1808: The Flight of the Emperor (29 page)

A piece of Portugal that had crossed the Atlantic with João's original court had died, never to return. The royal archivist had brought with him the heavy cultural baggage that characterized the Portuguese of preceding centuries. He was conservative, bureaucratic, superstitious, prejudiced, and fearful of the changes awaiting him on the other side of the world in an adverse tropical climate among uncouth, illiterate, poor people. At his death, nearly three decades later, he was a man transformed. He had involved himself in politics, cast off his fear of living with uncertainty, and discovered love, prosperity, and hope for the future. His transformation represents a perfect, detailed, and complete portrait of the new nation born then and there, its roots deeply entwined in Portugal—yet distinct.

XXIX

The Secret

F
or most readers, this book came to an end—or should have done so—in the preceding chapter. What follows will interest historians because it reveals previously unknown details of the life of Royal Archivist Luiz dos Santos Marrocos. In the grander context of the transfer of the Portuguese court to Brazil, it will reveal minor details. Nevertheless, those details will reinforce the fascinating and transitory nature of investigating the lives of people that even two hundred years later may continue to change.

On June 15, 1814, a child named Joaquinna dos Santos Maroccos was born in Rio de Janeiro. She is the daughter born to Luiz and Anna Maria de São Thiago Souza before their marriage, her existence maintained in secrecy in all the letters he sent to his family in Lisbon. At four months old, on November 22, Joaquinna was baptized in the Brotherhood of the Blessed Sacrament of the Sé.

Her birth certificate and baptismal certificate endure on microfilm in a database of more than a billion names, stored in Salt Lake City, Utah, at the headquarters of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. You can find them on the Internet via FamilySearch.org, a service maintained and provided by the Mormons and considered one of the largest and most complete genealogy services in the world. The Mormons constructed this
giant database because they believe that the dead can be redeemed and saved through baptism, even after death. For such purposes, it's necessary only that they be correctly identified. In this genealogy database, Joaquinna appears as the daughter of Luis Joaquim dos Santos Marrocos and Anna Roza de São-Tiago. Setting aside the common exchange of an “s” for a “z,” the spelling of the father's name exactly matches that of the royal archivist. The main difference we face is the mother's middle name: Roza instead of Maria.

This difference represents nothing more than a slip of the pen. Two centuries ago, church scribes and notaries commonly erred in the transcription of names on birth and baptismal certificates. Statistically it's also virtually impossible that in a city of only 60,000 inhabitants, of which fewer than half were white, another couple with the same names left no other details in the historical record.

The discovery of the birth of their daughter three months before the wedding clarifies several mysteries that subsequent researchers hadn't yet been able to decipher. First is the coldness and near-hostility with which the family received the news of the marriage. Dos Santos Marrocos communicated the news to his father in a letter of November 12, 1815, two months after the ceremony took place in Rio de Janeiro. Francisco reacted violently to the news. He accused Luiz of lacking respect for him, acting “like a stupid African and a presumptuous American” in having married without notifying him in advance or asking his permission, behavior that he considered “vile and incivil.” His sister Bernardina criticized him for having married “in the stealth of night, as if the populace were blind and deaf.”
1

The second enigma regards an apparent misunderstanding in the exchange of letters in the period before the wedding. Luiz rebuts the criticisms of his family, saying that he had indeed notified them in advance of his intention to marry. He maintains that he had mentioned it in two letters, one to his father and the other to his sister, both dated December 23, 1813, nine months before the ceremony. The family claimed that this correspondence never reached them. In November 1815, Luiz defends himself, saying that it wasn't his fault that the letters went astray. Curiously, of the 186 letters in the Ajuda Library, these are the only two that are copies. The whereabouts of the originals remain unknown.

If the family's allegations are correct—in other words, that neither father nor sister were notified in advance of the wedding—what would have led Luiz and Anna to have married in near secrecy, without respecting protocol? Joaquinna's birth and baptismal certificates suggest that the marriage probably was decided in haste following an unexpected pregnancy. The estrangement from his family coincides with Joaquinna's date of birth.

