CHAPTER XVIII.
THE HOUSE OF BOURBON.
“The king is dead; long live the king!” Before Charles II passed away, weak and vacillating as he was, he bequeathed to his subjects a legacy of woe in the unfruitful “Wars of the Succession.” Finally, on his deathbed, through the influence of his confessor, and at the recommendation of Pope Innocent II, Charles made a will in favour of Philip of Anjou, grandson of Louis XIV of France. When he received the news of this triumph, for which he had long been scheming, the French king joyfully exclaimed, “The Pyrenees no longer exist!” meaning that from that time France and Spain would be virtually under one sovereign, that sovereign himself. This did not actually come about; but to show how nearly the interests of the two countries were allied henceforth, let us examine the ancestry of the new king.
We have only to note that Philip of Anjou was the grandson of Louis, who himself was in early life married to the Infanta Maria Teresa, daughter of Philip IV, and hence, in natural course, would have claim to the Spanish succession in the event of what had now actually happened—a King of Spain dying without an heir of his own issue. But this event had been anticipated at the time of their marriage, and Maria Teresa had solemnly renounced all claim to the throne of Spain, either for herself or her heirs. This was because a just fear pervaded other nations of the two great monarchies with their dependent territories becoming united under one sovereign. To preserve the “balance of power” in Europe, it was considered necessary that they should be separately governed.
Still, Louis never quite gave up the idea of a scion of the house of Bourbon sitting on the throne of Spain, and he was prepared to sustain that resolve with all the might of his armies. He hardly dared, however, press the claims of the dauphin, his and Maria Teresa’s eldest son, but compromised on the son of the dauphin, Philip of Anjou. This was in a certain sense the better policy, for it excited less opposition from other crowned heads; and as it happened, the dauphin died before Louis himself, and Philip long survived him.
The remaining candidate for regal honours, and who was slighted in the award, was Leopold, Emperor of Germany, whose mother was the daughter of Philip III, and who was also descended from Charles V’s brother Ferdinand. He at once began a war against Philip in behalf of his son, the Archduke Charles, and, being joined by England and the Netherlands, acting under the “Grand Alliance,” Europe was again plunged into the barbarities of senseless warfare.
Philip was seated in 1700, the Alliance was declared in 1701, and then quickly ensued a succession of great battles, with victories at first in favour of the allies, but eventually resulting in favour of the Bourbon King of Spain. It was during these Wars of the Succession, as they were called, that first rose to prominence the great Duke of Marlborough, who, in connection with Prince Eugene, won the famous victory of Blenheim, in 1704. This was followed by the splendid victory of Ramillies, in 1706, and by that of Malplaquet, in 1709. In truth, the allies made Louis repent of ever having undertaken to sustain his grandson on the throne of Spain, especially as at first other victories fell to the portion of the archduke, until nearly all eastern and south-eastern Spain acknowledged the pretensions of “Charles III,” as he styled himself. But though Philip was twice driven from his capital, Madrid; though the rich city of Barcelona was captured by the English, and the Rock of Gibraltar taken by Sir George Rooke, in 1704; though the French empire itself seemed in danger of annihilation, yet unexpected circumstances intervened to save both Louis and Philip from destruction. That is, by the death of the Emperor Joseph, in 1711, the Archduke Charles received the imperial crown; and as the powers never intended that Spain and Germany should be again united, any more than they could tolerate the union of France and Spain, why, they all “turned right about face” and scampered away from each other as fast as they could. All this fuss about a crown would seem ludicrous, were it not for the sanguinary side of the strife—the ravaged countries, the thousands fallen in battle, the towns and cities burned, the innocent women and children massacred—all, that a certain insignificant, slow-witted hypochondriac named Philip of Anjou might seat himself upon the Spanish throne!
By the Peace of Utrecht, in 1713, he was acknowledged King of Spain and the Indies; but Milan, Naples, the Netherlands, and Sardinia were given to the insatiate Louis XIV. And England, which never yet went into a war without the ultimate object of territorial aggrandizement or material profit of some sort, retained out of the general scramble all her conquests of Gibraltar, Minorca, Hudson Bay and Newfoundland, St. Christopher Island in the West Indies, and Acadia.
Poor Spain, as usual, was plucked of many of her gaudiest feathers; and thus, after thirteen years of warfare, she became blessed with a prince of the house of Bourbon instead of one of the house of Hapsburg; the only difference between the two being that one was French, the other Austrian, and neither with more than a trace of Spanish blood to substantiate a claim to the throne of Isabella and Ferdinand.
Woefully had Spain descended in the scale of nations, and basely had she mingled her blood with foreign elements, until she could no longer claim as a ruler one nearly allied to the proud nobles of Castile or Aragon. She only knew that a degenerate Bourbon had replaced an equally degenerate Hapsburg; but she must have loved the foreigner greatly, for a descendant of the Bourbon sits on the throne of Spain to-day.
In justice to Philip V—to give him his new title—it may be said that Spain has been less wisely ruled than she was by him. The death of his imperial grandfather, in 1715, tempted him to break his pledges at the Treaty of Utrecht and aspire to the throne of France; but England’s fleets and the “Quadruple Alliance” soon brought him to his senses, and he abandoned all thoughts of a dual empire.
Fortunately, the country was not yet entirely drained of its resources; its people had still a little vitality remaining, and after a reign of forty-six years Philip left his kingdom in rather better condition than he had found it. Having still half the world tributary to that kingdom, the colonies of America, continually pouring into the Spanish treasury the golden products of mine and soil, the country needed only peace to enable it to recuperate. This period of rest it found during the reign of Philip’s successor and son, Ferdinand VI, who entered upon the kingly state at the death of his father, in 1746.
