The Portuguese ambassador, the marquis of Marialva, in charge of negotiating the wedding and signing the papers in the name of the king, starred in one of the most grandiose and expensive spectacles that the Austro-Hungarian empire had ever seen. As Malerba describes it,
On February 17th 1817, Marialva entered Vienna with a retinue of 41 carriages [each] pulled by six horses, accompanied by servants on both sides, dressed in rich liveries. The entourage was composed of 77 people, including pages, servants, and officials, on horse and on foot. They followed the imperial coaches, flanked by their footmen and further escorted by servicemen following behind. At the rear of the pageant were the carriages of the ambassadors of England, France, and Spain. On June 1st, there was a ball for 2,000 people in salons specially constructed in the gardens of Augarten park. The Imperial Austrian family was present, as were the diplomatic corps and the entire nobility. The ball began at 8 o’clock. At 11 o’clock, supper was served, with forty pieces of cutlery at each plate. The Emperor and family ate from serving sets made of gold and the other guests all had serving sets of silver. The cost was 1 million florins, or 1.5 million francs.3
Adjusting for inflation in the last two hundred years, this would be the equivalent today of $11 million, a staggering amount that represents approximately $5,400 per person.4
Aside from sponsoring a monumental feast, Marialva brought presents to distribute in the Austrian court: 167 diamonds worth a total of $10,532 at the time, 17 gold bars worth $1,700, and decorations studded with precious jewels and stones worth $8,800. The prince of Metternich, who signed the agreement and gave the bride away to the ambassador, received a total of $5,500 in presents, including a medallion, a box engraved with the likeness of King João VI, the Great Cross of Christ, and a diamond-encrusted plaque. The priest who officiated the wedding ceremony received a breastplate cross of precious stones worth $1,800.5
This exhibition of luxury in Vienna contrasted sharply with the difficulties that the royalty in Brazil were experiencing. In Rio de Janeiro, feasts and balls also took place, but the king became progressively indebted and depended on issuing new currency through the Bank of Brazil and through the list of volunteer donations from the wealthy in exchange for favors, privileges, and titles. On a daily basis, the court had nothing of delicacy or refinement, as the reports of diplomats and travelers who saw them in person can attest. The old seat of the monarchy, in the center of the city, became the Imperial Palace, modest compared with a royal residence. “It is a vast and irregular edifice, of the worst type of architecture,” evaluated painter Johann Moritz Rugendas.6 “A mansion with no architectural merit,” confirmed Ernst Ebel.7 Luccock found the palace of Quinta da Boa Vista, a gift from the slave trafficker Elias Antonio Lopes, “small and formal, ill-contrived and wretchedly furnished.”8
The poverty of architectural style reflected in the habits of the court. Jacques Arago, a French chronicler on the corvette Uranie, commanded by Captain Louis Claude de Fraycinet, made two stopovers in Rio de Janeiro between 1817 and 1820 and recorded a terrible impression of Queen Carlota Joaquina in a reception at the Palace of São Cristovão. “She dressed like a gypsy, wearing a kind of nightgown pinned with lapels,” he wrote. “Her hair unkempt in a rage, a stranger to any comb, attested to the absence of a hairdresser in the palace, or any diligent chamberlain.”9 The German ambassador, count von Flemming, confirmed this impression in a diplomatic report in 1817:
With the exception of the half-asian court of Constantinople, there is probably no other as strange as this one. Despite having been established in America not long ago, it may be considered totally alien to European habits, and completely exotic. No other court has so many servants, wardrobe attendants, assistants, domestic staff, and coachmen. This tendency towards orientalism in no way corresponds to luxury.10
The celebrations of 1817, initiated in Vienna, continued with the arrival of Princess Leopoldina in Rio de Janeiro. The superintendent-general of police, Paulo Fernandes Viana, organized the preparations. The beaches, ordinarily an open-air sewage depository, were sanitized. The streets were swept and washed, covered with a fine layer of white sand, and topped with aromatic flowers. Lace and damask quilts decorated the windows of mansions. In the streets to be traversed by the court three triumphal arches, designed by the French Artistic Mission, were constructed. For three nights in a row the city burned brightly.11
Princess Leopoldina arrived on November 5, 1817. On descending from her ship, she unexpectedly kneeled before her mother-in-law, Queen Carlota Joaquina, hugging her feet and kissing her hands. Then she repeated the same gestures with the king. Next she hugged and kissed her brothers-in-law and sisters-in-law. After this exchange of greetings and courtesies, she returned to her ship and remained until two in the afternoon the next day, when the official disembarking began.