The third mystery, which reinforces the first and second, concerns a letter of November 1814, at which point the girl would have been four months old. In this correspondence, dos Santos Marrocos warns his sister to pay no attention to the gossip and rumors about him spreading in Rio de Janeiro that could arrive in Lisbon. “I am laughing at the blindness of these silly people, diligently fraternizing with me with the worthless intention of discovering my secret, a satisfaction I will give no-one.”
2

What gossip could possibly evoke this kind of reaction from a thirty-three-year-old archivist and bureaucrat to the king, conservative to the roots of his hair? The explanation appears with Joaquinna, born in June of that year. In those days, pregnancy out of wedlock was reason for scandal. It also explains his sister's phrase “as if the populace were blind and deaf.” Blind and deaf to what? The evidence suggests that in Lisbon the family might have had knowledge, via other people, of the information that Luiz deliberately tried to hide in his letters.

So what happened to Joaquinna, the mysterious baby born in 1814? Aside from her birth and baptismal certificates, the Mormon database contains no other reference to her fate. We have no news of whether she was abandoned, whether she survived, died, married, or had children. But the key to these questions lies in documents archived in Salt Lake City. The microfilm containg the birth and baptismal certificates for Joaquinna dos Santos Marrocos forms part of a set of documents called batch C032065 of the International Genealogical Index. It consists of names of 1,855 girls born in Rio de Janeiro between 1812 and 1816, with a few exceptions from the end of the eighteenth century.

The majority of these children appear with only a first name. It records hundreds of girls named Justina, Honorata, Inocencia, or Jezuina, with no reference to genealogy or family name. Others have generic surnames
associated with religious societies, dates, or events, such as “of the Holy Spirit,” “of the Conception,” “of the Rosary,” or “of the Gospel.” The only point in common among all of them is that all were baptized at the Blessed Sacrament of the Sé—which explains the entire mystery. Blessed Sacrament was one of the oldest religious orders in colonial Brazil. Maintained by laymen of high social distinction, it counted among its responsibilities sheltering and providing assistance to the orphans of single mothers from wealthy families. This was the case of dos Santos Marrocos's fiancée: Anna Maria de São Thiago Souza came from a rich, socially well-connected family of legitimate Portuguese lineage.

The obvious conclusion is that, surprised by the pregnancy, Luiz and Anna Maria preferred to deliver the newborn baby to the care of a religious order rather than expose themselves to an inevitable scandal in presence of the court. Today, children born outside of wedlock are a normal phenomenon of life, accepted by society. Two hundred years ago, it was quite different. In the court of João VI, the news of a child born out of wedlock would be unacceptable. For the parents, it was better to hide the child and deliver her for adoption than to compromise the families' reputations.

The delivery of unwanted children for adoption was a widely spread habit in Rio de Janeiro. Orphanages and certain convents had a “foundling wheel,” an institution imported from Portugal, in which it was possible to leave a newborn without being identified. In 1823, Maria Graham visited a shelter in Rio de Janeiro the foundling wheel of which had received 10,000 orphan children in nine years. The majority died before finding a home to take them.
3

In the case of Joaquinna dos Santos Marrocos, despite all the risks involved, her parents nevertheless registered the unwanted child with her own surname. Identified as number 587 in batch C032065 of the Mormon record, Joaquinna is one of the rare children in this set of documents who appears with both a first name and a family name. It's as if they left a silent clue to their secrets buried for posterity.
4

A
CKNOWLEDGMENTS

This book stands as the result of ten years of journalistic investigation. It also pays homage to three people whose support, encouragement, and guidance proved indispensable to what I have written. First is Tales Alvarenga, my friend and editor colleague, who passed away prematurely in 2006. Second is the professor and historian Maria Odila Leite da Silva Dias. Third is the academic and bibliophile José Mindlin.

