Trienio Liberal

The Pronunciamiento of Riego

On 1 January 1820, the soldiers of the 2nd Battalion of the Asturias Regiment, which was stationed in Las Cabezas de San Juan, near Cádiz, awaiting embarkation to the Americas as part of the expeditionary army tasked with suppressing the uprisings in the colonies, were angry over infrequent pay, bad food, and poor quarters. They mutinied under the leadership of Lieutenant Colonel Rafael del Riego.^[11] Pledging fealty to the 1812 Constitution, they seized their commander. Riego addressed the officers and soldiers newly under his command with the following speech in support of the Constitution of 1812—Riego pronounced (se pronunció), hence the Spanish-language term pronunciamiento ("pronouncement"), which originated at that time:^[12]

Spain is living at the mercy of an arbitrary and absolute power, exercised without the slightest respect for the fundamental laws of the nation. The king, who owes his throne to those who fought in the War of Independence, has not, however, sworn to the Constitution; the Constitution, a pact between monarch and people, the foundation and embodiment of every modern nation. The Spanish Constitution, just and liberal, was drafted in Cádiz amid blood and suffering. Yet the king has not sworn to it, and it is necessary, for Spain to be saved, that the king swear to and respect the Constitution of 1812, the legitimate and civil affirmation of the rights and duties of Spaniards, of all Spaniards, from the King to the humblest farmer. [...] Yes, yes, soldiers, the Constitution. Long live the Constitution!

After failing to seize Cádiz, the troops raised by Riego began on 27 January a difficult and lengthy march through Andalusia, proclaiming the Constitution of 1812 and removing absolutist authorities in the towns they passed through. They encountered little resistance, but received no news of other garrisons joining the uprising.

To maintain morale, one of the officers, the future general Evaristo Fernández de San Miguel, composed a patriotic hymn that soon became known as the Himno de Riego (which, 111 years later, would become the official anthem of Spain during the Second Spanish Republic). The refrain read:^[12]

Soldiers, the fatherland calls us to the fray, let us swear by it to conquer or to die.

The rebel forces moved to nearby San Fernando, where they began preparations to march on the capital, Madrid, but this plan would never be executed. Instead, they wandered through Andalusia for nearly two months, and when on 11 March they were heading toward Portugal, considering the cause lost—the column had been reduced to about fifty men—they received news that King Ferdinand VII had, two days earlier, agreed to restore the Constitution after the absolutist government had proven incapable of suppressing the uprisings of several peripheral garrisons that had followed Riego's example.^[13]

The abolition of the Ancien Régime: disentailment, confiscation, and disamortization

As soon as the revolution triumphed, many peasants stopped paying tithes and feudal dues, about which the nobility and the clergy complained to the Cortes.^[93] In August 1820, the provincial deputation of Córdoba submitted to the Cortes seven petitions that revived the reforms approved by the Cortes of Cádiz and in practice meant the abolition of the Ancien Régime in Spain:^[94]

That the secular and regular clergy be limited to a fixed number; that superfluous convents be suppressed; that ecclesiastical and civil amortization be extinguished; that the owners of lordships present, within a fixed period, the titles to their properties and privileges; that reversion lawsuits [to the Crown] be expedited; that tithes be extinguished; and, finally, that two channels be opened between the rivers Guadalquivir, Guadajoz, Genil and Guadalimar.

The Provisional Consultative Junta had already approved several decrees aimed at dismantling the Ancien Régime, such as incorporating jurisdictional lordships into the nation, abolishing exclusive, private, and prohibitive privileges, demolishing the signs of vassalage (such as the pillory), or establishing freedom of industry.^[95] The Cortes continued that work, and the first major measure they approved was the disentailment of estates by suppressing, through a decree published on 27 September 1820, "all entailed estates, fideicommissa, patronages and any other kind of entailment of real property, movable goods, livestock, censuses, juros, foros, or of any other nature, which are henceforth restored to the class of absolutely free property" (an issue not addressed by the Cortes of Cádiz).^[96] With the abolition of the entail, the "properties" of a noble house included in it (inherited exclusively by the firstborn, with the obligation to keep them intact) could now be alienated (sold, mortgaged, or seized when claimed by creditors).^[97] They became "free" property.^[98] Disentailment, together with confiscation and the abolition of seigneurial rights, formed part of the liberal project, rooted in the Spanish Enlightenment (with its criticism of "dead hands"), to "clear the Spanish countryside of obstacles and foster its production and development."^[99]

The following month, on 25 October 1820, the Cortes approved the reform of the Regular clergy, which included the suppression of the monastic orders and military orders and the closure of many convents of the Mendicant orders. The main aim of this measure was to reduce the numbers of the Regular clergy, since liberals regarded regular clergy as basically useless in the new society, very different from the positive value they attached to parish priests as the "first support of the new institutions". By 1822, nearly half of Spain's convents had been closed. Their communities would thereafter depend on bishops, appointed on the government's proposal, and not on the superiors of each order; there could be no more than one convent of the same order per town, and only where it had at least 12 religious ordained in sacris, with the Piarists excluded from the measure.^[100][101] Monks and friars were also given an easier path to secularization—that is, transfer to the Secular clergy.^[102] Previously, following the Enlightenment legacy, they had suppressed the Jesuits (27 September).^[103][104]

What liberals sought in passing the law of 25 October was to apply Article 12 of the Constitution, which, after proclaiming the confessional nature of the state ("The religion of the Spanish Nation is and shall be perpetually the Catholic, Apostolic, Roman, the only true one"), stated that "the Nation protects it by wise and just laws, and prohibits the exercise of any other." Liberals interpreted this to mean that only the Nation, represented in the Cortes, was legitimately empowered to determine religious policy—linking, in this respect, to the Bourbon regalism of the previous century—whereas the Spanish ecclesiastical hierarchy and the Pope read Article 12 in the opposite way, holding that it obliged the civil power to safeguard the "rights of the Church". This was the root of the conflict that set an important part of the clergy—especially the bishops supported by the Pope—against the liberal regime, whose religious policy, largely inspired by Enlightenment proposals,^[106] was branded by them as Jansenist.^[107] As Ángel Bahamonde and Jesús A. Martínez have emphasized, the ecclesiastical reform carried out by liberals "was guided, more than by anti-clerical guidelines—present in some sectors of radicals liberalism—, by a desire to integrate the clergy within the constitutional framework... After all, the Constitution, by its confessional nature, was perfectly compatible with the Catholic religion".^[108] But liberals failed to create a constitutional ecclesiastical hierarchy because the Holy See (supported by the majority of bishops) refused to appoint the government's nominees to vacant bishoprics—mostly vacant due to the banishment or flight of their incumbents^{[note 2]}—calling them Jansenists—and threatened any cleric who accepted appointment exclusively by the political power with being considered "an intruder, schismatic, murderer of souls, disturber of the peace". Between July 1820 and October 1822 the government selected candidates for fifteen bishoprics and only three were confirmed by Rome.^[109]

