1808: The Flight of the Emperor (14 page)

Three men played a fundamental and abiding role in João's life. During different points in his life, in addition to helping him overcome fear, timidness, insecurity, and depression, they advised him on the decisions that
marked his reign. Rodrigo de Sousa Coutinho, count of Linhares, heir and godson of the marquis of Pombal and leader of the “English faction” in the court, acted as the main player responsible for the transfer of the royal family to Brazil. He “picked up where Pombal left off and promoted the Prime Minister's plan to counter Portugal's political weakness within Europe by developing the territories of Portuguese America,” affirms historian Kirsten Schultz.
25
His death in 1814 left a lacuna in the government that the prince regent never filled.

The second, Antonio de Araújo e Azevedo, count of Barca, succeeded de Sousa Coutinho in the Ministry of War and Foreign Affairs. De Araújo e Azevedo didn't have the same stature as a statesman as de Sousa Coutinho but was considered one of the most illustrious intellectuals in Brazil. In 1807 he brought in his luggage the English printing presses that initiated the Brazilian press. He was also responsible for important advances in science and culture, including the arrangement of the French Artistic Mission, which arrived in 1816. He died in 1817, one year before João's coronation.

The last of the three key men was Thomaz Villa Nova Portugal, successor to these first two in the same ministry. During the final phase of his government in Brazil, João, aging and tired, blindly confided in Villa Nova Portugal. “D. João did not even bother to think,” wrote Tobias Monteiro. “However insignificant the decision to be taken was, it fell to Tomas Antonio to resolve it.”
26
The correspondence between the two reveals João's ongoing timidity and insecurity in exercising power. In notes to the minister on January 24, 1821, about an audience that day, the king wrote: “O.C. is coming today, tell me what I should say to him.” João depended on Villa Nova Portugal even for conversations with his own son. “Until this moment, I have not yet spoken with my son, and I want you to tell me if you are of the same opinion; tell me what I should say to him, and if he should have a reply, how I should respond,” the king wrote on January 31, 1821, with respect to the decision about whether to return to Portugal or remain in Brazil. “I have just received my son's vote, now tell me your judgment,” he prompted on February 4, dealing with the same subject.
27

These three men helped save King João VI's reign and to a large extent his biography, otherwise doomed to failure on the merits of his own
personality.
28
Thanks to them, João went down in history as a relatively successful sovereign, especially when compared with his peers of the era—dethroned, exiled, imprisoned, and even executed. “The truth is, in spite of the period of unparalleled upheavals during which he ruled, D. João lived and died as king, while the majority of crowned heads in Europe fell before Napoleon,” Jurandir Malerba observes.
29
Pedro Calmon defined him as a sovereign who was “troubled and clever, who reigned until his death, in spite of Spain and France, a devilish wife, Napoleon, wars, revolutions, and conspiracies.”
30
De Oliveira Lima writes that, although he was no great sovereign capable of military feats or brash administrative coups, João knew how to combine good will, intelligence, and common sense to efficient result. “He was gentle and discerning, ingratiating and prudent, affable and persistent.”
31
In the opinion of de Oliveira Lima, thanks to these attributes, “D. João VI, without a doubt, was and is a popular king in Brazil.”
32

XIV

Carlota Joaquina

I
n the books and films that she has inspired, Princess Carlota Joaquina appears as an unfaithful wife and an ugly, unhappy, Machiavellian woman. While suspicions remain, no hard proof exists that she was ever unfaithful. Ugly, unhappy, and Machiavellian, however, she was indeed. No other individual from that time and place etched a portrait in history with such a caricatured and debated image. Quarrelsome, intelligent, and vindictive, she has merited diametrically opposed depictions through the ages. In Carla Camurati's film
Carlota Joaquina, Princess of Brazil,
she is a depraved and promiscuous queen. In the official Portuguese history, she appears as a pious and ultraconservative sovereign.
1
Her unbridled ambition and thirst for power remains undeniable, however, and led her to participate in numerous conspiracies and coup attempts, some of them against her own husband. All of them failed.

Queen Carlota Joaquina—ugly, Machiavellian, and unhappy but not demonstrably unfaithful.

A rainha D. Carlota Joaquina,
engraving by Jean-Baptiste Debret from
Voyage pittoresque et historique au Brésil,
Paris, 1834–1839, Lucia M. Loeb/Biblioteca Guita e José Mindlin

She had powerful black eyes and a wide, capricious mouth, with thin lips over which presided dark, pronounced whiskers. Straight, virile lines shaped her face. Thin, dark-haired, and short, she had skin mottled by scars from smallpox during her childhood.
2
The duchess of Abrantes, wife of General Junot, commander of the invading French troops, described her as “small, hobbling on one leg, cross-eyed, a purplish nose, and all too disagreeable given the legends of love affairs that accompanied her.”
3
The hobble
came after falling from a horse in childhood.
4
“The manly, crude features of her face, the nature of her worries, her very impudence, meant that the only feminine part of Carlota Joaquina was the exterior wrapping,” wrote de Oliveira Lima, who also defined her as “one of the major, if not the greatest encumbrances in D. João VI's life.”
5

