Isabella II of Spain
gigatos | June 3, 2022
Summary
Isabella II (or Isabel II in Spanish), born on October 10, 1830 in Madrid and died on April 9, 1904 in Paris, was queen of Spain from 1833 to 1868. Her reign can be divided into four parts: the Carlist War from 1833 to 1839, the time of the regencies from 1835 to 1843, the moderate decade from 1843 to 1854 and the last phase from 1854 to 1868.
The eldest daughter of King Ferdinand VII, she became his heiress thanks to the abolition of the Salic law by the latter with the signing of the Pragmatic Sanction. When the king died in 1833, some people refused to recognize the young sovereign and, in application of the Salic Law, designated Isabella’s uncle, the infant Charles, as king under the name of Charles V. Due to the young age of the new queen, the regency was exercised by her mother Mary Christine. The latter was marked by the crisis of succession and the civil war that followed the death of Ferdinand VII. Close to the liberals, the regent was in opposition to the Carlist supporters, absolutists. The Carlist war caused serious economic and political difficulties. The fight against the army of the Carlist Tomás de Zumalacárregui, who had taken up arms as early as 1833, forced the regent to place a great deal of trust in the militares christinos, who became very well known among the population. Among them, General Espartero stood out, who was in charge of recording the final victory in the Convention of Oñate. This situation, in which the military substituted for the weakened political parties, caused a permanent governmental crisis in which the interests of the different military commands imposed successive governments that lacked authority. It was not until the end of the Carlist War in 1839 and the exile of the infant Charles that Isabel II was recognized as the legitimate sovereign by all of Spain.
In 1840, Maria Christina relinquished the regency to General Espartero, who established a military dictatorship that lasted until the queen came of age in 1843, when she was still only thirteen years old. She took the oath to the Constitution on November 10, 1843 before the Cortes Generales. The first years of her personal reign were marked by the coming to power of the Moderate Party and the promulgation of a new constitution in 1845.
In 1860 the Carlist uprising of San Carlos de la Rápita took place, led by the pretender to the throne Charles Louis of Bourbon, son of Charles V. He tried to land from the Balearic Islands near Tarragona with the equivalent of a regiment of his followers to start a new Carlist war, but his attempt ended in a resounding failure. At the same time, the peasant uprising in Loja, led by the veterinarian Rafael Pérez del Álamo, took place; the first great peasant movement in defense of land and work was harshly repressed and crushed in a short period of time, resulting in several death sentences. Unpopular in the last years of her reign, she was overthrown by the revolution of 1868 and went into exile in France, a country with which she had strengthened ties during her reign, but did not formally abdicate until 1870. Although she was a major figure in nineteenth-century Spain, her reign was generally judged negatively because of the political instability that characterized it.
Isabella II of Spain is the daughter of King Ferdinand VII of Spain and his fourth wife (and niece), Maria Christina of Bourbon-Sicily.
His ancestor, Philip V, a French-born prince of the House of Bourbon, although he derived his rights to the Spanish throne from his grandmother, Queen Maria Theresa, had established the Salic law in 1713 in order to prevent the rival Habsburg dynasty from reclaiming the Spanish crown through opportunistic marriages according to the adage “Tu Felix Austria Nube” which, in the 16th century, had allowed these Austro-Burgundian princes to build up an empire over which “the sun never set”.
A century later, having no descendants despite three marriages, Ferdinand VII, great-grandson of Philip V, decided to leave the throne to his brother, the ultra-conservative infant Charles, Count of Molina, who also had three sons.
Nevertheless, at the urging of his youngest sister-in-law (and niece), the intelligent, opinionated and liberal Louise-Charlotte de Bourbon-Siciles, he entered into a fourth union with her sister, Marie-Christine, in 1829. It should be noted that Ferdinand VII and his brothers, whether conservative or liberal, all married their niece. In fact, at the time, the evils of consanguinity were not known and, since princely marriages were dictated less by the feelings of the future spouses than by the political interests of the various dynasties, the Pope paternally granted the necessary dispensations to the future spouses.
