There is one major popular festival in Salvador that is not connected with saints or orixás (African-Brazilian deities), does not happen in the summer, and does not observe, different from other events from the extensive festive calendar of Bahia, any greater commitments with attracting tourists, an increasingly important source of revenues for the state. Civic in nature, this festival is repeated every July 2 – the date that the Bahians know as the date of the independence of Bahia – it celebrates, in actual fact, the victory conquered by the Brazilians in the war waged for the independence of Brazil in the province of Bahia, over 17 months.
Let it be understood: war, here, is not a figure of rhetoric. It really is war, with its sad substance of unleashed violence, pains, a legion of wounded, deaths, destruction of buildings, collapse of urban services etc., waged along the lines of the wars of the beginning of the 19th century, of course, from February 1822 to July 1823. Like others, it generated its heroes – in this case almost all originating from the poorer layers of the population and revered even today with affection by the Bahians. Maria Quitéria, João das Botas and Corneteiro Lopes are unforgettable names in this saga that is nonexistent in the textbooks of the History of Brazil and, hence, unknown to the majority of Brazilians.
Incidentally, unjustly unknown, according to historian Luís Henrique Dias Tavares, who this January 28 completes his 80th year, a good part of which dedicated to tireless research into the Bahian participation in the process of Brazil’s independence. In December last, he launched a new book on the theme, Independência do Brasil na Bahia [Independence of Brazil in Bahia] (Editora da UFBA, 245 pages, R$ 35), a title that comes to add itself to the 22 others that he has published, distributed between historical studies and fiction. An emeritus professor of the Federal University of Bahia (UFBA), from which he retired in 1991, after 38 years of work, between 1977 and 1986, Luís Henrique Dias Tavares a few times spent periods doing postdoctoral studies in the University of London.
Born in Nazaré das Farinhas, in the Recôncavo region of Bahia, married to Mrs. Laurita, the father of two sons and a daughter, six grandsons and one great-granddaughter, so far, it was with an infinite Bahia calm, seasoned with much charm, that Professor Luís Henrique granted Pesquisa FAPESP, last November, the interview whose main passages we publish below.
Professor, what is your relationship with UFBA today?
I am the founding professor of the master’s and doctor’s degree courses in history and social sciences in the Faculty of Philosophy and Human Sciences. I am also a supervisor in the School of Education. And, from the end of 2003, I have been part of a commission that is organizing the events focusing on the university’s 60 years, which will happen on July 2, 2006.
As it will be on July 2, the date brings us straight to the theme of the independence of Bahia. And the question is: why does almost no one outside Bahia know that there was a war for independence here?
Because of the distortions in the teaching of the history of Brazil and of the regional differences in our country. São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and Minas Gerais gained a position of prominence because of the proclamation of the Republic and for the outcome of the so-called Revolution of 1930, which led the country to a new phase, which tried to unite audacious democratic forms with authoritarian, narrow, dictatorial forms, which held Brazil back at least 50 years. That is what lies at the base of this lack of knowledge of the fight for the independence of Brazil, and not just in Bahia. This province waged a war that lasted over a year. It cost many lives, sacrifices, and also contributed towards a greater impoverishment of the province.
Did the war for independence happen in any other province?
In the way how it went on here, no. There’s a situation of permanent fighting in Pernambuco, along with the provinces of Paraíba, Rio Grande do Norte, Ceará, with a certain extension to Piauí and probably to Maranhão.
You mean, the Northeast fought for independence.
Yes, there’s a war in the Northeast for independence, with very different characteristics from the way how Brazil was separated from Portugal in the south, Brazil’s separation from Portugal has a side of complicated negotiations in Rio de Janeiro, extending to São Paulo and Minas Gerais, and another side of situations of an armed fight and of a negation of the absolute monarchy that Portugal went back to being in the early months of 1823. This is the reality that our dear friend and colleague, historian Evaldo Cabral de Mello, develops in his recent book A outra independência [The Other Independence]. That is what he call what went on in the province of Pernambuco and, for their proximity, reached Paraíba, Rio Grande do Norte and Ceará.
What are the characteristics of the war that opened up in Bahia for independence?
