Strangford, that the British Parliament had voted 980,000_l._ for the
carrying on of the war in Portugal. In fact, England had now taken the
battle into her own hands, as she had decidedly the greatest interest in
opposing France; and the royal house of Braganza was at leisure to
devote its whole attention to its American dominions. Several well
appointed detachments were sent into different parts of the country for
the purpose of repelling the Indians, whose inroads had destroyed
several of the Portuguese settlements, of forming roads to connect the
different provinces with each other, and, above all, of furthering the
gradual civilisation of the Indian tribes. Strict orders were given the
commanders to proceed peaceably, especially among the friendly Indians;
but such as were refractory were to be pursued even to extermination. To
further the views with which these expeditions had been formed, a
proclamation was issued in the month of September, holding out to such
as should become proprietors and reclaimers of land in the province of
the Minas Geraes and on the banks of the Rio Doce, all the advantages of
original donatories and lords paramount; and promising that every
settlement that should contain twelve huts of reclaimed Indians, and ten
houses of white persons, should be erected into a villa, with all its
privileges. The party that was sent up the Rio Doce discovered one
hundred and forty-four farms that had been ruined by the Indians, and
which they restored: they formed a friendly treaty with several tribes
of Puri Indians, whom they found already settled in villages, to the
number of nearly a thousand. These people were gentle, and not without
some of the arts and habits of industry; but they were heathens and
polygamists; not that a plurality of wives was general, or even common,
for there were only one hundred and thirteen wives to ninety four
husbands. They do not appear to have been cannibals, though it is
strongly asserted that the neighbouring Botecudos were so, and that
having gained a slight advantage over the Portuguese, they had eaten
four of them who fell into their hands.[29] I confess I am sceptical
about these anthropophagi. That savages may eat their enemies taken in
battle I do not doubt; under the circumstances of savage life revenge
and retaliation are sweet: but I doubt their eating the dead found after
the battle, and I doubt their hunting men, or devouring women and
children. With the latter atrocities, indeed, they have not been charged
in modern times; and as at the period the missionaries wrote the first
histories of them, it was politic to exaggerate the difficulties these
useful men had to encounter, in order to enhance their services, it is
not uncharitable to believe that much exaggeration crept into the
accounts of the savages, especially if we recollect the miracles
ascribed in those very accounts to many of the missionaries themselves.
Besides these measures concerning the Indians, other steps were taken
for the good of the country of no less importance; several colonies,
both of Europeans, and of islanders from the Açores, were invited and
encouraged. The fisheries off the coast were attended to, and
particularly that of the island of St. Catherine; and on the same island
sufficient experiments were made upon the growth of hemp, to prove that
time and industry only were wanting to furnish great quantities of that
valuable article of a very good quality.
[Note 29: I have in my possession a curious drawing, found in a
Botecudo cottage, and done by one of the Creole Brazilians, of mixed
breed, who shows himself hidden in a cave, his white companions dead,
and they, as well as the soldiers of the black regiment who accompanied
them, have the flesh stripped from the bones, excepting the head, hands,
and feet. The Botecudos are represented as carrying off this flesh in
baskets. These savages appear quite naked, having their mouth pieces,
and being armed with bows and arrows.]
The year 1811 was the last of the life and ministry of the Conde de
Linhares, whose views were all directed to the good of the country.
Fully aware not only of its richness and fertility, he also perceived
how poor and how backward it was, considering its natural advantages.
In endeavouring to remedy the evils, he perhaps aimed at doing more than
was possible in the short time, and under the circumstances, in which
his active disposition could operate. He had formed roads and planned
canals; he had invited colonies, which indeed afterwards sunk; but they
left behind them some of their ingenious practice, and some seeds of
improvement which have not utterly perished. The possibility of
navigating both the St Matthew's river and the Gequetinhonha had been
ascertained; experiments in every kind of cultivation had been made;
even the tea had been introduced from China. A botanical garden had been
formed, in which the spices of the East were cultivated with success;
and perhaps as the greatest possible good, a public library had been
formed, and its regulations framed on the most liberal principles.
