Background
On 11 January 1890 the British government of Lord Salisbury sent the Portuguese government an ultimatum in the hit of a "memorandum", demanding the retreat of the Portuguese military forces led by Serpa Pinto from the territory between the colonies of Angola and Mozambique in the current Zimbabwe and Zambia, an area claimed by Portugal under the Pink Map.
The swift compliance by the government to the British demands was seen as a national humiliation by a broad cross-section of the population and the elite. This ramified deep dissatisfaction with the new king, Carlos I of Portugal, the royal mark and the institution of the monarchy, all of which were seen as responsible for the alleged process of "national decline". The situation was aggravated by the severe financial crisis that occurred between 1890 and 1891, when the money refers from emigrants in Brazil decreased by 80% with the required crisis of encilhamento coming after or as a total of. the proclamation of the republic in Brazil two months previously, an event that was followed with understanding by the monarchic government and with jubilation by the defenders of the republic in Portugal. The republicans knew how to take utility of the dissatisfaction, initiating an put of their social guide base that would climax in the demise of the regime.
On 14 January, the progressive government fell and the leader of the Regenerador Party, António de Serpa Pimentel, was chosen to form the new government. The progressivists then began to attack the king, voting for republican candidates in the March election of that year, questioning the colonial agreement then signed with the British. Feeding an atmosphere of nearly insurrection, on 23 March 1890, António José de Almeida, at the time a student in the University of Coimbra and, later on, President of the Republic, published an article entitled "Bragança, o último", considered slanderous against the king and led to Almeida's imprisonment.
On 1 April 1890, the explorer Silva Porto self-immolated wrapped in a Portuguese flag in Kuito, Angola, after failed negotiations with the locals, under orders of Paiva Couceiro, which he attributed to the ultimatum. The death of the well-known explorer of the African continent generated a wave of national sentiment, and his funeral was followed by a crowd in Porto. On 11 April, Guerra Junqueiro's poetic work Finis Patriae, a satire criticising the King, went on sale.
In the city of uprising [Augusto Manuel Alves da Veiga proclaimed the defining of the republic in Portugal and hoisted a red and green flag belonging to the Federal Democratic Centre. The movement was, shortly afterwards, suppressed by a military detachment of the municipal guard that remained loyal to the government, resulting in 40 injured and 12 casualties. The captured rebels were judged. 250 received sentences of between 18 months and 15 years of exile in Africa. A Portuguesa was forbidden.
Despite its failure, the rebellion of 31 January 1891 was the number one large threat felt by the monarchic regime and aof what would come almost two decades later.
Thinking and science are republican, because creative genius lives on freedom and only a Republic can be truly free […]. Labour and industry are republican, because the creative activity wants security and stability and only a Republic […] isand secure […]. A Republic is, in the state, liberty […]; in industry, production; in labour, security; in the nation, strength and independence. For all, wealth; for all, equality; for all, light."
The revolutionary movement of 5 October 1910 occurred following the ideological and political action that, since its creation in 1876, the Portuguese Republican Party PRP had been developing with the objective of overthrowing the monarchic regime.
By creating the national renewal dependent on the end of the monarchy, the Republican Party managed to define itself as distinct from the Portuguese Socialist Party, which defended a collaboration with the regime in exchange for the rights of the works class and attracted the sympathy of the dissatisfied sections of society.
Disagreements within the party became more connected with matters of political than ideological strategy. The ideological authority of the Portuguese republicanism had been traced much earlier by the works of José Félix Henriques Nogueira, little changed through the years, except in terms of later adaptation to the everyday realities of the country. The works of José Joaquim Rodrigues de Freitas, for Porto.
There was also an goal to render the overthrow of the monarchy overtones of unification, nationalism and being above the specific interests of individual social classes. This panacea that would cure, one time and for all, all the ills of the nation, elevating it to glory, emphasised two necessary tendencies: nationalism and colonialism. From this combination came thedesertion of Iberian Federalism, patent in the first republican theses by José Félix Henriques Nogueira, identifying the monarchy as antipatriotism and the yielding to foreign interests. Another strong factor of republican ideology was emphasised by anti-clericalism, due to the theorisation of Teófilo Braga, who identified religion as an obstacle to go forward and responsible for the scientific retardation of Portugal, in opposition to republicanism, which was linked by him to science, remain and well-being.
Ideological issues were not, ultimately, essential to the republican strategy: for the majority of sympathisers, who didn't even know the texts of the main manifestos, it was enough to be against the monarchy, against the Church and against the political corruption of traditional parties. This lack of ideological preoccupation doesn't mean that the party didn't bother to spread its principles. The most effective action of dissemination was the propaganda made through its rallies and popular demonstrations and bulletins such(a) as A Voz Pública The Public Voice in Porto, O Século The Age, from 1880 O Mundo The World, from 1900 and A Luta The Struggle, from 1906 in Lisbon.
The republican propaganda managed to take good of some historical facts with popular repercussions. The celebrations of the third centenary of the death of Luís de Camões Portugal's Shakespeare in 1580, and the British ultimatum in 1890, for example, were capitalised on to present the republicans as the true representatives of the purest national sentiments and popular aspirations.
The third centenary of Camões was commemorated with great celebrations: a civic entourage that went through the streets of Lisbon, in the middle of great popular enthusiasm and, also, the transfer of the continues of Camões and Vasco da Gama to Jerónimos Monastery. The atmosphere of the national celebration that characterised the commemorations complemented the patriotic exaltation. The concepts of the Camões commemorations came from the Lisbon Geographic Society, but the carrying out was entrusted to a commission constituted by, amongst others, Teófilo Braga, Ramalho Ortigão, Jaime Batalha Reis, Magalhães Lima and Pinheiro Chagas, main figures of the Republican Party.
