ATTEMPT ON THE LIFE OF QUEEN ISABELLA—THE OVERTHROW OF THE QUEEN-MOTHER, MARIA CRISTINA

1850–1854

There was much variety of feeling when it was known that an heir to the throne was expected. On the day of the birth, July 12, 1850, the clerics, Ministers, diplomats, officers, and other important personages of the realm, assembled at the palace to pay their respects to the expected infant. But the bells and cannon had hardly announced to the nation the birth of the girl-child when it expired. So the dead form of the infant, which had only drawn breath in this world for five minutes, was brought into the assembly of dignitaries, and after this sad display the gathering dispersed in silence. The kind-heartedness of the Queen was shown in her thoughtful generosity to the nurses who were disappointed of their charge.

“Poor nurses, they must have felt it very much!” she exclaimed. “But tell them not to mind, for they shall be paid the same as if they had had my child.”

In February, 1852, an heir to the throne was once more expected, and the birth of the Infanta Isabella was celebrated by the usual solemn presentation. When the King showed the infant to his Ministers, he said to the Generals Castaños and Castroterreño:

“You have served four Kings, and now you have a Princess who may one day be your Sovereign.”

It was on February 2, 1852, that the dastardly attempt was made on the life of the Queen, just before leaving the palace for the Church of Atocha, where the royal infant was to be baptized. The Court procession was passing along the quadrangular gallery, hung with the priceless tapestries only displayed on important occasions, when Manuel Martin Merino, a priest of a parish of Madrid, suddenly darted forward from the spectators lining the way, with the halberdier guard. The petition in the cleric’s hand and his garb of a cleric led to his step forward being unmolested, and the Queen turned to him, prepared to take the paper. But the next moment the other hand of the assassin appeared from under his cloak with a dagger, which he swiftly aimed at the royal mother. Fortunately, the Queen’s corset turned aside the murderous weapon, and, although blood spurted from her bodice, the wound was not very deep; but she was at once put to bed and placed under the care of the royal physicians.

The royal infant was promptly seized from the arms of its mother at the moment of the attack, by an officer of the Royal Guard, and for this presence of mind the soldier was afterwards given the title of the Marquis of Amparo.

With regard to the assailant, the Queen said to her Ministers: “You have often vexed me by turning a deaf ear to my pleas of mercy for criminals, but I wish this man to be punished immediately.” And, with the outraged feeling of the object of such a dastardly deed, Isabella turned to the would-be murderer, and said: “What have I ever done to offend you, that you should have attacked me thus?”

During the trial in the succeeding days the Queen softened to the criminal, and said to her advisers: “No, no! don’t kill him for what he did to me!”

However, justice delivered the man to the hangman five days after his deed.

The efforts to discover Merino’s accomplices were fruitless, and it was thought that the deed had been prompted more by the demagogue party than by the Carlists.

The cool, cynical manner of the cleric never left him even at the moment of his execution.

When the priest’s hair was cut for the last time, he said to the barber: “Don’t cut much, or I shall catch cold.”

The doomed man’s request to say a few words from the scaffold was refused. When asked what he had wished to say, he replied: “Nothing much. I pity you all for having to stay in this world of corruption and misery.”

The ovation which the Queen had when she finally went to the Church of Atocha to present the infant surpasses description. Flowers strewed the way, and tears of joy showed the sympathy of the people with the Queen in her capacity as mother, and at her escape from the attempt on her life.

From 1852 to 1854 Isabella failed to please her subjects, and the outburst of loyalty which had followed the attempt on her life gradually waned. Curiously indifferent to what was for her personal interest, as well as for the welfare of the country, Isabella turned a deaf ear to the advice of her Ministers to dissolve a Cabinet which was under the leadership of the Count of San Luis, who was known to be the tool of Queen Maria Cristina, now so much hated by the Spaniards. Miraflores wrote a letter to Isabella, advising the return of Espartero, the Count of Valencia, but the letter never reached its destination.

Remonstrances which had been made upon the Government were now directed straight to the Throne.

“You see,” said her advisers, “how the persons whom you have overwhelmed with honours and favours speak against you!”

The Generals O’Donnell and Dulce finally took an active part against the Ministry, supported by the Queen-mother and Rianzares.

The Count of San Luis was a man of fine bearing and charming manners. He had been conspicuous in his early days for his banquets and gallantries, but he had also been known for many a generous deed to his friends; and it was noticeable that when the tide of favour left him he was deserted by all those to whom he had been of service.

The birth of another royal infant in 1854 excited little or no interest in the capital, where discontent with the reigning powers was so evident. General Dulce was accused in the presence of the Queen and San Luis of having conspired against the Throne. This the officer indignantly denied on the spot, declaring that never could he have believed in the perfidy which had prompted the report.