The assets of the suppressed monasteries and convents, and those of the Inquisition and the Jesuits, were "disamortized" (they passed to the state and were sold at public auction).^[110][111] Disamortization affected 25,000 estates, with an overall value of between 500 and 1000 million reales, brought in by some 7,500 buyers, who were allowed to pay with public-debt securities—"so that, given their depreciation, the real value of purchases was below the high bids reached at auction".^[112] Nothing was done to facilitate peasants' access to ownership of these disentailed assets, which were purchased mostly by the wealthiest owners. Many peasants' situation even worsened when the new owners demanded higher rents from peasants who leased the plots (by virtue of the "freedom of leases" decreed by the Cortes) or even evicted them, invoking the "right of property" they had acquired.^[113] Diego González Alonso, an agrarianist who served as a deputy in the Cortes, wrote years later in his book La nueva ley agraria:^[114]

Millions of inhabitants, thousands of towns, were left at the mercy of a cruel proprietor, to whom it matters little, as we saw in 1820 and thereafter, that entire families, who rested in the homes of their elders... should wander orphaned, seeking connections in order to find shelter for themselves and a place and protection for their scattered and weakened herds. [...] If property had been divided with regularity... the number of serfs would not be so great. The revolution in France increased by millions the number of proprietors, and ours, in 1822... did not exceed four thousand new creations.

The disamortization of the assets of the monastic orders and of an important part of those of the mendicant orders was one of the reasons—if not the principal reason—why the majority of the clergy (especially the Regular clergy, the group most harmed by liberal policy) joined the camp of the counter-revolution, forming with part of the peasantry "the great anti-liberal alliance" (whose fullest expression would be the partidas realistas, which began to operate especially from 1821 onward).^[115][116]

On the other hand, disamortization was closely tied to the bankruptcy of the treasury inherited from the War of Independence and the Sexenio Absolutista^[117]—the public debt exceeded 14,000 million reales—^[112][117] since the liberals of the Triennium addressed it by resorting to foreign loans—"a tangential solution, apparently ingenious"—,^[118] "using disentailed assets first as collateral and later as an amortization fund for the new debt contracted".^[119] In this sense, Triennium governments adopted "a perspective that was to some extent short-term", pressed by the state's severe financial problems. Resorting to loans negotiated with major European financial groups, including the Rothschild bank, "was the fastest way to fill the state's coffers, but also the most costly, to the point that the Council of State... described as 'scandalous and inadmissible' the conditions imposed by the Laffitte group in the 300-million-real loan signed by the liberal government in November 1820".^[120]

Tax policy and the half-tithe question

The liberals approved a fiscal policy based on monetary taxation, preferring payments in cash over payments in kind, in order, among other objectives, "to energize the national economy by monetizing its most traditional sector—agriculture".^[112] But this change dealt a hard blow to peasants at a time of falling prices. According to Josep Fontana, "this led to two consequences of similar gravity. First, the peasants' confrontation with liberalism, which resulted in their rapprochement with an equally discontented clergy, which gave coherence to that opposition, legitimized it ideologically, and organized it. Second, tax collection failed and the regime had to struggle with serious financial difficulties", which was one of the reasons for its defeat in the face of the French invasion of the Hundred Thousand Sons of Saint Louis.^[121] The French ambassador Marquis de Talaru who accompanied those troops acknowledged as much in a letter sent to the Count of Villèle in October 1823, when the absolute monarchy had already been restored: "It is for this reason that the government of the Cortes has just fallen; the disorder of the finances and the total lack of means prevented it from organizing any means of defense against France".^[122]

The demand for payment in cash explains the paradox that reducing the tithe by half (decreed on 29 June 1821)^[111] not only failed to relieve peasants' burdens but actually made them worse. This measure, taken as opposed to the complete abolition of tithes, "ran counter to the peasants' spontaneous revolution, as in many parts of Spain they were refusing to pay tithes and first fruits".^[123] Liberal governments reasoned incorrectly, thinking that by cutting the tithe in half peasants would accumulate larger surpluses that they could sell on the market, and with the money obtained they could meet the state's new taxes (which on paper would be lower than half of the tithe they had previously delivered in kind), thereby increasing state revenues.^[124][99] But for peasants, as Josep Fontana has noted, "the half-tithe may have meant more grain for their own consumption, but not more money ―the increase in supply was immediately counterbalanced in these local markets [dominated by the speculation of large landowners] by falling prices―; when the tax collector arrived with new demands, they found themselves without the means to pay and identified the new regime with greater fiscal oppression".^[125] Moreover, paying the tithe in kind offered peasants more opportunities for evasion and fraud than cash payment, which was demanded relentlessly by the liberal administration.^[126] The French ambassador Marquis de Talaru also recorded this in the letter he wrote to the Count of Villèle in October 1823: "Tax in kind is nothing here; what weighs is tax in money. One of the greatest errors of the government of the Cortes is having wanted to establish it, at the same time as it is one of the principal causes of the hatred that the mass of the nation feels toward this government".^[122][127] In effect, peasant discontent was exploited by the counter-revolution. In a royalist proclamation of August 1821 addressed to the farmers of Zaragoza it was said: "You will tell me: 'They have reduced tithes by half', but to that I will reply that they have also imposed greater taxes on you".^[122]

