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.
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