Rise of Empires: Spain.

Chapter 360 Portuguese Civil War

Who is this mysterious organization that helps the Portuguese opposition? Of course, it is the Royal Security Intelligence Service established by Carlo.

Portugal has always been Spain's target, and Spain's attention to Portugal has never diminished.

The Royal Security Intelligence Service's sphere of activity covers the entire Iberian Peninsula. Both the Royal Security Intelligence Service and Carlo are fully aware of the chaos in Portugal and the opposition's planning.

Although theoretically the current King of Portugal is Carlo's nephew, Carlo will not mix too much personal emotions when considering national interests.

Besides, the Portuguese monarchy didn’t last long in history. It makes no difference whether it is overthrown earlier or later. Maybe some royal bloodline can be preserved.

In fact, during the reign of Louis I, Carlo did not think of overthrowing the Portuguese royal family so early. After all, Portugal at that time was a fence-sitter, and they kept swinging between Spain and Britain to ensure that Portugal could have a certain degree of autonomy and would not be infiltrated too much by Spain or Britain.

This situation continued until Carlos I came to power, when Portugal began to rely on Britain both politically and economically. Indeed, after turning to Britain, Portugal quickly got rid of the influence of Spain, and they no longer had to send thousands of immigrants to Spain every year.

The good cooperation between Spain and Portugal during the reign of Louis I was instantly severed, and Portugal and Spain seemed to be returning to the situation of confrontation and competition that they had faced more than 20 years ago.

Carlo was unable to accept the changes in the Portuguese government. Spain's infiltration of Portugal had already achieved certain results, and many Portuguese were not opposed to immigrating to Spain.

The two to three thousand Portuguese immigrants that Spain receives every year is the best proof of this. These Portuguese people live very well after coming to Spain, and their situation has also attracted more Portuguese immigrants to yearn for Spain.

Because the original Portuguese government was wavering between Britain and Spain, they did not openly ban these immigrants from going to Spain.

Although doing so would result in a certain amount of population loss, Portugal also obtained a large amount of industrial products from Spain, and the domestic economic situation was relatively good.

Since the Portuguese government amended its immigration regulations, many Portuguese immigrants who wanted to go to Spain have been blocked at the border.

British industrial products also replaced Spanish industrial products, which had a certain impact on Spain's exports of industrial manufactured products.

Since Portugal does not give face to Spain, Spain naturally does not have to give face to Portugal.

On May 1892, 5, with the support of the Royal Security Intelligence Service, the Portuguese Republican Union and some other anti-government parties jointly launched the Republican Uprising.

Thousands of citizens and hundreds of mobilized police officers participated in the uprising. People held high the red and green flag of the Republic and sang "Portuguese", which would become the national anthem of the Portuguese Republic in the future, to express their dissatisfaction with the corrupt government.

The uprising took place in Portalegre, an area carefully planned by the Republicans. In the era of Louis I, Portugal and Spain had relatively good cooperation.

The railway in the Spanish state of Extremadura runs directly to Portalegre in Portugal, and from here all the way west to the Portuguese capital of Lisbon.

After Carlos I came to power, as Britain strengthened its control over Portugal, Portugal also chose to close its railway connection with Spain.

Although British manufactured goods soon flooded the market, people in the Portalegre area still lost their jobs.

This was originally an important material transit station, and more than half of the goods exported from Spain to Portugal were transited here.

After the railway was closed, all the transport workers here lost their jobs, and other employees at the transfer station were basically unable to make ends meet.

If we talk about the group of people who are most dissatisfied with the current Portuguese government, the people in Portalegre are definitely the most radical group.

The location of the uprising was chosen here, and the people of Portalegri did not mind contributing to the uprising.

It was precisely because of the participation of the masses here that the uprising, which originally involved only a few thousand people, quickly evolved into a massive large-scale uprising involving tens of thousands of people.

More importantly, the rebels had thousands of rifles. Although they did not have heavy firepower, these thousands of militiamen armed with rifles could also cause a significant impact on the order of Portugal.

Portugal itself has a population of less than 500 million, and its standing army is less than 5. If it were not for the powerful neighbor Spain, Portugal would not even be able to have a standing army of 5.