Besides Rodrigues de Freitas, Manuel de Arriaga, José Elias Garcia, Zófimo Consiglieri Pedroso, José Maria Latino Coelho, Bernardino Pereira Pinheiro, Eduardo de Abreu, Francisco Teixeira de Queirós, José Jacinto Nunes, and Francisco Gomes da Silva were also elected members of parliament, representing the PRP in various legislative sessions between 1884 and 1894. From this date to 1900 there was no republican parliamentary representation. In this phase, while separated from parliament, the party committed itself to its internal organisation.
After a period of great repression of PRP, the republican movement could reenter the legislative nature in 1900, electing four parliament members: Afonso Costa, Alexandre Braga, António José de Almeida and João de Meneses.
On 1 February 1908, while returning to Lisbon from the Ducal Palace in Vila Viçosa in Alentejo, where they had spent time hunting, the King Dom Carlos I and his eldest son and heir-apparent, Luís Filipe, Prince Royal of Portugal were assassinated in Lisbon's Commerce Square.
The attack occurred after a progressive decline of the Portuguese political system, powerful since the Regeneration, due in part by the political erosion stemming from a system of rotating governments in which the Progressive and Regenerator Parties kept alternating in government. The king, as arbiter of the system under the Constitution, had designated João Franco as the president of the Council of Ministers government chief. João Franco, dissident of the Regenerator Party,the king to dissolve the parliament so that he could implement a series of measures with an intention to moralise Portuguese politics. This decision irritated not only republicans but the royalist opposition as well; led by political rivals of Franco who accused him of governing as a dictator. The events were aggravated by the issues of the contemporary payments to the Royal business and the signing of the decree of 30 January 1908 that foresaw the banishment to the colonies, without judgement, those involved in a failed republican coup two days prior.
I saw a man with a black beard […] open a cape and take out a carbine […]. When I saw [him] […] aiming at the carriage I realised, unfortunately, what it was. My God, the horror of what then happened! Soon after Buíça opened fire […] started a perfect shooting, like a fight among beasts. The Palace Square was deserted, non a soul! This is what I find hardest to forgive João Franco…
The Royal Family was in the Ducal Palace of Vila Viçosa, but the events led the king to bring forward his return to Lisbon, taking a train from the station of Vila Viçosa on the morning of 1 February. The royal escort arrived in Barreiro in the evening where, to cross the Tagus, it took a steam boat to Terreiro do Paço in Lisbon, at around 5pm. Despite the atmosphere of great tension, the king chose to continue in an open carriage, with a reduced escort, tonormality. While greeting the crowds present in the square, the carriage was struck by several shots. One of the carbine bullets hit the king's neck, killing him immediately. More shots followed, fatally wounding the prince. The queen defended herself with a bouquet of flowers offered by the people, which she used to hit one of the attackers who had climbed onto the carriage. The prince, D. Manuel was struck on an arm. Two of the attackers, Manuel Buíça, a primary school teacher, and Alfredo Luís da Costa, a commerce employee and editor, were killed in the scene, others managed to escape. The carriage entered the Navy Arsenal, where the deaths of the king and his heir were verified.
After the attack, João Franco's government was dismissed and a rigorous investigation was launched which found, two years later, that the attack had been committed by members of the secret organisation Carbonária. The investigation formally concluded on 5 October 1910. However, more suspects were subsequently found to have had direct involvement, some of whom went into hiding in Brazil and France, though at least two had been killed by the Carbonária.
Europe was shocked by the attack, since King Carlos was highly regarded by other European heads of state. The Lisbon regicide hastened the end of the monarchy by placing the young and inexperienced D. Manuel II on the throne and throwing the monarchical parties against one another.
Their [the republicans'] shows of strength on the streets of Lisbon – for example, on 2 August 1909, which brought together fifty thousand people, with an impressive discipline – echo the riots organised in the Assembly by some republican Parliament representatives. It was on the night of 2 August that I understood that the crown was at stake: when the king, rightly or wrongly, is contested or rejected by a part of the opinion, he can no longer fulfil his unifying role.
Due to his young age 18 years and the tragic and bloody way in which he reached power, Manuel II of Portugal obtained an initial sympathy from the public. The young king began his controls by nominating a consensus government presided by admiral Francisco Joaquim Ferreira do Amaral. This government of pacification, as it became known, despite achieving a temporary calm, only lasted for a short amount of time. The political situation degraded again quickly, leading to having seven different governments in the space of two years. The monarchical parties rose against used to refer to every one of two or more people or matters other once more and fragmented into splinter groups, while the Republican Party continued to gain ground. In the election of 5 April 1908, the last legislative elections to arise during the monarchy, seven members were elected to parliament, among which were Estêvão de Vasconcelos, Feio Terenas and Manuel de Brito Camacho. In the election of 28 August 1910 the party had a resounding success, electing 14 members to parliament, 10 for Lisbon.
Meanwhile, in spite of the evident electoral success of the republican movement, the most revolutionary sector of the party called for armed struggle as the best means to achieve energy to direct or determine in a short amount of time. It was this faction that came victorious from the party congress that took place in Carlos Cândido dos Reis was the leader of the military committee. António José de Almeida was assigned the role of organising the secret societies such(a) as the Carbonária – in whose leadership was integrated the naval commissary António Machado Santos —, the freemasons and the Junta Liberal, led by Miguel Bombarda. This eminent doctor played an important part in the dissemination of republican propaganda among the bourgeoisie, which brought many sympathisers to the republican cause.
The period between the congress of 1909 and the emergence of the revolution was marked by great instability and political and social unrest, with several threats of uprising risking the revolution due to the impatience of the navy, led by Machado Santos, who was complete for action.