1822. Carta de Francisco de Alpoim e Meneses, negociante, para Francisco António Borba, [seu solicitador].

News letter from Francisco de Alpoim e Meneses, a businessman, to his solicitor Francisco António Borba.

The author gives political news to the addressee, including the news that Brazil got independent from Portugal. He asks for authentic news from Braga and Galicia because he fears that he only hears untrue rumours in Lisbon.

In 1822, in the aftermath of the liberal revolution in Portugal, the suspects of a counter-revolutionary coup were prosecuted by the Royal justice. The official version of the coup was described in the 'Diário do Governo' (Cabinet Journal) as the act of «evil anarchists and ambitious conspirators who wanted no less than barbarically cover with blood our happy Regeneration, put our Homeland in mourning, depose the King and take down the House of Deputies ('Cortes')». Five suspects were immediately arrested: Francisco de Alpoim e Meneses, a businessman, Januário da Costa Neves, a knight of the Order of Christ, officer of the Military Ministry of the Army, Manuel Ferreira, a footman, and João Rodrigues da Costa Simões, an apprentice printer.