In 1997, Tales Alvarenga was editor in chief of the magazine
Veja,
and I was his head editor. Inspired by a successful experience during the centennial celebration of the Proclamation of the Republic, Tales commissioned me to do a special series of historical pieces to be distributed with the regular edition of
Veja
as a freebie to subscribers and newsstand buyers. The project would include the discovery of Brazil, the flight of the Portuguese royal family, and Brazilian independence. Of these three, only the first was ever published, in 2000, and distributed in Brazil and Portugal bundled with the magazines
Veja
and
Visão
under the title
The Adventure of Discovery.

As for the special piece on Dom João's flight from Lisbon, Tales decided to cancel it as there was no “hook”—an expression which in editorial parlance refers to a particular reason or opportunity for an article to be published. While the plan had changed, I continued working, moved by the enthusiasm that the topic and the historical figures had stirred in me. During these ten years, I read and researched over 150 books, printed sources, and electronic sources on the subject, in places as varied as the José Mindlin libraries, libraries in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, the Ajuda Library in Lisbon, and the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C.

In the initial phase of research, Professor Maria Odila Leite da Silva Dias acted as my advisor. My neighbor in Higienopolis, a district of São Paulo, she suggested the first of the books I consulted: the classic
Dom João VI in Brazil
by Manuel de Oliveira Lima, which I read in 1997. A PhD of the University of São Paulo and a professor at the Pontifical Catholic University of São Paulo, Maria Odila is the author of numerous books and articles on Brazilian history. The most recent,
A interiorização da metrópole
(
The Internalization
of the Metropolis
), published in 2005, has become a reference work in studies of the factors leading to independence. Maria Odila is also considered a major authority on the work of historian Sérgio Buarque de Holanda. As of mid-2007, her curriculum vitae on the website of the National Council for Scientific and Technological Development listed that she has supervised over eighty PhD and master's theses.

To the bibliophile José Mindlin, elected to the Brazilian Academy of Letters in 2006, I am indebted for access to his extraordinary library. Situated in the neighborhood of Brooklin, São Paulo, it holds the largest private collection of books in Brazil, with more than 38,000 rare or antique titles including a first edition of
Os Lusíadas
by Luis de Camões (1572). With the supervision and support of the librarians Cristina Antunes, Elisa Nazarian, and Rosa Gonçalves, responsible for the collection, I spent many unforgettable mornings conducting research and had the opportunity to consult, among other rarities, the first treatise on medicine published in Brazil in 1808, written by Manuel Vieira da Silva, as well as the original edition of Lieutenant Thomas O'Neill's
A concise and accurate account of the proceedings of the squadron under the command of Admiral Sir William Sidney Smith in effecting the escape of the Royal Family of Portugal to Brazil on November 29, 1807, and also the suffering of the royal fugitives during their voyage from Lisbon to Rio de Janeiro with a variety of other interesting and authentic facts
(1810). Both of these appear in the bibliography that follows.

The English-language edition of
1808
has been made possible thanks to the efforts of three professionals. I am indebted to Andrew Nevins, professor of linguistics at University College London, for the patient and careful work of translating the original text into English, a task replete with traps and challenges that could be overcome only with his profound knowledge of the subtleties of the Portuguese language. Jonah Straus, my literary agent in New York, took charge of the extremely important task of identifying Lyons Press, a division of Globe Pequot Press, as the publisher for the American market. Finally, it was the work of James Jayo in meticulously editing the final text which, besides greatly enriching the content of this work, made it more accessible for the background of an Anglophone readership.

N
OTES

1
Worth mentioning in the same category of highly readable books written in accessible language is
A longa viagem da biblioteca dos reis: do terremoto de Lisboa à Independência do Brasil
by historian Lília Moritz Schwarcz, professor at the University of São Paulo.