Daughter of Carlos IV and sister of Fernando VII, both kings of Spain, she was born in 1775 and died in 1830, at fifty-four years old. According to the history books, she participated in at least five conspiracies. In the first, in 1805, she tried to dethrone her husband and assume control of Portugal. The prince regent discovered the coup in time, punished those involved, and separated from her. Later, in the Americas, Carlota attempted to assume the throne of the Spanish colonies in America after Napoleon deposed her brother. Again João blocked her plans, preventing her from traveling to Buenos Aires, where she had planned to be named princess regent in place of her brother. In 1821, now back in Portugal, she refused to sign the Portuguese Liberal Constitution, opposing the demands of the Cortes and the advice of her husband. As a result, she was confined to the Palace of Ramalhão, far from Lisbon and far from power. In 1824, even while in isolation, she conspired to install her favorite son, Miguel, as king of Portugal in what became known as the April Revolt. Leader of a traditionalist party, Miguel, backed by troops, imprisoned his father and attempted to assume the throne. This coup also went awry, and Miguel ended up in exile like his mother. Some still suspect Carlota Joaquina's hand in her husband's death. João VI died in
1826 amid bouts of nausea and vomiting. Rumors at the time mentioned poisoning ordered by the queen. After João's death, she once again tried to install Miguel and displace her daughter Isabel Maria, whom João had appointed as regent. Carlota Joaquina failed yet again.
6

The queen contrasted sharply with her husband. Pedro Calmon wrote that “no other princess of the century seemed less appropriate as the wife of calm D. João.”
7
Few other couples could so differ in their preferences and behavior. João, obese, lethargic, and good-natured, hated riding horses, and a simple walk of a few feet exhausted him. He yawned during feasts and official receptions. But he loved Gregorian chant and ceremonies in the company of priests and monks.
8
Carlota Joaquina, on the
other hand, lively, hyperactive, and talkative, rode horses better than most men of her era—even with her hobble. Her jaunts on horseback through the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro became famous. She loved feasts and was handy with cannons.
9

She demanded—and even threatened—that people pay homage when she passed through the streets of Rio de Janeiro. According to protocol, men had to remove their hats and kneel in front of the royal family as a sign of respect. This requirement caused a series of diplomatic incidents because a large number of foreign visitors refused to enact the ritual. Thomas Sumpter—American envoy to the royal court, a dyed-in-the-wool Republican, and Carlota's neighbor near Botafogo—was out riding when the queen's retinue approached him galloping. The minister greeted them politely but without removing his hat or kneeling. Carlota, dissatisfied, demanded that her guards force him to dismount and fulfill the protocol. The soldiers surrounded Sumpter and threatened a whipping. Irritated, Sumpter drew a pistol in each hand and warned the soldiers that he might kill them if they raised a whip against him. Afterward, he pressed charges against D. João. In another incident, one of Carlota Joaquina's stablemen whipped Lord Strangford, the British envoy to the court. So many complaints accrued that João finally decided to exempt all foreigners from gestures of deference to the Portuguese royal family.
10

João and Carlota Joaquina were married by proxy, as was the custom in the European courts at the time. She met her husband for the first time a month after the wedding. She was ten years old, he seventeen. The destinies of these two children fulfilled key roles in the game of power in the era. Marriage was one of the most practical means of maintaining stability on the Iberian peninsula and avoiding the countless wars that had imposed so many sacrifices on Spain and Portugal in preceding centuries. Young Carlota arrived in Portugal in May 1785. Out of courtesy, João received her at the border, but the misunderstandings between them—a result of her indomitable character—didn't take long to manifest themselves. On the night of June 9, during a feast in the Palace of Vila Viçosa, Carlota bit her husband's ear and bashed him over the head with a candlestick.
11
They had been married for only two months.

The pair consummated the marriage six years later, after the princess had turned fifteen. While not allowed to share the same bed as her husband, Carlota spent her days playing patty-cake in the Palace of Queluz under the care of Queen Maria I, whose signs of madness had already begun to show.
12
The couple had nine children in the span of thirteen years:

 

• Maria Teresa, born April 29, 1793, one year after João assumed control of the throne

• Antonio, born March 25, 1795 (died June 11, 1801, six years old)

• Maria Isabel, born May 10, 1797, married to King Fernando VII of Spain but died shortly thereafter on December 2, 1818

• Pedro, born October 12, 1798, future emperor of Brazil as Pedro I and king of Portugal as Pedro IV

• Maria Francisca, born April 22, 1800, married to the infante Carlos of Spain, brother of Fernando VII

• Isabel Maria, born June 4, 1801, princess regent of Portugal from 1826 to 1828

• Miguel, born October 22, 1802, king of Portugal from 1828 to 1834, lost the throne to his brother Pedro, who had abdicated the throne of Brazil; fled on an English ship to Germany, where he died in 1866