As so frequently happens, the best king has the shortest reign, and Ferdinand lived but thirteen years after falling heir to the crown. But these were years of tranquility and progress, during which impoverished Spain deigned to take stock of her own resources and did not go abroad to rob her neighbours. Internal improvements were carried out, roads and canals built, agriculture fostered, oppressive taxes equalized, ship-building and foreign trade encouraged. The nucleus of a navy was gathered, and at the end of this reign it consisted of more than eighty frigates and ships of the line, valued at sixty million dollars.
Strange as it may seem, the Church was the greatest enemy of the people—at least, of the people’s material welfare. In the time of Ferdinand VI it had a revenue of three hundred and fifty-nine million dollars, which was greater than that of the state, and there were one hundred and eighty thousand clerical or non-producing people connected with it. The king did not interfere with its liberties, but he took steps to limit the power of the Pope, so that indiscriminate appointments were prevented; and he hindered the work of the Inquisition so much that it had but ten victims during his reign, as against one thousand during the reign of his father, and was, at last, almost starved out!
By the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, in 1748, the War of the Austrian Succession, into which Philip V had been drawn, was brought to a close and the heroic Maria Theresa confirmed in her rights. And though there was danger of trouble with England, over the “asiento,” it was obviated by concessions from Spain to the former’s great advantage. This asiento—literally a contract—was a special agreement by which the ships of England were entitled to trade to a certain extent with Spanish colonies, those of other nations being prohibited, especially in negro slaves from Africa.
The Seven Years’ War, which broke out in 1756 between Prussia and England on one hand, and Austria, France, and Sweden on the other, was a severe strain upon Spain’s neutrality, for both sides sought her aid. Ferdinand, however, wisely abstained from war, even though Pitt, the great English minister, offered him back Gibraltar, to reconquer which Spain had fought desperately and besieged in vain, with the assistance of the French. He still remained neutral, and Gibraltar yet rears its defiant crest under the folds of Britain’s flag.
Ferdinand’s beloved consort died in 1758, and, unlike his father in similar circumstances, he did not console himself with another, but sincerely mourned the good Barbara of Portugal, and was faithful to her memory until his own demise the following year. Altogether, Ferdinand’s reign was in such beneficent contrast to others which had preceded it that we could wish it had been prolonged. It was to his able ministers, Enseñada and Carvajal, that the country was indebted for so much; but as the king would have been held accountable had they been evil counsellors, so he is entitled to credit for following their advice.
And so, when his successor and brother, Charles III, took possession of the throne, he was most agreeably surprised to find—what had not occurred before since Isabella’s time—a surplus in the treasury! To be sure, much of it, if not all, was due to the fact that the national debt had not been paid for many years; but still the credit of it belongs to the frugal Ferdinand. When Charles III came to the throne, in 1759, he brought with him an invaluable experience of a twenty-five-years’ reign as King of Naples. In the main, he followed in Ferdinand’s footsteps, yet in 1762 he joined with France in the “family compact,” by which the Bourbons engaged to support each other against all others, and this precipitated the war with England, in which, as usual, Britain came out with the lion’s share of territory. Havana in Cuba, Trinidad, Manila, and the famed Acapulco galleon with three million dollars, besides other immense booty estimated at fifteen million dollars, fell into the hands of the English. By the treaty of peace, 1763, Spain got back her principal ports only by ceding Florida to the English, and the valuable rights for cutting logwood on the Honduras coast, while France gave up Canada, the Louisiana territory east of the Mississippi, and several islands in the West Indies.
Charles had able ministers in the persons of Squilaci, Grimaldi, Campomanes, and the Count de Aranda, under the last of whom was consummated the expulsion of the Jesuits from Spain, in March, 1767. Their order was suppressed by Pope Clement XIV, in 1773. Succeeding Aranda came Don José Moñino, afterward Count of Floridablanca, as prime minister. He was in power when the American colonies of Great Britain declared their independence, and, like France, sided with the colonies—not because of love for them or sympathy with their aims, but because of an apparent opportunity offering for striking a blow at England through her colonial possessions.
An insurrection in Peru, guided by the Inca, Tupac Amaru, had to be crushed, but Spain joined with France in a desperate attempt to retake Gibraltar, and in naval demonstrations, with the customary results: that they were repulsed from the Great Rock, and their fleets destroyed or scattered, particularly in the West Indies. In 1783, at the Peace of Versailles, at which the independence of the United States was established, Florida and Minorca were restored to Spain, but the loss her navy had sustained was irreparable.
In 1786 a peace was declared between Spain and Algiers, by which thousands of Spanish captives were released from slavery, and the piratical incursions from which the coast country had long suffered were ended. Two years later Charles III passed away, at the age of seventy-three, having done much to earn the gratitude of his country.
CHAPTER XIX.
CHARLES IV AND BONAPARTE.
When, at the age of forty, in 1789, Charles IV ascended the throne of Spain, he for a while retained in power his father’s great prime minister, Floridablanca; but soon, it seems, his wisdom failed him. After dallying awhile with this faithful servant, who was succeeded by Count Cabarrus, then by the patriot Jovellanos, Charles gave up all attempts to rule wisely, and abandoned himself utterly to the guidance of his wife, who was as capricious and depraved as any of her sex who had ever before ruled over a Spanish king. In 1792 the queen managed to install her own favourite, Manuel Godoy, a young man of low birth, in the seat of the statesman Aranda, and had him raised to the rank of a Spanish grandee, as Duke of Alcudia. Henceforth, for many years, poor Spain was to witness the humiliating spectacle of a good-natured but weak sovereign, ruled by his vicious wife and her creature, and to become familiar with family scandals which were a disgrace to the nation.
