To Fernando, trained in the traditions of absolutism, the Treaty of Valençay was vastly preferable to the reception prepared for him, but he uttered no word of dissent when, after Napoleon had liberated him without conditions on March 7th, he was transferred by Suchet, on the banks of the Fluviá, March 24th, to Copons, the Captain-general of Catalonia. He exercised volition however in deviating from the route laid down by the Regency, and made a detour to Saragossa on the road to Valencia, but he preserved absolute silence as to his intentions. Everywhere he was received with delirious enthusiasm; the people idealized him as the symbol of the nationality for which they had struggled through five years of pitiless war, and there were no bounds to their exuberance of loyalty.
The Restoration.
To few men has it been given, as to Fernando, to exercise so profound and so lasting an influence on the destinies of a nation. His ancestor, Henry IV, had a harder task when he undertook to impose harmony on compatriots who, for a generation had been savagely cutting each others’ throats. Fernando came to a nation which had been unitedly waging war against a foreign enemy. Differences of opinion had grown up, as to the reception or rejection of modern ideas, and parties had been formed representing the principles of conservatism and innovation; mistakes had been made on both sides and bitterness of temper was rising, but a wise and prudent ruler, coming uncommitted to either side and enthusiastically greeted by both, could have exorcised the demon of faction, could have brought about compromise and conciliation, and could have gradually so trained the nation that it could have traversed in peace the inevitable revolution awaiting it. This was not to be. Unfortunately Fernando was one of the basest and most despicable beings that ever disgraced a throne. Cowardly, treacherous, deceitful, selfish, abandoned to low debauchery, controlled by a camarilla of foul and immoral favorites, his sole object was to secure for himself the untrammelled exercise of arbitrary power and to abuse it for sensual gratification. Cruel he was not, in the sense of wanton shedding of blood, but he was callously indifferent to human suffering, and he earned the name of Tigrekan, by which the Liberals came to designate him.[925]
REACTION
When Fernando entered Spain he was naturally undecided as to the immediate attitude to be assumed towards the changes made during his absence, but the enthusiasm of his reception and the influence of the reactionaries who surrounded him emboldened him in the determination to assert his autocracy. Several secret conferences were held during the journey to decide whether he should swear to the Constitution, and the negative opinion prevailed. In fact, to a man of Fernando’s character, voluntary obedience to the Constitution was an impossibility. Not only did it declare that sovereignty resided in the nation, with the corresponding right to determine its fundamental laws, but the powers of the crown were limited in many ways; the Córtes reserved the right to exclude unworthy aspirants to the succession, and to set aside the incumbent for any cause rendering him incapable—clauses susceptible of most dangerous interpretation. At this very time, indeed, the Córtes were deliberating on the appropriation to be made to the king for the maintenance of his court, which implied the right to subject him to the most galling conditions.[926]
If anything was needed to induce him to assert the full powers enjoyed by his predecessors it was afforded by a manifesto known as the Representation of the Persians, from an absurd allusion to the ancient Persians in the opening sentence. This was signed by sixty-nine deputies to the Córtes; at much length and with turgid rhetoric it set forth the sufferings inflicted on Spain by the Liberals; it argued that all the acts of the Córtes of Cádiz were null and invalid; it pointed out the limitations on the royal power prescribed by the Constitution, and it asserted that absolute monarchy was recognized as the perfection of government. It did not omit to declare that the Inquisition was indispensable to the maintenance of religion, without which no government could exist; it dwelt on the disorders consequent upon its suppression and it reminded Fernando that, from the time of the Gothic kingdom, intolerance of heresy was the permanent law of the nation. Even if the king should think best to swear to the Constitution, the manifesto protested that it was invalid and that its destructive principles must be submitted to the action of Córtes assembled according to the ancient fashion. This paper, dated April 12th, was drawn up and secretly circulated by Bernardo Moza Reales, who carried it to Valencia and presented it to Fernando, receiving as reward the title of Marquis of Mataflorida.[927]
Fernando reached Valencia April 16th and paused there until May 4th, while secret preparations were made to overthrow the government. The Córtes, unaware of the contemplated treachery, were amusing themselves in arranging the hall for the solemnity of the king’s oath and his acknowledgement as sovereign, and took no measures for self-protection. Troops were secretly collected in the vicinity of Madrid, under General Eguia, a violent reactionary, who was made Captain-general of New Castile. On the night of May 10th, when Fernando was nearing the capital, Eguia notified Joaquin Pérez, President of the Córtes, that they were closed; troops took possession of the hall and the archives were sealed, while police-agents were busy making arrests from a list of thirty-eight marked for proscription, including two of the regents, two ministers and all the more prominent liberal deputies.[928] No resistance was encountered and the precedent was established which has proved so disastrous to Spain.
DESPOTISM RE-ESTABLISHED