14 May 1915: the navy rising that brought down Pimenta de Castro

In the early hours of 14 May 1915 a naval commander named Jaime Leote do Rego took over the cruiser Vasco da Gama, anchored in the Tagus off Lisbon. Her captain, Francisco de Assis Camilo, was struck down on his own deck and killed. Soon the cruiser and a second warship, the Almirante Reis, were exchanging fire with army batteries ashore.3 sources3 sources

Ilustração Portuguesa, the illustrated weekly of the newspaper O Século, rushed out a page while the shooting was still going on. The revolt, it reported, had broken out before dawn on the 14th, “sending a shudder of terror through all Lisbon at the roar of the cannon and the bursting of shells over the houses of the city”.1 source1 source

The target was not a king. Portugal had been a republic for four and a half years, and the government under fire was led by a republican general, Joaquim Pimenta de Castro. The men who rose against him were republicans too. In a little over a day his government had fallen, and two days after the rising the President of the Republic who had appointed him wrote his resignation.3 sources3 sources

The Republic proclaimed in October 1910 soon split. By 1912 its leaders had formed three parties: Afonso Costa's Democrats, heirs to the old Portuguese Republican Party and the strongest of the three, António José de Almeida's Evolutionists and Manuel de Brito Camacho's Unionists. The President, the veteran republican Manuel de Arriaga, elected by Congress in 1911, kept trying to form governments above party.1 source1 source

The First World War deepened the split. Every party agreed on defending Angola and Mozambique, and troops sailed for both in September 1914. The Democrats wanted more: to fight beside Britain in Europe, as a chance to show that Portugal was more than a British protectorate. The Unionists wanted to stay out of the European war, and the Evolutionists to follow Britain's lead.2 sources2 sources

In December 1914 Costa handed the government to a Democrat and naval officer, Vítor Hugo de Azevedo Coutinho. The Senate rejected his name, and Lisbon wits called his cabinet “Os Miseráveis”, a pun on the novelist Victor Hugo. General elections, due in 1914, had been postponed indefinitely since September.3 sources3 sources

In January 1915 the army boiled over. After a major, Craveiro Lopes, was moved from his post, allegedly for political reasons, officers of the Lisbon garrison protested from 20 to 22 January in what became known as the Movimento das Espadas, the movement of the swords. Pimenta de Castro was among the officers who protested. Cavalry officers marched towards the Belém palace to hand their swords to the President and were arrested. That afternoon Machado Santos, the hero of the Rotunda barricade in 1910, took his own sword to Belém.3 sources3 sources

Arriaga used the crisis to force the government out on 24 January. The next day he installed his friend Pimenta de Castro, the most senior general in the army and a republican from the days of the monarchy, at the head of a non-party government charged with calming the country and holding fair elections. Seven of its nine ministries went to military officers.3 sources3 sources

The general freed imprisoned officers, lifted newspaper suspensions, ended telegraph censorship and eased the pressure on the Catholic Church. An amnesty for political crimes let monarchist leaders such as Paiva Couceiro, who had led armed raids against the Republic from Spain, come home. Elections were set for 6 June (Maltez gives 3 June).3 sources3 sources

Then he closed parliament. He held that Congress, elected in 1911, had outlived its mandate. On 4 March, when its members came to sit, the Republican National Guard (GNR) and the police kept them out of the São Bento palace. It was the first time a government of the Republic had shut parliament, and from then on people spoke of a dictatorship.3 sources3 sources

Ninety members of Congress met instead at the Palácio da Mitra, in Loures, north of Lisbon. On Costa's motion they declared the general's appointment unconstitutional. Lisbon's city council refused to apply the government's decrees, and 49 of the country's 298 councils followed; the government replaced them with appointees.2 sources2 sources

The spring grew violent. A Democrat deputy, Henrique Cardoso, was murdered in Lisbon on his way to a party meeting on 28 February, and on 6 March crowds looted eleven bakeries over the price of bread. In early May the Unionists withdrew their support. In Porto on 3 May Costa called the government “a conspiracy to murder the Republic”, and Democratic papers began calling openly for insurrection.1 source1 source