Perhaps Charles would have made mistakes enough if he had been left to himself, for early in his reign the world was amazed at the horrible cruelties of the French Revolution, and he, as a Bourbon allied to the family of Louis XVI, was placed in a most embarrassing position when the excesses of the revolutionists culminated in the execution of the king. All Spain rose in protest against this barbarous act, and urged King Charles to declare for vengeance; but he sat supinely in his palace, and did nothing more than to send a feeble protest and a feebler army against the regicides. The new-born republic did not wait, however, for him to declare war, but sent a force into Spain, which quickly invaded the frontier and soon defeated the allied Spanish and Portuguese in several battles. The triumphant republicans were only checked when they held the peninsula at their mercy, for, as history has told us, they were at the outset invincible. They snatched victories from defeats, turned defeats into victories: these desperate outlaws, battling against the rights of kings and the oppressions of a decadent nobility. They were equally victorious over the allied armies in the Netherlands also, and soon we have the edifying spectacle of this Bourbon King of Spain entering into treaty with the red-handed murderers of his royal kinsman. This was in 1795, at the Treaty of Basel, arranged by the vainglorious Godoy, who won thereby great rewards in lands and honours, and also the title of the “Prince of Peace.” Further, by the Treaty of Ildefonso, in 1796, distracted Spain turned completely around and entered into an offensive and defensive alliance with France against England. Retribution was swift and sure, for the next year her fleet was shattered at the naval fight of Cape St. Vincent, Cadiz was attacked by the English, and she lost the island of Trinidad in the West Indies, besides having her merchant marine ruined and her colonial trade all but destroyed.
At the instigation of Napoleon, who was now foremost in the affairs of France, Spain declared war against her sister kingdom, Portugal, though sorely against her will, as—if for no other reason—the queen’s favourite daughter, Carlota, was the wife of the Prince Regent of Portugal. But in 1801 that kingdom was overrun by an army composed of seventy-five thousand men, fifteen thousand of which were French and sixty thousand Spanish, and the “Prince of Peace” won new honours for himself by his active participation. Spain, in common with other European countries, secured a brief breathing space by the Treaty of Amiens, in 1802, but by this treaty England was confirmed in her captures and came out triumphant.
Napoleon’s act in disposing of Louisiana to the United States for the paltry sum of fifteen million dollars, was a vast benefit to America, but a violation of good faith, inasmuch as Spain had ceded that territory to France, only three years before, with the expressed condition that no other country should ever obtain it. Still, she meekly bore this bitter humiliation, for she was under the domination of the conqueror of Europe, who soon imposed yet heavier conditions upon her. He found a pretext for violating the peace with England, and Spain also, who had purchased her neutrality by a monthly payment, in 1804 declared war against the Britons for seizing her homeward-sailing galleons with their wealth of treasure from the American colonies. England had done this as a measure of self-defence, foreseeing that, with the sinews of war which this colonial treasure would purchase, Spain would not hesitate to cast her lot with Napoleon and France.
The conflict that ensued put an end forever (so far as human ken can forecast) to Spain’s ascendancy at sea. Her supremacy, indeed, had long since departed; not since the times of the “invincible armada” had she been a powerful factor to reckon with upon the ocean. But it was during the war that followed that the combined French and Spanish fleets, under Villeneuve and Gravina, were sought out and attacked by Lord Nelson. Off Trafalgar, October 25, 1805, occurred that memorable naval battle by which the fleets were shattered, and England obtained, coincidently with the death of Nelson, the title which she has since so proudly borne, of “mistress of the seas.” She was thenceforth supreme upon the ocean, and the colonies of France and Spain were at her mercy.
The Spanish-French alliance had changed since the time of the “family compact,” for what then was a natural union between sovereigns allied by blood and interests, was now a most unnatural connection between two totally dissimilar organizations. Especially since Napoleon had so cruelly put to death the young Duke d’Enghien, a scion of the Bourbon house in 1804, Spain regarded France with averted eyes. The repugnance of the king could not be overcome, and even the skill at dissimulation possessed by the artful Godoy could not suffice to hide from Napoleon the fact that his great adversary, England, was higher in favour than himself. He took a characteristic revenge, and by compelling Spain to become a party to the dismemberment of Portugal, by the Treaty of Fontainebleau, placed her in a position from which she could not retreat. This was in 1806, and the same year a French army under Junot invaded Portugal and drove the royal family into exile. The next year, however, it became evident that not Portugal alone, but Spain as well, was the object of the great Napoleon’s ambition. The wonder is that she had escaped so long, when already Germany, Italy, Austria, Prussia, the Netherlands, and even the vast empire of Russia, had been invaded by him and made subject to his will. But Spain’s hour had come; the giant now felt the moment propitious for her conquest. Under pretext of marching his troops through Spain to Portugal—as by the treaty he was permitted to do—Napoleon massed his soldiers at all the passes of the Pyrenees, and, before the king and court were well aware of his plans, had obtained full possession of the frontier, and was sending forward Murat and his battalions to the capital, Madrid. Terror-stricken, the royal family resolved at once to flee to Mexico. But when the people learned this, realizing that all this misery had been brought upon them by the corrupt and faithless Godoy, they rose en masse and sacked the palace, seeking everywhere for the prime minister, whose life would have been forfeited if he had not escaped by hiding in a closet. This ebullition showed Charles IV the futility of longer clinging to the shadow of what he had formerly possessed, and he formally abdicated, on March 17, 1808, in favour of his son Ferdinand, the Prince of Asturias.
