The power of Azevedo and Targini grew so great that, in recognition of their services, João raised them both from barons to viscounts. The first became viscount of Rio Seco, the second viscount of São Lourenço. The elevation of these two corrupt characters led the cariocas, true to their tendency of satirizing even their own misfortunes, to compose popular verse catapulting these scandalous robbers into infamy:
He who steals little is a thief.
He who steals a lot, a chief.
Go steal more, and hide out.
You’ll pass from chief to viscount.21
In one letter, Royal Archivist Luiz dos Santos Marrocos recorded the following popular ditty about them:
As Azevedo robs the Palace
And Targini robs the Treasury
The ailing people carry
A heavy cross to Calvary.22
XVI
A New Court
The two worlds that collided in Rio de Janeiro had advantages and necessities that complemented each other. On one side stood a court that viewed itself with a divine right to rule, govern, and distribute privileges and favors—but had the disadvantage of not having any money. On the other side stood a colony richer in many ways than its old world masters—but with no education, refinement, or nobility. Three centuries after its discovery, Brazil remained a land of tremendous opportunities, typical of the new American frontiers where fortunes grew overnight from nothing.
Historian João Luis Ribeiro Fragoso tells of an immigrant who left Portugal poor, became a merchant in Rio, and by the time the court arrived in Brazil had amassed a fortune great enough to make the majority of nobility accompanying the prince regent envious. Braz Carneiro Leão was born on September 3, 1723, in Porto, to a family of peasants. At sixteen years old, he emigrated to Rio de Janeiro, where he began to work as a cashier in a Portuguese home in exchange for room and board. He soon opened his own business, a consignment house for imports and exports, and in 1799, he appeared on a list of the most important merchants drawn up by the viceroy, the count of Rezende. At his death in 1808, he owned six sugarcane mills near Campos and had a net worth of 1.5 billion réis, a figure 25 percent more than the initial capital used to found the Bank of Brazil.1
João needed the financial and political support of this elite class of men rich in assets but destitute in prestige and cultivation. To cultivate them, he began distributing titles and distinctions of nobility, a system that lasted until his return to Portugal in 1821. In the first eight years alone, he bestowed more titles than his forebears had given during the previous three centuries. Since its liberation from the Muslims in the Reconquista in the twelfth century until the end of the eighteenth, Portugal had a total of sixteen marquises, twenty-six counts, eight viscounts, and four barons. Upon arriving in Brazil, João created twenty-eight new marquises, eight new counts, sixteen new viscounts, and four new barons. According to Sérgio Buarque de Holanda, João also distributed 4,048 insignias of knights, commanders, and grand crosses of the Order of Christ, 1,422 commanders of the Military Order of Aviz, and 590 commanders of the Order of Santiago.2 “In Portugal, to become a count took 500 years; in Brazil, it took 500 million (réis),” wrote Pedro Calmon.3 “Individuals who had never buckled on a spur were dubbed Knights; while others, in utter ignorance of even the primary doctrines of their missals, were created ‘commendadores’ of the Order of Christ,” added John Armitage.4
In 1809 a resident of Vila Rica, modern-day Ouro Preto, offered the prince regent 100 cruzados, and in exchange he became a commander of the Order of Christ and a fidalgo of His Majesty’s House. His two sons, cadets in the cavalry regiment, immediately rose to the rank of ensign.5 Paulista merchant Manuel Rodrigues Jordão received a knighthood of the Order of Christ in 1808 “for having contributed a large sum to top up the funds of the Bank of Brazil, so that the State may reap the extensive and precious advantages of this useful and important establishment,” according to the decree, signed by the prince, granting him his title.6
