1808: The Flight of the Emperor (22 page)

Koster left a detailed description of the way of life in the Northeastern interior: “The
Sertanejo
is very jealous, and more murders are committed, and more quarrels entered into on this score, by tenfold, than on any other,” he related.

 

These people are revengeful; an offence is seldom pardoned, and in default of law, of which there is scarcely any, each man takes it into his own hands. . . . Robbery in the Sertão is scarcely known; the land is in favorable years too plentiful to afford temptation, and in seasons of distress for food, every man is for the most part equally in want. . . . They are extremely ignorant, few of them possessing even the commonest rudiments of knowledge. . . . The Sertanejos are courageous, generous, sincere, and hospitable: if a favor is begged, they know not how to deny it; but if you trade with them either for cattle, or aught else, the character changes, and then they wish to outwit you, conceiving success to be a piece of cleverness of which they may boast.

Certain images recur in the numerous accounts of foreigners who visited Brazil at the beginning of the nineteenth century. The first is of a carefree and sluggish colony with no inclination to work, dependent for three centuries on the proceeds of an extractive economy. Englishman Thomas Lindley, who traveled along the coast near Porto Seguro, in Bahia, took surprised note that the abundance of natural resources in Brazil failed to result in significant wealth, cultural development, or material comfort for the Brazilians. “In a country which, with cultivation and industry, would abound with the blessings of nature to excess, the greater part of the people exist in want and poverty, while even the small remainder know not those enjoyments which make life desirable.”
10

John Mawe had much the same reaction upon encountering cheese production in a region near Vila Rica and Mariana in Minas Gerais. “Its taste was sometimes so extremely rancid and disagreeable, as to be utterly unwholesome, and from this circumstance I judged that there must be great mismanagement in the preparation of it,” he related.

 

All the farms which I had occasion to visit on my journey to Villa Rica, [and from thence to this place], fully confirmed my opinion; for, miserable as was the condition of every department belonging to them, that of the dairy was still worse. In the few places where they pretended to prepare milk for cheese, not only were the various utensils in an extremely filthy condition, but the rennet was so putrid as to be in the last degree sickening.

Mawe relates how he tried time and again to teach the farmers more hygienic production techniques for the production of cheese and butter, but he knew his efforts were in vain. “The people seemed highly satisfied with the success of the process; but I had strong doubts that they would not pursue it after my departure, as they must naturally dislike the trouble and care which it required.”
11

Another theme that arises frequently in these travelers' accounts is illiteracy and the paucity of education and culture. “Brazil is not the seat of literature,” remarked James Henderson. “In fact, its total absence is marked by the prohibition of books generally, and the want of any single medium through which its inhabitants can attain even to a knowledge of the existing state of the world, or what is passing in it. The inhabitants are principally involved in great ignorance and pride, its usual consequence.”
12
Henderson, departing from London on March 11, 1819, aboard the
Echo
, stands as one of the later voyagers of João's time in Brazil. Henderson's travel diaries include a map of the country and eight engravings portraying landscapes and types of Brazilian people. “In this illiterate country, one does not meet anyone with an intimate knowledge of science,” observed English botanist William Burchell, who traveled through the country later, between 1825 and 1830, after the court had already returned to Portugal. “Nature has done many things here—but man, nothing. Here, nature offers many themes for study and admiration, while men continue to vegetate in the darkness of ignorance and extreme poverty, a consequence of indolence alone.”
13

The opening of the ports and the end of prohibited access to Brazil represented a quantum leap for scientific advancement there. The country, suddenly thrown open to geographers, geologists, botanists, ethnographers,
and more, offered an immense laboratory, rich and abounding with new discoveries. Augustin de Saint-Hilaire, born in Orléans, France, ten years before the French Revolution, lived in Brazil between 1816 and 1822. He visited the regions of Goiás, São Paulo, Rio Grande do Sul, Minas Gerais, and Espirito Santo, traversing a total of approximately nine thousand miles. A professor of botany at the Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle in Paris, he arrived in the company of the duke of Piney, Charles Emmanuelle Sigismond de Montmorency-Luxembourg, whom King Louis XVIII appointed as ambassador to the court in Rio de Janeiro in 1816. In the following years, Saint-Hilaire collected more than 15,000 species of plants and animals, from the northern region of Goiás—where today the state of Tocantins is located—to Rio Grande do Sul. He discovered two new botanical families, the Paronychiae and the Tamariscinae, and more than one thousand previously unknown species. Upon returning to France, he published fourteen volumes, including travel memoirs, botanical descriptions, and agricultural reports.
14

