The Abrilada: how Prince Miguel held his father captive in April 1824

At four in the morning of Friday 30 April 1824, by the French ambassador's account, a young man was going from one barracks to the next through the streets of Lisbon, shouting “Death to the traitors!” He was the Infante Miguel, 21 years old, the younger son of King João VI and commander-in-chief of the Portuguese army.2 sources2 sources

The regiments obeyed. Soon about 2,000 regular troops stood on the Rossio, the city's main square, and militia companies were marching in to join them. Patrols fanned out across the city. Before the day was out, ministers, officers and noblemen were on their way to the prisons and forts of Lisbon; judges and businessmen followed in the days after.3 sources3 sources

A rumour ran ahead of the soldiers: masked men had broken into the king's bedroom in the night to stab him, and the prince had saved his father just in time. None of it was true. The king himself was at the Bemposta palace, surrounded by troops who let nobody in without a pass from his son.2 sources2 sources

The episode is known in Portugal as the Abrilada, from abril, April. It was Miguel's second attempt in less than a year to take Portugal's politics into his own hands, and it ended with the prince on a ship bound for exile.2 sources2 sources

Four years earlier, on 24 August 1820, a military rising in Porto had begun what the Portuguese call vintismo: a revolution that summoned a parliament, the Cortes, and gave the country its first written constitution in 1822. João VI came home from Brazil in July 1821 and swore to the constitution's founding principles.3 sources3 sources

On 27 May 1823 Miguel led regiments out of Lisbon to Vila Franca de Xira against the constitution, with the backing of his mother, Queen Carlota Joaquina, a Spanish princess and sister of King Fernando VII. The king put himself at the head of the movement and the constitution fell. That coup, the Vilafrancada, made Miguel a hero to the absolutists, who wanted the old monarchy back without a parliament to limit it, and left him in command of the army.5 sources5 sources

João VI did not hand the government to the absolutists, though. His leading ministers, the Count of Subserra and the Marquis of Palmela, were moderates. Palmela looked to Britain and Austria for support and Subserra to the continental powers, and a commission was drafting a new, milder constitution. By 1823 or 1824, in the historian Fátima Bonifácio's words, the absolutist party was already the party of Miguel. The queen, living apart from her husband at the palace of Queluz, was its other pole.4 sources4 sources

Then came a killing. On the night of 29 February 1824, while the court spent Carnival at the royal palace of Salvaterra de Magos, the king's chamberlain and friend, the Marquis of Loulé, was attacked in a dark gallery and killed. Palmela wrote a few days later that Loulé had “without doubt been murdered” (translated from Portuguese). The inquiry the king ordered pointed at men close to Miguel, among them the Marquis of Abrantes. Rumour at court blamed Miguel and his mother, but who gave the order has never been settled.2 sources2 sources

The French ambassador, Jean-Guillaume Hyde de Neuville, believed the two events were one plot. He wrote that the king told a servant at Salvaterra, “You saw the beginning of the 30th April. The first blow was struck at Salvaterra.” By his account, the men behind Loulé's death learned that the king meant to have them arrested at last, and struck first.1 source1 source

The night before, the British minister, Sir Edward Thornton, had given a ball. Subserra, the leading minister, was warned at eight in the evening that men were waiting to ambush him on his way home from the palace. He slipped away by a roundabout route, and next morning hid in the house of a neighbour of the French embassy before Hyde de Neuville took him in. The ambassador was convinced the plan had been to kill him.2 sources2 sources

Palmela was less lucky. An officer came to say that the prince wished to speak to him at Belém; a short way down the road Palmela was told he was a prisoner and taken to the Tower of Belém. That is Hyde de Neuville's version; the Annual Register, the British yearbook of events, has him seized on his way home from the ball. The Register listed among those arrested the Marquises of Valença and Fronteira, the Count of Vila Flor, the Viscount of Santa Marta and senior officers. The finance minister, the Count of Póvoa, was seized at home and later released.2 sources2 sources