France had experienced her Reign of Terror; she now had her master, Napoleon, who looked upon his small empire as too restricted for his towering ambitions, and cast around for some other thrones to occupy. He saw, with that clearness of perception for which he was noted, that the throne of Spain was divided against itself: the king against the queen, Godoy the Prince of Peace against them both, and the son of the king at enmity with the other three. In truth, it was charged by Godoy that he had conspired to kill, or at least to dethrone, his father, and he was thrown into prison until he pretended to relent and ask forgiveness. Ferdinand, hated by his mother, despised by the prime minister, and accustomed to regard his father as an obstacle in the path of his ambition, was an altogether unlovely character, dark, sinister, with the making of another Philip II in him, had but the times been propitious. He was, however, the popular idol, and the misguided people hailed with joy this new accession to the line of royalty, under the title of Ferdinand VII.
It was not long that he was permitted to enjoy the royal prerogatives, nor the malicious satisfaction of retaliating upon his enemies. Confiding in the supposed friendship of Napoleon, he sent back to Portugal the Spanish troops which his father had recalled in anticipation of a French invasion, and unsuspiciously placed himself in the emperor’s hands. With consummate duplicity, Bonaparte allured first Ferdinand, then his father, the queen mother and Godoy, over the frontier to Bayonne, where he indeed had them at his mercy, and then revealed his true intentions. In a word, he frightened Ferdinand into an abdication, his father into renouncing forever his claim to the throne, in return for a pension and paltry honours, and Godoy he dropped as unworthy of attention.
Ferdinand was promised an income of one million francs, a palace, and—captivity. Meanwhile, Napoleon called an assembly of the notables—such as would come at his call—forced upon them a new Constitution, and made them swear allegiance to the new king, who, of course, was one of his own family—his brother Joseph, until then King of Naples. Joseph himself, by nature unfitted for kingship, amiable, humane, was yet unable to resist his imperious brother. Against his own inclinations he was forced to take the throne; but not all the ability and resources of Napoleon could keep him seated there. For though Napoleon, after he had finished this work to his mind—had dethroned two kings and seated another—returned to Paris and other victories, yet the people over whom he had placed his brother Joseph absolutely refused to accept him. An outbreak at Madrid was only quelled after many French soldiers and Spanish citizens had been massacred, and affairs wore such a threatening aspect that re-enforcements now poured through the Pyrenean passes to the number of one hundred thousand men. Marat did the best he could, other French generals co-operated; but within a week or so after he had entered the Spanish capital, Joseph was compelled to retreat to the frontier.
These, in brief, were the beginnings of the famed Peninsular War, which lasted from 1807 to 1814, and inflicted incalculable misery upon the Spanish and Portuguese people. The Spanish fought desperately, but without common purpose or direction. At the first siege of Saragossa, made memorable by the valiant defence of its inhabitants, Palafox and the romantic “Maid of Saragossa,” the French were repulsed; but at the second they took the city, with terrible slaughter. Joseph was a second time compelled to abandon Madrid, and a second time to return; for his brother was furious over the acts of the Spanish rebels, and determined to subdue the country. Perhaps he would have accomplished this in the end, though the whole nation was now aroused; but the Spaniards bethought themselves to appeal to England for assistance. The British ministry saw its way clear to fight the universal conqueror in Spain and Portugal in a manner not possible on the soil of France; so they sent out Moore and Wellington, and other tried generals, with armies behind them and fleets to support them, and they began operations in Portugal. At first they were successful in compelling Marshal Ney to evacuate Portugal; but in Spain Sir John Moore was driven back upon the port of Coruña, and met his death—the same General Moore whose defeat and burial are immortalized in heroic verse. Napoleon himself hastened to Spain and organized victories with two hundred thousand men, so that for a time “brother Joseph” was secure on the throne upon which his imperial master had so unceremoniously seated him. But with his departure reverses came again; for, though driven away at first, the British returned.
CHAPTER XX.
THE REIGN OF FERDINAND VII.
The same month of July, 1808, in which Joseph Bonaparte was proclaimed King of Spain at Madrid, the British troops were despatched to Portugal. After Junot had been expelled from that kingdom the genius of Napoleon reorganized his armies, until the French in Spain numbered not less than four hundred thousand men, which he left divided into eight corps under as many generals and marshals. Soult invaded Portugal, and was promptly driven out by Wellington; while King Joseph, with eighty thousand men, was defeated at Talavera, July, 1809. During the ensuing winter Wellington constructed that famous line of earthworks, twenty-nine miles in length, known as the lines of Torres Vedras. The French had then captured every city of note in southern Spain except Cadiz, and Wellington foresaw the necessity of preparing an impregnable base for retreat, in case he was pursued by the overwhelmingly powerful forces of the enemy. His foresight was justified when General Massena, with sixty-five thousand soldiers, moved against him in the spring of 1810. He retreated slowly behind his lines of defence, taking with him all the available sustenance of the country, and Massena, unable to force the works, and in effect starved out, after losing thirty thousand men, sullenly retreated northward. Following him cautiously, the English general, in the spring of 1811, overtook and whipped him in a battle fought in April, and for the third time rid Portugal of the French invaders. After this, by a succession of skilfully planned battles, and with victory alternating defeat, Wellington persistently advanced, until in August, 1812, he entered Madrid. He had not yet accomplished his purpose, however, of ridding Spain of the French, who still had nearly two hundred thousand men in the field. He was compelled to retire again in the direction of his protecting earthworks; but in the spring of 1813, finding himself now commander-in-chief of an army of two hundred thousand men, seventy thousand of whom were Anglo-Portuguese veterans, Wellington advanced boldly northward, and at Vittoria, on the 21st of June, met and overwhelmingly defeated the French under King Joseph, who fled from the field “with a ‘Napoleon’ (coin) in his pocket, and leaving another Napoleon in a predicament.” After that, Wellington’s advance was an almost uninterrupted series of victories, until, by February, 1814, he was well over the frontier and investing cities on the soil of France. But by that time Bonaparte himself was a fugitive, having abdicated, and the capital of France was in possession of the allied armies.
