Kaiser Wilhelm II in Lisbon, 1905: three days on the way to Tangier

The liner Hamburg tied up in the Tagus on the afternoon of Monday 27 March 1905. King Carlos I set off from the Navy Arsenal in the royal brigantine, the ceremonial barge, while the warships in the river fired their salutes. With him went the crown prince, Luís Filipe, the king's brother, Infante Afonso, the ministers of the navy and of foreign affairs, the German minister and consul, and the agents of the Hamburg-America Line, which owned the ship.1 source1 source

After greetings and introductions on board, Kaiser Wilhelm II, the German emperor, came ashore. A procession of boats like the one that had landed Queen Alexandra of Britain a few days earlier carried him to the Cais das Colunas, the marble steps at the river end of the Terreiro do Paço. It was a fine spring day. A Porto chronicler timed the landing at ten past four.1 source1 source

In the royal pavilion on the square, the British emblems and flags put up for the queen had been replaced with German ones. The Council of State, the ministers, the city council with its standard and officers of the army and navy waited there. The Kaiser wore the uniform of a Portuguese cavalry regiment of which he was honorary colonel; Carlos and Afonso wore those of honorary officers of a German infantry regiment. On the quay the German colony of Lisbon, and part of Porto's, cheered their emperor, and pupils of the German school lined up to watch.2 sources2 sources

Then the coaches rolled out. Eight state carriages, each known by the name of a past member of the royal family, carried the two suites west. The Kaiser and Carlos rode in the last, João V's, behind about 300 mounted municipal guards and ahead of a cavalry brigade of lancers and troopers. They went up the Rua do Ouro to the Chiado, down the Rua do Alecrim to the river, and along the Aterro and the Rua da Junqueira to the palace at Belém. The crowd along the way, the Porto chronicler wrote, was beyond counting.1 source1 source

Two 1905 accounts, the Porto chronicle and the Lisbon review O Occidente, end the procession at Belém, where Queen Amélia was waiting at about six. A caption in a photograph album published in 1933 has the coach heading instead for the Necessidades, the king's own palace.3 sources3 sources

The arrival was filmed. The Cinemateca Portuguesa keeps the result: a silent film of just over a minute, directed by Manuel Maria da Costa Veiga for the company Portugal Film.1 source1 source

Portugal in 1905 was a constitutional monarchy. Carlos had been king since his father, Luís, died in October 1889. The country was poor and in debt, but it still held a large African empire: Angola on the west coast, Mozambique on the east, and smaller colonies in Africa and Asia.2 sources2 sources

Its oldest friend was Britain. The alliance went back to the fourteenth century, but it had nearly broken in January 1890, when a British ultimatum forced Portugal to give up its claim to the lands between Angola and Mozambique. Germany had since become a neighbour in Africa. German South West Africa bordered Angola, and German East Africa bordered Mozambique.2 sources2 sources

In August 1898 Britain and Germany signed conventions setting out how they would share the security for any loan to Portugal, customs house by customs house, and how they would keep other powers out if Portugal ever lost Angola, Mozambique or Timor. The convention on the colonies was secret. In October 1899 Britain separately promised to defend Portugal's colonies, a story told in our article on the secret declaration of that year.1 source1 source

Royal visitors were one way to read where Lisbon stood. Edward VII of Britain came in April 1903 and Alfonso XIII of Spain in December 1903. Queen Alexandra, Edward's wife, was in Portugal from 22 to 25 March 1905, two days before the Kaiser. The French president, Émile Loubet, followed in October.1 source1 source

In Germany the visit was presented as overdue courtesy. King Luís had been the first monarch from outside Germany to call on Wilhelm in Berlin and Potsdam after he came to the throne in the summer of 1888, and Carlos had since visited Germany too. The German weekly Die Grenzboten wrote that the court and people of Lisbon had waited years for the return visit, above all those who wanted more trade with Germany.1 source1 source

