Chapter 5

Portugal is a small nation with a great history; and the pride of a small nation which has anything to be proud of is apt to amount to a passion. It is all the more sensitive because it can not swell and harden into arrogance. It is all the more alert because the great nations, in their arrogance, are apt to ignore it.

What are the main sources of Portugal's pride? They are two: her national independence and her achievements in discovery and colonization.

A small country, with no very clear natural frontier, she has maintained her independence under the very shadow of a far larger and at one time an enormously preponderant Power. Portugal was Portugal long before Spain was Spain. It had its Alfred the Great in Alfonso Henriques (born 1111--a memorable date in two senses), who drove back the Moors as Alfred drove back the Danes. He founded a dynasty of able and energetic kings, which, however, degenerated, as dynasties will, until a vain weakling, Ferdinand the Handsome, did his best to wreck the fortunes of the country. On his death in 1383, Portugal was within an ace of falling into the clutches of Castile, but the Cortes conferred the kingship on a bastard of the royal house, John, Master of the Knights of Aviz; and he, aided by five hundred English archers, inflicted a crushing defeat on the Spaniards at Aljubarrota, the Portuguese Bannockburn. John of Aviz, known as the Great, married Philippa of Lancaster, daughter of John of Gaunt; and from this union sprang a line of princes and kings under whom Portugal became one of the leading nations of Europe. Prince Henry the Navigator, son of John the Great, devoted his life to the furthering of maritime adventure and discovery. Like England's First Lords of the Admiralty, he was a navigator who did not navigate; but it was unquestionably owing to the impulse he gave to Portuguese enterprise that Vasco da Gama discovered the sea route to India and Pedro Alvarez Cabral secured for his country the giant colony of Brazil. Angola, Mozambique, Diu, Goa, Macao--these names mean as much for Portugal as Havana, Cartagena, Mexico, and Lima, for Spain. The sixteenth century was the "heroic" age of Portuguese history, and the "heroes"--notably the Viceroys of Portuguese India--were, in fact, a race of fine soldiers and administrators. No nation, moreover, possesses more conspicuous and splendid memorials of its golden age. It was literally "golden," for Emmanuel the Fortunate, who reaped the harvest sown by Henry the Navigator, was the wealthiest monarch in Europe, and gave his name to the "Emmanueline" style of architecture, a florid Gothic which achieves miracles of ostentation and sometimes of beauty. As the glorious pile of Batalha commemorates the victory of Aljubarrota, so the splendid church and monastery of Belem mark the spot where Vasco da Gama spent the night before he sailed on his epoch-making voyage. But it was not gold that raised the noblest memorial to Portugal's greatness: it was the genius of Luis de Camoens. If Spenser, instead of losing himself in mazes of allegoric romance, had sung of Crécy and Agincourt, of Drake, Frobisher, and Raleigh, he might have given us a national epic in the same sense in which the term applies to _The Lusiads_. With such a history, so written in stone and song, what wonder if pride of race is one of the mainsprings of Portuguese character!

But the House of Aviz, like the legitimate line of Affonso Henriques, dwindled into debility. It flickered out in Dom Sebastian, who dragged his country into a mad invasion of Morocco and vanished from human ken on the disastrous battlefield of Alcazar-Khebir. Then, for sixty years, not by conquest, but by intrigue, Portugal passed under the sway of Spain, and lost to the enemies of Spain--that is to say, to England and Holland--a large part of her colonial empire. At last, in 1640, a well-planned and daring revolution expelled the Spanish intruders, and placed on the throne John, Duke of Braganza. As the house of Aviz was an illegitimate branch of the stock of Affonso Henriques, so the Braganzas were an illegitimate branch of the House of Aviz, with none of the Plantagenet blood in them. Only one prince of the line, Pedro II., can be said to have attained anything like greatness. Another, Joseph, had the sense to give a free hand to an able, if despotic, minister, the Marquis of Pombal. But, on the whole, the history of the Braganza rule was one of steady decadence, until the second half of the nineteenth century found the country one of the most backward in Europe.

Nor was there any comfort to be found in the economic aspect of the case. A country of glorious fertility and ideal climatic conditions, inhabited by an industrious peasantry, Portugal was nevertheless so poor that much of its remaining strength was year by year being drained away by emigration. The public debt was almost as heavy per head of population as that of England. Taxation was crushing. The barest necessaries of life were subject to heavy imposts. Protection protected, not industries, but monopolies and vested interests.

In short, the material condition of the country was as distressing as its spiritual state to any one with the smallest sense of enlightened patriotism.