• Maria da Assunção, born June 25, 1805, died January 1834

• Ana Maria de Jesus, born December 23, 1806, the first infanta of Portugal to marry a man not of royal rank since the Middle Ages

Some historians raise the suspicion that some of these children issued not from Prince João but rather from Carlota's extramarital affairs. De Oliveira Lima writes that João “was not wholly certain of the paternity of the last children” and that Carlota Joaquina was “a traitor of a spouse, a conspirer of a princess, constantly and forever disloyal.”
13
No solid evidence proves her infidelity, but suspicions linger. In October 1820, rifle shots killed Gertrudes
Carneiro Leão, baroness of São Salvador de Campos do Goitacazes, as she alighted from her carriage in front of her house in the Catete neighborhood in Rio de Janeiro. The crime occurred one year before the royal family's return to Lisbon and gave rise to a wave of rumors, according to which Carlota Joaquina ordered the killing because she had an amorous relationship with Fernando Carneiro Leão, Gertrudes's husband, count of Vila-Nova de São José, and director of the Bank of Brazil.
14

Another insinuation of infidelity involved the commander of the British fleet in Rio de Janeiro, Admiral Sidney Smith. In a polemic, José Presas, the Catalunian former private secretary of Carlota Joaquina, claims that the princess had a rendezvous with the admiral in the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro. Presas doesn't explain the nature of this encounter, but Carlota and Smith had allied themselves politically in the so-called River Plate Question of the period, in which the princess fought to assume power over the Spanish colonies against the will both of her husband and Lord Strangford. According to Presas, she presented the admiral with a jewel-studded sword along with a note that read: “In gratitude from the Princess of Brazil for the services of Sir Sidney Smith.”
15

While it seems possible, the problem is that the greatest suspect in this story is not Carlota Joaquina but Presas himself. One of the most colorful personalities of this era, Presas became well known as the author of an explicit case of literary blackmail. Born in Catalunia, he moved as a boy to Argentina, where an uncle trained in law cared for him. In 1806, when England invaded Buenos Aires in reprisal for the Spanish alliance with Napoleon, Presas immediately adhered to the “English party,” believing British victory inevitable. He miscalculated. Argentina defeated and expelled the English from the River Plate region. Pursued for treason, Presas fled to Rio de Janeiro, where he joined the employ of Carlota Joaquina as her personal secretary on the recommendation of Sidney Smith himself, who knew him from Buenos Aires. More than just a secretary, he became her man of confidence, co-conspirator, and, some suspect, her lover.
16

With the return of the royal family to Portugal, Presas obtained a position in the court of Spain, thanks to her influence. He fell into disgrace, though, after writing pamphlets against monarchic absolutism. Threatened
with imprisonment, he fled to France, where he wrote a book entitled
The Secret Memoirs of D. Carlota Joaquina,
replete with intrigues, gossip, and insinuations, and revenge for the nonpayment of a pension that the queen had promised him. In the book, Presas insinuates possessing Carlota Joaquina's correspondence—which he calls her “confessions,” containing compromising information about her life and actions. He gives the impression that he could use this information if he doesn't receive the money promised to him. “Meditate deeply upon the fatal consequences that could befall you, if the Prince himself (D. João) were to have in hand the confessions that you involuntarily—having forgotten them—left with me,” he writes openly to the princess. In the end, he makes his mercenary point: “A brief response, accompanied by a bill of exchange for a modest amount, would be sufficient to hush me.”

Presas wasted ink, paper, and money in vain, though. Carlota Joaquina died at the beginning of 1830, when the book was still being printed in Bordeaux, France. She never had a chance to read the disloyalties of her ungrateful and treacherous secretary. Even if she had read the book, Presas's blackmail might not have had any effect. At the time that he wrote it, she, already a widow, was living ostracized in Portugal and drowning in debts.

Carlota Joaquina detested Brazil. In 1807, she resisted leaving Portugal as much as she could. “In this country nothing lasts,” she wrote after arriving in Rio de Janeiro. “Even salted meat does not keep, and rots quickly.”
17
Upon embarking to return to Portugal in 1821, she removed her sandals and beat them against one of the cannons on the gunwale of the ship. “I have knocked the last dust of Brazil from my feet,” she said.
18
“At last, I am going back to civilization!”
19

Back in Portugal, she refused to swear to the Constitution, as the Cortes had demanded. As a result, she lost all of her political rights and the title of queen. She spent the rest of her days imprisoned in the Quinta do Ramalhão, the summer estate near Sintra. In a letter to the king, she explains that she wouldn't swear the oath simply because she had said she wouldn't. Her position, she said, came not from pride nor contempt for the Cortes, but because “a decent person does not retract.” She added: “I shall be more free in my banishment than you in your palace. At least I have my liberty to keep
me company. My soul was never enslaved nor humiliated by those rebellious vassals, who dare to impose laws upon you and struggle to compel me to take an oath that my conscience repels.”
20
This was Carlota Joaquina in the role that she performed her whole life: stubborn, headstrong, obstinate, and inflexible.