1808: The Flight of the Emperor (26 page)

The Portuguese eagerly consumed the hope that when the war ended the treaty would be revoked and the court would return to Lisbon. Neither eventuality happened. The terms of the treaty continued vigorously for much longer, and João VI simply didn't wish to return yet. Strictly speaking, after 1810 he had no real reason to stay in Brazil. By then, Britain had expelled the last French troops. From then on, the Peninsular War continued in Spain, where it lasted three more years. If he had wanted, the prince regent could have returned to Lisbon without a hitch just two years after he left. But João learned in those two years that, if the Portuguese Empire had a future, its chances of survival lay in Brazil more than in Portugal. He resisted pressure to return for as long as he could. In 1814, even the English government tried to bring him back, sending to Rio de Janeiro a fleet commanded
by Admiral John Beresford, brother of the marshal governing Portugal, with the mission of transporting the royal family. The British government feared that if the court didn't return, the climate of dissatisfaction in Portugal would grow uncontrollable. History soon confirmed their fears.
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The specter of revolution quashed in 1817 resurged in Porto three years later.

On the morning of August 24, 1820, rebel troops gathered in the Santo Ovidio fields of Porto and declared themselves against the English dominion. In the manifesto they distributed, they lamented the penurious situation in which the country found itself and the absence of the king: “As the height of this misfortune, our beloved Sovereign has abandoned living among us. People of Portugal! Since that fateful day, we can count the disgraces as our orphanage continues. We have lost everything!”
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Three weeks later, on September 15, the revolt reached Lisbon, where various popular protests called for the end of absolute monarchy.
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On the 27th, the Provisional Preparatory Board of the Cortes convened in Alcobaça with the task of drafting a new liberal constitution. The Cortes, a council of state, hadn't met since 1698. Their very convocation, after such a long absence on the Portuguese political scene, indicated how much the king's power was under threat. The rebels decided to spare the Bragança dynasty, but the return of the king to Portugal became a point of honor.

On October 10, Marshal Beresford, who had traveled to Rio de Janeiro to seek more resources and power from João VI to counter the rebellion, was blocked from disembarking in Lisbon and stripped of his functions. In his place, a new Board of Governors was formed, composed of representatives of the gentry, nobility, clerics, and military men, under the leadership of Sinédrio, a secret organization created in Porto on January 22, 1818, its ideas and expression fundamental to the success of the Liberal Revolution.
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Gathered in February 1821, the Cortes had an extensive docket of work to accomplish: freedom of the press, elaboration of a new civil and criminal code, ending the Inquisition, reducing the number of religious orders, granting amnesty to political prisoners, and installing a bank in Portugal, among other measures. The principal demand, however, was returning the king to Portugal. In Rio, the return of the monarch also became a campaign point of the so-called Portuguese Party, composed of highly privileged military men, public servants, and merchants interested in reestablishing the ancient colonial system.
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We can see the climate of resentment among the Portuguese in relation to Brazil in the pamphlet signed by Manuel Fernandes Tomas, one of the chief revolutionaries of 1820, in which he attacks the Brazilians with outright prejudice. Tomas defines Brazil as “a veritable giant, without arms or legs, speechless in its burning, unhealthy climate . . . reduced to a few hordes of blackies, caught off the coasts of Africa, the only ones able to withstand the scalding rays of this seething land.” The pamphlet, which provoked indignation in Rio de Janeiro, asked of King João whether he should choose to reside “in the land of monkeys, blacks, and snakes, or in a nation of white people, of civilized people, who love their Sovereign.” The pamphlet ended with “Let us turn our eyes away from that savage and uncouth country, towards this land of civilization, to Portugal!”
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Upon hearing the rebels' demands, which arrived in Rio de Janeiro on October 17, 1820, with the brig
Providence
, João VI faced an unsolvable dilemma, which questioned the very future of the Portuguese Empire. If he returned to Portugal, he could lose Brazil, which might follow the path of its neighboring Spanish colonies and declare independence. If, on the other hand, he remained in Rio de Janeiro, he could lose Portugal, where revolutionary winds produced by the resentment accumulated over a decade and a half could topple him from supremacy there. From the start, João VI considered sending his heir, Pedro, to Portugal, while he himself stayed in Brazil. It would satisfy the Cortes's demands and appease the revolutionaries. But Pedro didn't want to go for two reasons. First, he felt more at home in Brazil, where he had arrived when he was only ten years old, and where all of his friends and advisors lived. Second, Pedro's wife, Princess Leopoldina, was in the last weeks of her pregnancy and could give birth at sea, a highly risky situation in those days. Worse still, some of the ministers wanted Pedro to travel to Portugal alone, leaving his wife behind in Rio de Janeiro, a suggestion that the princess desperately fought for weeks. After many discussions, João VI surprised his ministers with the following utterance: “Well, then, if my son does not wish to go, I shall be the one.”
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It was an unexpectedly courageous move for a king who had always shown himself to be insecure, fearful, and indecisive.

