A classroom in a fort: the founding of the Colégio Militar, 1803

On Sunday 3 March 2019 the pupils of the Colégio Militar formed up at the Marquês de Pombal roundabout, at the top of Lisbon's Avenida da Liberdade, and were presented to the President of the Republic, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa. Then the Batalhão Colegial, as the pupils' battalion is called, marched down the avenue behind its standard.2 sources2 sources

Hundreds of people lined the route, and from the pavements came shouts of “Zacatraz”, the greeting of pupils and former pupils. The Defence Minister and the heads of all three armed services were there.1 source1 source

The parade follows the same pattern each year. An Army band plays, and the mounted escort rides horses lent by the Republican National Guard, the GNR. The battalion salutes the monument to the dead of the First World War, goes on through the Restauradores and around the Rossio, and breaks up in the Largo de São Domingos, where a solemn mass follows in the church.2 sources2 sources

The occasion was the school's 216th birthday. The Colégio Militar is a state school run by the Army, teaching children from primary to the end of secondary school; that year it had more than 700 pupils, the sons and daughters of soldiers and civilians. It began with a few boys in the rooms of a coastal fort in Oeiras.2 sources2 sources

In 1803 Portugal was a monarchy ruled from Lisbon by the Prince Regent João, who governed in the name of his mother, Queen Maria I, after her mind failed in 1792. In 1801 the kingdom had fought a short war against Spain, known as the War of the Oranges.2 sources2 sources

António Teixeira Rebelo was the son of farm workers from Cumieira, a village in the municipality of Santa Marta de Penaguião in Trás-os-Montes. He enlisted as a volunteer in the artillery regiment at Valença while still a boy. In 1780 he enrolled at the Royal Naval Academy in Lisbon, and in the Court Artillery Regiment he won every rank up to major by competitive examination.3 sources3 sources

He commanded the artillery of the Portuguese force sent to help Spain against revolutionary France in the Roussillon campaign and was praised for his part in the action of 29 May 1794. Back home he rebuilt the fort at Cascais and the coastal batteries as far as Cabo da Roca. He translated John Muller's Treatise of Artillery from English, printed in 1793, and in the 1801 war he set up Portugal's first companies of horse artillery.2 sources2 sources

In 1802 he was promoted to full colonel and given command of the Regimento de Artilharia da Corte, the Court Artillery Regiment. Its barracks were at the Feitoria, a fort next to the great fortress of São Julião da Barra on the coast at Oeiras, west of Lisbon.2 sources2 sources

The colonel was concerned about the schooling and occupation of the children of his garrison. In March 1803 he opened a school for them in the rooms of the Feitoria fort. It was called the Colégio de Educação do Regimento de Artilharia da Corte, or simply the Colégio da Feitoria, and its teachers were the regiment's own soldiers.3 sources3 sources

At first the state paid nothing. The only money was what the regiment could save from its own accounts, and the teachers were unpaid. Teixeira Rebelo did persuade the government to let his pupils enlist in the regiment, which brought them a soldier's small pay. Later, many civilians obtained his permission to send their sons as well.3 sources3 sources

By 1805 it had become a small boarding school, and that year the Prince Regent visited. Told how hard it was struggling, he granted each pupil 240 réis a day for his keep and the teachers a modest allowance, their first. With that, the colonel kept the school going.2 sources2 sources

Then came Napoleon's wars. A French army invaded Portugal and the royal court sailed for Brazil on 29 November 1807. The regiments quartered at the Feitoria and São Julião were moved away, while the war killed soldiers by the hundred and left their children with nothing. The little school began to take in orphans of men who had died fighting.3 sources3 sources

Some of the first pupils went straight from the Feitoria into the army as officers and fought in those campaigns. Teixeira Rebelo, a brigadier from 1807 and still running the school, lobbied for a proper building and for the state to adopt it, so that it would not die with him.3 sources3 sources

On 24 April 1813 the governors who ran the kingdom while the Prince Regent was in Rio de Janeiro made it an official establishment, for the sons of army and navy officers who could not afford to educate them, with Teixeira Rebelo as its director. An order of 7 January 1814 set its strength at 100 pupils, gave it provisional statutes and moved it to Luz, then on the outskirts of Lisbon.2 sources2 sources

Sources differ on when it became “royal”. O Occidente's centenary report says the 1813 order named it the Colégio Militar and that the name Real Colégio Militar first appeared in the statutes of 1814. The Portugal dictionary and the school itself date the name Real Colégio Militar to 1813.4 sources4 sources

When it reopened there, a dispatch from Rio recorded that twelve new boys had been admitted to bring the number kept at the state's expense up to fifty. New statutes signed in Rio in 1816 doubled the school.1 source1 source

Of the hundred state places, 84 went to the army and 16 to the navy. Teixeira Rebelo directed the college until his death in 1825, apart from seven months in 1821 as Secretary of State for War. After his death the school hung his portrait in one of its rooms, in 1826 according to one entry of the dictionary and in 1828 according to another, and an obituary was read at the ceremony.2 sources2 sources

The building at Luz had been a hospital. The Infanta Maria, daughter of King Manuel I and his third wife, Queen Leonor, founded and endowed it; it was finished in 1618 and run by knights of the Order of Christ, who had a convent next door with a church she had paid for and where she is buried. The earthquake of 1755 brought down the knights' convent and most of their church and badly damaged the hospital, which never took patients again.3 sources3 sources

It was too small almost at once. In 1823 the school rented the neighbouring palace and estate of the Counts of Mesquitela, and in 1835, with numbers rising again, it moved to Rilhafoles, the former house of the Vincentian fathers in Lisbon. A decree of 14 November 1848 sent it to the convent at Mafra, and Rilhafoles became a mental hospital.2 sources2 sources

