page_title: 5 October 1910 revolution
section_title: The king's departure from Lisbon
hierarchical_section_title: 5 October 1910 revolution / The uprising / The king's departure from Lisbon
caption_attribution_description: Picture of King Manuel II of Portugal. Taken at St. George's Chapel, Windsor Castle, England, when he was invested with the Order of the Garter.
context_page_description: The 5 October 1910 revolution was the overthrow of the centuries-old Portuguese Monarchy and its replacement by the First Portuguese Republic. It was the result of a coup d'état organized by the Portuguese Republican Party.
  By 1910, the Kingdom of Portugal was in deep crisis: British pressure on Portugal's colonies, the royal family's expenses, the assassination of the King and his heir in 1908, changing religious and social views, instability of the two political parties, the dictatorship of João Franco, and the regime's apparent inability to adapt to modern times all led to widespread resentment against the Monarchy. The proponents of the republic, particularly the Republican Party, found ways to take advantage of the situation. The Republican Party presented itself as the only one that had a programme that was capable of returning to the country its lost status and place Portugal on the way of progress.
  After a reluctance of the military to combat the nearly two thousand soldiers and sailors that rebelled between 3 and 4 October 1910, the Republic was proclaimed at 9 o'clock a.m of the next day from the balcony of the Lisbon City Hall in Lisbon.
context_section_description: After the dinner with Hermes da Fonseca, D. Manuel II had returned to the Palace of Necessidades, keeping the company of a few officers. They were playing bridge when the rebels began an attack on the building. The king attempted some phone calls but, finding that the lines had been cut, managed only to inform the Queen Mother, who was in Pena National Palace, about the situation. Soon afterwards, groups of units that were loyal to the king arrived at the scene and managed to defeat the attacks of the revolutionaries.
  At 9 o'clock the king received a phone call from the president of the Council, advising him to find refuge in Mafra or Sintra, since the rebels were threatening to bomb the Palace of Necessidades. D.Manuel II refused to leave, saying to those present: "Go if you want, I'm staying. Since the constitution doesn't appoint me any role other than of letting myself be killed, I will abide by it."
  With the arrival of the mobile battery from Queluz, the pieces were arranged in the palace gardens so that they could bombard the quarters of the revolutionary sailors, which were located at no more than 100 metres from the palace. However, before they had time to start, the commander of the battery received the order to cancel the bombing and join the forces that were leaving the palace, integrated into the column that would attack the rebel forces of the 1st Artillery in the Rotunda. At around midday the cruisers Adamastor and São Rafael, which had anchored in front of the sailors' quarters, started the bombardment of the Palace of Necessidades, an action which served to demoralise the present monarchical forces. The king took refuge in a small house in the palace's park, where he could ring Teixeira de Sousa, since the revolutionaries had only cut the special state telephone lines and not the general network. The king ordered the prime minister to send the battery from Queluz to the palace to prevent a naval landing, but the prime minister replied that the main action was happening in Rotunda and all the troops that were there were needed. Taking into account that the available troops were not sufficient to defeat the rebels in Rotunda, the prime minister made it obvious to the king that it would be more convenient to retire to Sintra or Mafra so that the stationed forces of the palace could reinforce the troops in Rotunda.
  At two o'clock the vehicles with D. Manuel II and his advisors set out to Mafra, where the Infantry School would provide enough forces to protect the monarch. While approaching Benfica the king dismissed the municipal guard squad that escorted him so that they could join the fight against the rebels. The escort arrived in Mafra at around four o'clock in the afternoon, but then discovered a problem: due to the holidays, the Infantry School contained only 100 soldiers, as opposed to the 800 that were expected, and the person in charge, Colonel Pinto da Rocha, admitted to not having the means to protect the king. In the meantime, Counsellor João de Azevedo Coutinho arrived and advised the king to call to Mafra the queens D. Amélia and D. Maria Pia (respectively, the king's mother and grandmother), who were in the palaces of Pena and Vila in Sintra, and to prepare to continue on to Porto, where they would organise a resistance.
  In Lisbon, the king's departure did not bring a large advantage to the government since the majority of the troops now available to engage the rebel forces did not follow the orders to march to Rossio Square to prevent the concentration of rebel artillery in Alcântara.
caption: King Manuel II of Portugal
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