A Revolutionary Junta of five men prepared and directed the rising, according to the presidency museum, and Ilustração Portuguesa printed the same five portraits. All but one were Freemasons. Maltez names only three members, António Maria da Silva, Sá Cardoso and Álvaro de Castro, with Norton de Matos and Leote do Rego as their military allies. Behind the scenes, the museum says, Afonso Costa played a leading part.3 sources3 sources

The many civilians who joined in were organised through the Masonic lodges and the Formiga Branca (White Ant), a band of civilian agitators that Maltez also names among the organisers of the March bread riots.3 sources3 sources

The navy's rebels were led by Leote do Rego, a commander whom Ilustração Portuguesa praised as a writer and speaker, and who had once been a fervent supporter of João Franco's dictatorship under the monarchy. Maltez notes that Norton de Matos had backed Franco too. The navy had played a large part in the revolution of October 1910, and in 1915, the historian João Freire writes, it was almost entirely on the rebels' side.4 sources4 sources

Bruno J. Navarro, whose study of the Pimenta de Castro government won the Victor de Sá prize in 2010, describes the forces the Democrats could call on: soldiers, corporals and sergeants who no longer obeyed their officers, and civilians drawn by the promise of a purge of the civil service. They were, he notes, much the same people who had made the revolution of 5 October 1910.1 source1 source

The rising was the navy's work first and foremost. Its two strongholds were the naval barracks at Alcântara and the Arsenal da Marinha, the navy dockyard on the waterfront, where rifles were handed out to civilians. Armed groups attacked police stations. The government took refuge in the Carmo barracks, the Republican Guard's headquarters, where Marcelo Caetano would surrender in 1974.4 sources4 sources

Army batteries on the Alto de Santa Catarina, at Monsanto and on the Terreiro do Paço fired on the warships, and the ships fired back. Ilustração Portuguesa praised the gunners afloat for aiming only at the batteries, but the city did not escape. A shell burst inside the Senate's offices, and at the request of neighbours whose houses shook with every shot, the guns on the Alto de Santa Catarina were moved down to the Rua do Comércio, in the Baixa.1 source1 source

The navy minister, Admiral Xavier de Brito, ordered the submarine Espadarte to torpedo the rebel ships. Her commander did not obey. The order started a long controversy, and more than twenty years later Xavier de Brito published a text explaining himself. Ilustração Portuguesa photographed a crowd leading him to the Arsenal as a prisoner.2 sources2 sources

The navy paid for its victory. Besides Assis Camilo on the Vasco da Gama, the commander of the Almirante Reis, Joaquim Nunes da Silva, was hit by bullets and died some days later. Both, Freire writes, were shot as rebels seized their ships. Ilustração Portuguesa printed both men's portraits beside a photograph of Leote do Rego on the Vasco da Gama's bridge.2 sources2 sources

The end came at the Carmo. By then the street fighting was over, Ilustração Portuguesa reported, but people feared the general might still strike back with regiments from the provinces. Two naval lieutenants from the Arsenal, Philemon Duarte de Almeida, who had commanded it during the fighting, and Fernando Augusto Pereira da Silva, went to the barracks under orders to summon him. Pimenta de Castro agreed to go with them and was taken aboard the Vasco da Gama as a prisoner. On 14 May Machado Santos, who had backed the general, was arrested and his newspaper, O Intransigente, closed down.2 sources2 sources

From the balcony of Lisbon City Hall, where the Republic had been proclaimed in 1910, Major Sá Cardoso read out the junta's proclamation: “The Army, the Navy and the civilian element have just proclaimed the Portuguese Republic for the second time.” The junta held power on 14 and 15 May. Ilustração Portuguesa wrote that the revolution won after a little more than 24 hours of fighting; Maltez dates its victory to 16 May.4 sources4 sources

The violence did not stop with the proclamation. In the following days a force of sailors surrounded the Escola de Guerra, the army's officer school, where cadets held out, and there were more casualties there. Hungry crowds broke into warehouses and bakeries. On 17 May mobs attacked monarchist clubs, the Liga Naval, the church of São Paulo and the monarchist newspaper O Dia.4 sources4 sources

Ilustração Portuguesa's first report could not say how bad it was. “How many Portuguese have lost their lives or been carried wounded to the hospitals, struck by the bullets of their own fellow citizens?” it asked. “At the hour we write, nothing can yet be said.”1 source1 source

