The three young men, who had been invited into Dom António’s salon upon their return from their walk, found Carvalho e Melo’s manner so engaging that they lost some of their initial apprehension in his presence. When the minister asked what they had been doing on the hill, Marcelino Augusto responded: “Excellency, I wanted my friends to see the view from the old monastery. — Sintra, The Tagus, Mafra. The old and the new glories of their motherland.”
“Glories?” Carvalho e Melo queried. “Mafra is grand,” he agreed.
“Luis Fialho compared Mafra with El Dorado, Excellency,” Marcelino Augusto said. “Were the Paulistas who led the bandeiras to see Mafra, they could only think that here was the fabulous palace of El Dorado, which they had sought for so long and so patiently.”
“Patience! What patience God gave the Portuguese,” Carvalho e Melo responded vehemently. “For a century after our first expedition against the Moors at Cueta in 1415, we tore down forests for ships and we filled fleets with the young men of Portugal. One hundred years and we achieved our goal — the wealth of the Indies! But how soon before we lost most of our possessions to the Dutch? The English? The French?
“At Brazil, a century of patience was rewarded with gold and diamonds. And what of the Hollanders, the French, the English in Brazil? For thirty years the Dutch struggled to capture our American colony. They failed. The French, also. And the English?
“The English dispatched no royal fleet, and not one battle was fought on the soil of Portuguese America,” the minister continued. “And yet the greatest profit from our Brazil, the labor of the mines of Brazil — the gold, the diamonds — is not for Lisbon but London!”
Though the wines of Portugal flowed to London and the gallant men of England lay groaning with gout, the value of the great shipments of hogsheads and pipes exported from Oporto was only one-fifth of Portugal’s imports of English cloth. Portugal owed a fortune for goods supplied by the English, and in payment of her debts sent half the legally dispatched output of gold and diamonds from Minas Gerais and other mining areas to London.
“Gold and diamonds from Brazil are financing England’s manufactories — the very cloth we buy from her, her new public works, her canals, her highways,”
Carvalho e Melo added. “Our treasure is launching the East India ships that sail to build an empire for England. And the city of London? With the gold of Brazil, London has won the crown of commerce from Amsterdam.
“Without the riches of Brazil and the Maranhão to pay its debts, Portugal would collapse in six months,” Carvalho e Melo said. “The palaces at Lisbon, the crowded wharves, the ships — English ships — jamming the Tagus . . . these are an illusion. Gold, diamonds, sugar, cotton, the spices of the forest — whatever fills our plate comes from America, and this we happily pass on to England!
“We need manufactories in Portugal, and our own trading companies in Brazil, not a pack of agents whose first interest is the profit of the English merchants they serve.” With Dom António and others, Carvalho e Melo had recently launched a company with monopolistic rights in Maranhão and Grão Pará. Now he glanced at the maps on the table, stabbing Brazil on each with his forefinger. “Viable trade policies will protect the riches and products of our colony, but this alone will not secure Brazil . . . People! We must have the people to fill this wilderness. Small Portugal supports two million. There are those who suggest that Brazil can be home to twenty times this number. More. Sixty million, perhaps. A population like that of China.”
Paulo, more nervous than his friends in the presence of Carvalho e Melo, had said nothing, but he could not imagine how the minister could even contemplate such figures, and he plucked up the courage to ask a question: “Your Excellency, where would so many come from?”
“We can begin with the tens of thousands held in bondage by the Jesuits. The natives must be freed from that wasteful tutelage. Let them take Portuguese names. Let them forget the savage tongue the Jesuits have encouraged and learn Portuguese. Let them be welcome as equals in our society.”
Luis Fialho frowned at Carvalho e Melo’s remarks. It was common knowledge that Dom José’s minister was heading toward a major confrontation with the “Society” of Jesus, as Ignatius Loyola’s Company had come to be known.
“Do you disagree?” Carvalho e Melo asked Luis Fialho.
“No, Excellency. The priests have raised their congregations like children and taught them lies about the colonists.”
