4. The XIX Century

The XIX Century
Juan Antonio López Luque
Chapter 3

Napoleon
 The irresistible pressure of French imperialism:
Napoleon Bonaparte controlled the western half of
the continent.
 Spain became a satellite country of the Bonapart
Regime
 Napoleon forced the cession of the vast Louisiana
territory in North America
 France also forced Godoy into the border "War of the
Oranges" against pro-British Portugal.
 French troops crossed the Spanish border to attack
Portugal. It was a major victory for Spain but
 the consequent war with Britain upon Napoleonic
dictates marked the beginning of the end.

Trafalgar (1805)
 27 British ships led by Admiral Lord Nelson aboard HMS Victory (0 lost)
 33 French and Spanish ships under French Admiral Pierre-Charles Villeneuve (22
lost)
 Off the southwest coast of Spain, just west of Cape Trafalgar
 Nelson was shot by a French musketeer during the battle and died shortly after,
becoming one of Britain's greatest war heroes.
 It was the virtual destruction of the Spanish navy, and the subsequent British
domination of the Atlantic

Trafalgar (1805)
 Admiral Lord Nelson French Admiral Pierre-Charles Villeneuve

Trafalgar (1805)
Trafalgar Square

 Trafalgar completed the discrediting of the government
 The unpopularity of Godoy increased year by year
 The ineptitude of Carlos IV dragged the prestige of the royal family in the mud
 The regime drew the opposition alike of progressists and of ultra-conservatives
within the aristocracy and church who wanted Carlos’ son Fernando as king
 By the Treaty of Fontainebleau in October 1807 a huge French army cross the
border into the peninsula…
The Bonapartist Regime of 1808-1812

 When became clear to Godoy that Napoleon was
eager to eliminate him he tried a plan to remove
the royal family to America and start a movement
against French domination
 Godoy himself was imprisoned by a riot at the
winter palace of Aranjuez in March 1808
 Carlos IV was forced to abdicate
 The breakdown of Spanish government provided
Napoleon with the excuse to intervene directly,
deport both Carlos IV and D. Fernando to France,
and install his brother Joseph (José I) as king of
Spain.

 The Bonapartist administration tried to enact the
same reforms brought by French rule to other lands
 The legal and administrative systems were
reorganized
 The Inquisition was abolished
 The church was brought under closer state
regulation and most monasteries were abolished
and their properties seized
 Despite a conscientious effort he was rejected by
the great majority of Spaniards, who referred to
him sneeringly as Pepe Botella
 The only real support for the regime came from a
small minority of the afrancesados

The War of Independence (1808-1813)
 The reaction of the Spanish people to French
domination was the great revolt of May 1808
 It started on May 2 in Madrid as the members of
the royal family were being hustled into French
exile
 Spread throughout the country within a few
weeks
 It was supported by all classes of the population
(the nobility being the most tepid), to save
national independence and also to save the
primacy of traditional religion.
 By June 1808, the Spanish resistance fielded an
army with a nominal strength of 130,000 men.

 After outstanding victories of the Spanish
national Army over the French troops, Napoleon
himself decided to intervine personally leading
an invading force of 300,000 men from his best
units
 Britain immediately joined hands with the
Spanish governing junta, and dispatched an
expeditionary corps under Sir Arthur Wellesley
(later the Duke of Wellington)
 The heart of the Spanish War of Independence
lay not in the maneuverings of the field armies
but in the massive popular resistance of all
classes.
 the main burden of the war was carried by
irregular forces waging a guerrilla

 Was built during the Napoleonic wars

Agustina de Aragón
 The main suffering, and the main heroics, of the
war belonged to the Spanish civilians.
 French occupation policy was harsh withsavage
reprisals: whole towns were sacked; rape by the
French soldiers were not uncommon
 In turn, the most vivid symbols of the Spanish
resistance were given by the populace as a
whole, highlighted by the two spectacular
sieges-to-the-death of Zaragoza in 1808 and
1809
 Agustina de Aragón
 1813 brought a steady retreat by the shrunken
French forces, no longer able to contest major
battles in the main part of the peninsula.

 Though the final outcome was
complete victory, the cost was heavy
 To the destruction of the Spanish
state was added the devastation of
the peninsula's economy
 Popular resistance in Spain served as
an inspiring example to other
peoples held subject under
Napoleonic imperialism, most
notably in Germany, where the post-
1809 patriotic awakening was
directly stimulated by the Spanish
revolt.

The Cadiz Cortes and the 1812 Constitution
 Collapse of the Spanish monarchy under
the pressures of French imperialism
opened the way for the first breakthrough
of modern Spanish liberalism.
 In 1810 the Junta Central called for the
selection of representatives to a new
Cortes in Cádiz, the seat of Spanish
government during the greater part of the
War of Independence
 Deputies to the Cortes were chosen by
indirect universal male suffrage in which
the votes of twenty-five-year-old heads of
households were channeled through
district electoral councils.

