Montevideo was founded in 1726 and became the nucleus of the Spanish settlements which have grown into the modern country of Uruguay. Except Colonia, the only Portuguese settlements south of the 25th degree were the town of Santa Catharina Island, the unimportant village of Laguna on the coast-plain, and the scattered ranches of a few adventurous Paulistas on the plateau.
The founding of Montevideo drew the serious attention of the Rio government to the valuable country between the Plate and Santa Catharina. The Paulistas had thoroughly explored the plains and found them swarming with cattle. The chief obstacle to the foundation of a military post as a nucleus for the settlement of Rio Grande and eastern Uruguay was the lack of a harbour on that sandy coast. When the next European war broke out, in 1735, the Spaniards again besieged Colonia, and established forts and settlements along the Uruguayan coast, from Montevideo to the present Brazilian border. In 1737, the Portuguese authorities sent anexpedition to take Montevideo, which failed. On the way back the Portuguese built a little fort at the only entrance which gives access to the great series of lagoons which run parallel to the coast for two hundred and fifty miles north of the southern Brazilian frontier. This is the site of the present city of Rio Grande do Sul. A few years later, a considerable number of settlers from the Azores Islands were introduced, who engaged in agriculture along the fertile borders of the great Duck Lagoon.
RIO GRANDE DO SUL.RIO GRANDE DO SUL.
In 1750, Spain and Portugal made an attempt to reach an amicable and rational agreement about their South American boundaries. Up to that time, Spain had stubbornly claimed the territory as far north and east as Santos, and Portugal was even more unreasonable in asserting her exclusive right to the coast as far south and west as the mouth of the Uruguay. The treaty of 1750 virtually recognised theuti possidetis. Portugal agreed to give upColonia, and the boundary to her possessions and those of Spain was drawn between the Spanish settlements in Uruguay and the Portuguese settlements in Rio Grande. The seven Jesuit missions in the interior, two hundred miles to the north, were abandoned by the Spanish government. Spain deliberately ceded these tens of thousands of peaceful and prosperous civilised Indians, and even agreed that her troops should assist the Portuguese in the cruel dispossession. The Indians fought desperately and unavailingly. But this iniquitous provision of the treaty was the only part of it which was ever carried into effect. Spanish public opinion protested, the boundary commissions could not agree, Portugal put off the surrender of Colonia on one pretext or another, and in 1761 the treaty fell to the ground and all the questions were left open.
That year Spain and Portugal became embroiled on opposite sides in the Seven Years' War, and the Spaniards from Buenos Aires invaded the disputed territory in overwhelming force. Colonia was taken and in 1763 the Spanish governor led his army against the Portuguese settlements in Rio Grande. The fortified town of Rio Grande fell, the superior Argentine cavalry drove the Rio Grandenses back to the coast, and the Portuguese territory was reduced to the north-east quarter of the state. The flourishing farms of the Azorean settlers were laid waste, and from this invasion dates the adoption by the Rio Grandenses of pastoral habits. The Treaty of Paris put an end to the war in Europe. The Spaniards ceased their advance, they restored Colonia once more, but retained their conquests in southern Rio Grande.
The Rio Grandenses made good use of the breathing-spell. They cared little whether there was peace or war in Europe, and four years later made a desperate effort to recapture their old capital and regain their farms in the south. Disavowed by their government, they still kept on fighting; soon they made a regular business of raiding the territory occupied by the Spaniards; the beef they found on the plains was their food; they were always in the saddle and soon became the finest of irregular cavalry and partisan fighters.
The Spaniards retaliated by invading northern Rio Grande, but never succeeded in routing the Rio Grandenses from their last strongholds. In 1775 the Brazilians were re-enforced from São Paulo and Rio and took the aggressive, and the following year recaptured the city of Rio Grande. The Spanish government took prompt steps to avenge this loss. A great fleet was sent out, Santa Catharina was captured, an army of four thousand men was on the march up from Montevideo to sweep the Portuguese out of all southern Brazil once and for all. But in this crisis European politics again saved Brazil from dismemberment. France and Spain were forming a coalition against England in the War of American Independence. Spain wished to have her hands free and to isolate England. The Spanish fleet and army were at the gates of Rio Grande when the Treaty of San Ildefonso was signed in 1777. The Portuguese definitely relinquished Colonia; Uruguayand the Seven Missions remained Spanish, but most of southern Rio Grande which the Portuguese had lost in 1763, as well as Santa Catharina, was restored to them.
OLD RANCH IN RIO GRANDE.OLD RANCH IN RIO GRANDE.
