Portugal’s Mad Queen
In the late 18th century, a French invasion force marched into Portugal. Napoleon was insisting that Portugal must close its ports to British shipping. When it failed to comply, the invading army was given orders to march on Lisbon and seize the royal family. The Queen and her family fled to Brazil, and by this time, Maria I of Portugal had been insane for more than fifteen years.
On December 17th, 1788, Queen Maria I held an official audience to celebrate her fifty-fourth birthday. The occasion took place in the palace of Ajuda in Lisbon and the British envoy, Robert Walpole, wrote that the widowed Queen ‘exhibited a considerable degree of affliction’.
Maria had suffered a string of tragedies over the previous three months. Her elder son, José, died of smallpox on September 11th. Her only daughter, Mariana (who had married into the Spanish royal family), died of the same disease on November 2nd, followed by Mariana’s husband and newborn son. And on November 29th, Inácio de São Caetano – Maria’s confessor for more than thirty years, the man on whom she placed her entire trust and confidence – died of a massive stroke in the palace of Queluz.
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