1808: The Flight of the Emperor (24 page)

The events in Pernambuco caused great apprehension in Rio de Janeiro and forced King João to change the timetable of some of the more grandiose acts he had planned for his Brazilian stay. One was his own official consecration as king of the united kingdom of Portugal, Brazil, and the Algarves. In the original plans, the coronation was to occur after one year of mourning for Queen Maria I, who died in March 1816. After the Pernambucan revolt, King João VI decided to postpone the ceremony for another year. He didn't want to display to the world an image of a king being crowned amid a power struggle. For the same reason, he considered postponing the wedding of his son Pedro. This step didn't occur only because, by the time the news of the Pernambucan agitation had reached Europe, Princess Leopoldina had already married the heir to the throne by proxy and set sail for Brazil.

With the rebellion choked, it was time to celebrate. On February 6, 1818, a royal decree ended investigations into the rebellion. Four revolutionary leaders had been executed, but the rest received amnesty in a gesture of magnanimity by the new sovereign. Among those pardoned by the king was Cabugá, the agent of the revolutionaries in the United States. Thereafter began the most glorious and festive stage of the thirteen years during which the Portuguese court lived in Brazil. Two full years of celebrations, pomp, and displays of power followed, the likes of which Rio de Janeiro had never seen before.

XXIV

Tropical Versailles

1818 saw the pinnacle of King João VI's stay in Brazil. Despite financial difficulties, the kingdom was at peace, the monarchy enjoyed good health, Carlota Joaquina's conspiracies had been defeated, the colony was prospering, and in Europe the threat of Napoleon had become a distant memory. Defeated by Lord Wellington in the Battle of Waterloo in 1815, the French emperor had been imprisoned for three years on Saint Helena, a remote volcanic island in the south Atlantic. Despite being impoverished, the Portuguese court celebrated and enjoyed the amenable and tranquil climate of Rio de Janeiro. Dom João's dream, to reconstruct his empire in the tropics, finally seemed to have a chance.
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It was an illusion, however. Within two years, unexpected events on both sides of the Atlantic obliged him to change his plans and resume the role that destiny had chosen for him—that of a king forced always to act on the defensive, pressured by events beyond his control.

The brief period of festivities of the Portuguese court in Brazil began in 1817, the year of the arrival of Princess Leopoldina from Austria, and proceeded with the acclamation, coronation, and birthday of King João VI the following year. The death of Queen Maria I, at eighty-two years old, changed little. João had already ruled Portuguese dominions for more than two decades, ever since his mother had been deemed incapable of governing. Nonetheless, he made it a point to ascend to the throne officially, with
much pomp and circumstance. Beforehand, he had to quell the Pernambucan revolution and marry off three children, including his firstborn and the heir to the throne, Dom Pedro. The coronation took place on February 6, 1818, making it the first and only acclamation of a European sovereign in the Americas. “From the arrival of Dona Leopoldina up until the birthday of D. João, the court in Rio de Janeiro was, so to speak, a nonstop party,” according to Jurandir Malerba. “During these grandiose days of the monarchy, Rio became the amphitheater where the royal family represented with splendor the highest moments of their voyage to Brazil.”
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The form with which these rituals took place clearly demonstrates that King João VI wasn't concerned with the opinion of his Brazilian subjects. He wanted to impress his counterparts in Europe. Outcast from his own capital, Lisbon, and exiled to distant territory, exploited and oppressed by more powerful neighbors, and submitted to humiliation by fleeing in haste, the king nonetheless tried to maintain his poise. It was no accident, then, that the largest demonstration of pomp and richness of the Portuguese court in Brazil occurred in Vienna, more than six thousand miles away. In the Austrian capital, countless ceremonies took place between February and June 1817 to mark the proxy wedding between Princess Leopoldina and the future Emperor Pedro I.

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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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“A mansion with no architectural merit,” confirmed Ernst Ebel.
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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.”
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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.”
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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).
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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.
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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.”
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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.
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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