The thirty-four years of peace which followed in Rio Grande were employed in steady growth. A craze for cattle-raising set in, and the plains were divided up into greatestanciaswhich were distributed among the governor's favourites or those who had distinguished themselves during the war. Substantially the entire population engaged in the cattle business. The Rio Grandenses and their cattle multiplied so rapidly that they spread out over the western part of the state, which was still Spanish, and to the south. In 1780 the curing of beef by drying and salting was introduced, which permitted its shipment, and afforded a stable market.
WASHING DIAMONDS.WASHING DIAMONDS.
After the great gold discoveries in Minas during the late years of the seventeenth and early years of the eighteenth centuries, the prospectors ranged north from Sabará along the great Backbone Mountains, finding washings at many places in North Minas and Bahia. By 1740 the fields in Bahia were producing fifty to a hundred thousand ounces a year. As early as 1718 an expedition had penetrated fifteen hundred miles to the west and discovered good placers on the plateau where the headwaters of the Madeira and the Paraguay intertwine. This was the beginning of Cuyabá and the state of Matto Grosso. In ten years a million five hundred thousand ounces were taken out from these diggings. A little later still other fields were discovered farther west on the Madeira watershed.
The miners at the gold camp of Tijuca in North Minas had noticed some curious little shining stones in the bottom of their pans and thought them so pretty that they used them for counters in games. Soon a wandering friar who had been in India recognised them as diamonds. This occurred in 1729, and the field thus opened up supplied the world with diamonds until the discovery of Kimberley. In the years from 1730 to 1770 five million carats were taken from the original Diamantina district, and the deposits are still second in productiveness only to those of South Africa. The diamond region was at once declared Crown property and a deadline drawn around it which none except officials were allowed to cross.
In 1716 an exploring expedition ascended the Madeira, and in the years following the Tocantins, the Araguaya, the Rio Negro, and the principal tributaries of the Upper Amazon were navigated. The Jesuit settlements in the Amazon valley continued to flourish. While the interior and the South were expanding rapidly, the coast provinces were relatively declining. The growing competition of the West Indies reduced the price of sugar. During the seventeenth century Brazil had furnished the bulk of European sugar consumption, selling her product at non-competitive prices. But the growth of the English and Dutch colonial empires brought into the field competitors who possessed as good aclimate and soil and enjoyed the inestimable advantage of better government. Portugal's vicious and narrow-minded colonial system was not changed until Brazil's competitors had so far passed her that she has never since been able to make up lost ground.
The wealth from mines and taxes that Brazil poured into the Portuguese treasury was squandered by the dissipated bigot, John V. When he died in 1750 he left Portugal in a bad way, and though Brazil had managed to grow in spite of mismanagement, the outlook was discouraging. The Spaniards were threatening the new settlements in the South; São Paulo had been depopulated by the migration to the mines; Bahia's and Pernambuco's sugar and tobacco industries were decadent; in Ceará and Piauhy the golden days of the cattle business had passed; Maranhão and Pará had stopped short in their development, and their spread into the interior had been cut off by the Jesuits.
Contemporary documents prove the horrible corruption. From ministers of State down to the humblest subordinate every official had his share in the pickings. The farmers of the revenues openly paid bribes and might exact what they pleased from the taxpayers. All trade except that with Portugal was forbidden, and this was hampered in a hundred ways. Salt, wine, soap, rum, tobacco, olive oil, and hides were monopolies. All legal transactions were burdened with heavy fees; slaves paid so much a head; every river on a road was the occasion for a new toll; the exercise of professions and trades wasforbidden except on the payment of heavy fees; anything that could compete with Portugal was prohibited altogether. Taxation shut off industrial enterprise at its very sources, and many of the worst features of the system then put in vogue have never been discontinued.
The governors and military commanders interfered constantly with the administration of justice in favour of their friends and favourites; they accepted bribes for allowing contraband trade and permitting the immigration of foreigners; they misappropriated the funds of widows and orphans; they ignored the franchises of the municipalities; they imposed unauthorised taxes; they forced loans from suitors having claims before them; they obliged free men to work without pay; they forcibly took wives away from their husbands; they impressed the young men for the wars on the Spanish border, required every able bodied man to serve in the militia, and commonly practised arbitrary imprisonment. How even one of the best of them interfered to regulate private affairs can best be shown by his own words:
"I promoted the good of the people by forcibly compelling them to plant maize and pulse, and threatening to take away their lands altogether if they did not cultivate them diligently; I required the militia colonels to make exact reports about this matter and thus brought about a great increase in the production of food crops and sugar. I called the militia together for exercise on Sundays and holidays, days which otherwise the people would have spent in idleness and pleasure. Many havecomplained, but I have never given their complaints the slightest attention, having always followed the system of taking no notice whatever of the people's murmurs."
