CHAPTER XI
GOLD DISCOVERIES—REVOLTS—FRENCH ATTACKS
The early attempts to find gold and silver had not been successful. A little gold was found in São Paulo in the sixteenth century, but no great discoveries were made until nearly the end of the seventeenth. The Paulistas, who scoured the interior in their slave-hunts, occasionally came across indications of gold, and rumours constantly reached the coast. But for a long time the Paulistas failed, either through ignorance or design, to give sufficiently exact information. After 1670 the rumours became so circumstantial that no doubt was felt that the mountain ranges around the headwaters of the São Francisco River were gold-bearing. Stimulated by government promises of liberal treatment, the Paulistas undertook the hunt in earnest. About 1690 they found the rich gold washings of Sabará, where to-day is one of the great mines of the world—the Morro Velho. This is three hundred miles directly north of Rio. In 1693, Antonio Arzão, a Paulista, penetrated west from this region to the seacoast at Victoria, bringing with him native gold in large nuggets. These were sent to Portugal and created intense excitement. The Paulistas followed up these first discoveries by soon finding half a dozen other fields—all of them yielding gold in abundance to the crudest processes. A rush started that threatened to depopulate the seacoast and even Portugal itself. The find was the greatest gold discovery which had been made in the history of the world up to that time. The one province of Minas Geraes produced seven million five hundred thousand ounces within the first fifty years, and its total product to the present time has been twenty-five million ounces.
The Paulista discoverers of the mines soon became involved in quarrels with the swarms of adventurers who poured in from Portugal. The government at first did not establish any regular control over the mining region, and disputes arose between the old and new comers as to proprietorship of claims. Anarchy and civil war ensued, but the foreign element, nicknamed the "emboabas," came out on top with a strong man, Nunes Vianna, at the head of affairs. He became the virtual ruler of the region, and the Portuguese authorities at Rio, seeing their perquisites endangered, tried to get rid of him by force. They were unsuccessful, but finally managed to seduce his followers and secure a recognition of their own paramount authority by solemn promises to concede the reasonable demands of the miners. These promises were not kept. Vianna, though he had been induced to surrender on assurances that his life would be spared, was assassinated.
The mining laws, at first liberal, were narrowed until exploration was discouraged and production oppressed. For years the authorities tried to collect a fixed amount for each slave employed—a provision which discouraged searches for new deposits. Then the system of requiring all gold to be taken to government melting-houses was enforced. Export in dust or nuggets was forbidden, and no gold was allowed in circulation except that which bore the government stamp showing it had paid the king's fifth. This involved the searching of every traveller's pockets and the posting of detachments of soldiers at every crossroads. So oppressive and inconvenient was this that finally the chief miners and municipal authorities agreed to be responsible for a lump sum yearly.
The war of the emboabas ended in 1709, but troubles broke out in the mining regions from time to time down to the end of the colonial period. These struggles for local self-government—for the right to exist—were not confined to Minas. In various forms and at various times they were repeated in most of the provinces, and a strong belief in local autonomy never died out, though for long periods it was apparently crushed out of existence.
Simultaneously with the overthrow of the semi-independent government of Minas, which had been set up by the emboabas, a civil war broke out in the old province of Pernambuco. This was a struggle of the oligarchy of native Brazilian sugar-planters against the rigorous and corrupt rule of the royal governors and against the encroachments of the newly arrived Portuguese. Then, as now, foreigners conducted the trade of Brazil; the Brazilian aristocrats remained on their plantations, disdaining the small economies and anxieties of commerce. The Portuguese were the peddlers, shopkeepers, and money-lenders for the community, as well as the officials of the government. In both capacities they pressed hard on the extravagant Brazilians. Olinda, the old capital, was the headquarters of the latter. Recife, three miles south, was the port and chiefly inhabited by native Portuguese. It had outrun Olinda during the Dutch occupation, but was legally only an administrative dependency of the older and smaller town. In 1709 the Portuguese government made Recife a separate city—a step which was bitterly resented by the Brazilians and especially by the close corporation of native families who controlled the Olinda municipal government. Hostilities broke out between them and the governor. Two thousand Pernambucanos invaded Recife; the troops deserted and the governor fled for his life, while the royal charter to Recife was torn to bits by the mob. The heads of the insurrection met to determine what form of government should be adopted. Bernardo Vieira, the best soldier in the colony, proposed that a republic should be founded on the plan of Venice, probably the first time a republic was ever advocated on American soil. The proposition met with much favour, but the conservatives shrank from so radical a departure. The bishop was made acting-governor, but his hand proved not firm enough to control the divergent interests and ambitions. The Portuguese—"mascates" they were called—revolted in their turn and drove him from Recife. The Pernambucanos besieged the place, but the loss of the seaport was a heavy blow. The Olinda oligarchy was not able to secure the co-operation of the smaller municipalities, and civil war spread throughout the province. When a new governor appeared with a commission from the king, he had little difficulty, by promises of fair treatment, in inducing all parties to lay down their arms. No sooner, however, was he safely in power than he imprisoned and banished the chiefs of the revolt, especially selecting those who had favoured an independent republic.