Saint-Hilaire arrived in São Paulo carrying eighteen suitcases and stayed in a country estate where the neighborhood of Brás is located today.
15
He found the region agreeable but the mess and filth of the shops in the city center astounding. “One should not expect to find these shops clean and orderly,” he observed. “The lard, cereals, and meat are thrown about every which way, mixed one with the other, and the shopkeepers are still quite far from possessing the arts of our merchants in Paris, who know how to give an appetizing appearance to even the most crude provisions.” The streetwalkers also surprised him. “In no part of the world that I have traversed did I see such a large number of prostitutes. They were of every color; the sidewalks were covered, so to speak, with women of that low station. They pass leisurely from one side to the other or wait on the corners for customers,” he wrote, adding unsurprisingly that “nothing is more widespread in this region than venereal diseases.”

Rancho near the Serra do Caraça
(Minas Gerais), engraving from
Travels in Brazil
by Johann Baptist von Spix and C. Philipp von Martius, London, 1824, Lucia M. Loeb/Biblioteca Guita e José Mindlin

The most famous scientific expedition of this period arrived with Princess Leopoldina in 1817, directed by the twenty-three-year old Bavarian botanist Karl von Martius, and including painter Thomas Ender and botanist Johann Baptist von Spix. Responsible for studying plants, animals, minerals,
and natives, von Martius and von Spix covered more than six thousand miles in the interior of Brazil between 1817 and 1820, making the expedition one of the largest scientific explorations of the nineteenth century. Traveling by mule troop and canoe, the two researchers began in Rio—passing through the regions of São Paulo, Minas Gerais, Bahia, Pernambuco, Piauí, Maranhão, Pará, and finally the modern-day state of Amazonas—and went all the way to the border with Colombia. At the trip's end they brought 85 species of mammals, 350 species of birds, 130 species of amphibians, 116 species of fish, 2,700 species of insects, 80 species of arachnids and crustaceans, and 6,500 species of plants to Munich.
16
The result of this research, published in Germany in three volumes between 1823 and 1831, still holds pride of place as an important reference work of the natural sciences.

In the upper stretches of the Japurá River, a tributary of the Solimões River, almost at the border with Colombia, von Martius and von Spix met a picturesque individual: João Manoel, an emperor of the wilderness. Chief of the Miranhas, a native group with a population estimated at six thousand
by the researchers, Manoel had enslaved a neighboring tribe. His power extended over an area two and a half times larger than the modern state of Sergipe. Manoel didn't speak Portuguese, so they communicated in the
lingua-geral
, a common idiom among the majority of indigenous tribes of Brazil at this time. Manoel wore cotton shirts and trousers like the Portuguese colonizers, ate from china dishes, wore a hat, and shaved daily.

The botanists observed an unusual means of communication developed by the natives of the upper Solimões. Beating a hollow wooden log called a
trocano
,
the Natives emitted signals, like a primitive telegraph, to communicate with neighboring villages. Depending on the signal, messages conveyed, for example, that two white men had just visited a tribe or that at a certain moment a village was sleeping or eating. Because of these signals, the day after their arrival in the village of the Miranhas, von Martius and von Spix received a visit from hundreds of neighboring natives, curious to investigate for themselves these strangers who had suddenly appeared from nowhere.
17

This moment demonstrated the transformations in progress at the time. From the point of view of European civilization, the upper Solimões was a heart of darkness: an isolated location lost in time and space. Von Martius and von Spix came from Vienna, one of the most cultured and educated cities of its era, where at that time Ludwig van Beethoven was composing his
Fifth Symphony
. Trekking through the Amazonian wilderness, they had gone further than any other traveler in the Brazilian interior. Once there, they came face to face with a tribal society that nonetheless had a rudimentary system of communication sufficient to announce the biggest news of João VI's Brazil: The foreigners were coming.

