Lisbon Regicide

The Lisbon Regicide or Regicide of 1908 (Regicídio de 1908) was the assassination 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. Some idealistic students, politicians and dissidents were inspired by the founding of the French Third Republic in 1870 and hoped that a similar regime could be installed in Portugal. The intellectual style was heavily middle-class and urban, and hardly concealed its cultural mimicry of the French Republic. Most of the Republican leadership were from the same generation; many were the best-educated in the country and were heavily influenced by the French positivist Comte and the socialist Proudhon. The ideology after 1891 was peppered with concepts such as municipal autonomy, political and economic democracy, universal male suffrage, direct elections for legislative assemblies, a national militia instead of a professional army, the secularization of education and separation of church and state (all copied from French revolutionaries). The writings of Léon Gambetta (proclaimer of the French Third Republic) and socialist leader Jean Jaurès were read and admired by students at the University of Coimbra. After the period of monarchist revanchism in France had waned and the daily Sud Express rail service between Lisbon and Paris was established in 1887, the leftist French Jacobin influence grew stronger in Portugal (especially because it counteracted the national humiliation caused by the British ultimatum of 1890). These liberal ideas were encouraged by the French Republic (in 1870) and the Brazilian Republic (in 1889), although the French 1789 Revolution was also considered an inspiration and model.