It’s different from what happened in Pernambuco. There, the process was the development of the positions of 1817, still not accepted and understood by Brazil’s scholars of history, which were making their way towards a federative republican Brazil. And the concern with the trafficking of blacks and with slave labor was always in the cogitations of the most prominent leaders of 1817 in Recife. In Bahia, a situation of war developed, with all weapons being availed of. This unique situation came about because of the taking of office by General Madeira de Mello, by force of arms, in the command of the province of Bahia. Bahia, just as Maranhão and Pará, had adhered to the constitutionalist movement in Portugal, following the Porto revolution of August 1821.
My unforgettable master José Honório Rodrigues put in doubt the adhesion of Bahia, and we have still not managed to clarify the province’s position. But the Portuguese constitutional monarchy itself remains an unresolved theme in the history of Portugal, there are questions that have still not been clarified. One of them is that the revolution declared that it recognized the authority of King John VI, who, in those days, was in Rio de Janeiro, then a political center of the Portuguese empire. Some Portuguese historians stress that from 1808 onwards Brazil became the center of the empire, with the royal family coming to Brazil, but my proposition is that the intellectually more capable assistants of King John VI in actual fact gave a new form to the situation of a colony in Brazil.
In your view, Brazil merely gained a status of a rather different colony.
A situation still not understood is installed in Brazil. It is not acceptable to me to claim that Rio de Janeiro had become the center of the Portuguese empire. Less still, that Brazil had left its condition of being subaltern to Portugal. There is a new prominence for Rio de Janeiro, but not to the extreme of putting the command of the Portuguese empire in the city. It wasn’t from Rio de Janeiro that the guidance and decisions came for Angola, Guinea, São Tomé e Príncipe, Mozambique, the Azores and the island of Madeira.
But, if a substantial part of the court had transferred itself here, how could Lisbon keep the command of the Portuguese empire?
They kept a lame command, but they kept it. Inasmuch as the governments that structured themselves in Portugal under the protection of England, or rather, of the united empire of England, Scotland and Ireland, were interfering. One cannot in any very sure way declare that the governments that represented King John VI in Portugal were haughty and autonomous, insomuch as over these governments presided the greater authority of the representatives of the British empire, all those military men.
It was as if Brazil were in a second degree of subalternation. There was the British empire, Portugal under a certain control of this empire, and Brazil subaltern to Portugal. Quite a complicated situation.
Extremely complex and difficult to be understood, since we have still not reached the clear lines for arriving at the intelligence of this stage of the history of Portugal, which is also the history of Brazil.
Let’s go back to Bahia. General Madeira de Mello takes up the command of the Portuguese troop in March 1822. So then, how did the situation of war start?
It started before March, in February 1822, with the decision of the Portuguese military commanders in Salvador not to open up the command of the province to any Brazilian military authority. They decided that it had to be General Inácio Luís Madeira de Mello. The appointment came from Lisbon, from the Courts, an old name for the absolutist monarchy that was applied to the legislative Constituent Assembly formed by the revolution of August 1821. This assembly was neither sufficiently clear nor sufficiently lucid to establish the conditions of equivalence between the kingdom of Portugal, the kingdom of Brazil and the kingdom of Algarve and, in my evaluation, the formation of the United Kingdom of Portugal, Brazil and Algarve, ordered by King John VI, in 1816, is a figure of fiction. In the evaluation of many respectable Portuguese historians, it is something else, that the king, with this attitude, established equity between Portugal, Brazil and Algarve.
Before the constitutionalist revolution.
Yes. I have to say, nevertheless, that the United Kingdom of Portugal, Brazil and Algarve situation was building a new political situation in the international scene – to be precise, in the scene of western and eastern Europe, since tsarist Russia in this phase of history is very intimately connected with all the decisions of the monarchical, political and military organizations, which defeated Napoleon Bonaparte. All this is very confusing, because it is politically comfortable to transform the proclamation of the United Kingdom of Portugal, Brazil and Algarve into the end of the colonial bond, into the end of the bond of subordination of Brazil to Portugal. But this subordination is administrative, it is political, it is cultural, it is a subordination in all the senses! Not even the Brazilians that had attained positions of command in Portugal’s army on Brazilian soil had been heard for the decision to create the United Kingdom of Portugal, Brazil and Algarve.
But how did the Brazilian forces organize themselves for entering into war in Bahia?