In this manner did the British fight the battles of Spain and drive from her soil the armies of France. It was not altogether a disinterested task, of course, but a sagacious move of the highest diplomacy, for, as England’s ministry had foreseen, Spain became the “grave of France.” By continually weakening his armies to accomplish her conquest, Napoleon only paved the way for the complete triumph of his enemies in the north: the allied forces of Prussia, Russia, and Austria. Wellington received great rewards from his own country, and Spain eventually bestowed upon him vast estates, which his descendants own to-day. Here, also, he first met and checked the great conqueror of Europe; and he utilized the invaluable experience of this five-years’ war the next summer, when, on the field of Waterloo, he finally crushed Napoleon, and drove him into eventual exile at St. Helena. He may truly be called the saviour of Spain, for, aside from a few detached battles and a desultory though persistent guerrilla warfare, the Spaniards conducted no wise scheme of defence. The battle of Vittoria shows the relative parts played by them and their allies, when their total loss was but 553, the Portuguese 1,049, and the English 3,308. This was the end of the great “Napoleonic storm cloud” that burst over distracted Europe and shattered against the Spanish Pyrenees.
“The unfortunate war in Spain was the first cause of the misfortunes of France,” wrote the exiled Napoleon years afterward, when in St. Helena. His first step, after he found it impossible to retain Joseph on the Spanish throne, was to treat with Ferdinand, still a prisoner, in December, 1813. But before he could return the latter to his country he himself was deposed, and another Bourbon, Louis XVIII, had entered Paris as the choice of the allied conquerors.
Amid universal ovations Ferdinand assumed his intermitted reign, first promising to support the liberal Constitution which the Cortes presented for his acceptance. The Spaniards had spent more time in framing a Constitution than in fighting, and this guarantee of the people’s rights was a very liberal instrument—on paper. If Ferdinand had kept his pledges to sustain it, his would have been a very limited instead of the very absolute monarchy it was. But he did not keep his word, for the Inquisition, which had been abolished, was restored; the Jesuits were recalled; and of the liberal statesmen, who had at heart the good of Spain, some were sent to the galleys, and others executed. In fact, the despicable Ferdinand had learned nothing in his exile; a true Bourbon, he was at perpetual enmity with the people and republican institutions. Yet his countrymen had recalled him, supported him in power, and bared their necks to the naked sword of his despotism. The ignorant masses certainly ruled in Spain when Ferdinand VII, “worst of the Bourbon kings,” came back to his own. But even fools have feelings, and some of them rose against him in 1822, and he, true to his Bourbon instincts, called to his aid the Holy Alliance. French troops under the Duc d’Angoulême, to the number of one hundred and fifty thousand, came pouring into the peninsula, and stayed there five years, until the base monarch’s hold upon his throne was fixed again.
Bolstered by foreign troops, Ferdinand gave vent to his brutal instincts by imprisoning thousands of his subjects who had ventured to protest against this incarnation of corruption and venality; he executed the leaders, banished others, and perpetrated atrocities such as he delighted in.
His most beneficent act toward his harried kingdom was the involuntary deliverance afforded by his death; but even then he left a legacy of civil war, that has lasted to the present time.
Like his great predecessor, Philip II, whom he so much resembled, he married thrice, his last wife being his niece (as was Philip’s), Maria Christina, daughter of the King of Naples. Hitherto childless, Ferdinand was delighted, on the 18th of October, 1830, at the birth of a daughter to Queen Christina. It was her birth that inaugurated the civil wars to which reference has been made, and of which we will treat in the following chapter.
Momentous events happened during the reign of Ferdinand VII, which reduced his kingdom from a world-embracing dominance almost to the confines of the Iberian Peninsula. When, in the first decade of this century, the Emperor of France turned his greedy eyes toward Spain, she possessed territory now included in Florida, Mexico, Central America, all South America save Brazil; the islands of Cuba, Puerto Rico, and a portion of Santo Domingo in the West Indies, besides the Carolines and Philippines in the East, and her present possessions on and near the western coast of Africa and in the Mediterranean. When it was seen by her colonies that Spain was too weak to resist the imposition of a foreigner upon her throne, their bolder spirits realized that the moment had arrived for deliverance from her oppressions. The standard of revolt was raised in Mexico, 1808; in Venezuela, 1810; Buenos Ayres, Chili, and Peru followed the movement, until, before the death of Ferdinand, every American colony and every island had been lost to Spain except Cuba and Puerto Rico. Long and sanguinary were the struggles between the desperate Spaniards and the aspirants for freedom; but in the end the patriots conquered, and continental America was freed from Spanish misrule. Florida was ceded in 1819 to the United States, which ultimately acquired a vast portion of Mexican territory by conquest and treaty.
