Speaker 1: Welcome to Noble Blood, a production of I Heart Radio
Speaker 1: and Grimm and Mild from Aaron Minkie. Listener discretion is advised.
Speaker 1: It was September third, seventeen fifty eight. Just as it
Speaker 1: was crossing over into the early morning hours of September four,
Speaker 1: the King of Portugal was riding in a carriage down
Speaker 1: a dark back road, returning from the outskirts of Lisbon,
Speaker 1: back towards the tents of a Judah where court had
Speaker 1: been set up. King jose often anglicized to Joseph the
Speaker 1: First was a man fond of heavy powdered wigs that
Speaker 1: reached down to his back, and wearing brocade clothing that
Speaker 1: allowed him to stand out in a crowd. But this
Speaker 1: night he was traveling in cognito. His carriage was unmarked,
Speaker 1: and none of his footmen wore palace livery, and they
Speaker 1: were taking a particular lead, dark and sparsely traveled road,
Speaker 1: because on this night the king was returning from a
Speaker 1: rendezvous with his mistress, his very married mistress Teresa. Suddenly
Speaker 1: his carriage jolted to a stop. A horse whinnied, but
Speaker 1: then there was silence. Just as the king was readying
Speaker 1: himself to ask the driver what was going on. A
Speaker 1: shot ring out through the night, then another shot, and
Speaker 1: the King pulled the curtains of the carriage open to
Speaker 1: reveal two highwaymen before a third shot pierced the silence
Speaker 1: and the King screamed. The bullet had hit him in
Speaker 1: his side, in his arm, and another shot had wounded
Speaker 1: the driver without taking anything. The highwayman rode off. King
Speaker 1: Jose survived the bullet wound, but that night would have
Speaker 1: deadly consequences. Nonetheless, we don't know if those highwaymen were
Speaker 1: an assassination at Hunt or whether they were just two
Speaker 1: petty thieves who happened to come across the wrong carriage.
Speaker 1: But King Jose's prime minister would use that evening to
Speaker 1: wipe out the Portuguese nobility in an elaborate conspiracy that
Speaker 1: would cause the nation to fall into a decades long
Speaker 1: reign of terror and paranoia. Ralph Waldo Emerson Apocryphalle has said,
Speaker 1: when you strike at the king, you must kill him.
Speaker 1: But I think more people are familiar with a quote
Speaker 1: from the character Omar Little from Television to the Wire,
Speaker 1: who said succinctly, when you come at the king, you
Speaker 1: best not miss I'm Danis Schwartz, and this is noble blood.
Speaker 1: The story of the Taveras family's downfall actually begins with
Speaker 1: an earthquake. One of the most significant earthquakes ever to
Speaker 1: hit Portugal, the seventeen fifty five Lisbon earthquake, hit on
Speaker 1: a Saturday morning. The sky up until then had been
Speaker 1: of scenely blue, the type of clear blue that only
Speaker 1: comes in early fall, when the sunlight knows exactly how
Speaker 1: to hit the ocean and reflect on to the city.
Speaker 1: It was All Saint's Day, November first, and though it
Speaker 1: had been unseasonably warm, there were still candles lit all
Speaker 1: around the city, in churches and in homes. At nine
Speaker 1: thirty five in the morning, there was a low rumble,
Speaker 1: and then the city was torn in half. It had
Speaker 1: just been a gentle shaking for about a minute, but
Speaker 1: then the shaking became violent for five full minutes. The
Speaker 1: earth shook with an earthquake that seismologists estimate had a
Speaker 1: magnitude of eight point four. A fissure fifteen feet wide
Speaker 1: emerged in the city center. The aftermath was chaos. Every
Speaker 1: major church in Lisbon had collapsed, killing the worshippers inside
Speaker 1: in small buildings constructed close together. The Portuguese population panicked.
Speaker 1: Those who weren't immediately trapped under the collapsing rubble of
Speaker 1: their homes rushed out into the street. Many people ran
Speaker 1: to the flat expanse of the shoreline, where at least
Speaker 1: there was no rubble falling from the sky. A few
Speaker 1: hundred people crowded onto a dock to watch. The city
Speaker 1: finished shaking, but the disaster wasn't over yet. The sea
Speaker 1: pulled back, revealing the skeletons of shipwrecks that had been
Speaker 1: lost in the bay, and then the tsunami became visible.
