Antonio Bernardo da Costa Cabral

António Bernardo da Costa Cabral , 1st Count (Conde) and 1st Marquis (Marquês) of Tomar (born May 9, 1803 in Fornos de Algodres , Portugal ; † September 1, 1889 in Porto ) was an important leader of the cartistic movement in Kingdom of Portugal . He was Portuguese Minister of the Interior from 1842 to 1846 and Prime Minister from 1849 to 1851, and ruled the country with authoritarianism and dictatorial powers.

Life

António Bernardo da Costa Cabral, 1st Margrave of Tomar

Antonio Bernardo da Costa Cabral

Costa Cabral was born in a small village near Beira . He was trained as a lawyer at the University of Coimbra . Then Costa Cabral went to the military.

Costa Cabral was a supporter of the constitutionalists, so he advocated that Portugal should be governed as a constitutional monarchy . During the reign of the absolutists and of King Michael I (from 1828 to 1834) he had to go into exile for a time, some of which he spent in England . He finally went to the Azores island of Terceira , where he joined the army with which Peter IV drove his brother Michael out of Portugal (cf. Miguelistenkrieg ).

After the victory of the constitutionalists, Costa Cabral became a judge in the Azores, and in 1835 a member of parliament in Lisbon. At that time the conditions there were partially anarchic , the struggle between Setembrists and Cartists paralyzed the country. Initially, Costa Cabral was a leader of the Setembrists, but soon switched to the Cartist side and earned the trust of Queen Maria II .

In 1836 the Setembrists took power in the country during the September Revolution, and in 1838 they gave the country a new constitution. The Cartists ran a storm against this development. During this time, uprisings by the Cartists and counter-revolts by the National Guard alternated with one another. In this situation, the Queen saw in Costa Cabral, who had risen to become civil governor of Lisbon in 1838, the man who could restore stability and calm to the country with a hard hand.

The last Setembrist governments were already very weak, so that the Queen was able to get Costa Cabral to be appointed to the cabinet as an important cartist. In 1839 Costa Cabral was appointed to the government for the first time and took over the office of Minister for Justice and Spiritual Affairs. Costa Cabral carried out a number of significant reforms in this capacity.

Even then, Costa Cabral was an enthusiastic supporter of the constitutional charter of 1826 . He believed that the constitution that the Setembrists had given the country in 1838 would be the source of continued anarchy. After the traditional leaders of the Cartists, the Dukes of Saldanha and Terceira , failed in their attempt to reintroduce the Charter in 1837 ( uprising of the marshals ), Costa Cabral became more and more the actual leader of the Cartists.

Finally, in January 1842, from Porto, he succeeded in carrying out a coup d'état against the Setembrist government in Lisbon and reintroducing the constitutional charter of Peter IV on February 11, 1842. Costa Cabral established an authoritarian government as interior minister and dominant figure in a cabinet nominally led by the Duke of Terceira. The opposition to the Catholic Church was ended and new relationships with the papacy were established. The National Guard, which had proven to be the most loyal supporter of the Setembrists, was dissolved and then re-established by Costa Cabral.

There was some resistance to Costa Cabral's authoritarian style of government, but the court approved of his behavior. Some of Costa Cabral's measures were controversial even among the Cartists, such as the new Administrative Procedure Act ( Código Administrativo ), which Costa Cabral put into effect in 1842. His own brother then gathered the dissidents among the Cartists who allied themselves with the Setembrists and Miguelists (the supporters of the ex-King Michael, who was in exile). When he took office, Costa Cabral had promised swift new elections, but did not keep this promise. In 1844 his opponents rose up under the leadership of the Count of Bonfim (Torres Novas revolt); the rebels were able to stay in Almeida for two months before they were defeated by Costa Cabral. Costa Cabral, who was made Count (and later, on July 11, 1878, Margrave) of Tomar on September 8, 1845, felt strengthened by his victory over the insurgents and heightened his dictatorial and reactionary government. Although he had elections held (1845), these were characterized by electoral fraud and violence.