The Cadiz Cortes and the 1812 Constitution

¡Viva la Pepa! the 1812 Constitution
 Liberals wanted the Cortes as a way to transform the
nation
 Conservatives wanted the Cortes because they were a
traditional institution that could provide some sort of
power after the abdication of the king
 Finally a traditional three-estate Cortes is rejected and
a unicameral assembly is elected.
 The new constitution, completed in 1812, was based on
the principle of national sovereignty rather than royal
authority.
 This is the end of the Ancient Regime

¡Viva la Pepa! the 1812 Constitution
 2 main ideologies:
 Conservatives who were outnumbered by
 Liberals (progressivists)
 The constitution of 1812 represented an attempt to
work out a thorough new liberal scheme of
government and society in harmony, as much as
possible, with traditional Spanish values.
 It was the work of the middle-class, supported by
most of the middle and part of the upper classes.
 It was the most advanced document of its time in
Europe. For the next quarter-century it stood as the
classic document of constitutional liberalism in
western continental Europe

Fernando VII – The Fernandine Reaction
 Safely back on his throne, Ferdinand VII,
supported by the reactionary mood in the
country, reneges on his promise to the Cortes.
 He restores absolute rule and savagely
persecutes his liberal opponents.
 His behavior alienates many royalists in Latin
America and thus hastens the liberation
movements which are already under way.

Fernando VII - the loss of the colonies
 In most regions the Spanish-American independence
movement was limited mainly to a Spanish creole or
Spanish mestizo minority of the land owners and
commercial elite
 The lower classes in America tended to be neutral or
even pro-Spanish
 Fernando's corrupt and incoherent regime was
incapable of a major effort to restore Spanish
control. The empire was lost mainly by default.
 Spanish people were not actively identified with the
empire; its loss gained little attention in Spain
 After 1825 all that remained of the empire was
Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the island possessions in the
Pacific

The Liberal Triennium
 Fernando’s proposal of sending an army across the
Atlantic to suppress the rebellious colonists
ignited the indignation in Spain and prompt
another successful liberal revolution in January
1820.
 This revolt was led by young officers in the Army
whose chief leader was Major Rafael del Riego
and will establish a new form of rebelion: the
pronunciamiento.
 The pronunciamiento became the standard tactic
of military revolt in nineteenth-century Spain.
 Often it was the work of a small group of senior or
middle-rank officers who did not attack the
government but simply "pronounced" or raised the
flag of revolt against existing government policy.

The Liberal Triennium
 The new liberal government forces Fernando
once again to accept the constitution of 1812
and repeated the social, institutional, and
economic reforms of 1812-1813:
 the Inquisition abolished, state control over
church orders established, many of the latter
suppressed, and most monastic lands
confiscated.
 The doceañistas soon found themselves
challenged on both the left and the right.
 Within the ranks of liberalism, pressure came
from the exaltados or radicals who demanded
revenge from Fernandine past atrocities. This in
turn stimulated the reaction of ultra-
conservatives.

 Fernando finally asks for help to the Holy Alliance* and
an army of 100,000 soldiers from France: “Los Cien Mil
Hijos de San Luis”
 Fernando is freed (he has been taken to Cadiz as a
prisoner of the Cortes) and after the affront, Ferdinand's
persecution of the liberals is even more vindictive (it will
continue until his death in 1833)
 Fernando had just one daughter Isabel, who is a child of
3 when he dies in 1833.
 For most of his reign it has been assumed that he will be
succeeded by his brother, Don Carlos.
 Carlos is even more reactionary than Ferdinand, so the
conflict between the two branches of the family
becomes associated also with a political division within
Spain.
Fernando VII - The Succession Crisis

*The Holly Alliance
RUSSIA
PRUSIA
AUSTRIA

The Carlist Wars
 The ancient tradition of Castile is that women
can inherit the crown but the Salic Law is
adopted in an act of 1713 and is then discarded
again in a pragmatic sanction of Charles IV in
1789, but failed to complete final ratification
by the traditional Cortes.
 Fernando VII repeated the revocation by royal
decree
 Each side can therefore claim some legal
justification in the first Carlist war, which
breaks out in 1833 and lasts for six years.

The Carlist Wars
 Descendants of Don Carlos (each called Carlos in succeeding generations) keep their
dynastic claim alive through a succession of abortive uprisings in the mid-19th
century and another full-scale civil war in 1872-76.
 This second Carlist war takes place after the end of the reign of Isabella II, whose
inheritance of the crown at the age of three has sparked the Carlist reaction.

