Finally, after the death of Canovas, and a short term of power of General Azcarraga, Silvela was put at the helm of affairs. But the camarillas at Court again led to the fall of the Ministry, for Silvela’s choice of Loño as Minister of War was opposed by the choice of Polavieja by the Sovereign.
Thus, when Figuerola Ferretti saw that the impending death of Sagasta would lead to the Liberal party being cut up into as many groups as that of the Conservatives, so that the country would on both sides be a prey to the intrigues at Court of the partisans of the respective groups, he ventured, in view of the very superior intelligence manifested by the young King, after he had attained his majority, to represent to His Majesty that true Parliamentary elections were the only means of solving the problem of government, and for this he could exercise his royal prerogative of forming a Provisional Government. The King seemed to listen to this proposal with approval, and, indeed, if this election of the deputies by public vote had been promoted in the capital, it could never have been used by republicans as a cloak for Separatism.
The petition for this step was drawn up in the names of the widows and orphans of those who had fallen in the Cuban War. It was sent in proof to the secretaries of the King and the Queen-Regent. But the patriot had not counted on the antagonism of those in power; and albeit Loygorry, the follower of Lopez Dominguez, spoke eloquently in favour of the idea in the Senate, Moret, the Minister of the Interior, stopped its course by forbidding the Prefecture of the Police to affix the necessary seal to the document; and it was doubtless through such political influence in the palace that the Chamberlain found that further influence with the King was prevented by his removal from Court.
The cordial reception of the Colonel by Alfonso XIII., when he saw him in London in 1905, was cheering to the patriot, and it seems more than probable that the King is unaware of the Court intrigue by which his valued adviser was removed from his side.
It was in 1905—only a fortnight before his death—that I had the privilege of seeing Don Francisco Silvela, who had spent so much time and effort in the service of his country.
“I am utterly weary of politics,” said the statesman, lifting his tired eyes to my face. “It is a fruitless task, and no one is safe from the intrigues at Court. No, no; I am going to give up my spare time to literature now, which will be far more profitable. And, indeed, it seems like pouring water into a tank with a hole in it to expend efforts on the country which is unsupported by a true suffrage.”
It is thus that Alfonso, in 1906, had to appoint seven different Governments in the space of fourteen months, and it would sometimes require more than supernatural power to detect the real cause of the fall of a Cabinet in Spain.
CHAPTER XVII
ALFONSO XIII
May 17, 1886, the day on which Spain hailed the birth of their baby Sovereign, Alfonso XIII., is always kept as a fête-day in Spain. Shortly after Señor Sagasta had proclaimed the news to the assembly of Ministers and grandees of the realm, the Duchess of Medina de las Torres appeared in the antechamber, bearing in her arms a basket that contained the royal infant. Wrapped in cotton-wool, the infant King received the homage of his Ministers.