It may have been hoped by many both in Portugal and abroad that a new period of well-being for Portugal had begun. It was known that the change had been effected by a small section of Portuguese at Lisbon, but there was apparently some expectation that this small section would gradually extend its influence until the Portuguese Republic and the Portuguese people had indeed become one. It was believed, especially outside of Portugal, that the corrupt and inefficient interplay of party cliques at Lisbon was for ever at an end, and it was also believed, especially in Portugal, that the magic of the name Republic would restore prosperity to the national finances. Better administration, the development of Portugal’s resources, decentralisation, the improvement of conditions in the colonies, these were some of the problems by which the Republicans were confronted. Foreign opinion was prepared to support a régime which should encourage all that was best in the country, peasant and nobleman alike, to co-operate in this huge effort of regeneration. A small minority, of course, refused to co-operate, and the mass of the people relapsed into indifference as it became apparent that the Republicans, far from attracting waverers and conciliating their opponents, intended to rule as one clique more rather than as representatives of the Portuguese nation. The first Parliament of the Republicans, packed with their supporters, the municipal authorities appointed from Lisbon, the electoral law delayed from session to session, the “invention” of the clerical question, were so many indications of the gulf existing between the Republic and the country, and that the Republicans were aware of their isolation.

“Ordem e Trabalho”—“Order and Work” was the motto chosen by the Republic, but with that Portuguese love of words for their own sake or for the sake of appearances, the legend was far removed from the reality. On the very day after the citizens of Lisbon had been requested to give up their arms an assault was organised on the Convent of Quelhas. From the windows or roof of the convent Jesuits were said to have fired repeatedly on the mob, and to reconcile this assertion with the fact that the convent when entered was found to be empty, underground passages were devised for their escape, although in reality such passages did not exist. A few days later more firing was reported from the Jesuit convent at Campolide, described by the Republican Press as a “fortress of murderers and brigands.” In the next few months all the offices of Royalist newspapers were attacked and wrecked, both at Lisbon and in the provinces. At Coimbra and elsewhere the Royalist and the Catholic Clubs were assaulted and plundered.

Apart from the activity of the Carbonarios, the first months of the Republic were marked by an almost equal number of decrees and strikes. Every day the Diario do Governo came out bursting with new decrees, the Provisional Government being determined to make hay before the slower procedure of Parliamentary forms came to check progress.

And nearly every day one or several classes of workmen, taking advantage of the new permission to strike, struck. The strikes were the reality, the decrees were too often theoretical,[63] although some of them, such as that of agricultural credit, 2nd February, 1911, were excellent in principle. O Seculo might speak with complacency of “the evident identification of the people with the Government,” of “the close union between the people and the Government,” but all these decrees and the new Constitution provided by the Constituent Assembly left the people cold. The salaries voted to themselves by its representatives in Parliament did not fill it with enthusiasm: it would have preferred cheaper bacalhau. The octroi duty on certain articles was remitted, but it was soon discovered that while the State lost several hundred contos the price of the articles did not diminish.

The people found but small compensation in the clauses of the Constitution which declared that “The sovereignty belongs essentially to the nation,” or “Members of the Congress are representatives of the nation and not of the clubs which elect them.” Each Parliament was to last three years, and each year was to have one session of four months, from 2nd December to 2nd April. Parliament cannot be dissolved before the end of three years (the result being that the frequent changes of government are not even in appearance connected with the people). Senators are elected for six years, half their number being renewed at the elections to the Chamber of Deputies every three years.

The President of the Republic must be of Portuguese nationality and over thirty-five years of age. He is elected for four years, and cannot be President twice in succession.[64] For the first term of the Presidency (August, 1911, to August, 1915) Dr. Manoel de Arriaga was elected.[65] Ten days after the election of the President, Snr. João Chagas, since the Revolution Portuguese Minister in Paris, formed the first regular Government of the Republic (3rd September, 1911).

It did not last ten weeks; a period which included the first Royalist incursion under Captain Paiva Conceiro. The expedition was not of great importance. The danger to the Republic lay in the possibility of the whole of the North of Portugal rising in favour of the Monarchy; but, although there were many isolated disturbances they just failed to break into a general conflagration. The organisation of Carbonario spies throughout the country and the municipal authorities appointed by the Republicans undoubtedly acted as a powerful check on the inhabitants.