The Kaiser travelled on a passenger liner. For this, his second cruise to the Mediterranean in two years, he sailed from Cuxhaven on the Hapag liner Hamburg, with a large military suite and a party of personal friends. His suite rode in the first six coaches of the Lisbon procession, each with Portuguese escorts: generals von Plessen, von Scholl and Count Hülsen, the admirals von Müller and Baron von Senden, and Baron von Schoen, Germany's minister in Copenhagen, who sailed as the Foreign Office's representative.3 sources3 sources

The first night belonged to the Ajuda palace. Carlos lived at the Necessidades, a converted convent with no room big enough for a state banquet, so large dinners were held at Ajuda, the home of his mother, Queen Maria Pia. The Diário Illustrado reported two long tables of 90 in the Sala da Ceia, the supper room, and a third table of 70 in the next room.1 source1 source

The household's own paperwork, studied by the architectural historian Ana Sofia Pinto, gives the scale. The pantry order for the night lists a state table of 220 covers and a second table for 600 more people, and 30 musicians of the royal orchestra played. The kitchen order ran to nearly 800 kilograms of beef, veal and pork, more than 300 birds and 3,600 eggs.1 source1 source

On 28 March the Kaiser, in the uniform of his Portuguese regiment, visited the cavalry barracks on the Calçada da Ajuda and presented the regiment with his portrait in oils. That day the cavalry, a rifle battalion and the artillery put on exercises for the two monarchs at the Belém racecourse. In the course of the visit he also went to the Casa Pia orphanage, the city hall, the Jerónimos monastery and the São Carlos opera house, and attended a gala dinner at the German legation.2 sources2 sources

On the 29th the royal family took him to Sintra, in the hills west of Lisbon, and gave him lunch at the royal palace in the town. The guests included the Marquis of Soveral, Portugal's minister in London and a close friend of Edward VII. Soveral was on the quay again the next day, with Queen Amélia and Queen Maria Pia, when the Kaiser went back on board.2 sources2 sources

Not everything went smoothly. At dinner on the first night Carlos gave his speech in French. Wilhelm answered in German.1 source1 source

Schoen blamed poor preparation. The two monarchs had been alone in the state coach for hours without settling the toasts, and the German legation had not found out in advance what the king meant to say, so the Kaiser had to reply on the spot. He may also have been irritated, Schoen thought, because a Portuguese wireless station had refused a German telegram to the Empress shortly before he arrived.1 source1 source

Schoen talked him into a repair. At the Geographical Society the next day the Kaiser gave a hastily composed speech in French about the great Portuguese navigators and the colonial achievements of Portugal and Germany. The coolness, Schoen wrote, then changed to southern warmth and enthusiasm, and the rest of the stay passed off quite harmoniously.1 source1 source

The visit all Europe was discussing was the next one. Newspapers had been reporting that the Kaiser would land at Tangier, the Moroccan port where the foreign legations sat. On 22 March the French foreign minister, Delcassé, told the British ambassador in Paris that he could not understand what Germany wanted, and that the visit was raising expectations among the Moroccans.2 sources2 sources

Bülow wanted the landing. By his own account he advised the Kaiser by letter to go ashore and to say simply that he was visiting the Sultan as an independent sovereign and hoped Morocco would stay open to the peaceful competition of all nations. Wilhelm agreed without enthusiasm. Schoen, whose task on board was to keep him from wavering, found that he had meant only to give his guests a glimpse of Muslim life and to stay on the ship himself.2 sources2 sources

Lisbon added to his doubts. There he was told that Tangier's streets were too narrow for a carriage, so he would have to ride an unfamiliar horse from the harbour to the German legation on the far side of town, and that an east wind could make it impossible to land at all. His left arm was crippled, as he later wrote himself, and the strange horse worried him. Now and then, Schoen recalled, he seemed ready to back out.2 sources2 sources

The man on hand to stiffen him was Count Tattenbach, Germany's minister in Lisbon. He had served in Morocco before, had fought diplomatic battles with the French there, and sailed on with the Kaiser as the expert on the place. On 30 March the Hamburg left Lisbon.3 sources3 sources

