Port anD the Douro uP to Date 21constitution, which was reluctantly acceded to by the regents in Lisbon. João eventually
returned, leaving his heir, Pedro, to govern Brazil where he became the constitutional
emperor in 1822. Following the death of João VI in 1826 and Pedro’s accession to the
Portuguese throne, the country was pitched into turmoil by his younger brother Miguel,
who led the absolutists in revolt against the liberal constitution. The citizens of Oporto
supported the constitutionalist Pedro against the usurper Miguel and in 1832 the city
erupted into civil war. Pedro’s troops held the centre of the city which the Miguelites
bombarded from Vila Nova de Gaia.
Caught in the midst of the fighting, the British Port shippers, who tended to side
with the liberal constitutionalists, did their best to visit their lodges located in Miguelite
territory on the opposite side of the river. Joseph James Forrester described this perilous
situation:
‘Those who have been made familiar with danger will confess that familiarity soon
produces indifference to it. Soon after the entry of the Constitutionalists into Oporto the
city was besieged by the Royalists [Absolutists] from the south side of the river. At first,
the greatest alarm and anxiety prevailed amongst the inhabitants but as the shells were
bursting over their heads at almost every instant of day and night, I assert without the
smallest exaggeration that many persons arrived at such a pitch of ability in calculating
the curves each shell would take that they were enabled to decide with the greatest nicety
where the destructive engine would fall...’There were few casualties among the Port shippers, many of whom rather enjoyed the
diversion. A Mr Wright of Croft & Co. lost an arm when a shell penetrated the ceiling of
his dining room as he was enjoying a post-prandial glass of Port. But as the siege wore on
the situation deteriorated and the poorer inhabitants of Oporto lived in the most intolerable
conditions. Even tripe became a luxury and many resorted to eating cats and dogs in order
to survive. When the supply of pet animals was exhausted, large numbers died, either from
starvation or cholera.
There was considerable upheaval in the Douro with armed militias terrorising the
towns and villages. In the wilds of the Douro Superior, bands of guerrillas like the Marcais
de Fozcôa attacked Pesqueira, Moncorvo and Fozcôa and raided the most affluent of the
new quintas. As the constitutionalists gained the upper hand, vineyards belonging to the
Miguelistas and religious orders were seized and auctioned off and records (some dating
back to the thirteenth century), were destroyed. Reflecting the French Revolution some
forty years earlier, the whole structure of Portuguese agricultural society changed. Medium-
sized landowners and bourgeois merchants paid low prices for quintas expropriated from
religious orders.
In Oporto, after eighteen months of continual siege, the Miguelites finally retreated
under attack from Pedro’s troops supported by the British. In a final desperate act of
defiance in August 1833, the Miguelite Conde d’Almer ordered that the lodges belonging
to the Companhia should be burnt and over 20,000 pipes of Port were lost, much of the