Portal:Europe/Selected article/10

The history of Portugal from the beginning of Maria I's reign in 1777 to the end of the Liberal Wars in 1834 spans a complex historic period in which several important political and military events led to the end of the absolutist regime and to the installment of a constitutional monarchy in the country. In 1807, Napoleon ordered the invasion of Portugal and subsequently the Royal Family migrated to Brazil. This would be one of the causes for the declaration of Brazilian independence by Peter I of Brazil in 1822, following a liberal revolution in Portugal. The liberal period was stormy and as short as Prince Michael of Portugal (Peter's brother) supported an absolutist revolution endeavoring to restore all power to the monarchy. Peter would eventually return to Portugal and fight and defeat his brother in the Liberal Wars in which liberalism was completely installed and Portugal became a constitutional monarchy. When Princess Maria Francisca, King Joseph I of Portugal's eldest daughter, succeeded her father as the 27th (or 26th according to some historians) Portuguese monarch, she became the first Queen regnant of a 650-year-old country that was economically unstable and socially unbalanced, still recovering from the 1755 Lisbon earthquake. Her father's right-hand man, Sebastião José de Carvalho e Melo, already titled Count of Oeiras and Marquis of Pombal, had been ruling the country and its Empire with a strong hand for 27 years.