2
J. M. Pereira da Silva,
História da fundação,
Volume 1, p. 5.

3
During the thirteen years in which the Portuguese court ruled from Brazil, the value of the pound sterling, the standard currency for international trade, oscillated between 3,000 and 5,000 réis, according to the report of the Ambassador Joaquim de Souza Leão Filho, translator and annotator of Ernst Ebel's book
O Rio de Janeiro e seus arredores em 1824,
p. 14. With this reference as a guide, it is possible to have an approximate notion of the currency values of this period. The British Parliament offers a website in which one can calculate the equivalent of monetary amounts with their present-day value for the last three centuries. Through such a calculation, £1 in 1808 is equivalent today to £56. This means that goods sold in Rio de Janeiro at this time for 4,000 réis (approximately £1) would be worth today $100. Created by professors at the University of Miami and Illinois, the Economic History Service is a free site that provides conversions for older currencies: MeasuringWorth.com. GlobalFinancialData.com offers similar and even more detailed information but is not free. For historical information on the value of the pound sterling, see Robert Twigger,
Inflation,
available at www.parliament.uk.

 

I

THE FLIGHT FROM LISBON

 

1
For more detailed information about the power of monarchs during absolutist regimes, see Albert Sorel,
Europe Under the Old Regime,
and Geoffrey Bruun,
The Enlightened Despots.

2
In the era during which Prince José died, the smallpox vaccine was already in wide use across Europe. Queen Maria I, however, didn't authorize her eldest son and heir to the throne to be vaccinated “out of religious scruples,” according to historian Pedro Calmon in
O rei do Brasil,
p. 34. Later, under the regency of Prince João, the entire royal family received the vaccine.

3
For a description of Mafra Palace, see Lília Moritz Schwarcz,
A longa viagem da biblioteca dos reis,
p. 62, and Tobias Monteiro,
História do Império,
p. 168.

4
In 2005, the BBC created a website called
British History: Empire and Sea Power
to commemorate the 200th anniversary of the Battle of Trafalgar. For an insightful analysis of the consequences of Lord Nelson's victory over the French and Spanish fleets, see Nam Rodger,
Trafalgar: The Long-Term Impact,
on the same website.

5
Tobias Monteiro,
História do Império,
pp. 20–21.

6
Ibid, p. 55.

 

II

THE ERA OF DERANGED MONARCHS

 

1
For more information about this illness and about the behavior of George III and Maria I, see Christopher Hibbert,
George III;
Marcus Cheke,
Carlota Joaquina;
and Vivian Green,
A loucura dos reis.

2
Patrick Wilcken,
Empire Adrift,
p. 57. The equivalence conversion derives from Robert Twigger,
Inflation.

3
“Queen Maria I for a long time had been showing signs of psychological disturbance and was abrubtly affected by a serious attack of madness while attending a performance at the theater in the Palace of Salvaterra on Feburary 2, 1792,” writes historian Ângelo Pereira in
D. João VI,
p. 57.

4
Cited in H. A. L. Fisher,
Napoleon.

5
Manuel de Oliveira Lima, D.
João VI no Brasil,
p. 49.

6
Information about the size of the French debt after Louis XIV's reign and the
number of individuals in the court of Versailles comes from Winston Churchill,
The Age of Revolution.

7
This figure comes from Alistair Horne, in the audiobook
The Age of Napoleon.
Cameron Reilly, in
Napoleon 101,
a podcast available at Napoleon.ThePodcastNetwork.com, claims that there are 300,000 books in which Napoleon is the main character.

8
For a detailed analysis of Napoleon's military strategy and his capacity to mobilize troops, see Gunther Rothenberg,
The Napoleonic Wars,
pp. 18–47.

9
Alexandre Dumas,
Napoleão,
p. 37.

10
Alistair Horne,
The Age of Napoleon
(audiobook).

 

III

THE PLAN

 

1
Manuel de Oliveira Lima,
D. João VI no Brasil,
p. 43.

2
J. M. Pereira da Silva, in
História da fundação,
pp. 79–80, says that in 1806 Portugal imported from Brasil 14,153,752,891 réis and exported to the colony only 8,426,097,899 réis.

