Fall of Pimenta de Castro's government

In the night of 13–14 May 1915 an uprising broke out in Lisbon against the government of General Joaquim Pimenta de Castro. Since January the general, appointed by President Manuel de Arriaga, had ruled without parliament and by decree. The plot was prepared by people linked to the Democratic Party of Afonso Costa, especially a group of young officers known as the Young Turks. The leaders of the movement included Álvaro de Castro, Alfredo de Sá Cardoso and José Norton de Matos, and command of the naval forces was taken by the naval officer Leote do Rego. The insurgents justified the revolt as a defence of the 1911 constitution, which the president and the general had allegedly violated by preventing Congress, that is, parliament, from sitting.

Warships on the Tagus

At about 3 a.m. Leote do Rego reached the cruiser “Vasco da Gama”, anchored in the Tagus, by boat and took control of her. Other warships lying in the river followed her over to the uprising. At the same time sailors, soldiers, members of the Fiscal Guard and the Republican National Guard, and armed civilians from the secret society Carbonária seized the Naval Arsenal and handed out the weapons stored there. In the early morning armed civilians, supported by fire from the ships, also attacked the Army Arsenal and took it after several hours. According to Portuguese historians more than 7,000 people in all fought on the side of the uprising.

The government had nothing to defend itself with. Most of the Lisbon garrison remained passive, and some officers had been negotiating with the insurgents since the morning. The 16th Infantry Regiment of Colonel Gomes da Costa went into action and surrounded the Naval Arsenal, but came under fire from the ships’ guns. Government artillery tried to shell the ships from the hills of the city but was beaten off. In the afternoon, in the face of the enemy’s superiority, General Pimenta de Castro handed the resignation of his cabinet to the president. Power in Lisbon was taken over by a revolutionary junta, called the Constitutional Junta, made up of the leaders of the uprising.

Bloody days

The fall of the government did not end the fighting. Shooting went on in Lisbon until 17 May, and armed groups of civilians linked to the Carbonária and the Formiga Branca (“White Ant”) gang settled scores with their opponents. More than twenty policemen and cadets were killed without trial, and police stations, clubs and the offices of newspapers sympathetic to the general, to the monarchists and to Machado Santos, the hero of the 1910 revolution who had supported the dictatorship, were attacked. The movement was also accompanied by clashes in Porto and other towns. The number of victims is uncertain. The figures most often given are about 200 killed and about a thousand wounded, but some tallies speak of just over a hundred dead. It was the bloodiest armed rising in Lisbon in the twentieth century, with more victims than the revolution that overthrew the monarchy in 1910. Rumours spread in the city that Spanish warships were sailing towards the Portuguese coast. According to some accounts Spain, Great Britain and France did indeed send vessels to protect their citizens.

The war in the background

The dispute was not only about the constitution but also about the war. Pimenta de Castro was opposed to Portugal taking part in the fighting in Europe and halted the preparation of the division that was to fight alongside the Allies. The Democrats, who as early as November 1914 had induced Congress to authorise the government to take part in the war, accused the general of favouring Germany and the monarchists, and even of readiness to make concessions to Spain. Historians who judge the general’s government more leniently point out that the Democrats also wanted to regain control of the state before the elections the government had announced for June. According to some historians, one of the junta’s aims was to bring Portugal into the war on the side of the Entente.

Pimenta de Castro was soon arrested and exiled to the Azores, as was Machado Santos. Immediately after their victory the leaders of the uprising began looking for a new head of government, and President Arriaga, blamed for introducing the dictatorship, found himself in a hopeless position.