On 31 March the liner anchored off Tangier in a stiff east wind. The German chargé d'affaires, Kühlmann, came out in a sailing boat and climbed the rope ladder in full lancer's uniform. When an aide reported that anyone who did not mind getting wet could land, the Kaiser went ashore, mounted a white Arab horse that shied at his helmet, and rode through packed, noisy streets to the legation. Die Grenzboten put the visit at three hours.3 sources3 sources

Lisbon's papers covered the two royal visits back to back, Britain and Germany separated by a single sheet of newsprint. Writing in the illustrated weekly Ilustração Portuguesa on 27 March, the journalist and historian Rocha Martins compared Portuguese hospitality to that of an Arab in his tent, who would spread on the ground the myrrh and aloes he meant to sell to honour a guest, even if it ruined him. He also remarked on the city's rush to redecorate.1 source1 source

O Occidente, the city's long-running illustrated review, preferred a flattering reading. In its issue of 20 March its founder, Caetano Alberto, wrote that the Kaiser wanted to know at close quarters this intimate ally of great England, which wished to cooperate with Britain in what it called the civilisation of Africa. In Porto, the Catholic fortnightly O Progresso Catholico called him the great military arbiter of Europe.2 sources2 sources

Memory was cooler. When Joshua Benoliel's photographs of these years were gathered in 1933 in the album Arquivo Gráfico da Vida Portuguesa, its text called the Kaiser a hard military figure who won no sympathy, and counted his visit among those that echoed furthest abroad, because of the visitor and of a politics in which the Great War was already taking shape.1 source1 source

Tangier turned a grievance into a crisis. Germany pressed for an international conference on Morocco, and in June 1905 Delcassé resigned. Bülow sent Count Tattenbach from Lisbon to Fez, the Sultan's capital, on a special mission to encourage him to refuse French demands and to invite the powers that had signed the Madrid convention to a conference.2 sources2 sources

Portugal was among those invited, and it looked to London. On 7 June 1905 its foreign minister, Villaça, told the British minister in Lisbon that he would give no view on the invitation until he had heard from Portugal's minister in London.1 source1 source

The conference met at Algeciras, in southern Spain, from 16 January to 7 April 1906. Portugal's delegation included its minister at Tangier, Count Martens Ferrão. In February the Portuguese representative told Britain's delegate, Sir Arthur Nicolson, that his instructions were to follow Britain on the police question and that he was ready to vote for the French proposal if asked. The General Act was signed on 7 April 1906. It kept Morocco formally independent, but Germany came out more isolated than before.2 sources2 sources

Wilhelm did not forget who had sent him ashore. On 11 August 1905, when Bülow offered to resign over the treaty Wilhelm had just signed with the Tsar at Björkö, the Kaiser wrote from Wilhelmshöhe begging him to stay, and reminded him of Tangier.2 sources2 sources

In his memoirs Bülow called some of the letter pure invention, but wrote that the entire Tangier action had been done at his instigation. In Lisbon, Loubet's visit followed in October. Less than three years later, on 1 February 1908, Carlos and Luís Filipe were shot dead as their carriage turned out of the Terreiro do Paço, close to the quay where they had greeted the Kaiser.3 sources3 sources

The visit sat inside a rivalry that outlived it. A British Foreign Office memorandum of January 1907 by Eyre Crowe looked back on the 1898 deal with open distaste, and Britain and Germany reopened talks on Portugal's colonies before the First World War. A new agreement was initialled in August 1913 but never signed.2 sources2 sources

Portugal kept its colonies, and its choice of side held. When Germany declared war on Portugal in March 1916, Berlin accused the Portuguese government of regarding itself as Britain's vassal.1 source1 source

For Lisbon the visit also left a record. The minute of film in the Cinemateca and Benoliel's photographs of the arrival, the barracks, the racecourse and the quay show a court that could still stage a three-day pageant for an emperor, less than three years before its king was killed.3 sources3 sources