Nobody ever settled the figure. Historians quote different totals, and none of them claims a full count. The table sets out the main estimates.3 sources3 sources

Navarro calls it the bloodiest revolution of the First Republic, Júlio Dantas called it bloodier than the revolution of 1910, and on 29 May the new President, Teófilo Braga, told Congress the Republic had been cemented by the blood of “a thousand selfless victims”.2 sources2 sources

The junta wanted a government of all republicans. Costa, Camacho and Almeida all refused to serve, and it turned to João Chagas, a veteran republican journalist who had led the first constitutional government in 1911. He had resigned as Portugal's minister in Paris and come home in March, publishing two pamphlets against Pimenta de Castro.2 sources2 sources

There was an irony in the choice. In 1911 it was Chagas who had made Pimenta de Castro his minister of war, and the general had been dismissed within five weeks, accused of reacting too passively to the first monarchist raid from Spain. On 15 May 1915 Chagas was appointed head of government and set off from Porto to take up the post.4 sources4 sources

On 16 May, near Entroncamento, a senator named João de Freitas shot him on the Porto–Lisbon train. Chagas was gravely wounded and lost an eye. His attacker was killed; Maltez writes that the crowd lynched him.2 sources2 sources

Chagas never took office. A week later Ilustração Portuguesa still expected him to take up his post soon, “already recovered from his wounds”, but on 17 May José de Castro, a lawyer, deputy grand master of the Freemasons and Álvaro de Castro's father, had taken over as acting head of government. Chagas was formally relieved on 29 May.4 sources4 sources

Arriaga, aged 74, wrote his resignation to the head of government on 16 May. Congress, which met again from 27 May, accepted it on 29 May and the same evening elected Teófilo Braga to finish his term, a story told in our article on Braga. Arriaga left the Belém palace that day under a Republican Guard escort.3 sources3 sources

A new electoral law followed on 2 June, and on 13 June the country voted. Of 471,557 registered voters, in a population of about six million, 282,387 took part. The Democrats won 106 of the 163 seats in the Chamber of Deputies, the Evolutionists 26 and the Unionists 15. In the Senate the Democrats took 45 of the 68 seats.1 source1 source

The winners purged the state. A law of 16 June let the government remove officials who did not give “a complete guarantee” of their adherence to the Republic and the Constitution. Pimenta de Castro's justice minister, the law professor Guilherme Moreira, lost all his posts. A law of 9 September put the revolutionaries of 14 May on the same footing as those of 5 October 1910.1 source1 source

The fallen ministers were never tried. Navarro argues that the new rulers preferred to remove them from the civil service and the army rather than risk an acquittal in court. Machado Santos was sent into exile at Ponta Delgada, in the Azores, on 11 June, with two of the general's ministers, Xavier de Brito and Manuel Goulart de Medeiros.2 sources2 sources

The war policy changed with the government. Norton de Matos took the war ministry in July and began preparing a force for the Western Front. Costa returned as head of government at the end of 1915, and Germany declared war on Portugal on 9 March 1916, after Lisbon seized the German ships in its ports.4 sources4 sources

For the winners, 14 May was a second founding of the Republic, and it was celebrated every year from 1915. Their case was that a general whom parliament had never approved had shut Congress, ruled by decree and let the monarchists regroup: the first monarchist centre opened in Lisbon on 17 April, and dozens followed. Teófilo Braga's message of 29 May spoke of hands that had “irreverently touched the holy ark of our liberties”.4 sources4 sources

Navarro, whose study is sympathetic to the general, argues that the ruling party's press set the story that historians repeated for decades: a traitor general, a monarchist plot, a pro-German government.1 source1 source

Others saw the day differently. The poet Fernando Pessoa, writing a few years later, called it the most anti-national of Portugal's revolutions and wrote of the general with sympathy.1 source1 source

The revolt also set a pattern. The presidency museum sees in Pimenta de Castro's cabinet, with officers in seven of its nine ministries, the start of the army's growing hold on government. Maltez points out that the Democrats beat him with the same street-and-barracks method republicans had used against the monarchy in 1910.2 sources2 sources

Force kept deciding who governed. Sidónio Pais took power by force in December 1917, and the military coup of 28 May 1926 ended the parliamentary Republic.3 sources3 sources