Military commanders

The captain-donataries (1420–1580), the governors-general (1580–1640) and the captains-general (1640–1834), who were the highest authorities of the archipelago, held civil and military powers together. From 1834 these became two independent offices with entirely distinct functions, although they were sometimes held by the same individual, in which case one of the two posts was filled on a brief interim basis. We give below the list of military commanders, with the year in which each took up command. For the sake of brevity, we omit the names of the many army officers who held this post temporarily and on an interim basis:

Luiz da Silva Mousinho de Albuquerque (1834), Antonio de Padua da Costa (1836), the Baron of Lordelo (1838), Manuel José Julio Guerra (1847), Antonio de Padua da Costa (1847), José Teixeira Rebêlo (1853), José Antonio de Sequeira (1853), José Gerardo Ferreira Passos (1854), Antonio Rogerio Gromicho Couceiro (1856), José Maria Baldy (1858), José Herculano Ferreira da Horta (1859), Dom Luiz de Mascarenhas (1861), José Julio do Amaral (1861), Jacinto Augusto Camacho (1868), José Ribeiro de Mesquita (1869), Antonio Augusto Macedo e Couto (1870), Alexandre Cesar Mimoso (1878), Antonio Ferreira Quaresma (1881), Vasco Guedes de Carvalho e Meneses (1881), José Maria Lage (1884), Domingos Alberto Cunha (1888), Antonio Maria Celestino de Sousa (1894), Fernando Rodrigues do Rêgo (1896), João Francisco Regis do Rio Carvalho (1899), José Pedro Kukenbuk de Vilar (1900), Joaquim Maria Alves (1903), José Joaquim Bettencourt da Camara (1905), Joaquim Maria Alves (1906), Valeriano José da Silva (1910), José Justino Botelho Moniz Teixeira (1911), João Alfredo de Alencastre (1915), José de Sousa da Rosa Junior (1917), Luiz Correia Acciaioly de Meneses (1918), José Marceliano da Silva Pereira (1918), Alvaro Nobre da Veiga (1919),

João Maria Ferraz (1920), Aires Luís de Castro (1924), Ricardo José de Andrade (1925), José Maria de Freitas (1927), Vasco Crispiniano da Silva (1930), José Maria de Freitas (1931), General Adalberto Gastão de Sousa Dias, during the Revolutionary Movement (1931), Jaime Sepúlveda Rodrigues (1931), António Tomás de Aquino Tavares (1933), Carlos Alberto Gonçalves Marques (1935), Frederico de Magalhães de Meneses Vilas Boas Vilar (1937), Francisco Silvestre Varela (1938), João Pedro da Silva (1940) and Francisco Silvestre Varela (1940). We should point out that we make no distinction here between the titles of military governor, divisional commander, military commander and sub-divisional commander. All of them denote the same office, and we have included them under the general name of military commanders. Under the present organisation (Decree of 8 April 1940), the post of military commander of Madeira is to be held by a brigadier or a colonel. He has an aide-de-camp as his direct assistant and carries out his duties through a secretariat headed by a captain from any arm of the service, with an assistant, an archivist and two clerk sergeants.