The Portuguese army, like the Spanish, had not experienced a decent battle for a long time. Most of the targets of the Portuguese army were the natives of Africa, and those natives were not very populous.

Under such circumstances, the uprising of tens of thousands of people soon had a serious impact on the situation in Portugal.

The rebels quickly captured the Portalegre City Hall, seized the arsenal set up in the city, and integrated the local police and garrisons.

This integration added thousands of rifles to the rebel forces, and the uprising became more and more powerful, with the ability to threaten Lisbon.

Because the rebels acted so quickly, by the time the Portuguese government received the news, several hours had passed since the uprising.

The insurgents, numbering several thousand people, quickly took control of the city government and city council. When the Portuguese army hurried to the Portalegre area, the insurgents had even formed a large-scale defense line.

Looking at the fairly orderly defense line before them, the Portuguese officers suppressing the rebellion immediately sensed that something was wrong.

Judging from the defensive positions dug by the enemy, their uprising was definitely not a spur-of-the-moment idea but was premeditated.

Even thinking in the direction of conspiracy theories, these rebel groups were able to occupy the city government and parliament in a short period of time, and they might have the support of other forces behind them.

The situation in Portugal is quite chaotic. There are two major forces in the country, the conservatives and the republicans.

Among these two factions, there are pro-British and pro-Spanish factions. Among the pro-Spanish faction, there are Pan-Iberianists who not only support Portugal's move closer to Spain, but also hope that the two countries on the Iberian Peninsula can merge to establish a superpower that will terrify other powers.

The main reason why there are such complicated power relations in Portugal is that during the reign of Louis I, Portugal swung back and forth between Britain and Spain.

At that time, because the Pink Map Project was forcibly cancelled by the United Kingdom, the Portuguese people were quite dissatisfied and resentful towards the United Kingdom.

This also led to the prevalence of Pan-Iberianism throughout the Iberian Peninsula, and many Portuguese believed that a merger of Portugal and Spain would make them better off.

After the new King Carlos I of Portugal came to power, he directly severed relations with Spain and turned to Britain, which had even worse relations with Portugal.

Although this did free Portugal from Spanish control, Carlos I clearly did not take the opinions of the Portuguese into consideration.

It was only a few years ago that the British forcibly destroyed Portugal's Pink Map Plan. Now Portugal is rushing to become the British's younger brother. Isn't this degrading itself?
After all, Portugal was once a colonial empire. Even if its current comprehensive strength is not as good as that of European powers, there is no need for it to be so humble and get closer to Britain in politics and diplomacy.

At the same time in history, although the Republican Party in Portugal had already taken shape, most Portuguese people still believed in the monarchy and were willing to support Carlos I. This also led to the fact that although the Republican rebellion broke out many times, it did not pose much of a threat to the ruling status of the Portuguese royal family.

In the end, the assassination was effective, but it only replaced the king of Portugal.

And now, after Portugal's Pink Plan was proposed earlier and destroyed by the British earlier, relations between the Portuguese people and Britain have become worse than ever before.

Carlos I's closeness to Britain made the Portuguese quite dissatisfied, which also meant that Carlos I had lost his popular support.

The scale of this uprising was far larger than any other in history, and the impact it caused was also far greater than any other in history.

Historically, Carlos I only used a small number of troops to suppress the Republican uprising, but now, it has turned into a head-on battle between the rebel army and the Portuguese army.

Yes, this is no longer a simple uprising. Judging from the current development of the situation, it has evolved into an internal war in Portugal.

The topic of the Portuguese Civil War quickly spread throughout Europe and attracted the attention of many countries.

Britain was one of the countries that paid the most attention to the Portuguese Civil War. After all, Portugal had completely sided with Britain at that time, and Britain was not willing to lose its ally Portugal.

On the second day of the civil war, the British government summoned the Portuguese ambassador to London and expressed Britain's willingness to help Portugal resolve the domestic rebellion.

Yes, the British government used the word rebellion. They considered the Republican uprising to be a rebellion, and the war was not a civil war in Portugal. The Republican side was illegal and they were trying to steal the power of Portugal.

While Britain supported Portugal, Spain also contacted the Portuguese Republican Party.

In order to avoid exposing the fact that Spain was the supporter behind the Republican Party, the weapons that the National Security Intelligence Agency provided to the Republican Party were purchased from other places, including from many European countries.

