At the end of January, 1908, a revolutionary plot was discovered, and was put down with severity.  After signing some decrees to that end, at one of his palaces beyond the Tagus, the King, with his whole family, returned to Lisbon and the party drove in open carriages from the wharf toward the Necessidades Palace.  In the crowd at the corner of the great riverside square, the Praca do Comercio, stood two men named Buica and Costa, with carbines concealed under their cloaks.  They shot dead the King and the Crown Prince, and slightly wounded Dom Manuel.  Both the assassins were killed on the spot.

It is said that there was no plot, and that these men acted entirely on their own initiative and responsibility.  At any rate, none of the Republican leaders was in any way implicated in the affair.  But on All Saints’ day of 1910, Buica’s grave shared to the full in the rain of wreaths poured upon the tombs of the martyrs of the new Republic; and relics of the regicides hold an honored place in the historical museum which commemorates the revolution.

Franco vanished into space, and Dom Manuel, aged nineteen, ascended the throne.  Had he possessed strong intelligence and character, or had he fallen into the hands of really able advisers, it is possible that the revulsion of feeling following on so grim a tragedy might have indefinitely prolonged the life of the Monarchy.  But his mother was a Bourbon, and what more need be said?  The opinion in Lisbon, at any rate, was that “under Dom Carlos the Jesuits entered the palace by the back door, under Dom Manuel by the front door.”  The Republican agitation in public, the revolutionary organization in secret, soon recommenced with renewed vigor; and the discovery of new scandals in connection with the tobacco monopoly and a financial institution, known as the “Credito Predial,” added fuel to the fire of indignation.  The Government, or rather a succession of Governments, were perfectly aware that the foundations of the Monarchy were undermined; but they seemed to be paralyzed by a sort of fatalistic despair.  They persecuted, indeed, just enough to make themselves doubly odious; but they always laid hands on people who, if not quite innocent, were subordinate and uninfluential.  Not one of the real leaders of the revolution was arrested.

The thoroughness with which the Republican party was organized says much for the practical ability of its leaders.  The moving spirits in the central committee were Vice-Admiral Candido dos Reis, Affonso Costa (now Minister of Justice), Joao Chagas, and Dr. Miguel Bombarda.  Simoes Raposo spoke in the name of the Freemasons; the Carbonaria Portugueza, a powerful secret society, was represented by Machado dos Santos, an officer in the navy.  There was a separate finance committee, and funds were ample.  The arms bought were mostly Browning pistols, which were smuggled over the Spanish frontier by Republican railway conductors.  Bombs also were prepared in large