he met María Ángela Furriol González Luna. How far their relationship progressed is unknown, but there may have been a failed engagement. He returned to Rio de Janeiro and witnessed the increasing deterioration in Emperor Pedro I's political position. A growing opposition to Pedro I's policies eventually erupted into mass protests at the Field of Santana in downtown Rio de Janeiro on 6 April 1831. The situation became more ominous when several military units, led by Luís Alves's father and uncles, joined the protests. The Emperor considered appointing Luís Alves to command the Emperor's Battalion and asked him which side he would choose. According to historian Francisco Doratioto, Luís Alves answered that "between the love of his father and his duty to the crown, he would stay with the latter." Pedro I expressed gratitude for his loyalty, but instead ordered him to take the Emperor's Battalion to the Field of Santana and join the rebels, preferring abdication to bloodshedding. Decades later, Luís Alves said in the Brazilian Senate: "I marched along with the Emperor's Battalion to the Field of Santana, out of devotion to competent orders [from Pedro I]. I was not a revolutionary. I esteemed the Abdication. I judged that it would be of advantage to Brazil, but I did not concur directly or indirectly with it." Era of troubles A regency of three was elected to rule until the five-year-old Dom Pedro II reached the age of majority and the ability to rule in his own right. One of the regents chosen was Luís Alves's father. The regency had little effective authority, resulting in nine years of chaos, during which the country was plagued by rebellions and coup attempts initiated by unruly political factions. The army, "demoralized by the far from exemplary part it had played in the April Revolution [i.e. Pedro I's abdication]," said historian C. H. Haring, "became the ready tool of any popular agitator or demagogue, and often the source of riot and sedition." The government severely reduced the size of the standing army and effectively replaced it with the newly created National Guard, a militia force. In July 1831, without troops to command, Luís Alves and other officers joined the Volunteer Soldier-Officers Battalion as soldiers. As second in command of that unit, he put down a mutiny of navy artillerymen led by Miguel de Frias e Vasconcelos in the Ilha das Cobras on 7