Miguel justified it all in print. In a proclamation to the troops dated at the Bemposta, he compared the day with the Vilafrancada and promised to finish the work begun then. A second proclamation, to the nation, claimed that the king had been kept a captive of his own ministers and that a Masonic plot threatened the House of Bragança. A letter to his father asked João VI to approve the “heroic resolution” after the event.2 sources2 sources

Next morning, 1 May, the Gazeta de Lisboa, the official newspaper, printed the proclamations and called the prince “this guardian angel of the Portuguese”. It reported that the queen had come in from Queluz, that the Council of State had met and that the troops had gone back to barracks between two and three in the afternoon. It also said the king had named new ministers, which Hyde de Neuville says he refused to do. It did not say that the king had been a prisoner for most of the day.2 sources2 sources

The person who broke the spell, by his own account, was a foreigner. Hyde de Neuville sent his secretary round the embassies asking every envoy to meet him at the house of the papal nuncio. The envoys gathered there at about nine o'clock. After waiting half an hour for the others, the nuncio, Hyde de Neuville, the Spanish ambassador, the Duke of Villahermosa, and the Russian and Danish chargés d'affaires set off in their carriages. The American minister, Henry Dearborn, an old comrade of George Washington, hesitated, then followed.2 sources2 sources

On the way they met Thornton, in plain clothes and in a hired cab, and took him into the French ambassador's carriage. They drove deliberately through the Rossio so that the rebel officers would see them. The Austrian minister and the Dutch chargé joined on the road. At the gates of the Bemposta they were told carriages could not pass, so they walked in through the soldiers. A sentry grabbed Thornton by the collar and had to be pulled off him.1 source1 source

At the foot of the grand staircase a man told them nobody could go up without an order from the Infante. Hyde de Neuville replied, in French and then in what he called bad Portuguese, that Europe recognised no one but the king and would hold the man personally responsible for any delay.1 source1 source

One of Miguel's aides-de-camp, Tomás de Mascarenhas, called out that the king was not a prisoner and the ambassadors should be let through. In the throne room they found João VI almost alone, with the master of the palace, the Marquis of Torres Novas, and Marshal William Beresford, the British general who had commanded the Portuguese army from 1809. The king told them, quietly, that he was a prisoner in his own palace, that nobody had tried to kill him and that the queen was urging their son on.3 sources3 sources

Hyde de Neuville urged the king to send for Miguel and receive him in front of the diplomats. The prince came. He spoke alone with his father and Beresford, then appeared in the throne room, spoke of a conspiracy and of papers he had handed over, kissed his father's hand and rode off to stand the troops down. The soldiers left the Rossio at about two in the afternoon. The king stepped onto the balcony with his daughter Isabel Maria and Beresford to cheers from the crowd.2 sources2 sources

The troops had gone, but Miguel had told the officers to obey no orders but his own, and the arrests continued. Lisbon was lit up for three nights in honour of the prince. On 1 May he thanked the garrison in an order of the day. Palmela was freed, then went into hiding again when Miguel ordered him re-arrested, and later took refuge with the British.2 sources2 sources

On 3 May a decree in the king's name set up summary courts to try the accused conspirators and excused Miguel for the acts he had committed beyond his authority. It looked like surrender. The king later explained it as an attempt to calm things down that had failed, because arrests went on in the prince's name, some of the orders signed by people with no office at all.2 sources2 sources

By 5 May the jails were so full that prisoners were being sent on to the fortress of Peniche, up the coast. The British merchants of Lisbon complained to Thornton that their Portuguese partners had been torn from their families and thrown into prison. Thornton passed the protest to the government, and Hyde de Neuville sent one of his own. On the 5th, too, the diplomats met at the French embassy and agreed to urge the king to go aboard a ship, the only place where he could give orders freely.2 sources2 sources

Getting him there took four days, in Hyde de Neuville's telling. On 6 May Miguel heard that Subserra had left the embassy, rode to the fort of São Julião at the mouth of the Tagus and had sixteen shots fired at the departing British packet boat, which he believed was carrying him. That evening the boats were ready and Thornton was waiting at the quay, but the king saw the queen walking in the palace garden and lost his nerve. The 8th was lost too.1 source1 source