“Vieira did not lie,” the minister said dryly, referring to the Jesuit who had labored along the Rio das Amazonas. “‘Two million dead,’ Vieira wrote sixty years ago. How many more since Vieira’s day?” He shook his head. “No, Vieira did not lie about the butchers at the Amazon,” he repeated. “And what would he say if he were alive to see aldeias where hundreds are kept as serfs, where they do forced labor on plantations and roam the forests for products to enrich the Jesuits?”
During his years in London, Carvalho e Melo had listened to denunciations of the Jesuits who had gained notoriety for their alleged roles in past plots against Crown and Parliament. On his return to Lisbon, he had seen the power they exercised as confessors at court, and especially that of Gabriel Malagrida, an Italian Jesuit with thirty years’ experience in Brazil, where he had gained a reputation as a miracle worker.
When Dom João V was taken critically ill in 1749, Malagrida immediately set sail for Lisbon, bearing an image of the Virgin which had accompanied him on his missions in Brazil and to which marvelous powers were attributed. Malagrida spent months at the bedside of the ailing João consoling His Most Faithful Majesty in his last days. He was the most powerful Jesuit at court and the confidant of nobles opposed to Carvalho de Melo. But neither Malagrida nor these fidalgos had influence over events in South America, where incidents involving the Jesuits were providing Carvalho e Melo with evidence to convince King José that the black robes were a menace.
In 1750, Portugal and Spain signed the Treaty of Madrid, which at long last acknowledged that the Tordesilhas Line of 1494 no longer reflected a true division of their lands in America. The Treaty of Madrid provided for two border-survey commissions, working from the north and the south.
The early invasions of the province of Guairá and subsequent Paulista incursions south along the Atlantic littoral had led to the establishment of two new Brazilian captaincies: Santa Catarina and Rio Grande de São Pedro. This expansion had been in line with Portuguese ambitions to extend their domain to the Rio de la Plata, where, in 1680, they had set up a fortified enclave, Colónia do Sacramento, opposite Buenos Aires. By the terms of the Treaty of Madrid, Colónia do Sacramento was to be ceded to Spain in exchange for lands that would be incorporated in the southernmost captaincy, Rio Grande de São Pedro.
These fertile lands east of the Rio Uruguay contained seven Jesuit reductions, with a population of thirty thousand Guarani. They were ordered to pack up their movable belongings, abandon their homes, and cross the river to Spanish territory.
Appeals by the mission fathers failed to reverse this decision. Fearing the consequences of a confrontation with either the Portuguese or the Spaniards, the Jesuits had tried desperately to persuade the converts to accept the treaty; but the Guarani refused to move, and had blocked the passage of the Spanish-Portuguese border commissioners. In 1754 the Spanish and the Portuguese separately sent expeditions against the Guarani, both of which had failed.
In the Fonseca salon, Minister Carvalho e Melo referred to the incidents. “The Jesuits are leading thousands of Guarani in the field,” he said, quoting a grossly exaggerated report. “Even as we sit here, soldiers of Portugal and Spain again march to destroy this priests’ utopia.”
Carvalho e Melo then mentioned another area where the Jesuits were interfering with the border commission: the Rio das Amazonas and its tributaries, along which the Society of Jesus had established nineteen aldeias. The minister had a special interest in the region because his brother, Francisco Xavier de Mendonça Furt
ado, was governor of Maranhão and Grão Pará. Proud, excitable, and as ambitious as Carvalho e Melo, when Mendonça Furtado had arrived at Belém do Pará in 1751, his assignment included the post of chief border commissioner for the north. He had accused the Jesuits of impeding his work by refusing to supply aldeia natives for his canoes and by offering inadequate provisions for his survey party.
Mendonça Furtado’s criticisms of the black robes went far beyond the difficulties of his border commission: While he deprecated the settlers’ inhumanity toward the natives, he was a keen listener to their reports that the black robes kept the natives as serfs; that there were secret Jesuit mines in the sertão; that males of the aldeias were sent to collect plants and spices in the forest, and in their absence, the fathers consorted with their wives and daughters.