"I promoted the good of the people by forcibly compelling them to plant maize and pulse, and threatening to take away their lands altogether if they did not cultivate them diligently; I required the militia colonels to make exact reports about this matter and thus brought about a great increase in the production of food crops and sugar. I called the militia together for exercise on Sundays and holidays, days which otherwise the people would have spent in idleness and pleasure. Many havecomplained, but I have never given their complaints the slightest attention, having always followed the system of taking no notice whatever of the people's murmurs."
BOATS ON THE RIO GRANDE.BOATS ON THE RIO GRANDE.[From a steel print.]
He describes the Brazilians as vain, but indolent and easily subdued; robust and supporting labour well, but inclined to an inaction from which only extreme poverty or the command of their superiors could rouse them. They had no education, for the only schools were a few Jesuit seminaries, and no printing-press existed. They were licentious, had no aristocracy, were unaccustomed to social subordination, and would obey no authority except the military.
Underneath the surface fermented a deep disgust. Even in the seaports the very name of government was hated, and in the interior the people withdrew themselves as much as possible from contact or participation with it. A dull hatred of Portugal and Portuguese spread among all classes of natives. In much of the country the only law was the patriarchal influence of the heads of the landed families, who often exercised powers of life and death. Instances are on record where fathers ordered their sons to kill their own sisters when the latter had dishonoured the family name.
With the death of John V. in 1750 the great Marquis of Pombal became prime minister. The enormous energy and activity of this remarkable man revolutionised the administration of Portugal and Brazil. Official corruption was severely punished; order replaced confusion; agriculture, industry, andcommerce were protected and encouraged. In spite of the threatened exhaustion of the placers mining flourished. Maranhão and Pará took a new start; the worst monopolies were abolished; the price of sugar rose with the great colonial wars and the adoption of reasonable regulations. Wealth and revenues increased apace and peace and security were self-guarded. When Pombal fell, after twenty-seven years in power, Brazil's population had risen to two millions; Rio was a city of fifty thousand and the capital had been transferred there; Bahia had forty thousand; Minas contained four hundred thousand people; the yield of gold was four hundred thousand carats yearly, and the diamond production one hundred and fifty thousand carats, and, finally, Santa Catharina and Rio Grande had been saved from the Spaniards and settled. Pombal had made short work of the Jesuits. In 1755 he took away their rights over their Indians, and four years later issued an order for their immediate and unconditional expulsion and the confiscation of their property.
Pombal had no favourites; he spared no individuals and no classes in his work of ruthlessly concentrating all power in the Crown. But he built a Frankenstein of which he himself was the helpless victim the moment his old master died. Unwittingly he prepared the way for the triumph of the ideas of the French Revolution both in Portugal and Brazil, and his most beneficent measures were the most fatal to the permanence of his despotic system. Commercial prosperity gave the Brazilianpeople resources; the impartial administration of law gave them some conceptions of civic pride and independence; the encouragement of education, small as it was, helped start an intellectual movement which spread over the wilds of Brazil the liberal principle then fermenting in Europe.
Immediately upon his fall in 1777 the Portuguese government reverted to most of the old abuses, but the economic impulse did not at once die out.
Pombal had not only expelled the Jesuits, but had taken effective measures against enslaving the Indians. The latter separated themselves from the whites, and miscegenation largely decreased. On the other hand, the importation of negro slaves had been continued on a large scale throughout the eighteenth century and the proportion of blacks in the mining and sugar districts had increased. Intermixture with negroes was stimulated by the seclusion of the white women. The young men often took mistresses from among the slaves, and these unions sometimes subsisted after legitimate marriage. The system of doubleménages, however, decreased as manners became more liberal, and opportunities for social intercourse between the sexes increased.
The more energetic Brazilians acquired the rudiments of learning in the Jesuit schools, and a few fortunate youths were sent to the University at Coimbra in Portugal. In the early decades of the eighteenth century societies for the discussion of literary and scientific questions were established in Rio and Bahia. In the centres of population little groups of scholars began to gather who surreptitiously obtained the writings of French and English political philosophers. Suddenly, in the latter half of the century, a dazzling literary outburst occurred. Its seat was not in Rio, the political, nor Bahia, the ecclesiastical capital, nor yet in Pernambuco, the cradle of the nationality, but in Ouro Preto, the chief place of the mining province of Minas, twenty days' journey on muleback from the coast, and among a rude and unlettered population. Within a few years appeared six of the foremost poets of the Portuguese language: the lyrics, Gonzaga, Claudio, Silva Alvarengo, and Alvarengo Peixoto, and the epics, Basilio da Gama and Santa Rita Durão. He who writes the songs of a people rather records their history than influences it. The writings of the Minas lyric poets are the best documents extant on the character of the Brazilians of the colonial period. They clearly reveal that culture was only at its beginnings; that patriotism and national pride were indefinite and shadowy; that religion was neither dogmatic nor absorbing; that polite society had not come into being, and that the intellectual element entered little into the relations of the sexes.
