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.
Even her death was controversial. In the official version, she died of a malady of the uterus, probably cancer. The rumors of the era, however, maintained that she brought on her own end by drinking tea laced with arsenic. In her final days, she was “a tattered individual” according to historian Alberto Pimentel. She lived in complete abandonment. “She went around badly dressed, filthy, with a jacket of common cotton and a muslin turban on her head.”21 Two years before dying she wrote a will. She was poor—nearly bankrupt actually—but she still had enough money to order that 1,200 masses
be said, 100 of them for the soul of her husband, King João VI, who had died four years earlier. It was, according to the historian Raimundo Magalhães Jr., “a last minute reconciliation.”
XV
Hands in the Coffers
The court arrived in Brazil impoverished, destitute, and in need of everything. It was already nearing bankruptcy when leaving Lisbon, but the situation deteriorated even further in Rio de Janeiro. Between 10,000 and 15,000 people crossed the Atlantic along with the prince regent. By way of comparison, when President John Adams moved the US capital from Philadelphia to Washington, D.C., in 1800, he transferred approximately 1,000 employees. The bureaucratic machine of the Portuguese court in Brazil, in other words, was 10 to 15 times more bloated than that of the United States. Every one of the people who sailed to Brazil depended on the royal exchequer or awaited some benefit from João in exchange for the “sacrifice” of the journey.1 “A swarm of needy and unprincipled adventurers had come over with the royal family,” wrote historian John Armitage. “The newcomers were but little interested in the welfare of the country. They regarded their absence from Portugal as temporary and were far more anxious to enrich themselves at the expense of the state than to administer justice or benefit the public.”2
Historian Luiz Felipe Alencastro recounts that, along with the royal family, 276 noblemen and royal dignitaries received royal funding for their presence, paid in gold coins or silver taken from the royal treasury in Rio. Based on the reports of John Luccock, Alencastro adds 2,000 more royal employees and individuals exercising functions related to the crown: 700 priests, 500 lawyers, 200 medical practitioners, and between 4,000 and 5,000 soldiers.3 One of these priests received a fixed annual salary of 250,000 reís—equivalent today to $9,500—just for taking the queen’s confession.4 “Few European courts, comparatively speaking, have so many persons attached to them as the Brazilian, consisting of fidalgos [noblemen], ecclesiastics, and numerous attendants,” wrote British consul James Henderson.5 On visiting the stables of the Quinta da Boa Vista where João lived, Henderson took surprised note of the number of animals and, more so, the number of people employed there. The stables contained three hundred mules and horses and enlisted “double the number of persons to look after them that would have been deemed necessary in England.”6
It was an expensive, wasteful, and ravenous court. In 1820, just prior to the return to Portugal, they consumed 513 hens, chickens, pigeons, and turkeys and 1,080 eggs per day. This gluttony totaled 200,000 fowl and 396,000 eggs per year, costing approximately 900 million réis or $31.5 million today. The demand became so great that, by order of the administrator of the Royal Pantry, the department responsible for the court’s food supply, the sale of all hens in Rio de Janeiro was prioritized for agents of the king. The decision provoked a market shortage of fowl and revolt among city residents. In an open letter to the king, they complained of the lack of hens as well as the behavior of the employees of the Royal Pantry, who sold the hens in a gray market at higher prices.7
During the thirteen years that the court remained in Brazil, the expenses of the corrupt and badly administered Royal Pantry more than tripled. The deficit grew nonstop. In the final year, 1821, the budget gap had grown more than twenty times—from 10 million réis to 239 million.8 Yet the court continued to finance everyone without worrying overmuch about the sustainability of doing so. “Everyone, without exception, received rations, according to their place and worth,” explains historian Jurandir Malerba. “Nobles and also hired artists, such as Italian singers and musicians, French painters and architects, Austrian naturalists, ambassadors and employees of each department received quotas financed by the Royal Pantry, a practice that finally ended in the austere government of D. Pedro I.”9
Where did they find the money to sustain so many people? The first solution came in the form of a loan of £600,000 from Britain. This amount, lent in 1809 to cover the expenses of the journey and the initial costs of setting up the court in Rio de Janeiro, eventually comprised part of the £2 million debt that Brazil inherited from Portugal with its independence.10 Another measure taken, also not sustainable in the long term, was the creation of a state bank to mint coins. The sad, brief history of the first Bank of Brazil, created by the prince regent seven months after arriving, stands as an example of the cronyism between the monarchy and a caste of privileged merchants, ranchers, and slave traffickers starting in 1808.
