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Prime Minister António de Oliveira Salazar sat at a long wooden desk staring at new reports from the front lines. As Belém Palace shook and echoed with the reverberations of nearby artillery explosions, Salazar dwelled in the inescapable reality that the front lines he read about could be measured in city blocks. Years of planning, thousands of men, and the ambitions of an entire people were crumbling in his hands like month-old Eucharist.Salazar sifted through his papers praying for a glimpse of hope. Much of the infrastructure around Lisbon had demonstrated the fruits of earlier public works investments; the Portuguese navy was daily sending Spanish convoys to a watery grave; the colonies had fallen in line and begun production of the bullets Lisbon needed. Despite all of this, Portugal was almost gone. Initially Salamanca and even Seville seemed to be within reach, but quickly the Spanish counterattack had quashed them. Divisions emerged out of nowhere. Men and weapons overwhelmed the Portuguese lines in inconceivable numbers.Losing cities like Guarda, Castelo Branco, and Faro had been a shock but acceptable in the short term as Portuguese forces scrambled to reorganize. Porto had been the real loss. The tone of the war was desperate by that point, but after Porto fell, every sector of Portuguese life had become infused with a feeling of doom. There was no other word for it. Doom had descended across the land like thick black ash clouds before a volcanic eruption. It choked and stifled every part of life.The men kept fighting even as Salazar’s alma mater in Coimbra fell into Franco’s grasp. A surprise offensive along the southern coast had sent Lisbon into a panic. Wealthy denizens who hadn’t already smuggled themselves to sanctuary paid whatever price to leave the wealthy exurbs. From there, a long siege had begun. An organized retreat of forces from the surrounding area had allowed them to buy some time defending the capital. Nevertheless, supplies and morale run low. War is waged increasingly on roadways and in suburbs rather than open plains. To the southeast, the bridges over the Tagus had become the last lines of defense against Spain. That last line in the south had afforded Franco’s goons valuable artillery positions from which they bombarded sectors of the city.Salazar stared out of the regal glass window from his desk with his head cradled between his hands. All of his work and the work of his people was turned to rubble by shell after shell after shell. Salazar considered the pistol in his top left desk drawer. Beneath the dark, carved wood perhaps there was a solution that would not require he watch his countrymen fall to the Castillian pigs. It tempted him. The immediate release, the end to all of this chaos and doubt, and avoiding the destruction to come.These considerations raced through his mind as an artillery shell raced into the floor underneath him. In a moment, concrete, wood splinters, and assorted detritus spewed from the floor and the Prime Minister’s office collapsed. Salazar was caught off-guard as his body was torn and sliced by projectile debris. His last moment was filled with a strange admixture of feelings, but more than anything he thought, “Another choice goddamn Franco has taken from me.”