ABSTRACT
BEFORE the new Protocol was a month old, the effects of its signature were felt in Portugal. On the 10th March 1826, good-natured, feeble, fat old John VI. died at Lisbon. In his last hours, realising his danger, he had appointed a Council of Regency to protect the kingdom against the excesses of his termagant wife and his embittered absolutist son, Dom Miguel, now sulking in enforced exile at Vienna. Both were excluded from the Regency which, for the moment, held the field. Villele made the unwise suggestion that the Queen Mother united in herself the Crowns of Portugal and Brazil, and was therefore the fittest representative of Legitimacy. Pozzo di Borgo went even further, and said no king could alter the hereditary succession without the consent of the other kings of Europe. l But for these robust doctrines even Metternich was not prepared. He issued a circular on the 27th March suggesting that the Regency was the only true authority in Portugal, that Dom Pedro, the Emperor of Brazil, was the legitimate sovereign of both countries, that his will must be obeyed and his pleasure awaited, though Austria conceived that the separation of Brazil from Portugal was inevitable. Dom Pedro had a surprise in store for the Legitimil'ts of Europe. On the 22nd June the dreadful news of his pleasure was known. He renounced for himself the Crown of Portugal, which he devolved on his eldest daughter, Donna Maria, a child of eight, whom he proposed, after proper
dispensation, to marry to his younger brother, Dom Miguel. He left the Council of Regency (which did not include Dom Miguel) to govern during the new Queen's minority, and he made his pretty sister, the Infanta Isabel, the Regent. So far, so good. But the second part of his decision horrified Metternich. He, a crowned monarch, and the son·in·law of the Austrian Emperor, did what monarchists thought impossible. He endowed Portugal in the very act of his abdication with the funeste et fatal cadeau of a brand-new constitution.
