FEPA News

FEPA NEWS 45 74 The World of Research The Monarchy of the North was a military movement headed by Captain Paiva Couceiro, an illustrious soldier and monarchist, whose aim was to restore the monarchy in Portugal. This rebellious movement began in Porto on January 19th 1919 and was defeated on February 13th that year. When the monarchist revolt broke out the republican forces immediately began to make preparations for the counter- revolution, although confusion reigned in that a great many republicans were still political prisoners, particularly members of the Democratic Party. These were formerly part of Sidónio Pais’s republican military dictatorship that had been imposed in an attempt to bring political life in Portugal, which was still extremely troubled at the time, back to normal. However, Sidónio Pais was assassinated on the steps leading to the Rossio railway station in Lisbon on December 14th 1918 when he was about to set off for Porto. During this troubled period of the Republic, the republicans were sorely divided and there was a widespread idea that forces would have to be united if the monarchist uprising commanded by Paiva Couceiro was to be defeated. The leaders of the main parties met with the President of the Council of Ministers in office, João Tamagnini Barbosa, for the sole purpose of achieving the release of the political prisoners in order to arm them to allow them to defend the Republic. The newspapers, especially those of the capital, campaigned for the defence of the Republic and a decision was taken to arm the population, which was called upon to appear at Lisbon’s Campo Pequeno on January 22nd 1919. People turned up in large numbers and the army quickly began to organise them into sections, platoons, squadrons and companies, several battalions of volunteers having been formed. That same day, the government issued the following communiqué and invitation in the press: “To arms, Citizens! Faced with the events that are taking place, the Government of the Republic, desirous of making good use of the efforts of good republicans to quickly dominate the revolutionary movement in Porto, has resolved to open enlistment for the speedy formation of battalions of volunteers. For the purpose, every citizen of the Republic is invited to appear, today, the 22nd, at ten o’clock in the morning at Campo Pequeno. The Government also authorises those academicians so desiring to organise a battalion for the same purpose, for which they should appear at the same time, at the troop barracks at Janelas Verdes, under the command of cavalry captain and aviator António Maia and infantry captain Henrique Guerra”. The academicians did, indeed, gather at the Janelas Verdes barracks on January 22nd, and they came to form an Academic Battalion in Lisbon that was to set out for the North to fight the Monarchy that had been established in the meantime. Before this, however, the Lisbon Academic Battalion, still formed solely by students of the Lisbon Academy, took part in the skirmishes at Monsanto, where the people of Lisbon and a large part of the Navy attacked the monarchist forces under the command of Aires de Ornelas, which had set themselves up there and had started to bombard the city in an attempt to conquer Lisbon and to restore the monarchy once again. As said, the Academic Battalion played an active role in the confrontation between republican and monarchist troops at Monsanto, in Lisbon, in which the monarchists did not prevail. A major defeat was inflicted on Paiva Couceiro and, with the loss of control of the capital that was fundamental to the restoration of the monarchy, the impetus behind the revolt started by the monarchists was lost. The Republican Academic Battalion in the monarchy of the North PedroVaz Pereira reports on how the story of a little-known political upheaval in Portugal can be tracked through postal historical and other relevant material.