Speaker 1: Curling over the horizon. From up the Tagus River came
Speaker 1: a wave that reached a height of eighteen feet, turning
Speaker 1: over boats and carrying away with that everything and everyone
Speaker 1: in its path. The dock outed with people, sank and
Speaker 1: disappeared in silence. The fires destroyed what was left of
Speaker 1: the city. Candles and cooking fires knocked over by the
Speaker 1: shaking quickly engulfed flammable wooden houses, and then the flames
Speaker 1: leaped from house to house, leveling entire neighborhoods. Between the
Speaker 1: earthquake and the subsequent tsunami and fires, more than twelve
Speaker 1: thousand people died in Lisbon alone, over ten of the population,
Speaker 1: and that's a conservative estimate. Some write that the number
Speaker 1: might have been as high as thirty thousand souls. Lisbon
Speaker 1: became a shell of a city, broken buildings and people
Speaker 1: gutted by flood and fire. In the royal palace in
Speaker 1: the suburbs of Lisbon, the royal family huddled together in fear.
Speaker 1: The King Jose huddled with his wife Mariana Victoria, and
Speaker 1: held his three daughters close. All of their cheeks were
Speaker 1: wet with tears. When at last the shaking stopped and
Speaker 1: it became clear that they all had survived, the king
Speaker 1: pulled himself up on shaking legs and looked to one
Speaker 1: of his ministers, Sebastio Jose Carvallo Melo. Later Carrio would
Speaker 1: become the Marquis de Pomball, but that's the title most
Speaker 1: history texts refer to him by, so for clarity, that's
Speaker 1: what we'll call him. This whole time. The king was
Speaker 1: still ashen faced when he found his minister, impossibly poised,
Speaker 1: impossibly standing. What do we do, the king asked, through
Speaker 1: pale lips, Your majesty, Pomball replied, let us bury the
Speaker 1: dead and help the living. From that moment, Pomball became
Speaker 1: the central authoritarian power in Portugal. He handled the aftermath
Speaker 1: of the earthquake with decisive and comprehensive action, rebuilding the
Speaker 1: city and disbanding the groups of looters who were stealing
Speaker 1: possessions from the dead in the streets. On the scientific level,
Speaker 1: Pomball's leadership was invaluable. He distributed questionnaires to the citizens
Speaker 1: of Portugal about the duration and damaged of the quake
Speaker 1: that they experienced, and those records are still available one
Speaker 1: of the first seismology reports of its kind in history.
Speaker 1: King Jose was not a leader who liked to lead.
Speaker 1: He was the type of leader who preferred to lounge
Speaker 1: with his family or his mistresses in nice, well appointed
Speaker 1: rooms while other people took care of the boring matters
Speaker 1: of running a nation. Fortunately for him, Pomball was more
Speaker 1: than willing to step in. Born to a lowly country gentleman,
Speaker 1: Pomball worked his way up to the upper echelons of
Speaker 1: Portuguese idy, but he never dropped his intrinsic resentment of
Speaker 1: the noble families, the people who were born into power
Speaker 1: and looked down on him for his low birth, how
Speaker 1: could he not resent them? It was obvious the nobles
Speaker 1: hated him. When he married the niece of a prominent official,
Speaker 1: her family could barely contain their disappointment at her social falling.
Speaker 1: But it wasn't just the nobles. The Jesuits in Portugal
Speaker 1: too were a threat to him and his political ambitions.
Speaker 1: Prominent Jesuit priests like Father Gabriel Malagrida, we're going around
Speaker 1: town after the earthquake, implying that it was the consequence
Speaker 1: of God's disfavor with the direction of the country. Malagrida
Speaker 1: didn't outwardly say it was God punishing the King's and,
Speaker 1: by extension, Pombal's leadership, but he didn't have to. It
Speaker 1: was implied, and the Jesuits continued to be a thorn
Speaker 1: in Pomball's side. He suspected them for blocking an earlier
Speaker 1: marriage match he wanted. They blocked his motion to grant
Speaker 1: privileges to Jews in Portugal if they helped with the
Speaker 1: rebuilding efforts, and that's to say nothing of what they
Speaker 1: were doing down in Brazil, making expansion more difficult by
Speaker 1: organizing and converting natives. The earthquake was the moment, Pumbault
Speaker 1: cemented his control over King Jose, but he wouldn't have
Speaker 1: complete domination over Portugal until a few years later, when
Speaker 1: he saw an opportunity and knew exactly how to exploit it.