The Failed Abolition of the Seigneurial Lordships

The Cortes reinstated the decree of 6 August 1811 on the abolition of the lordships passed by the Cortes of Cádiz, but they had to confront the complex implementation of the measure and for that purpose approved a "clarifying" law in June 1821. The key issue continued to be the presentation of title deeds: if the lords could present the deed of "grant" of the seigneurial lordship and it confirmed that the lordship was not "jurisdictional", the lordship became their property; otherwise, ownership reverted to the peasants. However, the "clarifying" law was blocked by the king, who returned it unsigned twice (making use of the prerogative granted to him by the Constitution of 1812 to refuse royal assent to a law up to two times)^[128] and when it was finally "published as law" in May 1823 (the king could not refuse assent a third time) it was too late because the invasion of the Hundred Thousand Sons of Saint Louis had already begun, which would put an end to the constitutional regime.^{[129][115][130]}

Together with the confiscation of the property of the suppressed convents, the failed abolition of the lordships was another major missed opportunity to rally the peasantry to the cause of the Revolution, as had happened in France.^[131][115] This was acknowledged by a deputy of the Cortes of 1839 when comparing the situation in France with that in Spain: "There it is, there the wealth of France ['where few are without a house and a small field to cultivate']: from that comes the power, the strength that France has today; from the substitution of mortmain and the accumulation of property in few hands by its division among many."^[121]

The Americas question and the liberal policy

When on 9 March 1820 Ferdinand VII swore to the Constitution, the Viceroyalty of New Spain, the jewel of the Crown, since most of the remittances of precious metals for the Crown came from there, and the Viceroyalty of Peru continued loyal to the monarchy, although some insurgent strongholds persisted, but at that time the Viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata, self-proclaimed as the United Provinces of the Río de la Plata, and most of the Viceroyalty of New Granada, self-proclaimed as the Republic of Gran Colombia, under the presidency of Simón Bolívar, had already become independent.^[132] In general, news of the restoration of the Spanish Constitution of 1812 was received with jubilation by the populations of the American territories that remained under the authority of the Spanish monarchy and, after the civil and military authorities swore to uphold the Constitution—often not without offering strong resistance—the town councils and provincial deputations were established and deputies to the Cortes were elected. As for the rebels, the Provisional Consultative Junta of Madrid had ordered officers of the royalist armies to reach armistice agreements with them and, thus, Joaquín de la Pezuela in Peru and Pablo Morillo in Venezuela met respectively with José de San Martín and with Simón Bolívar.^[133]

In the metropolis, where the uprisings in the American colonies and the situation of the Spanish Americas in general were being followed with enormous expectation by both the Government and the Cortes as well as by public opinion,^[134][72], the idea spread that the proclamation of the Constitution of 1812 would put an end to the insurrections and independence movements, thus ending the war―"the pacification of America is now more a work of politics than of force and… only the Constitution can restore the fraternal bonds that united it with the mother country", stated a declaration of the Provisional Consultative Junta―.^[135] In fact, once the Constitution entered into force "the American territories ceased to be Viceroyalties and Captaincies General dependent on the king and became integrated as provinces with equal rights to those of the peninsula, and their inhabitants passed from the category of subjects of the king to citizens of the Spanish nation. Thus, the liberalism of the Constitution of 1812 transformed the empire into a nation-state of 'both hemispheres'".^[136] But the problem that arose was that, "despite the attempts at conciliation and the alternative projects considered during the Liberal Triennium", "overseas policy was always determined by the king's desire not to renounce his rights over the Americas territory".^[137]

The Provisional Consultative Junta immediately dealt with the "American question" and when on 22 March 1820 it called elections to the Cortes it reserved thirty seats for deputies from America, who would be chosen from among residents in the Peninsula until elections could be held there. Protests from Americans soon followed over the small number of seats assigned to the Americas since the Constitution established that there would be one deputy for every seventy thousand inhabitants and recognized in Article 1 as members of the "Spanish Nation" "all Spaniards of both hemispheres". The Junta responded by threatening that they might have no representation at all and maintained the number at thirty.^[138] Shortly after the Cortes opened on 9 July, the thirty American deputies again insisted that their representation should be increased.^[139] In the second half of 1820 elections for deputies to the Cortes were held in the American territories but of the 168 seats corresponding to them only 85 could be filled due to the independence process unfolding in the Americas.^[140] The American deputies arrived in Madrid in the first months of 1821 and in the end there were 77, including alternate and elected members. The largest delegation was that of New Spain.^[141]

On 31 March 1820 a proclamation by King Ferdinand VII to the inhabitants overseas set out the official position on the "American question" once the Constitution guaranteed their rights: the insurgents were to lay down their arms and in return would obtain royal pardon; otherwise, the war would continue ("although without the ferocity and barbarity seen until now, but in accordance with the law of nations", stated the opinion of the Council of State). The Secretary of the Overseas Department, Antonio Porcel ―"who trusted that the full implementation of the Constitution would suffice to smooth over the inconveniences and calm the resentments harbored by Americans toward the metropolis"―^[135] arranged for the dispatch to the Americas of several "commissioners" with Instructions to seek the pacification of the territories.^[142] "It was a detailed political plan to convince the territories at war to return to the bosom of the monarchy, but it came too late. After almost ten years of fighting against the king's armies, it did not seem that these conciliatory measures could have any effect. Above all, because Ferdinand VII had no credibility as guarantor of a Constitution he had abolished six years earlier, for which he had persecuted its defenders―including Americans―and whose repeal had given way to the 'war to the death' from 1814", has stated Ivana Frasquet.^[143] Pedro Rújula and Manuel Chust maintained a similar thesis: the proposal arrived too late because "the coup d'état of 4 May 1814 [which] restored absolutism and with it colonialism... meant for many Americans the abandonment of a third way between absolutist colonialism and insurgency, represented by the 1812 autonomist option".^[136] Indeed, among peninsular liberals there were some, such as the radicals Antonio Alcalá Galiano, Moreno Guerra, and Romero Alpuente, who considered the independence of the American territories to be an irreversible fact (Alcalá Galiano was even challenged to a duel for defending this position, although it did not take place due to the intervention of a royal officer from Cádiz).^[144][145]

