The Lisbon Regicide or Regicide of 1908 (Portuguese: Regicídio de 1908) was the assassination of King Carlos I of Portugal and the Algarves and his heir-apparent, Luís Filipe, Prince Royal of Portugal, by assassins sympathetic to Republican interests and aided by elements within the Portuguese Carbonária, disenchanted politicians and anti-monarchists. The events occurred on 1 February 1908 at the Square of Commerce along the banks of the Tagus River in Lisbon, commonly referred to by its antiquated name Terreiro do Paço.
Motivations
French Jacobinism and ideology
Some idealistic students, politicians and dissidents were inspired by the founding of the French Third Republic in 1870 and hoped that a similar regime could be installed in Portugal. The intellectual style was heavily middle-class and urban, and hardly concealed its cultural mimicry of the French Republic. Most of the Republican leadership were from the same generation; many were the best-educated in the country and were heavily influenced by the French positivist Comte and the socialist Proudhon. The ideology after 1891 was peppered with concepts such as municipal autonomy, political and economic democracy, universal male suffrage, direct elections for legislative assemblies, a national militia instead of a professional army, the secularization of education and separation of church and state (all copied from French revolutionaries).
After the period of monarchist revanchism in France had waned and the daily Sud Express rail service between Lisbon and Paris was established in 1887, the leftist French Jacobin influence grew stronger in Portugal (especially because it counteracted the national humiliation caused by the British ultimatum of 1890). These liberal ideas were encouraged by the French Republic (in 1870) and the Brazilian Republic (in 1889), although the French 1789 Revolution was also considered an inspiration and model.
Ultimatum
In the second year of the reign of King Carlos I, the Conservative government of Prime Minister Lord Salisbury delivered what is known as the 1890 British Ultimatum: a rejection of the territorial claims defined by the Pink Map of Portuguese Africa. The ultimatum forced the Portuguese to abandon claims to a large area situated between modern-day Angola and Mozambique (encompassing present-day Zambia, Zimbabwe and Malawi) and withdraw their forces from the region.
In passionate meetings, street demonstrations, political rallies, in countless poems, articles, pamphlets, even cartoons, Britain was depicted as a treacherous nation of pirates and profit-mongers able to commit the most outrageous and infamous action against her oldest ally. The King, as well as the whole dynasty, on the other hand, were branded as cowards, corrupts, trading the sacredness of the motherland for power and luxury.
The crisis was not a consequence of the King's actions; rather, it arose from the expansionist policies of the government of Portuguese Prime Minister José Luciano de Castro. The Minister of the Navy and Overseas Territories, Henrique de Barros Gomes, conspired with German diplomats to expand the Portuguese Empire and create "a new Brazil in Africa". This was in conflict with British interests, and Portugal was quickly forced to abandon these colonial designs under threat of diplomatic sanctions and military action. King Carlos attempted to mitigate the losses with diplomacy and leveraging blood relations with both British and German royalty; he was moderately successful, but Portuguese Africa was ultimately limited to territory in Angola and Mozambique. The Portuguese people were outraged by the ease in which the Portuguese government capitulated, which they saw as a blow to their pride.
The ultimatum provoked a crisis of authority in the State, which was simultaneously discredited by its diplomatic and military weakness, a failed Republican rising in Oporto in January 1891, a financial crisis, and the end of the previous decade’s understanding between the dynastic parties.
Republicanism
Since its formation, the Republican Party of Portugal had wished for a regime change. These republicans banded together after 1897, ostensibly to protest against the 1890 ultimatum; their appeals were based upon fears in Portugal of the extent of British influence overseas, a possible invasion by Spain or anger at policies issuing by ruling parties that were widely perceived as being failures. Teachers, journalists, small businessmen, clerks and artisans were drawn to the Republicans, who appealed to nationalism, universal suffrage, separation of church and state and (most notably) the abolition of the monarchy and the privileges of the nobility. As a "party of attraction and assimilation", it included in its membership (and as allies) other groups who were not so idealistic: secret societies, socialists and anarcho-syndicalists, who supported republicanism as a means of achieving change and ending the monarchy. A significant number of Republicans were Masons; some were members of the Portuguese Carbonária, a hard-core activist group which became "a state within the state".
By 1907 there was a strong (and growing) republican presence in the cities of Lisbon and Porto, where the Portuguese Republican Party had already won local elections and intended to promote a republican government at the national level. In the 1906 elections the party only received 2.7 percent of the vote, equivalent to four seats in the National Assembly. All were in Lisbon (where their supporters were concentrated), although their leader Bernardino Machado declared "we are the majority" to The Times in Paris.