3
Thomas E. Skidmore,
Brazil,
p. 23.

4
The total number of ships used for commerce with Brazil and Costigan's commentary come from Kenneth Maxwell,
Conflicts and Conspiracies,
p. 5.

5
In 1640, a group of royal adivsors, worried by the constant threats to Portugal's autonomy, including Jesuit priest Father Antonio Vieira, proposed the creation of an empire in the Americas, to which the seat of the monarchy would be transferred. Vieira had a messianic vision of the idea. According to him, Portugal was destined to recreate in the Americas the “Fifth Empire,” a biblical kingdom predicted by the prophet Daniel in the Old Testament. For defending such ideas, he was investigated by the Inquistion and later censured by the pope. For more information, see Kirsten Schultz,
Tropical Versailles,
p. 17.

6
Kenneth Maxwell,
Conflicts and Conspiracies,
p. 6.

7
Manuel de Oliveira Lima,
D. João VI no Brasil,
p. 45.

8
Letter to the prince regent of August 16, 1803, reproduced in Ângelo Pereira,
D. João Príncipe e Rei,
pp. 127–136.

9
Manuel de Oliveira Lima,
D. João VI no Brasil,
p. 16.

10
In 1807, the Council of State consisted of Antonio de Araújo de Azevedo, Rodrigo de Souza Coutinho, João de Almeida de Melo e Castro, José Egídio Alves de Almeida (head of the cabinet), João Diogo de Barros (secretary of the infantado), Tomás Antônio Vilanova Portugal (treasurer of the Aerarium), Manuel Vieira da Silva (D. João's personal physician and the author of the first medical treatise published in Brazil, in 1808), and the brothers Francisco José e Matias Antônio de Sousa Lobato (chamberlains and personal valets to the prince). For more details, see Lília Schwarcz,
A longa viagem da biblioteca,
p. 65.

11
Lília Schwarcz,
A longa viagem da biblioteca,
p. 199.

12
Tobias Monteiro,
História do império,
p. 23.

13
Lília Schwarcz,
A longa viagem da biblioteca,
p. 204.

14
Manuel de Oliveira Lima,
D. João VI no Brasil,
p. 47.

15
Alexandre José de Melo Moraes,
História da transladação,
p. 50.

16
Manuel de Oliveira Lima,
D. João VI no Brasil,
pp. 51–52.

17
Ibid, p. 37.

18
Ibid, p. 40.

19
According to René Chartrand,
Vimeiro 1808,
p. 17.

20
For a description of the indigence of the French army and the errors made during the invasion of Portugual, see René Chartrand,
Vimeiro 1808;
Charles Esdaile,
The Peninsular War;
General Maximilien Foy,
Junot's Invasion of Portugal;
David Gates,
The Spanish Ulcer;
Charles Oman,
A History of the Peninsular War;
and Gunther E. Rothenberg,
The Napoleonic Wars.

21
General Maximilien Foy,
Junot's Invasion,
p. 57.

22
Charles Oman,
A History of the Peninsular War,
p. 28.

23
Cited in Tobias Monteiro,
História do Império,
p. 59.

24
Charles Oman,
A History of the Peninsular War,
p. 27.

25
Alan Manchester,
British Preeminence in Brazil,
p. 67, quoting Albert Sorel,
Europe and the French Revolution.

26
Charles Oman,
A History of the Peninsular War,
p. 26.

 

IV

THE DECLINING EMPIRE

 

1
Júlio Bandeira, “O barroco de açúcar e de ouro,” in the introduction to
Viagem ao Brasil
by Thomas Ender, p. 26.

2
Kenneth Light, “Com os pés no mar,” pp. 48–53.

3
Joaquim Pedro de Oliveira Martins,
História de Portugal,
p. 519.

4
Manuel de Oliveira Lima,
D. João VI no Brasil,
p. 25.

5
Converted according to the inflation of the past two hundred years, a French franc in 1808 would be worth 4.07 euros today, according to GlobalFinancialData.com.

