page_title: Lisbon Regicide
section_title: Ultimatum
hierarchical_section_title: Lisbon Regicide / Motivations / Ultimatum
caption_attribution_description: Portrait of Robert Gascoyne-Cecil&#32;(1830&#8211;1903)
context_page_description: The Lisbon Regicide was the murder of King Carlos I of Portugal and the Algarves and his heir-apparent, Luís Filipe, Prince Royal of Portugal, by assassins sympathetic to Republican interests and aided by elements within the Portuguese Carbonária, disenchanted politicians and anti-monarchists. The events occurred on 1 February 1908 at the Praça do Comércio along the banks of the Tagus River in Lisbon, commonly referred to by its antiquated name Terreiro do Paço.
context_section_description: In the second year of the reign of King Carlos I, the Conservative government of Prime Minister Lord Salisbury delivered what is known as the 1890 British Ultimatum: a rejection of the territorial claims defined by the Pink Map of Portuguese Africa. This breach of the Treaty of Windsor forced the King to abandon Portugal's claim to a large area between Angola and Mozambique (encompassing present-day Zambia, Zimbabwe, and Malawi). This humiliation for Portugal led to public outrage, and was seized by nascent republicans and ideological Jacobins as an opportunity to attack the monarchy.
  In passionate meetings, street demonstrations, political rallies, in countless poems, articles, pamphlets, even cartoons, Britain was depicted as a treacherous nation of pirates and profit-mongers able to commit the most outrageous and infamous action against her oldest ally. The King (Carlos I of Portugal), as well as the whole dynasty, on the other hand, were branded as cowards, corrupts, trading the sacredness of the motherland for power and luxury.
  The crisis was not a consequence of the King's actions; rather, it arose from the expansionist policies of the government under Prime Minister José Luciano de Castro. The Minister of the Navy and Overseas Territories, Henrique de Barros Gomes, conspired with German diplomats to expand colonial territory and create "a new Brazil in Africa". This was in conflict with British interests, and Portugal was quickly forced to abandon these designs under threat of diplomatic sanctions and military action. King Carlos attempted to mitigate the losses with diplomacy and leveraging blood relations with both British and German royalty; he was moderately successful, but Portuguese Africa was ultimately limited to territory in Angola and Mozambique. The Portuguese people were outraged by the loss of territory, which they saw as a blow to their pride.
  The ultimatum provoked a crisis of authority in the State, which was simultaneously discredited by its diplomatic and military weakness, a failed Republican rising in Oporto in January 1891, a financial crisis, and the end of the previous decade’s understanding between the dynastic parties.
  Ultimately, Luciano de Castro's government fell not because of the ultimatum but because of opposition to the new tobacco-monopoly contract; this led to disorder, and he resigned.
caption: The Marquess of Salisbury, British Prime Minister at the time of the British ultimatum
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