Maybe he could just put Carlotta as his regent in Portugal and let the portuguese deal with the problem?
King Dom Miguel I of Brazil - An Absolutist Brazil Wank
- Thread starter Godhand Void
- Start date
Let’s hope the curse of Braganza does not fuck with him. The few exceptions it does not kill before they reach the throne tend to die childless, die with there first born son, or live to see there house overthrown by republican regimes.
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The residence of the royal family in Rio was the Paço de São Cristóvão - Queluz is in Portugal and i see no reason for the name to be changed.
That's a good possibility, not unlike the real-life Queen Mother who was isolated and died alone.
The Portuguese Civil War
Godhand Void
Banned
With the continuous presence of the Court in Rio de Janeiro, most Portuguese military garrisons in Brazil chose to side with the King over the Cortes without bloodshed, with some exceptions, like the Montevideo garrison, were General Lecor had to seize Álvaro da Costa and take control of the city in a local coup. While some native Brazilian agitation existed, the crisis didn’t develop into a Brazilian versus Portuguese scenario outright, but in a Portuguese absolutist and Brazilian vs Portuguese constitutionalist one.
In Portugal, the metropole suffered due to the absence of the country’s monetary reserves, which had been transported to Rio de Janeiro in 1808. Worse, the best part of the fleet, as well as all colonial possessions, also chose to obey the power of the King rather than the writ of the Cortes. To achieve a little bit of legitimacy, the Liberal government coerced the King’s older sister, Isabel Maria, to take the post of Regent for her nephew, the son of the King and Queen Leopoldina, while he was still in Rio de Janeiro, now recognized by it as the legitimate ruler of the Portuguese Empire, as his father had legally forfeited his rights after his act of treason against the body.
Nonetheless, after mustering the Divisão Auxiliadora in Rio de Janeiro, together with pieces of other Portuguese military garrisons as well as Brazilian volunteers from over all Brazil, the King managed to create a well-equipped force of roughly five thousand men, the “Exército da Reconquista”, which was supposed to take Portugal back from the heathens like the Crusaders of old did.
But when the mighty fleet of the King stopped to resupply in the loyalist Azores, they were confronted by a frenetic surprise attack from the liberal armada. In special, a British Mercenary named Thomas Cochrane, made captain of a ship of the line in the constitutional fleet, managed to sink and capture many loyalist ships.
While the bulk of the King’s Armada managed to sail back to Rio de Janeiro, confidence in an easy victory was tarnished, and the Constitutional side managed to achieve control of the Azores, Madeira and Cabo Verde. The war then turned into a sluggish conflict of maritime raids and skirmishes along the Atlantic, either side refusing to engage in a decisive battle.
To solve this, and under the secret instructions of her older brother, Isabel Maria, the nominal head of the constitutionalist side, sent secret letters to King Louis XVIII of France, asking for French intervention to stop the tide of Jacobinism in Portugal and to turn it back to it’s rightful King by the Grace of God. But before Paris could answer with force, her conspiracy was discovered by the de facto leaders of the liberal government in Lisbon, which tried to seize her to no avail while she escaped to Madrid, where the other sister of King Miguel, Maria Isabel, was married to King Ferdinand VII of Spain.
As a retaliation for the Infanta’s conspiracy, the Lisbon government started a reign of terror against those who had Loyalist sympathies, and in a moment of foolishness, a Portuguese Republic was declared, to the anguish of great powers of the Congress of Vienna, who dreaded the return of the revolutionary fervour.
Spain itself had suffered it’s own liberal constitutional revolution in 1820, when the Tenente-Coronel Rafael de Riego, which was supposed to lead the reconquest of Spanish America, turned his guns to Madrid, taking the homeland and putting Spain under a constitutional monarchy with King Ferdinand VII, a difficult cohabitation.
But when the Portuguese Republic was declared in 1823, both the King of Spain and the leader of the Spanish Cortes smelled an opportunity to fulfil an old Spanish aspiration, to take the Portuguese throne for itself, a much closer endeavour than the lengthy reconquest of the Spanish America.
