The churches and other ecclesiastical buildings of Lisbon, which we have considered in the previous chapter, were concentrated in a dense area of building in the city centre. The grand Patriarchal complex, with its sumptuous church, was the most impressive of these conglomerations, but up the slope from it was the Jesuit church of São Roque with its fine chapels, whilst nearby Rossio square contained both the Convent of São Domingues and the Palace of the Inquisition (on the site of the present National Theatre of Dona Maria II). To the west was São Paulo in hilly Santa Catarina.1 Numerous convents and monasteries, such as São Vicente da Fora, stretched out to the east just outside the old centre. A majority of the forty or so parish churches were also in the central area.
Intermingled with the churches and convents were grand public buildings such as the Customs House and the colonial trading agencies, which we have seen were built in the reign of Dom Manuel. The Paço da Ribeira, the royal palace, stood in the Terreiro do Paço or central square on the river’s edge. It was crammed with stately furniture, tapestries and rare objets d’art, particularly of oriental origin. Indian furniture was mingled with Chinese ceramics, as befitted the imperial pretensions of Manueline Portugal. Other public buildings, such as the Casa da India, were built on a grand scale, with numerous wings and internal courtyards. They were decorated in ornate styles, reflecting the newly acquired imperial aspirations of the nation. A large complex of these buildings interlinked to the royal palace, physically uniting the administrative and commercial features of empire. The colonial contribution to Lisbon was substantial, as borne out in an observation about Lisbon harbour made by a Frenchman in 1699.
During my stay in Lisbon, the fleets from Angola, Brazil and the Indies arrived. There were ninety ships of which fifty-four had Lisbon as their final destination and thirty-six were headed to Porto. I went out to see this armada in a canoe and found myself caught in the middle of the firing canons that jumped repeatedly. All the ships brought home rich cargoes and it was rumoured that the ship from the Indies brought goods worth sixteen million.2
To this Manueline city, King João V, who reigned from 1706 to 1750, had added further ornate buildings in the prosperous years in the half-century before the earthquake. He totally redesigned and enlarged the old royal palace. The building works at the palace went on for years under the supervision of Ludwig, architect of Mafra, as we have seen in the previous chapter.3 If the royal collection had always shown an inclination to the exotic and Eastern, King João wanted to create a setting of grandeur in which to show it off. Heavily gilded, Baroque features were created in the interiors; rare and valuable tapestries were hung; furniture was covered in fine brocades. Collections of works of art were purchased at home and abroad: a number of works by Rubens passed into royal hands in the 1720s; impressive architectural models of palaces and churches of Rome were acquired at the same time. Throughout his reign the bibliophile monarch went on amassing his library. His agents scoured European markets in search of the latest scientific literature as well as rare manuscripts and engravings.4
Meanwhile the spendthrift king lavished attention and funds on the building of the Patriarchal Church, with its adjoining palace, on a scale that he hoped would rival the Vatican and put Lisbon on a footing with Rome. Other palaces in the area, the homes of the court aristocracy, were also sumptuous. Dom Luis de Sousa had amassed a library of 30,000 volumes displayed in four Italianate rooms with lavish gilded stucchi in his house near the cathedral. The Conde de Vidigueira, who had been ambassador at the French court and who no doubt had been impressed by its regal grandeur, arranged another imposing library in spacious rooms, decorated with Italian paintings and statues, near São Roque Church.5 Important collections of art, rare libraries and masses of gold and silverware were scattered in other aristocratic houses in the central area.
As Masses began on the fateful morning of 1 November 1755, in the midst of these splendours in what had become one of the most ornate cities in Europe, no one could have guessed at what the events of the day would bring. The scene that fine autumn morning is vividly set in a letter from an anonymous English witness.