By royal fiat in October 1808, the Bank of Brazil started with a capital of 1,200 stocks with a total unit value of 1 million réis. To stimulate the purchase of these stocks, the court established a politics of give-and-take. Stockholders received titles, knighthoods, and appointments to the Royal Board of Governors of Commerce in addition to promises of dividends much higher than the results that the institution generated. In return, the prince regent had at his disposal a bank to print at will as many notes as the recently arrived court needed.11 As a result, rich commoners became nobility.12 The already rich and noble became even richer. The magic lasted for a little over ten years.
By 1820, the bank was falling into ruins. Its gold deposits, which served as a guarantee for issuing money, represented only 20 percent of the currency in circulation.13 In other words, 80 percent of the money in circulation had no foundation or corresponded to rotten assets. The royal family made 90 percent of all withdrawals. To make a bad situation even worse, upon returning to Portugal in 1821, João took with him every gold bar and diamond that the crown maintained in the bank’s coffers, thereby definitively overturning its credibility. Bankrupt and with zero chance of recovering, the institution went into liquidation in 1829. Another version of the bank came to life in 1853 during Pedro II’s reign. The current Bank of Brazil derives from a continuation of this second incarnation and itself had many moments similar to its predecessor in providing unsecured loans to bankrupt plantation owners, politicians, and factory proprietors.
Another practice in effect at the time was a “kitty” on kickbacks and payments to public servants. De Oliveira Lima, citing Luccock’s reports, observes that a commission of 17 percent was charged on all payments or withdrawals from the public treasury. It was a veiled from of extortion: If the paying party didn’t comply with the “commission,” the transaction simply halted.14 “The era of D. João was destined to go down in history for its administration, full of corruption and embezzlement,” asserts Lima.15 “Corruption thrived scandalously, and just as much as it contributed to increasing their spending, it also contributed to smuggling, which in turn diminished their income.”16
In Rio, the Portuguese court consisted of the following six large administrative sectors, called partitions.17 The Royal Scullery handled all matters related to the royal family’s table, including the supply and washing of tableware and napkins. To the Royal Wardrobe fell the management of all of the family’s clothing. The Livery took care of the animals of the cavalcade, the traction of the royal coaches and chaises, and the mules used to transport goods. The Royal Pantry and Buttery dispensed the food and drink. The Royal Warren administered the royal forests and thickets. Finally, the Head Steward organized everything with funds from the Royal Exchequer and its administrative arm, the Bank of Brazil.
Those responsible for these partitions passed into history as symbols of illegal enrichment and monkey business. Joaquim José de Azevedo—the same who in November 1807 was hastily invited to the Palace of Queluz to organize the departure of the court—administered the area in which purchases were stocked in the royal home. Bento Maria Targini headed the royal treasury. Close to João and Carlota Joaquina, these two enjoyed intimate companionship with the royal family, who gave them power and influence to go far beyond their normal tasks. Their departments oversaw meals, transportation, comfort, and all of the benefits that supported the thousands of court dependents. Their friends enjoyed everything, their enemies nothing.
In Brazil, de Azevedo prospered so quickly, his image so l
inked to spectacular robbery, that during the king’s return in 1821 the Portuguese Courts prevented him from disembarking in Lisbon. Still, this prohibition didn’t stop his successful career. On the contrary, his family continued getting wealthier after independence. In May 1823, English traveler Maria Graham was invited for a night of gala performances to celebrate the first constitution of an independent Brazil. On arriving at the theater, she headed toward the box seats of de Azevedo’s wife, a friend, and took surprised note of what she saw. The hostess was glistering with diamonds worth around £150,000 in Graham’s estimate—the equivalent today of $2 million. According to Graham, Madame de Azevedo also gloated that she had left an equal amount of jewels in the strong box at home.18
Targini hailed from a modest family of Italian origins in Santa Catarina. He entered public service as a bookkeeper, a relatively low function within the bureaucracy of the colonial government. Intelligent and disciplined, he became a clerk in the treasury and quickly rose to the highest position in this department. With the arrival of the royal family in Brazil, he gained power and distinction. Responsible for administering public finances, which included all of the contracts and payments of the court, he quickly prospered. At the end of João’s time in Brazil, Targini’s house, with its two stories and an attic, situated at the corner of Rua dos Invalidos and Riachuelo, was one of the largest in Rio de Janeiro.19 Amid the constitutional revolution of March 1821, he was imprisoned and his possessions were confiscated. Two weeks later, he was released. He, too, couldn’t return to Portugal with King João VI, but he continued to live a relaxed and comfortable life in Brazil nevertheless.20
1808: The Flight of the Emperor Page 14