Shortly after the second session of the Cortes began on 1 March 1821, the American deputies presented a proposal to establish a provincial deputation in each of the American intendancies. This formed part of their strategy to deploy all the possibilities for autonomy offered by the Constitution in order to achieve greater self-government.^[146][147] Until a provincial deputation was established, "the dissenters would not be pacified", warned a deputy from the Captaincy General of Guatemala. The proposal was approved and promulgated by a decree dated 8 May.^[148]

However, other proposals by the American deputies were rejected as "federalist" (which at that time was synonymous with "republican"), such as the proposal that the jefe político superior ("chief political officer", the highest political and administrative official in each of the provinces into which the 1812 Constitution divided the Spanish territory) not be appointed by the government but by the provincial deputations, or that these deputations have the authority to collect and manage all taxes.^[149] They also raised several demands not included in the Constitution, such as citizenship for blacks and mulattoes (which was granted on an individual basis according to Article 22)^{[note 3]} or the abolition of the indigenous tribute (which they regarded as belonging to the colonial period and not to the new era opened by the restoration of the Constitution).^[150]

Everything changed when news arrived of the proclamation of the Plan of Iguala by Agustín de Iturbide in February, declaring the independence of New Spain (now Mexico). According to Ivana Frasquet, the news reached Madrid on 18 May,^[151] while according to Pedro Rújula and Manuel Chust it arrived on 4 June.^[152]

Around the same time, specifically on 14 May, two commissioners from the self-proclaimed Republic of Gran Colombia, sent by its president and founder Simón Bolívar, arrived in Cádiz. They carried a letter from Bolívar to Ferdinand VII requesting negotiations on the basis of recognition of independence.^[153] They met in Madrid in early June with the Secretary of State, Bardají (also arriving in Madrid was Francisco Antonio Zea with his Plan de reconciliación y proyecto de confederación hispánica between Colombia and Spain, which in his view was the only way to keep Colombia united to the Spanish monarchy).^[154] The talks did not proceed, however, because news reached Madrid that Bolívar had broken the armistice and defeated the royalist troops at the Battle of Carabobo (24 June). The two commissioners and Francisco Antonio Zea were then invited to leave.^[155]

On 25 June 1821, with only three days remaining before the end of the second session, 51 American deputies, led by those from New Spain—with José Mariano Michelena and Lucas Alamán at the forefront—presented a proposal to structure the monarchy as a federation. It consisted of creating three sections of the Cortes, the Government, the Supreme Court, and the Council of State in Mexico, Santa Fe de Bogotá and Lima (the "sections" of all these institutions would have the same powers as the central ones, except for foreign policy, which would remain reserved to the Cortes in Madrid). At the head of each of the three executive branches there would be a prince of the House of Bourbon or "a person freely appointed by His Majesty from among those most distinguished for their qualities" under the authority of Ferdinand VII. In addition, internal trade would be declared free and therefore exempt from customs duties, and the Americas territories would assume their corresponding share of the public debt and contribute to the maintenance of the common navy.^{[156][157][158]} "The proposal was somewhat chimerical, because it was not known whether at that stage the American countries would be willing to accept it... But even so, it might have served as the basis for an amicable negotiation which, preserving appearances and many interests, would have granted the independence to the Americas", commented Alberto Gil Novales.^[159] According to Pedro Rújula and Manuel Chust, "by 1821 it was already a utopian proposal. The Americans knew it, the peninsular liberals also knew it. Ferdinand VII would never accept it".^[160]

The Cortes rejected the proposal of the American deputies—arguing above all that implementing it would require reforming the Constitution—^[161] and instead approved the proposal presented by the Count of Toreno which left the measures to pacify America in the hands of the government.^[123][162] According to Ivana Frasquet, "the possible negotiated solution to American independence through the establishment of Bourbon princes had been defeated. The king had triumphed... In his closing speech to the Cortes, Ferdinand VII was emphatic: the only alternative for America lay in the indissoluble unity of the monarchy".^[163]

During the summer of 1821 events in the Americas accelerated. The commissioner sent to Santa Fe de Bogotá reported the defeat of royalist troops on 24 June at the Battle of Carabobo by Simón Bolívar's forces.^[164] It was later learned that on 15 July General José de San Martín had proclaimed in Lima the independence of the Viceroyalty of Peru and that a month later, on 24 August 1821, Juan O'Donojú, chief political officer appointed by Madrid, and Agustín de Iturbide, leader of the independence movement of New Spain, had signed the Treaty of Córdoba by which the independence of Mexico was recognized under a Bourbon monarch.^[165][123] "Thus, in the summer of 1821, the Americas were at war, from north to south".^[165] "The Cortes and the Spanish government had missed a good opportunity", concludes Alberto Gil Novales.^[123] "The political solution that the Americans demanded did not fit within the mental universe of most liberals", noted Ivana Frasquet.^[166]

In November the Council of State left no room for negotiation, as desired by the king, when in its ruling it proposed strict "observance of the Constitution sanctioned for the entire Spanish monarchy and therefore the absolute integrity which it itself establishes". It then proposed sending naval forces, starting from a very optimistic and distorted view of reality across the Atlantic, trusting that America could still be recovered for the Crown.^[167] However, some councillors issued dissenting opinions in favor of a "federal solution" along the lines of the American deputies' proposal. The most radical was Gabriel Ciscar, who advocated organizing the Americas into "four or more independent states, linked to one another and to peninsular Spain by means of federations adapted to the circumstances of each of them".^[167]

The ruling of the Council of State was debated by the extraordinary Cortes between January and February 1822. Deputy Francisco Fernández Golfín proposed as an alternative the formation of a Hispanic-American confederation in which each state would have its own constitution and King Ferdinand VII would serve as the keystone of the entire structure, holding the title of Protector of the Great Hispanic-American Confederation.^[168] A radically opposed position was defended by the Count of Toreno, who accused O'Donojú of treason for having signed the Treaty of Córdoba, demanded that it be declared null and void (a proposal that was approved), and urged the government to defend the American provinces that remained loyal to the monarchy. Ultimately, it was agreed only to send new commissioners to America.^[169]

Most of the American deputies did not participate in these debates, as they had gradually left the Cortes in the preceding weeks. "Here, practically, ended the American autonomist trajectory in the Cortes of the Triennium", noted Pedro Rújula and Manuel Chust.^[160]

The new Spanish government's policy in the Americas themselves changed the political repression of the former absolutist period into negotiation. Sending troops was replaced by commissioners to attract pro-independence leaders, who were invited to submit to royal authority in exchange for recognition by Spain. With that in mind, the government announced a ceasefire for negotiations with the rebels until the 1812 Constitution, which ironically, had been superseded by Ferdinand's actions, were accepted.