There was never a finer morning than the First of November, the sun shone out in its full lustre, the whole face of the sky was perfectly serene and clear, and not the least signal nor warning of that approaching event, which has made this once flourishing, opulent and populous city, a scene of the utmost horror and desolation except only such as served to alarm, but scarce left a moments time to fly from the general destruction.6
The first tremor was felt after 9.30 in the morning. It took the form of a loud and sinister rumbling noise that shook buildings but did not cause immediate damage. The English correspondent records that the sound was like that of thunder and that it lasted for less than a minute.7 It was followed by two more violent quakes which were of sufficient strength to bring down roofs, walls and, in some cases, entire buildings. Much of the central and western parts of the city was affected. The English eyewitness, staying in Buenos Ayres (modern Lapa), slightly to the west of the old centre, describes the moment of impact:
The house I was in shook with such violence that the upper stories immediately fell and though my apartment, which was on the first floor, did not then share the same fate, yet was everything thrown out of its place, in such sort that ’twas with no small difficulty I kept on my feet and expected nothing less than to be soon crushed to death as the walls continued rocking to and fro, in the frightfullest manner; opening in several places; large stones falling down from every side from the cracks and the ends of most of the rafters starting out from the roof.8
When the shaking had stopped, a suffocating cloud of dust enveloped the whole city, choking the panic-stricken inhabitants who were crawling about in the debris. In this confusion the English eyewitness attempted to make his way down towards the river to escape by water. However, he found the entire street piled high with debris. Instead he turned eastwards towards São Paulo Church, which he found in ruins. The great church had collapsed into a pile of rubble after the second tremor, killing a large number of the congregation and others who had rushed into the building for safety. The streets in the whole central area running from São Paulo Church to the Royal Palace were the most severely affected, with buildings reduced to complete ruins or standing semi-derelict with only the odd wall intact. There were scenes of chaos everywhere. The eyewitness reports seeing priests still clad in their vestments from celebrating Mass, women half-dressed and without shoes, screaming children and terrified animals jostling to escape.
A similar account of the horrors was recorded by Thomas Chase, a young member of the British Factory, who fell from the fourth floor of his house but managed to survive in the debris in the basement with a broken arm and bruises. First sheltering in the burnt-out ruins of the Royal Palace, he eventually managed to escape by river to an English merchant ship moored on the Tagus. Chase describes the stench, and the corpses burning in the flames, the devotion of the parish priests who tried to console their flocks, and the rapacious boatmen who could not resist cashing in on the situation. But this was not the end of the misery; nor had the horror ended. Our first eyewitness commentary continues:
On a sudden I heard a general outcry. The sea is coming in, we shall all be lost. Upon this, turning my eyes toward the river, which at that place is near four miles broad I could perceive it heaving and swelling in a most unaccountable manner, as no wind was stirring. In an instant there appeared at some small distance a vast body of water, rising, as it were like a mountain, came on foaming and roaring, and rushed towards the shore with such impetuosity that tho’ we all immediately ran for our lives, many were swept away.9
This was the first of a series of seismic waves that hit the Lisbon–Cascais coast about two hours after the original tremors. Coming from a south-westerly direction they would have gone along the river bank until reaching the slightly protruding lower-lying areas around the foreshore of the central area. Starting out at sea, these waves may have been as high as 20 foot by the time they crashed on to the shore. Buildings near to the Terreiro do Paço were badly battered — a marble quay in front of the Customs House was smashed to pieces and the Customs House itself was badly damaged. In the harbour ships were thrown against each other; boats on the river were swept away in the current. Hundreds of people drowned, including groups who had gathered to escape from the city across the river. By early afternoon, the waves had subsided, allowing vessels to cross the Tagus once more.
The next disaster to hit the stricken city was fire. Contemporary accounts seem to suggest that fire broke out in different parts of the city very soon after the tremors had subsided. Whether these all arose from natural causes or some were the work of arsonists who saw an opportunity for looting is not clear. A French deserter was held responsible for the burning down of the Casa da India.10 Little effort was made to try to put the fires out by the exhausted and demoralized inhabitants who had survived the tremors. Fierce flames soon engulfed the entire central part of the city from the slopes in the ruins of Carmo Convent to the built-up area to the east, under the castle walls. From Rossio Square to the Royal Palace and across to São Paulo, the entire area was gutted. A strong north-west wind spread the flames in an uncontrollable conflagration that lasted for a week before being completely extinguished. Damage from the fire was as great as damage from the earthquake itself.
Lisbon had had a long history of earthquakes; several recorded in the sixteenth century also caused severe damage and loss of life and a tremor in 1750 coincided with the death of King João. The epicentre of the 1755 earthquake was in fact off the coast of Morocco: many cities, including Rabat and Agadir, were damaged by it. Tremors were felt as far away as Brazil and the Antilles, as well as in the south of France and Italy. The two-second tremors registered 9 and 10 on the Mercalli scale, indicating considerable force and likely to cause significant damage. Tremors continued to be felt for some weeks in the Lisbon area, adding to panic and devastation.
