On this date in 1821, Brazil’s saint of freedom was martyred by the Portuguese.
Francisco José das Chagas, fondly remembered as Corporal Chaguinha, led a mutiny in Santos of enlistees aggrieved by wages five years overdue, and the unequal treatment of Brazilian as compared to Portuguese soldiers.
It was a fraught and contradictory political moment; the Portuguese royal family had spent the past decade-plus in the quasi-exile of their New World colony after fleeing Napoleon. In the process they had (even formally) elevated Brazil from a mere dependency to a coequal in the empire, and attempts to reverse this promotion once the royals returned to Portugal in early 1821 found little welcome in Brazil.
Chaguinha was born to symbolize in his death his countrymen’s frustration.
To great popular indignation a customary pardon was not extended to the man, who was instead publicly hanged in a notorious botch. After the rope broke repeatedly — and again a public clamor for clemency was refused — they strangled him slowly with a leather strap. A Catholic priest named Diogo Antônio Feijó, who in time would rise to become the regent of independent Brazil, would describe seeing “with my own eyes” seeing the still-surviving Chaguinha being murdered lying under the gallows after his last noose failed to support him.
Brazil declared independence from Portugal one year later almost to the date (September 7, 1822), and won the war to clinch it. The martyred corporal was thereafter improved by veneration as a popular saint credited with miraculous intercessions for suitably patriotic Brazilians.
On this day..
- 1547: Jan Olivetsky, Moravian publisher
- 1878: John Speer
- 1917: Herbet Morris, British West Indies Regiment deserter
- 1937: Lev Karakhan, Marina Semyonova's husband
- 1889: Thomas Brown, Fargo-Moorhead outlaw
- 1246: Mikhail of Chernigov, Miracle-Worker
- 1631: Anna Katharina Spee
- 1763: Gabriela Silang
- 2006: Clarence Hill, former last-minute reprieve beneficiary
- 1586: Anthony Babington and fellow plotters, Walsingham'd
- 1918: The 26 Baku Commissars
- Themed Set: Counterrevolution
- 1803: Robert Emmet, "let no man write my epitaph"
Bit odd article as one has to know the Portuguese Crown Prince stayed in Brazil and declared Brazil Independent with him as first Emperor.. His father, the Portuguese King John VI, had given his secret approval but the Portuguese ministers were of a different opinion. For this article implies Brazil became independent without the royals..There was no Brazilian war of Independence. The British fleet intercepted the Portuguese Fleet and ordered it home.