According to the ceasefire offer, Spain would end the persecution and would issue a blanket amnesty for the insurgents; otherwise, the war would continue. The 11 commissioners failed, since the patriots demanded recognition of their independence from Spain.

The invasion and weak Spanish resistance

On 7 April 1823 the "Hundred Thousand Sons of Saint Louis"—the Armée d'Espagne was their official name—began crossing the Spanish border without having previously declared war.^[187][188] They numbered between 80,000 and 90,000 men, and by the end of the campaign they would total 120,000, some of whom had already taken part in the earlier French invasion of Spain in 1808, with Napoleon.^[189][188] They had the support of Spanish royalist troops that had been organised in France before the invasion—between 12,500 and 35,000 men, according to different sources –^[190][191] forming the self-styled "Army of the Faith", financed with 23 million francs (almost a third of the funds devoted to the French army itself).^[192] As they advanced, these royalist troops were joined by the bands that had survived the offensive by the constitutional army. Various historians, such as Juan Francisco Fuentes, have highlighted the paradox that many members of the bands and the supporting royalist troops had fought 15 years earlier against the French in the Peninsular War.^[193]

The invaders took great care not to repeat the same mistakes as in the Napoleonic invasion of 1808—for example, they did not resort to requisitions to supply the troops, but instead paid cash for supplies on the ground—and they presented themselves as saviours who had come to restore legitimacy and order, as shown by the fact that they enjoyed the support of the royalists.^[194][195] In the proclamation addressed to Spaniards before the invasion began, it was said that their intention was to put an end to that "revolutionary faction that has destroyed royal authority in your country, that holds your king captive, that calls for his deposition, that threatens his life and that of his family, [and that] has carried its guilty efforts beyond your borders".^[196] In addition, the French were accompanied by a self-styled Provisional Government Junta of Spain and the Indies, established in Oyarzun on 9 April and presided over by the absolutist general Francisco de Eguía, a trusted man of Ferdinand VII.^{[196][197][198][199]} Its function was to legitimise the invaders' actions^[200] in an effort to avoid being seen as oppressors.^[187] This was the aim of the count of Martignac—the civil commissioner accompanying the Duke of Angoulême—determined to present "as a Spanish civil war what was nothing other than a French invasion", comments Josep Fontana.^[188]

To face between 90,000 and 110,000 French invaders supported by some 35,000 Spanish royalists,^[201] the Spanish constitutional army had only about 50,000 men, placing it in a position of clear inferiority.^{[189][193][188]} The government led by Evaristo Fernández organised the Spanish forces into four operational armies, although the only one that truly confronted the invaders was the second, the largest (20,000 men) and best prepared, commanded by General Francisco Espoz y Mina, a former guerrilla of the Peninsular War, which operated in Catalonia. By contrast, the other three generals offered little resistance: neither the Count of La Bisbal, in command of the Reserve Army of New Castile, nor Pablo Morillo, in command of the forces of Galicia and Asturias, nor Francisco Ballesteros, in command of the troops of Navarre, Aragon and the Mediterranean.^{[202][203][204][205]} As a consequence, the French army advanced south with relative ease—entering Madrid on 13 May –^[194] although the speed of the campaign can be misleading, since the French had left most of the fortresses behind without occupying them.^{[201][206][207]}

With the exception of several cities, which showed great defensive capacity (such as A Coruña, which held out until late August; Pamplona and San Sebastián, which did not capitulate until September; or Barcelona, Tarragona, Cartagena and Alicante, which continued fighting until November, when the constitutional regime had been overthrown for more than a month),^{[208][209][210]} there was no popular resistance to the invasion, nor did anti-French guerrillas form as they had during the Peninsular War (rather the opposite occurred: the royalist bands joined the French army).^[193] The passivity of a large part of the population has been explained by the agrarian and fiscal policy of the liberal regime, which not only failed to satisfy the aspirations of the peasants, who constituted the great majority of the country, but also harmed them, something exploited by royalist propaganda.^{[211][212][213]} It has also been explained by the different situation Spain experienced in 1808 and in 1823.^[214] "Two of the key ideas that sustained the resistance of 1808 had disappeared in 1823, so that neither was the king a prisoner of the French—on the contrary, many presented him as a hostage of the liberals—nor was the Catholic religion in danger, since this time the French troops appeared aligned alongside the defenders of throne and altar".^[215][216]

The Spanish army, fraught by internal divisions, offered little resistance to the well-organised French force, who seized Madrid and reinstalled Ferdinand as absolute monarch. The liberals' hopes for a new Spanish War of Independence were dashed.

When the Duke of Angoulême entered Madrid on 23 May, amid the ringing of bells from all the churches of the capital,^[199] he appointed a Regency presided over by the Duke of Infantado. Angoulême justified this in a proclamation that said: "The time has come to establish in a solemn and stable manner the regency that must take charge of administering the country, organising the army, and reaching agreement with me on the means of carrying out the great work of freeing your king".^[196][217] The Regency in turn appointed an absolutist government headed by the canon and former royal confessor Víctor Damián Sáez, who would head the Secretariat of State,^[197][218] and which was "made up of some of the most prominent reactionaries of the moment".^[219] In its first proclamation the government called for "persecution" of its enemies.^[220] On 9 June French troops crossed Despeñaperros, defeating the forces of General Plasencia who confronted them, thus clearing the way to Seville, where the government, the Cortes, the king and the royal family were then located.^[221]