The damage done to Lisbon on 1 November 1755 was extensive. Some of the finest civic buildings (including the great trading houses) were ruined; hundreds of smaller shops and homes were destroyed. One estimate suggests that only 3000 of Lisbon’s 20,000 houses remained habitable.11 At least half the city’s churches were damaged or reduced to rubble. The riverside, around the Royal Palace in the Terreiro do Paço, was particularly badly affected. The Ribeira Palace itself, crammed with rich artwork and a library that may have numbered 70,000 books, was swept away. The royal family, who were staying in Belém in order to attend Solemn Mass at Jerónimos Church, escaped uninjured. The Bragança Palace, where the crown jewels were kept along with its fine collection of books and works of art, was totally destroyed. Nearby the sumptuous Patriarchal Church and the new Opera House, a grand, ornate building with gilt interiors that had dazzled the foreign community and visitors to Lisbon, were both burnt to the ground. The Opera House had only been opened in the spring. The Marquis of Louriçal’s Renaissance collection of art and another fine library, which included ancient manuscripts and rare maps and charts relating to the early voyages of discovery, were also destroyed. Important collections of incunables in the oratory sited in the Chiado disappeared in the flames. Gold and other valuables stored in the trading houses were also lost. Foreign traders, including the English and Hamburg merchants, lost large and valuable supplies. To east and west the slopes of the city exposed ruins; perhaps as many as half its buildings were either damaged or destroyed. Even the Palace of the Inquisition in Rossio Square had been swept away. Thomas Pitt, an English visitor, soon after the earthquake records his grim impression:
A far more melancholy abode than Lisbon cannot be conceived, nothing strikes the Eye in the City but ruin and Desolation; the Fire having completed what the Earthquake began: Heaps of Rubbish; broken walls; Fragments of Churches, with the Paintings and Ornaments in many parts remaining, form although a Scene of Horror rather to be felt than described.12
T.D. Kendrick rightly said that the combined damage of land movement, flooding and fire amounted to as ‘savage a gutting of the heart of a city as can be found anywhere in the previous history of Europe’.13
It is more difficult to determine how many people were killed in the disaster. Early reports were wildly exaggerated. In the first published report that appeared, only six weeks after the event, J. Trovão e Sousa claimed that as many as 70,000 people had been killed and much of Lisbon lay in ruins. His totally unscientific description and gross exaggeration provoked immediate reaction from other Portuguese writers, who were naturally annoyed at the impression that this first account was making across Europe. A number of pamphlets and other works appeared in the early months of 1756. One of the most reliable is the Commentary of António Pereira, who puts the death toll at about 15,000.14 An attempt was made to count casualties by way of parish records but requests for information sometimes remained unanswered. J.J. Moreira de Mendonça, another of the more reliable historians sets a figure of 5000 deaths on 1 November itself. T.D. Kendrick agrees that António Pereira’s figure of 15,000 in total is probably as accurate a guess as is possible.15 That would have been about 5 per cent of the total population of 275,000.
Many of those killed were caught in churches — either during the first quakes or in subsequent fires while they were sheltering in them.16 Of the large clerical population only about two hundred probably perished, a relatively small proportion. The British Factory or merchant community, many of whom lived in the suburbs, where the damage was less serious, escaped with a small number of deaths — less than one hundred. D. Francis puts the number at 74.17 Misery and suffering were, of course widespread. Many people were trapped in rubble, and the dying and injured were left unattended. Crowds of people roamed the streets frightened to go inside the buildings for fear of further tremors, of which many were recorded in subsequent days. Injured animals struggled to free themselves from the wreckage; when freed they faced starvation as there was no one to feed them. The immediate threats to the city were of anarchy and disease.
As the magnitude of the disaster became apparent, an intense debate about its meaning and causes swept across Europe. Voltaire talked of a ‘most cruel science’ by which ‘a hundred thousand of our kindred ants [were] crushed at a blow in our ant heap’.18 Kendrick says that the earthquake shocked Europeans more than any other event since the collapse of the Roman Empire;19 a contemporary cleric claimed it was on the scale of the Flood. Such comparisons indicate the degree of shock that the news of the earthquake caused and the profound way in which it was to affect Enlightenment thought.
The conventional clerical view thundered from pulpits within and outside Portugal was that the earthquake was a manifestation of divine wrath. God’s anger, it was argued, had been directed against the citizens of one of Europe’s major commercial cities because of their addiction to an indulgent and materialistic style of life. The very success of Lisbon, a bustling international centre of trade, had contributed to the disaster. The city was crammed with every imaginable luxury from distant parts: treasuries full of gold, sumptuous collections of exotic objects, slaves from Africa, refined fabrics and rare fruits from distant lands. The outward piety of Lisbon’s inhabitants, manifested in their attendance at Mass on the very morning of the disaster, did nothing to balance against the venalities associated with this style of life. Sins had to be punished severely. Some clerics within Portugal tried to mitigate this brutal lesson by suggesting that God had not entirely abandoned his favourites (the Portuguese) and that trust had to be put in his divine mercy, however ineffable it seemed. Others, of a more sadistic inclination, suggested that the Portuguese had in fact been singled out for the honour of punishment in a perverse recognition of their special status in God’s eyes. That divine favour had first been made clear by the miraculous appearance of Christ on the battlefield of Ourique in the time of Afonso Henriques. The earthquake, far from being a severe punishment, was an act of love and a more gentle instrument than the wicked citizens of Lisbon really deserved.
