Towards the end of 1826 Colonel Cotter, an Irish officer in the
Brazilian Service, undertook to bring over a number of his countrymen
from their native land in order that they should become soldier
settlers--that is to say, they were promised fifty acres of land a head
if they would undertake to perform military service when needed. The
result was a fiasco. The unfortunate Irishmen came out, but found
nothing prepared for them. They were insulted, moreover, by the negroes,
who took to calling them "white slaves" as a mark of contempt for the
ragged clothes to which they found themselves reduced in the end.
Goaded beyond endurance, not only by neglect, but by periodical assaults
on their numbers, the Irish, together with a number of Germans and other
soldiers who found themselves in a similar situation, broke out into
open mutiny, and a pitched battle took place between them and the
blacks, who had now been armed by the authorities. In the end the
Brazilians intervened, assisted by the French and the English Marines,
who were landed from the fleets of their respective nations, and the
mutiny was suppressed, but not before many foreigners quite unconcerned
with the affair had been slain.
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