Kingdom of Lusitania

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Partition of Portugal after the Treaty of Fontainebleau (1807)
Detail: The northern Portuguese region of Entre Douro e Minho, intended as the Kingdom of Northern Luzitania , in the 19th century

The Kingdom of Northern Lusitania (Portuguese: Reino da Lusitânia Setentrional ) or Kingdom of Lusitania for short was a state provided for in the Franco-Spanish Treaty of Fontainebleau of 1807, which was to arise when Portugal was divided.

King Karl Ludwig Ferdinand von Bourbon-Parma , who came from a sideline of the Spanish Bourbons, was to become king , who gave up his claims to his kingdom of Etruria to France. The new kingdom should be hereditary in Karl Ludwig's descendants and, in the event of his line becoming extinct, fall to the Spanish Bourbons, without being allowed to be directly united with Spain.

The kingdom, named after the former Roman province of Lusitania , should only include the northern Portuguese region of Entre-Douro-e-Minho between the Douro and Minho rivers , with the capital being Porto . The rest of Portugal was to be divided between France and Spain: the central Portuguese areas between the Douro and Tejo, including Lisbon, were to come under French rule for the time being, the areas south of the Tejo (Alentejo) and the Algarve were to form an autonomous principality under Spanish suzerainty. The Spanish Prime Minister Manuel de Godoy was planned as the Prince of the Algarve . According to the treaty, French troops marching through Spain occupied Lisbon in 1807, while Spanish troops occupied the Algarve and the Entre-Douro-e-Minho. With their expulsion by a British expeditionary force and the overthrow of the Spanish Bourbons in 1808, the plan became obsolete, neither the envisaged Kingdom of Lusitania nor the Principality of Algarve became a reality. Another offensive by the French under Marshal Nicolas Soult , who intended to make himself Nicholas I, if not King of Portugal, at least at least King of Lusitania, finally failed in 1809.

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  1. ↑ However, the areas north of the Douro never belonged to the Roman province extending south of the Douro
  2. ↑ António Henrique de Oliveira Marques : History of Portugal and the Portuguese Empire (= Kröner's pocket edition . Volume 385). Translated from the Portuguese by Michael von Killisch-Horn. Kröner, Stuttgart 2001, ISBN 3-520-38501-5 , p. 332.

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