History of Portugal (1834–1910)
Militant Republicans and their allies in the Carbonária were not willing to remain in the shadows of the constitutional monarchy. Between 4–5 October 1910, members of the Carbonária, republican youth, and elements of the army instigated a coup d'état against the already weak constitutional monarchy. The young king and his family, after a few miscues, escaped from the Palace in Mafra to exile in England. On the morning of 5 October 1910, the Republic was declared from the balcony of Lisbon City Hall, ending eight centuries of monarchy in Portugal.
History of Portugal (1777–1834)
In Brazil, Pedro faced other challenges to his newborn country; the people clearly did not wish to return to colonial status and subservience to the politics and economy of the much smaller kingdom of Portugal. The Brazilian constitution prohibited the Emperor from subsuming another crown; this fact obliged Pedro to choose between Portugal or Brazil. Pedro, a pragmatic politician, tried to find a solution that would reconcile the desires of the liberal, moderate and absolutist elements in the debate, and eventually chose to abdicate as king of Portugal (28 May 1826) in favor of his eldest daughter Princess Maria da Glória, who was seven years old at the time. The abdication was conditional: Portugal should receive a new Constitution, i.e., the 1826 Charter, and his brother Miguel, exiled in Vienna, was to marry the Princess when she came of age. The Constitution was not popular with the absolutists (who wanted Prince Miguel to govern as an absolute monarch), but the liberal "Vintistas" also did not support the Charter (which was imposed by the King); moderates bided their time as a counter-revolution was slowly building.