1808: The Flight of the Emperor (25 page)

Aside from these moments of celebration, King João VI lived a placid, tranquil life in Rio de Janeiro. He woke at 6 a.m., dressed with the help of his chamberlain, Matias Antonio Lobato, and went to pray at oratory. He ate chicken with toast during his morning audiences, during which he received the most obsequious and intimate fidalgos of the court. His most frequent interlocutor was Viana, the superintendent-general of the police,
whom he received three times a day to discuss urban improvements and security issues in Rio de Janeiro. He took his main meals together with his children. At dessert, a small hand-washing ceremony took place: Pedro, the eldest son, held a silver basin, while the youngest, Miguel, poured water for the king to wash the grease from his hands. After lunch, the king slept for one or two hours and then in the late afternoon went for a ride, sometimes driving a small mule-drawn carriage on his own.
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Historian Tobias Monteiro adds a picturesque detail to these rides. In front of the retinue went a cavalry boy, called the “broadener”—perhaps because he opened space for the king to pass or perhaps because he wore enormous sleeves. This vassal rode along with two saddlebags at his sides. In one were the king's snacks; in the other a chamber pot and a three-piece structure that functioned as a portable toilet bowl, to be used in the open country. During the ride, the king would murmur a certain order, and the boy descended from his mule and set up the equipment.

 

Then the King descended from his carriage and the chamberlain would approach him, and unbutton and lower his trousers. Right in front of the officials and others in the retinue, including his favorite daughter Princess Maria Teresa, if present, he would beatifically sit down, as if no-one was around. Having taken care of his need, a particular servant came to clean him and the chamberlain arrived again, to help him get dressed.
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Having completed this ritual, the king continued the excursion until snack time arrived. Aside from the food stored in the saddlebags of the cavalry boy, João also carried an extra supply of roast, boneless chickens in the grubby pouch of his jacket, nibbling at them while contemplating the scenery or stopping to chat with people who saluted him along the road. At night, he received his subjects for the hand-kissing ceremony before going to bed at 11 p.m.
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Monteiro offers more curious information about the private matters of the king. He recounts that João's quarters in the São Cristovão Palace opened onto a veranda. João VI slept alone in one of these rooms. In an
adjacent hall, which led to the interior of the building, he received visits and dispatched ministers and government officials. This meeting hall was the only means of access to the king's room, so palace servants also had to pass through it when they needed to empty the royal chamber pots in the morning. Depending on the timing, this task sometimes took place while the monarch was receiving guests. To avoid embarrassment, these chamber pots were covered with a wooden lid framed with a fringe of crimson velvet. “But the seal was imperfect, and let volatile elements escape, betraying the contents,” Monteiro recounts indiscreetly.
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Indeed not everything smelled of roses in the court of Rio de Janeiro, but imperfectly sealed chamber pots weren't the greatest of their problems by far.

PART THREE

T
HE
R
ETURN OF THE
M
ONARCH

XXV

Portugal Abandoned

I
f you can contain the reality of an entire nation in a work of art, the Portuguese Empire in 1820 would fit perfectly into a painting found in London's National Portrait Gallery. William Carr Beresford, an Irishman by birth and a general in the British Army, governed Portugal on behalf of the Portuguese while the court remained in Brazil. A portrait in oil by Sir William Beechey depicts a severe man who inspires both fear and respect. Tall, corpulent, and bald, with tufts of hair rising above his ears, Beresford sports a dark jacket covered in decorations with a high collar. The left side of his face reveals a sinister and enigmatic detail. Blinded by a musket shot years earlier, his left eye appears languid, deflated, and lifeless, forming a startling contrast with his right and giving him the appearance of having two simultaneous and antagonistic personalities. His left side is inert, inexpressive, moribund; his right is agile, vivacious, scanning the horizon for what the future holds.

The same dichotomy held for Portugal and its overseas dominions on the eve of João VI's return to Lisbon. On one side of the Atlantic, anchored in a land exhausted by war, lay a metropolis left amorphous, impoverished, and humiliated by the long absence of its king. On the other lay a former colony that, in the same period and for the same reason, had changed, prospered, and was contemplating the future with optimism and hope. They
were irreconcilable realities. Within two years, Brazil became an independent nation. Portugal, by contrast, continued in a whirlpool of conspiracies and political revolts for much longer. The venerable colonial empire thereby ended its glory days with frayed nerves, paying a high price for the choices made in the tumultuous days of 1807 and 1808.

The thirteen years during which João VI lived in Brazil saw much hunger and immense suffering for the people of Portugal. On the morning of November 30, 1807, the day after the royal family fled, the sails of their fleet hadn't even disappeared over the horizon as panic overtook Lisbon. A small earthquake hit the city, interpreted by some as an omen—rightly, as it happened.
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Knowing that the French would attack them first, farmers abandoned their properties and fled to the capital. There they and everyone else in the city scrambled like never before to purchase and hoard rations, locking themselves in at home. “Each, while he shed tears for the royal family, had first wept for his own fate,” wrote General Foy, one of the French officials who participated in the invasion of Portugal. “Other reflections now took their place: the Prince no longer made common cause with his people; the nation was conquered without having been vanquished. Priests, nobles, soldiers, plebeians, all turned their thoughts sadly inwards; all began to think of their own safety.”
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Before occupying Lisbon, General Junot futilely tried to pacify the Portuguese with a proclamation in which he promised to protect them and preserve their rights. “My army will enter your city,” declared the French general.

