The Portuguese Restoration War was a series of armed conflicts from December 1640 to February 1668 that ended with the Treaty of Lisbon which dissolved the Iberian Union between Portugal and Spain.
For the most part, the conflict consisted of periodic low level skirmishes, along with short episodes of more serious fighting. The Treaty of Lisbon (1668) recognised the House of Braganza as Portugal's new ruling dynasty, replacing the House of Habsburg which had held the Portuguese crown in personal union with Spain since 1580.
Background
The Portuguese succession crisis of 1580 led to the creation of the Iberian Union, a personal union between Habsburg Spain and Portugal. When Philip IV succeeded his father in 1621, he adopted a less conciliatory approach to Portuguese affairs. Their merchants paid higher taxes, its nobility lost influence within the Cortes Generales, and domestic appointments increasingly went to Spanish outsiders. In addition, Spanish involvement in the Eighty Years' War led to Dutch attacks on Portuguese colonies and outposts. Spain's preoccupation with their own empire resulted in the neglect of Portuguese interests in Asia and the Americas.
The consequent unrest resulted in a plot to restore Portuguese independence by a group known as the Forty Conspirators. With Spanish resources absorbed by the Thirty Years' War and a simultaneous revolt in Catalonia, on 1 December 1640, Antão Vaz de Almada, Miguel de Almeida and João Pinto Ribeiro assassinated Miguel de Vasconcelos, the Secretary of State, and imprisoned Philip's cousin, Margaret of Savoy, Vicereine of Portugal.
The support of the people became apparent almost immediately and within a matter of hours, Philip III's third cousin John, 8th Duke of Braganza, was acclaimed as King John (João) IV of Portugal. The news spread quickly throughout the country. By 2 December 1640, the day after the coup, John IV, acting in his capacity as sovereign of the country, had sent a letter to the Municipal Chamber of Évora.
The ensuing conflict with Spain brought Portugal into the Thirty Years' War as at least a peripheral player. From 1641 to 1668, the period during which the two nations were at war, Spain sought to isolate Portugal militarily and diplomatically, and Portugal tried to find the resources to maintain its independence through political alliances and maintaining its colonial income.
Preparations for war
Immediately after assuming the Portuguese throne, John IV took several steps to strengthen his position. On 11 December 1640, a "Council of War" was created to organize all of the operations. Next, the king created the "Junta of the Frontiers" to take care of the fortresses near the border, the hypothetical defense of Lisbon, and the garrisons and sea ports.
A year later, in December 1641, he created a tenancy to assure that all of the country's fortresses would be upgraded and that the improvements would be financed with regional taxes. He also organized the army, re-established the "Military Laws of King Sebastian", and undertook a diplomatic campaign focused on restoring good relations with England.
After gaining several small victories, John tried to make peace quickly. However, his demand that Philip recognize the new ruling dynasty in Portugal was not fulfilled until the reign of his son, Afonso VI, during the regency of Peter of Braganza, another of his sons, who later became King Peter II of Portugal). Confrontations with Spain lasted 28 years.
Context: relations among the European powers
Relations between France and Spain
Cardinal Richelieu, the chief adviser to Louis XIII, was fully aware of the fact that France was operating under strained circumstances. Louis was at war with Spain at that time; he had to control rebellions within France that were supported and financed by Madrid and had to send French armies to fight the Spanish Habsburgs on three different fronts. In addition to their shared frontier at the Pyrenees, Philip IV of Spain, formerly Philip III of Portugal as well, reigned, under various titles, in Flanders and the Franche-Comté, to the north and east of France. In addition, Philip IV controlled large territories in Italy, where he could, at will, impose a fourth front by attacking French-controlled Savoy.
Spain had enjoyed the reputation of having the most formidable military force in Europe, with the introduction of the arquebus and the so-called "Spanish School", but that reputation and tactic had diminished with the Thirty Years' War. Nevertheless, the consummate statesman, Richelieu, decided to force Philip IV to look to his own internal problems. To divert the Spanish troops besieging France, Louis XIII, on the advice of Richelieu, supported John's claim during the Acclamation War on the reasoning that a Portuguese war would drain Spanish resources and manpower.
Relations between Portugal and France
To fulfill the common foreign policy interests of Portugal and France, a treaty of alliance between the two countries was concluded at Paris on 1 June 1641. It lasted eighteen years before Richelieu's successor as unofficial foreign minister, Cardinal Mazarin, broke the treaty and abandoned his Portuguese and Catalan allies to sign a separate peace with Madrid. The Treaty of the Pyrenees was signed in 1659. Under its terms, France received the portion of the Principality of Catalonia north of the Pyrenees, known as the Roussillon, and part of the Cerdanya (French Cerdagne). Most important to the Portuguese, the French recognised Philip IV of Spain as the legitimate king of Portugal.
Seven years later, in the late stages of the Portuguese Restoration War, relations between the two countries thawed to the extent that the young (but sickly) Afonso VI of Portugal married a French princess, Marie Françoise of Nemours.
Relations between Portugal and the Dutch Republic
In 1580, Portugal came under the rule of King Philip II of Spain. At that time,
the Dutch Republic was engaged in the Eighty Years' War (1568–1648) against Spain for independence. Trade between Portugal and the Dutch Republic stopped immediately.