Speaker 1: After the earthquake in Lisbon, King Jose suffered from paranoia
Speaker 1: and claustrophobia. He refused to remain inside his palace, and
Speaker 1: so court was moved to a tent city on the
Speaker 1: outskirts of Lisbon, where King Jose wouldn't have nightmares of
Speaker 1: rocks collapsing in on him while he slept. It was
Speaker 1: on his way back to his royal tent after a
Speaker 1: visit with his mistress that King Jose ran into two
Speaker 1: would be assassins that held up his carriage. King Jose
Speaker 1: was shot in the arm and shoulder and his driver
Speaker 1: was badly wounded, but both survived and made it back
Speaker 1: to court, bloodied and terrified. How had this assassination attempt happened?
Speaker 1: The carriage was unmarked from the outside, with no indications
Speaker 1: that it contained the King. He had been driving on
Speaker 1: a dark back road, and more importantly, nobody knew where
Speaker 1: he was, well, almost nobody knew where he was. The
Speaker 1: King's mistress had known where he was, didn't she They
Speaker 1: had planned their rendezvous in advance, and the mistress, Teresa
Speaker 1: de Tavora, was married to a man named Louis Bernardo,
Speaker 1: heir to the Tavora family. Who else could have organized
Speaker 1: the assassination attempt but the powerful Tavara family, the elite
Speaker 1: group of nobles who hated Pomball and knew that the
Speaker 1: only way to get rid of him was to get
Speaker 1: of the king who loved and trusted him. Before word
Speaker 1: of the would be assassination had even been made public,
Speaker 1: Pombal sprang into action. He opened an investigation and swiftly
Speaker 1: arrested two men who allegedly had been the one who
Speaker 1: had tried to kill the king. The two men were
Speaker 1: hanged before anyone could ask any more questions, but who
Speaker 1: had hired them? By December, Pombal put together a special
Speaker 1: court to investigate whether the assassination had been under the
Speaker 1: orders of the Tavara family. Officers arrested the entire Tavara family,
Speaker 1: the Marquise, his wife Lenore, their sons, and several grandchildren,
Speaker 1: and they also arrested the Jesuit Gabriel Malagrida, who was
Speaker 1: a close friend of the family and Leonora's personal confessor.
Speaker 1: Pombal additionally came for the Duke of a Viral. King
Speaker 1: Jose only had daughters, and for a while people believed
Speaker 1: that the Duke of a Viro was going to be
Speaker 1: the next in line to take the throne, until the
Speaker 1: king had decreed that his daughter Maria would be next
Speaker 1: in line. The Tavora plot was surely an attempt to
Speaker 1: make the Duke king. Pomball's court was granted special dispensation
Speaker 1: to use torture to find out and lo and behold
Speaker 1: under torture, the Duke and to Tavara servants confessed to
Speaker 1: the entire plot. The servants would later retract their statements,
Speaker 1: but it was too late. The entire Tavara family was guilty,
Speaker 1: and Pombal would make sure that everyone in Portugal knew it.
Speaker 1: For organizing an attempt to kill the king, the courts
Speaker 1: sentenced seven nobles to death, the Marquis and his wife,
Speaker 1: their sons and two sons in laws, and the Duke
Speaker 1: of a Viro. There would be usurper Three servants were
Speaker 1: also sentenced, and all ten were killed on a single
Speaker 1: massive stage erected in Lisbon. The scaffold was eighteen feet
Speaker 1: high so that everyone would be sure to get a
Speaker 1: good view. The King himself was in the audience that afternoon,
Speaker 1: and all other Portuguese nobles were required to attend so
Speaker 1: that the fate of the Tavoras would be a lesson
Speaker 1: to them. First to die was the marchioness Leonora. She
Speaker 1: was led up the scaffold by a rope around her
Speaker 1: neck with her hands tied behind her back. Because she
Speaker 1: was a woman, she was permitted a quick death sitting
Speaker 1: in a chair, and an executioner slicing off her head.
