The independence of the United States suggested to a few Brazilians the possibility of freeing their country from Portugal. In 1785 a dozen Brazilian students at Coimbra formed a club for this purpose, and one of them wrote to Thomas Jefferson, then Minister to France, asking American aid. Jefferson was interested, but answered that nothing could be done until the Brazilians themselves had risen in arms. A like impulse was working in the minds of the poets and their friends at Ouro Preto. A child-like conspiracy was formed whose object was to found a republic with San John d'El Rei as capital and Ouro Preto as the seat of a university. A few practical men listened to the plans of the conspirators probably with a view of turning a disturbance to account in preventing the government from putting into effect an obnoxious gold tax then being threatened. Among those let into the inner circle was a young sergeant nicknamed "Tiradentes." He undertook the task of fomenting an uprising among the troops, but before anything practical had been done the whole thing had been given away to the authorities. The conspirators were arrested and taken to Rio, where the frightened governor instituted a formal and elaborate trial and took a fearful vengeance upon the helpless boys and poets. Poor Tiradentes, being without powerful connections, was hanged and quartered. His memory is now revered in Brazil as that of the first martyr to independence and the precursor of the republic. The gentle Claudio hanged himself in prison after having been tortured into a confession implicating his friends. Gonzaga and Alvarengo, with several others, were banished to Africa. Republican and separatist ideas had, however, made no headway among the Brazilian masses. Brazil's independence was to come by the force of circumstances and not by any deliberate national effort, and for a republic she was destined to wait a century more. CHAPTER XIII THE PORTUGUESE COURT IN RIO The political development of colonial Brazil may be divided into three epochs. First, there was the confusion of early colonisation, the unsuccessful attempt to establish a system of feudal captaincies, the struggles against the Indians, French, and Jesuits, and the search for a solid economic foundation for the new commonwealth. On the whole, this era contained the promise of the ultimate development of a freer governmental system than that of Portugal.