Minas Gerais lay in the mountains. It produced neither grain nor livestock and relied entirely on imported food, whose prices were astonishingly high.
When the miners learned that the priests were distributing meat free of charge to those mission villages, they felt it was deeply unfair.
Ever since the king began levying the "royal tax," people had been trying every possible way to evade it. Yet no matter who you were, you still had to eat salt. Commercial salt was hoarded, driving prices ever higher. Licensed merchants made more money, and the king collected more taxes, but miners and ranchers were being driven to the point where they could barely afford salt.
Once conflict broke out, the Portuguese royal family would be able to intervene in the affairs of the Saint Paul's fief.
After the Hungarians gained autonomy from the Habsburgs, manorial courts appeared. Besides that, there were also mining city courts within the Holy Roman Empire.
Although mercury was needed in gold extraction, after the War of the Spanish Succession ended, Almadén, the world's largest mercury mine, was assigned to the Bourbon family. This directly caused mercury production to plummet.
The world's second-largest mercury mine was in Idrija, but even after extracting the mercury, transporting it out was no simple matter. For example, if it was packed in Trieste and shipped by sea, it would inevitably have to pass through the Strait of Gibraltar.
Even if they managed to transport the mercury out, it still could not keep up with Minas Gerais's output. Thus, Minas Gerais adopted "alchemy"—that was, high-temperature processing of gold.
Mercury extraction produced low-temperature gold, while high-temperature refining required fuel and furnaces. In contrast, French mercury mirrors were beginning to become widespread, turning what had once been Venetian luxury goods into something found everywhere.
Murat's trip