He was the oldest of the five children of noted Macanese lawyer Frederico Albino de Mesquita and Clara Esmeralda Carneiro – both Macau natives.

On August 25, 1849, with a numerically smaller group of 36 soldiers from his Artillery Battalion, against a defending force of 400 men and 20 cannons, the then Second Lieutenant Mesquita attacked and pacified the Chinese fort at Baishaling.

This coup guaranteed Macau's security and upon his return to the city, Mesquita was received as a national hero.

His madness reached its zenith on March 3, 1880 – at his fashionable home: nº 1, Largo da Bica do Lilau – when Mesquita murdered his second wife, a daughter and gravely wounded two other of his children.

Some thirty years later, on August 28, 1910, in conformity with public opinion on the importance of this man to the history of Macau, were his remains re-interred in the Cemitério de São Miguel Arcanjo [zh] with full military and ecclesiastical honors.