On the 4th of September Snr. Chagas had read his ministerial statement to Parliament. His principal object, he said, was to carry on the work begun by the patriotic and disinterested members of the Provisional Government, and his principal care to reconcile the work initiated by them with the situation of the Republic’s finances. The Republic was to be a régime of conciliation for all Portuguese. Some days later the Premier addressed a large crowd from a window of the Ministerio of the Interior. That day, he said, was the last of the revolutionary period, and began a period of order, peace and work. Unfortunately it did nothing of the kind, and Snr. Chagas was glad to get back to Paris.[66] Snr. Chagas’ promises had been too moderate to satisfy the extremists. Reconciliation of all Portuguese was a large order for the Democrats who were never tired of demonstrating that a Portuguese Royalist was far worse than an assassin.

The new Ministry under the Premiership of Dr. Augusto de Vasconcellos was presented to Parliament on the 16th of November, 1911. Dr. Vasconcellos declared that the Government would be decidedly anti-clerical. He spoke of the urgent need of adapting administration to the actual political condition of the country, and of creating “an atmosphere of tranquillity, peace, and confidence.” The Government received the support of the leaders of the various tendencies of Republican politics which had now crystallised into separate parties. Dr. Affonso Costa, Dr. Antonio José de Almeida, and Dr. Brito Camacho.[67] Yet all was not plain sailing for the Government. Snr. Machado Santos even declared (O Intransigente, 8th December, 1911) that every day that passed discontent increased. And the Seculo, four days later, said: “Unless Portuguese politicians leave little party questions on one side, and devote themselves seriously to the economic development of the country, the country is doomed.” “The Parliamentary system has only served to embarrass for the most part the normal life of the nation” (O Seculo, 12th December, 1911). The Budget, according to the same newspaper (28th December, 1911) was “but a very close copy of those of the Monarchy.” And while it was found impossible to allow sufficient money for the most urgent expenses of schools and roads, the Minister of Marine presented a project to construct three 20,000 ton cruisers, twelve torpedo destroyers, etc., at a total expense of 45,000 contos.

At the end of January, 1912, a revolutionary strike at Lisbon, coinciding with a widely extended strike movement in Alemtejo, was met by the Government with the declaration of martial law, and the arrest of over a thousand suspected Syndicalists and workmen. It was during the weakness of this and the following Government that the Carbonarios were allowed to commit some of their worst outrages with impunity. The “laws of defence” voted by Parliament at the beginning of July on the occasion of the second Royalist incursion were opposed even by O Seculo, which remarked in a leading article (6th July, 1912): “It is certain that we are thus entering upon a purely arbitrary régime which will no doubt be temporary but which nevertheless is a detestable instance of the Parliament abdicating in favour of the Government, of this and succeeding Governments.... The laws to which we are referring are so vague and indefinite that they favour any desire of persecution or vengeance.” Since the Royalist “army” was as negligible as in the autumn of the preceding year the excitement was deliberately fanned by the Carbonarios.

It was during the second Royalist incursion in the summer of 1912 that Dom João d’Almeida, a Portuguese of noble family, serving as an officer in the Austrian army, was taken prisoner. His sentence of six years’ confinement in a solitary cell in the Penitenciaria, to be followed by ten years of deportation to a penal settlement, was severe, but under the circumstances, naturally so. Unfortunately, however, for its credit, the Republic neglected to treat him as an officer and a gentleman.

Persons known to be Royalist were set upon in the street, beaten, wounded, and then arrested as conspirators. But the worst feature was the encouragement given by the Democrat Press to the perpetrators of these outrages. The murder of Lieutenant Soares elicited no protest from the Republican Press. It was not till September that A Republica, organ of the moderate Republicans, found its voice to protest generally against the abuses: “The number of those who dislike or distrust the Republic or have retired from politics is enormous, owing to the narrow persecutions of the demagogues, headed by Dr. Affonso Costa.”[68] On the 16th of June Snr. Duarte Leite constituted another coalition government (Democrats, Evolutionists, Unionists, Independents) in succession to that of Dr. Augusto de Vasconcellos, who remained in office as Minister for Foreign Affairs. Parliament met a little before the date fixed by the Constitution, and the Government was soon in crisis. Discontent was fairly general. An attempted coup d’état by advanced Republicans had occurred at Oporto. No municipal elections had been held since the Revolution.