Starting in 1598, the Dutch mercantile surrogates, the Dutch East India Company and the Dutch West India Company, repeatedly attacked Portugal's colonial possessions in the Americas, in Africa, in India, and in the Far East. This Dutch-Portuguese War was fought almost entirely overseas. Portugal was in a defensive posture throughout, and received very little military help from Spain. The Dutch seized half of Brazil, Elmina (in Ghana), and some Portuguese colonies in the East Indies.
At the time of the revolution in Lisbon (1 December 1640), Portugal had been at war with the Dutch Republic for forty years. Despite Portugal and the Dutch Republic now having a common enemy in Spain, the Dutch continued to attack Portuguese colonies, seizing Angola, São Tomé, and Malacca in 1641.
Portugal fought back, regaining Angola in 1648, São Tomé in 1649, and Brazil in 1654. The Dutch signed a European truce with Portugal, helping each other somewhat against their common enemy, Spain. The Dutch resumed buying salt in the Setúbal salt factories, restarting commerce between the two countries for the first time since 1580. However, Dutch attacks on Portuguese colonies persisted until 1663, even after the signing of the Treaty of The Hague (1661).
Relations between Portugal and England
England was then embroiled in its own civil war. Portuguese problems in dealing with England arose from the fact that the English Parliament fought and won its anti-royalist war while, at the same time, Portugal's royal court continued to receive and recognize English princes and nobles. The strained relations persisted during the short-lived Commonwealth period, when the republican government that had deposed Charles I ruled England and then Ireland and Scotland.
After the restoration of the Stuart dynasty, it became possible for Portugal to compensate for the lack of French support by renewing its alliance with England, with experienced soldiers and officers available from the demobilised New Model Army. That took the form of a dynastic marriage in 1662 between Charles II and Afonso VI's sister, Catherine of Braganza, which assured Portugal of outside support in its conflict with Spain. The English alliance helped peace with Spain, which had been drained by the Thirty Years' War and had no stomach for further warfare with other European powers, especially a resurgent England.
War
Militarily, the Portuguese Restoration War consisted mainly of border skirmishes and cavalry raids to sack border towns, combined with occasional invasions and counter-invasions, many of them half-hearted and under-financed. There were only five major set-piece battles during twenty-eight years of hostilities.
The war may be considered to have had three periods:
- first, an early stage (1640–1646) when a few major engagements demonstrated that the Portuguese could not be easily returned to submission to the Spanish Habsburgs,
- second, a long period (1646–1660) of military standoffs, characterized by small-scale raiding, while Spain concentrated on its military commitments elsewhere in Europe,
- third, a final period (1660–1668) during which the Spanish king, Philip IV, unsuccessfully sought a decisive victory that would bring an end to hostilities.
First stage: battles
Hoping for a quick victory in Portugal, Spain immediately committed seven regiments to the Portuguese frontier, but delays by the Count of Monterrey, a commander with more interest in the comforts of life at camp than the battlefield, squandered any immediate advantage. A Portuguese counter-thrust in late 1641 failed, and the conflict soon settled into a stalemate.
Battle of Montijo
On 26 May 1644, a large column of Spanish troops and mercenaries, commanded by Neapolitan Carlo Andrea Caracciolo, marquis of Torrecuso, was stopped at the Battle of Montijo by the Portuguese, who were led by the Matias de Albuquerque, one of a number of experienced Portuguese colonial officers who rose to prominence during the war.
Scope of the war
Three theaters of warfare were eventually opened, but most activity focused on the northern front, near Galicia, and on the central frontier between Portuguese Alentejo and Spanish Extremadura. The southern front, where the Portuguese Algarve abuts Spanish Andalusia, was a logical target for Portugal, but it was never the focus of a Portuguese attack, probably because the Portuguese queen, Luisa de Guzmán, was the sister of the Duke of Medina Sidonia, the leading noble of Andalusia.
Attrition and corruption
Spain, at first, made the war a defensive one. Portugal, for its part, felt no need to take Spanish territory in order to win, and it too was willing to make the war a defensive contest. Campaigns typically consisted of correrias (cavalry raids) to burn fields, sack towns, and steal large herds of enemy cattle and sheep. Soldiers and officers, many of them mercenaries, were primarily interested in booty and prone to desertion. For long periods, without men or money, neither side mounted formal campaigns, and when actions were taken, they were often driven as much by political considerations, such as Portugal's need to impress potential allies, as by clear military objectives. Year after year, given the problems of campaigning in the winter, and the heat and dry conditions of summer, most of the serious fighting was confined to two relatively short "campaigning seasons" in the spring and autumn.
The war settled into a pattern of mutual destruction. As early as December 1641, it was common to hear Spaniards throughout the country lament that "Extremadura is finished." Tax collectors, recruiting officers, billeted soldiers, and depredations by Spanish and foreign troops were loathed and feared by the Spanish population as much as raids by the enemy. In Extremadura, local militias bore the brunt of the fighting until 1659, and the absence of these part-time soldiers was extremely harmful to agriculture and local finances. Since there was often no money to pay or support the troops (or to reward their commanders), the Spanish crown turned a blind eye to the smuggling, contraband, profiteering, disorder, and destruction that had become rampant on the frontier. Similar conditions also existed among the Portuguese.