Towards the end of 1811 a royal decree was issued, assigning 120,000
crusadoes per annum to be taken from the customs of Bahia, Pernambuco,
and Maranham, for forty years, to the Portuguese, who had suffered
during the French war; a measure regarded even then with jealousy by the
northern captaincies. But they all continued tranquil for the present,
and seemed to attend only to domestic improvement. New buildings, both
for use and ornament, arose in the cities. Maranham and Pernambuco
improved their harbours. Bahia, besides the handsome theatre opened
there in 1812, paved her streets; and at Rio, a subscription of 30,000
crusadoes was raised towards beautifying the palace square, completing
the public gardens, and draining the campo de Sta. Anna.
In 1813, some disputes arose between the court of Rio and England on
account of the slave trade. Three ships had been captured by the British
squadron off the coast of Africa, while certainly engaged in illegal
_slaving_; remonstrances were made, and the matter continued suspended
until after the congress of Vienna, when that illustrious meeting,
though most of its highest and most powerful members had exclaimed
loudly against the villanous practice, suffered it to be carried on.
Then indeed England consented to pay 13,000_l._ to indemnify the
Portuguese slave traders for their loss (July, 1815)!
In the same year there appears to have been some discontent manifested,
or suspected in the provinces. Many of the salaries of officers, both
civil and military, remained unpaid; yet there were exactions, the more
grievous, because they were irregular, in every department; the
administration of justice was notoriously corrupt; the clergy had fallen
into disorder and disrepute; and though much that was useful had been
done, yet that was forgotten, especially in the distant provinces, and
such a portion of discontent existed, that various officers who had come
to Rio either on private business or to remonstrate on public wrongs,
were peremptorily ordered to return to their own provinces.
It was wisely done at this juncture, to take off the public attention
from such vexations by a measure at once just and gratifying to the
pride of the Brazilians: by an edict of the 16th of December, 1815,
Brazil was raised to the dignity of a kingdom, and the style and title
altered so as to place it on an equal footing with Portugal. For some
months addresses of thanks and congratulation poured in to the king from
various provinces, and the feasts and rejoicings on that happy occasion
occupied the people to the exclusion of all other considerations.
Meantime the victories of the allies in Europe, having caused the exile
of Napoleon to Elba, the necessity for an English guardian squadron at
Rio had ceased; and accordingly the British establishment was broken up,
and the stores sold, and the family of Braganza, again independent of
foreign aid, began to renew its connections with the other courts of
Europe.
These negotiations suffered some little interruption from an event which
had long been expected, namely, the death of the queen, on the 20th of
March, 1816, whose state, both of body and mind, had long precluded her
from all share in public affairs. She was buried with great pomp in the
church of the convent of the Ajuda; and, as is usual, dirges were sung
for her in all the churches in the kingdom.
In the month of June, the Marquis Marialva was received at Paris as
ambassador of Portugal and Brazil, and shortly afterwards the way having
been prepared by an inferior minister, he went to Vienna, to negotiate a
marriage between Don Pedro de Alcantara, Prince of Portugal and Brazil,
and the Archduchess Maria Leopoldina, which was happily effected. On the
28th of November, she was privately contracted at Vienna to the prince.
On the 17th of February following, the contract was made public, and on
the 13th of May she was married by proxy, the Marquis Marialva standing
for Don Pedro; but it was not until the 11th of November that she
arrived at Rio. The line of battle ship Joam VI. had been sent along
with two frigates for her to Trieste, the voyage was performed without
accident, and the person the most important to the hopes and happiness
of Brazil, was welcomed with enthusiasm by all classes of people.
In the autumn preceding, two of the Infantas of Portugal had been
married to Ferdinand the 7th of Spain, and his brother the Infant Don
Carlos.
But the frontier of Brazil to the southward now began to feel the effect
of those disturbances which had long agitated Spanish South America. The
chief Artigas showed a disposition to encroach on the Portuguese line,
and, therefore, a corps of volunteers had been formed for the purposes
of observation, and the Porte da Santa Theresa had been occupied in
order to check the motions of that active leader: during the autumn of
1816, several skirmishes took place, but the arts of negotiation as well
as of war were resorted to, and on the 19th of January, 1817, the keys
of Montevideo were delivered up to the Portuguese general Lecor, by
which the long-wished-for command of the eastern bank of the Plata was
obtained.