The statement made to Parliament by the new Finance Minister, Snr. Antonio Vicente Ferreira in November, concerning the financial situation did not mend matters. He admitted that the finances were in a most serious state, and that the deficit would be enormous. “As there can be no doubt,” said O Seculo (4th December, 1912), “that waste is going on, and indeed increasing precisely when it seemed that it should have disappeared, the logical and irrefutable conclusion is: The politicians of the Republic are personally as honest as may be, but as administrators of the public finances they rank with what was bad in the administration under the Monarchy. Is this due to discreditable concessions? to weakness or cowardice? We do not know.”

The Government was demissionario before the end of the year, and after a fortnight of attempts to constitute a moderate Government, Dr. Affonso Costa was sent for by the President and on the 9th of January formed, with a ministry of nonentities, the fifth government of the Republic.[69] This Democrat Ministry maintained itself in office for a little over a year, and during that time some of the worst elements of the Republic were in clover. O Mundo, under the editorship of Snr. França Borges, now became an official organ, and made full use of its new opportunities. In its inquisitorial ardour it spared not even the impartial and moderate Diario de Noticias nor the distinguished poet who was serving the Republic as its Minister in Berne, Snr. Guerra Junqueiro, nor the President of the Republic, nor any moderate person. The Carbonarios, moreover, knew that whatever they did would be supported by the Government, and the Government, by organising new groups of Carbonarios in its special service, saw to it that whatever they did should benefit the Democrat party. The Democrats, the Carbonarios and the Mundo formed a trinity which came very near to being as disastrous to the Republic as, according to the Democrats, the “august trinity of Braganças, Jesuits and English” had been disastrous to Portugal. Dr. Costa, when Premier, declared that he agreed with every word written in O Mundo. It is the creed of the Democrats that outside the Republic there are no Portuguese, and outside the Democrat party there are no Republicans. Those who do not belong to the Democrat party can, therefore, scarcely be good Republicans.

Yet it became impossible in 1913 to continue to ascribe all disturbances to the Royalists. The movements of April and July of that year and the bomb thrown at the procession in honour of Camões on the 10th of June, killing and wounding several persons, were the work of Anarchist and Radical Republican elements. Yellow badges inscribed with the letters R.R. (Republica Radical) were freely distributed, and the number of bombs manufactured in Lisbon was so great that even the Republicans who had exalted the bomb as the instrument of liberty, began to like it less when it was directed against themselves. Well-intentioned Republicans were exhorted to give up the bombs in their possession, and after July hundreds of bombs were thus daily delivered voluntarily or discovered by the police in Lisbon. The Mundo, which continued to harp on the time-honoured theme that the bomb-throwers were Jesuits, must have failed to convince even the most enthusiastic of its readers. Obviously from the point of view of the Republic, Royalist conspiracies were far preferable to these plots and disturbances within the very bosom of the Republic.

As early as February, 1913, on the day after Snr. Machado Santos’ Amnesty Bill had been discussed in Parliament, the Alta Venda of the Carbonarios had posted up a notice in the streets of Lisbon, warning citizens that the Royalists were actively conspiring. Rigorous vigilance, said the notice, is needed; all Portuguese worthy of the name must be at their posts to destroy the miserable plots of the reactionaries. The warning, subsequently explained Snr. Luz Almeida, head of the Carbonarios, was dictated by fear of “the wave of false generosity which was invading the spirit of sincere Republicans.” In other words, there had been serious talk of an amnesty for the political prisoners with which the prisons throughout the country had been crowded since the proclamation of the Republic. In December, 1912, the President addressed a letter to the Government in favour of an amnesty for the prisoners and the recall of the bishops. The Government did not see its way to grant either, but in the following October, on the third anniversary of the Republic, a pardon (indulto) was given to some three hundred among the uneducated prisoners of the Penitenciarias, who sought it as a favour. The injustice was manifest, especially as it was not among the uneducated classes that persons were most likely to have been arrested and imprisoned merely for their Royalist opinions. The “defenders of the Republic” did not intend the cells thus vacant in the Penitenciarias to be left long unoccupied, and they were to be filled by persons of higher social importance than the released peasants.

