The victory of absolutism in Italy was complete. Courts-martial sat all over Italy. Morelli, the officer who had led out the so-called sacred band of Nola, was shot. His followers were expressly excluded from all amnesty acts. An attempted insurrection in Sicily cost the conspirators their lives. Hundreds of persons were cast into prison, or were marched off to distant fortresses in Austria. It was at this time that Silvio Pellico, the author of the famous "Prison Records," was sent to the dungeon of Spielberg. Then began that long stream of fugitives to England and America.
The Holy Alliance, sitting at Leibach, thought the time was ripe to pronounce its anathema against all peoples seeking their liberties elsewhere than in the grace of their legitimate sovereigns. Yet the spirit of revolt was abroad, and its flames continued to flicker up at widely separated points. On February 26, the Portuguese troops in Brazil rose in revolt. The king, still residing at Rio Janeiro, was compelled to appoint a new Ministry pledged to give to both Portugal and Brazil a new representative system. In Mexico, General Iturbide, at the same time, issued a pronunciamiento, containing his so-called "Plan of Iguala," which proposed independence for Mexico under a Spanish Bourbon prince. Several rebel leaders acquiesced in this, and forced the Spanish viceroy to resign. Juan O'Donoju became acting-viceroy. He signed a treaty with Iturbide virtually accepting the plan. The people of Buenos Ayres profited by the military troubles in Brazil to throw in their lot with that of the Argentine Republic. Their popular idol, San Martin, meanwhile was leading his victorious troops from Chile into Peru. Lima, one of the greatest Spanish strongholds in South America, was threatened by the revolutionists.
At the other end of the earth, the new force of national feeling showed itself in popular uprisings. In distant Annam the death of Emperor Gia-Long, followed by a bloody struggle for the succession between his sons, incited the people to a national demonstration against the encroachments of the French in Tonquin. In China the new Emperor Taouk-Wang was enthroned. He was the first to throw his whole personal influence against the evils of the opium trade inflicted upon China by English merchants since 1800.