This Elizabeth Farnese, in spite of her quiet life at Parma, soon showed herself to possess a capacity for government which no one could have suspected, for she had studied and was far better acquainted with history and politics than the majority of women, spoke several languages, and had an intelligent appreciation of the fine arts. Hume calls her a virago, and, although this is a harsh word, her first encounter with the Princess Orsini would seem to warrant its use. The princess, by virtue of her office of camerara-mayor, had gone ahead of the king, to meet the new queen, and the two women met at the little village of Xadraca, four leagues beyond Guadalaxara. The princess knelt and kissed the hand of her new mistress, and then conducted her to the apartments which had been prepared for her. Coxe describes the scene as follows: "The Princess Orsini began to express the usual compliments and to hint at the impatience of the royal bridegroom. But she was thunderstruck when the queen interrupted her with bitter reproaches and affected to consider her dress and deportment as equally disrespectful. A mild apology served only to rouse new fury; the queen haughtily silenced her remonstrances, and exclaimed to the guard: 'Turn out that mad woman who has dared to insult me.' She even assisted in pushing her out of the apartment. Then she called the officer in waiting, and commanded him to arrest the princess and convey her to the frontier. The officer, hesitating and astonished, represented that the king alone had the power to give such an order. 'Have you not,' she indignantly exclaimed, 'his majesty's order to obey me without reserve?' On his reply in the affirmative, she impatiently rejoined: 'Then obey me.' As he still persisted in requiring a written authority, she called for a pen and ink and wrote the order on her knee."
Whether this incident as related be true or not, it serves well to illustrate the imperious nature which she undoubtedly possessed, and which was seen so many times in the course of the next quarter of a century. Her will had to be obeyed, and nothing could turn her aside from her purpose when once it was fixed. But she was as artful as she was stubborn, and ruled most of the time without seeming to rule, carefully watching all of her husband's states of mind, and leading him gradually, and all unconsciously, to her point of view when it differed from her own. Her interests were largely centred in her attempts to win some of the smaller Italian principalities for her sons, she was continually involved in the European wars of her time, and she again brought Spain into a critical financial condition by her costly and fruitless warfare. Not until the accession of her stepson, Charles III., who came to the throne in 1759, was Spain free from the machinations of this designing woman, and, in all that time of her authority, no one can say that she ruled her country wisely or well. She was short-sighted in her ambition, entirely out of sympathy with the Spanish people, and did little or nothing to deserve their hearty praise. So when at last her power was gone, and the new king came to his own, there was but one feeling among all the people, and that was a feeling of great relief.
For the rest of this eighteenth century in Spain there is no predominating woman's influence such as there had been for so many years before, as Amelia, the wife of Charles III., died a few months after his accession, and for the rest of his life he remained unmarried and with no feminine influence near him. The morals of Spain did not improve in this time, however, even if the king gave an example of continence which no other monarch for many years had shown. Charles was very strict in such matters, and it is on record that he banished the Dukes of Arcos and Osuna because of their open and shameless amours with certain actresses who were popular in Madrid at that time. The women in question were also sternly punished, and the whole influence of Charles was thus openly thrown in favor of the decencies of life, which had so long been neglected. The sum total of his efforts was nevertheless powerless to avail much against the inbred corruption of the people, for their none too stable natures were being strongly influenced at that time by the echo of French liberalism which was now sounding across the Pyrenees, and restraint of any kind was becoming more and more irksome every day. Charles IV., who ascended the throne in 1788, was weak and timid and completely in the power of his wife, Marie Louise of Parma, a wilful woman of little character, who was responsible for much of the humiliation which came to Spain during the days of Napoleon's supremacy. Charles IV., realizing his own lack of ability in affairs of state, had decided to take a prime minister from the ranks of the people, that he might be wholly dependent upon his sovereign's will; and his choice fell upon a certain handsome Manuel Godoy, a member of the bodyguard of the king, with whom the vapid Marie was madly in love, and whom she had recommended for the position. The king, all unsuspecting, followed this advice, and Godoy, who was wholly incompetent, went from one mistake to another, to the utter detriment of Spanish interests. The queen's relations with her husband's chief of state were well known to all save Charles himself, and, on one occasion at least, Napoleon, by threatening to reveal the whole shameful story to the king, bent Godoy to his will and forced him to humiliating concessions. The queen supported him blindly, however, in every measure, and put her evil pleasure above the national welfare.
It must not be assumed that in this period of national wreckage that all was bad, that all the women were corrupt and all the men were without principle, for there was never perhaps such a condition of affairs in any country; but the prevailing and long-continued licentiousness at the court, which was in many respects a counterpart in miniature of the wanton ways of eighteenth-century France, could not fail in the end to react in a most disastrous way upon the moral nature of the people. There were still pious mothers and daughters, but the moral standards of the time were so deplorably low in a country where they had never been of the highest, from a strictly puritan standpoint, that society in general shows little of that high seriousness so essential to effective morality.