The “Royalist movement” of October, 1913, was prepared by means of agents provocateurs, with the object of making a clean sweep of all those suspected of being unfriendly to the Republic who were not yet in prison. The most celebrated of these agents, Homero de Lencastre, succeeded in securing the arrest of the Conde de Mangualde and other Royalists, and the movement thus organised became a pretext for arresting Royalists by the score. The proof of the existence of the Royalist movement consisted chiefly in these arrests. The first and last items on the programme of the “White Ants” and Carbonarios were—arrests. The Lisbon police had not been taken into the confidence of these unofficial defenders of the Republic. In the words of the head of the Lisbon police himself: “Neither the Minister of the Interior nor the Civil Governor ever gave the Lisbon police any definite information concerning the ‘conspiracy,’ with which the Oporto police, it was said, was acquainted in all its details. Only vague words: ‘A great affair,’ ‘we are on a volcano,’ ‘the men are working bravely,’ and so forth. Certain indications were received from the police at Oporto, but these indications were very vague: ‘Many people compromised,’ ‘over four hundred officers have signed documents with their own blood,’ and so forth.” Muita gente compromettida: there in three words is the raison d’être of the October “Royalist conspiracy” which succeeded in overcrowding the prisons throughout the country till the Amnesty Bill was passed in the following February. Snr. Azevedo Coutinho almost alone succeeded in escaping, on board an English boat, to the extreme mortification of the Carbonarios.

The partial election of members of the Chamber of Deputies, rendered necessary by the vacancies due to deaths, resignations, and diplomatic and other appointments, were held on the 16th of November, and resulted, as had been foreseen, in the return of Democrats for all but two constituencies. Dr. Affonso Costa thus had a good working majority in the Lower House, which enabled him to dispense with the support of the Unionists, by which he had been kept in office during the earlier part of the year.

The majority in the Senate was, however, anti-Democrat. Thus a difficult situation arose which in the beginning of the following year led to a deadlock between the Government and Parliament. A senator, Snr. João de Freitas, had made certain accusations against the Premier, Dr. Affonso Costa, and the Premier, instead of attending in the Senate to refute the charges, answered by a letter which the acting President of the Senate considered lacking in respect to that House, and therefore refused to read. The Government thereupon in its turn refused to have anything to do with the sittings of the Senate, and it therefore became impossible to carry through certain necessary business such as the passing of the Budget. At the same time the Government was threatened with another general strike, and to avert this it adopted the old method of surrounding the building in which the strikers held their meetings and arresting hundreds of workmen. This did not add to the popularity of the Government, which was already hated owing to the arrest of hundreds of Republicans after the April and July disturbances. The prisoners had been sent partly to Elvas and partly to Angra do Heroisno, since the prisons of the capital were insufficient. The Lisbon Republican Press, which had kept silence concerning the sufferings and ill-treatment of the Royalist prisoners and the condition of the prisons, now told of the sufferings and ill-treatment of the Republican prisoners, of the insanitary state of the prisons, and the badness and insufficiency of the food. A demonstration was actually held in Lisbon against the Government of Dr. Affonso Costa, and a large crowd, organised by Snr. Machado Santos, proceeded to the palace of Belem, where the President of the Republic lives, to show their wish for an amnesty, which the Democrat Government had declared unnecessary and inopportune.

It was evident that Dr. Costa’s days as Premier were numbered, and when the President addressed to him a letter proposing that a government of concentration should be formed in order to grant an amnesty, revise in a more moderate sense the Law of Separation between Church and State, pass the Budget and hold the General Election, the Government resigned (25th January, 1914). A crisis of over a fortnight ensued. The Democrat Government had fallen because it was in opposition to the President of the Republic, to the majority in the Senate, and to public opinion. The President had been on the point of resigning more than once during the last two years as he saw his moderate policy ruthlessly cast aside by the extremists. His definite resolution to resign unless his conciliatory policy were now adopted, produced its effect. But the Democrats still had a strong majority in the Chamber of Deputies, which made it impossible for the Evolutionists or Unionists to form a Ministry. The attempt to constitute a non-party Government also failed. One of the most significant features of the crisis was the extreme unwillingness of the abler Republican politicians to take office. It was not till the 9th of February that Snr. Bernardino Machado was able to constitute a Cabinet, all the new Ministers, with the exception of the Premier, holding office for the first time. The Premier took the portfolio of Foreign Affairs, as in 1910-11, and retained it during three months, until Snr. Freire de Andrade was appointed.