XXVI

The Return

A
funereal entourage crossed the streets of Rio de Janeiro in silence. They were transporting the remains of Queen Maria I, who had died in 1816, and those of the infante D. Pedro Carlos—both nephew and son-in-law to the king and victim of tuberculosis in 1812—into the stifling chamber of a frigate anchored at port. On the night of April 24, 1821, João VI accompanied the procession by torchlight, behind two caskets, the first removed from the Convent of Ajuda, the other from the Convent of San Antonio. It was the final act of the Portuguese court in Brazil.

Two days later, the king departed from Rio de Janeiro against his will and without knowing what awaited him in Portugal. He left behind a vastly changed country that had welcomed him with such happiness thirteen years earlier. Its independence was already inevitable. A few hours before the grim ceremony of the night of April 24, João called his elder son and heir to the crown, then twenty-two years old, for a last recommendation: “Pedro, if Brazil separates, better that it happens under you, who will respect me, than under these adventurers.”
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The tense weeks leading up to the departure churned with distress. The echoes of the Porto revolution had arrived in Brazil in mid-October of the preceding year, and it only took a few weeks for them to ignite the spirit of the Brazilians and Portuguese surrounding the court. On the morning of
November 26, a crowd gathered at Rocio Square, today Tiradentes Plaza, demanding the presence of the king in the center of Rio de Janeiro and the signing of the liberal constitution. On hearing the news, a few miles away, João, quite startled, ordered all the windows of São Cristovão Palace shut, just as he did on stormy nights.

“How should I treat the rebels?” he asked the count of Palmela, minister of foreign affairs and war.

“Unfortunately, sir,” the count responded, “there is nothing to deliberate; it is necessary to meet all of their requests.”
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Shortly thereafter arrived Prince Pedro, who spent the wee hours of the morning conversing with the rebels. He fetched the king as the mob had demanded, but João, recalling recent scenes from the French Revolution, took fright. Thousands had surrounded the Palace of Versailles, captured King Louis XVI and Queen Marie Antoinette, and carried them off to Paris, where, after an escape attempt, they were summarily tried and guillotined. Despite the fear that this episode stirred in him, João entered the carriage that awaited him and proceeded to the city center. On the way, however, he noticed that, instead of shouts of protest and offences, the crowd was cheering him. As much as the French mob had hated Louis XVI, so did the Brazilian people love João VI. After half an hour's journey, he appeared, tremulous, on the balcony of the Royal Palace. He could barely mumble the words dictated to him, which Pedro had to repeat for him aloud, much to the delight of the crowds. João VI, the last absolute monarch of Portugal and Brazil, had agreed to swear to and sign the very constitution that stripped some of his powers.
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The euphoria of February 26 quickly gave way to new agitation, though. The more radical leaders thought the constitutional reforms insufficient. They wanted the king to cede even more ground. As a result, a second popular demonstration was scheduled for April 21, a date that marked the anniversary of the 1792 hanging of Tiradentes, the rebel leader of the Conjuração Mineira. To shouts of “It is the people who give the orders!” and “There will be revolution!” the crowd, gathered at the Plaza of Commerce, demanded that João swear to the Spanish constitution—an even more radical document than the first—adopted in Cádiz in 1812 during the uprisings
of the Peninsular War, which had become an inspiration for the Portuguese rebels in 1820. They also wanted the king to remain in Brazil, defying the decision of the Portuguese Cortes. But this time the demonstration ended in tragedy, violently repressed by troops commanded by Prince Pedro. Thirty people were killed, and dozens wounded. Dawn broke on the façade of the elegant building designed by Grandjean de Montigny in the Plaza of Commerce scrawled with the graffiti, “Butchery of the Braganças.”
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João departed Rio de Janeiro on April 26, five days after the massacre at the Plaza of Commerce. His retinue included approximately four thousand Portuguese—a third of the total who had accompanied him southwest across the Atlantic thirteen years earlier.
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It is said that the king embarked in tears. If it were up to only him, he would have stayed in Brazil forever. Nonetheless, once more, this fat, good-natured, tranquil, solitary, indecisive, and often fearful king hunkered down under the responsibility put upon him by history.