The siege of Cádiz

Faced with the threat of invasion, the Cortes and the government—in reality, two governments: one headed by Evaristo Fernández and one headed by Álvaro Flórez Estrada –^[231][232] had left Madrid on 20 March—three weeks before the first French soldier crossed the border –^{[233][234][235]} to head south, establishing themselves in Seville on 10 April, taking Ferdinand VII and the royal family with them despite his refusal (as the king himself explained, he claimed to be ill with gout in order not to leave the court:^[234][236] "They got tired of hurling insults at me, concluding... by assuring loudly that I would leave Madrid in any event, for if I could not travel in a coach, they would carry me crosswise and tied to a donkey").^[237][238] Ferdinand VII's only desire was to meet the French troops: "Will the foreigners arrive soon?", was for some time, according to the French ambassador, his main concern".^[193]

The Cortes resumed their sessions on 23 April^[234][239] and the following day the king signed the declaration of war on France. Shortly afterwards San Miguel's cabinet resigned, which would have opened the way to the cabinet whose leading figure was Flórez Estrada, but the opposition of a large group of deputies opened a new political crisis that would only be resolved the following month with the formation of a new government whose leading figure was the "masonic" exaltado José María Calatrava, who did not take the State Secretariat, as had been the norm, but that of Grace and Justice.^{[240][241][242]} Calatrava, according to Emilio La Parra, "came to be a consensus figure among the defenders of the Constitution", since as a former "doceañista" he was not ill-regarded by the moderates, nor by the "masonic" exaltados, and he maintained good relations with the "comunero" exaltados; and "something similar could be said of his ministers" (Pedro de la Bárcena in War, later replaced by Estanislao Sánchez Salvador; Colonel Salvador Manzanares, very close to General Riego, in the Interior; José Pando in State; Juan Antonio Yandiola in Finance; Pedro Urquinaona in Overseas).^[243][244] According to Josep Fontana, the "new government of masonic predominance, whose effective head was Calatrava", was the result of "a new conspiracy [that] had managed to ensure that the ministry formed by the comuneros did not come to exercise power for even a single day".^[245]

Faced with the advance of the "Hundred Thousand Sons of Saint Louis", the government and the Cortes decided on 11 June to move from Seville to Cádiz,^{[246][247][248]} taking the king and the royal family with them, again against their will, since they expected his "liberation" upon the army's imminent arrival (or the success of a royalist plot that was being prepared and would eventually be uncovered).^[249][250] Ferdinand VII was even more stubborn than in Madrid about not undertaking the journey. "Neither my conscience, nor the love of my peoples allow me to leave Seville; as a private individual I would make this sacrifice; as King I cannot", he told the deputies who informed him of the need to move to Cádiz (when they tried to reply, the king turned his back and left, saying: "I have spoken").^[244] The Cortes then, at the proposal of the then exaltado deputy Antonio Alcalá Galiano—who said: "It is not possible for a King to agree to remain in a place to be taken prisoner by the enemies... His Majesty cannot be fully in his reason; he is in a state of delirium"^[251]—decided that the king was suffering a "temporary lethargy" and, in accordance with the Constitution,^{[note 4]} incapacitated him due to "moral impediment" from exercising his functions and appointed a Regency that would hold the powers of the Crown during the journey to Cádiz (it consisted of Cayetano Valdés, Gabriel Ciscar and Gaspar de Vigodet). The king recalled that during the journey, "with a dreadful shouting they insulted us as much as they wished, saying: 'Death to the Bourbons; death to these tyrants! You are nothing now and you will not rule again!', uttering all this with the greatest threats, curses, and obscene words".^{[252][253][241][246][254][255][256]} The king and Queen Amalia later wrote that they feared for their lives and for those of the entire royal family.^[257]

Testimony of José María Calatrava, related years later^[258]
What infinitely enervated the action of the ministers, what reduced them—as it had reduced all their predecessors under the constitutional regime—to a situation that will have few parallels, was having at the head of that Government its most bitter enemy. The principal conspirator against the system they were entrusted to uphold, the one most determined to frustrate whatever they attempted, to discredit and ruin them, was the very king on whom they depended, to whose approval they had to submit all their plans and to whom they were obliged to communicate all their secrets and intelligence, even though they knew he made use of this information to render useless whatever they did or proposed.

The king was in agreement with the invaders and with the internal enemies and, nevertheless, the ministers had to conceal that they knew this and conduct business with him as constitutional king. Honour and their oaths prevented them from ceasing to be faithful to him. The law commanded that his person be respected as sacred and inviolable; and, by exempting him from all responsibility, compelled them to close their eyes to all his private acts, leaving them no other recourse than to prevent them by whatever indirect means were possible.
[...]

Neither my colleagues nor I could give credence to all his protestations [the king's]. We did not doubt that he remained in constant communication with the enemies, whether in writing, by word of mouth, or by agreed signals, by whatever means could elude our vigilance and that of the patriots. [...] In the palace, therefore, the enemy had his surest and most inevitable spies... The palace was the principal office from which discouragement and corruption were sown in the Army. [...] I am persuaded that the baleful influence of the palace contributed greatly to the condition into which the people fell and to the reluctance shown by the taxpayers. But I am also persuaded that in all these evils the infanta [María Francisca, wife of Don Carlos] had a far greater share than the king...

The response of the royalist Regency installed in Madrid by the Duke of Angoulême was to promulgate, on 23 June, a decree declaring guilty of lèse-majesté all deputies who had participated in the deliberations to incapacitate the king (this would be the "crime" for which they would hang Rafael del Riego).^[259][220] The decree concluded by ordering eight days of rogativas for the king, during which neither festivities nor theatrical performances would be held.^[220] On the other hand, news of the suspension of Ferdinand VII from his functions, even if temporary, caused great shock in European courts, because the memory of the French king Louis XVI—guillotined by revolutionaries—was still very vivid.^[260]

As soon as they arrived in Cádiz on 15 June, the Regency ended and the king recovered his powers—Ferdinand VII said to the regents when they appeared before him: "Very well. So my madness has ended?"^[261][262]—and at the same time there was a reshuffle of the government: José Luyando took the State Secretariat; Manuel de la Puente War; Salvador Manzanares the Interior; and Francisco Osorio the Navy; José María Calatrava remained in Grace and Justice, and Juan Antonio Yandiola in Finance.^[263] A fact that spread discouragement was that the British ambassador William à Court, representative of the only government whose support the liberals believed they could count on, did not travel to Cádiz but instead went from Seville to Gibraltar "to await orders from his government".^[264][265]