 

I came to save your port and your prince from the malign influence of England. But your prince, while respectable for his virtues, let himself be dragged by treacherous advisors . . . to be handed over to his enemies. Residents of Lisbon, remain calm. You have nothing to fear from my army or me. The beloved, mighty Napoleon has sent me to protect you, and protect you, I shall.
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As you might imagine, that's not quite what happened. When Junot's exhausted and ill-equipped troops entered the capital, the streets stood deserted. On arriving at the docks, the men caught sight only of a solitary
cargo ship. Cannon shots fired from the Tower of Belém forced the commander of the ship to return to port. Thereafter began the sack of the city. The crates and suitcases left behind on the docks during the haste of the departure were confiscated. Shops and homes were ransacked. The price of food skyrocketed. The currency devalued by 60 percent. Money changers closed up shop due to the lack of cash in circulation.
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Tricked by the court's flight to Brazil, Bonaparte imposed severe punishments on Portugal. First, he announced war reparations in the amount of 100 million francs, an astronomical figure, equivalent today to approximately $500 million, which the country, in its penurious situation, could never repay.
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French troops confiscated the property of anyone who had left with the prince regent, including royal palaces and land. The silver of the church, forgotten in the haste of flight on the docks, was melted down. Part of the Portuguese army, totaling about 40,000 soldiers, amalgamated into the French forces and marched off to Germany, where many died in 1812 during Napoleon's failed attempt to invade Russia. The provisional government appointed by Prince João on the day of departure was dissolved and replaced with an administrative council subordinate to General Junot. Finally, as the French emperor had promised months before in
Le Moniteur
, the Bragança dynasty was declared extinct.
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In these days of fear and uncertainty, two diametrically opposed attitudes formed in Portugal. With privileges and property to safeguard, the nobility quickly adhered to the conquerors. The prince regent had barely left for Brazil when a large delegation of elite Portuguese traveled to Bayonne, France, to pay homage to Napoleon. The group included four marquises, a count, a viscount, the head inquisitor, and the bishop of Coimbra. This same delegation published a manifesto in Lisbon, in which they urged the Portuguese to accept the French dominion “under the magnanimous protection of a world hero, the arbiter of kings and people,” such that the Portuguese nation could “one day form part of the great family of which His Majesty (Napoleon) was the beneficent father.”
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Satisfied with this development, Junot attended the opera the first night after the invasion and promised to respect all of the property and rights of the nobility—with the exception of those who had fled to Brazil of course.

But the common Portuguese people had everything to lose and nothing to gain from the French invasion. Without the option to flee as their prince had or the ability to curry meaningful favor, as the remaining elite did, the Portuguese ignored the proclamations of General Junot and the manifesto of the nobility and resisted the invaders. Trouble began on December 13, two weeks after the royal family's departure. General Junot had ordered the Portuguese flag lowered from São Jorge Castle, where it dominated the view of the city above the neighborhood of Alfama, and the French colors raised in its stead. That same day, Junot ordered six thousand soldiers to parade through Rossio Square to the beat of a military march. This demonstration of force, unexpected and unnecessary, provoked a popular insurrection, promptly suppressed by the general. In the following days, conflicts spread throughout the nation.
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In the bishopric of Coimbra, the terrorized inhabitants fled to the mountains, where French soldiers followed and surrounded them. Some managed to save their hides in exchange for gold, jewels, or cash. The rest were shot dead on the spot. Nearly three thousand people were killed, and more than one thousand homes were burned.
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Between 1807 and 1814, Portugal lost half a million inhabitants. One sixth of the population perished of hunger, battle, or simply fled the country.
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Never in its history had the country lost so much of its population in such a short period. In May 1808, the Portuguese ambassador in London, Domingos de Sousa Coutinho, wrote to Prince João in Rio de Janeiro that the number of Portuguese refugees in England was enormous. “Every walk of life has come, in numbers I don't even know how to convey,” recounted the diplomat. “The majority of them are almost naked, in need of everything.”
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The Portuguese court was bankrupt, however, so de Sousa Coutinho had to ask the English government for financial assistance to shelter the refugees. In the meantime, the rich bribed Junot in exchange for permission to embark on ships leaving Lisbon.

“Portugal indeed was in a dismal state,” wrote English historian Sir Charles Oman.