The independence of the United States suggested to a few Brazilians the possibility of freeing their country from Portugal. In 1785 a dozen Brazilian students at Coimbra formed a club for this purpose, and one of them wrote to Thomas Jefferson, then Minister to France, asking American aid. Jefferson was interested, but answered that nothing could be done until the Brazilians themselves had risen in arms. A like impulse was working in the minds ofthe poets and their friends at Ouro Preto. A child-like conspiracy was formed whose object was to found a republic with San John d'El Rei as capital and Ouro Preto as the seat of a university. A few practical men listened to the plans of the conspirators probably with a view of turning a disturbance to account in preventing the government from putting into effect an obnoxious gold tax then being threatened. Among those let into the inner circle was a young sergeant nicknamed "Tiradentes." He undertook the task of fomenting an uprising among the troops, but before anything practical had been done the whole thing had been given away to the authorities. The conspirators were arrested and taken to Rio, where the frightened governor instituted a formal and elaborate trial and took a fearful vengeance upon the helpless boys and poets. Poor Tiradentes, being without powerful connections, was hanged and quartered. His memory is now revered in Brazil as that of the first martyr to independence and the precursor of the republic. The gentle Claudio hanged himself in prison after having been tortured into a confession implicating his friends. Gonzaga and Alvarengo, with several others, were banished to Africa.
Republican and separatist ideas had, however, made no headway among the Brazilian masses. Brazil's independence was to come by the force of circumstances and not by any deliberate national effort, and for a republic she was destined to wait a century more.
The political development of colonial Brazil may be divided into three epochs. First, there was the confusion of early colonisation, the unsuccessful attempt to establish a system of feudal captaincies, the struggles against the Indians, French, and Jesuits, and the search for a solid economic foundation for the new commonwealth. On the whole, this era contained the promise of the ultimate development of a freer governmental system than that of Portugal.
Next followed the Spanish dynasty and the wars against the Dutch. Control of Brazil by the home government was weakened, and the colonists learned their own military power. The years following the expulsion of the Dutch—1655 to 1700—were the brightest politically in Brazil's colonial history. The municipalities, governed by local oligarchies of landowners, exercised functions not contemplated by the Portuguese code. Though the military governors were continually encroaching, and the system was imperfect, it was in essence thoroughly local.Its fundamental defect was the want of co-operation between the towns.
The third period began with the consolidation of Portugal's international position in the closing years of the seventeenth century. Once secure from foreign attacks, she renewed the exploitation of Brazil with redoubled eagerness. The discovery of the mines made the plunder enormous. At first there were resistance and even formidable rebellions like Beckman's in Maranhão, of the mascates in Pernambuco, or of the emboabas in Minas. But the civic vitality of the people was not great enough to sustain any continuous and effective opposition. Early in the eighteenth century the municipalities were already at the mercy of the military governors, and Brazil was governed partly by petty despots and partly by numerous feeble local bodies who were without cohesion or power to resist interference. Brazil would have remained a dependency of Portugal during an indefinite period had it not been for a series of events which arose in Europe out of the French Revolution.
DOM JOHN VI.DOM JOHN VI.[From an old woodcut.]
By 1807 England was the only power which still defied Napoleon. Portugal had been Great Britain's ally for a century, but Napoleon found it necessary to have command of Lisbon and Porto in order to enforce his Berlin and Milan decrees. He peremptorily commanded Portugal to give up her English alliance. The pusillanimous John, who had been prince regent since the insanity of his mother in 1792, hesitated and shuffled, seeking to put off the emperor with negotiations and evasions and a show of hostility to England. A single despatch indicating his double dealing was enough for Napoleon, who promptly made an agreement with Spain for the division of Portugal and ordered Junot to march on Lisbon. The people were ready to make a desperate resistance, but their king was in two minds each day, and the army had been withdrawn from the frontier to bid the British fleet a hypocritical defiance. John shed tears over his unhappy country, but prepared to save his own person by a flight to Rio. Junot had passed the frontier and was advancing on Lisbon by forced marches. The Prince Regent and his Court huddled their movable property on board the men-of-war lying in the Tagus. Fifteen thousand persons, including most of thenobility, and fifty millions of property and treasure were embarked. Junot's advance guard arrived at the mouth of the river on the 27th of November, 1807, in time to see the fleet just outside and bearing south under British convoy.