The Jesuits denied these allegations, pointing out that the priests were forbidden to receive anything worth more than one cruzado for themselves, and that all the income had to be applied to support the aldeias. They dismissed with contempt the charges of immorality. But they could not allay Mendonça Furtado’s suspicions or the envy of the colonists, few of whom had properties to compare with those of the Jesuits. The black robes controlled seven ranches with thirty thousand cattle. They had vast plantings of cane and cotton. And the spices of the Amazon — cocoa, cloves, sarsaparilla, dyestuffs, and other forest products — realized thousands of cruzados a year.
“The colonists are starving and impoverished because of these rich priests,” Mendonça Furtado had reported to his brother. “The natives live in a state of ignorance, without hope for the future.”
Carvalho e Melo intended to strike his first blow against the Jesuits, at Maranhão and Grão Pará. A law had been passed in June 1755 removing temporal authority over the aldeias of the north from the Jesuit fathers. They would be allowed to catechize the natives, but the control of the villages would be given to a civilian directory.
Carvalho e Melo did not discuss this law with the Fonsecas and their guests; the text was secret and was to be made public only when Governor Mendonça Furtado was ready to move against the black robes. But, for nearly an hour, the minister spoke of dangers posed by the Jesuits in Paraguay and Maranhão. His audience did not contradict his views. Marcelino Augusto appeared content to let Dom António offer whatever response was called for. Luis Fialho was skeptical about equality for the natives, but he was in agreement with everything else said by the minister. As for Paulo Cavalcanti . . .
Paulo found His Excellency Carvalho e Melo’s condemnations most troubling. Fourteen miles directly south of Engenho Santo Tomás there was an aldeia, Nossa Senhora do Rosário, which had been established thirty-five years ago at an abandoned plantation bequeathed to the Society. When Paulo had last seen it, Rosário had had an impoverished population of three hundred, a mixed group of natives, half-breeds, and a few free mulattoes and blacks. Everything Paulo remembered about Nossa Senhora do Rosário conflicted with Carvalho e Melo’s criticism of the wealth of the Jesuits.
“There’s an aldeia near the Cavalcantis’ engenho, Your Excellency,” Paulo ventured.
“Yes?”
“The aldeia of Nossa Senhora do Rosário, Excellency. There are three hundred families. Most are caboclos—”
Carvalho e Melo waved a hand, signaling Paulo to stop. “‘Caboclo,’” he repeated. “The child of a native and a Portuguese.” He gave a deep sigh. “This is derogatory; it is insulting and demeaning, Paulo.”
“I realize this, Your Excellency.”
“I hope that it won’t be long before the colonists stop using such words. It will make it easier for these people to be accepted as equals. Please continue, Paulo.”
Paulo was distracted by the offense he’d given the minister, but he nevertheless made the point: “There’s nothing at this aldeia that suggests the Jesuits are wealthy.”
“The priests at Rosário may have few possessions, but they are not typical. The big aldeias produce more in one season than the majority of colonists will see in a lifetime.
“You are young, Paulo Cavalcanti. Take your time. Make your own observations.” Though the words were addressed to Paulo, the minister looked at Luis Fialho and Marcelino Augusto, suggesting that they, too, should heed this advice. “You will come to see that the Jesuit who set out to conquer the pagans of Brazil has lost his way. No longer content with heaping up heavenly rewards, he seeks a Jesuit paradise on earth.”
“The Society of Jesus is a mighty force, Excellency,” Paulo said quietly. “No other Order has the same power, not in Lisbon, not at Rome. By whom will they be judged?”
Carvalho e Melo appeared to ignore the question. He started to talk about the gold output from Minas Gerais, his words directed toward Luis Fialho. But for an instant his eyes shifted to Paulo, a quick, blazing look, and the young Pernambucan knew that Carvalho e Melo himself would condemn the Society of Jesus.
When, at the end of two days, their visit with the Fonsecas ended, Paulo and Luis Fialho went to Lisbon. A fortnight later they were to board a merchantman, Estréla do Mar, bound for Brazil sometime during the second week of November 1755. They took rooms with Dona Clara de Castro, a Bahia-born widow of an officer who had served with a Lisbon regiment in Brazil. Paulo and Luis Fialho and Dona Clara’s niece were the only guests at Dona Clara’s four-story house on a precipitous street northeast of Rossio Square in the heart of the city. The niece, Manuela, was sixteen and had a newborn infant; no mention was made of a husband, and the young men tactfully did not inquire.