They organized themselves in the way that was possible at the time, with the Brazilian military that was taking part in the Portuguese colonial army, who had higher ranks and command in the city of Salvador. They had participated in the adhesion of Bahia to the constitutional movement that followed the revolution of 1821, without considering the mistake they were entering into. They adhered to a situation in which they saw the possibility of independence, if not of Brazil, at least of a region of Brazil, by means of a constitutional charter also drawn up with the participation of Brazilian deputies in the Constituent Assembly.
As nothing of this occurred, the disillusioned military decided to enter into a war against Portugal?
They set off for a complete rupture with Portugal.
And who are the leaderships at the first moment of the war?
There are various, but I am going to bring them together under the name of Felisberto Gomes Caldeira, who at that time was lieutenant-colonel of the Portuguese colonial army in Brazil. Then, in November 1821, Felisberto Gomes Caldeira and other soldiers went up the Ladeira da Praça [in the historical center of Salvador], invaded the Municipal Chamber, took the flag of the chamber, which was the symbol of power, and, with it in their hands, went to depose the junta that governed Bahia, that governed the city of Salvador in military terms. These soldiers are with the junta, demanding it to resign and for them to form another junta, when the Portuguese officers, with Madeira de Mello in command, reach the center of the city and arrest these demonstrators.
Between November 1821 and February 1822, these soldiers that had Felisberto in the leadership were arrested. How then did the fight begin in February?
Yes, they were sent as prisoners to Lisbon. But other soldiers with the same position stayed in the colonial army. And they take the attitude of resisting when Inácio Luís Madeira de Mello is appointed by the Courts of Lisbon and by King John VI as commander of the armed forces in Bahia. This is a decree that has still not been perfectly clarified in the history of Portugal and in the history of Brazil. But it was a question of appointing Portuguese generals for all the provinces of Brazil, a decision that, in my reading, revealed that Portugal had decided to keep Brazil subordinated by the force of arms.
This law or decree in actual fact is from September 1821, but it only reaches Bahia in February 1822, with the appointment of Madeira de Mello as governor of the armed forces in the province of Bahia. The Brazilian officers that were still within the army, just as the Brazilian militiamen who represented the whites, the poor, the blacks, the mulattos, did not accept this appointment. They preferred it to be a Brazilian, and, in this case, the mistake of stitching up Brazil with the Kingdom of Portugal and Algarve would still last for some time. But I say that the appointment was a declaration of war, because it was with weapons in his hands that Madeira de Mello occupied the position of governor of the armed forces in the province of Bahia.
And then the resistance begins.
Yes. The municipalities that made up the Recôncavo (area around the bay of Todos os Santos), the direct producers of the wealth of the province, since they produced sugar, tobacco and other merchandise for international trade, without arms, declare that they do not accept General Madeira de Mello as governor of the armed forces. And they shut off the Recôncavo to relations with the city of Salvador. This affects the whole province, because it is from Cachoeira, in Recôncavo, that the trade relations with the whole of the so-called backlands are established, by going up the River Paraguaçu to the Chapada Diamantina, extending from there to the areas that produced cattle and sent it to the city of Salvador.
They all adopt the position of resistance. And all the attempts of Madeira de Mello to have the recognition of the Recôncavo fail. He does not manage to establish any relationship with the owners of the lands, the farms, the plantations and slaves in the Recôncavo. This passive resistance goes on until June 1822. The occupation of the government by Madeira de Mello in February had established a cut between Brazilians and Portuguese. The relations between Brazilians and Portuguese were always very distant, always observed the conveniences of the activities that they carried out, but cases of falling out always existed.
What happens in June and after, that changes the situation?
First, the proclamation of the municipality of Cachoeira happens, against Madeira de Mello, against all the other military officers, against the Portuguese Armada, which was occupying the Baía de Todos os Santos. This is a situation that is still hardly understood, but on June 28, 1882, a government is formed in Cachoeira that rejects the government that is in the city of Salvador. In my new book, I carry out a review of what happened and of what I myself narrated in the earlier editions of Independência do Brasil na Bahia, published by Civilização Brasileira. I analyze the regional divisions of Brazil, which were very deep at that moment.
From the panorama that you draw, a situation takes shape in which the price regent had power over Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo and Minas Gerais. The province of Bahia had a singular situation. The major part of the provinces of the Northeast was not very concerned with the decisions of the prince regent, while Maranhão and Pará obeyed Lisbon directly. Then Rio Grande do Sul, Paraná and so on…
…were still very distant from all this.