Six weeks later the exiles caught sight of the coast of Brazil, destined thereafter to be the principal seat of the Portuguese race. The Prince Regent disembarked at Bahia, where the people received him with enthusiastic demonstrations of loyalty and tried desperately hard to induce him to make their city his capital. He adhered to the original plan, and on the 7th of March, 1808, arrived at Rio, where he was received with equal cordiality. No conditions were imposed on the helpless fugitives. The first acts of the prince regent proved that the removal would be of inestimable advantage to Brazil. He promulgated a decree opening the five great ports to the commerce of all friendly nations. The system of seclusion and monopolies fell to the ground at a single blow. Other decrees removed the prohibitions on manufacturing and on trades. Foreigners were allowed to come to Brazil either for travel or residence, and were guaranteed personal and property rights; a national bank was established; commercial corporations were given franchises; a printing-press was set up; military and naval schools and a medical college were founded. Foreigners were encouraged to immigrate and that improvement in art, industries, civilisation, and manners began which can only result from the daily contact of different types of humanity. For the first time Brazilwas opened to scientific investigation, and scholars, engineers, and artists were imported to aid in making its resources known. The commercial nations lost no time in trying to get a foothold in this virgin market; they sent their consuls and salesmen, and within a few months importations, principally from Great Britain, far exceeded any possible demand.
The prince regent found his South American empire divided into eighteen provinces. These constitute the present states of the Brazilian union—the only changes having been the separation of Alagoas from Pernambuco and of Paraná from São Paulo, besides the erection of the city of Rio into a neutral district. Of the three millions of people one-third were negro slaves, and the free negroes and mulattos numbered as many more. The proportion of whites in the whole country was not more than a fourth, and in the larger coast cities, in the sugar districts, and the mining regions, it descended to a seventh and even a tenth. Civilised Indians were most numerous in Pará and Amazonas, and whites predominated most in the extreme South and in the stock-raising interior. In the century since, the whites have increased to forty per cent. and the negroes have fallen to less than twenty-five, in spite of the large slave importation in the first half of the nineteenth century. Sugar was still the great staple. Exports of gold and precious stones had fallen with the exhaustion of the best placers late in the preceding century. Tobacco was largely produced, especially in Bahia, and Maranhão and Pará were centres of a flourishing cotton trade. Rice, indigo,and pepper were exported on a considerable scale, and the production of coffee had been carried from Pará to Rio, and was rapidly increasing.
The people of the interior were mostly clothed in coarse cottons manufactured at home; probably nine-tenths went barefoot and lived in rude houses without ornamentation and conveniences. The slave system, the large landed estates, the want of diversification of industry, the general apathy, the ease of maintaining one's self in the mild climate—all these causes co-operated to lessen consuming power and to diminish Brazil's value as a market for imported merchandise.
Great estates, many of them owned by religious corporations, were the rule. Only the best parts of these estates were cultivated. Enclosures were almost unknown, and the farm buildings were dilapidated. Though next to sugar the chief wealth, cattle were neglected, breeds were not kept up, and the making of butter was so little understood that it was worth a dollar a pound. The proprietors of the sugar ranches left everything to their slaves. Ploughs were unknown; lumber was sawed by hand; water power was rarely used for any purpose, though so abundant. The only schools were a few in the towns; artificial light was practically unused; the cities were dilapidated, and their filthy streets were full of stagnant water. Horsemen rode on the sidewalks in the centre of Rio itself.
Freight was brought from the interior on muleback over narrow trails, and hardly any roads for wheeled vehicles existed. The mountains and heavily forested coast regions were extremely difficult to penetrate, but in the sparsely forested interior the old Indian trails furnished facilities for constant communication, which was astonishingly rapid considering the circumstances.
The people were very hospitable; to receive a guest was an honour; each ranch had special quarters for travellers, and the only pay the stranger could offer was to tell the news. Outside the ports no foreigner had ever been seen, and the first Englishman who visited São Paulo in 1809 was as much of a curiosity as an Esquimau would be to-day.
