Luís I of Portugal

Louis I of Portugal

Portuguese Royalty House of Braganza-Wettin Pedro V Luís I Children    Carlos, Prince Royal and Duke of Braganza (future Carlos I)    Infante Afonso, Duke of Porto Carlos I Children    Luís Filipe, Prince Royal and Duke of Braganza    Infante Manuel, Duke of Beja (future Manuel II) Manuel II

Luís I, King of Portugal KG (pron. IPA [lu'iʃ]; English: Louis, whose full name was Luís Filipe Maria Fernando Pedro de Alcântara António Miguel Rafael Gabriel Gonzaga Xavier Francisco de Assis João Augusto Júlio Valfando de Saxe-Coburgo-Gotha e Bragança), the Popular (Port. o Popular) (Lisbon, October 31, 1838 – October 19 1889 in Cascais) was the 32nd (or 33rd according to some historians) King of Portugal and Algarves between 1861 and 1889. He was the second son of Maria II and Ferdinand of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha and was created Duke of Porto and Viseu.

Louis was a cultured man who wrote vernacular poetry, but otherwise had no distinguishing gifts in the political field into which he was thrust by the deaths of his brothers Pedro V and Ferdinand in 1861. Luis' domestic reign was a tedious and ineffective series of transitional governments formed at various times by the Progressives (Liberals) and Regenerators (Conservatives – the party generally favoured by King Luis, who secured their long term in office after 1881). Despite a flirtation with the Spanish succession prior to the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–71, Louis's reign was otherwise one of domestic stagnation as Portugal fell ever further behind the nations of western Europe in terms of public education, political stability, technological progress and economic prosperity. In colonial affairs, Delgoa Bay was confirmed as a Portuguese possession in 1875, whilst Belgian activities in the Congo (1880s)and an English ultimatum denied Portugal a land link between Angola and Mozambique at the peak of the Scramble for Africa.

Louis was mostly a man of the sciences, with a passion for oceanography. He invested great amounts of his fortune in funding research boats to collect specimens in the oceans of the world. He was responsible for the establishment of one of the World's first Aquariums, Aquário Vasco da Gama in Lisbon, which is still open to the public with its vast collection of maritime life forms, including a 10 meter long squid. His love for sciences and things new was passed to his two sons.

Ancestors

Marriages and descendants

Louis married Maria Pia of Savoy, daughter of Victor Emmanuel II of Italy and Adelheid, Archduchess of Austria. They had two sons, and the King had one love-child, born in 1874, in Lisbon, and named: Carlos August.

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