MARIA II di Braganza (MARIA da GLORIA), queen of PORTUGAL. — Born in Rio de Janeiro on 4 April 1819, died in Lisbon on 15 November 1853.
M. di Braganza succeeded her grandfather Giovanni VI on the Portuguese throne, her father, don Pedro, having renounced his rights to the Lusitanian crown in order to separate Brazil from Portugal and proclaim himself its emperor. Succession through the female line was not, however, accepted by her uncle don Miguel, who in 1828 dethroned his niece with the support of the absolutist powers. Don Pedro then came to Europe to champion his daughter’s cause against his brother, who, after a long struggle, was defeated in 1834. M. was then declared of age and married a son of the former viceroy of Italy, Eugenio di Beauharnais. Widowed after only two months, she contracted a new marriage with Prince Ferdinando di Coburgo, by whom she had two sons who subsequently reigned over Portugal, Pietro V and Luigi I.
The twenty years of her government were ravaged by continual civil struggles, fomented by the “miguelists” at the very time when neighbouring Spain was being torn apart by the wars between the “carlists” and the “cristinos”; thus M. in Portugal and Maria Cristina in Spain embodied the liberal current in opposition to don Miguel and don Carlos, representatives of legitimism.
For a considerable time her ecclesiastical policy was sectarian and persecutory: the nuncio was forcibly expelled, the ecclesiastical forum was abolished, the newly elected bishops were removed, all religious Orders were banished, and even the patriarchate of Lisbon was suppressed. In 1853 M. amended the kingdom’s constitutional charter by an acto adicional, and the following year died in childbirth at the age of thirty-four.