The period before World War I, were years of political instability in Portugal. In the early October 1910, a republican revolutionary event occurred in Lisbon. Despite receiving few popular and military support, the revolutionaries manage to prevail, much thanks to the passive attitude of the Army and its reluctance in suppressing the uprising, with the Constitutional Monarchy being overthrown and the republic being proclaimed on 5 October 1910. One of the first measures of the new republican regime was to implement a military reform that aimed to transform the Portuguese Army into a militia type army, modeled after the Swiss Army.