The Great Events by Famous Historians

Franco dissolved the Cortes, and on May 10, 1907, published a decree declaring the "administration to be a dictatorship." The Press was strictly gagged, and all the traditional weapons of despotism were polished up. In June, the dictator went to Oporto to defend his policy at a public banquet, and on his return a popular tumult took place in the Rocio, the central square of Lisbon, which was repressed with serious bloodshed. This was made the excuse for still more galling restrictions on personal and intellectual liberty, until it was hard to distinguish between "administrative dictatorship" and autocracy. As regards the adeantamentos

, Franco's declared policy was to make a clean slate of the past, and, for the future, to augment the civil list. In the autumn of that year, a very able Spanish journalist and deputy, Señor Luis Morote, visited most of the leading men in Portugal, and found among the Republicans an absolute and serene confidence that the Monarchy was in its last ditch and that a Republic was inevitable. Seldom have political prophecies been more completely fulfilled than those which Morote then recorded in the Heraldo

of Madrid. Said Bernardino Machado:

"The Republic is the fatherland organized for its prosperity…. I believe in the moral forces of Portugal, which are carrying us directly toward the new order of things…. We shall triumph because the right is on our side, and the moral idealism; peacefully if we can, and I think it pretty sure that we can, since no public force can stop a nation on the march."

Said Guerra Junqueiro, the leading poet of the day: "Within two years there will be no Braganzas or there will be no Portugal….The revolution, when it comes, will be a question of hours, and it will be almost bloodless."

I could cite many other deliverances to the same effect, but one must suffice. Theophilo Braga, the "grand old man" of Portugal, said: "To stimulate the faith, conscience, will, and revolutionary energies of the country, I have imposed on myself a plan of work, and a mandate not to die until I see it accomplished."

The Paris Temps

of November 14, 1907, published an interview with Dom Carlos which embittered feeling and alienated many of his supporters. "Everything is quiet in Lisbon," declared the King, echoing another historic phase: "Only the politicasters are agitating themselves…. It was necessary that the gâchis

—there is no other word for it—should one day come to an end…. I required an undaunted will which should be equal to the task of carrying my ideas to a happy conclusion…. I am entirely satisfied with M. Franco. Ça marche. And it will continue; it must continue for the good of the country…. In no country can you make a revolution without the army. Well, the Portuguese Army is faithful to its King, and I shall always have it at my side…. I have no shadow of doubt of its fidelity." Poor Charles the First!

At the end of January, 1908, a revolutionary plot was discovered, and was put down with severity. After signing some decrees to that end, at one of his palaces beyond the Tagus, the King, with his whole family, returned to Lisbon and the party drove in open carriages from the wharf toward the Necessidades Palace. In the crowd at the corner of the great riverside square, the Praça do Comercio, stood two men named Buiça and Costa, with carbines concealed under their cloaks. They shot dead the King and the Crown Prince, and slightly wounded Dom Manuel. Both the assassins were killed on the spot.

It is said that there was no plot, and that these men acted entirely on their own initiative and responsibility. At any rate, none of the Republican leaders was in any way implicated in the affair. But on All Saints' day of 1910, Buiça's grave shared to the full in the rain of wreaths poured upon the tombs of the martyrs of the new Republic; and relics of the regicides hold an honored place in the historical museum which commemorates the revolution.