remained of the empire, leaving nothing in its passage but the aged emperor and empress, who, surrounded by the imperial brood, were on the road to exile on board the “Alagoas,” whence the messenger dove sent forth found no longer a monarchical land ou which to rest her foot.
The provisional government set up by the revolution and
accepted at once by the entire nation had at its head General
Deodoro da Fonseca, and was composed almost entirely of historical
republicans. The only exception was Ruy Barbosa, a former
monarchist, a man whose learning is only equalled by his artful-
ness, and who, on the eve of the revolution, found, at the eleventh
hour, the road to Damascus.
The first care of the new government was to give to the coun-
try, by means of dictatorial decrees, all the reforms indispensable to
the new order of things, in order that the Brazilian republic
might, like the Minerva of the ancients, spring into being armed
from head to foot. Before it lay the unforeseen; even the re-
publicans could hardly comprehend the entire inanity of the
monarchical régime and the full extent of their easy victory.
Indeed, history records no other example of such an almost phan-
tasmagoric change from one system of government to another—
without resistance, without protest, without armed strife, which
have everywhere else been the baptism of liberty. The student,
however, of Brazilian history would find this quite in accordance
with the character of the people. The revolution of 1822, by
which our independence was secured, was bloodless. That of
April 7, 1831, which drove Pedro I. from the country, was also
accomplished without bloodshed; and even in the “battle of the
bottles” (garrafadas de Março) which preceded this movement,
little damage was done beyond the breaking of a few Portuguese
heads and the spilling of more wine than blood. In 1888 we ac-
complished the abolition of slavery "under the reign of the
roses.” Every victory gained by democracy in revolutions in Bra-
zil has been likewise bloodless. Up to the present time the shed-
ding of blood has been the privilege of the monarchy : it alone
made martyrs; it alone stained its victories with blood. Not to
speak of the colonial period and the first reign, it is enough to
recall the suppression of the revolutions of Rio Grande do Sul, of
Minas and São Paulo, and of Pernambuco.
An explanation of this apparent phenomenon, which is doubt-
