D.Pedro de Sousa Holstein, 1st Duke of Faial and Palmela (8 May 1781–12 October 1850) was one of the most important Portuguese diplomats and statesmen in the first half of the 19th century. He also served as the country's first modern Prime Minister (with the title of "President of the Council of Ministers").
You can help expand this article with text translated from the corresponding article in Portuguese. Click [show] for important translation instructions.
Machine translation, like DeepL or Google Translate, is a useful starting point for translations, but translators must revise errors as necessary and confirm that the translation is accurate, rather than simply copy-pasting machine-translated text into the English Wikipedia.
Consider adding a topic to this template: there are already 1,519 articles in the main category, and specifying|topic= will aid in categorization.
Do not translate text that appears unreliable or low-quality. If possible, verify the text with references provided in the foreign-language article.
You must provide copyright attribution in the edit summary accompanying your translation by providing an interlanguage link to the source of your translation. A model attribution edit summary is Content in this edit is translated from the existing Portuguese Wikipedia article at [[:pt:Pedro de Sousa e Holstein]]; see its history for attribution.
You should also add the template {{Translated|pt|Pedro de Sousa e Holstein}} to the talk page.
His uncle Frederico Guilherme de Sousa Holstein[pt] had been governor of Portuguese India.
He earned notoriety at an early age by telling Napoleon to his face at the conference in Bayonne in 1808 that the Portuguese would not ‘consent to become Spaniards’ as the French Emperor wanted.
After this he was briefly ambassador to London, but then was appointed secretary of state for foreign affairs in Brazil. After the Liberal Revolution of 1820 he was commissioned by the revolutionary junta to inform the king, João VI, of what had taken place and to request his return to Portugal from Brazil.
In 1823 he was made a Marquis and became foreign minister as well as head of the committee which D. João appointed to devise a new constitutional charter. The resulting document, to which the King was unable to agree, was so liberal that it drew down on Palmela the hatred of the reactionary forces in the country, especially the Queen and the Infant Dom Miguel, who in 1824 had him arrested.
After he obtained his liberty he was made a minister of state and returned to London as ambassador.
Liberal Wars
When Dom Miguel seized the throne of Portugal in 1828 Palmela sided with the opposition in Oporto and was forced with many others to flee to England. An attempt to return to Oporto in June 1828, called the Belfastada, failed. Greville noted in his diary for 16 August 1828:[1]
”Esterhazy told me to-night that Palmella entertains from twenty to thirty of his countrymen at dinner every day, of whom there are several hundred in London, of the best families, totally destitute.”
Miguel condemned him to death in absentia and seized his estates, but Dom Pedro, Emperor of Brazil, appointed Palmela guardian to his daughter, the rightful Queen Maria II, and he acted as her ambassador at the British court.
In 1830 he set up the young queen’s regency on Terceira in the Azores; it was at this time that he became acquainted with Captain Charles Napier whom he considered the best person to command the Liberals' navy.
When Dom Pedro took charge of the regency in person in 1832 he named Palmela as his foreign minister, in which capacity he acted against Miguel from London.
In 1833 he sailed with Charles Napier bringing mercenary reinforcements to Oporto, where Pedro was being besieged, and took part in the subsequent expedition to the Algarve of Napier and the Duke of Terceira.
Portrait of the Duke of Palmela, c. 1840s, attributed to John Simpson
He served as the first Prime Minister of the newly formed constitutional monarchy in Portugal from 24 September 1834 to 4 May 1835.
He served briefly Prime Minister again in February 1842 (for two days, in the so-called Shrovetide Cabinet), and from March to October 1846 (during the height of the Revolution of Maria da Fonte).
.jpg)
.png){kind=link}