Meantime the discontents in the northern provinces had broken out into
open insurrection, in the captaincy of Pernambuco. The people of
Recife, and its immediate neighbourhood, had imbibed some of the notions
of democratical government from their former masters the Dutch. They
remembered besides, that their own exertions, without any assistance
from the government, had driven out those masters, and had restored to
the crown the northern part of its richest domain. They were, therefore,
disposed to be particularly jealous of the provinces of the south,
especially of Rio, which they considered as more favoured than
themselves, and they were disgusted at the payments of taxes and
contributions, by which they never profited, and which only served to
enrich the creatures of the court, while great abuses existed,
especially in the judicial part of the government, which they despaired
of ever seeing redressed. Such were the exciting causes of the
insurrection of 1817, in Pernambuco, which threatened for many months
the peace, if not the safety of Brazil. The example of the Spanish
Americans had no doubt its weight, and a regular plan for obtaining
independence was formed, troops were raised and disciplined, and Recife
being secured, fortifications were begun at Alagoas and at Penedo.
The insurgents, however, had probably miscalculated the degree of
concurrence or assistance they should meet with from their neighbours.
The people of Serinhaem as soon as the insurrection was known, namely
the middle of April, posted themselves on the Rio Formosa as a check on
that quarter, and the king's troops under Lacerda, marched immediately
from Bahia. The Pernambucan leader Victoriano, having attacked the Villa
de Pedras, received a decided check from a body of royalists, under
Major Gordilho, who had been sent forward by Lacerda, on the 21st: and
by the 29th Gordilho had occupied that post, as well as Tamandré, where
he was not long afterwards joined by Colonel Mello, with a strong
reinforcement.
Meantime the Pernambucan chief, Domingos Jose Martins, was actively
employed in collecting troops, and forming guerilla parties, in order to
harass the marches of the enemy. These parties were headed by
Cavalcante, a man of wealth and family, aided by a priest, Souto, a
bold and enterprising man, who was far from being the only
ecclesiastical partisan. On the 2d of May, a vigorous attack was made on
Serinhaem, by the famous Pernambucan division of the south, which had
hitherto received no check; but the assailants were repulsed with the
loss of their artillery and baggage, and a column under Martins coming
up met with the same fate, on which he drew off his people with those of
the south, to the ingenio of Trapiche. On the 6th of May they left that
position, and meeting the royalists under Mello, suffered a complete
defeat. Their chiefs were either killed or taken; and of the latter some
were exiled, others imprisoned, and three, Jose Luiz Mendonça, Domingos
Jose Martins, and the priest, Miguel Joaquim de Alameida, were hanged in
Bahia.
At this juncture Luiz do Rego Barreto was appointed by the government at
Rio to the office of captain-general of Pernambuco. He was a native of
Portugal, and had served with distinction under Lord Wellington. Of a
firm and vigorous mind, and jealous of the honour of a soldier, he was
perhaps too little yielding to the people and the temper of the times.
The severe military punishments inflicted on this occasion certainly
produced irritation, which though it did not break out immediately, was
the cause of much evil afterwards, and brought an odium upon that
gallant soldier himself, from which his high character in other
situations could not shield him.
This year the ministry underwent a complete change. The Marquis
d'Aguiar, who had succeeded to the Conde de Linhares, died in January,
and the Conde da Barca in June; when the Conde de Palmela became prime
minister, Bezerra became president of the treasury, the Conde dos Arcos
secretary for transmarine and naval affairs, the Conde de Funchal
counsellor of state, and Don Tomas Antonio de Portogal secretary to the
house of Braganza.
I cannot pretend to speak of the character or measures of these or any
other Portuguese or Brazilian ministers. My opportunities of information
were too few; my habits as a woman and a foreigner never led me into
situations where I could acquire the necessary knowledge. I wish only to
mark the course of events, and in as far as they are linked with each
other, the causes of those effects which took place under my own eyes.
