Lisbon Regicide - Motivations - French Jacobinism and Ideology

French Jacobinism and Ideology

Some idealistic students, politicians, free-thinkers 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 (both were democratic nationalists). 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 (a proponent of opportunistic republicanism) 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.

Their ideology was inclusive and vague enough to attract a variety of supporters, and the manner in which the Republican party developed allowed it to avoid narrow partisan appearances; it was an ideology easily promoted by revolutionary evangelists such as journalist João Chagas, Magalhães Lima, Basílio Teles, Guerra Junqueiro and França Borges.