Restoration Five years later after experiencing serious setbacks on many fronts, Napoleon agreed on 11 December 1813 to acknowledge Ferdinand VII as king of Spain, and signed the
Treaty of Valençay so that the king could return to Spain. The Spanish people, blaming the policies of the Francophiles (
afrancesados) for causing the Napoleonic occupation and the Peninsular War by allying Spain too closely to France, at first welcomed
Fernando. Ferdinand soon found that in the intervening years a new world had been born of foreign invasion and domestic revolution. In his name Spain fought for its independence and in his name as well
juntas had governed Spanish America. Spain was no longer the absolute monarchy he had relinquished six years earlier. Instead he was now asked to rule under the liberal
Constitution of 1812. Before being allowed onto Spanish soil, Ferdinand had to guarantee the liberals that he would govern on the basis of the constitution, but only gave lukewarm indications he would do so. On 24 March the French handed him over to the Spanish Army in
Girona, and thus began his procession towards Madrid. During this process and in the following months, he was encouraged by conservatives and the Church hierarchy to reject the constitution. On 4 May he ordered its abolition, and on 10 May had the liberal leaders responsible for the constitution arrested. Ferdinand justified his actions by claiming that the constitution had been made by a
Cortes illegally assembled in his absence, without his consent and without the traditional form. (It had met as a unicameral body, instead of in three chambers representing the
three estates: the clergy, the nobility and the cities.) Ferdinand initially promised to convene a traditional Cortes, but never did so, thereby reasserting the
Bourbon doctrine that sovereign authority resided in his person only. '' by
Francisco Goya (1815),
Prado Meanwhile, the
wars of independence had broken out in the Americas, and although many of the republican rebels were divided and
royalist sentiment was strong in many areas, the
Spanish treasure fleets – carrying tax revenues from the Spanish Empire – were interrupted. Spain was all but bankrupt. Ferdinand's restored autocracy was guided by a small
camarilla of his favourites, although his government seemed unstable. Whimsical and ferocious by turns, he changed his ministers every few months. "The king," wrote
Friedrich von Gentz in 1814, "himself enters the houses of his prime ministers, arrests them, and hands them over to their cruel enemies;" and again, on 14 January 1815, "the king has so debased himself that he has become no more than the leading police agent and prison warden of his country." The king did recognise the efforts of foreign powers on his behalf. As the head of the Spanish
Order of the Golden Fleece, Ferdinand made the
Duke of Wellington, head of the
British forces on
the peninsula, the first
Protestant member of the order. During the aftermath of the
Mexican War of Independence, the general of the
Army of the Three Guarantees,
Agustín de Iturbide, and Jefe Superior
Juan O'Donojú, signed in 1821 the
Treaty of Córdoba, which concluded the war of independence and established the
First Mexican Empire. The imperial constitution contemplated that the monarch would be "a Spanish prince," and Iturbide and O'Donojú intended to offer the Mexican Imperial Crown to Ferdinand VII himself to rule Mexico in
personal union with Spain. However, Ferdinand, refusing to recognise Mexican independence or be bound by a constitution, decreed that the Mexican constitution was "void", declined the Mexican crown, and stated that no European prince could accede to the Mexican throne. The imperial crown was consequently given to Iturbide himself, but the Mexican Empire collapsed and was replaced by the
First Mexican Republic a few years later.
Revolt , 1821 , 1815'' There were several
pronunciamientos, or military uprisings, during the king's second reign. The first came in in September 1814, three months after the end of the
Peninsular War, and was led by General
Espoz y Mina in Pamplona.
Juan Díaz Porlier revolted at La Coruña in the following year. General
Luis Lacy led an uprising in Barcelona in 1817, and General
Juan Van Halen did the same in Valencia in 1818. In 1820
Rafael del Riego undertook the most successful
pronunciamiento, leading to the
Trienio Liberal. In 1820 a revolt broke out in favour of the
Constitution of 1812, beginning with a mutiny of the troops under Riego. The king was quickly taken prisoner. Ferdinand had restored the
Jesuits upon his return, but now they had become identified with repression and absolutism among the liberals, who attacked them: twenty-five Jesuits were slain in Madrid in 1822. For the rest of the 19th century, liberal political regimes expelled the Jesuits, and authoritarian regimes reinstated them. Ferdinand VII was an ardent opponent of
Freemasonry in Spain, seeing it as a vehicle for secular liberal revolutions, an enemy of the Spanish Crown, aristocracy and the Catholic faith, subordinated to foreign interests (the
Grand Orient of France primarily). After reinstating the Spanish Inquisition and the Jesuits, on 4 May 1814 he publicly declared all Spanish freemasons to be traitors. '' by
José Aparicio In the spring of 1823, the restored Bourbon French King
Louis XVIII of France
invaded Spain, "invoking the God of
St. Louis, for the sake of preserving the throne of Spain to a fellow descendant of
Henry IV of France, and of reconciling that fine kingdom with Europe." In May 1823 the revolutionary party moved Ferdinand to
Cádiz, where he continued to make promises of constitutional amendment until he was free. When Ferdinand was freed after the
Battle of Trocadero and the fall of Cádiz, reprisals followed. The
Duc d'Angoulême made known his protest against Ferdinand's reneging on his promise of amnesty for the people of Cadiz by refusing the Spanish decorations Ferdinand offered him for his military services. During his last years, Ferdinand's political appointments became more stable. The last ten years of his reign (sometimes referred to as the
Ominous Decade) saw the restoration of absolutism, the re-establishment of traditional university programs and the suppression of any opposition, both by the Liberal Party and by the reactionary revolt (known as "
War of the Agraviados") which broke out in 1827 in
Catalonia and other regions.
Death and succession crisis In May 1830, Ferdinand VII published the
Pragmatic Sanction, again allowing daughters to succeed to the Spanish throne as well as sons. This decree had originally been approved by the
Cortes in 1789, but it had never been officially promulgated. On 10 October 1830, Ferdinand's wife gave birth to a daughter,
Isabella, who thereupon displaced her uncle,
Infante Carlos María Isidro of Spain, in the line of succession. After Ferdinand's death in late September 1833, Carlos revolted and said he was the legitimate king. Needing support, Maria Christina, as regent for her daughter, turned to the liberals. She issued a decree of amnesty on 23 October 1833. Liberals who had been in exile returned and dominated Spanish politics for decades, leading to the
Carlist Wars. ==Legacy==