4. The Portuguese Campaign in Minas Gerais
General
Carlos José Silva Fragoso Mendes’ autobiography reveals minute details about the campaigns that he coordinated during the Brazilian War of Independence. In his memoirs, he makes it clear that the Crown of Portugal expected serious rebellions in Brazil if the
Revitalização policies were to be implemented. To respond adequately, the Portuguese needed to quickly mobilize their own war machine to launch a preemptive war of sorts, in 1816, attacking the rebels before they could prepare the local resistance.
Two armies would be sent consecutively: the
Exército Real do Alentejo under Gen. Fragoso Mendes and, later, the
Exército Real de Viseu, to attack the northeastern provinces. According to Fragoso Mendes’ report, the Portuguese fleet was in such a poor state that it could not transport the whole army at the same time. The army was comprised by a handful of Portuguese veteran companies, a large fraction of it had the presence of French mercenaries who saw themselves unemployed after Napoléon’s defeat, and a significant number of men levied from the African colonies.
The Portuguese disadvantages were enumerated as: (A) numerical inferiority; (B) the vast size and little knowledge of the country, increasing the risk of stretching supply lines; (C) unreliable naval support, as the Portuguese warfleet had been reduced to but a few transport ships during the Napoleonic Wars; (D) the arriving soldiers, despite their triumphs in the Peninsular War, were tired of conflict, and became demoralized by the turbulent crossing of the Atlantic Ocean; (E) the initial lack of a sizeable cavalry force, which was supposed to be draw from the loyalist Luso-Brazilian forces.
The advantages, on the other hand, were listed as: (I) the rebels were too disunited, and still amalgamated around mutually exclusive regional identities, so they might fail in mounting a strategic grand-scale resistance; (II) the Portuguese forces were veterans of the Peninsular War, and had been trained by British supervisors during the campaigns, and had much better equipment and training; (III) it was a light moving force, knowledgeable about guerrilla tactics, and he believed they could be quickly maneuvered to strike the resistance before it could organize itself.
General Fragoso Mendes’ strategy consisted of quick and decisive campaigns against urban settlements, to break the main resistance foci in the southeastern provinces, and, if necessary, march all the way to the southern border of the colony, to repel eventual Spanish interference. Indeed, he had anticipated that the Kingdom of Spain might attempt to thwart Portuguese designs in South America in this moment of strategical weakness.
At last, he expected the second royalist army from the Atlantic Sea to arrive in the next year, to wage a separate war in the Northeast region of Portuguese America. After the principal resistance groups were defeated in battle, the royalist faction inside Brazil would gain strength and assist in the restoration of the colonial rule.
Mobilizing all the military forces at his disposal in Rio de Janeiro, bolstering the Exército Real do Alentejo to almost 8.000 troops – a staggering cipher in the record of Brazilian military conflicts – he wasted no time in marching north, through the
Estrada do Ouro [“Road of Gold”] that crossed the Serra do Mar and led to the central region of the province of Minas Gerais, where the gold and diamond minefields were concentrated. He sought to fulfill a double purpose: (1) to ensure the control of the production of precious minerals and of the mints; and (2) to reestablish administrative control over one of the most populous and militarized provinces of the colony.
His grand army arrived in March 1816 in the parish of Piedade da Borda do Campo [“Barbacena”], and routed a local militia, which had been put in alarm after he set ablaze the village of Santo Antônio de Paraibuna [“Juiz de Fora”]. The citizens of Piedade da Borda do Campo closed the doors of the small town, but resisted barely two days before their palisades were breached. Demonstrating his little patience for resistance, Gen. Fragoso Mendes coordinated another massacre, and the local slaves were confiscated, leaving the ruined village in flames. Not even the priests escaped violence, and were imprisoned and sent back to Rio de Janeiro to be trialed as traitors. This episode cemented the Mineira opposition against him, including a large part of the clergy, offended by the arbitrary incarceration of church members at specious allegations of treason, and the province bishop wrote a formal protest to the Crown in Lisboa.
After his vanguard was ambushed by a small light cavalry band in the woodlands near
Carandaí, Fragoso Mendes became enraged and decided to exact revenge upon the hapless inhabitants of that city. This time the siege lasted a bit longer, as the besieging forces were continuously harassed by minor raiding parties. It barely delayed the inevitable, however, and Carandaí was razed to the ground after its population was slaughtered and deported. Their severed heads and members were displayed along the
Estrada do Ouro, in a ghastly display of imperial might. To this day, the inhabitants claim that the specters of the slain men and women wander and moan along the roads in moonless nights.