In short, in your book there is a very interesting drawing of the formation of the nation, after these deep divisions.
My dear friend, historian Marco Morel, stresses this aspect in the preface to my book. With his lucidity, his authority and knowledge of the history of Brazil, he stresses that there was this total lack of a perspective of unity. There wasn’t a Brazil, there were Brazils. And there were differences in the province itself. The municipality of Cachoeira was not like Santo Amaro, nor was the latter like São Francisco do Conde. They are very close, they are lands very mixed together, but they have different interests, different formations. Getting back to the war, the belligerent position adopted by Cachoeira was accompanied by the municipalities of Santo Amaro, São Francisco do Conde and Maragogipe. And then the Bahia deputies in the Courts sent a consultation to the Brazilians from these municipalities, which served as cover for structuring the new situation of war, now recognizing the authority of Prince Pedro, the government established in Rio de Janeiro. This occurred in June, July, August 1822, when Pedro, José Bonifácio de Andrada e Silva and others close to them are now decided on the separation of Brazil from Portugal.
You say that September 7 is a symbolic date. Why?
That is also a question that is still calling for a lot of research. The fact is that the conversations on the separation of Brazil from Portugal followed very strange paths, insomuch as they led to an authoritarian, absolutist form. In the province of Bahia, there is, at that moment, an unavoidable situation of war, since those that had weapons in their hands in the Recôncavo were Brazilians, who wanted nothing more to do with Portugal, and had decided to recognize Prince Pedro as the authority in Brazil; those that had weapons in their hands in Salvador were soldiers from the Portuguese army that was occupying the city of Salvador, with support from the big exporters and importers of the Portuguese trading companies, subordinated to King John VI. It’s an absolutely new situation. The government formed in Cachoeira did not go so far as to have actual breadth, but almost right afterwards, the Interim Council is formed. And here I am led to recall that lieutenant-colonel Felisberto Gomes Caldeira acted decisively for the formation of an autonomous government in Bahia, this Interim Council that was now governing the province from this point onwards.
But how could he have all this influence if he was a prisoner in Lisbon?
He had already come back. The Brazilian deputies in the Courts managed to defend all the soldiers who had been arrested and sent there, and they were freed. Felisberto Gomes Caldeira came back to Salvador, now under the domain of Madeira de Mello, and behaves like a conspirer. He presents himself to the general who had ordered his arrest as a soldier that had come back from an unjust situation, he occupies his post, receives his pay and disappears, to reappear afterwards in Santo Amaro. He goes to talk to the masters of mills, lands and slaves, all of them with their relations with Madeira de Mello broken off. And then he goes from Santo Amaro to São Francisco do Conde, to Cachoeira, where once again, with a demonstration that has armed men at the door of the Municipal Chamber, the decision is taken to form an Interim Council, with representatives of the various municipalities of the province.
Is it when these militias and organized troops come to Salvador that the war breaks out that ends with the overthrowing of Madeira de Mello?
No. Before, in August 1822, they declare war. At that moment, they know absolutely nothing about what is happening in Rio de Janeiro. What these municipalities from Bahia are doing is to seek the authoritarian cover of the prince, because this is one of the permanent focuses of our history, authoritarianism. We are a conservative people. Our behavior has repeatedly been conservative. And also one that expects more of authoritarian authorities than of democratic constitutional authorities. It is easy to locate today the tendencies that afterwards made it possible for 1964, 1968 to exist, and may God never allow these occurrences to repeat themselves again, although we should not ever ignore two things: first, that we had slave labor until 1888, and we were not capable of solving the end of slavery. We did nothing for the end of slavery to be in fact the end of slavery.
The heads that thought up the best solution belonged to the engineer André Pereira Rebouças, a monarchist until he died, but with crystal-clear thinking, and Joaquim Nabuco, the only two Brazilians who proposed the donation of a plot of land to each slave that was apparently being set free. And, in second place, coming back to the fact that authoritarianism is profoundly imbedded as a tendency in our history. When Brazil more recently constructed the conditions that led to the suspension of the military dictatorship, in actual fact a militarized dictatorship of major Brazilian businessmen and major international businessmen who had money allocated to the Brazilian economy, a poll was taken with the officers of the Armed Forces about the return to the democratic form that ended up with 85% voting against it. Accordingly, the ghost of authoritarianism is there, and we have to be very alert for it not to come back and tread on us as it has already trodden.
