Portuguese Restoration War - Timeline

Timeline

• 1640: A small group of conspirators stormed the royal palace in Lisbon and deposed the Vicereine of Portugal, Margaret of Savoy on 1 December 1640. She, famously, tried to calm the Portuguese people during demonstrations in the Terreiro do Paço, at the time, Lisbon's main square, but her efforts failed. The Duke of Bragança, head of the senior family among the Portuguese nobility, accepted the throne as João IV of Portugal later the same day. João IV's entire reign was dominated by the struggle to maintain Portuguese independence.

• 1641: A counter-revolution mounted by the Inquisition failed. It was quelled by Francisco de Lucena, who had its leaders executed. Miguel Luís de Menezes, 2nd Duke of Caminha, was executed for continuing to support the Habsburgs' claim to the Portuguese throne.

• 1641: Portugal signed alliances with France (1 June 1641) and Sweden (August 1641).

• 1641: Portugal and the Dutch Republic signed a 'Treaty of Offensive and Defensive Alliance', otherwise known as the Treaty of The Hague, on 12 July 1641. The treaty was not respected by either party; as a consequence, it had no effect on the Portuguese dependencies of Brazil and Angola that were under Dutch occupation.

• 1641: The Dutch began their occupation of São Tomé and of Ano Bom on 16 October 1641, where they remained until 6 January 1649. This was clearly a violation of the agreement made with Portugal only three months earlier.

• 1641: Portugal was ousted from Malacca by the Dutch.

• 1642: The Dutch took over all of the Portuguese Gold Coast (now Ghana).

• 1643: At the Battle of Rocroi (19 May 1643), in the Ardennes, the French defeated the Spanish.

• 1644: The Battle of Montijo near Badajoz, between the Portuguese and the Spanish, was fought on 26 May 1644.

• 1644: The Portuguese city of Elvas withstood a nine-day siege by Spanish troops.

• 1648: The Sultan of Oman, in alliance with the Dutch, captured Muscat, which had been a Portuguese trading outpost on the Arabian peninsula.

• 1648: Portuguese troops from the colony of Brazil under Salvador Correia de Sá landed in Angola, retook Luanda, and expelled the Dutch, thereby restoring the African colony to Portugal.

• 1649: The Dutch were ousted from São Tomé.

• 1654: The Anglo-Portuguese treaty between João IV and Oliver Cromwell was signed at Westminster. João agreed to prevent the molestation of English traders in Portugal and its possessions; they were allowed to use their own bible and to bury their dead according to Protestant rites even though they were on Catholic soil.

• 1654: Portuguese troops from the colony of Brazil drove the Dutch out of the great plantation colonies of northeastern Brazil, re-establishing the territorial integrity of Portugal’s South American holdings.

• 1656: Portugal lost control of Colombo in Portuguese Ceylon to the Dutch.

• 1656: João IV died on 6 November 1656 after a reign of fifteen years. His queen, who was born Luisa de Guzman (1613–1666), the eldest daughter of the Spanish grandee, the Duke of Medina-Sidonia, then reigned as regent for their son, Afonso VI of Portugal. She began seeking an accommodation with Spain.

• 1658: The Dutch took Jaffnapatam, Portugal's last colony in Ceylon.

• 1659: The Battle of the Lines of Elvas was fought on 14 January 1659. Portuguese troops, under the command of the marquis of Marialva, António Luís de Meneses, and Sancho Manoel de Vilhena, scored a resounding victory over the Spanish.

• 1659: The Spanish besieged the Portuguese town of Monção, on the northern frontier with Galicia, but they were driven off.

• 1659: The Treaty of the Pyrenees was signed on 7 November 1659, ending Spain's long war with France, and Spanish troops were free once more to suppress the Portuguese 'rebellion'. The Spaniards besieged Elvas, and they were driven off by António Luís de Meneses once again.

• 1660: Upon the restoration of Charles II in England, the Queen-Regent re-negotiated the treaty of 1654. Portugal was allowed to recruit soldiers and horses in England for the fight against Spain, to seek the conscription of four thousand mercenaries in Scotland and Ireland, and to charter twenty-four English ships to carry them. The expeditionary force was issued English weapons upon arrival in Portugal and guaranteed freedom of worship.

• 1660: The English began to dominate the trade in port wine from Portugal after a political spat with the French denied them Bordeaux wines. Brandy was added to the Portuguese wines to fortify them for the Atlantic voyage. Together with the restoration of Charles II in England, the "port connection" had an increasingly positive influence on Anglo-Portuguese relations.

