Cochrane (49 page)

The Emperor swore that he had in no way authorised the search, assuring Cochrane of his complete trust in him. They discussed how to prevent the "outrage" to Cochrane's flag. At length they agreed that the Emperor must be taken ill next day and unable to review his forces. Cochrane's ship would be manned and safe. The ministers would attend their sick Emperor. Indeed Cochrane himself would be obliged to go through the farce of calling at the palace to inquire after the health of a man he knew to be well.
¹⁵

While this bedroom comedy of avarice and suspicion was acted out at Rio de Janeiro, the news from the vast empire to the north reflected the incompetent and partisan nature of the new ministry. A republican rebellion had broken out more than a thousand miles away in Pernambuco. A second province, Maranham itself, was in the convulsions of civil war, fought between rival groups who all claimed to be loyal to the new Emperor but none the less found good cause for fighting each other.

It was a matter of the greatest urgency to get the squadron to sea and to embark the
1200
troops who were waiting to go with it. But the men of the squadron, feeling cheated of their pay and prizes, had left the ships and showed no intention of returning. The Brazilian government accepted their defeat to the extent of providing Cochrane with
200,000
dollars of the money owing to the ships' companies. The lure was sufficient to get them back on board. Cochrane paid his men, and the squadron with three troopships sailed on
2
August. He had been offered a further personal inducement by the Emperor and the ministry. He was to receive his pay as First Admiral of Brazil for as long as he chose to serve. When he retired, he would receive half-pay for the rest of his life. Should he die before Kitty, which was probable in view of the difference in their ages, she would inherit the income for life.
¹⁶

On the orders of the government, Cochrane put the troops ashore about eighty miles short of Pernambuco. With his warships he sailed north and anchored off the city itself on
18
August. In principle,

Cochrane was not entirely hostile to the republican rebellion, which he thought had been inspired by a number of Americans who were resident in the city. The rebels insisted that, sooner or later, Dom Pedro would come to terms with his father and Brazilian independence would vanish. They wanted all the northern provinces to unite in a "Confederation of the Equator", based on the example of the United States.

At the same time, Portuguese ships were now using Pernambuco openly. Cochrane made no attempt to interfere with them. The "Portuguese faction" now enjoyed a majority of nine to four in the Tribunal of Prizes, and had decreed that so far from rewarding any interference with Portuguese shipping, they would make the appellant liable for damages. Ignoring the Portuguese, Cochrane began to negotiate with Manoel de Carvalho, the "President" of the new regime. He pointed out that division and anarchy in Brazil would destroy independence, and offered to mediate between the rebels and the Emperor. Carvalho replied by inviting Cochrane to change sides and join the republican cause. Cochrane refused, remarking that "it did not follow that, because the Brazilian ministers were unjust and hostile to me, I should accept a bribe from a traitor to follow his example".

When the rebel leaders refused his offer of safe conduct following surrender, Cochrane warned them that he must first blockade and then bombard their city. There were already rumours of clippers having been ordered by Carvalho from the United States, and steamships from England, so there was little time to be lost. Fortunately for the inhabitants, the waters off Pernambuco were too shallow for any ship other than the schooner
Leopoldina
to carry out the bombardment. A mortar was duly put on board her and fired. After several shells had been sent on their way it was evident that the explosions shook the schooner so badly that she was likely to go to the bottom before doing much damage to Pernambuco. Cochrane called off the attack. But the effect of the large shells exploding among them evidently turned the citizens against the rebel regime. At least, the force of
1200
loyal troops advancing from their disembarkation point farther down the coast took the city with little difficulty. Carvalho himself, after a last defence in one of the suburbs, escaped on board a fishing raft and was rescued by a British corvette, H.M.S.
Tweed.
¹¹

It was
9
November when Cochrane and his squadron arrived at Maranham. The situation represented anarchy rather than any political rebellion. Miguel Bruce, the President, aided by an army of negro troops, was fighting the former military leaders. Cochrane quickly saw that "Bruce was unfit to be trusted with authority at all" but Bruce's opponents were fighting one another as well as their President. There were, said Cochrane, "two or three family parties fighting each other under the Imperial flag". According to the protests of the French and British consuls, it was Bruce's negro army, officered by newly emancipated slaves, who were responsible for most of the murder and brutality. Cochrane rounded them up and confined them on hulks in the harbour, under the guns of his fleet. He carried out a purge of the more notoriously corrupt officials and celebrated Christmas Day by deposing Bruce himself and replacing him by Manuel Lobo. Cochrane insisted that he had merely "suspended" Bruce, but the practical effect was to stir up a rebellion among those who believed their President had been overthrown.

For six months, anchored almost on the equator, Cochrane struggled with the petty but bloody politics of Maranham. He reported the situation to the government in Rio de Janeiro but received little acknowledgement. He argued the issue of prize money and pay with Brazilian authorities, both national and provincial. He got nowhere with it. Despite his loyalty to the Emperor, the empire at large had forgotten him. As though this were not enough, the pestilential climate had undermined his own health, as well as that of his officers and men. Having had his fill of Maranham and its intrigues, Cochrane left one ship to guard the port, sent the
Pedro
Primiero
to Rio de Janeiro, and shifted his flag into the
Piranga.
On
1
January
1825,
he had written privately to the Emperor, asking for leave to resign his command. "I have now accomplished all that can be expected from me," he concluded wearily. But his request had not been acknowledged. With his crew of mercenaries he sailed northward and eastward, in search of cooler waters. The frigate put to sea on
18
May and crossed the equator three days later. The winds carried them eastward, with little complaint on the part of the men. By
11
June they were off the Azores, which by any stretch of the imagination was an odd location for a Brazilian warship.

