Mendes. The second force is tasked to recapture the Kionga Triangle from the Germans. 1916 When Portugal complies with the British request to confiscate the German ships interned in Portuguese ports, Germany reacts by declaring war on Portugal, thus forcing the Portuguese officially into the war. February 23: Following a British request, Portugal interns 36 German and Austro-Hungarian ships in Lisbon. March 9: Germany declares war on Portugal, followed by Portugal's reciprocal declaration. The Portuguese government starts to organise the participation of its troops on the Western Front. Shortly afterward, Portugal begins closing its consulates in the Ottoman Empire (for their part, the Ottomans do not have any representation in Portugal). March 15: Austria-Hungary declares war on Portugal. June 9: Finance Minister Afonso Costa participates in an Allied Economic Conference in which the Allies decide that Germany would have to return the territories of Alsace-Lorraine to France (occupied since 1871) and Kionga in Mozambique to Portugal (occupied since 1894) as a condition for peace. July 15: The British government formally invites Portugal to take an active part in the military operations of the Allies. July 22: The Portuguese Expeditionary Corps (Corpo Expedicionário Português, CEP), with 30,000 soldiers, is established in Tancos, Portugal, under the command of General Norton de Matos. August 7: The Portuguese Parliament accepts the participation of Portugal in the war, following the invitation of the British government. The Portuguese war effort reaches 55,000 infantry soldiers, plus 1,000 artillerymen, to be sent to France, 4,000 soldiers per month, to man 12 km of battlefront. Only the first two divisions reach France. At the same time, Portugal fields forces in its African colonies: in Mozambique to defend the colony from German colonial forces and in the south of Angola against native unrest instigated by the Germans. December 3: The German U-boat SM U-38, captained by Max Valentiner, enters Funchal harbour in Madeira and torpedoes and sinks 3 ships: CS Dacia (), () and Surprise (). The commander of the French gunboat Surprise and 34 of her crew (7 Portuguese) die in the attack. The Dacia, a British cable laying vessel, which had previously undertaken war work off the coast of Casablanca and Dakar, was in the process of diverting the German South American cable into Brest, France. Following the attack, the Germans proceed to bombard Funchal for two hours from a range of about . Batteries on Madeira return