All three great revolts—Beckman's in Maranhão, that of the emboabas in Minas, and the Olinda rebellion of 1710—followed substantially the same course. Local feeling was strong enough to sweep all before it for a time, but lack of capacity for organisation, intestine quarrels, want of persistency, soon enabled the Portuguese officials to re-establish themselves more firmly than ever.
Meanwhile Portugal had become involved in the War of the Spanish Succession. Colonia was again captured by the Spanish of Buenos Aires, and though it was restored at the end of the war its trade was never so prosperous afterwards. In the Upper Amazon Spanish Jesuits had come down from Quito, but the Portuguese expelled them, thereby confirming Portugal's title as far as the foothills of the Andes. The Spaniards of the eighteenth century no more than the Peruvians and Bolivians of the nineteenth were able to cope with the difficulties of transit from the Pacific side of the mountains. Portugal's effective possession reached to the 70th meridian from Greenwich—sixteen hundred miles west of the Tordesillas line.
Rio was the only important Brazilian port which had escaped attack by hostile fleets during the preceding century, and the discovery of the gold mines gave a tremendous impetus to its prosperity and wealth. The only gateway to the mining territory, its population of over twelve thousand was soon one of the richest and busiest in all America. The opportunity was too tempting to be neglected by the French prize-hunters. A daring Frenchman, named Duclerc, appeared before the city in 1710, but, seeing that he had not ships strong enough to force the entrance, landed with a thousand marines forty miles down the coast. They met with no resistance in their march through the woods and arrived back of the city without loss. Thence they proceeded coolly to charge into the narrow streets in the face of the artillery fire from the hilltop forts that surround the city. The audacious enterprise was very nearly successful. The Portuguese regulars offered no effective resistance, and the main body of the French penetrated to the very centre of the city. There they were checked by a little party of students who had climbed into the governor's palace and were firing out of the windows. The French finally took the palace by assault, but meanwhile the city had risen behind them, their scattered detachments were massacred in detail, and the main body in the palace had to surrender at discretion. The Portuguese sullied their victory by acts of mediæval cruelty—killing most of the prisoners.
The victims did not long remain unavenged. As soon as the news reached France, Admiral Duguay-Trouin, one of the ablest seamen his nation has produced, volunteered to lead an expedition to Rio. Wealthy merchants of St. Malo supplied the money, and in June, 1711, he sailed with seven line-of-battle ships, six frigates, and four smaller vessels, manned by five thousand picked men. Secretly as the expedition had been despatched, the Portuguese had received warning. The garrison had been re-enforced and the narrow-mouthed harbour and hill-commanded city were defended by three forts and eleven batteries, besides four ships of the line and four frigates. Favoured by a foggy morning he ran boldly in, suffering little loss. Of the Portuguese men-of-war not one escaped. Fort Villegagnon was blown up by the mismanagement of its garrison, the Portuguese became demoralised, Trouin put a battery on an unoccupied island within cannon-shot of the city, and disembarked troops to the left of the town where a range of hills made it easy to dominate the low ground. The poor governor knew no better tactics than to let the French enter the streets and then overpower them in fighting from the houses. But Trouin was too old a soldier to be caught like his fellow-countrymen the year before. He coolly advanced his batteries and soon had the town commanded on three sides; it was only a question of getting his cannon into position when he could batter the place at his leisure. Panic extended from the citizens to the soldiers, and a week after the French had entered the harbour the governor fled ignominiously to the interior, and the French took possession unopposed.
Revenge and plunder had been the objects of the expedition. It would have been very difficult for the French to have remained in permanent possession of the city, and a conquest of the interior, with its large population and mountainous character, was not to be thought of. The city was admitted to ransom on giving up the surviving prisoners of the Duclerc expedition. Duguay-Trouin sailed triumphantly back to France with a treasure which netted the Norman merchants who had fitted him out ninety-two per cent. on their investment, in spite of the wrecking of the biggest ship on the homeward voyage.
