Welcome to the Official page of the Presidency of the Portuguese Republic

Mayor of Sobral de Monte Agraço,
Chief of the Army General Staff,
Ladies and Gentlemen,

Sobral de Monte Agraço has a fundamental place in the celebrations of the bicentenary of the Linhas de Torres Fortifications.

Considered as one of the most efficient fortification systems in history, this was built with the work of thousands of Portuguese.

We are quite near to the Alqueidão Fort, the largest of all the forts erected to counteract the movement of the invader and the true command post.

Its privileged situation allowed overseeing the whole of the battlefield between the river Tagus and the sea.

The building of the Fort commenced on 4 November 1809. Less than a year later the invader, to his great surprise, was confronted with this impenetrable barrier.

And it was here, in Sobral de Monte Agraço, that on 12 and 14 October 1810, the more violent fighting took place. After this, the French army was forced to retire.

This was the last stronghold. The invading forces did not overcome it.

After having retired the French armies never again entered Portuguese territory.

It was the end of a Europe governed by force and the beginning of a Europe based on will.

It seemed impossible.

Impossible because it was contrary to the world as it then was, to the law of submission to the strongest, to the law imposed by the most powerful army in the world, which had dominated everyone.

But the impossible did not exist for those Portuguese and they achieved it.

The French army’s General Thiébault left in his memoirs a picture of the feelings of the invader. The frustrated conquest of Portugal was, in his opinion, the cause of all of Napoleon’s disasters which had he not entered Portugal, would have been avoided:
“... the humbling we had to suffer when our most celebrated generals failed against peasants and against Wellington.”

Peasants against generals!

It is true that it was the allied armies that obliged the invader to retire. But the general insurrection of the common people was decisive.

French historian François Guizot rightly accentuated the importance of the rising of the Portuguese. “The whole of the people were insurgent” against Marshal Junot. “The impassioned rebellion of the Portuguese people” opposed Marshal Soult.

The Portuguese thus gave proof of courage in action. What was the reason for this?

They did so because it was their land which was being taken.

They did so because they rejected becoming expatriates in heir own Fatherland.

They did so because they refused to submit in the name of a way of life.

They did so because they wanted to live in accordance with what they were and with what they had.

Ant thus victory, which had seemed impossible, became inevitable. In a pamphlet which had been published in Lisbon in 1809, with the title “Recipe against the moral sickness called fear that they may come back”, a final victory was already promised, based upon a decisive reasoning that the Emperor Napoleon and other peoples less disposed to fight for their freedom had not yet understood: France did not have a sufficient number of men for a battle which was not just that of “annihilating armies, but to fight the people”.

However, in Portugal, it fought against a people which wanted to continue free.

Moments like this are thus important, moments in which we tell ourselves stories about what we are and what we have been able to accomplish This is our most valuable heritage, because it contains memories and values which distinguish us and hold us together.

Those Portuguese achieved the impossible in spite of the suffering and the sacrifices to which they were submitted.

Everyone was surprised with the capability of the Portuguese to bear the consequences of the adopted strategy.

General Wellington made himself very clear, in August 1810, in his Proclamation to the People of Portugal: “The Portuguese now see that they have no other remedy for the evil that threatens them except their determination to resist. Resistance and determination to make the enemy’s advance as difficult as possible, taking out of his path everything that could be of any value or which could contribute to his sustenance, and to frustrate his progress.”

Here, in Sobral de Monte Agraço, we celebrate, calling upon his example, the capacity to resist and the capacity for suffering of the Portuguese.

The efforts they took and the sacrifices they made ensured our freedom. But these were also based upon the hope for a better life.

Those who took up arms, those that resisted, believed in the future as a possibility, as a means to overcome the difficulties of the present. They hoped it would be the Portuguese to take upon themselves the decisions which would set their destiny.

Also today, as always, it is expected that we will take upon ourselves the finding of the required decisions.

It is said that we have difficulty in bearing setbacks, especially when these demand efforts.

It is important that, in addition to momentary courage and to the urgency, in addition to courage as an occasional virtue, as an impulse, we should also have the courage of steadiness, the capability to firmly and durably maintain the position indispensable for the building of a better future.

I am certain that we will know how to be deserving of those Portuguese that, in the past, bequeathed us examples of civic courage, such as happened here in Sobral de Monte Agraço.

Thank you.