The most influential exponents of the theory of unmitigated divine wrath within Portugal were the Jesuits. Their chief spokesman was Gabriel Malagrida,20 an Italian missionary who had been personally favoured by King João V when he returned to Portugal from Brazil where he had been converting the natives. His reputation for holiness and his connections in aristocratic circles made him a powerful spokesman whose views would carry much weight. In his sermons he concentrated on highlighting the ‘abominable sins’ of Lisbon folk. When he expanded his argument in a pamphlet, entitled the Juizo da verdadeira causa do terremoto, he was particularly contemptuous of any attempt to explain the earthquake in purely natural terms.
It is scandalous to pretend that the earthquake was just a natural event. For if that be true, there is no need to repent and to try to avert the wrath of God, and not even the Devil himself could invent an idea more likely to lead us to irreparable ruin. Holy people had prophesied that the earthquake was coming, yet the city continued in its sinful ways without a care for the future.21
Among the sins indulged in by the citizens of Lisbon which Malagrida listed were theatre-going, (lewd) dancing, watching (obscene) comedies and indulging in the bloody sport of bull fighting. Devoted to these lascivious pastimes, they neglected to fast, scourge and take other devotional steps to prove their obedience to God. They were, in fact, totally irreligious people who would only be saved if they turned to acts of repentance at once. Reconstruction of the city was, by comparison, an unimportant matter. Malagrida thundered:
Learn, O Lisbon, that the destroyer of our houses, palaces, churches and convents, the cause of the death of so many people and of the flames that devoured such vast treasures, are your abominable sins, and not comets, stars, vapours and exhalations, and similar natural phenomena.22
Taking exactly the opposite line, one Portuguese commentator, the Chevalier d’Oliveira, who resided in London and had converted to Protestantism, identified the real problem as the idolatrous practices that Portuguese Catholics did observe. Instead of relying on the words of the Bible, his fellow countrymen preferred to rely on the superstitious reverence of saintly images, shrines to the Virgin and other excesses. They tolerated the Office of the Inquisition with its persecution of individuals and minorities such as the Jews. If divine punishment had been meted out, it was because of the existence of this dangerous organization and the superstitions it nurtured among the citizens of Lisbon. The chevalier’s pamphlet on the subject, published in 1756, was unsurprisingly proscribed by the Inquisition, but his views were widely shared by many Protestant clerics, including John Wesley, who lashed out against a people he regarded as heathen. According to Wesley, writing a fast-selling pamphlet that was reprinted almost immediately, anyone who thought that the earthquake was not the work of God was denying the authority of Scripture.23
The irony of a connection between the piety of the Lisbon churchgoers and the cruel effects of the earthquake, killing innocent and guilty alike, was not lost on Voltaire. In his poem on the disaster he paraded in the most elegant and sombre verse the moral dilemma confronting every European intellectual: how could a benevolent God preside over such a ghastly event? How could anyone henceforth subscribe to the facile belief that all was for the best in this best of all possible worlds when good and bad, guilty and innocent, had all been crushed together? It was utterly useless to tell the victims of the earthquake that somehow it had all been part of God’s plan. All that the earthquake showed was the evil inherent in nature (le Mal est sur la terre) and the impossibility of explaining it in rational terms at all.
Voltaire went on to explore his theodicy in Candide (1759) with such bantering enthusiasm and high spirits that one cannot help suspecting that there is more than a measure of enjoyment in his exposé of moral chaos in the universe. Once again he attacks the absurdity of holding to an optimistic philosophy, which he associates with Leibniz, in the face of disasters of the scale of the earthquake. The pithy tone of the exchange between Pangloss and Candide is a crucial challenge to the optimists.
Tell me my dear Pangloss, after you had been hanged, dissected, and beaten unmercifully, and while you were rowing at your bench in the galley, were you still convinced that everything in this world was for the best?
