departed for Europe to restore his daughter to her throne. Regency A troubled regency Since Pedro II would only be 18 in 1843, an elected regency was created to replace the emperor during his minority. Joaquim Nabuco, writing in the 1890s, remarked that the Brazilian republicans saw this period as their chance to prove that the country could survive in peace without a monarch as superior arbiter, as a neutral character above rival parties. However, this republican experience proved itself to be a complete disaster: as a republic, Brazil was no better than its Hispanic-American neighbors. The regency had little effective authority which resulted in nine years of chaos during which the country was plagued by rebellions and coup attempts initiated by unruly political factions. The Liberal Party which assumed power on 7 April had been only a loose coalition representing "disparate interests, united only by their opposition to Pedro I." Although they were called liberals various groups within the coalition championed one or another liberal ideal while others opposed these points preferring to promote other aspects of liberalism. The party soon split into two factions: the republicans (also known as the "Extremists" or "Tatters") which was a small but aggressive group and the "moderate" liberals. The moderate liberals consisted of a coalition of the Nativists whose main leader was the priest Diogo Antônio Feijó and the Coimbra bloc–so-called because many of its supporters had graduated from Coimbra University. The Coimbra bloc's main leaders were Pedro de Araújo Lima (later Marquis of Olinda) and Bernardo Pereira de Vasconcelos. Vasconcelos acted not only as a leader but also as a mentor to the younger generation of his faction which included Honório Hermeto Carneiro Leão (later the Marquis of Paraná), Paulino Soares de Sousa (later the first Viscount of Uruguay) and Joaquim José Rodrigues Torres. There were also other, smaller groups not related to the moderates of which the most important were the restorationists (or Caramurus) who called for the return of Pedro I as regent for his son. Beyond the need to fight the restorationist threat the only other common interest uniting the Nativists and the Coimbra bloc into the Moderate Party was their support of federalism. The Brazilian constitution was overly centralized and this was one of the main reasons behind their opposition to the former emperor who was openly against any constitutional amendment. The Moderate Party believed that by