Portuguese Restoration War


The Restoration War between Portugal and Spain began with the Portuguese revolution of 1640 and ended with the Treaty of Lisbon in 1668, bringing a formal end to the Iberian Union.
The period from 1640 to 1668 was marked by periodic skirmishes between Portugal and Spain, as well as short episodes of more serious warfare, much of it occasioned by Spanish and Portuguese entanglements with non-Iberian powers. Spain was involved in the Thirty Years' War until 1648 and the Franco-Spanish War until 1659, while Portugal was involved in the Dutch–Portuguese War until 1663.
In the 17th century and afterwards, this period of sporadic conflict was simply known, in Portugal and elsewhere, as the Acclamation War. The war established the House of Braganza as Portugal's new ruling dynasty, replacing the House of Habsburg, which had been united with the Portuguese crown since the 1580 succession crisis.

Events leading to revolution

When Philip II of Portugal died in 1621, he was succeeded by his son Philip III of Portugal who followed a different approach to Portuguese concerns. Portuguese merchants saw higher taxes, the Portuguese nobility began to lose its influence at the Spanish Cortes, and Spaniards increasingly occupied the government's posts in Portugal.
Moreover, Spain entangled Portugal in the efforts to suppress the independence of the Dutch Republic during the Eighty Years' War. In response, the Dutch embarked on systematic attacks on Portuguese colonies and outposts, either pillaging or occupying them in what is known as the Dutch–Portuguese War. Spanish preoccupation with defending their own empire, particularly in the Thirty Years War, left Portuguese interests in Asia and Brazil neglected.
The situation culminated in a revolution organized by the nobility and bourgeoisie, executed on 1 December 1640, sixty years after the crowning of Philip I, the first "dual monarch".
The plot was planned by Antão Vaz de Almada, Miguel de Almeida and João Pinto Ribeiro. They, together with several associates, known as the Forty Conspirators, killed the Secretary of State, Miguel de Vasconcelos, and imprisoned the king's cousin, Margaret of Savoy, who had been governing Portugal in his name. Philip's troops were then fighting the Thirty Years' War and also facing a revolution in the Principality of Catalonia, which became known as the Reapers' War.
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 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

, 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. 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 Afonso VI of Portugal married a French princess, Marie Françoise of Nemours.

Relations between Portugal and the Dutch Republic

At the time of the revolution in Lisbon, the Portuguese had been at war with the Dutch for nearly forty years. A good deal of the conflict can be attributed to the fact that Spain and the Dutch Republic were concurrently engaged in the Eighty Years' War, and, ever since hostilities between Portugal and the Dutch Republic erupted in 1602, Portugal had been ruled by a Spanish monarch.
The Dutch-Portuguese War was fought almost entirely overseas, with the Dutch mercantile surrogates, the Dutch East India Company and the Dutch West India Company, repeatedly attacking Portugal's colonial possessions in the Americas, in Africa, in India, and in the Far East. Portugal was in a defensive posture throughout, and it received very little military help from Spain.
After the acclamation of John, the pattern persisted all over the Portuguese Empire until the final expulsion of the Dutch from Angola, São Tomé, and Brazil. 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, when the Spanish branch of the Habsburgs, against whom the Dutch were in revolt, had assumed the Portuguese throne. However, Dutch attacks on Portuguese territories persisted until 1663, even after the signing of the Treaty of The Hague in 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 when a few major engagements demonstrated that the Portuguese could not be easily returned to submission to the Spanish Habsburgs,
  • second, a long period of military standoffs, characterized by small-scale raiding, while Spain concentrated on its military commitments elsewhere in Europe,
  • third, a final period during which the Spanish king, Philip IV, unsuccessfully sought a decisive victory that would bring an end to hostilities.