Pangloss replies:
I stick to my original views because I am a philosopher. It would be wrong for me to recant especially since Leibniz could not have been wrong. Pre-established harmony, together with the plenum and the materia subtilis, is the most beautiful thing on earth.24
Reading Candide, one is left with the distinct impression that Voltaire is questioning not only the existence of a benevolent God but the existence of a God at all. The conclusion that faith alone can sustain man in the face of such irrationality as the earthquake rings a very hollow note indeed. The secular lesson that he wished to impart was that instead of trying to unravel such imponderables — those causes of things that Dr Pangloss spends so much time puzzling over — man was better off applying his reason to solving the social and economic problems that beset the majority of his fellows. Only in that way could he tackle the problem of alleviating evil.
Despite this intellectual onslaught the optimists did reply. Most prominently Jean-Jacques Rousseau challenged Voltaire’s conclusions head-on.25 He says that physical evil must be distinguished from moral evil. Physical evil is part of the natural order — it is inherent in the great chain of being where some creatures are superior to others and may live off those below themselves. In the case of moral evil, man himself is the principal culprit. But even in respect of physical evil, man is to blame for much of what happens. Agreeing with Voltaire that it would have been better if the earthquake had occurred in a desert, Rousseau points out that in fact earthquakes do occur in such places but pass unnoticed. Man’s folly was in building populous cities like Lisbon, with its 20,000 or so six-storey buildings, concentrated in a small area where the effects of an earthquake were bound to be catastrophic. If the city had been more dispersed, if its citizens had not remained in it because of their fear of losing property and possessions after the first tremor had occurred, the loss of life would have been far less. Man cannot defy the laws of nature without paying a heavy price. But he should not give up belief in a benevolent God who mitigated the effects of evil and provided a basis for hope in a better future. Rousseau ends by comparing his optimism in difficult circumstance of life to Voltaire’s pessimism in easy ones, even though he pays tribute to the great philosopher.
Another philosopher who came to the conclusion that man had to live according to the laws of nature was Immanuel Kant. But in the hands of the young Kant, the explanation took on a more scientific flavour. Earthquakes were natural phenomena to be explained by scientific laws. A philosopher had to understand the causes and operation of those laws. It was absurd to try to deduce divine motivation from such a happening as an earthquake. It was a natural occurrence, which could produce good, as well as bad, effects. In any case the suffering of the Lisbon citizens could be exaggerated. Everyone had to die sooner or later; all property was eventually lost to its owners or destroyed. This theme was repeated by less well-known writers who questioned whether many deaths at once were any worse than single deaths one by one. In times of disaster, men forgot the long periods of calm that they enjoyed in normal times. No doubt the great city of Lisbon would be rebuilt and in a better form than it had been before. Nevertheless the earthquake itself raised fundamental doubts about the relation of God and man.
Fernando Pessoa captures the extreme scepticism that this conclusion may lead to in the words of Ricardo Reis very much later. His tone is of a modernist Voltaire.
My act when I destroy
The structure ants have raised
Must seem to them divine indeed
Yet in my own eyes I am not divine.
Perhaps, just so, the gods
No gods in their own eyes
Merely because they are greater than we
Appear as gods in ours.
Be the truth as it may
Even towards those
Whom we consider gods, let us not be
Perfect in a faith that may be groundless.26
While the lofty debates of the philosophes raged across Europe, within Portugal a small group of men were determined to spread word through the international community that Lisbon had survived a catastrophe and was open for trade. They realized that to do that convincingly they had to take action to ensure that normal life in the city could be resumed as speedily as possible. António Pereira mentions the actions of four prominent citizens who contributed to the restoration of order and confidence — namely the Duke of Lafões, who as head of civil administration worked tirelessly to preserve law and order; his younger brother, Dom João de Bragança, who took a lead in rescue work; the old Cardinal Patriarch Manuel; and Monsenhor Sampaio of the Patriarchal Church, who, with numerous other clergymen, had stayed at their posts and continued to administer to the spiritual needs of the citizens. Mendonça mentions27 the generosity of the royal princes Palhavã (the bastard sons of King João V) and, most important of all, the secretary of state, Carvalho e Melo, later to become the Marquis of Pombal.28
Pombal was the real genius behind the impressive effort to get Lisbon functioning again. Brushing aside all suggestions of abandoning the capital, he realized that the administration had to seize the initiative if civil disorder on a serious scale was to be averted.29 His ruthless realism is summarized in the advice given to the king to ‘bury the dead and feed the living’. Pombal realized that to achieve success government had to be directed to clear and precise policy objectives. Planning needed to be detailed and effective; policy would only gain widespread support if it appeared to apply to all citizens alike of whatever station. Ironically the minister’s own house, in the Rua Formosa, had survived the quakes. When the king remarked that this was a divine dispensation, the Count of São Lourenço, Pombal’s enemy, declared that the principal street in the red-light district had also survived.30
Pombal divided Lisbon into twelve administrative districts, each headed by a magistrate who was responsible for ensuring that newly drawn up emergency measures were enacted. The first and most urgent need was to dispose of the dead. The most efficient method of disposing of corpses was to take them on barges, which were then sunk in the Tagus. Strongly anti-clerical by instinct, the secretary of state nevertheless realized that he needed the support of the Church and got the Cardinal Patriarch’s agreement to this unconventional method of burial. If the bodies had not been dealt with quickly, plague or other disease would have soon broken out. Several medical men spoke out about the need for the quick disposal of corpses, although others claimed that the risks were being exaggerated by the authorities. They pointed out the beneficial effects of the fires in that respect, since they amounted to wholesale, sanitary cremation of the population buried in the ruins. Pombal’s efforts on public health were helped by the cool winter weather which followed the earthquake.
