In Portugal, the government of the Regency had grown intensely unpopular, for Lord Stuart de Rothesay and Marshal Beresford ruled most despotically. The people which had endured the authority of the English during the terrible war for existence, and the very soldiers who had served so gallantly under English officers on the field of battle, soon grew weary of foreign rule in time of peace, and raised the cry of “Portugal for the Portuguese.” The ministers, who had reluctantly paid the large sums needed for the expenses of the army, even when aided by subsidies from England, now that those subsidies were withdrawn, insisted on great reductions, and practically paid nothing at all. Democratic ideas spread swiftly; the people claimed a share in the government, and expressed aloud their hatred for the king, the Regency, and the English, and a spirit of discontent arose in every part of the kingdom. The first outbreak took place in 1818, when General Gomes Freire de Andrade, who had commanded the Portuguese Legion in the Russian and other campaigns in Napoleon’s army, and who was an ardent lover of France, planned a “pronunciamento,” but the plot was discovered and suppressed with stringent severity by the Regency, which ordered the execution of the general and of ten of his partisans. This rigorous punishment only enraged the radical party, and when Beresford went to Brazil in 1820 in order to get money from the king to pay the arrears due to the army, advantage was taken of his absence by the people of Oporto to raise the standard of revolt under the leadership of Colonel Antonio de Silveira, Brito da Fonseca, and other officers belonging to the garrison. The Regency in Lisbon, deprived of the presence of Beresford, gave way before a similar rising in the capital, headed by the Counts of Resende, Penafiel, and Sampaio, and the revolutionary juntas formed in the two great cities agreed to act in harmony. The English officers were driven from the country; Beresford was not allowed to land when he returned from Rio de Janeiro; a fresh regency was proclaimed; and a constituent assembly was summoned to draw up a constitution for Portugal.