Austria-Hungary breaks off relations with Portugal

On 15 March 1916 Austria-Hungary broke off diplomatic relations with Portugal. This happened six days after Germany declared war on Portugal. Vienna sided with its ally. The next morning the American minister in Lisbon, Thomas Birch, cabled Washington that relations between the two states had been broken off and that the Austro-Hungarian minister was leaving that same day. For this reason some contemporary lists date the rupture to 16 March.

Austria-Hungary had its own interest in the dispute. When on 23 February the Portuguese seized the ships lying in the Tagus, the vessels taken included Austro-Hungarian ships. According to Portuguese researchers, of about 72 ships requisitioned in the ports of Portugal and its colonies only two sailed under the Austro-Hungarian flag, but their crews, like the German ones, were placed under Portuguese supervision.

The rupture of relations passed in the shadow of the German declaration of war, delivered in the form of a long note with a list of charges. The Portuguese government in its official report of January 1917 wrote of it briefly: after the declaration of war by Germany “there soon followed the rupture of diplomatic relations with Austria”. The minister’s departure ended official contacts between Lisbon and Vienna for the rest of the war.

The same day a new government was formed in Lisbon. The cabinet of Afonso Costa, which had governed since November 1915, gave way to a “Sacred Union” government, intended to lead the country through the war.