Mustering an army before the other great powers could react, Madrid invaded Portugal, with the help of the more moderate Portuguese liberals, taking Lisbon and placing Queen Maria Isabel of Spain, a Braganza by birth, as the Queen of Portugal under a Constitutional monarchy. While the prospects of a Queen de facto controlled by the Spanish Crown were not good in the books of any faction in Lisbon, it was considered to be preferable to the inevitable white terror that would come should King Miguel managed to retake the old homeland.
At the same time, the elevation of his wife to the throne of Portugal endeared King Ferdinand VII of Spain with his own liberal government, preventing Paris from intervening in the Iberian Peninsula now that the worst excesses of the liberal movements were controlled by it’s own moderate counterparts.
The war between Lisbon and Rio de Janeiro entered into a new phase of constitutional supremacy, with the covert help of the Spanish Navy, hoping to use Brazil as a springboard to retake other Spanish possessions in South America. In 1824, a small fleet commanded by Thomas Cochrane managed to take Luanda by surprise, sacking the African city with extreme brutality and taking it’s riches as payment.
Rio de Janeiro, while initially in the advantage, was now becoming increasingly outclassed by the constitutional navy, specially now that Madrid’s support was turning the tide of the war decisively. With the loss of Luanda, as well as the rest of Angola, the easy connection between Rio and it’s African and Asian colonies was lost.
While another Constitutional Fleet was already sailing towards Mozambique, the British started to pressure the two governments, Lisbon and Rio, to stop hostilities and to sign a treaty, fearful that the continuation of the war would see Portuguese America reconquered with Spanish help.
In London, representatives of the two sides tried to negotiate a peace, but neither side would concede on the most important matter: who should sit on the Portuguese throne. At the end of the negotiation, it was merely established that hostilities would cease and commerce would be re-established between European and American Portugal. The Asiatic Portuguese possessions were supposed to be kept under the power of Rio de Janeiro, but the taking of Mozambique by Lisbon made this proposition null and void, as Macau and East Timor quickly accepted the authority of the Cortes to allow their continuous access to the European market, while the British took Goa by force and placed it under it’s “temporary tutelage”.
The Portuguese Empire was effectively partitioned between two Portuguese monarchs, King Miguel I in Rio de Janeiro, ruling over all of Brazil, as well as his older sister Maria Isabel, ruling as a constitutional monarch in Lisbon under the auspices of her husband and the Cortes, controlling the remaining Portuguese Empire. Both monarchs would go to their graves claiming the whole Empire as theirs.
While this was never intended by King Miguel, this is considered by historians as the moment when Brazil de facto achieved it's liberty from the metropole, even if in a convoluted way, in one of the most counterintuitive liberation process of all American history.
One could say that Brazil lost the war, but won it's independence, and Portugal won the war, but lost it's empire.
In Portugal, the metropole suffered due to the absence of the country’s monetary reserves, which had been transported to Rio de Janeiro in 1808. Worse, the best part of the fleet, as well as all colonial possessions, also chose to obey the power of the King rather than the writ of the Cortes. To achieve a little bit of legitimacy, the Liberal government coerced the King’s older sister, Isabel Maria, to take the post of Regent for her nephew, the son of the King and Queen Leopoldina, while he was still in Rio de Janeiro, now recognized by it as the legitimate ruler of the Portuguese Empire, as his father had legally forfeited his rights after his act of treason against the body.
Nonetheless, after mustering the Divisão Auxiliadora in Rio de Janeiro, together with pieces of other Portuguese military garrisons as well as Brazilian volunteers from over all Brazil, the King managed to create a well-equipped force of roughly five thousand men, the “Exército da Reconquista”, which was supposed to take Portugal back from the heathens like the Crusaders of old did.
But when the mighty fleet of the King stopped to resupply in the loyalist Azores, they were confronted by a frenetic surprise attack from the liberal armada. In special, a British Mercenary named Thomas Cochrane, made captain of a ship of the line in the constitutional fleet, managed to sink and capture many loyalist ships.