CHAPTER XX
THE WOMEN OF MODERN SPAIN
Spain, in all the days of her history, has been conspicuous among all other continental countries for the number of women who have wielded the sovereign power, and the reasons for this fact are not far to seek perhaps. In both Germany and Italy there has been little of national life or government in the broadest sense of the word until a very recent date, the custom of the empire has given male rulers to Austria, the illustrious Catherine of Voltaire's day has been the one woman to achieve prominence in Russia, and in France the ancient Salic law did not allow women to ascend the throne; so that, all in all, by this process of exclusion, it is easy to see that in Spain alone the conditions have been favorable for woman's tenure of royal office. A scrutiny of the list of Spanish monarchs reveals the fact that in all the long line there are no names more worthy of honor than those of Berenguela and Isabella the Catholic, and that, irrespective of sex, Isabella stands without any formidable rival as the ablest and most efficient ruler that Spain has ever had. The right of woman's accession to the Spanish throne was seriously threatened, however, early in the eighteenth century with the advent of the French Bourbons. Young Philip V., acting under French influences in this affair, as he did continually in all his various undertakings, had induced the Cortes to introduce the French Salic principle; and for the greater part of the century this law was allowed to stand, although nothing happened to test it severely. By way of comment on this circumstance, it is interesting to note that this young king, Philip V., who had been instrumental in barring women from the succession, was, by tacit confession, unequal to his own task, and found his wisest counsellor in the person of the clever Princess Orsini. Spanish feeling and Spanish custom in regard to this matter were so strong, however, that Charles IV., when he came to the throne in 1789, had prevailed upon the Cortes to abolish the Salic law and to restore the old Castilian succession. While this was done secretly, a decree to this effect had never been issued, and legally the Salic law was still in force when Charles's son, Fernando VII., approached his last days. Fernando had been unlucky with his wives, as the first three proved to be short-lived, and the fourth, Maria Cristina, Princess of Naples, presented him with two daughters and no sons.
It happened that, before the birth of these daughters, Fernando had been induced by his wife to attack the Salic law and to restore the Castilian rule of succession, and in this way the elder princess, who was to become Isabella II., had a clear claim to the throne from the time of her birth. The person most interested in opposing this action was Don Carlos, brother of Fernando, who was the rightful heir in the event of his brother's death under the former procedure. When the fact became known that Don Carlos had been dispossessed in this way by the machinations of Maria Cristina, he and his followers put forth every effort to induce Fernando to undo what he had done; but all to no avail, and in 1833, when the king died, Maria became regent during the minority of the youthful Isabella. For the next seven years Spain was in a turmoil as the result of the continual revolts which were raised by the friends of Don Carlos, and Maria for a time had much trouble in making headway against them.
The political game she was playing gave her strange allies during these days, for she was naturally in favor of an autocratic government, after the manner of the old régime; but as Don Carlos had rallied to his standard the clerical and conservative parties of the country, Maria was forced, as a mere matter of self-protection, to make friendly advances to the growing liberal forces in society, which had been brought into permanent existence by the success of republicanism in France. In spite of this nominal espousal of the liberal cause, Maria was continually trying to avoid popular concessions and to retain unimpaired the despotic power of the monarchy, but she was soon forced to see that, in appearance at least, she must pretend to advance the popular cause and give her subjects more extended privileges. Accordingly, she issued a decree in 1834 establishing a new constitution and creating a legislature composed of two chambers; but there was more pretence than reality in this reform, and the dissatisfaction of the liberals increased as the queen-regent's real purposes became more clearly understood. Fortunate in having at the head of her armies a great general, Espartero, Maria finally succeeded in dispersing and exhausting the Carlist armies; but then differences arose between the queen and Espartero over the rights of the chartered towns, which she was endeavoring to abolish; and the popular sentiment was so in favor of the liberal side of the discussion, that a revolution was threatened and Isabella was forced to seek safety in flight. For three years the general-statesman ruled, until the majority of the Princess Isabella was declared in 1843, and in that same year Espartero was forced into exile, as he had become unpopular on account of his friendship for England. With this change in governmental affairs, Maria Cristina was allowed to return to Madrid, and she and her daughter, the new queen, Isabella II., controlled the destinies of the country. A husband was found for Isabella in the person of her cousin, Francis of Assis, but he was a sickly, impotent prince, with no vigor of mind or body, and the married life of this young couple was anything but happy. The country meanwhile continued in a state of unrest, and there were frequent revolutionary outbreaks. Isabella was no less unreliable than her mother had been, and her capricious manner of changing policy and changing advisers was productive of a state of lawlessness and disorder in all branches of the government which daily became more shameful. This shifting policy in matters of state was equally characteristic of the queen's behavior in other affairs. Dissatisfied with her pitiful husband, she soon abandoned her dignity as a queen and as a woman, in a most brazen way, and her private life was so scandalous as to become the talk of all Europe. But the court was kept in good humor by the lavish entertainments which were given; the proverbial Spanish sloth and indifference allowed all this to run unchecked, for a time at least; and the sound of the guitar and the song of the peasant were still heard throughout the land.