6
This data comes from Marcus Cheke,
Carlota Joaquina.
Pereira da Silva, in
História da fundação,
p. 77, claims based on the statistics of 1801 that the population of Portugual was 2,951,930 residents, including 30,000 bishops, priests, nuns, and seminarists cloistered in 393 monasteries or convents.

7
Pedro Calmon,
O rei do Brasil,
p. 34.

8
Maria Antonia Lopes,
Mulheres, Espaço e Sociabilidade,
1989, cited in Francisca L. Nogueira de Azevedo,
Carlota Joaquina na Corte do Brasil,
p. 54.

9
Cited in Luis Edmundo,
Recordações do Rio Antigo,
p. 68.

10
Manuel de Oliveira Lima,
D. João VI no Brasil,
p. 23.

11
Lília Schwarcz,
A longa viagem da biblioteca,
p. 86.

12
Sérgio Buarque de Holanda,
Raízes do Brasil,
p. 49.

13
Interview in
Veja
magazine, volume 1967, August 2, 2006, p. 11.

14
Lília Schwarcz,
A longa viagem da biblioteca,
p. 39.

15
Ibid, p. 86.

16
Pandiá Calógeras,
Formação histórica do Brasil,
p. 60. The conversion to present-day equivalents derives from Robert Twigger,
Inflation.

17
In
História do Império,
pp. 499–500, Tobias Monteiro calculates the amount of gold sent from Minas Gerais to Portugal as 35,687
arrobas
or 590 tons.

18
Pandiá Calógeras,
Formação histórica do Brasil,
p. 60.

19
Cited in Lília Schwarcz,
A longa viagem da biblioteca,
p. 87.

20
For a description of the damage caused by the Lisbon earthquake, see Lília Schwarcz,
A longa viagem da biblioteca,
chapter 1.

21
Oliveira Martins,
História de Portugal,
pp. 494–496.

22
Lília Schwarcz,
A longa viagem da biblioteca,
p. 161.

23
The policy of neutrality and noninterference in extradomestic matters held so strong in Portugal that, directly inherited, it characterized the relationship between Brazil and the rest of the world after independence. Even today it forms an important thread within Brazilian foreign policy.

24
Alan Manchester,
British Preeminence in Brazil,
p. 2.

25
Oliveira Martins,
História de Portugal,
p. 575.

26
Alan Manchester,
British Preeminence in Brazil,
p. 2.

27
Winston Churchill,
The Age of Revolution
(audiobook).

28
Manuel de Oliveira Lima,
D. João VI no Brasil,
p. 29.

 

 

V

DEPARTURE

 

1
Descriptions of the weather in Lisbon on the day of departure come from the lieutenant of the British Navy Thomas O'Neill in
A concise and accurate account of the proceedings,
p. 22, and from Portuguese historian Ângelo Pereira in
Os filhos d'El-Rei D. João VI,
p. 113.

2
Thomas O'Neill,
A concise and accurate account,
p. 16.

3
The information about the number of ships that accompanied the Portuguese royal family to Brazil remains a matter of dispute. Based on onboard diaries, historian Kenneth Light affirms that on the first day of the voyage the commander of the English vessel
Hibernia
counted a total of fifty-six ships. These would have been thirty-one warships, thirteen of them English and eighteen Portuguese, plus twenty-five merchant vessels. In his memoirs, Admiral Sidney Smith speaks of “a multitude of large armored merchant ships.” In Lord Strangford's version, they would have been “numerous brigs, armed corvettes and sloops, and some other ships from Brazil,” totalling “nearly 36 ships in all.” Historian Alexandre de Melo Moraes reports eight large ships (
Principe Real, Martim de Freitas, Príncipe do Brasil, D. João de Castro, D. Henrique, Afonso de Albuquerque, Rainha de Portugal,
and
Meduza
), four frigates (
Minerva, Urânia, Golphinho,
and
Thelis
), three brigs (
Lebre, Voador,
and
Vingança
) and a schooner (
Carioca
) and numerous merchant vessels, besides the British ships.