Hard evidence that the king didn't want to return exists in a pamphlet that circulated in Rio de Janeiro and major Brazilian cities in January 1821. Written by Francisco Cailhé de Geine, the French text defends the notion that João VI should remain in Brazil. It argues that Brazil could live without Portugal—but not vice versa. It warns further that the departure of the king would bring independence, which in fact happened the following year. “The king should not abandon the country while the revolutionary storm threatens and while he is needed more than ever here.”
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The proof lies in the document's origins. Under the order of Thomaz Villa Nova Portugal, minister and private advisor to João VI, the Royal Press printed the leaflet in 1820. Historian Tobias Monteiro uncovered evidence that João not only knew of the text but authorized its propagation.
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The document therefore defended ideas shared by the king and his principal assistant.

The departure of the court left Brazil indigent on the eve of its independence. On embarking, João VI scraped clean the coffers of the Bank of Brazil and withdrew all that remained of the royal treasury brought to the colony in 1808. “The royalty, which lived in corruption, carried out a veritable raid on the Brazilian treasury,” wrote de Oliveira Lima.
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Eyewitness Maria Graham recounts that “the treasury was left so poor” that Pedro had to delay the
increase of military pay promised before the king's departure, which further heightened the discontent and uncertainty in Brazil. “The funds for carrying on several branches of industry, and several works of public utility were destroyed by this great and sudden drain,” she wrote, “and thereby much that had been begun after the arrival of the court, and which it was hoped would have been of the greatest benefit to the country, was stopped.”
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The withdrawal of treasury funds had dramatic consequences on the Brazilian economy and in practice “amounted to bankruptcy, even if not declared” in the evaluation of historian Pereira da Silva.

 

Gold is no longer found in circulation. Silver has raised to a 7 or 8 percent premium. The discredit of bank notes has paralyzed, tormented, damaged, and dragged commerce to a slow liquidation. It has suspended the regular whirl of commerce. Many things have failed. A hideous crisis has formed. A panic of terror has seized everyone's spirits. The price of basic necessities has raised, and this fact has powerfully influenced everyone and everything, multiplying the disasters resulting from the restless spirits, anarchic ideas, and general disorder in which the society is plunged.
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João VI arrived in Lisbon on July 3 after sixty-eight days of travel, as vulnerable as when he had left. When he departed in 1807 he was a hostage to England and a fugitive from Napoleon. Now he was again a hostage, this time of the Portuguese Cortes. According to historian Oliveira Martins, even before setting foot on solid ground, the king was “insulted and humiliated.”
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While still aboard his ship, he was obliged to swear to the new Constitution, developed without consulting him. José Honório Rodrigues recounts that “D. João swore the oath in a hushed voice, mumbling with the cowardice that was his alone.”
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The king had to accept certain impositions that in the epoch of absolute monarchy were unimaginable. One prohibited a number of his companions, accused of corruption and robbery in the administration of the public treasury, from disembarkation in Portugal. Among the blacklisted was Joaquim de Azevedo, count of Rio Seco, the official invited to the Palace of Queluz in
November 1807 to organize the voyage to Brazil in the first place. In Rio de Janeiro, where he served as head treasurer in the royal exchequer, he became one of the richest men in the former colony and new kingdom. In addition, Bento Maria Targini, viscount of São Lourenço, and the Lobato brothers, chamberlains and private advisors to the king, couldn't enter Lisbon either.
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For the Portuguese, who for so many years anxiously awaited the return of the royal family, the arrival of João VI on the docks of Lisbon was a spectacle to behold, just as much as it had been for the Brazilians thirteen years earlier. Oliveira Martins captures the moment vividly:

 

By then old, overweight, filthy, greasy, ugly, obese, with a dead look in his eyes, a fallen, sunburned face, a sagging pout, hunched over on swollen knees, he hung like a sagging load between the velvet pillows of aged golden coaches . . . and was followed by a gaunt cavalry—for those who beheld this scene on the rocky streets of Lisbon, he was a grotesque apparition.
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