Pombal made the central control of the administration so tight that the next vital matter, securing a safe water supply, could be put into immediate effect. Of equal importance was ensuring sufficient food supplies. Warehouses and other places where food had been left were requisitioned; cooks, millers and other involved in catering were compelled to work in specially set up centres. Food prices were controlled, particularly by the lifting of tax on fish, the staple diet. The supply of fuel, particularly wood, was also controlled centrally. Response from abroad also helped these considerable efforts. The British Parliament voted £50,000 of aid; supplies of fuel and provisions were sent from Spain and much needed timber from the Hanseatic League based in Hamburg.31
The practical measures were supplemented by a strict enforcement of law and order. Chief magistrates had the power to order summary execution of anyone who was caught looting or pillaging. At least 34 people were executed for such offences within the first few days of November. The movement of individuals was also controlled so that people in particularly vital jobs — carpenters and builders for example — could be kept in the city or returned from the provinces if they were found to have fled from the metropolis. Bands of workmen were forced to the urgent job of removing rubble and flattening buildings that were too dangerous to leave standing. At the same time a survey of property was instituted, as disputes about ownership were likely to arise once the initial shock of what had happened had been absorbed. In some areas, of course, nothing remained to be recorded. These measures were seen to be just and gained the minister widespread support for his strict control of the lives of citizens who had been accustomed to a degree of freedom in going about their business.
To help the economy stabilize, rents and wages were controlled and a massive programme of house building was undertaken. This reconstruction moved on at a very rapid pace. The king and his court had taken to living in tents soon after 1 November but within months a wooden building had been put up on the site of the Ajuda Palace. It remained the royal residence until 1777. So far as more modest housing was concerned, as many as 9000 wooden structures were put up in six months, housing a proportion of the 25,000 refugee population. The building programme was carefully planned from the centre; no construction work was allowed to proceed without permission. Pombal realized that the flattening of a large part of the riverside area and levelling some of the hillside to the west would enable a new modern city to be built around the Baixa district. He was determined that this would be done in an orderly manner. The layout would be on a grid system, making downtown Lisbon one of the most up-to-date Enlightenment cities, a home fit for a new middle class on whom national prosperity would depend.
A team of engineers and architects, including Manuel da Maia, Carlos Mardel and Eugénio dos Santos (all military officers), took as their starting point the great square or Terreiro do Paço where the Ribeira Palace had stood.32 The idea of focusing the city’s centre on a great square at the waterfront was dos Santos’s idea; significantly it was to be renamed Commercial Square.33 A grand equestrian statue in bronze of the king in triumphal mode, clutching his sceptre, the symbol of absolute power, was later erected in the square. From the square two parallel roads, the Rua Aurea and the Rua Augusta sweep straight up to Rossio, whilst just to the east the grid leads through another set of streets, parallel with the Rua da Prata, to the Praça da Figueira. The whole area forms an impressive rectangle and has remained the commercial and financial centre of the city to the present day. Street lighting and other modern conveniences were installed under the imaginative superintendence of Pina Manique, one of Pombal’s close allies.34
Pombal’s policies were executed not only for the benefit of the citizens of Lisbon but to restore the confidence of the international trading community upon whom Portugal depended for its economic welfare. The message for them was that not only would their interests be protected but in fact the reconstruction of Lisbon would enhance the possibilities of commerce.35 Pombal had been much influenced by his diplomatic career, which had been spent in London and, from there, in Vienna. In 1739 he had replaced his cousin, Mario António de Azevedo, as the envoy to the Court of St James’s. Pombal was never entirely at home in England — his grasp of the language was not fluent even though he moved in erudite circles such as the Royal Society. Nevertheless, he recognized the superiority of English commercial arrangements, particularly the organization of the great trading companies, whose ships had the protection of the Royal Navy when carrying out their overseas enterprises.