It fell to this new nobility to help João in his financial troubles. Some became stockholders in the Bank of Brazil. Others signed the countless “lists of voluntary subscriptions” that circulated in Rio de Janeiro after the court’s arrival. These donation lists raised funds to cover the crown’s expenses. Historian Jurandir Malerba calculated a total of approximately 1,500 subscribers. Of this number, 160 made contributions greater than 150,000 réis, an amount sufficient to purchase a slave between the ages of ten and fifteen. “The rich that supported the King sought and received distinction, honor, social prestige, conferrals of nobility, titles, privileges, exemptions, liberties, and concessions, as well as favors of material return, such as posts in administration and tax auctions.”7
On the first list of subscriptions, in 1808, half of the contributors were slave traffickers.8 One of them, José Inacio Vaz Vieira, was singlehandedly responsible for 33 percent of the traffic catalogued between 1813 and 1822. He received the Order of Christ in 1811. Amaro Velho da Silva, the trafficker who in 1808 held up one of the poles of the canopy mounted during João’s arrival on the docks of Rio de Janeiro, also appeared on the list of great donors to the court. He was royally compensated for his services. On August 28, 1812, the prince regent signed a decree naming Amaro and his brother Manuel as official advisors of the prince, with the following justification:
After having shown ample proof of their zeal and patriotism on different occasions of State importance and supplying my Royal Exchequer with great sums, they have recently made the unsolicited donation of fifty thousand cruzados, for me to make use of as I please, thereby showing their honorable sentiments and the greatest zeal for my Royal Service and the public good.9
Aside from becoming a royal counselor, Amaro also received the titles of first viscount of Macaé, avowed knight of the Order of Christ, fidalgo of the Royal House, and nobleman-at-arms.10
This new nobility created in Brazil now possessed money, titles, and power but few signs of taste or sophistication. All the chroniclers and travelers of the era refer to Rio as a prosperous city lacking refinement. “One perceives the demonstration of plenty, perhaps as a form of self-affirmation of the new elite,” posits historian Jurandir Malerba. On arriving in Brazil in 1817 as the minister of foreign affairs and war, the count of Palmela found everything quite strange. “There is a dearth of white people, luxury, and good roads; in sum they lack many things that will come with time,” he wrote to his wife, who stayed in Portugal.11 “Despite all of this expense, there is no appearance of splendor or elegance,” wrote James Henderson, the English consul, referring to the wasteful character of the court.12 The American naval official Henry Brackenridge noted with intrigue the number of people in the streets of Rio de Janeiro wearing ribbons, bows, medals, and decorations to distinguish themselves from others. This group included nobles, merchants, and public servants as well as slaves, who also wore ribbons and other decorations:
It is not the custom in this country to lay aside any insignia of distinction, to be used only on days of ceremony or parade. Nothing surprised me more than the number of persons I saw in the street with decorations of one kind or other; I could not but think that in becoming so common and being so frequently exhibited, they must cease to impart dignity or importance to the wearers.13
The meeting of the rich and newly noble with the poor and established nobility took place in the countless rituals surrounding the royal family, which included concerts, processions, masses, and other religious ceremonies. Nothing, however, compared to the hand-kissing ceremony. The prince and the entire royal family opened the portals of the royal palace so that subjects could kiss his hands, pay homage, and directly make any request or complaint they had. While this ancient ritual had fallen into disuse for quite some time in the rest of the courts of Europe, it remained an active practice in Portugal and by the viceroys of colonial Brazil.