CHAPTER XXI.
ISABELLA II AND THE CARLISTS.
The greatest, most illustrious reigns in Spain have been those inaugurated by the placing on the throne of princes already of age, trained in kingly affairs and able to rule without assistance. The weakest, most deplorable reigns have been those where princes or princesses nominally occupied the throne, and regencies or successions of favourites actually held the power. A king or queen should be one pre-eminent for strength and virtues, a leader, a ruler, capable of guiding and fostering the best interests of the subject people. But the Spaniards, through their false notions of chivalry, their romantic ideas of majesty, have lost sight of the primal principles of kingship. Provided that a fantastic figure be elevated to the august position—whether a weak and juvenile scion of royalty, or a gilded and bedizened puppet of rags and putty—it may for a time command their worship and blind adoration! This national trait is admirable, were nothing expected of a king or queen but to act as an ornamental figure-head. Unfortunately, in a nation composed of such diverse and irreconcilable elements as exist in Spain, much more is expected—is demanded.
When, in 1833, at the death of the king, the infanta, Maria Isabella II, was held up for the adoration of the people, most of them fell down and blindly worshipped. The Cortes assembled at Madrid and swore loyalty to the three-year-old queen and her mother, the regent, while the unthinking people went wild in their fervent declarations of devotedness to the heiress of the most corrupt, most intolerant sovereign that had disgraced the throne in many years.
But there was an instant protest from a minor portion of the people, led by the late king’s brother, Don Maria Isidor Carlos de Bourbon; not because of the silly spectacle afforded by placing the reins of power in the hands of a puling infant, but because Don Maria Isidor Carlos de Bourbon wanted the throne for himself! In truth, but for King Ferdinand’s “pragmatic sanction,” abrogating the existing “Salic law” (excluding females from the succession), Don Carlos had every reason to believe he would himself be king. He was born in 1788, or a year before the “pragmatic sanction” was put forth, he was next in line of the male successors, and he meant to “succeed.” So he started a revolution, and thus began, in 1833, the first of that long series of battles, massacres, outrages, known collectively as the “Carlist Wars.”
Don Carlos had been banished by Ferdinand to Portugal for venturing to protest against the very thing that happened later, and after the king’s death he came over the frontier between France and Spain with a small army. His chief adherents were found in the country of the Basques, those brave, peculiar, liberty-loving but bigoted people in the north of Spain, who have dwelt from time immemorial in their beautiful mountain valleys, and whom we have noted at the very beginnings of Spanish history as strenuous opponents of oppression and defenders of their rights, real or imaginary.
Among other rights which they claimed were the ancient fueros—charters or privileges—by which, in consideration of valiant services in the past, they were exempt from most taxes, from enforced military service, etc., and they recognised the ruler of the country not as king or queen, but merely as lord. It was given out by the Carlists that these fueros were to be taken from them by the “liberals,” or adherents to the queen regent, and that only by assisting the really legitimate sovereign (Don Carlos, of course) could they still continue to enjoy their ancient immunities. So they flocked to the Carlist standard, and opposed to them and their associates were the Christinos, or supporters of the queen regent Christina. For seven years they fought, victory first with one side, then with the other. At one time the queen regent and her court were on the point of fleeing the country; the Carlist guerrillas were at the gates of Madrid; but by the persistence of General Espartero, commander of the Christinos, in May, 1840, the last of the pretender’s forces were driven over the frontier. Terrible excesses were committed on both sides; the Carlists, particularly, under the savage Cabrera and Zumalacarregui, showed what the Spaniard is capable of when his evil passions are aroused. “Those days that I do not shed blood,” said the cruel Cabrera, “I do not have a good digestion!” He punished with death the giving of a drink of water to a wounded enemy, and he butchered in cold blood numerous innocent women, children, and aged men. A Christino garrison once surrendered to him on the stipulation that their lives and their clothes should be spared to them. He performed his part by stripping them of their clothing and setting his men to chasing and shooting them until the last one fell! And these conflicts were between men of the same nationality, sometimes of the same township and canton; thus showing to what a state of moral degradation these people had arrived.
A short period of peace ensued, but the Carlist conflict has been continued intermittently until the present day. The first Don Carlos died in 1855, and his eldest son, the Count of Montemolin, fell heir to the feud, making an unsuccessful attempt at revolution in Valencia in 1860; but died in 1861. A brother succeeded to the claims as Juan III, and he, in 1863, renounced them in favour of his son, grandson of the first Don Carlos, or Charles V. He is the present Don Carlos, or Charles VII, known as the Duke of Madrid, and was born in 1848. He was implicated in Carlist uprisings in 1869, 1870, and 1872, and personally instituted his greatest campaign in 1873, which was suppressed, while the Basques, his devoted adherents, were deprived of many privileges. As a French “legitimist,” he has also a claim to the throne of France, and was at one time expelled from that country; but has since been permitted to return, whence he has conducted clandestine operations against the Spanish crown. And now, with a child sovereign and a queen regent again in Spain, the conditions are similar to what they were in 1833. There is still, after more than sixty years, a Don Carlos as claimant to the throne; but to-day, even more than then, the moral influence of Europe is against the “pretender,” and in favour of the “legitimate” sovereign.