The Ministry came into power with the solemn obligation of immediately introducing an amnesty to Parliament. Ten days later (19th February) it redeemed this promise, and after an all-night sitting the Amnesty Bill was passed in the Chamber of Deputies. The amendments made by the Senate were rejected by the Lower House, and the Bill as voted by the Chamber of Deputies became law on the 21st of February. The terms of the Bill were unsatisfactory and gave rise to much criticism, but its actual results were all that could be desired. All the political prisoners without exception were released, and only eleven “leaders” or “instigators,” among the thousands of prisoners and émigrés, were banished, for a space of ten years. A less creditable clause was that by which all abuses of authority were included in the amnesty. The clause by which all the untried prisoners were to be tried subsequently to their release received widespread criticism, and was often misinterpreted, as was but natural considering its strange and apparently contradictory character. For the law expressly said that these persons even if sentenced to imprisonment could not be imprisoned. Then why try them? it was said. The reason apparently was to have an opportunity to distinguish who were leaders or instigators, and also to show that these persons had not been arrested unjustifiably. Another point more justly criticised was the indefinite power conferred by the law to banish leaders and instigators. Only eleven persons, however, were regarded as leaders, and not allowed to return to Portugal, whereas it was calculated that the amnesty would include some 3,000 persons, of whom 572 were untried prisoners and 1,700 émigrés. The new Government was obliged to walk circumspectly, for although it leaned towards the Democrats and consulted the wishes of Dr. Affonso Costa, it did not content the extremists of that party, and it contented scarcely anyone else. It did not profess to look upon itself as more than a stop-gap ministry, temporarily pouring oil on the troubled waters between a storm and a storm.

It was succeeded by a Democrat ministry, presided over by Snr. Victor Hugo d’Azevedo, Democrat President of the Chamber of Deputies. Regardless of the fact that a great World War was now raging, the thoughts of political parties were bent almost exclusively upon the forthcoming elections. The real reason for the fall of Dr. Bernardino Machado’s Government was that the Democrats were determined to run no risks and to make the elections themselves. For this it was essential to have a Democrat at the Ministry of the Interior, and Dr. Alexandre Braga, considered to have much skill in the political intrigues required, was accordingly appointed Minister of the Interior. Everything seemed to point to an overwhelming return of Democrats at the election. Press, Opposition, public opinion were gagged, telegrams to the foreign Press suppressed. “Ministerial oppression,” said General Pimenta de Castro, “reached such a point that even liberty of thought was strangled.” A packed Democrat Parliament seemed assured. But there were two elements which proved too vigorous to be gagged and bound. One of these was the bitter discontent of the other political parties who saw the elections escaping them; the other was discontent in the Army. When the Democrat Government proceeded to interfere with the Army and, moreover, attempted to hamper the President of the Republic’s action, and to force him into declaring martial law, the cup brimmed over, and a military pronunciamento led to the fall of the Ministry and to the appointment of General Pimenta de Castro.

The Democrats still had a majority in the Chamber of Deputies, but, when they attempted to meet and “confer of their miserable fall,” like Satan and his angels on the burning lake, they found the entrance of the Congresso guarded against them. The country had had enough of their constitutional hypocrisies. From thenceforward General Pimenta de Castro’s Government, welcome to the country, went serenely on its way, although bitterly attacked by the Democrat opposition which even went to the length of spreading abroad in their Press that the Government was responsible for the rise in prices, although it was well known—to all but the ignorant readers of such newspapers—that the pinch of the war would be felt in the Spring. The President of the Republic also came in for his share of foul abuse, owing to the fact that by the firmness and strength of character displayed by him the election hopes of the Democrat party had been ruined. It may well be argued that his action also saved the Republic, since it is difficult to believe that the Republic could have lasted many months longer in the rarefied atmosphere produced by the Democrats in power. There was a general breath of relief throughout the country, and by an odd paradox this new Government born of a military movement, this “dictatorship,” this “tyranny,” proved the most moderate Government that Portugal had seen since the Revolution of 1910. With equal moderation and firmness one measure after another was enacted in order to bring about the long-dreamt reconciliation of all Portuguese. Churches were restored to the use of the faithful, officials arbitrarily dismissed were restored to their posts, the “White Ants” were sent about their business, their so-called “Committee of Public Safety” abolished, and finally in April (1915) a general amnesty emptied the prisons and allowed the eleven exiles of the 1914 amnesty to return to Portugal.

