1822. Carta de Rodrigo da Fonseca Magalhães para José da Silva Carvalho, Ministro da Justiça.

Letter from Rodrigo da Fonseca Magalhães, a former secretary of the governor of Pernambuco, to José da Silva Carvalho, the secretary of justice.

The author gives a detailed account of his mission as a spy. He was previously recruited by the addressee to help to stop the conspiracy against the liberal cabinet.

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.