Pombal particularly resented the British monopoly of the Brazilian trade. These interests were protected by two treaties, one agreed in 1654 during Cromwell’s dictatorship, the other signed in 1703 and known as the Methuen Treaty. These treaties not only guaranteed special access for British ships to Brazilian ports, but exempted British goods from certain customs duties. British merchants understood that the Brazilian trade was one that needed medium- to long-term investment. What is more, they had sufficient capital resources to fund credit over a number years, giving them an edge over Portuguese rivals. Average profits of sale from this colonial trade could be as high as 30 per cent, double the already profitable 15 per cent made in Portugal itself.36
It seemed to Pombal that the British had done too well out of these arrangements and he was determined to claw back advantages for Portugal. As the representative of his country at the Court of St James’s, he pressed hard for recognition of Portuguese commercial interests and gained some minor success for Portuguese residents in Britain.37 His London days taught him how demanding the English could be when it came to trading terms and how much the old alliance served British, rather than Portuguese, interests. When he returned to Portugal, Pombal began to consider ways of curbing British privileges without upsetting an alliance upon which Portuguese foreign policy had been firmly based for decades. British support was meant to be a guarantee against incursion by Spain, seen as a threat and one that was realized in 1762. The Royal Navy also guaranteed the integrity of Brazil. Pombal would have had some sympathy with the view expressed by the French writer Ange Goudar that the Portuguese should take the opportunity afforded by the rebuilding of Lisbon to throw off what was an oppressive British control of their affairs. But the minister knew that Portugal still depended on British protection in the event of a threat from Spain.38
In his reconstruction of Lisbon after the earthquake, Pombal applied the lessons he had learnt in London, giving due prominence to the interests of the commercial houses. The new grid system designed for the Baixa allowed for the orderly coordination of commercial, banking and government interests. Buildings were to be in uniform style, with limited ornamentation on their façades. Arcaded elevations and pavilions echoed the neo-Palladian style popular in England. By keeping the design simple (the so-called ‘Pombalese’ fronts were plainer than previous styles) much of the work could be prefabricated and put into place speedily and more economically than would otherwise have been the case.
William Dalrymple, staying in Lisbon in 1774, records a favourable impression of the Baixa:
In whole streets and adjoining squares were planned in a single sweep: there was no place for individual variation. This effect was immediately apparent to visitors, in the New City there is great attention to uniformity, and the houses being built of white stone have a beautiful appearance.39
Plainer façades would have lent an air of harmony to the emerging clean-cut buildings. The uniform feeling was also achieved by strict measurement of the streets — 60 foot across for those running up the grid north to south; 40 foot across for those crossing west to east. Pavements of exact proportions were laid out on each street. The military background of the team of engineers and surveyors in charge of reconstruction was clearly in evidence in this precision planning. The very proximity and modernity of the quarter encouraged efficiency; new safety for buildings was provided by the invention of a flexible wooden frame, known as the gaiola, around which the structure was built. This reinforcement was intended to make them more resistant to future tremors.40 Other features included a new sewerage system and wherever possible fountains for the provision of clean water. These amenities were attractive to those commercial businesses that were largely to finance the rebuilding.
However, Pombal’s reforms went further than mere physical rebuilding. He set about changing the conditions of employment and practices in the public service. Realizing that the public service needed to be more effective in a modern, commercial country, he turned his attention to the education system from which he would recruit a new class of bureaucrats inspired by modernizing ideals. If this meant more openness and recruitment by merit, he was prepared for it. Towards this end, he established new institutions such as the Casa do Risco das Reais Obras — a school of architecture and drawing — and the Colégio Real dos Nobres where classes were held on the principles of military and civil architecture. In 1770 the Junta de Providência Literária began to formulate new statutes for the University of Coimbra. The emphasis of these reforms was to promote the study of science, and various buildings in the university were to be dedicated to that purpose.41 In this enterprise, as in others, Pombal did not hesitate to act radically to achieve his ends.
Meanwhile the ex-envoy turned his mind to ways of mitigating the trading advantages which he had seen so effortlessly enjoyed by the British. A careful reading of old treaties, particularly that of 1654, proved fruitful. Pombal soon realized that under the terms of the agreement, the British Factory only controlled the wine trade in the absence of the existence of any Portuguese company. However, if one were to be set up, it would have the right to deal exclusively with the wine trade to Brazil. Accordingly, in 1756, Pombal set up the Douro Wine Company with a monopoly over the wine business and thereby gained control of a trade which had always been entirely in British hands.