Cochrane claimed that he intended to sail from the Azores to Rio de Janeiro once his men had recuperated from their equatorial experiences. But strong gales caught the
Piranga,
her maintopmast was sprung, the main and maintopsail yards were unserviceable. The rigging was rotten and the provisions stank. On
25
June, the
Piranga
anchored in Spithead.
¹⁸

For much of the remainder of his life, Cochrane was to be involved in financial quarrels with the Brazilian government, the question depending upon whether he had deserted the cause by bringing the
Piranga
to England. In his own view, he had had no choice in the matter. The frigate was not in any state to cross the Atlantic again, nor was she provisioned for such a v
oyage. To have put into a Portu
guese port was out of the question and, under the circumstances, Spithead seemed a reasonable landfall. Cochrane protested that he was the one who had most to lose from it, since the Tory government had by now passed the Foreign Enlistment Act to make his activities on behalf of other governments a criminal offence. At the same time, it is not hard to see why the Brazilians were dismayed to discover that their flagship had left Maranham and was now riding at anchor off Portsmouth.

If Cochrane's career as a Latin American admiral was effectively at an end, he none the less returned from his six and a half years' exile with his reputation further enhanced among European liberals. Despite the petty quarrels of the day, the Brazilians themselves were destined to christen him "the South American Lafayette". Most important of all, at fifty years old he was still possessed of the enthusiasm and energy with which he had been accustomed to fight other men's battles as well as his own. He was, in every sense, an imposing figure, a certain middle-aged stoutness filling out his considerable height.

In the capture of Valdivia, the cutting out of the
Esmeralda,
and the win
ning of the northern provinces for the new Brazilian empire, Cochrane's admirers detected the same audacity and resolution which had made the
Gamo
and Fort Trinidad legends of the Napoleonic wars. Now he was no longer a lone crusader against the complacency and nepotism of British political life generally and of the Admiralty in particular. He had emerged on the world stage as the champion in arms of liberty and national independence, the warrior of a new century and a new political philosophy. The enemies who had snared him secretly a decade earlier would now be obliged to fight him openly, where the world could judge them, and this they seemed disinclined to do. The Royal Navy prudently fired a salute as the
Piranga
sailed into Spithead. When Cochrane went ashore, he was cheered and applauded by the Portsmouth crowds, as soon as they realised the identity of the stout naval gentleman. In the House of Commons, his ministerial enemies and their successors heard with deep apprehension the first demands that the injustice done him should be brought to light.

I will ask, what native of this country can help wishing that such a man were again amongst us? I hope I shall be excused for saying thus much; but I cannot avoid fervently wishing that such advice may be given to the Crown by his Majesty's constitutional advisers as will induce his Majesty graciously to restore Lord Cochrane to the country which he so warmly loves, and to that noble service to the glory of which, I am convinced he willingly would sacrifice every earthly consideration.
¹⁹

The appeal of Sir James Mackintosh fell on unsympathetic ears. Lord Ellenborough was now dead, so for that matter was St Vincent, while Gambier was seventy years old and in decline. But George IV, who as Prince Regent had ordered Cochrane's "degradation" was still on the throne, and Lord Liverpool was still his Prime Minister. John Wilson Croker remained ensconced at the Admiralty until
1830,
while the Duke of Wellington sat in the cabinet as Master-General of the Ordnance. Not only was he an opponent of Cochrane's principles, he had fought hard against recognising the new South American republics.

But the popular feeling for Cochrane was shown repeatedly and sometimes effusively, as when he and Kitty went to the theatre in Edinburgh on the evening of
3
October. Sir Walter Scott, who was also present, described how a reference to South America was included in the performance, whereupon the entire audience rose and turned to the couple with spontaneous and prolonged applause. Kitty, who had endured the perils of the Andes with comparative equanimity, was overcome by the occasion and at length burst into tears. But Scott commemorated the enthusiasm of the audience in a poem which he addressed to her, and in part of which he described the ovation.

Even now, as through the air the plaudits rung,

I marked the smiles that in her features came;

She caught the word that fell from every tongue,

And her eye brightened at her Cochrane's name;

And brighter yet became her bright eyes' blaze;

It was his country, and she felt the praise.
²⁰

In Scotland, Cochrane stood as a hero in his own right, but Kitty, by virtue of her striking beauty, contributed a further dimension to the heroic quality. She was, as Scott remarked, easily recognisable, as distinctive in appearance as the tall figure of her husband.

I knew thee, lady, by that glorious eye,

By that pure brow and those dark locks of thine.
²¹

Beyond the enlightened and literate middle class, who saw in Cochrane the hero of Byronic campaigns and of revolutionary romance, his appeal to ordinary men and women was much simpler. With few exceptions, the victorious leaders of the country in the Napoleonic struggle had become the instruments of authoritarian government in the years of peace. The heroes of Waterloo were soon the villains of Peterloo. But the reformers saw clearly that they were oppressed by the same men as Cochrane and that the freedoms for which he had fought were those they coveted. Among his former colleagues, it was Sir Francis Burdett who publicly pronounced Cochrane the future "Liberator of Greece".
²²