Arm in arm with her new husband, Leopoldina descended to the docks accompanied by the entire royal family. She wore a cloak of white silk, embroidered with gold and silver. A thin veil covered her face. The instant she stepped on solid ground, cannon volleys rang out from the surrounding forts and ships anchored in port. The bells of every church in town chimed in unison. Jubilantly applauded by the crowds gathered in the streets, the retinue proceeded toward the Royal Chapel, on the Rua Direita, near the Royal Palace. Nearly one hundred carriages paraded along, accompanied by formally dressed servants. A coach bore the king, queen, prince, and princess. “Behind one of the triumphal arches, one could see the carriage, yoked with eight horses decorated with white plumes and saddled with gold-embroidered velvet,” noted painter Jean-Baptiste Debret.12 After a ceremony of thanksgiving and a gala dinner, the couple greeted the public from the window of the palace. At eleven o’clock that night, everyone returned to the Palace of São Cristovão, where Pedro and Leopoldina spent the first night of their honeymoon.
For the coronation of the king, the painters, sculptors, and architects of the French Artistic Mission went even further in their preparations. The timid Palace Square suddenly turned into an imperial plaza with allegories to the greatest civilizations that humanity had witnessed in the preceding two millennia. In a reference to the Roman Empire, Grandjean de Montigny constructed at the edge of the docks a reproduction of the Temple of Minerva, goddess of war. Earlier, Jean-Baptiste Debret designed a copy of the Arc de Triomphe—the monument that Bonaparte ordered to celebrate his military victories—to be placed alongside the square’s fountain. But this copy of the triumphal arch had a double meaning. In 1810, as the French arch was being built, Napoleon had a full-size wooden replica of it built on the spot and proceeded through it with his second wife, Archduchess Maria Luisa of Austria—Princess Leopoldina’s sister. In the center of the square stood an Egyptian obelisk designed by Auguste Taunay. “It created an agreeable sensation of simultaneously viewing these Greek, Roman, and Egyptian monuments, not only due to the beautiful illumination with which they decorated it, but also by the good taste of its architecture, which could only be appreciated and understood by intelligent people,” wrote Father Luis Gonçalves dos Santos (Father Tree Frog).13
Henry Brackenridge arrived right in the middle of these great court celebrations. When the frigate Congress arrived in Guanabara Bay in January 1818, Princess Leopoldina had already disembarked, and the preparations for the king’s coronation for February 6 were moving ahead. On descending from the ship, Breckenridge found all the streets decorated for the event: “Rows of columns formed of boards covered with canvas, painted to resemble marble, an obelisk, triumphal arches of the same, and a Grecian temple supported on pillars of like durable materials, were the most conspicuous among the preparations for the important event.” Brackenridge also observed that some of these monuments, erected for the princess’s arrival and to be used also for the king’s coronation, were already dissolving under the force of the rain and wind. “I saw part of a splendid entablature literally in rags,” he noted.14
These
artificial monuments proved short-lived. This imitation of marble, bronze, and granite mirrored the precarious and illusory character of a weakened and exiled European monarchy celebrating in the tropics, thousands of miles from home. “The secret was to act on two fronts,” observed historian Lília Schwarcz in The Long Voyage of the King’s Library. “On one side, the event was decorated with monuments as fragile as the political moment itself. One the other, classical allegories and references to the past conferred on the celebration the tradition that they lacked and the history that they needed.”15
On Coronation Day, King João VI wore a scarlet velvet cloak covered with gold embroidery. As he had when he arrived in 1808, he promenaded from the palace to the Royal Chapel accompanied by the members of the nobility and foreign ambassadors. After the oath, he donned the imperial crown and wielded the scepter for the first time. The princes extended their hands over the prayer book and promised him obedience. Lively crowds concentrated in front of the Royal Palace followed the ceremony, along with cannon fire and the uninterrupted chimes of churchbells. Popular festivals, bull runs, military parades, musical spectacles, and dances dominated the city for the entire week.
Brackenridge, who observed all from the docks in front of the Royal Palace, recounts an amusing episode involving the commander of his ship. At dawn on Coronation Day, he tells us, all the forts and ships began firing their cannons in homage to the king, the ships decked with various flags of the nations of the world. As a mark of respect, the American frigate joined the celebrations and fired its cannons as well—until the commander noticed that none of the other ships was flying the American colors. On discovering this glaring absence, the captain ordered his crew to halt their firing and to limit themselves to observing the festivities, without taking part in them.16
Surrounded by numerous attendants, João drives his own carriage through the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro, a scene of serene and tranquil life in the tropics. The king distributed more titles of nobility in Brazil than had been done in three centuries in Portugal.
D. João VI, king of Portugal and Brazil, and his attendants at Rio de Janeiro from History of Brazil; comprising its geography, commerce, colonization, aboriginal inhabitants by James Henderson, London, 1821, Lucia M. Loeb/Bibioteca Guita e José Mindlin
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.17
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.18
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.19
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.20
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
THE RETURN OF THE MONARCH
XXV
Portugal Abandoned
If 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.1 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.”2
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.3
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.4
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.5 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.6
1808: The Flight of the Emperor Page 23