Isabel II – The triumph of liberalism
 Isabel was a 3 years old girl so her mother
Maria Cristina became regent of Spain

Espartero
 The dominant figure in the Spanish army at the
close of the First Carlist War was General
Baldomero Espartero, who commanded the
government forces in the north during the
campaign that concluded with the compromise
peace of Vergara in 1839.
 He had become identified with Progressive
interests in opposition to rivals in the military who
supported the Moderates
 When the progressive faction threatened with a
revolt against the new Election laws, María Cristina
offered to appoint Espartero prime minister as the
only hope of finding a compromise that would
support the throne.

Espartero
 But when Maria Cristina refused to sanction
annulment of the law, the Progressives broke into
two months of street demonstrations and minor
disorders.
 This forced Maria Cristina to abdicate the regency.
 Espartero then became interim regent in October
1840, and de facto head of state, the first and only
time that a military figure held that position until
1936.
 Espartero was not a politician and had little
interest in resolving problems by attacking the
causes, so by 1843, many of the Progressives
themselves were looking for an alternative solution
and he was forced into retirement.

The Isabeline Regime

 Both the regency and the reign of Isabel have
suffered clashes between the royal tendency
towards absolute rule and the rival demands of
liberal and conservative factions.
 Successive minor military revolts had failed since
1864, but a victorious one was made possible by the
union of the center and left opposition between
1866 and 1868.
 In a mounting atmosphere of discontent, a naval
mutiny in Cadiz in 1868 finally sparks a nation-wide
revolution.
 Isabella II abdicates and withdraws to France with
her 10-year-old son Alfonso.
The Revolution of 1868

The elective monarchy: Amadeo I
 The Cortes of 1869, votes for a continuation of
the monarchy under a different monarch. The
Carlists naturally have their own candidate, but
the wish of the majority is for a king outside the
Bourbon dynasty.
 The crown is offered and eventually accepted in
1871 by an Italian prince Amadeo de Saboya,
younger son of Victor Emmanuel II.
 Amadeo's arrival in December 1872 prompts the
Carlists to take up arms again, with the result
that the unwelcome prince abdicates two
months later, in February 1873.
 The Cortes, disgusted for the moment with all
royal pretensions, now declares a republic.

The First Republic
 The establishment of the Republic resulted
from a flaunting of the democratic
constitution, abstention by the conservatives,
and the precipitous abdication of D. Amadeo.
 New elections were held by the Republican
government in May 1873. These were the
fourth in slightly more than two years, and
only 40 percent of the electorate, perhaps the
smallest proportion in all Spanish history,
participated.
 Government in Spain seemed to dissolve
during the summer and autumn of 1873, while
the Carlist threat gathered momentum in the
Basque country. Three Republican presidents
resigned within four months

Restoration of the Borbón Monarchy: Alfonso XII
 In the general chaos the republic stands no
chance. In 1874 a military coup led by General
Martínez Campos restores order and the crown is
offered to the young son of Isabel II, Alfonso, at
this stage a schoolboy in England.

Restoration of the Borbón Monarchy
 The reorganization of the Spanish politics in 1875-
1876 was largely the work of one man, Antonio
Cánovas del Castillo
 Republicanism was discredited and moderate
opinion was willing to accept a tolerant monarchist
regime.
 Only those parties, groups, and newspapers that
accepted the principle of constitutional monarchy
under the Bourbon dynasty had the right to free
activity. Elements which did not, such as
republicans and Carlists, were largely suppressed.
 The main work of the Cortes was adoption of a new
monarchist constitution reestablished full
central control over local government and
administration
 In 1880 slavery in Cuba was abolished
1876

Caciquismo and the Structure of Restoration
 The political system of the Restoration rested on
oligarchy, articulated through the alliance of
provincial political factions and boss control.
 The “cacique” is the land owner, the local rich
oligarch . It’s the boss rule.
 This was only possible in a country with 28% general
literacy and a huge dependence on agriculture
 The provincial governor pressed the local caciques
who “colect”votes from the peasants and workers
 The whole system was based on fraud. By 1890 a
two-party parliamentary system had been
institutionalized in Spain. Liberals & Conservatives
took turns governing
“PUCHERAZO”

Alfonso XII
 From the very moment of his coronation in 1875
the slight, tubercular Alfonso XII proved a model
constitutional monarch and enjoyed a somewhat
higher reputation than his ministers
 The king died prematurely 3 days short of his
28th
birthday without a male heir, though a son,
also named Alfonso, was born posthumously
several months later.
 The regency is entrusted to the infant's mother, a
second Maria Cristina.

Alfonso XIII
 The reign of Alfonso XIII is complicated by many
long-running internal problems:
 separatism,
 anarchism terrorism
 But even more significant during the reign are
difficulties abroad.
 The Spanish-American war of 1898
 The Moroccan war

The Cuban Disaster
 Spanish Colonies in 1898

The Moroccan Dilemma
 Godoy c

4. The XIX Century

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4. The XIX Century