During John's stay in Rio, Brazil was little involved in foreign difficulties. In 1808 an expedition was sent from Pará, which took possession of Cayenne, but the place was restored to the French in 1815. In the south the breaking out of the Argentine revolution in 1810 was a temptation for the Prince Regent to increase Brazil's territory. After the expulsion of the Spaniards by the populace of Buenos Aires, the Spanish forces in Montevideo held that place against the patriots for four years. John sent an army into Uruguay in 1811 nominally to help the Spaniards, but he had to withdraw it because of British pressure. After the surrender of Montevideo by the Spaniards a civil war broke out amongst the patriots of Uruguay and the adjacent Argentine provinces. The warring factions trespassed on the territory of their Brazilian neighbours. John determined to seize the coveted north bank of the Plate for himself. In 1815 the celebrated guerrilla chief, Artigas, invaded the Seven Missions,which had been seized in 1801, and throughout that year and the next the Rio Grandenses fought desperately to expel him. Finally Artigas was decisively defeated, and the Portuguese army marched down the coast and entered Montevideo without opposition. They were welcomed by the factions opposed to Artigas, but the Buenos Aires government protested and Artigas kept up a resistance in the interior until he was overthrown by rival Argentine chieftains. From 1817 to 1821 Uruguay remained in the military occupation of Brazilian troops, and in the latter year it was formally annexed under the title of the Cisplatine Province.
Brazil had had to assume the burdens as well as reap the advantages of being an independent nation. The whole extravagant government with its swarm of hangers-on, who had bankrupted both nations together, was now saddled on Brazil alone. John's advisers regarded liberal principles as dangerous to civil order, and considered all French and North Americans as firebrands whose presence in Brazil might start the flame of revolution. The United States minister was treated as if he were a Jacobin agent, and American ships were searched for Napoleon's spies. However, the removal of the Court to Rio had set forces in motion which ultimately transformed Brazil. Free ports were open doors for ideas and education as well as merchandise. Free manufacturing and immigration diversified industry and spread energetic habits. The influx of so many educated Portuguese and the introduction of the printing-press stimulated a desire for instructionamong the Brazilians. Ambition for employment in the public service, the road to which, under the Portuguese system, has always lain through the gates of a university, co-operated. A considerable educated class began to be formed, though the intellectual movement never extended into the body of the people. Through the former class the nation found a means of expression. A spirit of inquiry and unrest was roused, but the movement was intellectual rather than instinctive; theoretical rather than practical; from the top down, and directed more toward revolutionising the central government than developing local administration.
The first outbreak on Brazilian soil against absolutism was the Pernambuco revolution of 1817. Five lodges of Free Masons existed in the city; the priests themselves were most earnest preachers of political freedom; merchants and sugar-planters wanted lower taxes; the prosperity of the sugar trade had made the people self-confident. A conspiracy was formed which had the sympathy of many of the clergy and influential citizens. An attempt to arrest the principal agitators resulted in a riot; the troops were mostly Brazilian, and rose in favour of their compatriots, and the populace joined them. The governor fled, leaving the public departments, and the treasury containing a million dollars in the hands of the revolutionists. The movement became at once frankly separatist and republican. A Committee of Public Safety was named; the Portuguese flags were torn down; a temporary constitution proclaimed; a printing-press set upto publish a liberal newspaper. Messengers were despatched to the interior and to the neighbouring provinces to announce the overthrow of despotism and to invite co-operation, but they met with no enthusiastic reception. Fear of the aggressive Jacobinism of the city of Pernambuco cooled the slave-owners and conservatives, and the dignitaries on the revolutionary committee were shocked by the impetuosity of their radical colleagues. The insurgents had not had time to provide themselves with arms, and a Portuguese fleet from Bahia quickly blockaded the port. When the royal troops came up they found the interior of the province in civil war, and the radicals were soon backed into the city, where a short siege compelled them to capitulate. The more aggressive leaders were shot by court-martial and a military government was set up. Hundreds of prisoners were carried off to Bahia, where they remained until the great reaction of 1821.
In 1820 the standard of revolt was raised in Cadiz against the Spanish Bourbons, who, with the aid of the Holy Alliance, had re-established absolutism after the fall of Napoleon. The feeble Ferdinand was compelled to accept a liberal constitution. When the news reached Lisbon the Regency, acting there for King John, was panic-stricken. Communication with Spain was forbidden and word sent off post-haste to John to urge his immediate return to Portugal, or at least the sending of his eldest son, as the only means of pacifying the deep dissatisfaction felt because of the absence of the Court and government. In Porto—always the centre of liberal movements—a formidable conspiracy was formed which included the leading citizens and the officers of the garrison, and in August, 1820, the royal authority was overthrown after scarcely a show of resistance, and a provisional junta installed. The movement spread over the northern provinces and thence to Lisbon, where a junta assumed power in December. After some confusion it was agreed temporarily toadopt the Spanish Constitution, to summon the Cortes, and to retain the Braganza dynasty as constitutional monarchs.