XXII

Napoleon's Downfall

O
ne of the most popular works in the Prado Museum in Madrid, Francisco Goya's
Los Fusilamientos del Tres de Mayo
portrays a startling scene that occurred on May 3, 1808, on Príncipe Pío Hill, in the Spanish capital. On the right, shrouded in heavy, dark tones, a firing squad aims at a group kneeling on the left. In the center, a square lantern on the ground throws phantasmagorical light across a man in a white shirt and beige trousers, who lifts his arms in the direction of the firing squad. Is he begging for mercy, attempting some explanation, performing a last act of protest? The moment of pure fear and despair stands frozen in Goya's painting. At the feet of the man in the white shirt lie three or four stacked and bloodstained corpses. At his side, other prisoners await their fatal bullet. Some cover their eyes, while others hang their heads in resignation.

Goya's painting silently but powerfully witnesses the tragic events that rocked the Iberian peninsula in the year that the Portuguese royal family arrived in Brazil. On the eve of those mass executions, the Spanish rebelled against the French invasion and the removal of Carlos IV from the throne. The French reacted with ruthless violence. Between the afternoon of May 2 and the night of May 3, hundreds of rebels were shot in the suburbs of Madrid. Two of the most bloody conflicts of the Napoleonic wars started there and had profound consequences for both sides.

Between 1807 and 1814, Portugal and Spain represented for Napoleon what Vietnam did for America a century and a half later. Many years afterward, in exile on Saint Helena, Napoleon reflected in his memoirs: “It was the Peninsular War that destroyed me. All of my disasters had their origin in this fatal knot.” He added a rationale much abused by countless leaders and governments throughout history: “What I tried to do in Spain was for their own good, but the people didn't understand. As a result, I failed.”
1

The Peninsular War, seizing these two countries between 1807 and 1813, involved a series of non-conventional clashes including guerrilla skirmishes and ambushes. Not unlike the English Redcoats in colonial America several decades prior, the disciplined, regimental French troops were unaccustomed to this style of martial engagement. Master of the battlefield, Napoleon based his military strategy on massive concentrations of troops, with the objective of deciding battles as quickly as possible and forcing his enemies to accept his terms of surrender. In these meticulously planned conflicts, fought in open fields under the control of generals, the strengths and weaknesses of each side quickly became apparent. In Spain and Portugal, however, the French faced bands of men armed with scythes, tridents, sticks, and even rocks, who ambushed them on difficult and mountainous terrain.

The errors of judgement that Napoleon committed on the Iberian peninsula—which sealed his destiny—began with the choice of the man responsible for commanding the invasion of Portugal. Despite being an old friend of the French emperor, General Jean-Andoche Junot was far from a first-rate official. He had enjoyed a mediocre career when compared with Napoleon's other great generals, such as Louis Davoust, André Masséna, and Nicolas Soult. Before invading Portugal, he hadn't commanded any large military expeditions. “Junot was one of Napoleon's most active and vigorous officers, but not a great strategist after the style of Masséna, Soult, or Davoust,” wrote Sir Charles Oman, author of
A History of the Peninsular War
. “He was a good fighting man, but a mediocre general.”
2

Bonaparte apparently chose Junot for three reasons. First, they were old comrades in arms. They became acquainted at the beginning of both of their military careers in the famous Siege of Toulon in 1793, in which the future French emperor distinguished himself with his courage and cleverness in
defeating the English. Thereafter, Junot fought alongside Napoleon in Italy, Egypt, Palestine, and in the Battle of Austerlitz. He was a little over thirty years old when he received the order to invade Portugal. Nicknamed “The Storm” on account of his ferocious, irascible temperament, Junot had a face marked by the various battles in which he had fought. One side featured a deep scar from top to bottom, the result of a saber wound received during a campaign in Italy.
3

Second, Junot had served as French ambassador in Lisbon for a brief period between 1804 and 1805. He married the duchess of Abrantes, who went down in history as the author of the most stinging and irreverent comments about the customs of the Portuguese court. Recorded in her personal diary, the duchess's criticisms still delight historians and students of this era. (It's hard to forget her account of Princess Carlota Joaquina as small, hobbling, cross-eyed, and disagreeable.)