King Charles I.--name of evil omen!--ascended the throne in 1889. His situation was not wholly unlike that of the English Charles I., inasmuch as--though he had not the insight to perceive it--his lot was cast in times when Portugal was outgrowing the traditions and methods of his family. Representative government, as it had shaped itself since 1852, was a fraud and a farce. To every municipality a Government administrator was attached (at an annual cost to the country of something like £70,000), whose business it was to "work" the elections in concert with the local _caciques_ or bosses. Thus, except in the great towns, the Government candidate was always returned. The efficacy of the system may be judged from the fact that in a country which was at heart Republican, as events have amply shown, the Republican party never had more than fourteen representatives in a chamber of about 150. For the rest, the Monarchical parties, "Regeneradores" and "Progresistas," arranged between them a fair partition of the loaves and fishes. This "rotative" system, as it is called, is in effect that which prevails, or has prevailed, in Spain; but it was perfected in Portugal by a device which enabled Ministers, in stepping out of office under the crown, to step into well-paid posts in financial institutions, more or less associated with the State. Anything like real progress was manifestly impossible under so rotten a system; and with this system the Monarchy was identified.

Then came the scandal of the _adeantamentos_, or illegal advances made to the King, beyond the sums voted in the civil list. It is only fair to remember that the king of a poor country is nowadays in a very uncomfortable position, more especially if the poor country has once been immensely rich. The expenses of royalty, like those of all other professions, have enormously increased of late years; and a petty king who is to rub shoulders with emperors is very much in the position of a man with £2,000 a year in a club of millionaires. He has always the resource, no doubt, of declining the society of emperors, and even fixing his domestic budget more in accord with present exigencies than with the sumptuous traditions, the palaces and pleasure-houses, of his millionaire predecessors. It is said of Pedro II. that "he had the wisdom and self-restraint not to increase the taxes, preferring to reduce the expenses of his household to the lowest possible amount." But Dom Carlos was not a man of this kidney. Easy-going and self-indulgent, he had no notion of appearing _in forma pauperis_ among the royalties of Europe, or sacrificing his pleasures to the needs of his country. Even his father, Dom Luis, and his uncle, Dom Pedro, had not lived within their income; and expenses had gone up since their times. The king's income, under the civil list, was a "conto of reis" a day, or something over £80,000 a year. Additional allowances to other members of the royal family amounted to about half as much again; and there was, I believe, an allowance for the upkeep of palaces. One would suppose that a reasonably frugal royal family, with no house-rent to pay, could subsist in tolerable comfort on some £2,250 a week; but as a matter of fact, Dom Carlos made large additional drafts on the treasury, which servile ministries honored without protest. He had expensive fantasies, which he was not in the habit of stinting. The total of his "anticipations" I do not know, but it is estimated in millions of pounds.

These eccentricities, combined with other abuses of finance and administration, rendered even the _cacique_-chosen Cortes unruly, and our Charles I. looked about for a Strafford who should apply a "thorough" remedy to what he called the parliamentary _gâchis_. He found his man in João Franco. This somewhat enigmatic personage can not as yet be estimated with any impartiality. No one accuses him of personal corruption or of sordidly interested motives. His great private wealth enabled him the other day to find bail, at a moment's notice, to the amount of £40,000. On the other hand, his enemies diagnose him after the manner of Lombroso, and find him to be a degenerate and an epileptic, ungovernably irritable, vain, mendacious, arrogant, sometimes quite irresponsible for his actions. A really strong man he can scarcely be; scarcely a man of true political insight, else he would not have tried to play the despot with no plausible ideal to allege in defense of his usurpation. Be that as it may, he agreed with the King that it was impossible to carry on the work of government with a fractious Cortes in session, and that the only way to keep things going was to try the experiment of a dictatorship. Dom Carlos, in his genial fashion, overcame by help of an anecdote any doubt his minister may have felt. "When the affairs of Frederick the Great were at a low ebb," said the King, "he one day, on the eve of a decisive battle, caught a grenadier in the act of making off from the camp. 'What are you about?' asked Frederick. 'Your Majesty, I am deserting,' stammered the soldier. 'Wait till to-morrow,' replied Frederick calmly, 'and if the battle goes against us, we will desert together.'" Thus lightly was the adventure plotted; and, in fact, the minister did not desert until the King lay dead upon the field of battle.

Franco dissolved the Cortes, and on May 10, 1907, published a decree declaring the "administration to be a dictatorship." The Press was strictly gagged, and all the traditional weapons of despotism were polished up. In June, the dictator went to Oporto to defend his policy at a public banquet, and on his return a popular tumult took place in the Rocio, the central square of Lisbon, which was repressed with serious bloodshed. This was made the excuse for still more galling restrictions on personal and intellectual liberty, until it was hard to distinguish between "administrative dictatorship" and autocracy. As regards the _adeantamentos_, Franco's declared policy was to make a clean slate of the past, and, for the future, to augment the civil list. In the autumn of that year, a very able Spanish journalist and deputy, Señor Luis Morote, visited most of the leading men in Portugal, and found among the Republicans an absolute and serene confidence that the Monarchy was in its last ditch and that a Republic was inevitable. Seldom have political prophecies been more completely fulfilled than those which Morote then recorded in the _Heraldo_ of Madrid. Said Bernardino Machado:

"The Republic is the fatherland organized for its prosperity.... I believe in the moral forces of Portugal, which are carrying us directly toward the new order of things.... We shall triumph because the right is on our side, and the moral idealism; peacefully if we can, and I think it pretty sure that we can, since no public force can stop a nation on the march."

