When Espartero arrived at Madrid, Don Carlos withdrew from the capital, and from that time the General became the most influential man in the kingdom, though he had a powerful rival in Don Ramon Maria Narvaez.
It was certain that a Government which had witnessed twice in one year peril at the hand of rebels could hardly be called successful, and Espartero thought to put it on a more secure basis by instituting military rule. He seems to have wished to act the part of a Roman military consul, and the fact of Narvaez leading eleven battalions past the Palace of Madrid aroused his jealousy to a great degree.
Don Carlos, whose wife had died in England in 1834, now, in 1838, married the Princess of Beira, and when this lady came to Madrid she boldly proclaimed herself the Queen of Spain, and the eldest son of Don Carlos the Prince of Asturias. The effect of two Courts in the country was most disastrous, and, in this fresh struggle with the Portuguese Princess, Maria Cristina did not have the support of her sister Luisa Carlota, as in the early days of her arrival in Spain, when the same lady had, with her sister, been so jealous of her popularity in Spain; for Luisa Carlota, who had, indeed, been instrumental in the marriage of Maria Cristina to King Ferdinand, and who had always been the ally of her sister, was no longer on friendly terms with her.
The main reason for this quarrel with the Queen-Regent was evidently her secret marriage with Don Fernando Muñoz, whose rapid rise in the royal favour savoured very much of that of Godoy with Queen Maria Luisa.
The story of this passion of Ferdinand’s widow is graphically told in an unpublished manuscript by a Don Fermin Caballero, who was a contemporary of the episode.
Born in 1806, in Naples, Maria Cristina had had a very poor education, as her father, Francisco I. of the Two Sicilies, and her mother, Maria Isabel, Infanta of Spain, thought that much intellectual work was unnecessary for a girl, and the rollicking, jovial maiden herself preferred the pleasures of horsemanship and hunting to any kind of brain-work.
Gossip was busy with the name of the handsome Princess in connection with that of Luchessi Bailen before her marriage with Ferdinand, but from the time she came to Spain as the wife of Ferdinand VII. until three months after his death there was not a word to be said against her, as she was a model wife and mother. Her buxom form, clad in the brown garb of a Sister of the Carmelite Order, was never absent from the bedside of her husband, and for two months after his death she duly mourned his loss.
But the reaction came. The simple, somewhat ignorant, but affectionate nature of Maria Cristina was captivated by Muñoz, who certainly could not be said to belong to the upper classes, as his parents kept a tobacco-shop; and it was as the friend of the fiancé of the dressmaker Teresita, who exercised so much power over the Queen, that the young man was found a place at Court. The Queen’s new friend was bald, common, and of poor education, but the influence of his royal patroness soon raised him to be an officer of the bodyguard.[13]
[13] “Estafeta del Palacio Real,” by Bermejo.
It was about five months after Ferdinand’s death that Maria Cristina impetuously took the reins of her destiny into her own hands, and on December 17, 1833, she gave voice to her intention to go to La Granja, under the escort of the Adjutant-General, Don Francisco Arteaga y Palafox, General of the Guards, the gentil hombre Carbonell, and the honoured Muñoz. By chance or by arrangement, the favourite had the place in front of the Queen, and the party proceeded on the way. But the snow was so heavy that the road from the height of Navacerrada was quite impassable, and they had to turn back, though not before the royal carriage had collided with a bullock-cart, loaded with wood, and the broken glass of one of the windows had cut the hand of the Queen.