One of the most detail
ed descriptions of the ceremony comes from an anonymous and mysterious author who signed his texts and illustrations with the abbreviation APDG. His identity was never revealed, although apparently he was an English official who lived closely alongside the nobility in Lisbon and Rio. His caricatures and reports satirize the antiquated and pious customs of the time—and thereby explaining his anonymity. APDG describes the ritual as follows:
The signal being given for the opening of the royal saloon, the court band of music, in their rich antique costume, begin to play; and the whole scene assumes an imposing appearance. The nobles file into the throne room, one after the other at a slow pace, and when at a few steps from the throne make a profound inclination, then advance, kneel and kiss the hand of the sovereign, who extends it to all his subjects with a look truly paternal. This being done, they perform the same homage precisely towards Her Majesty and each of the royal family. They then file out in the same order through the other door at the same end of the room whence they entered.14
Some ceremonies lasted up to seven hours, “to the great fatigue of the princes and princesses, who are standing all the time.” Another witness, English consul James Henderson, wrote that the hand-kissing took place every night in the Palace of São Cristovão, around eight o’clock, with the exception of Sundays and holidays. “The roads that came from Cidade Nova, Catumbi and Mata Porcas are covered, on those occasions, with officers, and numerous persons in cabriolets, on horseback, and on foot, pressing forwards towards the palace, consisting of those who have some object to carry with his Majesty,” he relates. “When the door is opened there is a promiscuous rushing forward, and a mulatto will be seen treading upon the heels of a general. They advance in single rank up one side of the room to the upper part, where his Majesty is seated, attended by his fidalgos in waiting.”15
Everyone had the right to kiss the king’s hand, even those who were neither noble nor fidalgos. “It was a ceremony that put the monarch in direct contact with the vassal, who presented his dutiful bows and pleaded for mercy,” explains Malerba. “It reinforced the paternal authority of the sovereign protector of the nation.”16 In 1816, a dispatch by the superintendent of police, Paulo Fernandes Viana, makes reference to a group of natives who wanted to participate in the ceremony. Viana requested that the commander of the Royal Guard “send an inferior of the cavalry to the Superintendence, to go by land to the Rio Doce though the Vila de Campos and the Captaincy of Espirito Santo, and to accompany a certain group of Indians who wish to have the honor of kissing the hand of His Majesty.” Viana recommended that the official should “treat them with humanity and thoughtfulness.”17
Viana’s recommendation was surprising when one takes into account the manner in which the Portuguese were accustomed to treating Brazilian Indians up until then. It is estimated that at the time of the Portuguese arrival in Brazil in 1500, the indigenous population totalled 5 million. In 1808, at the time of the court’s arrival in Rio de Janeiro, this had been reduced to 800,000 indigenous people, almost all of them living in remote areas far from the coast, following the expulsion from their lands and massacres at the hands of the Portuguese colonizers.
XVII
Empress of the Seas
On June 25, 1808, five months before the signature of the royal letter opening the Brazilian ports, 113 English merchants gathered in a London pub. The brother of a powerful man in Dom João’s new ministry in Rio de Janeiro, Domingos de Sousa Coutinho, the Portuguese ambassador in England, had invited them there. Three weeks earlier, he had published in the London newspapers a notice urging the assembly of all businessmen interested in getting the first crack at the untapped Brazilian market.1 The opportunities, de Sousa Coutinho assured, were enormous. Brazil—for three centuries a mysterious land prohibited to outsiders—was opening to the world. Its ports, until then restricted to ships from Portugal alone, could finally receive shipments from and load them for other countries.
In practice, the outlook for the English promised to be even better than the ambassador assured. With all of Europe occupied by Napoleon’s armies, at that moment no other European country had the means to conduct commerce with Brazil. Lord Nelson’s fleet had trounced the combined forces of France and Spain during the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805, making Britain the only power with free transit on the seas. Britain therefore became the greatest beneficiary of the opening of Brazilian ports, as the months ahead attested. The businessmen gathered in the London pub had to seize this once-in-a-lifetime chance immediately. During the meeting, reported in the pages of the Correio Braziliense, 113 merchants founded the Society of English Merchants Trading in Brazil under the presidency of John Prinsep.2 From that point on, Brazilian ports grew cluttered with English products on a scale never before imagined.
Everything made its way to Brazil, much of it practical and useful, such as cotton fabric, rope, nails, hammers, saws, saddle buckles, and hardware. But eccentricities also crossed the seas, such as ice skates and heavy woollen shawls, objects of wonder in the humid and sweltering heat of the tropics. English factories dispatched some products in monumental quantities and at low prices, thanks to new production techniques developed during the Industrial Revolution of the late eighteenth century. Because of the Continental Blockade, Britain lacked access to the European market and sent these products to Brazil and other South American countries at bargain prices. The goods caused quite a sensation among inhabitants who were used to shortages and the low quality of the crude, handmade products that circulated in the colonies of the Americas.