Third, Portugal's obvious unpreparedness convinced Bonaparte—and soon Junot himself—not to expect any resistance on the part of the Portuguese, who, at first sight, didn't seem to warrant the presence of a top-of-the-line general. Junot, despite his limitations, seemed able to handle the errand. In 1808, weeks after occupying Lisbon, he wrote in his diary: “This people is easily managed. I am better obeyed here, and more expeditiously, than ever the Prince Regent was.”
4

But he was terribly mistaken. As the following years showed, despite their poverty and meager resources, the Portuguese and Spanish mounted an obstinate resistance that proved fatal to the destinies of Junot and even Bonaparte himself. Of the 29,000 soldiers who invaded Portugal, only 22,000 would return home.
5
The other 7,000—nearly a quarter of the total—died on forced marches, in battle, or during ambushes led by the Portuguese.
6
As a result of his failure in the Iberian peninsula, Junot was court-martialed. Although Bonaparte ultimately pardoned him, Junot's career was ruined. In 1813, the general jumped to his death from a window in Paris during a bout of insanity.

Countless acts of resistance took place in Portugal. The venerable University of Coimbra, a citadel of knowledge and training of the Portuguese elite, became a military arsenal. The chemistry lab turned into a gunpowder
factory. A metallurgy professor oversaw the manufacture of bullets, cartridges, and other weaponry. On June 24, 1808, forty students leading two thousand countrymen surrounded a French garrison tasked with monitoring the Santa Catarina fort in the city of Figueira de Foz. Caught by surprise and without sufficient provisions to hold out long enough to await reinforcements, the soldiers surrendered three days later, brought as prisoners in triumph to the university campus.
7

The French reacted with severe repression. Organized in various cities and villages, firing squads attempted to eliminate the rebels. General Loison's troops massacred the inhabitants of the historic city of Evora in the Alentejo region after they futilely tried to resist his military advances. French troops mercilessly hunted men, women, children, and the elderly in blood-soaked streets that in some cases witnessed the deaths of more than two thousand people in a single afternoon. General Loison's cruelty branded him odiously into Portuguese history, a feeling that still lingers there today. Injured in battle, Loison had part of one arm amputated and thus became known as “One-Arm.” In 1808, entering Porto to demand its surrender, General Maximilien Foy was nearly lynched by the populace, who mistook him for One-Arm. Foy saved his own skin by lifting up both arms to the crowd—though he was still arrested. Released a few weeks later, General Foy later became one of the main historians of Napoleon's campaigns in Portugal and Spain.

Of the 110,000 soldiers who participated in the Peninsular War under Bonaparte, only 34,000 belonged to the regular French army. The other 76,000 were badly trained recruits or foreign legionnaires, a reserve force that the emperor maintained in the French countryside while employing his best soldiers in the memorable campaigns against the Austrians, Prussians, and Russians.
8
The catastrophic results that took place in Iberia changed the course of history after more than a decade of uninterrupted victories in Europe. They demonstrated that the French armies were not invincible and gave redoubled spirit to the Corsican's enemies.

“On the Iberian Peninsula, the Emperor embarked on a venture that ultimately proved to be a major cause of his downfall,” wrote David Gates, author of
The Spanish Ulcer: A History of the Peninsular War.
“It was evidence of his greed and ambition and his failure to correctly grasp the situation.” In
Portugal and Spain, the French emperor saw the rise of the man who decisively defeated him on the battlefields of Waterloo in 1815. Born in Dublin, Sir Arthur Wellesley, future duke of Wellington, then thirty-nine years old, took charge of organizing the defense of Portugal after the royal family had departed for Brazil. A master of planning marches and troop supply, he rarely took the offensive in battles—in contrast to Napoleon. Wellesley preferred a cautious, studied defense systematically prepared and detailed. He had in his favor another decisive factor: the extraordinary capacity of British industry to supply arms and other vital equipment for the troops on the battlefield. Riding the wave of the first Industrial Revolution, British factories had reached a height of production in 1808, English gunpowder was considered the best in the world, and their rifles incomparable.
9