At last the storm of revolution broke over Madrid, and the parties of the Generals O’Donnell and Dulce came into collision with those of the Government. Insulting cries against the Queen-mother filled the streets, and during the three days’ uproar the house of Maria Cristina, in the Calle de las Rejas, was sacked, as well as those of her partisans. The furniture was burned in the street, and Maria Cristina took refuge in the royal palace.

After the Pronunciamento of Vicalvaro and O’Donnell to the troops, it was evident that the soldiers of the Escorial would also revolt against the Government.

It was then that Isabella was filled with the noble impulse to go alone to the barracks of the mutinous regiments and reason personally with them. With her face aglow with confidence in her soldiers and in herself, she said: “I am sure that the generals will come back with me then to Madrid, and the soldiers will return to their barracks shouting ‘Vivas’ for their Queen.”

But this step, which would have appealed with irresistible force to the subjects, was opposed by the Ministers, who objected to a course which would have robbed them of their portfolios by the Sovereign coming to an understanding with those who were opposed to their opinions.

At this time Isabella received from the Infanta Josefa, daughter of the Infanta Louisa Carlota and Francisco de Paula, a letter which showed that the Princess had inherited her mother’s hatred of the Queen-mother, Maria Cristina; for she wrote:

“Your Majesty should distrust the artificial and partial counsels of the Queen-mother. This lady, to whom you owe your birth, is sacrificing you to her insatiable greed of gold. Beyond your life you do not owe anything to Maria Cristina. She has done nothing for Spain that you should give her submission and obedience in your conduct as Queen. Hardly had Your Majesty’s father gone down to his grave than his widow gave you the pernicious example of an impure love, which began in a scandal, and ended, ten years later, in a morganatic marriage, to the incalculable harm of the country.

“Maria Cristina is lax in the principles of morality, which ought to be the foundation of the education of Princes, and she knew not how to inculcate them in the mind of Your Majesty. Whilst you were a child, she did nothing but accumulate money and arrange for her future booty.

“The disinterestedness and the generous sentiments which enrich Your Majesty’s heart, and the high tendencies which have shone in your mind, and which have only been suffocated by the pettiness of your entourage, are exclusively a gift from Heaven, and under favourable circumstances they would have developed into great and glorious deeds. When the time arrived for the marriage of Your Majesty—an event of such import to your destiny—Your Majesty knows that the Queen-mother only used her influence to make you marry a man whose sole merit lay in his power of ministering to her omnivorous nature. Never did a mother behave in such a self-interested way in what concerned her daughter’s domestic happiness! And now she continues the soul of the Government, counselling Your Majesty for her own ends, and with utter disregard of the wishes of the people.”

This letter, which gives an idea of the dissensions of the Royal Family, and the expression of feeling against Maria Cristina, was shared by the people. Indeed, the hatred of the Queen-mother was publicly shown after she took refuge in the royal palace. The Plaza de los Ministros resounded with the cries from the townsfolk of “Death to Cristina!” A storm of stones broke all the windows of the palace. The soldiers fired on the people. The palace gate of El Principe had to be guarded by two cannon commanding the Plaza de Oriente. Twelve guns were stationed in the great courtyard called the Plaza de las Armas, and all the cavalry at Madrid was summoned to the defence of the royal abode; and during the siege there was serious anxiety that the provisions would not last long.

Queen Isabella sought to encourage and support her mother, but she saw that the stream of public hatred was now too strong to be stemmed.

The arrival of Espartero in Madrid, on July 29, raised the siege of the palace, and the people, delighted at the sight of their favourite leader, gave a loyal ovation to Queen Isabella when she appeared at a window of the palace.

The days from July 17 to August 28 were fraught with anxiety for the Queen of Spain. The cries for the dismissal of the Queen-mother, and for her trial for the appropriation of State moneys, could no longer be silenced, and the day came when the royal lady found that her personal safety demanded her departure from the country. So, accompanied by a mounted escort, Maria Cristina submitted to the decision of Espartero, as the mouthpiece of the people, and she finally bade farewell to her weeping daughter at the palace door, and left the country, never more to return.

Espartero made a crusade against the undue priestly influence at Court. The weak-minded King was quite under the power of “the bleeding nun,” as Patrocinio was called, and his constant visits to her apartments in the palace were said to have been in search of spiritual counsel, with which she was supposed to be miraculously endowed by reason of the wounds in her forehead and hands, which refused to be healed, as they were said to be illustrative of those of the Saviour. The Queen and all the Royal Family became hysterically hypnotized by this phenomenon.