So it was hardly surprising that there was a new uprising in 1846, which began in the barracks of Minho ( uprising of Maria da Fonte ). This uprising, initially sparked by minor disputes in Minho, soon assumed the proportions of a general uprising against Costa Cabral. It reached such proportions that not only Costa Cabral, but even the reign of Queen Maria II seemed endangered. The Queen, terrified by the extent of the uprising, dismissed Costa Cabral on May 20, 1846 and set up a new, moderate Setembrist government under the Duke of Palmela . However, when she believed she had regained the upper hand over the rebels, she dismissed Palmela and reappointed a cartistic government with the Duke of Saldanha (so-called coup d'état of October 6th). They sent the Duke of Terceira to the north of the country to militarily stifle the resistance that remained there.

These acts of the queen led to civil war. A Setembrist counter-government was constituted in Porto. The Queen, Saldanha and Terceira did not succeed in suppressing the insurrection on their own. The Queen therefore sent Costa Cabral to Madrid as a special envoy . There he managed to persuade the Spaniards to intervene. The English also declared themselves ready to intervene. Only with the help of these foreign troops was the civil war victorious in June 1847, Porto captured and the leaders of the rebellious junta arrested.

Even after the end of the civil war, the queen initially did not dare to reappoint Costa Cabral as prime minister because he was extremely unpopular in the country. The Duke of Saldanha therefore initially remained head of government. Costa Cabral stayed in Madrid, where he served as his country's ambassador.

In 1849, however, the queen found that the situation had calmed down enough to bring Costa Cabral back to Portugal. She dismissed the Duke of Saldanha and reappointed Costa Cabral as head of government on June 18, a decision that met with great criticism from the Portuguese public.

Costa Cabral, who had little illusions about his followers in Portugal, is said to have returned to Lisbon from Madrid reluctantly, but did not dare to oppose the queen's request. Saldanha, whom Costa Cabral ousted from power, and who, at Costa Cabral's instigation, was also replaced by the Queen from his post as marshal of the court, then allied himself with his opponents. There were also some scandals. A London newspaper reported on Costa Cabral's wealth and suggested that he was the Queen's lover. The Krone leased an estate to Costa Cabral for a ridiculously low rent for 99 years, which led to another scandal. Weakened by this and since he could not oppose Saldanha's military genius, Costa Cabral submitted his resignation on April 26, 1851, when parts of the army rose against him again, and Saldanha took over the command of the rebels with a heavy heart accepted. His predecessor, Saldanha, became his successor and ruled with dictatorial powers until 1856.

After his resignation in April 1851, Costa Cabral fled to England, but returned to Lisbon in February 1852. Now he no longer played a major role in Portuguese politics, but rendered excellent services to his country as a diplomat, such as 1859–1861 as Portuguese ambassador to the Brazilian emperor. From 1862 he was a member of the State Council and president of the highest administrative tribunal. In 1870 he became ambassador to the Holy See . His tenure in the Holy See coincided with the time when the Italian revolutionary forces occupied the city. Costa Cabral, who soon won the trust of Pope Pius IX. acquired, led the Vatican's negotiations with General Cadorna, the commander in chief of the Italian troops.

Costa Cabral was once married and had 5 children with his wife, including António Bernardo da Costa Cabral , who was ambassador to the Kingdom of Belgium between 1874 and 1881 and inherited the title of 2nd Conde de Tomar after his death during the July 11th The title of Marquês de Tomar created in 1878 expired. After the death of his wife in 1885, Costa Cabral retired from Rome to his country estate near Naples ; In 1889, already seriously ill, he returned to Portugal, where he died in Porto that same year.

meaning

Costa Cabral is still one of the most controversial figures in recent Portuguese history. On the one hand, he was undisputedly one of the country's most important modernizers, playing a significant role in the history of his country through a series of far-reaching and important reforms in the administration, taxation and finance. On the other hand, he antagonized his opponents through his authoritarian, even dictatorial style of government. However, it is asserted by his defenders that the reforms of Costa Cabral, in the chaotic political situation of the time, could only be implemented by an authoritarian government. In Portuguese historiography, Cabral's system of government was given its own name; the years in which Cabral ruled are also known as the years of cabralismo , that is, of cabralism.

See also : History of Portugal  and Time Table of Portugal

literature

• Cabral 2) . In: Meyers Konversations-Lexikon , 4th edition, 1885-1892, 3rd volume, pp. 712f. ( online ).

predecessor	Office	successor
João Carlos de Saldanha Oliveira e Daun	Prime Minister of Portugal 1849–1851	António Jose de Sousa Manoel de Menezes Severim de Noronha