In May 1816, his large army was attracted to a battlefield chosen by the
Captain Antônio Francisco Teixeira Coelho – son of the former Governor Francisco Antônio de Oliveira Lopes – who had been appointed commander of the military forces by Joaquim Silvério dos Reis Montenegro Leiria Grutes, elected Governor by the population of Vila Rica. The rebels comprised a hastily assembled army of almost 6.000 militiamen and conscripted slaves and Indians, protected by a wooden palisade at the top of a hill not far from the village of Queluz [“Conselheiro Lafaiete”]. In the
Battle of Queluz, Marshal Fragoso Mendes won a decisive victory, and Captain Teixeira Coelho was forced to retreat with grave losses. His disastrous defeat forced the local citizens to capitulate and open the gates to the Royalist forces.
Exército Real do Alentejo marching in Minas Gerais
Wasting no time, in the first week of June 1816, the Exército Real do Alentejo encircled the provincial capital of Vila Rica. Most of the non-able to fight civilians had been evacuated by Governor Joaquim Leiria Grutes to the neighboring city of Mariana, but a few hundreds of citizens picked weapons to join the urban garrison, led by
Alferes Joaquim Pinto Romão. Their heroic effort ensured the salvation of the brave citizens of Vila Rica, who succeeded in escaping to Mariana. This city was also evacuated, and the civilians followed the course of the River Doce, all the way to central Minas Gerais, from whence they dispersed to the countryside and small parochial communities. The gubernatorial seat was captured after two days of bloody battle, in January, and the deserted settlement of Mariana was occupied by the Portuguese.
Governor Joaquim Leiria Grutes and Captain Teixeira Coelho managed to reorganize their meager forces to attempt another defensive act in the mountainous region around the city of Sabará, in the outlying district of Congonhas de Sabará [“Nova Lima”]. There his unprepared militia of peasants and freedmen was again defeated in July 1816, shattering after a tactical bombardment by the enemy artillery, but he managed to regroup the army to garrison the city of Sabará.
These two disastrous losses, followed by the rapid conquests of the adversary, tarnished the Governor’s prestige among the local community leaders and the rural landholders, who grudgingly accepted the terms imposed by the Portuguese General. Governor Joaquim Leiria Grutes decided to capitulate to avoid further bloodshed, and was hanged like a common criminal in the end of July.
Captain Teixeira Coelho, an ardent republican and enemy of absolutism like his deceased father, inspired by the example of the Mineira Revolt, decided to fight to the bitter end. Refusing to put down arms, he dedicated himself to guerrilla warfare with a band of roughly 300 freedom fighters. Like thirty years previously, the resistance was focused in the stronghold of
Tijuco [“Diamantina”], near the diamond fields, and the difficult terrain meant the Portuguese would experience disproportionate losses in their attempts to oust the defenders.
Gen. Fragoso Mendes spend the months of March and April in Vila Rica, receiving the homage of various municipal leaders, and donatives of rich plantation and cattle owners, as tokens of loyalty to the Portuguese Crown. He then reestablished the direct line of communication with the colonial capital, and marched back there in September 1816, when he received the news of a raid led by Paulistas in the royalist city of
Paraty (in the southwestern part of the Viceroyal Captaincy of Rio de Janeiro).
A detachment of 800 Portuguese troops was left in the province to ensure its obedience and to hunt Cpt. Teixeira Coelho and his rebels, whose charismatic persona attracted bands of deserters, escaped slaves and even mercenary Indians from the frontier.
Portrait of Antônio Francisco Teixeira Coelho (c. 1820)
By early October, the
Exército Real do Alentejo had returned to Rio de Janeiro and received the news that the second Portuguese army – the
Exército Real de Viseu – had recently arrived in the Captaincy of Rio Grande do Norte. A force of roughly 4.000 Portuguese and foreign troops employed as mercenaries was led by Marshal Dom Marcos Nunes Vaz Pereira. This meant that the total of Portuguese forces transported to Brazil amounted to almost 9.000 troops, about half of the entire standing military of the Kingdom of Portugal in the years after Napoléon’s defeat.
