Joseph I was King of Portugal for more than two decades in the 18th Century. He guided his country through a devastating earthquake and a war that spanned the European continent.

He was born on June 6, 1714, in Ribeira Palace in in Lisbon. His father was the reigning monarch, John V, and his mother was Maria Anna of Austria. Joseph was not his parents' firstborn son; that was Pedro. However, Pedro died not long after Joseph was born, and so the secondborn son became the heir apparent.

Joseph married Mariana Victoria of Spain on Jan. 19, 1729. Her father was Spain's reigning monarch, Philip V. At the same time, in a ceremony that many refer to as the Exchange of the Princesses, Joseph's older sister, Barbara, married Ferdinand of Spain, who later became King Ferdinand VI. Joseph and Mariana had seven children, four of whom lived to adulthood: Maria (1734), Mariana Francisca (1736), Doroteia (1739), and Benedita (1746).

John V died in 1750. Joseph, then 36, took the throne. Joseph and Mariana had no surviving sons, so the king declared his eldest daughter, Maria Francisca, as the heir apparent.

Joseph was king when a massive earthquake struck Lisbon and the surrounding area, on Nov. 1, 1755. (Scientists today estimate that the Richter Scale magnitude of the quake was 8.5.) The death toll was in the tens of thousands. The combination of fires and tsunami that followed furthered the devastation. A great many buildings were damaged, as was much of the countryside. The king himself developed a fear of enclosed spaces; this claustrophobia kept him from feeling comfortable inside a walled building, and he moved his family to a group of tents in Ajuda, which was then near the edges of the capital city.

Spearheading the Lisbon rebuilding effort was the King's prime minister, Sebastião José de Carvalho e Melo, otherwise known as the Marquis of Pombal. Many of the new buildings were said to be in the Pombaline style.

It took the city, country, and king some time to recover from the devastation. In fact, Portugal was in no shape to fight a war. However, the Seven Years War engulfed Europe in 1756, and Portuguese forces were eventually part of that war. In fact, a joint force of French and Spanish soldiers invaded Portugal in May 1762. Joseph I had maintained his alliance with Great Britain, and that alliance paid off, as British reinforcements helped the Portuguese repel the invaders, ending that part of the conflict in November 1762. The Seven Years War also had battles fought in the New World; there, Portugal and Spain fought to a standstill.

King Joseph I suffered from a stroke in 1776; his wife assumed the role of regent. The king died on Feb. 24, 1777. Succeeding him on the throne was his daughter, who became Queen Maria I. She had married Joseph's brother Peter, and he became King Consort Peter III.