Carlos and Amélie: the royal wedding of 22 May 1886 in Lisbon

At one o'clock on Saturday 22 May 1886 the gala coaches left the Ajuda palace, high above Belém. They carried King Luís, Queen Maria Pia, their son Carlos, the king's brother Infante Augusto and two foreign guests, the Duke of Aosta and Prince George of Wales, with lancers, heralds and kings of arms riding ahead. A little later a second procession set out from the Necessidades palace with the bride, her parents, her brother and sister and her great-uncle the Duc d'Aumale.1 source1 source

Both processions were bound for the church of São Domingos, beside the Rossio. Carlos waited for his bride at the church door. The ceremony began at two in the afternoon, under decorations that had cost a great deal of money. Gervásio Lobato, who wrote the chronicle of the illustrated review O Occidente, found them rich but muddled, “without unity, without idea, without style” (translated from Portuguese).1 source1 source

A memoir of the bride by the French monarchist writer Lucien Corpechot, drawing partly on the Marquis de Beauvoir, puts the Cardinal-Patriarch of Lisbon and six mitred bishops at the altar. Queen Maria Pia wore a dress copied from one in a Rubens painting of Marie de Médicis, with a peacock-blue train. The bride, Princess Amélie of Orléans, was in plain white.1 source1 source

When it was over the two processions joined into one and drove to the Belém palace, where the couple would live. The crowd was so thick that the streets could barely be crossed, and people cheered the newly married pair as they passed in the great glass coach.1 source1 source

Portugal in 1886 was a constitutional monarchy, governed under the Constitutional Charter of 1826, and its king was Luís I. His heir, Carlos, carried the title Duke of Braganza. A Catholic bride of royal blood had to be found for him, and in Catholic Europe the choice was short.2 sources2 sources

Amélie was born on 28 September 1865 at York House in Twickenham, west of London, the first child of the Count and Countess of Paris. Her father, a grandson of King Louis-Philippe, had grown up in exile in England. After the fall of Napoleon III the French National Assembly lifted the laws that barred the family, and they moved back to France, dividing their time between Paris and the château of Eu in Normandy.3 sources3 sources

According to Corpechot, the idea came from a French countess, Madame de la Ferronnays, who talked it over with the Marquis de Beauvoir, a confidant of the Count of Paris. The plan was for Carlos to tour Europe early in 1886 and see three candidates before he chose: an archduchess in Vienna, a princess in Saxony and Amélie in Paris.1 source1 source

Her father was so unsure, Corpechot writes, that on the morning of Carlos's arrival in Paris he sent a trusted servant to the Hôtel Bristol with a choice of two messages. Carlos was said to be very short and Amélie was very tall. If the pair would look ridiculous together, the servant was to say the family was leaving for Cannes that evening. He gave the other message, and the next day the family received Carlos at Chantilly, the château of her great-uncle, the Duc d'Aumale.1 source1 source

Carlos was taken with her at once. Before dawn he sent his aide, the Count of Seisal, to Paris for the embassy's cipher, so that he could telegraph Lisbon that he would travel no further. The family took him to Eu for a week, then went to Cannes on 22 February; Corpechot says he stayed with them there until 6 May. When Amélie left Eu, Corpechot says more than 10,000 people came to the park to say goodbye.1 source1 source

On 15 May the Count of Paris gave a farewell reception for her in the Hôtel Galliera, the mansion in the Rue de Varenne that the Duchess of Galliera had lent the family. Royalist supporters came in such numbers that it looked like a show of loyalty to the old dynasty, and the Republic took offence.2 sources2 sources

The bride travelled by night train through the Spanish border mountains, past bonfires lit on the peaks. At Pampilhosa, about five hours from Lisbon, Carlos was waiting for her with ministers sent to greet their future queen. On 19 May she reached the station of the Norte and Leste railway, now Santa Apolónia, hung with flags, coats of arms and garlands for her arrival.2 sources2 sources

Prince George, son of the Prince of Wales and the future George V, came to represent his grandmother, Queen Victoria. The Duke of Aosta came too. The queen regent of Spain sent an extraordinary embassy, and the French Republic was represented by its ambassador, Billot.1 source1 source

On the wedding night the town hall, its façade outlined in gas jets, was the finest of the illuminations. The Terreiro do Paço had 12,000 lights, though Lobato thought them arranged in very bad taste. The Avenida da Liberdade stayed dark, to the annoyance of the crowd that had come to see its 48 gas arches. It was lit three nights later, after the parade, and O Occidente put the crowd there at 100,000 people, in the street, on the stands and at the windows.2 sources2 sources

The gala at São Carlos was the high point. The impresario had replaced the gas with electric light, and Lobato wrote that without it no one could have stayed in the hall for the heat. When the royal family entered at half past nine, the whole audience stood. At the end the president of the city council, Fernando Palha, led cheers for the family and its guests, and the house went on cheering the royal family and the new princess for several minutes.1 source1 source

On the 27th, halfway through a bullfight given by the Turf Club, the Count and Countess of Paris left for the railway station and Paris. Their daughter watched the fireworks that night from the Museu de Belas-Artes with the king and queen, her husband and the infantes. Lobato wrote that the festivities had brought visitors from the whole kingdom, the islands and abroad, and changed the face of the city for eight days.2 sources2 sources

Within weeks the reception at the Hôtel Galliera had its answer. In June 1886 the French parliament passed a law expelling from France the direct claimants to the throne and their heirs. The Count of Paris and his son had to go. He returned to England and leased Sheen House, near Richmond Park, from 1886 until 1892.2 sources2 sources

