Dom Pedro, the Prince Regent of Portugal, sensing his last hour drawing closer, displayed the most admirable resignation. He sent for his august daughter Dona Maria and recommended that she should observe the Charter as her only safe haven. He also called for the Ministers and some soldiers and said to one of these: "Come here, I wish to embrace you and thank you for your noble services. Tell your comrades that I feel that I cannot hold them all close against my heart to prove to them how much I love them and how honoured I am to have fought with them to save the nation.” Paris, chez Bulla, rue St Jacques 38.; N Maurin del. ; L. de Maurin, rue Mezières.7.
Hand-coloured engraving, representing King Pedro IV on his death bed, in the Dom Quixote Room of the Palace of Queluz. On the right stands his daughter, Queen Maria II, recently enthroned, being comforted by the Duke of Saldanha, while his wife, Empress Amelia of Leuchtenberg Beauharnais, kneels at the foot of the bed, holding his hand. King Pedro symbolically bids farewell to the army that accompanied him in the person of a veteran soldier kneeling at the left of the bed, with the Archbishop of Lacedemonia behind him.
King Pedro IV (1798-1834) was born and died in the same bedroom of the Palace of Queluz. The son of King João VI and Queen Carlota Joaquina, he became the heir to the Crown on the premature death of his brother António in 1801. He spent his adolescence in Brazil, where he had moved with the Royal Family, following the invasions of Napoleon’s troops (1807). He was appointed Regent of the Kingdom of Brazil by his father King João VI, when the latter returned to Lisbon to take the oath to the Constitution, following the Liberal Revolution of 1820. On 7 September 1821, he proclaimed the independence of Brazil and named himself Emperor. In 1826, he abdicated his claims to the Portuguese Crown in favour of his daughter Dona Maria da Glória, now Queen Maria II, born from his first marriage to the Empress of Brazil, the Archduchess of Austria Maria Leopoldina Carolina (who died in 1826). In 1829, he married for a second time, to Amelia of Beauharnais. In 1831, he abdicated the Imperial Crown of Brazil in favour of his son King Pedro II and set sail for Portugal in the company of Amelia and Queen Maria II, to claim his daughter’s rights to the Crown of Portugal, which had been usurped by his brother Miguel, a longstanding defender of the absolutist cause, who had proclaimed himself king of Portugal in 1828. In 1832, he disembarked on the island of Terceira in the Azores, taking over the regency of the kingdom on behalf of Queen Maria II. In June of the same year, he headed the liberal expedition which disembarked in Mindelo, entering Porto with his liberating forces some days later. He entered Lisbon as the victor in 1833 and died at the Palace of Queluz on 24 September 1834, in the Dom Quixote Room, only a few days after restoring Maria II, then aged 16, to the throne of Portugal.