d was shed in the course of their contentions
with the soldiers, and Sebastian de Castro, the governor, weakened both
in body and mind, was induced to fly to Bahia for safety. Six of the
chief Pernambucans were now appointed to exercise the functions of a
provisional government till orders should be received from Lisbon, and
all Europeans were deprived of their offices and commissions.

But the bishop, who had been at Paraiba since the time when De Castro
was wounded, now returned to claim his office as governor on the removal
of the former one. He began to exercise his authority in the king's
name, and his first act was to declare a general pardon. But he, however
appears to have been a timid man: willing yet not daring to join the
party who wished to shake off the yoke of Portugal, and by his
vacillating conduct betraying both his friends in that party, and the
trust reposed in him by the crown. At length, in 1711, these
disturbances were quieted by a new governor, Felix Jose Machado de
Mendonca. Brazil was not yet ripe for independence; nor indeed could so
small and ill-peopled a state as Pernambuco have maintained its freedom
even for a year unconnected with the other captaincies. While these
things were going on in the captaincies of Brazil, the Jesuits were
labouring in the interior to reclaim the Indians, with success far
beyond the apparent means, and some towns, which have since become of
importance, were built on the coast and on the shores of the Plata,
particularly Monte Video, in 1733; but the border war, between the
Spaniards and Portuguese, which was waged on account of these
settlements, disquieted the neighbourhood for a time. Its importance,
however, was soon forgotten in the disturbances caused by the treaty of
division between Spain and Portugal, which forcing the Indians who had
been reclaimed to emigrate, roused them to a vigorous but short and
useless resistance, which only began the evils that the Jesuit missions
were destined to perish under.

The Portuguese government, under the administration of Carvalho,
afterwards Marquis of Pombal, had begun to attend to, and attempt to
reform the abuses which existed throughout Brazil, but particularly in
the newly founded captaincies and settlements, when the war with France
and Spain broke out in 1762. For a time defence against a foreign enemy
superseded every other consideration. The first act of hostility in the
western world was the seizing of the P