The news of the rising in Porto spread like wildfire through the Portuguese possessions beyond sea. Madeira and the Azores immediately installed revolutionary juntas, and some of the Brazilian provinces could not wait until the assembling of the Cortes before establishing free governments. Among native Brazilians and immigrated Portuguese, among soldiers and citizens alike, the enthusiasm for a constitution was well-nigh universal. In Pará, Pernambuco, and Rio Grande do Sul, the royal governors were dispossessed by the united soldiers and people, and the Spanish Constitution proclaimed as the law of the land. Rio, however, lay quiet, and it was not until February, 1821, that the Bahia garrison deposed the governor, and installed a provisional junta, which, protesting allegiance to the House of Braganza, proclaimed the Spanish Constitution, nominated deputies to the Cortes, and promised to adopt whatever definite constitution might be framed by that body.
The action of Bahia was decisive. Throughout the interior it met with approval. That John could hope for no support from Brazil in case he decided to make a struggle against the Portuguese revolutionists, was evident. Reluctantly he issued a proclamation announcing his intention to send Dom Pedro, his eldest son, to treat with the Cortes, and he promised to adopt such parts of the new constitution as might be found expedient for Brazil. Tosuch delay native Brazilians and the Portuguese-born were alike opposed. In Rio the troops and people arose, demanding an unconditional promise to ratify any constitution the Cortes might adopt. On the 26th of February a great crowd assembled in the streets, and while the cowardly King skulked in his suburban palace, the Prince Pedro addressed the people, swearing in his father's name and his own to accept unreservedly the expected constitution. The multitude insisted on marching out to the King's palace to show their enthusiastic gratitude. Trembling with fear John was forced to get into his carriage, and the miserable man was frightened out of his wits when the crowd took the horses out to drag him with their own hands. He fainted away and, when he recovered his senses, sat snivelling, protesting between his sobs his willingness to agree to anything, and sure that he was going to suffer the fate of Louis XVI.
DOM PEDRO I.DOM PEDRO I.[From an old woodcut.]
Thereafter Dom Pedro, though only twenty-two years old, was the principal figure in Brazil. He resembled his passionate, unrestrained, and unscrupulous mother rather than his vacillating, pusillanimous father. He had grown up neglected and uncontrolled in the midst of his parents' quarrelling and the confusion of the removal to Brazil, receiving no education except that of a soldier, and hardly able to write his native tongue correctly. He was handsome, brave, wilful, arrogant, loved riding and driving, was eager and shameless in the pursuit of pleasure. His manners were frank and attractive and he was active-minded, quick to absorb newimpressions, enterprising, strong-willed, loved popularity, and intensely enjoyed being the principal dramatic figure in any crisis. His personal courage was unquestionable, and he was prompt of decision in the face of dangers and difficulties. While capable of warm friendships and with strong impulses of devotion and gratitude, he lacked real faithfulness. Between him and his father little love and no sympathy existed. Prior to the events of 1821 he had not been admitted to the councils in state affairs, and his closest friends were among the young Portuguese officers, who, like most of their class, sympathised with the constitutional movement. Pedro was a Free Mason, and the Liberal opinions advocated in the lodges greatly influenced him. To Pedro, therefore,—young, ardent, popular, holding progressive notions,—both Brazilian and Portuguese Liberals naturally turned.
Seeing the rôle of leader and ruler of Brazil ready to his hand, Pedro favoured the departure of his father for Portugal. A meeting of the Rio electors, held on the 21st of April, to elect members to the Cortes suddenly changed into a tumult, and demanded that the King assent to the Spanish Constitution before his departure. He had no choice but to yield, though probably neither he nor the popular leaders had ever read the document. The demonstrations continuing, Pedro became uneasy lest his father's journey should be delayed, and marched his troops into the square and cleared the people out at the point of the bayonet. This audacious move was followed by general stupefaction, and the Kingquietly escaped, leaving Pedro as regent. As his vessel weighed anchor he said to his son: "I fear Brazil before long will separate herself from Portugal; if so, rather than allow the crown to fall to some adventurer, place it on thy own head."
The grasping policy of the Portuguese members of the Cortes furnished the impulse that drove the Brazilians into union and independence. The Cortes met in Lisbon, and, although most of the Brazilian delegates had not arrived, immediately undertook to pass measures touching the most important interests of the younger kingdom. In December, 1821, news reached Brazil that decrees had been enacted requiring the prince to leave Brazil, abolishing the appeal courts at Rio, creating governors who were to supersede the juntas and be independent of local control, and sending garrisons to the principal cities. Tremendous popular excitement followed. The coupling of the order for Pedro's retirement with the provisions for the enslavement and disintegration of Brazil, made the provinces realise that he was the only centre around which they could rally for effective resistance. A cry rose up from the whole country, praying Pedro not to abandon them. The address sent by the provincial junta of São Paulo was penned by the hand of José Bonifacio de Andrada, and may well be called the Brazilian declaration of independence.
