five years of fairly good government. A successful war in
Morocco in 1859 nattered the pride of the Spaniards, and the
country began to make real progress towards prosperity.
In 1863 the old scene of confusion was renewed. O'Donnell
was dismissed. For the next five years the political history
of Spain was the story of a blind attempt on the part of the
queen to rule despotically, by the help of reckless adventurers
Misrule of Isabella.
of mean capacity, and by brute violence. The
Isabella opposition took the form of successive military
outbreaks accompanied by murder, and suppressed
by massacre. In 1868 the government of Queen Isabella
collapsed by its own rottenness. She had even lost the mob
popularity which she had once gained by her jovial manners.
All men of political influence were either in open opposition
or, when they belonged to the Conservative parties, were holding
aloof in disgust at the predominance of the queen's favourites,
Gonzales Brabo, a mere ruffian, and Marfori, her steward, whose
position in the palace was perfectly well known.
In September 1868 the squadron at Cadiz under the command of Admiral Topete mutinied, and its action was the signal for a general secession. One gallant fight was made for the queen at the bridge of Alcolea in Andalusia by General Pavia, who was horribly wounded, but it Revolution of 1868. Deposition of Isabella. was an exception. Gonzales Brabo deserted her in a panic. She went into exile, and her reign ended. The Revolution of 1868 was the first openly and avowedly directed against the dynasty. It became a familiar saying that the “spurious race of Bourbon” had disappeared for ever, and the country was called upon to make a new and a better government. But the history of the six years from September 1868 to December 1874 proved that the political incapacity of the Spaniards had not been cured. There was no definite idea anywhere as to how a substitute was to be found. A Republican party had been formed led by a few professors and coffee-house politicians, with the mob of the towns for its support, and having as its mouthpiece Don Emilio Castelar, an honest man of Republican and Monarchical Parties.incredible fluency. The mass of the Spaniards, however, were not prepared for a republic. Besides them were the various monarchical parties: the Alfonsistas, who wished for the restoration of the queen's son with a regency, the partisans -of the widower king consort of Portugal; those of the duke of Montpensier; the Carlists; and a few purely fantastic dreamers who would have given the crown to the aged Espartero. The real power was in the hands of the military politicians, Francisco Serrano (q.v.) and Juan Prim (q.v.), who kept order by means of the army. A constituent Cortes was assembled in 1869, and decided in favour of a monarchy. Serrano was declared regent until a king Regency of Serrano. could be found, and it proved no easy task to find one. Ferdinand of Portugal declined. Montpensier was supposed to be unwelcome to Napoleon, and was opposed by Prim, who had also committed himself to the prophecy that the Bourbons would never return to Spain. Attempts to find a candidate in the Italian family failed at first. So did the first steps taken to find a king in the house of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen. When the desired ruler was again sought in this family in 1870, the acceptance of the offer by Prince Leopold proved the immediate cause of the Franco-German War, in which Spain had a narrow Amadeo of Savoy accepts the crown.escape of being entangled. At last, in August of 1870, Prince Amadeo of Savoy, second son of Victor Emmanuel II., consented to become candidate. He was elected on the 3rd of November. On the 27th of December 1870, on the very day on which the new king reached Carthagena, Prim was murdered by assassins who were never discovered.
The nominal reign of Amadeo lasted till February 1873.
It was a scandalous episode. The Italian prince had put himself
into a thoroughly false position, in which the nearest
approach to friends he could find were intriguing politicians
who sought to use him as a tool, and where every man of honest
principles, royalist or republican, looked upon him as an intruder.
The Carlists began to collect in the mountains. Republican
Resignation
of Amadeo.
agitations went on in the towns. At last a dispute in
regard to the officering of the artillery gave the
king an honourable excuse for resigning a throne
on which both he and his wife had been treated
with the utmost insolence.
The Republicans entered the place he left vacant simply
because there was nobody to oppose them. Until January
of the following year the country was given up
to anarchy. The Republicans had undertaken to
abolish the conscription, and many of the soldiers, Republican Interlude.
taking them at their word, disbanded. The Carlists increased
rapidly in numbers, and were joined by many Royalists,
who looked upon them as the last resource. Bands of ruffians
calling themselves “volunteers of liberty” were found to defend
the Republic, and to terrorize society. A new Cortes was
collected and proved a mere collection of hysterical ranters.
Three presidents succeeded one another within a year, Pi y
Margall, Salmeron and Castelar. Ministries changed every few
days. As the Republic was to be federal when finally organized
many parts of Spain proceeded to act independently. One
party went beyond federalism and proposed to split Spain
into cantons. The Cantonalists, who were largely galley
slaves and deserters, seized the important harbour of Carthagena
and the ships in it. The ships were taken out of their
hands by the British and German squadrons. The spectacle
of anarchy, and the stoppage in payment of taxes frightened
the Republican deputies into some approach to sanity. Salmeron
allowed General Pavia to restore order in Andalusia.
When he gave place to Castelar, the eloquent Republican
deputy, who was left unchecked by the recess,
threw all his most eagerly avowed principles to the Castelar’s presidency.
wind, raised a great conscription, and provided
the means of reducing Carthagena and pushing the war against
the Carlists with vigour. When the Cortes met again in January
1874, the extreme parties voted against Castelar on the 3rd
of the month. Hereupon General Pavia, the governor of
Madrid, turned the Cortes into the streets, to the relief of all
sane men in the country. Serrano was appointed as head of
the executive, and was mainly employed during the year in
efforts to save Bilbao from falling into the hands of the Carlists.
It had now become clear that the restoration of the Bourbons
in the person of Don Alphonso, Isabella's son, was the only
way of securing a final settlement. His civilian Alphonso XII.
King, 1874.
agents would have preferred to see him brought in
by a Cortes. But on the 29th of December 1874
General Martinez Campos caused him to be proclaimed king
at Murviedro by a brigade of troops, and the example there
set was followed everywhere. Don Alphonso XII. landed in
Barcelona on the 10th of January 1875.
The Restored Monarchy, 1874–1900.—The first act of Alphonso was a royal decree confirming the appointment of Canovas del Castillo as prime minister. A strong Conservative administration was formed, to which Canovas admitted some men of the old parties of Queen Isabella's reign side by side with men who had played a part in the Revolution before they became his active auxiliaries in the Alphonsist propaganda in 1872 and 1873. This cabinet gave its chief attention for fifteen months to the pacification of the Peninsula, adopting a Conservative and Catholic policy which contributed quite as much as the great display of military resources to make the Pretender lose adherents and prestige from the moment that his cousin reached Madrid. The Church, the nobility and the middle classes soon pronounced for the new state of things. The Alphonsist armies, led by Marshals Campos and Jovellar, swept the Carlist bands from the right bank of the Ebro to the Pyrenees, and took their last strongholds in the eastern provinces, Cantavieja and Seo de Urgel. Not a few of the Carlist leaders accepted bribes to go abroad, and others put their swords at the disposal of the government for employment against the Cuban rebels. Then all the forces of King Alphonso under Marshal Quesada gradually closed round the remainder
