João Ayres de Campos was born in Coimbra, the eldest son of João Maria Correia Ayres de Campos and his wife Maria Amélia de Sande Mexia Vieira da Mota, niece and sole heir of Carlos Pinto Vieira da Mota, 1st Count of Juncal. He was granted the courtesy title Viscount of Ameal (Portuguese: Visconde do Ameal) by Carlos I of Portugal in 1901, at the age of 23, upon his father's accession to the peerage as Count of Ameal. These titles were confirmed by king Manuel II in exile in 1920.[2] He succeeded to the comital title at his father's death in 1920.
On 21 November 1901 he married Maria Benedita Falcão Barbosa de Azevedo e Bourbon, of a prominent Bragan family, and sister of the 2nd Count of Azevedo.
Revolutionary politics and attempted coup
Plans of Mesnier de Ponsard's elevator near the Municipal Library in Lisbon, owned by the then Viscount of Ameal
With several members of this group and in cooperation with Costa's Republican Party, João (then styled Viscount of Ameal) was involved in the failed Municipal Library Elevator Coup, one month before the Lisbon Regicide.[4] The coup derives its name from the large public elevator designed by Raoul Mesnier de Ponsard [pt] and owned by Ameal near Lisbon City Hall outside which the conspirators assembled on the afternoon of 28 January 1908, and where many were arrested when a policeman became suspicious as the elevator was not in service.[5][6] Its organisers were opposed to the administrative dictatorship of Prime Minister João Franco, and to King Carlos I's perceived protection of Franco's Liberal Regeneration Party.
Unlike co-conspirators Afonso Costa, António Egas Moniz and the Viscount of Ribeira Brava, among others, Ameal avoided arrest, having managed to escape to Galicia disguised as a campino;[7][8] a detailed plan for the intended coup was however found among his papers, testifying to his prominence in the plot.[9] In a later interview to the Spanish periodical La Voz de Galicia, he reminisced about his involvement in the attempted revolution, acknowledging that he had hosted the conspirators in his property and given them a key to the premises of the elevator. He did not, however, elaborate on the extent of his participation in the tentative coup d'etat.[10]
Later life
Ameal remained in Spain after the dismantlement of the Elevador conspiracy, and only resumed his political career upon the proclamation of the Portuguese Republic on 5 October 1910. His later public life was developed under the auspices of the First Portuguese Republic. However, he eventually became disillusioned with the new regime's instability, and by the early 1930s he welcomed the dawn of Salazar's authoritarian Estado Novo – of which his son João Francisco de Barbosa Azevedo de Sande Ayres de Campos, later 3rd Count of Ameal, was one of the leading ideologues.[11]
He and his wife were killed in a car accident in Ota, near Lisbon, in 1952.[12] He is buried in the monumental Gothic Revival mausoleum of the Counts of Ameal in Coimbra's Conchada cemetery.[13]
His only son, a prolific author and a committed monarchist, succeeded to his titles.[14]
References
^Various authors, Nobreza de Portugal e Brasil (Lisbon, 1983), vol. II, p. 275.
^Various authors, Anuário da Nobreza de Portugal (Lisboa, 1985), vol. I, p. 220.
^Abreu, Jorge de, O 5 de Outubro – A Revolução Portuguesa (Texto Editores, 2010), chapter VI, "A 'ratoeira' do elevador, insucesso do complot".
^Cabral, António. O Agonizar da Monarchia: Erros e Crimes. Novas Revelações (Lisbon: José Franco, 1931), p. 210: "No dia 28 de janeiro, pela tarde, alguns conjurados reuniram-se no elevador da Bibliotheca, pertencente ao deputado dissidente, sr. visconde do Ameal, que lhes facultou a respectiva chave, como elle proprio declarou, mais tarde, n'uma interview do jornal La Voz de Galicia. O local era propicio: d'ali, se a revolução vingasse, os conspiradores não teriam de dar muitos passos para irem acclamar a republica, da varanda da Camara Municipal."
^Rocha Martins (Lisboa: José Bastos [no date]), p. 66: "o elevador era pertença do visconde [sic] do Ameal, e estava há alguns dias parado".
^Ilustração Portugueza (1908), p. 253: "Outros dos seus correligionarios conseguem pôr-se a salvo, como os srs. visconde do Ameal, que se refugia na Galliza, e visconde de Predralva, que é detido em Encinasola, povoado de Hespanha."
^Rocha Martins, Vermelhos, brancos e azuis: homens de estado, homens de armas, homens de letras, vols. 3–4 (Lisbon: Vida Mundial, 1948), p. 48: "Ele estava com os seus cúmplices no elevador da Biblioteca Pública, que não funcionava e era pertença do visconde do Ameal, dissidente e conjurado. Este fugiu, vestido de campino, entre os guardas de gado do grande lavrador Palha Blanco, que apesar de receber D. Carlos em casa e de se dizer um amigo, não hesitara em ajudar à. fuga do titular que tentava contra a Monarquia. "
^Ribeiro, Armando, A Revolução Portuguesa (Lisbon: J. Romano Torres, 1912), p. 236 "[...] e o Visconde do Ameal, este portador de importantes instrucções para a revolução."
^Cabral, António. O Agonizar da Monarchia: Erros e Crimes. Novas Revelações (Lisbon: José Franco, 1931), p. 210.
^Pinto, Antonieta Maria da Silva. João Ameal, o historiador do regime. Dissertação de Mestrado em História Contemporânea de Portugal (Coimbra, 2003).
^Various authors, "Ameal (Condes de)" in Enciclopédia Luso-Brasileira, vol. II, Lisboa, 1965, p. 311-312.
^Paulo Duarte de Almeida, Pedras de Armas nos Cemitérios de Coimbra (Instituto de Genealogia e Heráldica da Universidade do Porto, 2012), p. 81.
^Ernesto Castro Leal, "A Cruzada Nacional D. Nuno Álvares Pereira e as origens do Estado Novo (1918–1938)", in Análise Social, vol. xxxiii (148), 1998 (4.°), pp. 823–851: 833.