• 1661: Bombay and Tangier were ceded to England on 23 June 1661 as a dowry for Afonso's sister, Catherine of Braganza, who had married King Charles II of England on 25 May 1661. In addition to the deeds to Bombay and Tangier, Catherine arrived in London, where she introduced the practice of drinking afternoon tea, with a dowry of two million gold pieces. Servicing this wedding debt burdened the Portuguese exchequer for the next half-century. The marriage with a Protestant monarch was deeply unpopular with those among the Portuguese nobility who favored alliance with France. An anglophile party and a francophile party developed at the Portuguese court.

• 1661: English mediation induced the Netherlands to acknowledge, on 6 August 1661, Portuguese rule in Brazil, in return for uncontested control of Ceylon and eight million guilders. This agreement was formalized in the Treaty of The Hague (1661).

• 1662: Shortly after Afonso VI's coming-of-age, Luís de Vasconcelos e Sousa, 3rd Count of Castelo Melhor, saw an opportunity to gain power at court by befriending the mentally deficient king. He managed to convince the king that his mother, Luisa of Medina-Sidonia, was plotting to steal his throne and exile him from Portugal. As a result, Afonso asserted his right to rule and dispatched his mother to a convent. The king appointed Castelo Melhor his secret notary (escrivão da puridade), a position in which Castelo Melhor was able to exercise the functions of first minister. Because of the weakness of the king, Castelo Melhor became the virtual "dictator of Portugal".

• 1662: Castelo Melhor commenced the final (successful) phase of the Portuguese Acclamation War with the aid of the Count of Mértola, who brilliantly commanded the international mercenary army that had been assembled with the assistance of England.

• 1663: The Battle of Ameixial was fought on 8 June 1663. After they had spent nearly all spring overrunning the south of Portugal, the Spanish army, under John of Austria the Younger, took the Portuguese city of Évora. Less than three weeks later, they were soundly defeated by Sancho Manoel de Vilhena and Count of Mértola.

• 1663: The Dutch ousted the Portuguese from the Malabar coast, even though this was a clear violation of their 1661 treaty.

• 1663: The Siege of Évora occurred when the Portuguese army led by Sancho Manoel de Vilhena and by the Count of Mértola retook the city from the Spanish occupiers, with little to no casualties. The entire Spanish garrison surrendered.

• 1664: The Battle of Castelo Rodrigo was fought on 7 July 1664. A regional military commander, Pedro Jacques de Magalhães, defeated the Duke of Osuna.

• 1664: The Siege of Valencia de Alcántara results in the successful conquest of the Spanish town of Valencia de Alcántara by Portugal in July 1664.

• 1665: Portugal was again victorious at the Battle of Montes Claros (on 17 June 1665), in which António Luís de Meneses and Schomberg defeated the Spanish army under the Marquis of Caracena; Spain ceased hostilities, but a true peace treaty was not signed for another three years. Montes Claros is considered one of the most important battles in Portuguese history.

• 1666: In an attempt to establish an alliance with France, Castelo Melhor arranged for Afonso VI to marry Marie Françoise of Nemours, the daughter of the Duke of Nemours, but this marriage would not last long.

• 1666: The ambitious Castelo Melhor planned to prosecute the war to the extent of taking Galicia and presenting it to the Portuguese crown as a war indemnity, but he was dissuaded.

• 1667: Marie Françoise petitioned for an annulment of her marriage to Afonso VI, based on the impotence of the king. The Church granted her the annulment.

• 1667: King Afonso VI, Castelo Melhor, and his francophile party were overthrown by the king's younger brother, Pedro, Duke of Beja, (who later ruled as Pedro II of Portugal.) Pedro first installed himself as his brother's regent and then arranged Afonso's exile to the island of Terceira in the Azores on the pretense that he was incapable of governing. Castelo Melhor fled into exile; ironically, he chose to live in England.

• 1667: The French alliance had been imperilled by the annulment of Afonso's marriage, but Pedro strengthened his political position by marrying his brother’s estranged queen.

• 1668: The Treaty of Lisbon with Spain ended twenty-eight years of war. The regent of Spain, Mariana of Austria, acting in the name of her young son Charles II of Spain, finally recognized the legitimacy of the Portuguese monarch. Portugal kept all of its remaining overseas colonies, with the exception of Ceuta on the north African coast, who didn't recognize the Bragança Dynasty during the war.