The present queen regent, Christina of Austria, mother of the boy king Alfonso XIII, possesses—what Queen-Regent Christina of Naples did not have—the respect and confidence of her people. Christina of Naples, the mother of Isabella, forfeited the good opinion of all her subjects by her gross immorality, and in 1840 she was compelled to renounce her regency in favour of the prime minister, Espartero, who as general of her armies had won the victories over the Carlists, and leave the country. Her daughter, as Isabella II, was early declared to have reached her majority, and in 1846 was married to her cousin, Don Francisco de Bourbon, while her sister, the infanta, was married to the Duke of Montpensier, son of Louis Philippe of France. These were the infamous “Spanish marriages” arranged by Louis Philippe in the hope of securing the succession to his house.
The story of her reign is not an inviting one, revealing as it does the instability of the Spanish character and the corruption of the court and queen. Spain’s foreign relations had been strengthened by the “Quadruple Alliance” between England, France, Portugal, and Spain, and liberal statesmen were numerous who would have served her faithfully. Under Burgos, in Christina’s time, wise plans were made for the development of commerce, internal improvements, and the regulation of church and state. Blindly cognizant that the church had in some way possessed itself of a vast portion of the nation’s wealth, many advocated confiscation of church properties. In 1835 the cry was, “Down with the monks!” and hundreds of these helpless though useless persons were massacred. The country’s resources seemed at the last ebb, when the able banker Mendizabel came to the rescue; but he accomplished no more than the several “Constitutions” (of which at least three were put forth in twenty-five years) to remedy the existing troubles. The reason was that the real secret of their troubles lay in the people themselves: the masses, complacent in self-sufficient ignorance; the intelligent portion without patriotism, self-seeking politicians.
Espartero was overthrown and went into exile in 1843. In 1844 arose a strong military government under the veteran Narvaez, who kept order and sustained the throne until 1851. Meanwhile the French Revolution of 1848, though it unsettled Spain not a little, was safely tided over. In 1854 insurrections broke out in various parts of the country, and to appease the people a national “Junta” was formed, with the recalled Espartero and O’Donnell at its head. The latter continued to direct affairs more or less until 1858; in 1859 he created a diversion of public sentiment by a short war in Morocco, and in 1861 the island of Santo Domingo was annexed.
Between this time and 1866 the changes in the ministry were numerous, from O’Donnell to Miraflores, and back again to Narvaez and O’Donnell; but in 1866 a serious insurrection under General Prim broke out, which was suppressed and the leaders exiled. A more successful rebellion was inaugurated in 1868 by the naval fleet under Admiral Topete, at Cadiz. Prim and Serrano, the exiles, returned; the rebels and royal troops fraternized, and Queen Isabella, then at the baths of San Sebastian, was sent over the frontier, never to return.
Without being specific in charges against her, it may be mentioned that her subjects, debased as many of them were, yet demanded a queen with higher moral purpose—more like the Isabella of old, less like the disreputable queen-mother Christina. She had reigned, in a fashion, for thirty-five years, including the regency. She was banished in 1868, since which time she has lived in Paris, where she made her home after her exile, ever true to the traditions of Ferdinand VII and his times.
CHAPTER XXII.
FROM ISABELLA II TO ALFONSO XIII.
“A daughter of kings: if I were a man I would go to my capital!” indignantly declared Isabella, when the appalling news reached her that the royal army was defeated. But instead, she sought safety in flight, leaving to the successful revolutionists the difficult task of providing a government in place of the one they had overthrown. Distrust and suspicion were rampant, and those who had declared the pronunciamiento were at their wits’ ends what to choose: a democratic monarchy, a constitutional monarchy, or a republic; but during the interregnum the patriot Serrano stepped into the breach. A thankless task was his, as president of the provisional government, though he was assisted by such able men as Prim, Minister of War; Topete, Minister of Marine; Zorilla, Minister of Commerce; Figuerola, of Finance; Ortiz, of Justice; Lopez de Ayala, of the Colonies; and Sagasta, Minister of the Interior.
They were glad to resign, the following year, and subscribe to a constitution which provided for the restoration of a constitutional monarchy.
The constitutional monarchy was very beautiful, as an idea; but while Serrano ruled as “regent for the interregnum,” the throne of Spain “went begging about Europe,” seeking a royal occupant. General Prim was insistent upon the candidacy of Prince Leopold, of Hohenzollern, a relative of King William of Prussia, at which Napoleon III took alarm; and though the prince promptly resigned his candidature, the French emperor demanded further that Prussia should give a guarantee that she would at no future time sanction his claims. King William refused to give this assurance, and Napoleon made this a pretext for declaring that war against Prussia which ended so disastrously for his empire and for France.
Isabella’s brother-in-law, the Duke of Montpensier, as well as Fernando of Portugal, were considered, but rejected for political reasons; and even sturdy old Espartero refused the crown, showing the possession of greater wisdom than the one upon whom it was finally bestowed—Don Amadeo, Duke of Aosta, the second son of Victor Emanuel of Italy.
The reception he received was presaged by the assassination of Prim, in December, 1870; but Amadeo was crowned a few days later, on January 2, 1871, and entered heartily into the duties of his unsought kingship. Two years later, after having been several times the object of assassination and of insults innumerable, he became convinced that modern Spain was different from that Spain which had besought a foreign prince to rule over it in the eighteenth century, and sorrowfully abdicated.
Monarchical rule having failed them, the Spaniards now turned to a republic, as the ideal toward which they had striven through these hopeless, turbulent, and chaotic years. But they did not take into account their inborn reverence for a king, their superstitious faith in the sanctity of the royal office; and so the “republic” had a thorny road to travel, first under Señor Pi y Margall, the first “president of the executive power,” lastly under the great jurist, orator, and patriot, Emilio Castelar.
