Portugal in the First World War

Portugal, England’s ally since the fourteenth century, fought the Germans in its African colonies from 1914, but it was formally at war only from 9 March 1916, when, after the seizure of German ships, Germany declared war on it. The republican government sent an expeditionary corps to the Western Front, which was shattered in the Battle of the Lys on 9 April 1918, while in Mozambique the Portuguese suffered painful defeats at the hands of Lettow-Vorbeck’s forces. The war, which was meant to strengthen the young republic, divided the country and greatly weakened it.

The road to war

Portugal was bound to England by an alliance concluded in 1373. In the nineteenth century London cared less and less about it, although for Lisbon it remained the cornerstone of foreign policy. In 1890 a dispute over the partition of southern Africa ended in a British ultimatum, and in October 1910 a republic was proclaimed in Portugal, which cooled relations with Britain further. In 1898 and 1913 Britain and Germany negotiated the division of Portugal’s African possessions in case Lisbon defaulted on its debts.

A war before the war

In August 1914 the government declared that the country would honour its obligations as an ally, but at London’s request it declared neither neutrality nor entry into the war. Reinforcements sailed to Angola and Mozambique. In Africa the fighting began quickly. On 24 August a German detachment attacked the Maziua post in Mozambique, and in October, after the Naulila incident, troops from German South West Africa raided Portuguese posts in Angola. On 18 December 1914 the Germans defeated the Portuguese at Naulila itself, and the Portuguese retreat set off a rising of the Kwanyama people. For months southern Angola slipped out of Lisbon’s control.

On 23 November 1914 parliament authorised the government to take part in the war at Britain’s side “when and as it deems necessary”, but disputes over the war broke up one cabinet after another. In January 1915 power passed to General Pimenta de Castro, who governed without parliament. On 14 May 1915 the navy and armed civilians overthrew his dictatorship, and Afonso Costa’s Democrats, supporters of entering the war, returned to power.

Entry into the war

At the beginning of 1916 Britain needed ships. On 23 February, at its request, the Portuguese seized 36 German and Austrian ships that had lain in the Tagus off Lisbon since the start of the war, and in the following days more in other ports of the country and its colonies. On 9 March 1916 the German minister, Friedrich Rosen, handed over a note in which Germany declared itself to be at war with Portugal. On 15 March Austria-Hungary followed Germany’s lead. The same day the Sacred Union government of António José de Almeida was formed, with Costa as finance minister.

The ruling republicans went to war deliberately. They hoped that a country that shed blood for its ally would take its seat at the peace table and save its empire, and that taking part in the war would strengthen the young republic, which Europe regarded with reserve. The war in Europe was not wanted, however, by monarchists, Catholics, a large part of the officer corps and many workers, who were already feeling the rising cost of living.

The war in Africa

In Africa the Portuguese went into action at once. Around 10 April 1916 they occupied without a fight the Kionga Triangle at the mouth of the Rovuma, which the Germans had taken from them in 1894. An attempt to advance into German East Africa, however, ended in a costly failure and a disorderly retreat. On 25 November 1917 General Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck crossed the Rovuma, overran the Portuguese camp at Ngomano and captured weapons, ammunition and medicine that allowed him to fight on. In July 1918 his troops routed the Portuguese and British garrison of Nhamacurra. Only at the end of September 1918, after ten months in Mozambique, did they return to German East Africa.

The war also shook Portuguese rule in the colonies. From early 1915 the Portuguese were putting down risings in Angola, and from 1917 they broke out in Mozambique too. The most dangerous was the rising in the former kingdom of Barué on the Zambezi, provoked by excessive taxation and the forced recruitment of porters for the army.

The Portuguese in France

On 7 August 1916 parliament accepted the British invitation to take part in the war in Europe. Under the convention with Britain the Portuguese Expeditionary Corps was to fight under British command, as part of the First Army. It numbered about 55,000 infantrymen. On 2 February 1917 the corps’ 1st Brigade landed at Brest, and by the end of October just under 60,000 soldiers had been sent to France.

On the night of 3–4 June 1917 the Germans attacked the Portuguese trenches for the first time near Neuve-Chapelle. From November the corps held its own sector of the front. Only two divisions ever reached France, however, and in the winter morale sank because replacements were lacking: British ships were by then carrying Americans across the Atlantic. Soldiers were kept in the front line for up to six months, and on 4 April 1918 the exhausted 7th Infantry Battalion refused to return to the front.

On 9 April 1918, in fog, the German Sixth Army struck the sector of the exhausted 2nd Division of General Manuel Gomes da Costa, which the British were to relieve on the night of 9–10 April. Within a few hours the division ceased to exist as an organised force. That day the Portuguese lost about 7,000 men, including about 6,000 prisoners. So began the Battle of the Lys, and the Portuguese corps practically ceased to exist as a fighting force. The remaining soldiers were used mainly to build trenches and fortifications, and when some battalions were to return to the front in the autumn, mutinies broke out.

The home front

The war, which was meant to strengthen the republic, divided the country. On 8 December 1917, after three days of fighting in Lisbon, Costa’s government fell, and power was seized by the junta of Major Sidónio Pais, a former minister in Berlin and an opponent of sending troops to the Western Front. Pais removed President Bernardino Machado, and in April 1918 won the country’s first direct election for head of state. On 14 December 1918 a former sergeant shot him dead at Rossio station in Lisbon.

The country felt the war at sea and in the kitchen too. German submarines shelled Funchal on Madeira in December 1916 and again in December 1917, and Ponta Delgada in the Azores in July 1917. They sank 96 Portuguese ships. According to demographic studies food shortages cost the lives of 82,000 civilians, and the Spanish flu 138,000.

The end of the war and the cost

According to the figures reported to the International Labour Office, Portugal mobilised 100,000 men. The number of dead differs from source to source: from 7,000 to 8,000 killed, most of them in Africa, to about 12,000 if African soldiers in the Portuguese ranks are counted. Research based on the online Memorial to the Fallen, launched in 2014, confirms at least 6,232 deaths, and with the estimated deaths of African carriers gives 8,787 dead, including 2,103 in France and 5,961 in Mozambique.

At the peace conference Portugal received from Germany only Kionga, its sole territorial gain of the war. The republic emerged from the war weakened, and in May 1926 a military coup overthrew it.