The death of King Joseph in 1777 forced the accession of Princess Maria Francisca, his eldest daughter, to the throne of Portugal; she succeeded her father as the first Queen regnant of the 650-year-old country, which was still recovering from the 1755 Lisbon earthquake. Before becoming queen, Princess Maria and her husband, the Infante Pedro, lived on the sidelines of politics, but were clearly unsympathetic to her father's former Prime Minister, Sebastião José de Carvalho e Melo, the Marquis of Pombal, who had been the "de facto" ruler of the kingdom for the past 27 years. During her father's last few years, she had been the Marquis' fiercest detractor; once in power, she eagerly dismissed him and then exiled him to Pombal.