The general harness-room is a large nave, consisting of three halls. Preserved in many cases are the magnificent sets of harness and saddles, the liveries of footmen and coachmen, crests, fly-traps, whips and ancient horse-cloths, bridles, and other curiosities. The Royal Riding School is built on one of the esplanades facing the Campo del Moro.
In order to form some idea of the size of the edifice, it may be mentioned that, besides the coach-houses, stables, harness-rooms, etc., there are apartments for the accommodation of the six hundred and thirty-seven people and their families who are employed in this department of the palace.
The Royal Coach-house is situated in the Campo del Moro. Its plan is a rectangular parallelogram, the longest sides of which are 278 feet in length, and the shortest 101 feet. This great coach-house was built in the time of Ferdinand VII., after the design and under the direction of the architect Custodio Moreno, who gave to the exterior a simple and severe appearance. In this department are twenty splendid State carriages, which are only used on special occasions, among them being that of Juana the Mad, restored a few years since, and one hundred and twenty-one carriages of all kinds and shapes for daily use.
Kings of three dynasties have made their homes in the Royal Palace of Madrid since the nineteenth century brought in with it so much havoc and disruption to Spain. The Bourbons, Joseph Buonaparte, and Amadeo of Savoy, each ‘abode his hour or two and went his way,’ and in 1873 and 1874 the palace windows looked out upon a city which for the first time since its foundation was the capital of a republic. Nearly all the culminating incidents in the stormy history which has been enacted in Spain since the abdication of Charles IV. occurred in the Royal Palace. From this not too secure eminence Ferdinand the Desired saw his guards slaughtered by the frenzied mob. ‘Serve the fools right,’ he exclaimed; ‘at all events I am inviolable.’ But the king had a fit of terror when he found his palace was left without guards to protect it from the crowd, and Riego, the man he hated, was taken into favour, in order that he might appease the populace.
Through the terrible night of 7th October 1841, when Generals Concha and Leon made their determined attempt to kidnap Queen Isabella and her little sister, the Infanta Maria Luisa, the valiant eighteen halberdiers of the guard, commanded by Colonel Dalee, held the grand staircase of the palace against an army of revolutionists until the National Militia arrived to relieve them. Truly that night the halberdiers wrote a magnificent page of fidelity in the records of the guards.
After a hopeless struggle to reduce Spanish affairs into something like order, Amadeo of Savoy issued from the Royal Palace his valedictory address to his people, and on the following day, 12th February 1873, he left Madrid, as he had entered it, a chevalier sans peur et sans reproche. In the same palace Alfonso XIII. was born and baptized, from the palace he set out to the church of San Jeronimo to be married to Victoria Eugénie of Battenberg, and here was born and baptized the Prince of the Asturias, the heir to the throne of Spain.