For a week, Paulo and Luis Fialho roamed Lisbon and its environs, with increasing impatience to start the voyage back to their homes.
Minister Carvalho e Melo had asserted that rapacious foreigners were draining off Lisbon’s wealth, and that the opulence seen in the capital was illusory. But what an illusion! The palaces of the king and the powerful Corte-Real family dominated the waterfront on the west side of the Terreiro do Paço, the palace square; east of the square was a magnificent quay, and behind it the customs building. Dom José I’s love of music had inspired the construction of the marble and gilded opera house. No less impressive were the meat and fish markets, said to be the finest in Europe. From Lisbon’s hills, the central district between Rossio and the Terreiro do Paço was seen to be level and lowlying, flanked to the east and west by steep hills and to the north by a long ridge. The city had a medieval, congested appearance, its most striking feature its ninety convents, forty parish churches, and several basilicas.
Many fidalgos had pink-and-white-marble mansions in the capital. Equally suggestive of prosperity were the shops in the rua dos Mercadores and rua de Confeitaria, with stocks of jewelry, plate, silks, and fine wares.
The lively bustle of the city and port reflected a general mood of optimism, with few men sharing Carvalho e Melo’s concerns. Tens of thousands of Africans, descendants of slaves transported here since the days of As Conquistas, were conscious of a movement toward ending slavery. The merchant class were delighted with Carvalho e Melo, who had shown his esteem by permitting them to wear swords in public, a privilege previously reserved for the nobility. The fidalgos who were not in active opposition to the minister had shrugged off such insults, retreated to their faro or baccarat tables, and assured one another that except for the actions of the irksome Carvalho e Melo, they were living in the best of all possible worlds.
A thick fog drifting over the Tagus at dawn was dispersed as the sun rose on November 1, 1755, All Saints’ Day, and when the church bells were rung for early Mass, the cloudless sky heightened the joy of those hastening to celebrate the hallowed Saints. Luis Fialho rose early to go to the cathedral, the Basilica de Santa Maria, which was below the Castelo do São Jorge. Paulo planned to attend a later Mass at a church close to Rossio.
Paulo awoke just before 9:30. He sat on the edge of the bed to say a brief prayer. Then, suddenly, he crossed to the window. The jalousies were slightly ajar and he pushed them back, flooding the room with sun
light.
He gazed along the street, as far as a sharp bend to the right where it led down to Rossio Square. He wondered what had made him move to the window; he had a vague notion of hearing a cock crow, but that was unlikely at this hour. Four houses away, an old man whom Paulo knew to be deaf sat on the step of his doorway, smoking a pipe; a family going to Mass greeted him and went on their way; behind them, two servant girls with water pitchers chattered noisily as they headed for the fountain at Rossio.
Paulo glanced along the row of houses opposite. Three and four stories, the facades of a few were decorated with blue and white tiles, but most of the houses that abutted each other were grimy, their roofs dingy with age. Several had small balconies attached to the upper windows, but at this hour most shutters behind the iron railings were closed.
At 9:45, as Paulo started to turn from the window, a tremor shook the house. Paulo gripped the windowsill; the family below and the girls behind them stopped walking; the deaf old man rose unsteadily and reached for the handle of his front door. Momentarily, Paulo associated the movement with coaches passing along a main thoroughfare below the hill, but then there came a noise, distant and deep, like the rumbling of thunder. Paulo threw his head back, his expression puzzled as he scanned the strip of blue sky above the street. Abruptly, the tremor stopped.
“Aieee!” a woman cried. “Aieee Maria!” Their sandals slapping on the cobblestones, the girls caught up with the family; one of the servants gave a shrill, nervous laugh. The old man stood with his back to the street and was having difficulty opening his door.
Paulo looked at the myriad specks of dust dancing before him. He again raised his face, his dark eyes searching the sky for a trail of smoke, for he now reasoned that there had been an explosion, perhaps at the royal arsenal in the lower town or in the magazine of the Castelo do São Jorge.
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