Although scoring advantages over the British would not have upset them, Pombal’s radicalism at home unsettled members of the old court nobility, who saw him as a menace to their conservative way of life. Not only did they regard him socially inferior but they considered that meritocratic educational views would eventually loosen the grip which their own families held on privileged positions at home and in the colonies. For his part Pombal was concerned as for the progress of the nation and had no patience for those who did not share his ideal. However, his position was still precarious as he depended entirely on royal favour. Although his success in tackling the considerable problems that had resulted from the earthquake had put him in a powerful position, he still needed to consolidate it by removing opposition from the old aristocrats.
The minister’s chance came in 1758 when a group of conservative nobles attempted a coup d’état. An attempt was made to assassinate King José I, whom the rebels considered to be entirely under the minister’s control. The king was only wounded in the attempt on his life but seriously enough for the queen to assume a regency during his convalescence. Dom José, enfeebled by years of sybaritic living (his two passions were hunting and the Italian opera, on which he had lavished royal funds), had no idea how to handle a situation he had not anticipated. He could only turn to his first minister, who had shown such steeliness in dealing with the earthquake. Pombal acted ruthlessly. After an initial period of silence, a series of arrests were made. Members of the Tavora family (headed by the Duke of Aveiro) and the Count of Atouguia were the most prominent of those detained, but Pombal also took the chance to act against the Jesuits by confining leading members of the order to house arrest. A tribunal was set up with sweeping powers; Pombal as the minister responsible for home affairs sat on it personally and took part in the interrogation of the prisoners. Proceedings were conducted in secret. A panel of judges, over whom Pombal also had control, pronounced sentence for the crime of treason. All the leading conspirators, including the Duke of Aveiro, were summarily executed. Their families were rounded up, tortured and in some cases left in prison for years.
Acting against the Jesuits would take a little longer. Pombal had first clashed with the Jesuits in Brazil, setting up his company the Junta do Comércio to break the missionaries’ stranglehold on the country. As he encountered the force of their resistance, the minister came to realize that only by removing the order altogether would he secure crown interests entirely. He therefore undertook a policy of expelling the order from various provinces in Brazil until they were no longer able to operate in the country at all. Emboldened by his success, Pombal turned his attention to the metropolis. By 1759 he had persuaded the king that the Jesuits were a menace to national security, and they were duly expelled. Pombal began a policy which was followed in a number of European countries: in France in 1764 and in Spain in 1767. In 1773 Pope Clement XIV decreed a suppression of the entire order.
However, Pombal was not yet finished with the Jesuits. He despised Padre Gabriel Malagrida, their leader, for supporting, as we have seen, the widespread theological view that the earthquake was a sign of God’s wrath and a punishment for the hedonistic life of the inhabitants of Lisbon. With his considerable personal authority, Malagrida had flatly contradicted Pombal’s view that the earthquake was a natural phenomenon. This was open defiance and something Pombal could not let pass if his authority was to remain intact. Malagrida’s view undermined his entire reform programme, which was based on a rational response to a natural rather than divinely inspired happening. Once his overtures to Rome failed, Pombal turned to the Portuguese clergy. Having installed his brother to head the Inquisition, he persuaded senior Portuguese clerics to take up the case against Malagrida. He was now pursued as both a heretic and a subject in rebellion against the crown, although the evidence against him was thin. The Inquisition was persuaded of his guilt and ordered punishment. Malagrida was eventually garrotted and publicly burnt in Lisbon in 1761.
Pombal’s action in the matter of the Aveiro conspiracy displayed the same ruthless realpolitik that he had employed after the earthquake. The decade that followed the Lisbon earthquake marked the high point of his influence. He himself ascended to the rank of marquis and ruled the country as a dictator, though he depended entirely on royal backing. His energies were directed at modernizing Portugal along English and Dutch lines. The king allowed him a free hand, even acceding to the minister’s requests that royal expenditure should be more tightly controlled. Although Pombal may have acted ruthlessly against those who opposed him and favoured those who supported him, his measures on the whole stabilized the Portuguese economy after the excesses of the first half of the century under King João V. In the two decades of his rule he had done much to put Portugal on the path to being a modern state, capable of competing against its European rivals. The earthquake had proved the decisive turning point in providing the opportunity for this short-lived period of enlightened despotism.