But by 1820 the liberal forces in Portugal made it necessary for Dom João to return, if he wanted to save his throne. Again he shilly-shallied, apparently partly because he could not face that ocean voyage a second time. But again under British auspices and promptings, he finally announced one constitution for Portugal, another one for Brazil, and sailed away. Before he left he wrote a letter to Dom Pedro, weeping as he wrote, in which he prophesied the secession of Brazil from Portugal and advised his son to take the crown for himself. He also cleaned out the treasury and took with him all the jewels he could collect, — and about three thousand Portuguese. This departure established a sort of precedent, unfortunately, for later abdications or “renunciations” (under the Republic), which are always discussed in terms of João I’s sad career. Not all of them have filled their pockets as liberally as he did, and they have left for very different reasons, but the peculiarly Brazilian institution of leaving-the-country-in-order-to-govern-it-better had been established.
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Dom Pedro had been badly brought up; he had led the luxurious but slovenly life of the small upper-class of Brazilians of his day; he had been friends with slaves and stable boys, and a notorious womanizer from the age of thirteen or so. He is, nevertheless, a fascinating character: brilliant, in spite of his faulty education, energetic, spoiled, dissipated, neurotic — and suffering from occasional epileptic fits. [Maria Graham, the Scottish woman who stayed in Rio in the 1820s and was even tutor to Dom Pedro’s children for a brief period, has left a good account of his personality and the life of the court and city.] He was fundamentally kind-hearted (he was devoted to all his children and provided for them well, legitimate and illegitmate alike) and he wanted to be a good ruler, but the “court” still meant the hated Portuguese to many of the Brazilians. Dom Pedro still favored them, and things started to go badly for him almost immediately. Brazil wanted a king, but not too much of a king; and Dom Pedro was autocratic.
Orders started coming from Portugal; some of the hated taxes and restrictions were restored. While he was away in São Paulo an order came for him to return to Portugal immediately, to finish his education. It was handed to him as he sat on his horse on the banks of a little stream, the Ipiranga. Dom Pedro read it, waved his sabre in the air, and shouted “Independence or death!” This is the famous grito, or cry, of Ipiranga, and the day on which Dom Pedro gave it, September 7th, is the Brazilian 4th of July. The first lines of the Brazilian national anthem — even more complicated and difficult than “The Star-Spangled Banner”—describe this scene. The simple word grito is a by-word and has as many overtones for a Brazilian as, say, “cherry-tree” has for an American.
Dom Pedro was proclaimed Emperor of an independent Brazil, but his reign lasted only nine years. He considered himself a liberal, and a very advanced one, and the constitution that he granted in 1824 lasted until the end of the Empire in Brazil. But there were constant revolts, foreign soldiers made trouble, regional differences and needs were not attended to, and his private life became too scandalous for even the tolerant Brazilians. His notorious mistress, Domitila, whom he created the Marqueza de Santos, meddled in state affairs, and he was blamed for the death of his first wife, Leopoldina, whom the people loved. After the death of his father he became heir to the throne of Portugal, but his younger brother was already there and trying to take power. Rebellion broke out all over Brazil; his personal army deserted him, and then he, too, left the country, to begin, in Europe, the “War of the Brothers.” Daumier left cartoons of them, two mean figures having a tug-of-war over a crown. This was the way things looked to Europeans, but Dom Pedro I had really been a much higher-minded ruler than that, greatly superior to his father, and honestly well-intentioned. Brazil has always proved hard to rule. And the ruler he now left behind was only five years old.
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Except that he was equally energetic, Dom Pedro II was almost exactly the opposite of his mercurial, dissipated father. He had been carefully, even over-carefully, educated by a beloved governess and series of tutors and priests. He was serious, hard-working, cultivated, an amazing linguist; he wrote quite presentable poetry on all the important occasions of his life; and for forty-nine years he did his very best to govern his country. The nine years of his Regency were filled with bitter quarrels, and finally the two parties, Liberals and Conservatives, agreed that only the figure of the young Emperor could unify the troubled country. This was explained to Dom Pedro, aged fourteen, who replied in another famous historical phrase: Quero agora. “I want it now.” He was crowned when he was fifteen, wearing the ugly, diamond-studded crown now in the Petrópolis Museum, and over his green velvet robes a yellow cape made from the breasts of toucans, a symbol of the Indian heritage of his country.
Dom Pedro was not a genius; but he was a very different type to appear in the Braganza line, and in most things, much in advance of his countrymen. He was an imposing Emperor: six feet four inches tall, plus his habitual top-hat; with blue eyes inherited from his German mother and a large bushy beard that early turned snow-white. He himself felt that he was better fitted for an intellectual life than a political one, but he did his duty. He ruled under the constitution his father had granted the country in 1824: the government was monarchial, constitutional, and representative; the laws were made by two houses, Senate and House of Deputies; Catholicism was the state religion but religious freedom was guaranteed, as well as freedom of speech and of the press.
He selected his own council of state and his cabinet; his chief strength was his “moderating power,” under which he could dismiss almost anyone he wanted to, prorogue Parliament, and dissolve the Deputies if he thought the state of the country warranted it. These privileges, or some of them, had been added by the Ato Adicional of 1834, for the constitution had started out being over-optimistic about the political maturity of the country. According to his more liberal-minded ministers, he was apt to over-use his “moderating” power and change the government too often. According to Dom Pedro himself, he was the most republican man in Brazil and would have preferred to be president rather than Emperor (second to being an intellectual, of course). As he grew older he grew more patient, but also more liberal. He never took political revenge; he did appoint men for their good qualities, no matter what their loyalties were, and Brazil has never had men of such high calibre in public office since. However, he seriously underestimated — and given his background, how could he help it? — the growing commercial and business interests of his country (and of the 19th-century world), and he always favored the old land-owning aristocracy. Towards the end of his reign many liberals, who admired him personally, for political reasons came out against him as a “tyrant” and a representative of a decayed monarchy.
When he had ruled for more than thirty years he at last permitted himself to go abroad, to Europe, then to the United States, and then longer trips to Europe, Egypt, and the Holy Land. He always travelled incognito, as “Dom Pedro de Alcantara,” and his democratic ways, gift for languages, good-humor, and boundless energy made him “the most popular crowned head in Europe.” He sought out literary leaders wherever he went, and talked to them in their own languages. Victor Hugo called him “a grandson of Marcus Aurelius.” He was fascinated by comparative religions (and thus shocked his more devout subjects) and always made a point of visiting synagogues and reading aloud in Hebrew.