Said Guerra Junqueiro, the leading poet of the day: "Within two years there will be no Braganzas or there will be no Portugal....The revolution, when it comes, will be a question of hours, and it will be almost bloodless."

I could cite many other deliverances to the same effect, but one must suffice. Theophilo Braga, the "grand old man" of Portugal, said: "To stimulate the faith, conscience, will, and revolutionary energies of the country, I have imposed on myself a plan of work, and a mandate not to die until I see it accomplished."

The Paris _Temps_ of November 14, 1907, published an interview with Dom Carlos which embittered feeling and alienated many of his supporters. "Everything is quiet in Lisbon," declared the King, echoing another historic phase: "Only the politicasters are agitating themselves.... It was necessary that the _gâchis_--there is no other word for it--should one day come to an end.... I required an undaunted will which should be equal to the task of carrying my ideas to a happy conclusion.... I am entirely satisfied with M. Franco. _Ça marche_. And it will continue; it must continue for the good of the country.... In no country can you make a revolution without the army. Well, the Portuguese Army is faithful to its King, and I shall always have it at my side.... I have no shadow of doubt of its fidelity." Poor Charles the First!

At the end of January, 1908, a revolutionary plot was discovered, and was put down with severity. After signing some decrees to that end, at one of his palaces beyond the Tagus, the King, with his whole family, returned to Lisbon and the party drove in open carriages from the wharf toward the Necessidades Palace. In the crowd at the corner of the great riverside square, the Praça do Comercio, stood two men named Buiça and Costa, with carbines concealed under their cloaks. They shot dead the King and the Crown Prince, and slightly wounded Dom Manuel. Both the assassins were killed on the spot.

It is said that there was no plot, and that these men acted entirely on their own initiative and responsibility. At any rate, none of the Republican leaders was in any way implicated in the affair. But on All Saints' day of 1910, Buiça's grave shared to the full in the rain of wreaths poured upon the tombs of the martyrs of the new Republic; and relics of the regicides hold an honored place in the historical museum which commemorates the revolution.

Franco vanished into space, and Dom Manuel, aged nineteen, ascended the throne. Had he possessed strong intelligence and character, or had he fallen into the hands of really able advisers, it is possible that the revulsion of feeling following on so grim a tragedy might have indefinitely prolonged the life of the Monarchy. But his mother was a Bourbon, and what more need be said? The opinion in Lisbon, at any rate, was that "under Dom Carlos the Jesuits entered the palace by the back door, under Dom Manuel by the front door." The Republican agitation in public, the revolutionary organization in secret, soon recommenced with renewed vigor; and the discovery of new scandals in connection with the tobacco monopoly and a financial institution, known as the "Credito Predial," added fuel to the fire of indignation. The Government, or rather a succession of Governments, were perfectly aware that the foundations of the Monarchy were undermined; but they seemed to be paralyzed by a sort of fatalistic despair. They persecuted, indeed, just enough to make themselves doubly odious; but they always laid hands on people who, if not quite innocent, were subordinate and uninfluential. Not one of the real leaders of the revolution was arrested.

The thoroughness with which the Republican party was organized says much for the practical ability of its leaders. The moving spirits in the central committee were Vice-Admiral Candido dos Reis, Affonso Costa (now Minister of Justice), Joao Chagas, and Dr. Miguel Bombarda. Simoes Raposo spoke in the name of the Freemasons; the Carbonaria Portugueza, a powerful secret society, was represented by Machado dos Santos, an officer in the navy. There was a separate finance committee, and funds were ample. The arms bought were mostly Browning pistols, which were smuggled over the Spanish frontier by Republican railway conductors. Bombs also were prepared in large numbers, not for purposes of assassination, but for use in open warfare, especially against cavalry. Meanwhile an untiring secret propaganda was going on in the army, in the navy, and among the peasantry. Almost every seaman in the navy, and in many regiments almost all the non-commissioned officers and men, were revolutionaries; while commissioned officers by the score were won over. It is marvelous that so wide-spread a propaganda was only vaguely known to the Government, and did not beget a crowd of informers. One man, it is true, who showed a disposition to use his secret knowledge for purposes of blackmail, was found dead in the streets of Cascaes. On the whole, not only secrecy but discipline was marvelously maintained.