The news reached Amélie in Lisbon, in her first weeks of married life. She had been born in exile, and now, in the wake of her wedding, her father was going back into it. Her confidante in France, at the château of Dampierre, wrote that she was glad Amélie was far away from all the sadness. Amélie answered:1 source1 source

Carlos chose the Belém palace, then little used, as the couple's home. Painters including Columbano Bordalo Pinheiro, João Vaz and José Malhoa worked for nearly three months on the rooms, and Leandro Braga carved the woodwork. From its windows you could see the Tagus as far as the bar.1 source1 source

Corpechot describes a simple life there that surprised a court used to display. The couple breakfasted alone, rode together, painted the same views, went to the opera incognito and kept a small boat they rowed themselves. “I have found the most absolute happiness one could dream of,” Amélie wrote.1 source1 source

Their first son, Luís Filipe, was born at Belém on 21 March 1887. Corpechot tells how, at Vila Viçosa, Amélie snatched him from his cot as it caught fire, and how the shock brought on the birth of a daughter who died. King Luís died on 19 October 1889, and the 24-year-old princess became Queen Amélia of Portugal. A second son, Manuel, was born on 15 November 1889.3 sources3 sources

Amélia began with poor children. She founded a dispensary in Alcântara, in a wing of the former convent of the Sacramento, paid for at first with a charity bazaar and her own income. Sick children were treated there, vaccinated and sent home with milk, bread and soup, and a branch on the same model opened in Porto in 1894 or 1895.1 source1 source

In 1892 she founded a lifesaving institute for the whole coast, the Instituto de Socorros a Náufragos, helped by the navy minister, Admiral Ferreira do Amaral. Before then Portugal had four independent lifeboat stations, at Póvoa de Varzim, Viana do Castelo, Porto and Paço de Arcos. Growth was slow at first; by 1926 the institute had fifty life-saving stations, and between 1900 and March 1926 they rescued 12,996 people.2 sources2 sources

At the turn of the century tuberculosis killed an estimated 15,000 to 20,000 people a year in Portugal, and the country had no national campaign against it. On 11 June 1899 Amélia called a large meeting in the building of the Ministry of the Kingdom and told it why.4 sources4 sources

The Assistência Nacional aos Tuberculosos was run by the physician António de Lancastre, with Curry Cabral and others on its board. On 6 June 1900 it opened its first house in the old fort of Outão, at the mouth of the Sado near Setúbal, which had been the royal family's summer residence and which the queen gave up for it. It began as a preventorium for 36 frail girls, daughters of tuberculosis patients, and became a sanatorium proper in 1912; five years after opening it had 126 children.3 sources3 sources

Dispensaries followed in Lisbon and other towns. The largest project was a mountain sanatorium at Guarda, on 27 hectares, designed by the young architect Raúl Lino and opened on 18 May 1907 as the Sanatório Sousa Martins. It was the association's first purpose-built hospital.3 sources3 sources

In 1905 Amélia turned the old royal riding school of the Belém palace into a museum for the royal coaches. Her husband's own passion was the sea. Between 1896 and 1907 Carlos led 12 oceanographic expeditions on a series of yachts named Amélia, starting off Cascais on 1 September 1896, and his collection is now in the Navy's Aquário Vasco da Gama.3 sources3 sources

On 1 February 1908 gunmen killed Carlos and Luís Filipe in their open carriage on the Terreiro do Paço; Amélia, who struck at one of the attackers with her bouquet, survived, and Manuel became king. That day is told in our article on the regicide.2 sources2 sources

Amélia was at the Pena palace in Sintra on 3 October 1910 when Manuel warned her of the revolt in Lisbon. On the morning of 5 October she left Pena for Ericeira, where she and Queen Maria Pia embarked with the king on the royal yacht Amélia. The Republic was proclaimed the same day.2 sources2 sources

After a time in England, Amélia settled in France at the Château de Bellevue at Le Chesnay, near Versailles. The country that had expelled her father now became her home in exile.1 source1 source

She came back once. In 1945, at the invitation of the dictator António de Oliveira Salazar, she visited Portugal and was received by him and by President Carmona. The historian José Alberto Ribeiro says the crowd at Santa Apolónia gave her a triumphant welcome. She made a point of visiting the Pena palace on her own, and spent a moment alone at the tomb of her husband and sons.2 sources2 sources

Her train stopped at Pampilhosa, where Carlos had waited for her in 1886. The Count of Vilas Boas, a monarchist who went to meet her there, was called into her saloon carriage. He remembered railwaymen's wives on the platform lifting their children to the windows and shouting “Long live our queen!” (translated from Portuguese).2 sources2 sources

Amélia died in the district of Versailles on 25 October 1951, aged 86. Her body was brought to Lisbon for a state funeral at the end of that year. She is buried in the Braganza pantheon at São Vicente de Fora, beside Carlos, Luís Filipe and Manuel II.4 sources4 sources

Amélia was the last queen of Portugal. Her wedding week of illuminations and galas, recorded engraving by engraving in O Occidente, filled the Avenida da Liberdade with an estimated 100,000 people in a single night. Twenty-two years later the groom was shot in the Terreiro do Paço, and two years after that the monarchy was gone.4 sources4 sources

Amélia's work outlived the crown. Sixteen years after the Republic, the lifesaving institute she founded was running fifty stations, and the Outão and Guarda sanatoriums treated patients for decades; nearly 5,000 children passed through Outão between 1900 and 1950. The problem she took on was huge: until 1930 Portugal had the second-highest tuberculosis death rate in Europe.4 sources4 sources