Without wasting any more time, in the same month of October, Gen. Fragoso Mendes, at the head of about 4.400 Portuguese and Luso-Brazilian men, with proportional number of cavalry and artillery, marched against the Paulistas in Paraty. His military leadership was not exactly popular: he favored the Portuguese-born – called
Reinóis – to hold the top-most positions in the command of the armed forces, and to lead the garrisons of the occupied places. As the months passed, his distrust of the colonial-born soldiers became apparent, and as his victories amounted, he made even little effort to disguise it. To him, even the better-trained Luso-Brazilian soldiers did not seem better than mere cannon fodder, and resentment started growing among them.
5. The Portuguese Campaign in São Paulo
The village of
Taubaté lay in the heart of the River Parahyba valley, and connected the fledgling capital of São Paulo to the Captaincy of Rio de Janeiro. It was a populous and prosperous town in its own right, by the colonial standards, with roughly 10.000 inhabitants, owing to its privileged geographic position in southeastern Brazil. Gen. Fragoso Mendes decided that the town should be another example to those who dared defy the authority of the King of Portugal. His army fell upon the settlement in the third day of November, in 1816, giving no opportunity of capitulation or resistance to its citizens. A bloody clash ensued in that cursed day, and by the next morning, at least a thousand white men, women and even children had perished, and comparably much slaves had been massacred in a display of power.
So far, the Captaincy of São Paulo as whole had been indecisive regarding the sides of the war of independence. Indeed, for most of them, the prospect of independence was less interesting than the reduction of taxes and enhanced autonomy. Only a handful of radicals had actually dared support the rebellion in Minas Gerais – so far it seemed an isolated revolt – and the raids against the border cities of the Viceroyal Captaincy of Rio de Janeiro had nothing to do with emancipation, but in fact represented a series of opportunist attacks seeking easy plunder.
After the atrocious massacre of Taubaté, however, the minoritarian emancipationist faction inside São Paulo suddenly gained force. Even if most of the population was now intimidated by the violence of the Portuguese army, the militarized caste of adventurers – whose desire to preserve their own property, and cultural hatred towards the metropolitan agents, made them natural enemies of the Crown – made a daunting effort to organize a resistance against the Exército Real do Alentejo.
The Romantic retellings of this historical period attribute the emergence of the independentionist faction in São Paulo to one man,
Inácio Joaquim Monteiro, a powerful landholder in the region of Guaratinguetá, who had been one of the key figures in the rebellion of 1808, and since then rose to become a prominent politician in that province, now serving his second term as a deputy in the Municipal Chamber of São Paulo. While it is beyond doubt that Inácio Joaquim Monteiro played a very important role in articulating the resistance against the Portuguese into an organized group, it seems that at the time he was not an emancipationist. Apparently, he simply found it convenient to further his own interests against the Portuguese Crown to join the emancipationist groups led by the then commandant of the garrison of São Paulo,
Raimundo Uchôa Chaves Filho, who had staged a mutiny and a coup d’état against the Portuguese Governor of the province in November 1816, and usurped his office. The military forces inside São Paulo, like those of Minas Gerais, had been thoroughly influenced by the revolutionary ideology, and many of its Brazilian-born sergeants and lieutenants were avid defenders of republicanism. The common enemy represented by the Exército Real do Alentejo forced those groups of partisans to amalgamate into a convenient alliance.
This explains why the republicans suddenly gained force in São Paulo: on ideological grounds, their project was the most coherent than the other factions that simply desired tax reduction and restoration of provincial privileges. As time passed, the whole resistance in the province of São Paulo became convinced that emancipation was the only way to safeguard their own way of lives and their property.
In December 1816, the Exército Real do Alentejo found the capital of São Paulo half-empty, as most of its population had been evacuated and dispersed through the countryside by the orders of Cpt. Raimundo Uchôa Chaves Filho – whose charisma and strength made him the natural leader of the local resistance. The provincial seat at the time had barely 6.000 inhabitants, freemen and captive alike; the total number of free farmers and slaves inhabiting the outlying perimeter rose this number to perhaps 20.000 citizens.
In the week before Christmas, Raimundo Chaves Filho and Inácio Joaquim Monteiro met in the
parish of Mogi Guaçu, joined by the efforts of Friar Marcos Paulo Câmara and various priests of the region, who had become opposed to the Portuguese Crown after the violent massacres against civilians. There, they formalized an agreement to cooperate against the Portuguese armed forces, whose violence and brutality against the peaceful flock of God warranted armed resistance against the oppressors.
