Yet, though absolute ruin was averted, the weakness of the crown rendered it impossible to defend its foreign possessions from the attacks of a daring enemy. In 1710, a French squadron, under Duclerc, appeared off Rio de Janeiro, but not daring to pass the forts, sailed on, and after making several attempts to land a force at the different inlets, where he was deterred by the appearance of the militia of the country, succeeded at Guaratiba, between thirty and forty miles from the city, and thence he marched upon it with about one thousand marines. The governor, Francisco Castro de Moraes, made no attempt to stop him until his arrival at the city. There the first check the enemy met was from F. Francisco de Menezes, a Trinitarian friar, who appeared every where, and did what the governor, who remained quietly intrenched in a flat space, where the place of the Rosario now is, between two hills, ought to have done. The French having divided, one party attacked the palace, but the students of the college defended it successfully; and after a short, but desperate struggle, the French were overpowered, and the victory disgraced by the inhuman conduct of the Portuguese. Duclerc and his people were imprisoned and harshly treated. Duclerc himself is said to have been murdered in his bed.
The next year drew on Rio de Janeiro a signal punishment for these proceedings. The famous Duguay Trouin undertook to inflict it; and accordingly, in August, 1711, one year after Duclerc's adventure, he arrived off the coast, and taking advantage of a fog, entered the bay, notwithstanding the fire of the forts.
The Portuguese government had notice of his design, and had sent out stores and ammunition to meet the attack, and had appointed Gasper da Costa commander of the troops. But the sudden appearance of the French actually within the harbour, seems to have palsied the understanding of every person on shore, whose business it should have been to oppose them, and the forts and the city were given up almost without a struggle.
It would, however, have been impossible for the French to maintain themselves in Rio; therefore Duguay Trouin, after refreshing his people, ransomed the city for 600,000 cruzadoes. Bad weather alone prevented him from laying waste the reconcave of Bahia, as he had done Rio: but he had fulfilled the ostensible purpose of his voyage by avenging the treatment of Duclerc and his people, and returned to France early in 1712.
These circumstances had awakened the greatest anxiety on account of Brazil in the cabinet of Lisbon: and at the peace of Utrecht, 1713, every precaution was adopted by the Portuguese ministers to avoid any expression that might seem to admit of a free trade by any power whatever to Brazil, notwithstanding the agreements to that effect actually existing at the time. Disputes without end arose between Portugal and Spain concerning the colonies adjoining to the Rio de la Plata, and it was especially stipulated that no other power, particularly England, should be allowed to form settlements there on account of the facilities such settlements might afford for smuggling the precious metals out of the country. These had now become the first object in Brazil. St. Paul's had been erected into a city, and the district of the mines had been formed into a captaincy: the inhabitants of the coast flocked to the interior, where new towns were daily springing up; all were desirous of a share in that lottery where the prizes were so enormous, that the great preponderance of blanks was overlooked. Great inconvenience must have been felt by the early adventurers to the mines: for so many hands were employed in searching for gold, that few remained to cultivate the soil, and provide the necessaries of life. Yet that insatiable thirst of gold is a stimulus which has led to useful and to honourable things: it is not the love of the metal, but the possession of it gives power, and that is the real object of most men's ambition: it is certainly that of the ambition of all nations, and this object is held legitimate: we account those base or wicked who seek the means; we admire those who attain the end. The philosophic historian and the poet are alike ready to condemn the man who first dug the ore from the mine: the panegyric in prose and in verse is lavished on the hero and the patron. But gold furnished the means for the hero's conquests and the patron's liberality, and gold, or the worth of gold, is the object of both; whether in the form of continued power, or of that fame which patronage can bring. Sad indeed has been the waste of human life in searching for gold: but have all the mines together consumed more men than the single revolutionary war? And have not the religious contests among Christians, and their persecutions and mutilations and burnings cost many more? I would not justify the gold finders; their actions were horrible, their oppressions atrocious; but let them have justice: the stimulus was great; urged on by it, they performed great things, they braved cold, and hunger, and fatigue, and persecution, and death; they persevered, they opened the way to unknown lands, they laid the foundations for future civilisation in countries which will have reason to bless their discoveries, when the effect of their evil deeds, as well as the memory of the brutal customs of the savages they so unjustly oppressed, shall have passed away.
But I have neither space nor inclination to follow their adventures, and must refer to Mr. Southey's elaborate and excellent account of them. Daniel Defoe alone could have so handled the subject as to make delightful so dull and so sad a tale. I am but a looker on to whom the actions of the present are more interesting than the past, but yet am not insensible to the influence that the elder days have had upon us.