The young queen declared her first pregnancy at the beginning of 1830. Again at the urging of the Infanta Louise, who feared the arrival in power of a prince as conservative as her brother-in-law and uncle the Infant Charles, Ferdinand VII promulgated a Pragmatic Sanction abolishing the Salic law and allowing the unborn child to wear the crown regardless of its sex. To do this, he relied on a declaration of his father Charles IV discreetly published in 1789 which, re-establishing the Spanish tradition, abolished the Salic law.
This decision was not accepted by the infant Charles and his supporters, who considered that the Spanish crown, being the offspring of a French house, was governed, like the French crown, by the Salic law, by virtue of the Pragmatic Sanction enacted in 1713 by Philip V. For them and for the main interested party, the legitimate heir of the king is his brother, the infant Charles. This one, born in 1788, pretexting that the declaration of their father, Charles IV, dating from 1789, is not applicable to him, refuses to take oath to the child to be born if this one is a girl.
On October 10, 1830, the queen gave birth to a baby girl, who was named Isabel in memory of her glorious ancestor Isabel I of Castile.
On the death of her father on September 29, 1833, Isabella, who was not yet three years old, was proclaimed queen under the name of Isabella II under the regency of her mother Maria Christina, while her uncle also declared himself king under the name “Charles V”.
The supporters of the infantry took the name of “Carlists. They were staunch defenders of institutional Catholicism and the maintenance of provincial law, while their opponents, the “isabellists,” were more liberal and centralizing.
This conflict between the two factions led to the crisis of succession, which resulted in armed clashes that mainly affected the north of Spain, also known as the Carlist Wars. The supporters of Infante Charles failed to take Madrid and seize the throne, supported by English and French contingents. The liberal France of King Louis-Philippe I became the first ally of “Isabellist” Spain. Behind these wars of succession there were in fact two opposing political visions of Spain: that of the supporters of the young Isabel II and her mother, which was liberal and centralizing, and that of the supporters of the infant Charles, which was clerical and federalist.
Marriage under the influence of the French king
On October 10, 1846, Isabelle, who was 16 years old, and her sister Louise-Fernande, 14 years old, were married the same day.
Influenced by the king of the French, Louis-Philippe, her great-uncle by marriage, Isabella II married her cousin, the infant François d’Assise de Bourbon, Duke of Cadiz. The young man is doubly her cousin since his father is the Infante Francisco de Paule de Bourbon, younger brother of Ferdinand VII and the Infante Charles, and his mother is the aforementioned Princess Louise-Charlotte of the Two Sicilies, sister and supporter of the regent Maria Christina but also of the wife of the second Carlist pretender (Carlos, son of the Infante Charles who “abdicated” in 1845). It should also be noted, as mentioned above, that these princesses were also the nieces of their husbands.
As for the great-uncle Louis-Philippe, he took advantage of the opportunity to marry Isabelle’s younger sister, Louise-Fernande, to his younger son Antoine, duke of Montpensier. Thus, if Isabelle had no children – or no surviving children – the duke of Montpensier could ascend with Isabelle’s sister to the Spanish throne.
On the day of Isabel’s wedding, her mother, the ex-regent Maria Cristina (who, against the customs of her environment, had contracted a morganatic union in her second marriage – soon to be recognized by her daughter – which had made her the mother of a large family), could not restrain herself from sighing: “This marriage should not be. The bridegroom, Francisco de Assisi of Bourbon, was a young man of 24 years old, suffering from hypospadias, and later, after the 1868 putsch, the Carlists would use this pretext to claim that he was homosexual. The royal couple had eleven children, five of whom reached adulthood. The king consort, during the official ceremonies of presentation of the newborn child to the court, used to say before retiring:
“You will congratulate His Majesty my wife on becoming pregnant and happily giving birth.”
According to Carlist propaganda disseminated after the 1868 putsch, most of Isabel’s children were not legitimate, and the king consort gave his dogs the names of his wife’s lovers. The queen’s preferences were in the world of music (composers, opera singers) but, given the troubled times and the environment in which she lived, there were also military, officers and diplomats.
