Despite his bias, the revolution of 1820 owes a lot to him: without him it would have remained in the shadows, unloved by Liberal historiography, since Herculano had dismissed it as a demagogic revolution of words, not deeds, unlike the rupture represented by the triumph over D. Miguel, in 1834. He returned to it the mysticism that it only enjoyed from the mouths of its own protagonists. In 1820 the nation had risen up against the absolute monarchy and the “English invaders”, after which the constitutional cortes had assembled to draft a constitution that was unparalleled for its “democratic spirit”.

In Arriaga’s discourse are embedded two keys concepts that inspire and structure his whole narrative: revolution, as a state of exception, and the people, as the class upholding an exemplary patriotism, formed by abnegation and a love for the fatherland. Revolution is seen by Arriaga as something that goes beyond the consummation of social necessity. We do not find in his narrative the anxiety normally expressed in Liberal historiography at the risk in any revolutionary process of unleashing social anarchy and plebeian revolt.

Revolution has something of the transcendental, as an exemplary and exceptional event, involving the whole nation in a communion of wills. It is a truly cathartic moment of liberation from all the ills of the past and the start of a new life – the revolution of 1820 was all of that. Through it, Arriaga proceeds to a sort of pedagogy of revolution, trying to calm the anxieties accumulated over generations against revolutionary processes, and to make use of history to transmit the idea of revolution as a regenerative moment in society. Portugal is transformed into a revolutionary nation, marked by a series of emancipatory movements, and Afonso Henriques is compared to an early Fernandes Tomás (História da Revolução Portuguesa, 1886-87, p. 634). This is another example of anachronism, evidence of Arriaga’s desire to write “a popular history, accessible and usable to the common reader” (Historiografia, 1998, p. 67).

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