Pernambuco had during the half century which had elapsed since the expulsion of the Dutch had time to recruit. The sugar plantations had reappeared, and the commerce of Recife had become extremely important. The merchants, and especially those from Europe, had settled there, and the town had increased till it became the second of Brazil; while Olinda gradually declined, having few inhabitants besides priests and the representatives of the old families of the province, who might be called its nobility: still Recife was but a village until, in 1710, it solicited and obtained the royal assent to its becoming a town, and having a camera or municipal council to govern its internal affairs. The jealousy of the people of Olinda and the other old Brazilians was violently excited by this concession, which they conceived would raise the plebeian traders and foreigners to an equality with themselves. After several tumultuous meetings on the subject, three of the ten parishes belonging to Olinda were assigned to Recife, and the governor, fearing to set up the pillar which marks a township openly, had it erected in the night. Fresh disturbances ensued, in which some of the magistrates were concerned, and there were not wanting voices to exclaim that the Pernambucans had shown they could shake off the strong chains of the Dutch, and that they could as easily shake off others and govern themselves. The seditious magistrates were arrested and thrown into prison. The soldiers were employed to disarm the people; but they had now advanced too far to be easily reduced. The governor was fired at and dangerously wounded, and proofs were not wanting that the judge and the bishop had at least consented to the attempt on his life. The most serious disturbances followed: the inhabitants of the whole district took up arms, some blood was shed in the course of their contentions with the soldiers, and Sebastian de Castro, the governor, weakened both in body and mind, was induced to fly to Bahia for safety. Six of the chief Pernambucans were now appointed to exercise the functions of a provisional government till orders should be received from Lisbon, and all Europeans were deprived of their offices and commissions.
But the bishop, who had been at Paraiba since the time when De Castro was wounded, now returned to claim his office as governor on the removal of the former one. He began to exercise his authority in the king's name, and his first act was to declare a general pardon. But he, however appears to have been a timid man: willing yet not daring to join the party who wished to shake off the yoke of Portugal, and by his vacillating conduct betraying both his friends in that party, and the trust reposed in him by the crown. At length, in 1711, these disturbances were quieted by a new governor, Felix Jose Machado de Mendonça. Brazil was not yet ripe for independence; nor indeed could so small and ill-peopled a state as Pernambuco have maintained its freedom even for a year unconnected with the other captaincies. While these things were going on in the captaincies of Brazil, the Jesuits were labouring in the interior to reclaim the Indians, with success far beyond the apparent means, and some towns, which have since become of importance, were built on the coast and on the shores of the Plata, particularly Monte Video, in 1733; but the border war, between the Spaniards and Portuguese, which was waged on account of these settlements, disquieted the neighbourhood for a time. Its importance, however, was soon forgotten in the disturbances caused by the treaty of division between Spain and Portugal, which forcing the Indians who had been reclaimed to emigrate, roused them to a vigorous but short and useless resistance, which only began the evils that the Jesuit missions were destined to perish under.
The Portuguese government, under the administration of Carvalho, afterwards Marquis of Pombal, had begun to attend to, and attempt to reform the abuses which existed throughout Brazil, but particularly in the newly founded captaincies and settlements, when the war with France and Spain broke out in 1762. For a time defence against a foreign enemy superseded every other consideration. The first act of hostility in the western world was the seizing of the Portuguese settlement of Columbia, in the Plata, by the governor of Buenos Ayres, before the squadron despatched by the governor of Brazil, Gomez Freyre, could arrive to protect it. That squadron consisted of the Lord Clive, of 64 guns, an English ship commanded by Capt. Macnamara; the Ambuscade, of 40 guns, in which Penrose, the poet, served as lieutenant; and the Gloria, of 38 guns. The Spanish ships retired before Macnamara, and he ran under the guns of the forts of Colonia, in order to retake the place. He had nearly succeeded in silencing the batteries, when, by accident or negligence, the ship took fire; the enemy renewed their fire; three-fourths of the crew of the Lord Clive, among which was the captain, were drowned. The other ships were nearly destroyed and obliged to retreat; but owing to the neglect of the Spaniards, they were able to refit and return to Rio. And this was the most remarkable action of the war beyond the Atlantic, and the first in which the English distinguished themselves in the defence of Brazil.
Pombal, meantime, having resolved on the suppression of the order of Jesuits, overlooked, in the ardour with which he pursued that measure, the important services they had rendered, and were daily rendering, to one of his favourite objects, namely, the improvement of the condition of the Indians. Their plan of discipline, indeed, hitherto had kept their pupils rather in a state of childish innocence than of manly improvement. Their fault was, that in order to secure obedience, they had stopped short of what they might have effected. Their dominion was an Utopia; and had it been possible to shut out every European and every wild Indian, it might have lasted. But such artificial polities can never be of long duration. Some convulsions either from without or from within must end them, and that with a more complete ruin than could befal states less curiously framed. But the well-intentioned labours of the missionaries had produced one decided good effect,—the habits of savage life were abandoned, and the advantages of agriculture and manufactures had been felt. The rock on which the education of the Indians split, was the community of goods. When a man has no property, but depends for the supply of his daily wants upon the providence of others, he has no incitement to particular exertion. The stimulus to industry cannot exist where a man has no hope of growing richer, no fear of becoming poorer, no anxiety about the provision of his family. His judgment in the portioning and disposing of his property is never called forth; all the qualities and virtues that arise out of the practice of domestic economy lie dormant, and the man remains an infant. It would have been easy to remedy this, by allowing the Indians to possess private stock, and to provide for their own families after the first generation. The newly reclaimed did require to be provided for, but the children growing up in the Aldeas might have been intrusted with their own property. They would have become men; and when the removal of their spiritual fathers took place, that wide and deep desolation would not have overwhelmed them, nor would Paraguay have gone back as it has done towards a savage state.