Rotatavism
Problems within the political system had arisen during the Portuguese Regeneration Era as a consequence of an inefficient system of rotating governments (which saw the Progressive Party and Regenerator Party alternating in government). The British ambassador to Portugal at the time, Francis Hyde Villiers, explained the confusion and inefficiency of the Cortes (Parliament):
Sittings of the Cortes...were spent in idle vociferation, and were often suspended for months together; the finances were carelessly if not corruptly conducted, annual deficits were accepted as inevitable, a considerable expenditure being always devoted to allowances granted, although not authorized by parliament, to supplement wholly inadequate salaries, taxation was unequal, and too often evaded by the wealthy, the administration of justice was notoriously imperfect, commercial policy consisted only in the imposition of the highest possible duties, no attention was paid to the promotion of agriculture or the development of natural resources, to education, to the housing of the poor, to the protection of labor, or to any of those social questions which directly affect the people.
The transfer of government was an undemocratic process decided between the leaders, rubber-stamped by the monarch and legalized in rigged elections. Other sectors of the nation were also corrupted by serious economic and social issues: the judiciary was corrupt, illiteracy was between 70 and 80 percent and the nation's finances were crippled by high taxation, monopolies on tobacco and other commodities, numerous sinecures and high customs duties on imported goods.
This system was aggravated at the beginning of the 20th century by new groups which formed from dissident political factions within the two main parties. In 1901 João Franco, supported by 25 deputies, abandoned the Regenerator Party to form the Liberal Regenerator Party with a radical programme of social and economic policies within the framework of the constitutional monarchy. In 1905 the Dissidência Progressista (Progressive Dissidence) was formed by José Maria de Alpoim, who also split from the Progressive Party with six other deputies. The intense rivalry between the new parties, aggravated by personal animosities, was regularly critiqued by members of the nascent Republican Party. Despite King Carlos's intent to execute meaningful reform, the efforts were largely undermined by monarchist inefficiency, incompetence, factionalism and Republican propaganda.
Prelude
When King Carlos decided to become politically active, it had become difficult to form a non-coalition cabinet which could win a majority in Parliament. In May 1906 he appointed João Franco premier with a plan to combat the issues of the day, but the opposition was confrontational and progressively less manageable.
Franco tried to govern in a coalition with José Luciano de Castro but this too became unmanageable. Franco asked the king to dissolve the parliament to implement a series of political changes which included censoring the press, jailing reactionaries and establishing reforms to decentralize the government (a program stolen for the most part from the right wing and the republicans). These measures had been advocated by the mainstream parties but the monarch had refused to actively participate, stating that "the king reigns, but does not govern". Ostensibly, João Franco would govern by parliamentary dictatorship until order could be restored. This was the simplest method of government during a crisis and was first used in 1833, when the major parties at the time could not agree on a government. The king had given Franco the means of governing without them; elections would only be held when he and Franco thought it opportune, probably when “normality” had been restored.
However, this measure further increased political tension; the two major monarchist parties, Partido Regenerador and Partido Progressista (who were accustomed to sharing power in an informal rotation), were infuriated. In reaction to King Carlos' action (which favored Franco's faction), they joined forces with the Partido Republicano Português to resist Franco and his cohorts. The political strategy was "Machiavellian", as Brito Camacho (leader of the Partido Unionista) later attested. There were personal attacks on João Franco and the monarch from pro-republican sympathizers, progressive dissidents and academics. At one point, Afonso Costa (a leader in the Republican Party) criticized the government for permitting unauthorized transfers for expenses within the royal household without the Cortes' sanction. Declaring that the sums should be repaid, he then insisted that the King should leave the country or be imprisoned:
For much fewer crimes than the ones committed by King Dom Carlos, the head of Louis XVI rolled off the scaffold in France.
As the session became increasingly confrontational another republican mounted a desk, declaring:
The ship of exile shall convey Dom Carlos away, reviled, harassed and despised...that royal criminal, who has known neither how to honour nor love the country which has tolerated him.
Cortes member Teófilo Braga was forcibly removed for calling the King "a highwayman in mantle and crown". Costa and Braga were suspended for 30 days. Agitation and conflict continued in Lisbon, instigated in many cases by republican youth and their supporters; there were many arrests and the discovery of stockpiles of arms and bombs. These developments created an increasingly volatile situation. Franco then prohibited all public meetings, imposed stricter controls on press freedom and began to take judicial action against “all cases of offenses against the state”. The king became further embroiled in events when he replaced the elected municipal councils by nominated committees and gave himself the power to nominate an unlimited number of life peers to the upper house.
The republicans held him responsible for many of the problems in the country. Republican journalist João Chagas declared,
"[The King governed] against all the Parties and men that served him..."