Numerous descendants
After the marriage, Francis of Assisi was made king of Spain, but Isabella remained the reigning queen, giving her husband the rank of “king consort”. Their eleven children are those of the queen and her legitimate husband and thus the heirs of Charles V and Philip V:
This marriage, from which King Alfonso XII was born, would later contribute to reuniting the Spanish Isabellist and Carlist successions, as well as the French Legitimist succession, in the same person: King Alfonso XIII, in 1936.
Unhappy marriage and religious life
Victim of a disastrous dynastic marriage that she had initially refused, the queen took lovers. From this the myth of the nymphomaniac queen was born, forged by opponents from all sides. In reality, this myth was invented exclusively by the Carlists to discredit her person, Isabel was a very pious Catholic, of an ardent and sincere faith.
In 1857, she took as her confessor Antoine-Marie Claret, Archbishop of Cuba, whose life was in danger because the prelate had opposed the treatment of slaves by the colonists. He also had a great influence (he was canonized in 1950).
Also under the influence of France, on her wedding day, the young queen named her husband King Consort, gave him the predicate of Majesty and, like Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom, shared the reality of power with her husband.
The same year of his marriage was troubled by the second Carlist war, which lasted until 1849.
Influential advisors
The queen, prey to an ultra-politicized and manipulative entourage, did not seem to have taken much interest in politics. Intelligent, generous, determined, she knew how to show character in a Spain traumatized by the French period and torn between conservatives and liberals, Carlists and Christinists, clerics and anticlerics, but all deeply misogynistic: at the age of 13, pushed by the liberals to dissolve the Cortes, she affirmed before the deputies that she had been locked up and manipulated by the leader of the liberals. Soon enough, the reality of power belonged to the army and the generals controlled the country.
In 1840, his mother, Queen Maria Cristina, was expelled from Spain after promulgating the Spanish Constitution of 1837 leaving the regency to General Espartero, who was overthrown three years later.
To avoid chaos, the Cortes decided to avoid a new regency and proclaimed the majority of the young 13-year-old queen. One of the first gestures of the little sovereign was to call her mother back from exile. The two women remained close. The queen mother returned to Spain after having her morganatic marriage with Agustín Fernando Muñoz y Sánchez recognized by Pope Gregory XVI; she then had it officially recognized by her daughter Isabel II, who authorized a second public celebration of the marriage; she would always exert a certain influence on her daughter, who sought her advice.
In 1845, under the presidency of the conservative general Narváez, who had defeated the progressive general Espartero, the Spanish Constitution of 1845, inspired by the French July Monarchy, was enacted.
Influence of Louis-Philippe
The queen dowager having sought to marry Isabella II to the duke of Orleans, eldest son and heir of the king of the French, England, always anxious to avoid the rapprochement of the Spanish and French crowns, was moved and proposed a cousin of the prince consort: Leopold of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha. Finally, under the influence of the French king Louis-Philippe I, Isabella married her cousin François d’Assise de Bourbon, the closest infant to the throne after the Carlist branch but a known homosexual, at the age of 16, while her 14-year-old sister Louise-Fernande married the duke of Montpensier, the last son of the French king, who intrigued behind the scenes to have his sister-in-law dethroned in favor of his wife.
Economic and cultural development
In 1850, it inaugurated the Royal Theater, the following year the first railroad line (Madrid-Aranjuez) and the canal that still bears its name today. In 1851 the concordat with the papacy was finally signed. This was a double moral victory over her Carlist cousin: Isabel II was recognized as the legitimate queen of Spain and the Church’s properties, which had been nationalized and sold to private individuals since 1836, remained with their new owners, with the Church being compensated by the State.
It was also during the reign of Isabel II that the Spanish mines were opened and exploited. Nevertheless, economic development remained very slow if compared to other European countries, and corruption became widespread in the highest classes of society, including the entire royal family.
Political crisis
In 1854, a pronunciamento forced the queen to appoint the progressive general Baldomero Espartero, winner of the first Carlist war, as president of the Council. After two years, he was replaced by the moderate general Leopoldo O’Donnell.
