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The radicals, now called Septemberists after the September 1836 revolution,
held office until June 1841. On that date, they were replaced in a bloodless
coup d'état by moderates, who abolished the 1838 constitution and restored the
charter. António Bernardo da Costa Cabral, who organized and led the revolt,
took various measures designed to reform Portugal's political, economic, and
social systems. Some of these measures, especially new sanitary regulations that
prohibited burials in churchyards, stirred the rural countryside, still
Miguelist, into active resistance against the liberal government in Lisbon.
The women of the Minho region, who had traditionally played an important role
in churchyard burials, began to demonstrate against the authorities. Supported
by the rural nobility and clergy, the Maria da Fontes, as this movement was
called, spread throughout the rural north. Unable to suppress it by force, the
government of Costa Cabral fell on May 20, 1846. The new government, a confusing
hodgepodge of radicals and moderates, rescinded the cemetery regulations.
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