On
September 7, 1822, he received a bundle of despatches from Portugal, and
his staff watched while he read letter after letter. There was one
which he read two or three times, and then destroyed. What its contents
were was never known, but after pondering and a few minutes of thought,
Pedro raised his hand and spoke his decision--"Independence or death!"

There was no doubt that he had carried out the wishes of his father, and
probably the letter which he destroyed contained Joao's written
directions. Some idea of this seems to have been general among the
Brazilians, for both they and the Portuguese soldiers in Brazil always
spoke of Joao with affection, and regarded him rather as a prisoner of
the Cortes of Lisbon than as King of Portugal.

The Brazilians determined that the last doubt concerning the situation
should be dissipated, and on October 12, 1822, Dom Pedro, who was at
Piranga, was made constitutional Emperor of Brazil, and all relation and
connection with Portugal was severed.

Dom Pedro had all this time kept up a correspondence with his father,
King Joao, and in one of these letters he wrote:

"They wish, and they say they wish, to proclaim me Emperor. I
protest to your Majesty that I will not be perjured ... that I will
never be false to you; and if they commit that folly, it will not
be till _after they have cut me to pieces_--me and all the
Portuguese--a solemn oath, which I here have written with my blood
in the following words:

"'I swear to be always faithful to your Majesty, to the Portuguese
nation, and Constitution.'"

These latter words were apparently actually written in his blood, and
the epistle is certainly a proof of the complicated state of affairs and
of the strange influences which were at work.

Open warfare now broke out between Brazil and Portugal. At Bahia the
Portuguese, although their garrison was hemmed in, were masters of the
sea. The Brazilians determined to make a bold bid for the control of the
waves, and to this end sent an invitation to Lord Cochrane, who had just
freed the Pacific Ocean from the Spanish fleet, and was at the time in
Chile.

An invitation of that kind was never refused by Cochrane. In March,
1823, he arrived and took command of the new Brazilian fleet, which was
considerably inferior to that of Portugal. He sailed immediately for
Bahia, but found his crews in no very anxious mood to fight their
compatriots. A