But the political and institutional crisis intensified and the government was entrusted alternately to two generals, Narváez – a conservative who had promulgated the 1845 constitution – and Leopoldo O’Donnell, leader of the moderates, while the support of France was increasingly expensive: despite Spain’s involvement in its disastrous Mexican War, Emperor Napoleon III demanded, through the mouth of his wife, the Spaniard Eugenie de Montijo, nothing less than the Balearic Islands.
Nevertheless, Spain led a victorious campaign against Morocco in 1859
In this Spain in perdition, the public but “unconstitutional” interventions of the queen (she even proposed to be appointed secretary of state) made her more and more unpopular in political circles while the gossip about her private life and the corruption of the court deprived her of the respect of the people. The queen was the target of an attempted murder by a Franciscan monk in 1852.
The crisis led to the formation of a new government on June 21 with the return of Leopoldo O’Donnell. Among other measures, a new law was approved that increased the electorate by 400,000 members, almost double the previous number, and elections to the Cortes were called. However, even before the elections were held, the progressives announced their non-participation. In this context, General Juan Prim organized the Villarejo de Salvanes uprising, to take power by force, but it failed due to insufficient planning. Again, the hostile attitude of the progressives displeased O’Donell, who reinforced the authoritarian character of his government, leading to the uprising of the San Gil garrison on June 22, again organized by Prim, but which again failed and resulted in over sixty death sentences.
O’Donnell withdrew, exhausted, from political life, and was replaced in July by Narváez, who cancelled for the insurgents the sentences that had not yet been executed, but maintained the authoritarian rigor: expulsions from the pulpits of the republicans and krausists, reinforcement of censorship and control of public order. When Narváez died, the authoritarian Luis González Bravo succeeded him with a more repressive policy, supported by the queen. In 1866, an uprising was bloodily suppressed and in 1868, General Juan Prim launched a revolution with cries of “Down with the Bourbons! Long live honest Spain!” which, on September 30, forced Queen Isabella into exile in France.
She abdicated on June 25, 1870 and ceded her rights to her son, the dashing Prince of Asturias who, having just entered his fourteenth year, was declared an adult. The departure of the queen, far from improving the situation of Spain, provoked new national and even international tensions. It led to a candidacy of the Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen dynasty in 1870, which was quickly withdrawn by the prince concerned (on the advice of his father, the wise Charles-Antoine de Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen) but skilfully exploited by Chancellor Bismarck. This claim was one of the causes of the Franco-Prussian war of 1870.
The queen then took refuge in the “Palais de Castille” (ex-hotel Basilewski), avenue Kléber in Paris, where in November 1871, she learned of the suicide of her son-in-law, the infant Gaétan de Bourbon-Siciles, who had taken his own life at the age of 25, leaving the infanta Marie-Isabelle as a widow at 19.
More happily, in 1874, the former queen learned of the re-establishment of the monarchy, the restoration of her house to the throne and the accession of her 17-year-old son. However, she was less pleased with the marriage of the new king to his cousin the Infanta Mercedes, daughter of his brother-in-law and rival, Antoine d’Orléans. However, the young princess was able to win the affection of her people from the start. She died after a few months of marriage, Alphonse XII married the Archduchess Marie-Christine of Austria (1858-1929), of whom he had three children. Fearing a new alliance with the branch of Orleans, the princess of Asturias, elder sister and heiress of the king, strongly influenced this marriage with a cousin of her late husband.
In 1878, the queen dowager María Cristina died in Le Havre, five years after her second husband.
Between 1850 and 1880, Isabel II, her mother and her sister, the infanta María Luisa, stayed several times on the Normandy coast, notably at the Château des Aygues in Étretat. Every year she took a cure in Contrexéville, a spa town that gave the queen’s name to one of its streets. She also stayed in Saint-Honoré-les-Bains and lived there at the Villa des Pins.
In 1885, his son Alfonso XII died prematurely, entrusting the regency to his young pregnant wife Maria Christina of Austria. A few months later King Alfonso XIII was born.
Queen Isabella II died in Paris in 1904 at the age of 73. She is buried in the Royal Necropolis of El Escorial, in the Royal Crypt.
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