Speaker 1: Her twenty one year old son came next. He was
Speaker 1: tied to a cross for his arms and legs were
Speaker 1: broken with iron clubs. He was finally strangled to death
Speaker 1: before his corpse was flattened upon a wheel. The same
Speaker 1: fate befell his brother and his brother in laws, and
Speaker 1: three servants, until all of their bodies were broken and
Speaker 1: bloodied on their own individual wheels on the scaffold. The
Speaker 1: Tavora patriarch was bound on a Saint Andrew's cross and
Speaker 1: beaten with an iron rod before he was stabbed through
Speaker 1: the chest. The Duke of a Viro was similarly tortured,
Speaker 1: beaten until his arms, thighs, and calves were all broken,
Speaker 1: and then beaten on the chest until he was dead.
Speaker 1: Each one of the ten Tavara conspirators was forced to
Speaker 1: watch all of the deaths of those who preceded him.
Speaker 1: When it was finally over and the blood dripped beneath
Speaker 1: the scaffolding, all of the bodies were burned at the stake,
Speaker 1: and the entire scaffolding then was set on fire. The
Speaker 1: flames of all of it and the greasy black smoke
Speaker 1: coughed into the sky for hours until only ash was left.
Speaker 1: The ash they swept into the river. But public execution
Speaker 1: wasn't enough punishment for the Tavaras, Pombal banned their family
Speaker 1: crest and had their palaces raised to the ground. Stone
Speaker 1: by stone. Salt was sprinkled on the earth so that
Speaker 1: nothing could grow there ever again. Plaques were erected in
Speaker 1: stone forbidding anything to be built upon the cursed ground
Speaker 1: that had belonged to traders. Pombal had wanted to go further,
Speaker 1: had wanted to execute more of the Tavara women and
Speaker 1: children as well, but King Jose's wife and daughter intervened
Speaker 1: and so instead the Tavara women and children were all
Speaker 1: just banished and imprisoned to various convents. Among the imprisoned
Speaker 1: was the king's former mistress Teresa. She lived out the
Speaker 1: rest of her life in a convent. The king protected
Speaker 1: her enough so that she was granted a pension and
Speaker 1: was permitted to receive visitors in her cell. They say
Speaker 1: that for the rest of her life, whenever the King's
Speaker 1: barge went by and the nuns and servants would rush
Speaker 1: to the windows to catch a glimpse of him, Teresa
Speaker 1: would break down weeping. Pombal also implicated the Jesuits in
Speaker 1: the Tavara plot. He couldn't outright accuse them of treason,
Speaker 1: but he had nine prominent Jesuits imprisoned at the infamous Unchariafort,
Speaker 1: including Father Malagrida. The Jesuits were among fifty prominent members
Speaker 1: of Portuguese society that Pombal had imprisoned under increasingly thin
Speaker 1: pretenses through the jurisdiction of the Tribunal of High Treason.
Speaker 1: The tribunal did not disband after the mass execution of
Speaker 1: the tavaras it continued on locking up nobles for perceived
Speaker 1: slights and possible disloyalties for the wrong whisper of a
Speaker 1: piece of gossip at a cafe overheard in Lisbon. All
Speaker 1: we know from what it was like to be imprisoned
Speaker 1: in the fort of the Isolation, and the misery is
Speaker 1: from a marquis who wrote an account of his imprisonment
Speaker 1: using inky made by scraping paint off the woodwork on
Speaker 1: his jail cell and dissolving it in vinegar that came
Speaker 1: with his meals in isolation. Gabriella Malagrida's devotion turned to fanaticism,
Speaker 1: turned to madness. He raved speaking to himself and claiming
Speaker 1: that Saint and God himself were talking to him. As
Speaker 1: a member of the clergy, he was above secular law enforcement,
Speaker 1: and so a special inquisition presided over his arrest and trial.
Speaker 1: Conveniently enough, the grand inquisitor happened to be Pomball's brother.