Cádiz was besieged by the French army, as had happened thirteen years earlier^{[266][241][267]} and shortly after the siege began the Duke of Angoulême, who arrived in mid-August at El Puerto de Santa María where he had established his headquarters,^[209] sent a letter to his "brother and cousin" Ferdinand VII informing him that "Spain is already free of the revolutionary yoke" and suggesting he grant an amnesty and convene the old Cortes. Meanwhile the king amused himself flying kites from the rooftop of the Customs Palace, where he was lodged, and watching the besiegers through binoculars.^[263] It has been debated whether flying kites was mere entertainment or a means of communicating with the enemy by prearranged signals. What is known is that Ferdinand VII, using various means, was in contact with royalists and the French and urged them to "rescue" him, and that the infanta María Francisca de Braganza, wife of Don Carlos, was his principal link and instigator.^[268]

On the night of 30–31 August French troops took the fort of Trocadero, "the most talked-about operation of the war",^[269] and twenty days later that of Sancti Petri, making resistance impossible.^{[270][241][271][272][269]} Cádiz this time did not receive assistance by sea from the British fleet as in 1810.^[208][273] On 24 September General Guilleminot, chief of the French general staff, issued an ultimatum to the besieged to capitulate, threatening that if the royal family were the victim of any misfortune "the deputies to the Cortes, the ministers, the councillors of state, the generals and all government employees caught in Cádiz will be put to the sword".^[274][275] The day before, bombardments from the sea had begun (with devastating effects on streets and houses), and morale declined further when news spread of the desertion of two battalions of the reserve army and, almost simultaneously, that General Rafael del Riego had been captured by royalists in Jaén.^[276][277] The Secretary of War committed suicide by cutting his throat.^[276] On the 25th he had informed the Cortes in a secret session of "the demoralisation and declared cowardice of our troops".^[278]

The "liberation" of Ferdinand VII and the restoration of absolute monarchy

On 30 September 1823, after nearly four months of siege, the liberal government decided, with the approval of the Cortes,^[279] to allow King Ferdinand VII to depart. He met the Duke of Angoulême—and the Duke of Infantado—the following day, 1 October, at El Puerto de Santa María, on the other side of the Bay of Cádiz, which the king and the royal family crossed aboard a decorated felucca.^{[208][241][280][281]} That day the king noted in his diary: "I recovered my freedom and returned to the fullness of my rights which a faction had usurped from me".^[282] Many liberals fled to England via Gibraltar, suspecting the king would not honour his promise of a "general, complete and absolute forgetting of everything past". They were correct.^{[283][208][284][280][285]}

The manifesto of 30 September 1823, drafted by the government and signed by the king (after removing a sentence stating he would never adopt absolute government), declared:^[283][286]

I freely and spontaneously promise, and I have resolved to carry out and cause to be carried out, a general, complete and absolute forgetting of everything past, without any exception...

Yet once free, Ferdinand VII repudiated his promises and immediately nullified all legislation of the Liberal Triennium.^{[287][284][288][289][290]} He declared:

All the acts of the so-called constitutional government are null and of no value...

Thus absolute monarchy was restored.

After the surrender of Cádiz, the last engagement occurred on 8 October at Tramaced (Aragón), where French and royalist forces defeated an army led by Evaristo Fernández de San Miguel.^[291] The remaining cities negotiated capitulations: Barcelona and Tarragona (2 November), Alicante (11 November), Cartagena (30 November).^[292]

On 30 November 1823 the Duke of Angoulême issued his final general order from Oyarzun before crossing the Bidasoa the following day. The campaign had lasted seven and a half months. Ferdinand VII emerged as the true victor.^[293]

Repression

Repression had already been initiated by the Provisional Junta and its successor, the Urgel Regency, through the creation of various specific bodies (Superintendency of Public Surveillance, the Corps of Royalist Volunteers, Purification Boards, Regimental Boards in Catalonia, Flying Columns and Armed Civilians in Biscay, etc.)^[295], providing cover for the arbitrary violence unleashed against liberals by royalists. As Emilio La Parra has emphasized, "repression in the territory controlled by the Regency was extremely harsh and indiscriminate."^[295]

The first formal measure agreed by the Regency was to declare on 23 June the deputies who had approved in Seville the king's temporary incapacitation guilty of lèse-majesté, as well as to sentence to death the three members of the constitutional Regency who had assumed his powers during the journey from Seville to Cádiz (Císcar, Valdés, and Vigodet; all three saved their lives by going into exile).^{[296][297][220]}

At almost the same time, freedom of expression, established during the Triennium, was brought to an end by an order from the press judge stating: "No printer shall print or reprint books, pamphlets, newspapers or other papers of any kind, except invitation notices, without prior permission from the council or from this court."^[220]

These repressive measures were "accompanied by an opinion campaign that codified as infamous crimes almost everything that in the previous regime had formed part of the normal functioning of the system. Clergymen played a very important role in spreading the idea of political crime, adding a moral judgment to the actions of liberals and demanding the corresponding punishment."^[298]

As soon as Ferdinand VII recovered his absolute powers on 1 October and broke his promise of an amnesty ("a complete and absolute general oblivion of everything that has passed, without any exception"), he ratified what had been agreed by the Regency and continued the harsh repression.^[296][290] The Duke of Angoulême failed in his attempt to persuade Ferdinand VII to end "arbitrary arrests and banishments, measures contrary to all ordered government and social order."^[299]

During the following years, the French troops that remained in Spain under the agreement signed between the two monarchies intervened on numerous occasions to protect liberal sympathizers from harassment and repressive excesses by absolutists.^[300]

On 7 September, in a private conversation with General Miguel Ricardo de Álava, sent by the constitutional government to negotiate a ceasefire, the Duke of Angoulême confessed that it was necessary "to restrain Ferdinand, without which nothing good could be expected from him," and that "the servile party in general", on which Ferdinand VII relied, "is the worst in the nation. I am accustomed to their stupidity and immorality. The employees of the [absolutist] Regency are concerned only with stealing and making business."^[301]