But Espartero soon put an end to the matter by having the lady put under the authoritative care of a doctor, who had her hands tied so as to prevent her irritating the wounds; and thus in a short time the supposed miracle was over, and the power of the religieuse and her brother, the Archbishop Claret, was at an end.

Espartero had O’Donnell as his Minister of War. Dissensions broke out again in the Cabinet, and O’Donnell reaped the success of his camarilla influence at the midnight Council meeting held before the Queen in July, 1856. For when Espartero found that his measures for the new Constitution were rejected, he offered his resignation; and then, to his surprise, the Queen, by a prearranged concert, turned to his colleague with her sweetest smile, saying, “I am sure you won’t abandon me, will you?” and he was sworn in as Prime Minister the following day.

But O’Donnell had a powerful rival for favour at the palace in the person of Narvaez, a General of some fame, whose alert, dapper little figure, said to have been improved by corsets, made him popular at Court as a dancer.

This officer was extremely arrogant, and noting that the grandees, by right of their special prerogative, stood covered in the royal presence during the ceremony of the King washing the feet of the poor, and feeding them in the historical Hall of Columns, he promptly put his own cocked hat on his head, and bade his officers do the same.

O’Donnell, who was of a heavier, clumsier build than his rival, suffered much at the sight of the success of Narvaez in the arts of society. One day at a state ball at the palace the two Generals stood in readiness to conduct the Queen through the mazes of the rigodon. As Prime Minister, O’Donnell considered that the distinction of taking Isabella’s hand for the figures was his by right, but Isabella could not resist the temptation of having for a partner a man distinguished as a follower of Terpsichore, and she therefore singled out Narvaez as her partner.

In a fury at what he considered a public slight, O’Donnell gave in his resignation the next day as President of the Council, and General Narvaez was chosen to fill the vacant place.

It was well known at Court that the British Ambassador, Bulwer Lytton, was working against the Court of Spain in England, and consequently he was an object of great aversion to the military leader of the Government.

Irritated at the Englishman’s assumption of authority, Narvaez said one day to Bulwer Lytton that Spain did not interfere with the affairs of Queen Victoria like England did with those of Isabella II. To this remark the British diplomat returned that Victoria did not owe her throne to foreign intervention, as Isabella did.

One day Narvaez was in his bureau in a great state of irritation about some action of the British Ambassador, when Bulwer Lytton was announced. He drew a chair close to Narvaez, and, although the Spaniard pushed his back, drew his seat still closer. Upon this Narvaez jumped up in his excitable manner, and then, wishing to seat himself again, he missed the place and found himself lower than he wished.

Upon this the Ambassador made some remark which added fuel to the fire of the General’s wrath, and, advancing to the Englishman, he made him rise from his seat, took him by the neck, and kicked him so that he nearly fell to the ground. The Ambassador took his papers for England that day, and this incident doubtless added to the bitterness with which Bulwer reported on the affairs of Spain.

The incident just related, of this last interview of Sir Bulwer Lytton with the Spanish Premier, was evidently never reported in all its bearings, but enough was known for it to be seen that the Ambassador was apt to embroil matters. For in “The Letters of Queen Victoria,” vol. ii., p. 207, Her Majesty writes:

But Isabella’s realm was still torn by insurrections. In January, 1860, the Prefect of the Police reported that a rebellion was being prepared in Spain against the throne by the Carlist party, under Don Carlos Luis de Bourbon y de Braganza, Count of Montemolin. When justice was prepared to take its course against the insurrectionists, Don Carlos wrote to Isabella, saying:

“I am certain that your compassionate heart, which has always shown pity for the unfortunate, will not fail to have mercy on your cousins, and not deny the pardon that we crave.”

This mercy was also eloquently pleaded for by the unhappy mother of the delinquents. So, obedient to the impulse of her kind heart, Isabella said to the weeping parent: “Be at rest; your son shall not die.”

However, the Carlist family soon forgot the clemency of the Queen, and the letter of Juan de Bourbon, son of Don Carlos, Ferdinand’s brother, showed that the spirit of animosity burnt as powerfully as ever in the breast of the claimant to the throne.

“Twenty-seven years you have reigned,” ran the Prince’s letter to his royal cousin, “and you must confess that the hand of God has not helped you. I know the country; I know equally well that your heart is good, and that you do good when you can, and you regret the evils which afflict Spain. But you try in vain. You cannot fight against Providence, which never wills that evil should prosper. Be assured, dear cousin, that God did not choose you to make the happiness of Spain, and that Divine Providence has denied you the lot of being a great Queen. Descend, Isabella—descend from the throne! Show yourself great in this matter, and take the place to which you have a claim in my family as my dear cousin, and as having occupied the throne for so many years, and do not expose yourself to final disaster and bring ruin on the family.”