On December 11, 1826, the Empress died in childbirth at the early age of twenty-nine.  She had come out from Austria determined to make the ways of Brazil her own.  On her first arrival she was considered lovely, and there is no doubt that her fair, clear complexion, blue eyes, and golden hair were immensely admired by folk themselves almost invariably possessed of raven locks.  Some while after she had arrived in the country of her adoption the Empress is said to have neglected her personal appearance to a rather regrettable extent, adopting the ways of the Brazilian country-side rather than those of the capital.  Thus she accustomed herself to large heavy boots adorned with enormous spurs, and would ride astride on a horse, her hair being suffered to hang loose about her face and shoulders.  In fact, she paid not the slightest attention to those attractions with which Nature had endowed her.  She was a being of intense charity and love, polished to a degree, an accomplished letter-writer, and a lover of the fine arts in general.

Had the Empress bestowed less care on others and more upon her own person, there is little doubt but that she would have led a happier life, for the Emperor, surrounded by the temptations which are always in the path of crowned heads, allowed his affections to stray.  Indeed, so wrapped up was Dom Pedro in his liaison, that the unfortunate Empress, under pressure, found her rival attached to her Court as lady-in-waiting.  Her meek and affectionate temperament does not appear to have resented this—­at all events openly.  When, however, this rival insisted on making her way to the death-bed of the Empress, it was felt by the attendants that all bounds had been passed.  On their own responsibility they prevented the proposed entrance, and after the death of the Empress suffered for their pains at the instigation of the slighted favourite.

Towards the end of 1826 Colonel Cotter, an Irish officer in the Brazilian Service, undertook to bring over a number of his countrymen from their native land in order that they should become soldier settlers—­that is to say, they were promised fifty acres of land a head if they would undertake to perform military service when needed.  The result was a fiasco.  The unfortunate Irishmen came out, but found nothing prepared for them.  They were insulted, moreover, by the negroes, who took to calling them “white slaves” as a mark of contempt for the ragged clothes to which they found themselves reduced in the end.

Goaded beyond endurance, not only by neglect, but by periodical assaults on their numbers, the Irish, together with a number of Germans and other soldiers who found themselves in a similar situation, broke out into open mutiny, and a pitched battle took place between them and the blacks, who had now been armed by the authorities.  In the end the Brazilians intervened, assisted by the French and the English Marines, who were landed from the fleets of their respective nations, and the mutiny was suppressed, but not before many foreigners quite unconcerned with the affair had been slain.  After this the Irish returned to their native land.