Although some Spanish standard weapons were mixed in, due to the large number and variety, other countries could not conclude that Spain was supporting the Portuguese Republican Party.

On the day after the Republicans successfully launched the uprising, another large batch of weapons and equipment was shipped to the Republicans.

Spain even friendly recommended a battle plan to the Republicans, suggesting that they attack Castelo Branco to the north, occupy Portugal north of Lisbon, and divide the Portuguese government into north and south.

It was unlikely that they could continue to attack Lisbon to the west. After all, it was the capital of Portugal, and Portugal had deployed a large number of garrisons along the line east of Lisbon to prevent Spain from attacking it.

It is impossible to occupy Lisbon with the current strength of the rebels. Attacking westwards will only waste manpower and eventually allow the Portuguese government to quickly put down the rebellion.

But if we continue to attack northward, the chances of victory will be much greater.

Castelo Branco and the eastern part of Guarda to the north are part of the Spanish state of Castile and León, and this area has another name, the Meseta Plateau.

Because of the existence of the Meseta Plateau, the probability of Spain attacking Portugal from here is extremely low, and Portugal's defensive forces will naturally be much smaller.

Extremadura is located in the valley between the Toledo Mountains and the Morena Mountains, and there is a plain to the west towards Portugal.

If they could attack northwards towards areas where Portugal's military strength was weak, this uprising might actually evolve into a larger-scale civil war, thus changing the domestic situation in Portugal.

Of course, if this uprising really evolved into a civil war, the British would most likely come directly to help Portugal.

However, this may not be a bad thing for Spain. After all, the British's personal involvement will only deepen the Portuguese hatred towards Britain.

Even if Portugal could quell the rebellion with the help of Britain, it would not be able to save the country from the growing hatred of Britain.

What Carlo had to do was to vigorously cultivate the number of Pan-Iberianists and pro-Spanish supporters in Portugal, and then take direct action at the critical moment to forcibly bring Portugal under his rule.

Seeing that the scale of the civil war in Portugal was growing, Spain would naturally not miss the opportunity to improve its reputation.

On May 1892, 5, Carlo officially announced a donation of 15 million pesetas in supplies to the Portuguese people to help the Portuguese people in the civil war areas resume normal life.

The Spanish government also announced the next day that it would donate supplies worth 300 million pesetas to the Portuguese government, and stated that the Spanish border with Portugal would be temporarily open to take in Portuguese people who were affected by the war and needed to protect their own safety.

Although there were suspicions within the Portuguese government that the rebellion might have been supported by Spain, they had to express gratitude for Spain's open donation.

If there is no sufficient evidence for this kind of thing, speaking out will only make your situation more embarrassing.

The Spanish government will not be harmed by a frame-up without any evidence. On the contrary, Portugal will make the war more difficult by offending Spain.

On the day of the uprising, King Carlos I of Portugal summoned Prime Minister João Franco and asked him to immediately mobilize the army to suppress the rebellion.

The hard-line João Franco immediately agreed to the king's request and promised to use the army to suppress the rebellion at all costs.

Unfortunately, the situation soon developed beyond the expectations of Carlos I and João Franco.

Not only did the troops they sent out fail to suppress the rebellion quickly, but they also fought back and forth with the rebel forces.

Although the rebel troops were a temporary militia, the situation on the Portuguese army's side was not very good either.

The Portuguese army had not experienced a large-scale war for a long time, and because the enemy before them was their own compatriots, they did not have much fighting spirit.

The Republicans contacted several other opposition parties, and they tried to win over some neutral officers and soldiers in the Portuguese army in an attempt to break up Carlos I's army.

Facts have proved that this is really effective. Not all the soldiers in the army are die-hard fans of Charles I. After all, they were just Portuguese civilians before joining the army.

Carlos I was King of Portugal for only three short years, and his incompetent operations failed to gain the loyalty of these troops.

Facing their compatriots, and possibly even their friends and family, it was quite good that these Portuguese troops did not turn against their own side in the battle.

Some of them were really unwilling to shoot at their own people just because of the government's orders. They didn't want the Portuguese to kill each other. After all, the number of Portuguese was limited, and killing each other would only make Portugal weaker.

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(End of this chapter)