Portrait of Inácio Joaquim Monteiro (c. 1820)
Differently from what happened in Minas Gerais, however, the resistance faction – at the time they could not have numbered above 2.000, with 1.000 being a reasonable estimate – implemented a
Fabian strategy to wear out the much larger Portuguese forces. Attacking their supply lines was easier, as the Portuguese depended entirely on the road along the Parahyba River valley leading to Rio de Janeiro, and the rest of São Paulo (especially the hinterland) was a hostile wilderness, still inhabited by inimical Indians and
quilombos of escaped slaves. For almost two months, the Brazilians avoided pitched battle, engaging in violent skirmishes against detachments of Portuguese during their marches.
By late February 1817, however, most of the settlements of the province had either surrender or been conquered by the determined Exército Real do Alentejo. Most of the rural elites and urban aristocracy grudgingly accepted the Portuguese domination, and saw no use in supporting independence – what they imagined to be a lost cause. Inácio Joaquim Monteiro saw himself isolated when many tribes of frontier Indians decided to seek peace with the Portuguese, and Cpt. Raimundo Uchôa Chaves Filho was betrayed by his own men and surrendered as a prisoner before Gen. Fragoso Mendes. After a summary trial for treason, he was executed in São Paulo in March 1817.
By now, even São Paulo had received the news from the northeastern provinces: the
Exército Real de Viseu had suppressed most of the regional resistance in Rio Grande do Norte and Ceará – again, mainly consisting of tax revolts and common banditry – and the province of Pernambuco had enthusiastically supported recolonization. Only disorganized groups of rebels resisted in the Captaincies of Bahia and Piauhy.
Independence thus seemed to be a lost cause, and the Portuguese commanders were confident that they could restore the colonial control.
The Captaincies of Grão-Pará and Rio Negro, as well as Maranhão in the Northern Region had sworn allegiance to the Crown, as did the governors of Matto Grosso and Goyaz, who, despite their dissatisfaction with the new taxes and conscriptions, saw it futile to stage a revolt.
According to the contemporary anecdotes, Inácio Joaquim Monteiro was about to give up his own last ditch efforts of resistance, intending to escape into the wilderness and from there find a road to the northern coast, like his
bandeirantes ancestors had done centuries ago, and from there he would attempt to sail to Europe. In a fateful day of March 1816, however, he was met by a child riding a horse near São Sebastião das Palmeiras [“Ribeirão Preto”], whose hair was reportedly of the color of gold, and the eyes of the color of the sky, and who he assumed to be an angel. The boy was a messenger coming from Minas Gerais, in the name of Cpt. Teixeira Coelho, who was coming to the frontier of São Paulo from the village of São Julião [“Arcos”], victorious after a clash with the Portuguese forces. We cannot know for sure about the truth of this romantic tale, but it is very likely that before this the Paulista rebels had contacted the Mineiros under Cpt. Teixeira Coelho. Only this explains why he decided to abandon his stronghold in Tijuco, in the northeastern reaches of Minas Gerais, and followed a dangerous path to the west, all the way to the border with the Captaincy of São Paulo, to meet the Paulista rebels.
São Sebastião das Palmeiras was one of the last strongholds of the resistance, located on the savage frontier still inhabited by the primitive peoples. In this place, Antônio Francisco Teixeira Coelho, leading an army of circa 800 men, mostly freed blacks, mulattoes and armed peasants who had lost everything in the war – known as “
Legião dos Descalços” [“Barefoot Legion”] met with Inácio Joaquim Monteiro in April 1816, and resumed the guerrilla warfare against Gen. Fragoso Mendes.
To their surprise, however, they discovered that the Portuguese general himself had marched to the southern province of Santa Catarina in that same month with most of his forces, trusting in a regiment of 1.000 soldiers (mixed with Portuguese and Brazilian troops), led by
Lt. Baltazar Célio Tavares to maintain order in São Paulo and quench the resistance.
The southern Captaincies of Santa Catarina and São Pedro do Rio Grande, which had so far been loyal to the Crown – being governed by Portuguese aristocrats – were suddenly seized by a large rebel faction led by Gen.
José de Abreu Mena Barreto, the hero of the
War in Banda Oriental.
After quickly securing his hold over the two southern provinces, he proclaimed independence from the Kingdom of Portugal, and was acclaimed the first President of the Republic of the Gaúchos, in 14 March 1817.
