broke out at Torres Novas in 1844, Count Bomfim, leader of the revolutionary party, took command of the insurgents and seized the fortress of Almeida. The government suppressed the revolt after a siege of a few days, but ultimately Costa Cabrals' firm and disciplined majority could not contain an undisciplined popular revolt. Maria da Fonte Unlike Septembrist initiatives that were centered on the district capitals, many of Cabral's programs affected the people of the country's interior directly. Cabral's moves once again decentralized government, placing the costs of health care, public finances and other sectors onto the tributary network, reinvoking the medieval system and subordinating local governmental authority. Two other initiatives, the forbidding of church burials and land assessment, were directly worrisome to the rural population, who were fearful of the government seizing their land rights. The revolt that occurred around the middle of April 1846 was similar to one that had occurred in Galicia, and involved a popular uprising in the parish of Fontarcada, Póvoa de Lanhoso. Although the revolt included both men and women, it was known as the Revolution of Maria da Fonte, because women were actively involved in this rural uprising: armed with carbines, pistols, torches, and stakes, the peasantry assaulted municipal buildings, burned land records, stole property and even attacked a garrison from Braga. Some even declared themselves Miguelistas, but rather for being in opposition to encroachments by the state and the imposition of taxes than as a political affirmation. The failed Septembrist politicians, realizing the political influence that the numerous cholera-infected peasantry could have on the government, used this fact to attack Cabral's government. They succeeded in forcing Cabral's removal and exile, but the queen assembled a larger, more loyal cadre of Cabralist politicians around her new government, headed by the Duke of Saldanha. Patuleia Meanwhile, the peasant uprising was co-opted by an undisciplined band of political and military elements backed by the small merchant class, pitting the Septembrists against the Cartistas in a civil war known as the Patuleia, similar to what occurred in the French 1848 Revolution and the Second Republic. Although social conditions were different, an unnatural coalition of Septembrists and Miguelist sympathizers was reacting to the doctrinaire liberalism and neo-aristocratic avarice of the Cabralist politicians. Their forces installed themselves in Porto, declared a provisional government and attempted to march on Lisbon. The "soldiers", without strong ideological convictions, wavered in their political