The symbol of the repression unleashed by Ferdinand VII – despite French advice to mitigate it^[284] – was the hanging of Rafael del Riego in Madrid's Plaza de la Cebada on 7 November 1823.^[302][284] The prosecutor argued that he had committed so many crimes that "many days and volumes would not suffice" to describe them, but he was sentenced to death for a single one: the "horrendous attack committed by this criminal as deputy of the so-called Cortes, voting for the transfer of our lord the king and his royal family to the city of Cádiz."^[302] The execution of Del Riego, "the Spanish George Washington", provoked a wave of indignation throughout Europe (in London it was proposed to erect a monument to him, and the activist John Cartwright said that he represented better than anyone "the common cause of humanity").^[303] Domestically, as Juan Francisco Fuentes has noted, "if the pronunciamiento of Riego in January 1820 opened this three-year period of constitutional rule, his execution in Madrid, in the Plaza de la Cebada, on 7 November 1823, symbolized the end of that revolutionary experience and the beginning of the second absolutist restoration in Spain."^[208] According to Josep Fontana, Ferdinand VII did not wish to return to Madrid before Riego had been executed.^[302] Emilio La Parra does not rule out that motive and notes that the king took twice as long to travel from Cádiz to Madrid as he had taken on his outward journey, remaining 15 days in Seville (8–23 October).^[304]

The king entered Madrid on 13 November, six days after Riego's execution,^[208] mounted on a "triumphal carriage" drawn by "24 men dressed in old Spanish style and 24 royalist volunteers."^[305]

Another case exemplifying the harshness of repression was that of Juan Martín Díez ("El Empecinado"), guerrilla fighter and hero of the Peninsular War.^[284] On 21 November 1823 he was captured by royalist volunteers in Roa and taken prisoner tied to the tail of the mayor's horse. After months in inhumane prison conditions, he was hanged on 19 August 1825. Ferdinand VII wrote to his confidant Antonio Ugarte: "It is time to dispatch El Empecinado to the other world."^[306][307]

Military commissions sentenced 152 people to death—some for shouting "Long live Riego!"—and imposed arbitrary punishments, including imprisonment and forced labor.^[308] The Juntas de Fe assumed part of the functions of the Spanish Inquisition, which was not formally restored. A French diplomat described them as "fearsome tribunals".^[309]

The liberal clergy also suffered persecution, often carried out by the Church itself.^[310]

European pressure forced Ferdinand VII to decree a "general pardon" on 11 May 1824, but its many exceptions rendered it largely ineffective and prompted further departures into exile.^[311]

Exile

The harsh repression led many liberals into exile—some even committed suicide out of fear of arrest—.^[312] It was the largest political exile of Restoration Europe.^[313] An estimated 15,000–20,000 people left Spain.^[307][314] Their main destinations were France (77%), the United Kingdom (11%), Gibraltar, and Portugal.^[315]

In Britain, sympathy among Whigs and radicals led to the creation of several Spanish Committees to aid refugees, with donations from figures such as David Ricardo and Jeremy Bentham, and support from newspapers such as The Times. Around 1,000 Spanish families settled in Somers Town in London.^[314][316]

In France, by contrast, refugees were subject to constant surveillance and control. Many were military officers confined to "depots" under government supervision.^[317]

Juan Luis Simal has highlighted that Spanish liberal exile, together with Neapolitan, Piedmontese, and Portuguese exile, "was central to the development of a European liberal politics," fostering an emerging "liberal internationalism".^[318]

Liberals began returning to Spain after amnesties in October 1832 and October 1833, following the death of Ferdinand VII and the accession crisis that led to the government of Francisco Martínez de la Rosa.^[319]

In French

Encyclopédie Universalis, Paris, Volume 18, 2000

Larousse, tome 1, 2, 3, Paris, 1998

Caron, Jean-Claude, La France de 1815 à 1848, Paris, Armand Colin, coll. « Cursus », 2004, 193 p.

Corvisier, André, Histoire militaire de la France, de 1715 à 1871, tome 2, Paris, Presses universitaires de France, "Quadrige" collection, 1998, 627 p.

Demier, Francis, La France du XIXe 1814–1914, Seuil, 2000, 606 p.

Dulphy, Anne, Histoire de l'Espagne de 1814 à nos jours, le défi de la modernisation, Paris, Armand Colin, "128" collection, 2005, 127 p.

Duroselle, Jean-Baptiste, L'Europe de 1815 à nos jours : vie politique et relation internationale, Paris, Presses Universitaires de France, "Nouvelle clio" collection, 1967, 363 p.

Garrigues, Jean, Lacombrade, Philippe, La France au 19e siècle, 1814–1914, Paris, Armand Colin, "Campus" collection, 2004, 191 p.

Lever, Evelyne, Louis XVIII, Paris, Fayard, 1998, 597 p.

Jean Sarrailh, Un homme d'état espagnol: Martínez de la Rosa (1787–1862) (Paris, 1930)

In Spanish

Miguel Artola Gallego, La España de Fernando VII (Madrid, 1968)

Jonathan Harris, 'Los escritos de codificación de Jeremy Bentham y su recepción en el primer liberalismo español', Télos. Revista Iberoamericana de Estudios Utilitaristas 8 (1999), 9–29

W. Ramírez de Villa-Urrutia, Fernando VII, rey constitucional. Historia diplomática de España de 1820 a 1823 (Madrid, 1922)

In English

Raymond Carr, Spain 1808–1975 (Oxford, 1982, 2nd ed.)

Charles W. Fehrenbach, 'Moderados and Exaltados: the liberal opposition to Ferdinand VII, 1814–1823', Hispanic American Historical Review 50 (1970), 52–69

Jonathan Harris, 'An English utilitarian looks at Spanish American independence: Jeremy Bentham's Rid Yourselves of Ultramaria', The Americas 53 (1996), 217–33

• Jarrett, Mark (2013). The Congress of Vienna and its Legacy: War and Great Power Diplomacy after Napoleon. London: I. B. Tauris & Company, Ltd. ISBN 978-1780761169.