29 June 1847 the junta's delegates accepted the Convention of Gramido, which granted an amnesty and restored the status quo.2 sources2 sources

Maria II was no figurehead. The Charter gave the monarch an active role, and she used it, choosing and dismissing ministers. The historian Ron Thomson judges that she had more power than later constitutional monarchs, perhaps even more than Queen Victoria, and that the fault, if any, lay with the constitution. Her contemporaries were less kind: many found her haughty and arrogant, and some called for her removal.3 sources3 sources

Costa Cabral, now Count of Tomar, returned to power on 19 June 1849, and the queen was again his main source of power. Saldanha, who had long behaved as if he held a father's authority over her, wrote to her in December 1849 that the minister was exposing her to general hatred.1 source1 source

She did not listen. On 7 April 1851 Saldanha rode out of Lisbon to raise the army himself, refusing civilian help. The pronunciamento brought down Costa Cabral and opened the Regeneration, which brought the country political stability at last. The queen had once told Victoria, in a letter of 8 May 1842, that she longed for a country where everything ran quietly, a routine of identical, serene days.3 sources3 sources

Her nickname, a Educadora, the Educator, points to the other side of the reign. Ministers and men of letters such as Passos Manuel, Rodrigo da Fonseca Magalhães, Almeida Garrett and the musician Domingos Bontempo reformed teaching and founded schools and institutes, the national conservatoires of music and drama and new museums. The old convent of São Francisco became the seat of the Academy of Fine Arts and the National Library.2 sources2 sources

The national theatre on Lisbon's Rossio, built on the ruins of the Inquisition's old palace to a design by Fortunato Lodi, opened on 13 April 1846, during the celebrations of her 27th birthday, and still bears her name.3 sources3 sources

She was the first Portuguese monarch to pose for a camera. Her profile also appeared on Portugal's first postage stamps, issued in 1853 and designed by Francisco de Borja Freire, chief engraver of the Mint, on the British model of 1840; one of the values was printed in blue, her favourite colour.1 source1 source

The births grew harder. By the early 1850s the queen had put on weight and her recent deliveries had gone badly. When she became pregnant again in 1853, her doctors prescribed a diet and a light binding of the belly so that the baby would not grow too large, and told her to stop riding in carriages after the seventh month. She agreed only to a partial diet, and went on going to the opera, the theatre and Sintra for the summer.2 sources2 sources

Labour began on 14 November 1853 at the Necessidades palace, her Lisbon home. “It's nothing like the other times,” she is reported to have said. At about half past eleven the next morning she laid her head on the pillow and died. The baby, a boy named Eugénio, did not survive. She was 34.3 sources3 sources

Fernando wept at her bedside and later wrote to his cousin Queen Victoria that such broken affections left a terrible void. He had her bedroom closed. Their eldest son, born in 1837, became king as Pedro V, and Fernando ruled as regent for two years until he came of age.4 sources4 sources

Portugal has had two queens regnant, Maria I and Maria II, and Maria II was the last woman to head the Portuguese state. Neither the later monarchy nor the Republic, the dictatorship or the democracy since 1974 has had a woman in the top post. She was born under absolute monarchy and died as the Regeneration was bringing Portuguese politics closer to the rest of Europe.2 sources2 sources

Her cause was the cause of the Charter, and the Charter outlasted her. Restored in 1842 and amended by Additional Acts from 1852 onwards, it stayed in force until the Republic was proclaimed on 5 October 1910. The historian Paulo Drumond Braga, writing for the bicentenary stamp issue of 2019, links her name both to the triumph of liberalism and to the political turmoil of the first half of the nineteenth century.2 sources2 sources