On Sunday 9 May João VI heard Mass at Belém with his daughters, let it be known that he was going on to dine at a country house, and instead stepped into the royal barge. Towards one in the afternoon he was rowed out between lines of marines to the Windsor Castle, a British ship of the line commanded by Captain Charles Dashwood. Launched in 1790 as a three-decker, she had been cut down in 1814 to a two-decker of 74 guns. The royal standard went up, and the diplomats raced out in whatever boats they could find.4 sources4 sources

From the ship the king acted fast. A decree dismissed Miguel as commander-in-chief and forbade anyone to obey his orders, on pain of being treated as a rebel. The Intendant of Police was told to free everyone arrested illegally since 30 April, and the commander at Peniche the same. A proclamation to the nation told the story of the day in the king's own words.2 sources2 sources

A letter ordered Miguel to come aboard at once, with a promise of pardon. He obeyed. On deck he threw himself at his father's feet: “Ah! My Father! I would have hastened to you, if I had been at the other end of the world.” The king walked away without answering and kept him waiting an hour. When they spoke, Miguel blamed his advisers. Orders went out to arrest the Marquis of Abrantes and others of the prince's circle.2 sources2 sources

On 12 May Miguel wrote to ask leave “to travel for some time in Europe”, blaming the errors of youth and inexperience. The king granted it the same day in a letter that spoke only of a father's love and of the service his son had done the throne the year before. The word exile appears in neither letter.3 sources3 sources

The next day, 13 May, was the king's birthday. He held court on the ship and handed out rewards to the men who had stood by him. At four in the afternoon Miguel sailed for Brest, in France, on the Portuguese frigate Pérola, escorted by the British frigate Lively and a French brig, travelling under the title of Duke of Beja. The Annual Register dates his sailing to the 14th.3 sources3 sources

João VI stayed on board one more day. According to the Gazeta, he came ashore at the Navy Arsenal at half past six on the evening of 14 May, to a salute from every warship in the river and a crowd that wept and embraced. The city was lit up again, this time for him.2 sources2 sources

The queen was ordered to withdraw to Madeira or abroad. She took to her bed at Queluz, pleaded illness and refused three times to receive her own brother's ambassador. The king forbade her to appear at court, and she stayed at Queluz under watch. Beresford, whom the king now avoided, sailed for England on 18 July.3 sources3 sources

The restored ministers did not keep the promise of a new constitution. Instead, a royal law published in June 1824 declared the old constitution of the kingdom back in force, with the Cortes of the three estates of clergy, nobility and people, which had not met for more than a century. In August a special commission was set up to judge those behind 30 April, “observing only the limits of the natural law, without attention to civil forms”.2 sources2 sources

From France Miguel went on to Vienna, capital of the Austrian Empire. He was still there when his father died at the Bemposta on 10 March 1826. He accepted his elder brother, Pedro, Emperor of Brazil, as king, swore Pedro's new Constitutional Charter in Vienna on 4 October 1826 and agreed to marry Pedro's daughter, Maria, then seven.4 sources4 sources

He landed in Lisbon as regent on 22 February 1828. Within months he had dissolved the Chamber of Deputies, been proclaimed king by the old Cortes and annulled the Charter. The civil war that followed, from 1832 to 1834, ended with his defeat and his final exile. Among the liberal commanders was the Count of Vila Flor, by then Duke of Terceira, one of the men arrested on 30 April and the son-in-law of the murdered Loulé.5 sources5 sources

The Abrilada failed, and it was short. The organisers of a colloquium held in Porto in February 2024, two hundred years on, described it as the moment when the moderate middle ground broke, and as a rehearsal for the repressive system of Miguel's regency and reign from 1828. They also noted that research on the Abrilada and its archives is still incomplete.1 source1 source

It also showed where power lay. A king whose army had followed his son got his authority back because foreign envoys walked into his palace and a foreign warship took him in. Hyde de Neuville's memoirs are full of the rivalry between France and Britain for influence in Lisbon, and Thornton fell out of favour with his own government for having worked so closely with the French.3 sources3 sources