Betrayed and denounced to the Portuguese governor, they were
arrested, tried, and convicted. Claudio Manoel was strangled in
prison for fear that the eloquence of his defence would light the
flames of independence in the hearts of the oppressed people; Gon-
zaga was banished to Africa and ended his days in exile; Maria I.
of Portugal commuted the death penalty in the case of Alva-
renga Peixoto and sixteen of his companions, whose banishment
for life was considered as an act of royal mercy; but the rigors of
the law were visited on Tiradentes, who was hanged in Rio de
Janeiro. His body was quartered and his members distributed
among various cities of the interior, his house was razed to the
ground and its site sown with salt, while his descendants were de-
clared infamous forever.
The impression left upon the people by the martyrdom of these
patriots had not yet been effaced when the royal family of Bra-
ganza, flying from Lisbon, arrived at Rio de Janeiro. The head
of the family was the prince regent Dom Joam, afterward Joam
VI. of Portugal, a cowardly prince, whose chief claim to dis-
tinction was the number of roast chickens he ate daily, while
leaving the direction of political affairs to his wife, the princess
Carlotta, a Spaniard by birth, who at once involved Brazil in
political intrigues on the Rio de la Plata.
Between his stupid father and ambitious mother grew up the prince Dom Pedro, badly educated, licentious, and ambitious for power. This royal trio came to plant in America the principles of absolute monarchy which the storm of the French Revolution had swept from Europe. For the growth of such a plant the climate of America could not be propitious, and but few years had passed when the first note of resistance was sounded in the north of Brazil.
Republican revolutions broke out in Pernambuco in 1817 and
in 1821, in Bahia in the latter year, and in the states of the north
in 1824. The last-named revolt took the name of the “Confed-
eration of the Equator.”
Although these attempts at republican independence ended in
disaster, they were evidence of the spirit of freedom that existed
in Brazil; and the names of those who took part in them, of Do-
mingos Martins, the priests Roma and Caneca of Ratcliff, and
Carvalho, all victims of the monarchy, have never been forgotten
by the people.