In the early part of 1818, some additional restrictions concerning the
slave trade, which had been agreed to by Conde de Palmela during the
last year at London, were published at Rio, and a commission of English
and Portuguese jointly was formed for the examining into and deciding on
causes arising out of the treaties on that most important subject, a
certain number of commissioners being appointed to reside in the
different ports in Africa and Brazil, where the trade was still
considered lawful. That year opened at Rio with unusual festivity. On
the 22d of January, a great bull-feast was given at San Christovam, the
royal country house, in honour of the young princess's birth-day; it was
followed by a military dance, in which the costume of the natives of
every part of the Portuguese dominions in the east and west were
displayed. Portugal and Algarve, Africa and India, China and Brazil, all
appeared to do homage to the illustrious stranger. Music, in which the
taste of the king was unrivalled, formed a great part of the
entertainment, and never perhaps had Brazil witnessed so magnificent a
festival.
On the 6th of February the coronation of his majesty, John VI., took
place, and these peaceful festivities gave a character to the year,
which was remarkably quiet, the only public acts of note being the
farther prosecution of the plans for civilising the interior, by
facilitating the communications from place to place, and reclaiming the
border tribes of Indians.
The following year was not less tranquil. The birth of the young
princess, Donna Maria da Gloria, was an event to gratify both the court
and the people of Brazil. They had now the heir of their kingdom born
among them, a circumstance which they were disposed to hail as a pledge
that the seat of government would not be removed from among them.
The early part of 1820 was disturbed by some irruptions of the Spanish
Americans under Artigas, on the eastern side of the Plata. The
Portuguese troops, however, soon repulsed him, and strengthened their
line by the occupation of Taquarembo, Simar, and the Arroyo Grande.
Meantime the peace in Europe had not brought back all the tranquillity
that was expected from it. In vain did the old governments expect to step
back into exactly the same places they had occupied before the
revolutionary war. The Cortes had assembled in Spain. Naples had been
convulsed by an attempt to obtain a constitution similar to that
promulgated by the Spanish Cortes; and now Portugal began to feel the
universal impulse. Lisbon and Oporto were both the seats of juntas of
provisional government, and both assembled Cortes to take into
consideration the framing of a new constitution, and the reformation of
ancient abuses. On the 21st of August the Cortes of Lisbon had sworn to
adopt in part the constitution of the Spanish Cortes, but it was not
until the month of November that the government of Brazil made public
the recent occurrences in the mother country. Indeed it was not to be
expected that Brazil should remain unconscious of the proceedings of
Europe. The provinces were all more or less agitated. Pernambuco was as
usual foremost in feeling, and in the expression of feeling. A
considerable party had assembled at about thirty-six leagues from
Olinda. They declared their grievances to be intolerable, and that
nothing but a total reform in the government should reconcile them to
longer subjection to the government of Rio. The royalist troops were
sent out against them and were victorious, after an action of six hours,
in which they lost six officers and 19 men killed, and 134 wounded. The
loss on the other side was much greater, and as usual severe military
executions increased the evils of the civil war, at the same time that
they farther exasperated the people, and prepared them for a future and
more obstinate resistance.
Bahia was far from tranquil. The old jealousy which had subsisted from
the time the seat of government had been transferred from the city of
St. Salvador to Rio, combined with other causes, tended to increase the
desire of a constitutional government, from which all good was to be
expected, and under which, it was hoped, that all abuses would be
reformed. Rio itself began to manifest the same feelings. The provinces
of St. Paul's and the Minas were always ready to unite in any cause that
promised an increase of freedom; and the whole country seemed on the
brink of revolution, if not civil war.
The court party, however, still flattered themselves that the
determination of the King to remain in Brazil, instead of returning to
Lisbon to put himself into the power of the Cortes, would be so grateful
to the Brazilians, that they would be contented to forego the probable
advantages of a constitution, for the sake of the positive good of
having the seat of government fixed among themselves. But it was too
late; the wish for improvement had been excited. The administration had
been too corrupt, the exactions too heavy to be longer borne, when
reform appeared to be within reach. The very soldiers became possessed
with the same spirit, and though highly repugnant to the King's
feelings, it soon became evident that a compliance with the wishes of
the people and with the constituton, as declared by the Cortes at
Lisbon, was inevitable.
