Deodoro and Constant could absolutely count upon one brigade--the second--and were well assured of the sympathy of all the regular forces in Rio. Of course the plan could not be kept secret from the government police, though the public seems to have known nothing of the gravity of what was going on. On the 14th of November, the rumour spread that Deodoro and Constant would be arrested. Orders had, in fact, been given for the transfer of the disaffected brigade, and the ministers were warned that it was preparing to resist. That night the members of the Cabinet did not sleep, and the morning found them still in anxious council at the War Department, which faces the great square of Rio. Constant had ridden out to the quarters of the Second Brigade, and early in the morning led it to the square and drew up in front of the War Department. Deodoro took command of the insurgent troops, sending an officer to demand the surrender of the ministers. Ouro Preto called upon the adjutant-general, Floriano Peixoto, to lead against the revolters the troops which were in the general barracks. Floriano, after a little hesitation, refused, and it is doubtful whether the troops would have followed him had he consented. There was no one to raise a hand for the ministers. They surrendered and sent their resignations by telegraph to the Emperor at Petropolis, twenty-five miles away in the mountains. Their impression seems to have been that the insurrection was simply a military mutiny and that its object was solely to secure their own downfall. But the fact that Constant, Bocayuva, and others had been let into the inside enabled these republicans to direct the movement so that a permanent change in the form of government was possible. The troops in the barracks joined the Second Brigade and all together marched through the centre of the city cheering for the army, for Deodoro, and the republic, amid the astonishment of the people, most of whom knew nothing of any trouble until they saw the parade. No resistance was offered, and when the Emperor reached the city at three o'clock in the afternoon the revolution was an accomplished fact. The chiefs of the revolt had met and organised a provisional government, naming themselves ministers. They at once took possession of their different departments and the public buildings. A decree was issued announcing that henceforth Brazil was to be a federal republic. The feeble old Emperor was visited by a few friends, but there was no one to raise a hand or strike a blow for him or the dynasty. He himself would have shrunk from being the occasion for the shedding of the blood of any of his people. [Illustration: THE EMPRESS IN 1889.]