Sidónio Pais takes power

On 11 December 1917 the Revolutionary Junta, which three days earlier had overthrown the government of Afonso Costa in Lisbon, completed its seizure of power in Portugal. By one decree it removed the President of the Republic, Bernardino Machado, from office, and by another it appointed the chairman of the junta, Sidónio Pais, President of the Ministry, that is prime minister. Pais also took the portfolios of Minister of War and Minister of Foreign Affairs. Both acts appeared in the official gazette the following day, 12 December. Chronologies of the war sometimes state that Pais became prime minister as early as 10 December, but the decree of appointment is dated 11 December. On 10 December the junta formally did no more than dismiss the ministers of the overthrown government.

President Machado refused to the last to recognise the coup. After the fall of the government he tried to find a new prime minister among the moderate republicans, including Manuel de Brito Camacho’s Unionists. On 9 December the junta called on him to step down, but he refused. The next day he was detained in his residence, the Belém Palace. The decree of 11 December not only removed him from office but also ordered him to leave the country until the day on which his term would have expired, that is 5 October 1919. Machado remained under guard at Belém for several more days. On 15 December he left by train via Madrid for France, where he settled in exile.

Both of the other members of the junta joined the new government: António Machado Santos, the hero of the 1910 revolution, took the Ministry of the Interior, and José Feliciano da Costa Júnior the Ministry of Labour. According to the Museum of the Presidency of the Portuguese Republic, the cabinet also included three Unionists, two Centrists and one independent. According to the Portuguese political scientist José Adelino Maltez, Pais had earlier tried to entrust the leadership of the government to someone else, first to the Unionist Bettencourt Rodrigues and then to the independent José Relvas, but without success. With the appointment of the government the junta ceased to exist.

Pais thus concentrated all executive power in his own hands. Parliament had been dissolved, the presidency was vacant, and the overthrown prime minister Afonso Costa was in custody. On 18 December he was taken to the fort at Elvas, from which he was released only in March 1918. The new government’s programme was published on 16 December. It promised a struggle against “demagogy” and the restoration of “the harmony and unity of the fatherland”. The ruling group called the new order the “New Republic”.