Away back in the time of the regent Christina, that queen was troubled by the dissensions of the so-called liberals, who, split into two parties, the moderados and the progresistas, impeded whatever advance might have been possible had the occupant of the throne been inclined toward the people.
So now, the actual arrival of the republic found dissensions among the very “patriots” who should have served it disinterestedly and with fervour. The misnamed “republic” served but as a bridge for another king to pass over from exile to the throne.
When Prim was dying, mortally wounded by unknown assassins, he whispered to a friend, “I die, but your king is coming!” The king came, and went; the “republic” came, and went out in the coup-d’état of January, 1874, with militarism triumphant, and the administration of the government in the hands of military officers. Their action in putting down anarchy and ending the civil war—for “Don Carlos” had again taken the field, with his Basque retainers, in support of his inalienable “male succession”—would seem to prove that Spain, like Mexico, needed the mailed hand of the military dictator to force it into paths of prosperity and development.
Serrano might have been that dictator; but if he had designs, they did not succeed, for he soon resigned in favour of one who proclaimed himself “the first republican in Europe”—no less a personage than the seventeen-year-old son of Isabella the exile, who was ferreted out by the king-makers and offered the crown, that a Bourbon might again occupy the throne of his ancestors.
The Spaniards were now content, for had they not travelled the road of republicanism and found it a failure? tried the rule of a foreigner, and found him wanting? At last they were in possession of their own again! In his veins ran the blood of Isabella the corrupt; but his reputed father was an amiable man, and so was the new king, Alfonso XII, who was proclaimed at Madrid in January, 1875.
The faults, the traits, of Alfonso XII were inherited. Even his death, less than eleven years after his coronation, is said to have been caused by constitutional ills. But, so far as he could, he nobly lived up to his intentions to give Spain peace and renewed prosperity. Six years before the people had shouted, “Away with the Bourbons!” yet here again was a Bourbon on the throne. He could not forget the line from which he descended, nor the treatment his mother, also a Bourbon, had received; yet his reign approached what the people had so long desired. Able ministers assisted him, according to the humour of the hour: first under General Martinez Campos; then under the leadership of Canovas del Castillo; again under the liberal Señor Sagasta. Through all these changes, however, Alfonso preserved the goodwill of his subjects; yet he was the object of the base assassin’s aim on three different occasions.
Despite the good offices of imperial match-makers, who would have married him to some great princess of a reigning house in Europe, Alfonso persisted in wedding his own choice. He married his cousin, Marie de las Mercedes, daughter of the Duke of Montpensier—a love-match which death disrupted less than six months later.
Kings may marry, but kings may not mourn; so within another six months he was united to the Archduchess Maria Christina, niece of the Emperor of Austria, who, the story goes, when she had heard of Alfonso’s first marriage, was so disappointed that she entered a convent. A child was born and named Mercedes, after the former queen; then yet another daughter; but no male heir to the throne before the death of the king, which occurred on the 25th of November, 1885. Whether his death was caused by excesses, as has been sometimes charged, or by his chivalrous insistence upon visiting the afflicted cholera districts of his kingdom, mattered little to the people, who mourned sincerely for their brave young king, cut off in the flower of his manhood, with his great schemes unaccomplished.
For the first time since the death of Ferdinand VII, more than fifty years before, the vaults in the Escorial were opened for the reception of another occupant. In accordance with an ancient custom, when the funeral cortège arrived at the door of the Escorial, the keeper within demanded, “Who would enter here?” One of the attendants answered, “Alfonso XII would enter,” and the door was thrown open. Even then Alfonso was not considered as officially defunct, until the lord chamberlain, drawing back the cloth of gold covering his features, addressed him: “Señor, señor, señor,” and, receiving no reply, said solemnly: “His Majesty does not answer; then indeed the king is dead!”
The king was dead; to his place succeeded his elder daughter, little Mercedes, Princess of the Asturias, during whose minority the queen-mother reigned as regent. For the seventh time in five hundred years a minor sat on the throne of Spain. The first of whom we have record was Ferdinand IV, at the beginning of the fourteenth century; he died young, and was succeeded by an infant son, Alfonso VI; at the end of that century there was another child-king, Henry III, from 1390 to 1406; and after him John VI, who reigned from 1406 to 1454; Charles II, who came to be king at the age of fourteen, in 1676; and Isabella, the age of three, in 1833. Child kings and queens, babes in arms enthroned in nurses’ laps, and unscrupulous regents during their minorities, seem to have been a Spanish evil!
But the child queen Mercedes was not to reign long, for six months after the death of Alfonso XII the queen gave birth to a son, and this posthumous heir succeeded to the throne as Alfonso XIII, while yet unable to understand the fearful dignities that were thrust upon him. He was thus the eighth infant sovereign to rule Spain from the nursery within the past five centuries—perhaps may be the last; for as people grow older they are supposed to grow wiser; though all rules may have their exceptions, and perhaps the Spaniards are exceptions to all rules!
Still, we can not withhold our admiration from a chivalrous sentiment, however foolish it may seem to sober sense; and when it was suggested to Emilio Castelar, the lion-hearted orator and statesman, that this might be a good time for a re-trial of the republic, he probably voiced the national feeling when he said: “We can not make war against a woman and a child!” That is the unthinking, sentimental side of it; but if the people had been brave enough to have said: “While we do not wish to war against a woman and her child, yet we will set this infant aside until he has shown what manner of man he becomes,” would it not have been far less cruel to her and to him, and more to the credit of a nation desirous of keeping pace with a progressive civilization?