O but, say the Democrats, it was all so unconstitutional! Such a dictatorship! Of course it was unconstitutional. The Constitution has been so ordered that the Democrats having installed themselves in power—and they had been in power in fact if not in name since the Revolution—could never be dislodged by constitutional means. Their majority in the Chamber of Deputies was secure, their majorities in the town councils throughout the country, and in the officials responsible for returning the new deputies equally secure. It became necessary to dissolve these bodies, by force if they would not go willingly. But the country which had suffered from four years of constitutional tyranny was delighted to have a little unconstitutional moderation. In vain the Democrats cried out that it was a dictatorship worse than the dictatorship of Snr. João Franco. If, answered common-sense opinion, the Government which empties the prisons, maintains order and acts in every respect so fairly and moderately, is a dictatorship, then may all succeeding Governments be tarred with the dictatorial brush. Only so will the future of the Republic and of Portugal be secure. It is quite true that the situation in some respects resembled that of Snr. João Franco’s Government, and it is a striking and bitter comment on the seven intervening years that to find a government as good as that of General Pimenta de Castro one has to go back to that of Snr. João Franco. They are like two rocks, and the seven years between a sea of slush and molten fire.

Scarcely had these words been written when the guns of the fleet early on the 14th of May announced the determination of Democrats and Carbonarios, having found no support in public opinion, to overthrow by force the Government of General Pimenta de Castro. For two days Lisbon was cut off from the outside world and bombarded from the river. Scores of persons lost their lives, hundreds were wounded. The rebels triumphed. General Pimenta de Castro was arrested. The Democrat Press had done its work well. The sergeants in the army had been encouraged to mutiny against their superior officers, and the officers who resisted the mutiny of the sailors were arrested or killed. The commander of the Vasco da Gama was shot dead, the commander of the Almirante Reis died some days later of his wound. The Democrat revolutionary committee nominated a new government with Snr. João Chagas as Premier. The new Premier was, however, shot by the Senator João de Freitas when on his way to Lisbon, and, although not mortally wounded, resigned the premiership some days later. This was the only contretemps in the Democrats’ plans. Otherwise their victory was complete, and they at once set about making the elections. In certain States of South America one has heard of such proceedings, of a party winning its way to power by means of civil war. (The peaceful and exceptionally well-governed country of Chile, ignorantly confused with the pungent red Chili pepper of the Portuguese Republic, naturally resented any such comparison.) But even over those States the World War had thrown a steadying influence. That a party in Portugal should take this opportunity to copy Mexico stamps that party more effectively than would reams of comment. It suffices to state the fact, and the Democrat party will always be known as the party which, under cover of the World War, raised itself to power over the dead bodies of its fellow-countrymen. The object of the Revolution of the 14th of May, say the Democrats, was to restore the Constitution. The falseness of this argument will be obvious to any but the wilfully obtuse when it is remembered that the general election was fixed for the 6th of June, and that they would therefore in twenty days have had constitution to their hearts’ content. As a result of their proceedings, Dr. Arriaga, the moderate President of the Republic, resigned, accompanying his resignation with a very dignified protest addressed to Parliament. The Democrat members of Parliament thereupon chose the Democrat, Dr. Theophilo Braga, to succeed him (29th May, 1915). General Pimenta de Castro was deported to the Azores and dismissed from the Army. Were not the injustice of it a bitter shame and humiliation to all true Portuguese, this persecution as dictators and tyrants of two old men who have been Liberals and Republicans for over a generation, and have done and suffered so much for the Republic (but not for the Carbonario-Democrat clique) would be highly diverting.