While the bulk of the King’s Armada managed to sail back to Rio de Janeiro, confidence in an easy victory was tarnished, and the Constitutional side managed to achieve control of the Azores, Madeira and Cabo Verde. The war then turned into a sluggish conflict of maritime raids and skirmishes along the Atlantic, either side refusing to engage in a decisive battle.
To solve this, and under the secret instructions of her older brother, Isabel Maria, the nominal head of the constitutionalist side, sent secret letters to King Louis XVIII of France, asking for French intervention to stop the tide of Jacobinism in Portugal and to turn it back to it’s rightful King by the Grace of God. But before Paris could answer with force, her conspiracy was discovered by the de facto leaders of the liberal government in Lisbon, which tried to seize her to no avail while she escaped to Madrid, where the other sister of King Miguel, Maria Isabel, was married to King Ferdinand VII of Spain.
As a retaliation for the Infanta’s conspiracy, the Lisbon government started a reign of terror against those who had Loyalist sympathies, and in a moment of foolishness, a Portuguese Republic was declared, to the anguish of great powers of the Congress of Vienna, who dreaded the return of the revolutionary fervour.
Spain itself had suffered it’s own liberal constitutional revolution in 1820, when the Tenente-Coronel Rafael de Riego, which was supposed to lead the reconquest of Spanish America, turned his guns to Madrid, taking the homeland and putting Spain under a constitutional monarchy with King Ferdinand VII, a difficult cohabitation.
But when the Portuguese Republic was declared in 1823, both the King of Spain and the leader of the Spanish Cortes smelled an opportunity to fulfil an old Spanish aspiration, to take the Portuguese throne for itself, a much closer endeavour than the lengthy reconquest of the Spanish America.
Mustering an army before the other great powers could react, Madrid invaded Portugal, with the help of the more moderate Portuguese liberals, taking Lisbon and placing Queen Maria Isabel of Spain, a Braganza by birth, as the Queen of Portugal under a Constitutional monarchy. While the prospects of a Queen de facto controlled by the Spanish Crown were not good in the books of any faction in Lisbon, it was considered to be preferable to the inevitable white terror that would come should King Miguel managed to retake the old homeland.
At the same time, the elevation of his wife to the throne of Portugal endeared King Ferdinand VII of Spain with his own liberal government, preventing Paris from intervening in the Iberian Peninsula now that the worst excesses of the liberal movements were controlled by it’s own moderate counterparts.
The war between Lisbon and Rio de Janeiro entered into a new phase of constitutional supremacy, with the covert help of the Spanish Navy, hoping to use Brazil as a springboard to retake other Spanish possessions in South America. In 1824, a small fleet commanded by Thomas Cochrane managed to take Luanda by surprise, sacking the African city with extreme brutality and taking it’s riches as payment.
Rio de Janeiro, while initially in the advantage, was now becoming increasingly outclassed by the constitutional navy, specially now that Madrid’s support was turning the tide of the war decisively. With the loss of Luanda, as well as the rest of Angola, the easy connection between Rio and it’s African and Asian colonies was lost.
While another Constitutional Fleet was already sailing towards Mozambique, the British started to pressure the two governments, Lisbon and Rio, to stop hostilities and to sign a treaty, fearful that the continuation of the war would see Portuguese America reconquered with Spanish help.
In London, representatives of the two sides tried to negotiate a peace, but neither side would concede on the most important matter: who should sit on the Portuguese throne. At the end of the negotiation, it was merely established that hostilities would cease and commerce would be re-established between European and American Portugal. The Asiatic Portuguese possessions were supposed to be kept under the power of Rio de Janeiro, but the taking of Mozambique by Lisbon made this proposition null and void, as Macau and East Timor quickly accepted the authority of the Cortes to allow their continuous access to the European market, while the British took Goa by force and placed it under it’s “temporary tutelage”.