Speaker 1: The charges were lengthy and elaborate. Malagrida was accused of
Speaker 1: sacred religious utterances, hypocrisy, imposture, and more. When Malagrida was
Speaker 1: forced to answer for his crimes during the inquisition, the
Speaker 1: old man, then seventy three years old, was so disoriented
Speaker 1: and mad that he couldn't respond to the questions. One
Speaker 1: of the judges, a Dominican priest, quietly remarked that these
Speaker 1: proceedings weren't right, that they shouldn't be doing this to
Speaker 1: a man who clearly wasn't in his right mind. It
Speaker 1: was strongly suggested that that Dominican priest relocate to an
Speaker 1: overseas bishop position. Before Malagrida was executed. The reading of
Speaker 1: his charges took two hours. At the request of the
Speaker 1: inquisition that no blood be shed, he was strangled to
Speaker 1: death and then burnt at the stake. His ashes were
Speaker 1: scattered to the wind. Pomba would complete his final revenge
Speaker 1: against the Jesuit when he expelled them all from Portugal
Speaker 1: on September three, the anniversary of the ill fated assassination
Speaker 1: attempt that ignited it all. For nineteen years, Pombal would
Speaker 1: rule Portugal as an Enlightenment era despot, an authoritarian ruler
Speaker 1: who imprisoned all who challenged him while fancying himself a
Speaker 1: modern and benevolent ruler for a new era. But his
Speaker 1: power would only last as long as the king did.
Speaker 1: When King Jose finally died in seventeen seventy one, his
Speaker 1: daughter Maria the first took power as Queen. Maria had
Speaker 1: no problem with the Jesuits and liked the nobles. She
Speaker 1: reopened the Tavara case and vindicated almost everyone involved. Those
Speaker 1: who still survived in prison or convents were released. As
Speaker 1: for Pombal, she took no real punitive action against him
Speaker 1: for what really, in effect, had been an act of treason.
Speaker 1: Maybe she thought he had been acting on her father's orders,
Speaker 1: or maybe she just took pity on a man who,
Speaker 1: by then himself was in his seventies. Pombal was stripped
Speaker 1: of his position and banished from Lisbon. In fact, Maria
Speaker 1: insisted that her father's former prime minister remained more than
Speaker 1: twenty miles away from her at all times, in what
Speaker 1: some might consider to be history's first restraining order. Now
Speaker 1: nearly three hundred years later, it's impossible to know the
Speaker 1: truth of the case. Whether there had been an elaborate
Speaker 1: conspiracy on the part of the Tavara Is to kill
Speaker 1: the king, or whether the king, riding in an unmarked
Speaker 1: carriage on a dark road, just happened to be set
Speaker 1: upon by highwaymen. There's a lot of evidence for that. Obviously,
Speaker 1: there's no real proof that the Tavaras were guilty. None
Speaker 1: of them fled town after the King survived the gunshots,
Speaker 1: which you know they might have wanted to do if
Speaker 1: they had organized it, And the only proof that led
Speaker 1: to their execution were fashions under torture. But I will
Speaker 1: say this, if the Tavoras had tried to take down
Speaker 1: pombal Via the king, can you really blame them? But
Speaker 1: you know what they say, when you come at the King,
Speaker 1: your best not miss. There's still a plaque if you
Speaker 1: go to Lisbon written in stone at the place where
Speaker 1: the Duke of a Viro's palace once stood. The letters
Speaker 1: are hard to make out, and of course it's in Portuguese,
Speaker 1: but you can see it alongside a tiny side street
Speaker 1: called the Alley of the Salted Earth. The plaque reads
Speaker 1: in this place were put to the ground and salted.
Speaker 1: The houses of Jose Masquerins, stripped of the honors of
Speaker 1: Duke of a Viro and others, convicted by sentence proclaimed
Speaker 1: in the High Court on the twelfth of January, put
Speaker 1: to justice as one of the leaders of the most
Speaker 1: barbarous upheavals that on the night of the third of
Speaker 1: September was committed against the most royal and sacred person
Speaker 1: of the King, Joseph, the first in this infamous land.
Speaker 1: Nothing may be built for all time. The plaque wasn't
Speaker 1: exactly heated. Google Earth is an amazing thing. If you
Speaker 1: look up the alley of the salted Earth Becco Desha Salgado,
Speaker 1: you'll find that something has been built there. Pombal's revenge
Speaker 1: wasn't entirely carried out. Now at that corner of an
Speaker 1: alley stands. Who would have guessed a Starbucks. Noble Blood
Speaker 1: is a production of I Heart Radio and Grimm and
Speaker 1: Mild from Aaron Minky. The show was written and hosted
Speaker 1: by Danis Schwartz and produced by Aaron Manky, Matt Frederick,
Speaker 1: Alex Williams, and Trevor Young. Noble Blood is on social
Speaker 1: media at Noble Blood Tales, and you can learn more
Speaker 1: about the show over at Noble Blood Tales dot com.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts from I Heart Radio, visit the I
Speaker 1: Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
Speaker 1: your favorite shows. M