may, he agreed with the King that it was impossible to carry on the
work of government with a fractious Cortes in session, and that the
only way to keep things going was to try the experiment of a
dictatorship. Dom Carlos, in his genial fashion, overcame by help of an
anecdote any doubt his minister may have felt. "When the affairs of
Frederick the Great were at a low ebb," said the King, "he one day, on
the eve of a decisive battle, caught a grenadier in the act of making
off from the camp. 'What are you about?' asked Frederick. 'Your
Majesty, I am deserting,' stammered the soldier. 'Wait till to-morrow,'
replied Frederick calmly, 'and if the battle goes against us, we will
desert together.'" Thus lightly was the adventure plotted; and, in
fact, the minister did not desert until the King lay dead upon the
field of battle.

Franco dissolved the Cortes, and on May 10, 1907, published a decree
declaring the "administration to be a dictatorship." The Press was
strictly gagged, and all the traditional weapons of despotism were
polished up. In June, the dictator went to Oporto to defend his policy
at a public banquet, and on his return a popular tumult took place in
the Rocio, the central square of Lisbon, which was repressed with
serious bloodshed. This was made the excuse for still more galling
restrictions on personal and intellectual liberty, until it was hard to
distinguish between "administrative dictatorship" and autocracy. As
regards the _adeantamentos_, Franco's declared policy was to make a
clean slate of the past, and, for the future, to augment the civil
list. In the autumn of that year, a very able Spanish journalist and
deputy, Señor Luis Morote, visited most of the leading men in Portugal,
and found among the Republicans an absolute and serene confidence that
the Monarchy was in its last ditch and that a Republic was inevitable.
Seldom have political prophecies been more completely fulfilled than