 

Her ports were blocked and her wines could not be sold to her old customers in England, nor her manufactures to her Brazilian colonists. The
working classes in Lisbon were thrown out of employment, and starved, or migrated in bands into the interior. Foy and other good witnesses from the French side speak of the capital as “looking like a desert, with no vehicles, and hardly a foot-passenger in the streets, save 20,000 persons reduced to beggary and trying vainly to live on alms.”
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Thanks to the fierce resistance of the Portuguese and Spanish, Britain finally penetrated the Continental Blockade and initiated a series of victorious campaigns in the Peninsular War that set in motion the definitive fall of the French emperor at Waterloo. But in their conflict, the two great European powers—Britain and France—treated the Portuguese almost as sideline participants. A demonstration of this treatment occurred soon after the first great English victory over the French in Vimeiro, Portugal, on August 21, 1808. It was such a decisive battle that General Junot preferred surrender, leaving Portugal to British control. This agreement, known as the Convention of Cintra, after the city where it was negotiated, stipulated that the French withdraw immediately from the forts and military outputs and hand over all possessions, supplies, munitions, horses, and other means of transport taken from the Portuguese. In exchange, British forces would protect them on their return to France.

The possessions that the French had plundered weren't returning to their original owners, the victims of the invasion, but rather going to the new occupiers, the English. These goods included $60,000 worth of the Church's silver, already melted down and ready to be transported; $40,000 confiscated from the Portuguese treasury; and another $25,000 worth of merchandise stolen from public warehouses. The agreement caused a general revolt in Portugal, prompting the British parliament, who deemed it excessively unjust to the Portuguese, to revoke it in part.
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In the absence of the court, Portugal essentially became a British protectorate. Marshal Beresford, charged with commanding and restructuring the battered Portuguese army, took over the governing of the country de facto between 1809 and 1820—and he did so with an iron fist. In 1817, on discovering a military conspiracy that planned to overthrow him, the marshal reacted with alarming cruelty. The leader of the rebellion, General
Gomes Freire de Andrade, and another twelve rebels were hanged. Some of them, including Gomes Freire, were then decapitated, burned, and their ashes thrown into the sea.

Even though it was quelled, the rebellion served as a warning signal for those in the coming years. Gomes Freire had an extensive record of conspiracy attempts. In 1805, he participated in the failed coup d'état led by Princess Carlota against her husband. Now a pariah to the Portuguese army, he turned his allegiance to Bonaparte. In 1808, he actively collaborated with the French invaders. After Napoleon's defeat, he returned to Portugal imbued with liberal ideas. His shifting allegiances foretold not only the end of the English protectorate but also the end of absolute monarchy. Some of the more extreme revolutionaries even proposed the overthrow of the Bragança dynasty and the replacement of João VI with the duke of Cadaval.
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Signs of discontent appeared everywhere. Assessing the failed movement led by General Gomes Freire, Portuguese governors loyal to João VI alerted the king to the rising climate of dissatisfaction in Lisbon and the risk that he ran by staying in Brazil. “Our lord, abiding by our honor and obligation, we should not hide from Your Majesty the discontent of all of your loyal vassals that Your Majesty has stayed so long in the Kingdom of Brazil, after the extraordinary sacrifices they have carried out to ensure the salvation of the Monarchy,” they wrote. “This discontent has now grown in the city, and will continue to increase in all the lands of the Kingdoms.”
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This dissatisfaction resulted less from the humiliations that the country had suffered in the war than from the growing privileges that João VI guaranteed to the English and Brazilians after having transferred the court to Rio de Janeiro. From the perspective of the Portuguese, the situation was unsustainable. They bore the entire burden of the court transfer, while all the benefits went to Brazil and England. The opening of the Brazilian ports in 1808 and the special commercial treaty with the English in 1810 landed hard blows on Portuguese merchants, who nearly went bankrupt. The extraordinary duties imposed by the court to finance the struggle against Napoleon continued even after the end of the war, overburdening merchants and urban workers, especially in Lisbon and Porto.
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Harmed by British competition, Portugal's trade with Brazil plummeted. The exports to the colony, totalling 94 million cruzados between 1796 and 1807, fell to just 2 million in the following ten years. In the other direction, exports from Brazil to Portugal reduced by half, from 353 million cruzados to 189 million.
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In 1810, 1,214 Portuguese ships entered the port of Rio de Janeiro. Ten years later, in 1820, no more than 212 entered, and of these only 57 came from Lisbon. The rest came from India, Africa, or other South American ports.
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“The widespread hunger, the lack of basic foodstuffs, and the disorganization of wine and olive oil production amounted to paralysis in the ports, initially closed by Junot and afterwards debilitated and at a standstill due to the treaty of 1810,” observed historian Maria Odila Leite da Silva Dias.
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We can find an example of Rio's favor by looking at this new system in the redistribution of gunpowder in the Portuguese Empire. Before the arrival of the court in Brazil, the sale of this product fell under the absolute monopoly of the ancient Royal Gunpowder Factory in Portugal. It supplied Lisbon and all of the colonies with no competitors. After 1808, the situation reversed. The new factory installed by João in Rio de Janeiro received the privilege of selling gunpowder to the most attractive and lucrative parts of the market, including Pernambuco, Bahia, São Paulo, Rio Grande do Sul, the ports off the coast of Africa, and the court itself. In the meantime, the old factory received the scraps of the marginal and secondary markets: the Azores, Madeira, Cape Verde, and the Brazilian provinces of Maranhão, Pará, and Ceará.
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