The Portuguese Empire was effectively partitioned between two Portuguese monarchs, King Miguel I in Rio de Janeiro, ruling over all of Brazil, as well as his older sister Maria Isabel, ruling as a constitutional monarch in Lisbon under the auspices of her husband and the Cortes, controlling the remaining Portuguese Empire. Both monarchs would go to their graves claiming the whole Empire as theirs.
While this was never intended by King Miguel, this is considered by historians as the moment when Brazil de facto achieved it's liberty from the metropole, even if in a convoluted way, in one of the most counterintuitive liberation process of all American history.
One could say that Brazil lost the war, but won it's independence, and Portugal won the war, but lost it's empire.
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I did hope for a continued union between Portugal and Brazil, but this was very creative
This was very good!
And now that Brazil is free Miguel shall see that it becomes the Supreme power of South America and the Premier power of the Americas themselves.
Godhand Void
Banned
Thanks man!
One should remember that OTL independence process made Brazil extremely indebted to Portugal and lenders. ITTL, Brazil not only had the benefit of the Portuguese treasury in Rio, but also didn't pay any kind of indemnity to Lisbon, considering the end of the war was by means of a mere armistice and not a full-fledged peace treaty.
At the same time, the independence struggle placed Brazilians and Portuguese against eachother, an antagonism that contributed to Dom Pedro I later exile. Here, there's no antagonism, as the Brazilian identity will develop more slowly, more like Canada and less like the US. Absolutist Brazil sees itself as more Portuguese than Portugal itself now that Lisbon is controlled by a constitutional Spanish puppet.
Very true.
Not to mention that Miguel would make for a much more dedicated King, as while he still sees himself as the rightful king of Portugal, he will make sure his people in Brazil know that they're his foremost priority, plus his image as a devoted husband and family man will elevate his iamge further in comparasion to the mess Ferdnando will leave.
It was a good chapter. Just a few weird things in my opinion. First Angola was not necessary for access so "With the loss of Luanda, as well as the rest of Angola, the easy connection between Rio and it’s African and Asian colonies was lost." it's wrong. Angola grew primarily to supply the Brazilian slave trade (so much so that at OTL when Brazil revolted they revolted together asking to be part of Brazil). The unification with Spain, it is a very peculiar measure that harms Portugal in the long run. The long-term peace agreement breaks more portugal than brazil. Portugal that is now under Spanish tutelage will be pulled into Spanish problems (which were many), not only that but as neither side gave up the title we will probably have a new war in the future. Also, one thing that was not discussed is whether or not Alto Peru's proposal was accepted.
Godhand Void
Banned
They didn't make the proposal because the course of events was different since 1817. Pedro was trying to create an American Empire while Miguel was merely trying to retake his European Empire, and was much less prone to grant regional autonomies.
Then the Liberian troops of generals Bolívar and Sucre, who had already liberated Venezuela, Colombia and Ecuador, are now in control of the Alto Peru Region. Because what prevented the advance of these troops were the Brazilians. Probably the region will have an ugly war involving several different groups.
the governors of the three regions thought that it was better to be occupied by a nation of monarchical character than to venture into a fragile and uncertain republic. It had nothing to do with autonomy, because the region was going to have autonomy because it was far way from Rio in the same way that Angola, Mozambique and other regions had certain autonomies
Godhand Void
Banned
It was part of Miguel's Navy but it isn't in a flagship condition (or battle condition) anymore.
Sadge; also shouldn't Miguel be arguing with the British for letting a British admiral go and screw over their supposed ally?
Godhand Void
Banned
He is mostly flying under the radar here. OTL he was the Admiral of the whole Brazilian fleet, here he was just a very capable captain of the Portuguese Navy, considering the Portuguese didn't suffer from the chronic lack of naval officers and crews that the Brazilians suffered in 1822 OTL.
His participation isn't negligible, but Miguel and Isabel are probably much more angry with the destiny of Goa, which was taken by the British to prevent a Portuguese-Spanish presence in India.
Maybe that's part of the story?
with brazil due to this preferring france or germany over the uk due to this kind of thing