It is said, that some of the wisest ministers hail long pressed His
Majesty to a compliance with the wishes of his people, but in vain. His
reluctance was unconquerable, until at length, perceiving that force
would certainly be resorted to, he adopted a half measure which probably
accelerated the very event he was anxious to avoid.[30] On the 18th of
February, 1821, the King accepted as a junta, to take into consideration
such parts of the constitution as might be applicable to the state of
Brazil, the following persons:--
[Note 30: Some have imagined that a paper published at Rio, written
by a Frenchman, and supposed to have been in the pay of the then
ministry, desirous of keeping the king in Brazil, had great effect on
the subsequent events; and that greater still had been produced by the
revolution of the 10th of February, at Bahia; but the motives of action
were the same in all Brazil; the event must have been the same at Rio,
whether Bahia had stirred or not, though, perhaps, it might be
accelerated by that circumstance.]
Marquez de Altegrete--_President_
Baron de St. Amaro.
Luiz José de Carvalho Mello.
Antonio Liuz Pereiro da Cunha.
Antonio Rodriguez Velloso dc Oliviera.
Joaŏ Severiano Maciel da Costa.
Camillo Maria Tonelet
Joaŏ dc Souza de Mendonça Costa Real.
José da Silva Lisboa.
Mariano José Pereira da Fonseca.
Javŏ Rodriguez Pereira de Almeida.
Francisco Xavier Pires.
José Caetano Gomez.
_Procurador da Casa._
José de Oliviera Botelho Pinto Masquiera.
_Secretarios._
Manoel Jacinto Noguerra de Gama.
Manoel Moreira de Figueiredo.
_Secretaries Sustituti._
O Coronel Francisco Saraiva da Costa Refoios.
O Desembargador Joaŏ José dc Mendonza.
These persons were all anxious to retain the King in Brazil. Most of
them Brazilians, they had felt the advantage of having the seat of
government fixed among themselves, and though the King's foreign allies
and his Portuguese subjects had pressed him to return to Europe, his own
dread of the Cortes of Lisbon, together with their natural desire to
detain him in Brazil, produced on the 21st a manifesto, describing His
Majesty's affection and relianceon his Brazilian subjects, and stating,
that he was resolved to send the Prince Don Pedro to Lisbon, with full
powers to treat on his behalf with the Cortes, whom he seems to have
considered as subjects in rebellion.
The Prince was also to consult with the Cortes concerning the drawing up
of a constitution, and the King promised to adopt such parts of it as
might be found applicable to existing circumstances and to the peculiar
situation of Brazil. This manifesto appears to have produced an effect
very different from what was intended. At four o'clock in the morning of
the 26th, all the streets and squares of the city were found full of
troops. Six pieces of artillery were planted at the heads of the
principal streets, and the most lively sensation agitated every part of
the city of Rio. As soon as this circumstance could be known at San
Christovaŏ, the Prince Don Pedro, and the Infant Don Miguel, came into
the city. The Camara[31] was assembled in the great saloon of the
theatre.[32] The Prince, after conferring for a short time with the
members of that body, appeared upon the balcony of the saloon, and read
to the people and the troops, a royal proclamation, antedated the 24th,
securing to them the Constitution, such as it should be framed by the
Cortes of Lisbon. This was received with loud cries of Viva el Rei, Viva
a Religiaŏ, Viva a constituicaŏ. The Prince then returned to the saloon,
and ordered the secretary of the Camara to draw up the form of the oath
to be taken to observe the constitution, and also a list of a new
ministry, to be submitted to the people for their approbation. The list
of ministers was first read, and each individually approved.[33]
[Note 31: The whole municipal body.]
[Note 32: The square in front of the theatre, from its size and
situation, was most fit for the assembly of the people and troops on such
an occasion.]
[Note 33:
_New Ministers._