At last the propitious moment arrived. Three ships of war--the _Dom Carlos_, the _Adamastor_, and the _San Raphael_--were in the Tagus to do honor to the President-elect of Brazil, who was visiting King Manuel; but the Government knew that their presence was dangerous, and would certainly order them off again as soon as possible. The blow must be struck before that occurred. At a meeting of the committee on October 2, 1910, it was agreed that the signal should be given in the early morning of October 4th. All the parts were cast, all the duties were assigned: who should call this and that barrack to arms, who should cut this and that railway line, who should take possession of the central telegraph-office, and so forth. The whole scheme was laid down in detail in a precious paper, in the keeping of Simôes Raposo. "You had better give it to me," said Dr. Bombarda, "for I am less likely than you to be arrested. Even if they should think of searching at Rilhafolles [the asylum of which he was director], I can easily hide it in one of the books of my library." His suggestion was accepted, the paper on which their lives and that of the Republic depended was handed to him, and the meeting broke up.

On the morning of Monday, October 3d, all was as quiet in Lisbon as King Carlos himself could have desired. At about eleven o'clock Dr. Bombarda sat in his office at the asylum, when a former patient, a young lieutenant who had suffered from the persecution mania, was announced to see him. Bombarda rose and asked him how he was. Without a word the visitor produced a Browning pistol and fired point blank at the physician, putting three bullets in his body. Bombarda had strength enough to seize his assailant by the wrists and hand him over to the attendants who rushed in. He then walked down-stairs unaided before he realized how serious were his wounds. It soon appeared, however, that he had not many hours to live; and when this became clear to him, he took a paper from his pocketbook and insisted that it should be burned before his eyes. What the paper was I need not say. At about six in the evening he died.

Bombarda was a passionate anticlerical, and his murderer was a fanatical Catholic. The citizens, with whom he was very popular, jumped at the conclusion that the priests had inspired the deed. As soon as his death was announced in the transparency outside the office of _O Seculo_, there were demonstrations of anger among the crowd and some conflicts with the police.

Meanwhile the Revolutionary Committee, to the number of fifty or thereabouts, were sitting in the Rua da Esperança, discussing the question, "To be or not to be." The military members counseled delay, for the Government had ordered all officers to be at their quarters in the various barracks which are scattered over the city. The intention had been to choose a time when most of the officers were off duty and the men could mutiny at their ease; but this plan had for the moment been frustrated. The military view might have carried the day, but for the determination shown by Candido dos Reis, who pointed out that it would be madness to give the Government time to order the ships out of the Tagus. Finally, he turned to the military group, saying, "If you will not go out, I will go out alone with the sailors. I shall have the honor of getting myself shot by my comrades of the army." His insistence carried all before it, and it was decided that the signal should be given, as previously arranged, at one o'clock in the morning.

That evening, at the Palace of Belem, some two miles down the Tagus from the Necessidades Palace, Marshal Hermes da Fonseca, President-elect of Brazil, was entertaining King Manuel at a State dinner. There was an electrical sense of disquiet in the air. Several official guests were absent, and every few minutes there came telephone-calls for this or that minister or general, some of whom reappeared, while some did not. At last the tension got so much on the nerves of the young King that he scribbled on his menu-card a request that the banquet might be shortened; and, in fact, one or two courses were omitted. Then followed the dreary ritual of toasts; and at last, at half-past eleven, Dom Manuel parted from his host and set off in his automobile, escorted by a troop of cavalry. Two bands played the royal anthem. Had he known, poor youth, that he was never to hear it again, there might have been a crumb of consolation in the thought.

It would be impossible without a map to make clear the various phases of the Battle of Lisbon. Nor would there be any great interest in so doing. There was no particular strategy in the revolutionary plans, and what strategy there was fell to pieces at an early point. It is not clear that the signal was ever formally given, but about the appointed hour mutinies broke out in several barracks. In some cases the Royalist officers were put under arrest, in one case a colonel and two other officers were shot. A mixed company of soldiers and civilians, with ten or twelve guns, marched, as had been arranged, upon the Necessidades Palace, to demand the abdication of the King; but they were met on the heights behind the palace by a body of the "guardia municipal," and, after a sharp skirmish, were forced to retire, leaving three of their guns disabled behind them. They retreated to the general rallying-point of the Republican forces, the Rotunda, at the upper end of the mile-long Avenida da Liberdade. This avenue stands to the Rocio very much in the relation of Charing Cross Road to Trafalgar Square: there is a curve at their junction which prevents you from seeing--or shooting--from the one into the other. On reaching the Rotunda, the insurgents learned that the Rocio had been occupied by Royalist troops, from the Citadel of St. George and another barrack, with one or two machine guns, but no cannon.

There, then, the two forces lay, with a short mile of sloping ground between them, awaiting the dawn. Under cover of darkness, a body of mounted gendarmes attempted to charge the insurgent position, but they were repulsed by bombs.