Editing Távora affair (section)

== Arrests, trial and sentence ==
[[Image:Execução do Duque de Aveiro e do Marquês de Tavora.jpg|thumb|The way the Duke of Aveiro and the Marquis of Tavora were executed.]]Over a thousand arrests were made.<ref name=":0">{{Cite book |last=Saraiva |first=José Hermano |title=História concisa de Portugal (10th edition, in Portuguese) |publisher=Publicações Europa-América |year=1986 |pages=250}}</ref> In the following weeks the Marchioness Leonor de Távora, her husband the Count of Alvor, and all of their sons, daughters, and grandchildren were imprisoned. Alleged conspirators, the Duke of Aveiro and the Távoras' sons-in-law, the [[Marquis of Alorna]], and the [[Count of Atouguia]], were arrested with their families. The Jesuits were considered implicated in the attack, and Gabriel Malagrida, the Jesuit confessor of Leonor de Távora, was also arrested.<ref name=":0"/>
[[Image:Suplício da Marquesa de Távora (Sociedade de Socorros Mútuos Marquês de Pombal).png|thumb|The execution of Marquise Leonor Tomásia de Távora.]]
All were accused of high treason and attempted regicide. The evidence presented in their common trial was simple: a) the confessions of the executed assassins; b) the murder weapon belonging to the Duke of Aveiro; and c) the assumption that only the Távoras would have known the whereabouts of the king on that evening since he was returning from a liaison with Teresa de Távora.{{citation needed|date=November 2023}}

During the trial intense violence and torture were used to obtain confessions. That was legal, but even witnesses for the prosecution were tortured, which was not permitted by law.<ref name=":0" />{{sfn|Oliveira Santos|2017|p=58}} Their estates were confiscated by the crown, even before the trial,{{sfn|Oliveira Santos|2017|p=58}} their palaces in Lisbon destroyed and its soil [[Salting the earth|salted]], their name erased from the peerage and their [[coat-of-arms]] outlawed. Most historians agree that the whole process was "full of omissions, judicial contradictions and calumnies."<ref>{{Cite book |last=Dutra |first=Francis A. |title=The Wounding of King José I: Accident or Assassination Attempt? |publisher=Penn State University Press (in Mediterranean Studies, Vol. 7 (1998) |year=1998 |pages=221–229}}</ref>
[[File:Chegada_da_Suprema_Junta_da_Inconfidência_a_Belém_para_arrasar_e_salgar_o_chão_do_Palácio_dos_Duques_de_Aveiro_(1759)_-_Bartolomeu_da_Costa_(Museu_de_Lisboa).png|thumb|300x300px|''Chegada da Suprema Junta da Inconfidência ao Sítio de Belém...'', painting by Bartolomeu da Costa, 1759, depicting the demolition and salting of José Mascarenhas' palace by the Suprema Junta da Inconfidência.]]
A special court, the ''Suprema Junta da Inconfidência'', was authorised to invent the sentences to be imposed on those convicted, because none of those laid down in the law seemed severe enough for them.<ref name=":0"/>{{sfn|Oliveira Santos|2017|p=11}} The original sentence ordered the execution of entire families, including women and children. Only the intervention of Queen [[Mariana Victoria of Spain|Mariana]] and [[Maria I of Portugal|Maria Francisca]], heiress to the throne, saved most of them.{{Citation needed|date=December 2019}}

The Marchioness, however, was not spared. She and the other defendants sentenced to death were publicly tortured and executed on 13 January 1759, in a field near Lisbon. The King was present at the executions with his bewildered court. The Távoras were their peers and kin, but the prime minister wanted the lesson driven home.

=== Executions ===
In [[Belém, Lisbon|Belém]], during the night from the 12 to the 13 January 1759,  a scaffold was built. In the morning, Marquise Leonor de Távora went up the stairs between two priests. Three executioners showed her the instruments of execution one by one, and explained to her  how her husband, her children, and her daughter's husband would die: the sledgehammer to break the chests and the bones, the [[garrote]] to strangulate. Then one executioner made her sit down, blindfolded, and beheaded her.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Castelo Branco |first=Camilo |title=Perfil do Marquês de Pombal |publisher=Lopes & Ca. |year=1900 |pages=17 |language=pt}}</ref>

Then the Marquise's sons, José Maria de Távora and Luís Bernardo, came forward for the execution. They were tied to an ''aspa'' (a St. Andrew's Cross) and at the same time as the main executioner put them to death by garrote, his helpers broke their bones with sledgehammers. Similarly executed were Jerónimo de Ataíde, Count of Atouguia, and the commoners Manuel Álvares Ferreira, Brás José Romeiro, and João Miguel.{{sfn|Oliveira Santos|2017|p=34-36}}

Finally, the Marquis of Távora and José Mascarenhas, Duke of Aveiro were executed after showing them the dismembered bodies, and the instruments of their deaths. Bound to the ''aspas'', they were struck with an eight kilogram sledgehammer until they died.{{sfn|Oliveira Santos|2017|p=34-36}}

Afterward, the ground was salted, to prevent future growth of vegetation. To this day, in this location there remains an alley called ''Beco do Chão Salgado'' ("Alley of the Salted Ground"); on its corner stands a shame memorial with an inscription just below waist height, overlooked by no saints' statues in niches - this disposition effectively converted the memorial into a popular public urinal.{{cn|date=May 2025}} The inscription on the monument (translated to English) reads:

::''In this place were razed to the ground and salted the houses of José Mascarenhas, stripped of the honours of Duque de Aveiro and others, convicted by sentence proclaimed in the Supreme Court of Inconfidences on the 12th of January 1759. Brought to Justice as one of the leaders of the most barbarous and execrable upheaval that, on the night of the 3rd of September 1758, was committed against the most royal and sacred person of the Lord Joseph I. On this infamous land nothing may be built for all time''.