The Peninsular War consisted of two great campaigns. The first began in October 1807, when Napoleon pressured the Spanish government to support the 25,000 soldiers who had crossed the Pyrenees under General Junot's command, ready to attack small and insolent Portugal. Spain cooperated, but the march proved difficult and cost the French heavily. Junot arrived in Lisbon on December 1, 1807, two days after the royal family set sail for Brazil. Some four hundred miles from the French border with no steady line of communication and supplies, Junot had marched too far away from France to ensure the safety and survival of his troops.

In the meantime, Bonaparte betrayed the subservient Spanish monarchy. At the beginning of 1808, a second line of French forces, under the command of General Murat, invaded Spain. In a few weeks, Murat occupied every fort in the north and center of the country and, leading 82,000 men, entered Madrid on March 14. Foreseeing this maneuver, King Carlos IV attempted a final, desperate measure: Taking a page from Prince João's book, he ordered his minister Manuel de Godoy to prepare ships in order to transport the Spanish royal family to the Americas. They didn't make it, however. Surprised in Seville by French troops before embarking, the king and his heir, Prince Fernando, unwillingly abdicated in favor of Joseph Bonaparte—Napoleon's brother and king of Naples at the time—who reigned as José I.

In the beginning, the Spanish resisted minimally, but the deposing of their king and the brutality of the French forces in Spain created hugely
unpopular sentiment, which exploded in the May revolt in Madrid that was so brutally repressed, as seen in Goya's painting. In the interior of the country, the people resisted more fiercely. On July 20, in the city of Bailén, 20,000 French troops were surrounded and forced to surrender. The seemingly impossible news of this defeat sent a shockwave through Europe. In Portugal, the resistance, organized by the English, also surfaced much more strongly than imagined. On August 1, 1808, an army of 15,000 English soldiers commanded by General Wellesley disembarked on the Portuguese coast and three weeks later defeated Junot in the city of Vimeiro.

The second phase of the Peninsular War involved the personal intervention of Napoleon, who sent his best generals to the front lines of resistance in Spain and Portugal. In December 1808, the emperor himself entered Madrid, commanding a monumental army of 305,000 men. His triumph proved short-lived. Shortly thereafter, concerned with news of conspiracies in Paris and the reorganization of Austrian forces, he returned to France—just as the momentum leading to his definitive fall began to swell in Spain. His defeat in the first phase of the Peninsular War landed a blow to the confidence of the French troops and reinforced the courage of the Spanish and Portuguese. Moreover, it gave the English time to get a foot in the door and reorganize the dismantled Spanish and Portuguese armies. Under the command of General William Carr Beresford between 1809 and 1812, the Portuguese army, consisting of some 40,000 soldiers, became more professional and more dangerous for the French.

In May 1809, while Napoleon was trying to defeat the Austrians once more in the Battle of Wagram, Sir Arthur Wellesley, who had retired to England at the end of the first phase of the Peninsular War, returned to Portugal with a reinforced army. In the four years that followed, he expelled the French from the continent using a combination of guerrilla tactics, conventional battles, and ingenious bids. In October 1809, British engineers and Portuguese laborers began constructing one of the great wonders of modern military history: the Lines of Torres Vedras, a sequence of one hundred fortifications built in strategic positions, beginning at the edge of the Tagus River and extending to the Atlantic Ocean, forming a ring of thirty miles around Lisbon.

The towers, which served simultaneously as lookouts and as defense posts in case of attack, proved impassable. In July 1810, André Masséna, one of Napoleon's most experienced generals, tried to cross them with a force of 70,000 men and 126 cannons. He failed. Forced to retreat, Masséna opened the way for Lord Wellington to proceed all the way to the French border. In the meantime, Napoleon had lost 250,000 soldiers in his infamous attempt to invade Russia. Bonaparte's final defeat at Waterloo was only a matter of time.