Mafra was far from Lisbon and hard to reach, and officers and military widows with sons at the school petitioned parliament to bring it back. It returned to the restored building at Luz in 1859 (1858 in the dictionary). A reform of 1870 turned it into a school for infantry and cavalry officers and sent it back to Mafra, which had more room; the plan was suspended within months and revoked as too expensive, and in 1873 the school came home to Luz for good.3 sources3 sources

By the centenary of March 1903 the Real Colégio Militar was a well-known Lisbon boarding school. Old boys, some of them by then at the top of the army, came to a banquet in the refectory, the pupils staged two comedies in the school theatre, and King Carlos unveiled a bust of the founder. After the Republic was proclaimed in October 1910 it dropped the word “Real” and became plain Colégio Militar again.2 sources2 sources

The long years at Luz gave the pupils their nickname, the “Meninos da Luz”, the boys of Luz. The school's motto is “Um por todos, todos por um”, all for one and one for all, and its cry is “Zacatraz”, the call by which pupils and old boys make themselves known. Pupils are known by a number as well as a name: in 2016 the commander of the battalion, a final-year boy, was “no. 192”.3 sources3 sources

The coat of arms shows a silver dome topped by the cross of the Order of Christ, for the chapel at Luz, with two lit golden oil lamps above it. Over the shield a gold lion holds a sword and an open book: the lion for the Army officer who founded the school, the book and sword for learning and military ethics.1 source1 source

The school was given the national flag as its standard in 1888, and that standard has collected decorations ever since. The first, in 1921, was the Military Order of the Tower and Sword, whose collar also surrounds the school's arms.2 sources2 sources

For 210 years the Colégio Militar took only boys. Army officers' daughters had their own school, the Instituto de Odivelas, founded in 1900 and housed in the medieval monastery at Odivelas where King Dinis is buried. In 2013, according to a parliamentary question, it had about 300 girls, boarders and day pupils.3 sources3 sources

Portugal was in a financial crisis, and the minister's order spoke of the exceptional constraints of the moment the country was going through. A study ordered by the Defence Minister, José Pedro Aguiar-Branco, found that the Army's three schools had too many staff and too few pupils. Citing figures it had obtained, the newspaper Correio da Manhã reported that together they had 820 pupils and 550 employees, and how much each pupil cost the state.2 sources2 sources

The minister's order of 25 March 2013 set out to make the Colégio Militar a school able to combine “gender integration” with its centuries-old identity, with boarding left to the choice of families. From September 2013 it opened mixed primary classes and admitted girls as day pupils; Odivelas day girls could transfer, and its boarders could keep sleeping at Odivelas and be taken to lessons at Luz. Odivelas would close and a girls' boarding house would be built at Luz.2 sources2 sources

Announcing the plan, the Secretary of State for Defence, Paulo Braga Lino, said the aim was for the school to “become a reference again” without “losing its military character”. The former pupils' association backed the primary classes but objected to the €6.5 million building planned for the Odivelas girls.2 sources2 sources

Parents and old boys fought it. In a joint statement the parents' and former pupils' associations of the Colégio Militar said the minister was preparing to “condemn to destruction” two of the most respected military schools. Their main fear was the loss of boarding: the parents' president said a day-school regime had been tried about eight years earlier and had not worked.2 sources2 sources

Odivelas parents held a vigil at their school against the closure. In April 2013 two members of parliament for the Portuguese Communist Party (PCP), Rita Rato and António Filipe, asked the minister whether the reform rested on any study, why the parents had not been heard, and what would become of the monastery, a national monument since 1910.2 sources2 sources

In February 2014 the minister wrote that the opening of the school year had exceeded expectations, with more pupils and full integration of boys and girls. By 2016 some girls held cadet ranks and commanded platoons, and the Army's director of education called the merger “a success story”, while admitting that some senior officers would rather have kept Odivelas as a separate girls' school.2 sources2 sources

The same year brought a different row. In April 2016 a senior officer at the school told Observador that boys found to be gay were shunned by their classmates and that the school spoke to their parents. Days later the Army Chief of Staff resigned, citing personal reasons, and two months later the officer and the Army's director of education were moved to other posts. New school rules that came into force that year ban discrimination on grounds including sexual orientation.1 source1 source

Hazing by older pupils has also reached the prosecutors. In 2009 eight final-year pupils were charged with ill-treating younger ones. In January 2024 older pupils, most of them in their final year, woke a class of 9th-year pupils before dawn and made them do forced exercises for about two hours; parents told Observador that some needed hospital treatment, which the Army did not confirm. The prosecutor's office opened a criminal inquiry, and the school suspended one pupil for four days, saying it does not tolerate such conduct.1 source1 source

The Colégio Militar calls itself one of the oldest schools in Portugal. It is part of the Army and answers to the Ministry of Defence, but it teaches the national curriculum set by the Ministry of Education, from primary school to the end of secondary school, to children of military and civilian families alike.2 sources2 sources

Its site at Luz now covers 13 hectares, from the seventeenth-century hospital cloisters and the eighteenth-century Mesquitela palace to additions of the Estado Novo dictatorship and recent buildings made for the girls. The name has spread beyond the gates: the Lisbon Metro station beside it is Colégio Militar/Luz.2 sources2 sources

The arguments of 2013 have not gone away. The ministry's study found too few pupils for the staff, the school's defenders saw the merger as a threat to its traditions, and the hazing cases raise questions about life in its boarding houses. The parade on the Sunday nearest 3 March keeps the founder's date in public view.4 sources4 sources