Azevedo Coutinho becomes Prime Minister of Portugal

On 12 December 1914 Vítor Hugo de Azevedo Coutinho, a naval officer and president of the Chamber of Deputies, became Prime Minister of Portugal. He replaced Bernardino Machado, whose non-party government had just fallen. The cabinet consisted almost entirely of members of the Democratic Party, the strongest group in parliament.

The search for a prime minister

President Manuel de Arriaga wanted to keep the government above party divisions. According to contemporary accounts he offered the premiership to several well-known republicans, including the president of the Senate, Anselmo Braamcamp Freire, and Machado Santos, one of the leaders of the 1910 revolution. All of them refused. António José de Almeida, leader of the Evolutionists, also did not want a coalition government, and the Unionist Brito Camacho opposed both a coalition of all parties and a non-party cabinet. Arriaga therefore turned to the parliamentary majority, the Democratic Party.

A sailor from Macau

Azevedo Coutinho was born in 1871 in Macau. He served in the navy from his youth, specialised in hydrography and in the 1890s took part in the campaigns in Mozambique. He belonged to the Democrats but was not a front-rank politician. His opponents believed that the government was in reality run from the back seat by Afonso Costa, the party’s leader.

The new prime minister kept the navy ministry for himself. Alexandre Braga became Minister of the Interior, Álvaro de Castro Minister of Finance, Augusto Soares Foreign Minister and Alfredo Rodrigues Gaspar Minister of the Colonies. The opposition quickly dubbed the line-up “the miserables of Victor Hugo”, a play on the prime minister’s names and on the novel Les Misérables. The cabinet was also called “Alexandre’s cellar”, after the first name of the new interior minister.

A government under fire

The Democrats’ return to power meant that they would organise the coming elections. It also gave them a chance to steer the country towards active participation in the war, which they had been seeking since August. The moderate republicans regarded the new cabinet as a threat from the outset. When the government presented itself to parliament, the Chamber of Deputies gave it a vote of confidence by 63 votes to 39, but the Senate passed a motion of no confidence by 27 votes to 26. A few days later Machado Santos and the Unionist deputies resigned their seats in protest.

The Azevedo Coutinho cabinet lasted only until 25 January 1915, making it one of the shortest governments of the First Republic. It fell after a protest by army officers, when President Arriaga entrusted power to General Joaquim Pimenta de Castro. Azevedo Coutinho remained in politics. He was twice more Minister of the Navy, and in 1924–1926 High Commissioner in Mozambique. He died in Lisbon in 1955.