"How dare these Portuguese deputies, without waiting for the Brazilian members, promulgate laws which affect the dearest interests of this realm? How dare they dismember Brazil into isolated parts possessing nocommon centre of strength and union? How dare they deprive your Royal Highness of the Regency with which your august father, our Monarch, had invested you? How dare they deprive Brazil of the tribunals instituted for the interpretation and modification of laws; for the general administration of ecclesiastical affairs, of finance, commerce, and so many institutions of public utility? To whom are the unhappy people hereafter to address themselves for redress touching their business and judicial interests?"
"How dare these Portuguese deputies, without waiting for the Brazilian members, promulgate laws which affect the dearest interests of this realm? How dare they dismember Brazil into isolated parts possessing nocommon centre of strength and union? How dare they deprive your Royal Highness of the Regency with which your august father, our Monarch, had invested you? How dare they deprive Brazil of the tribunals instituted for the interpretation and modification of laws; for the general administration of ecclesiastical affairs, of finance, commerce, and so many institutions of public utility? To whom are the unhappy people hereafter to address themselves for redress touching their business and judicial interests?"
José Bonifacio, whose voice and example, more than any other man's, gave expression and direction to the aspiration for independence, belonged to the English parliamentary school which was dominant then in liberal thought. The elevation of the young and progressive prince to an independent throne seemed an easy method of establishing constitutional government, as well as of securing Brazil's autonomy. Pedro did not hesitate long in acceding to the wish of the Brazilians. On January 9, 1822, he formally announced that he would remain in Brazil—thus defying the Portuguese Cortes. The word "independence" had not yet been employed, and there was a very general hope that the Portuguese would listen to reason when the Brazilian deputies arrived in Lisbon. The only active resistance to Pedro in Brazil came from the Portuguese soldiers, some of whom revolted and went so far as to march under arms to a point commanding the city of Rio, but their nerve failed them in face of the immense concourse of citizens who were preparing to fight.
DOM JOSE BONIFACIO DE ANDRADA.DOM JOSÉ BONIFACIO DE ANDRADA.[From a steel print.]
Pedro threw himself unreservedly into the hands of the patriots. José Bonifacio was made Prime Minister, and measures taken to re-establish the control of the central over the provincial governments. But the ruling groups in the various capitals were not very ready to surrender their authority. Pedro called a council, but representatives from only four provinces responded. Bahia and Pernambuco were held in check by Portuguese garrisons, and other provinces hesitated before committing themselves. Meanwhile the Portuguese majority in the Cortes paid no attention to the warnings of the Brazilian members, but ruthlessly pushed forward the measures for the commercial and political subjection of Brazil. Most of the Brazilian members withdrew, while a squadron was sent to Rio to escort the prince back to Portugal. On May 13 1822, he assumed the title of "Perpetual Defender and Protector of Brazil," and from this to a formal declaration of independence was only a step. In June he notified the Cortes that Brazil must have her own legislative body, and, on his own responsibility, issued writs for a constituent assembly. The Cortes responded by re-enforcing the Bahia garrison, and the Bahianos retaliated by attacking the Portuguese troops. The Pernambucanos expelled their garrison and sent promises of adhesion to the prince. On the 7th of September Pedro was in São Paulo, and there received despatches telling of still more violent measures taken by the Cortes, accompanied by letters from José Bonifacio urging that the opportunity they had so often planned for together had at last arrived. Pedro reflected but a moment, and then, dramatically drawing his sword, cried, "Independence or Death!" Everything had been carefully timed, and his entrance into Rio a few days later, wearing a cockade with the new device, was greeted with enthusiasm. On the 12th of October he was solemnly crowned "Constitutional Emperor of Brazil," announcing that he would accept the constitution to be drawn up by the approaching constituent assembly.
Prompt and efficient measures for the expulsion of the Portuguese garrisons from Bahia, Maranhão, Pará, and Montevideo were taken. The militia came forward enthusiastically; the regular forces were rapidly increased; Lord Cochrane, the celebrated free-lance English admiral, was placed in command of a fair-sized fleet which sailed at once for Bahia, and, defeating the ships which remained faithful to the Portuguese cause, established a blockade that soon enabled the land forces besieging the city to reduce the place. At Maranhão Cochrane's success was still easier; Pará also fell without resistance at the summons of one of his captains; and the news of these successes was followed by that of the surrender of the garrison at Montevideo. Within less than a year from the declaration of independence not a hostile Portuguese soldier remained on Brazilian soil.