Shall we go back to 1822?
Yes, in August, the Brazilians of the Recôncavo form organized forces, not only to resist, but also to advance and to repossess the city of Salvador. Until arriving at the decision for independence, their secretive paths led Prince Pedro to think of bringing back King John VI and investing him here with the authority of a king of Brazil, Portugal and Algarve, a formula that did not enjoy the slightest condition; the whole situation was very peculiar, which is something that Brazilians are not yet aware of. When the prince goes to São Paulo in August, he does this to meet the political conveniences of Minister José Bonifácio de Andrada e Silva. He goes to sort out the conditions of leadership of the Andradas in the province of São Paulo. Anyway, he travels decided to separate Brazil from Portugal, and to proclaim himself as that which the citizens of Rio had given him as his title, that is to say, the perpetual defender of Brazil. And so September 7 is a symbolic date, not really the date of the independence of Brazil, not least because an enormous piece of the country was still not independent. The war that was happening in a province like Bahia was, which had articles of the greatest importance in international trade, besides a port of easy access to those who arrived from Europe, from India or from Africa, was creating a very special situation for the unity of the country.
Why?
The economic picture, of an advance of industrial capitalism, that needs new technological standards to make production advance, is favorable for an indirect transposition. But the political picture is different. An absolutist monarchical Europe has the command of millions of Europeans. Who leads this Europe is Austria, Russia, Prussia. And there is a situation of economic and political conflict between the United Kingdom of Great Britain and these countries. England, the leader of the United Kingdom of Great Britain, is the country of the Industrial Revolution, which had also reached France and the United States. This economic picture is not yet in the forefront in the world, but it has a position of great importance and a certain power of decision in the entire world. Then here in Brazil are English diplomats, American consuls, they are in the Northeast, in Pernambuco, in Bahia… In short, a Brazil that was not yet Brazil has, at this precise moment, a very fragile position, and it’s there you have to understand that all our fighting in Bahia, in the Northeast, was decisive for the independence of Brazil and the formation of Brazil as it is. Tobias Monteiro saw this and highlighted it in his book A elaboração da independência do Brasil [The Preparation of Independence in Brazil]. We accept Tobias Monteiro’s line for its lucidity and for his authority as a historian. But we continue to work on this; actually I have been studying the independence of Brazil in Bahia since 1956.
Why does the independence of Bahia, in the imagination of the Bahians, have such a strong popular connotation? Why has the festival of July 2, different from September 7, always been a festival more linked to popular causes? Why do the figures of Maria Quitéria, Joana Angélica, Corneteiro Lopes, João das Botas seem to speak of an imagery totally different from the one that one has of the independence of Brazil?
This is a construction of many, many years after July 2, 1823. Bahia came out of the war very poor, since throughout a long period it remained without any possibilities of carrying on its trade, while it was spending resources to form those troops, those battalions, and to support the army that is after all going to arrive in Rio de Janeiro. Hence, empty handed, on July 2, 1823, the only thing that Bahia has is precisely July 2, 1823. In that picture, which at the time could not be called a Brazilian national one, since Brazil did not yet truly exist, Brazil is a lengthy and chastised construction of the Brazilians, Bahia has nothing. And that is why the Bahians proudly constructed July 2, 1823 as a date of independence, which it was of Bahia, but which it was also, and a lot, of Brazil.
The construction of July 2 is slow and is done with some mistakes, because Bahia continues even today paying homage to General Labatut on July 2, and there is not the slightest reason for this. It was the Brazilians who in fact set free the city of Salvador with weapons in their hands. First, it was the Brazilians of Santo Amaro, Maragogipe, Cachoeira, São Francisco do Conde, Nazaré das Farinhas, Jaguaripe who formed an army in tatters… Afterwards, they were joined by the Brazilians who went down there from Catité and from other parts of the backlands and from the Chapada Diamantina (Diamond Highlands), forming an army of the most different colors, of Brazilian sons of slaves, descendents of slaves, poor white Brazilians who had nothing more than a patch of sugarcane planted for the master of the mill…
There were months and months that they remained in trenches dug out in the lands of Santo Amaro, São Francisco do Conde, lands that, with any rain, turned into mud, and were there taken by ticks, by chigoes, from head to foot. Assaulted by tuberculosis, malaria, typhoid, all those diseases took hold of our soldiers, and sacrificed many of them. They advanced to reach the city of Salvador, they took the heights of Pirajá and advanced into the Todos os Santos bay, beginning from Itapagipe, conquering Rio Vermelho, from Rio Vermelho reaching Barra, an army in tatters, of famished men. The picture of the general, on that occasion still a colonel, Joaquim de Lima e Silva, the Duke of Caxias, on the finest of sorrel horses, acclaimed by an army of men, all very content, joyous and fat, does not represent the truth.
