Belfastada is the name given to the military uprising against the Miguelist regime in Portugal as part of the Liberal Wars, that was triggered off in June and July 1828 in Porto, with the landing of a group of liberal exiles coming in from England aboard the Belfast ship (hence the name given to the event).
After the Napoleonic War, the British ruled Portugal in the name of the absent king who was in Brazil, with Beresford as the de facto Regent, until the Liberal Revolution of 1820 when they were driven out and the king was forced to return as a constitutional monarch.
To assert the cause of his daughter Maria da Glória, Pedro sailed in 1832 from Terceira in the Azores with an expeditionary force consisting of 60 vessels and 7500 men, mostly mercenaries.
Meanwhile, Miguel's fleet was comprehensively defeated by Pedro's much smaller squadron, commanded by Charles Napier, in the fourth Battle of Cape St. Vincent (1833).
Miguel was finally defeated at the Battle of Asseiceira, on 16 May 1834, and capitulated a few days later with the Concession of Evoramonte.