To break up the Jesuit missions, Pombal in 1755 decreed the “emancipation of the Indians of Pará and Maranhão,” a curious corollary to the laws that the Society had themselves obtained earlier forbidding the Portuguese settlers to enslave Indians. A little later occurred in Portugal an attempt against the life of the King: the Jesuits were, quite unjustly, accused of being concerned in it, and on this pretext they were ordered expelled in a body from Portugal and from all Portuguese possessions. This was in 1759, expulsion from Brazil taking place during 1760; not content with this, the abolition of the Society of Jesus was obtained from Pope Clement XIV in 1773. This severe measure was rescinded in 1814, and the Jesuits came back to Brazil as to other world dominions, doing excellent educational work at the present time; their colleges are magnificent institutions, and it is commonly said in Brazil that the very best education for men is obtained in the Jesuit college at Itú, in the interior of São Paulo State. José I died in 1777, and Pombal promptly descended from power; but his work in the stimulation of Brazilian industries, the creation of a genuine Brazilian entity through strong centralization, and the erection of Rio into a viceroyalty, paved the way for the next great change. Early in the nineteenth century, when the North American colonies of Great Britain had successfully revolted, and the French Revolution was an accomplished fact, ideas of republican independence began to agitate many heads in South America. Brazil had only one uprising, the famous Conspiracy of Minas, which got no farther than plans; it was headed by one of the influential Freire de Andrade family, and all the plotters were eventually pardoned except one scapegoat, who was executed publicly in Rio in 1792, and thus achieved immortality: his nickname of _Tiradentes_ is preserved in the name of a square in Rio and a public holiday on the anniversary of his death. A few years later Napoleon was overrunning Europe. Portugal, friendly to his enemy England, incurred the Napoleonic wrath, tried to make terms too late, and was being actually invaded by the French when an English naval squadron appeared in the Tagus commanded by Sir Sidney Smith; the Portuguese royal family and a host of courtiers went aboard Portuguese vessels and were convoyed across the Atlantic, out of Napoleon’s reach, to Brazil. It would not at all have suited England for the Braganzas to fall into hands which already held too many royal prisoners. It was one of the most remarkable transferences of a crown in history, this emigration of Dom João to his American colonies; it was a useful and a dignified refuge for him and at the same time was of great value to Brazil, probably saving her from years of disorder and bloodshed. [Illustration: _Two Views of the Avenida Rio Branco, Rio de Janeiro._