How many soldiers were there in this war, from the calculations available?
From 9 thousand to 10 thousand Portuguese soldiers, adding in the personnel from the Portuguese Armada that was occupying the Todos os Santos bay. And on the Brazilian side, about 12 thousand soldiers, though actual professional soldiers were few, who came in the first levy sent by the prince, now already proclaimed emperor, and afterwards other Brazilian soldiers who came from Sergipe, Alagoas, Pernambuco, Paraíba, Rio Grande do Norte and Ceará to fight for the independence of Brazil in Bahia.
Almost nobody has this notion of a convergence of forces from all over the country…
They don’t have, but there we are getting close to the historical truth. This war made many victims, registered heroic deaths of men who stuck themselves into trenches that were pure mud… Muddy, barefoot heroes… The Bahian mythology created Maria Quitéria with a Scottish kilt, with a beautiful uniform and a gun in her hand. She really was in several instants of fighting, but in tatters, with what was left covering her body, because she was part of this Brazilian army…
She isn’t a myth, is she in fact a woman who fought in the war the whole time?
Yes, the whole time. Until July 2. At least since August 1822, she was in the war leadership to set free the city of Salvador.
Does the same hold good for João das Botas? And for Corneteiro Lopes?
The same holds good for João das Botas. It doesn’t hold good for Corneteiro Lopes, because he isn’t a documented figure in our history. He’s a construction of Santos Titara and other; you mustn’t forget that, as homage to Corneteiro Lopes, Inácio Acioly Cerqueira e Silva got to know him as a beggar, asking for alms in the city of Salvador, and he reports this in 1836, in the first edition of Memórias históricas da província da Bahia [Historical Memories of the Province of Bahia]. As he is won over by this ideology of Bahian patriotism, he also constructed the story of a bugle deciding combats that were almost lost.
Is it true that Maria Quitéria died in a situation of prostitution in Cachoeira?
It’s not true. That is the result of Brazilian and Bahian prejudice against women. The barons of Bahia had never recognized Maria Quitéria, and hence had constructed various versions denying her. She really was at the front of the combat. She set off with the battalion of the grandfather of Castro Alves, dom Periquitão, and arriving in Salvador, being intelligent, when the war was over, she saw that her prospects were not very good, and went to Rio de Janeiro to present herself to Prince Pedro, who gave her the title of cadet. And here, to conclude, allow me to give the news that General Inácio Luís Madeira de Mello went back with his army, with an enormous quantity of ships to Portugal, and, in November 1823, was arrested and then had to answer in one of the most incredible lawsuits in Portugal. His prison occurred by the direct order of the Minister of War of King John VI, Prince Michael. And in the trial, Madeira de Mello is presented as the only one responsible for the defeat of Portugal’s army and navy.
I cannot close without knowing something about João das Botas.
He is still a very little known figure. He is a Portuguese sailor who adheres to the authority of Prince Pedro and from his knowledge instructs Cachoeira, Santo Amaro, São Francisco do Conde on fitting out boats. The history of the Baía de Todos os Santos is the history of the schooners, canoes and boats. The big boats are armed, cannons are put in the stems and sterns, and then they have the command of João de Oliveira Botas. These boats, armed like this, were decisive in the war. We are not going to say that they were victorious, because we do not know up until now for what reason the Portuguese Armada was so afraid of actually engaging combat, with the conditions it had, with big warships with many cannons, with a far greater bellicose power than those little boats.
These big boats of the resistance would bombard the city of Salvador from the Baía de Todos os Santos?
No. They don’t reach Salvador. They defend Itaparica. On January 5, 6 and 7 of 1823, the Portuguese Armada made one more frustrated, and, from what everything indicates, without any great interest, attempt to take and to occupy the island of Itaparica.