In 1808, Britain was extending to the four corners of the Earth the second incarnation of its empire, the largest that world had ever known. At its apogee, a few decades after the sixty-year reign of Queen Victoria—the longest in the history of England—the British proudly said that the sun never set on their dominions. The empire began easternmost in recently discovered Oceania, passing through Asia, Africa, and the islands of the Caribbean, and finally terminating in the icy vastness of Canada, which remained loyal to the British crown after American independence. British cannons forcibly protecting British commerce had subjugated India, one of the most ancient civilizations, which regained its independence only in the middle of the twentieth century. Britain even stuck its elbows into millennial China; their enclave in Hong Kong finally returned to the Chinese only in 1997.
The power and influence of this new supremacy reverberated across the entire planet. With over a million inhabitants, London was the largest city on earth at the time.3 Its countless chimneys released endless clouds of soot that covered the roofs of the city, earning it the nickname of The Big Smoke. Thanks to revolutionizing inventions such as the steam engine, fortunes multiplied. In this creative, dynamic atmosphere, ideas circulated freely—in contrast to the patriotic, even authoritarian ardor of Napoleonic France, where books and culture were subject to the whims of the emperor.
At the beginning of the nineteenth century, 278 newspapers circulated in London alone. This number included English periodicals, such as the venerable Times, as well as a plethora of foreign language newspapers, published there to evade censorship and persecution in their countries of origin, as was the case of the Correio Braziliense. The city hosted debate, research, and innovation, attracting scientists, thinkers, writers, and poets. Some of the masterpieces of the greatest names in English literature—Lord Byron, Percy Shelley, Jane Austen—were published there. Throngs gathered to attend the lectures, expositions, and debates in countless societies dedicated to research in anthropology, astronomy, geography, and geology, among many other areas of science.4
As a result of the Industrial Revolution, combined with dominion over the oceans and commercial expansion, Britain’s national wealth doubled between 1712 and 1792.5 In under a century, the volume of commerce in London’s ports tripled. By 1800, the Thames, flowing through the capital, had become a thicket of ships’ masts. Every day between two thousand and three thousand mer
chant boats lay at anchor, awaiting their turn to load or unload goods. Tea and silk arrived from China. Tobacco, corn, and wheat came from America. From Brazil ships carried sugar, wood, coffee, and minerals. From Africa, ivory and minerals arrived.6 Between 1800 and 1830, cotton consumption by the textile industries in the Liverpool region jumped from 5 million pounds to 220 million—a growth of 4,400 percent in just three decades.7
The 880 warships that the Royal British Navy maintained around the world protected this monumental volume of commerce. It comprised the most powerful and efficient naval force of its era, 147 times larger than that of the recently independent United States of America, which had a naval fleet of no more than six ships.8 Over a period of two centuries, the British had won every naval battle in which they engaged.9 The British Navy’s ships were equipped and organized in exemplary form, its crews capable of rigging and lowering sails and loading and firing cannons in less time than any other navy of the era. They also kept their ships extremely clean and orderly, thereby reducing the threat of disease and epidemics on board.
In 1808, the recently opened Brazilian market became a natural target for the interests of this flourishing world power. After escaping from Napoleon under the protection of the British Navy, João owed a huge debt of gratitude to Britain. His dependence on the British was so great that, during the stage of the voyage between Salvador and Rio de Janeiro, he entrusted Captain James Walker, commander of the Bedford, with eighty-four safes of the Royal Treasury being transported from Lisbon.10 Later, in Rio de Janeiro, he presented Vice-Admiral Sidney Smith, commander of the British fleet, with a country estate on Santa Luzia beach, in appreciation for his services. The property included a country house, fields, and slaves to cultivate them.11
1808: The Flight of the Emperor Page 15