On February 1, 1908, the Portuguese royal family returned to Lisbon from a month-long holiday at Vila Viçosa. Disembarking from their train at Cais do Sodré station in central Lisbon, they boarded an open carriage for the last leg of their journey to the Queluz National Palace. While passing through the Praça do Comércio (Commerce Square), beside the Tagus River, they were ambushed by republican activists Manuel Buiça and Alfredo Costa. Armed with a rifle and pistol, respectively, they fired multiple shots into the the carriage, killing King Carlos I instantly, fatally wounding Prince Luis Filipe, striking Prince Manuel in the arm, and wounding the coachmen in one hand. Buiça also wounded a soldier, Henrique da Silva Valente, who intervened to spoil his aim. Only Queen Amélie of Orleans escaped injury, as police killed both assailants and an innocent bystander.
Born in Lisbon on September 28, 1863, the son of King Luis I and Queen Maria Pia of Savoy, Carlos Fernando Luis Maria Victor Miguel Rafael Gabriel Gonzaga Xavier Francisco de Assis José Simao boasted a roster of royal relatives including King Victor Emmanuel II of Italy, King Frederick Augustus III of Saxony, and King Ferdinand of Romania. Succeeding to the Portuguese throne upon his father’s death, in October 1889, Carlos faced his first crisis three months later, with the British ultimatum of January 1890, breaching the 1386 Treaty of Windsor to dispute Portuguese territorial claims in Africa. Carlos signed the controversial Treaty of London in August 1890, relinquishing much of Angola and Mozambique, while furious protests errupted at home.
Chief among the protesters were leaders of the Portuguese Republican Party and the Carbonaria, a conspiratorial revolutionary society opposed to both the monarchy and the Catholic Church. Republicans won only 2.7 percent of the popular vote nationwide in 1906 – four seats in the National Assembly, all from Lisbon – but its support concentrated in the capital and in Porto, where party leader Bernardino Machado proclaimed, “We are the majority.” The Carbonaria, founded in 1896 by Artur Augusto Duarte de Luz de Almeida, prefered direct action to electioneering, organizing along military lines to recruit an estimated 40,000 members – including many frustrated republicans. Further agitation came from the Liberal Regenerator Party, organized by Joao Franco in 1901, and from Progressive Dissidence, founded by Jose Maria de Alpoim in 1905. Dissident parties battled one another, while condemning the monarchy for inefficiency and failure to support reform.
Carlos responded to that opposition by naming Joao Franco as prime minister in May 1906. Franco tried to form a coalition with Progressive Party leader and two-time former prime minister Jose Luciano de Castro, but failing there, he persuaded Carlos to suspend future elections until Franco deemed them practical, while jailing dissidents. Those moves predictably increased political tension, prompting Republican Party spokesman Alfons Costa to say that “for less than Dom Carlos has done, the head of Louis XVI fell.” Franco responded to increasing agitation with Costa’s arrest, detention of 93 other republicans, and a ban on public meetings.
After the assassinations of February 1908, Prince Manuel was proclaimed king of Portugal. He proved to be the nations last monarch, deposed and exiled by a republican revolution in October 1910. Joao Franco was long gone by then, driven from office and from public life by successor Francisco Joaquim Ferreira do Amaral on February 4, 1908. A two-year investigation of the royal murders indicted several Carbonaria suspects on October 5, 1910, but they were spared from trial by a republican coup d'etat that deposed King Manuel II and established the First Portuguese Republic.
Famous Assassinations in World History: An Encyclopedia
