Miguel

Miguel, MARIA EVARIST, usurper of the throne of Portugal, was born at Lisbon, 26th October 1802, the third son of King John VI. A determined hater of all constitutional principles, he plotted (1824) to overthrow the constitutional form of government granted by his father: he caused the ministers to be arrested and his father to be closely watched in his palace; but the aged king escaped to an English man-of-war anchored in the estuary. Miguel and his mother, his principal abettor, were banished. At the death of John VI. in 1826, the throne devolved upon Miguel's elder brother, Pedro, the emperor of Brazil; he, however, resigned it in favour of his daughter, Maria, but making Miguel regent till her majority. Miguel at once dissolved the constitutional cortes, summoned the cortes that had preceded it, and was on 30th June 1828 by it proclaimed king. But Pedro of Brazil gathered an army at the Azores, and in 1832 captured Oporto and Lisbon, and Charles Napier destroyed Miguel's fleet off Cape St Vincent (1833). Next year Maria was restored to the throne, and Miguel withdrew to Italy, protesting. He died on 14th November 1866 at Bronnbach, near Wertheim in Baden, having been a spoilt youth, a wildly dissolute man, and a tyrannical ruler.