Yet this party courted popularity; and while they declaimed in the hall of the Cortes fancied that they enjoyed it. The galleries were filled with their admirers; and they had active partizans who could at any time raise tumult enough out of doors to carry violent measures by intimidation. The Serviles, as they contemptuously called those who disapproved the new constitution, either wholly or in any of its parts, were kept silent, some by prudence, others by this system of terror. ♦Feb. 3.♦ One deputy ventured to say that Ferdinand, as soon as he arrived, ought to be acknowledged as being born to all the rights and privileges of an absolute King, and that the constitution ought therefore to be annulled. The indignation of the Liberales burst forth at this, and of the galleries also, for the persons who attended there had always a potential voice; the president thought it prudent to close the doors, lest the liberal mob should be brought in to take summary vengeance upon the indiscreet member: a vote for expelling him was passed, and orders given for commencing a process against him, upon a law passed in the preceding ♦Aug. 18, 1813.♦ summer, by which any person who should affirm, either by word of mouth or by writing, that the constitution ought not to be observed, was to be punished with perpetual banishment, and the deprivation of all offices, pay, and honours. Another law had been passed, on the same day, declaring, that whoever should conspire to establish any other religion in Spain than the Catholic-Apostolic-Roman religion, or to make the Spanish nation cease to profess it, should be prosecuted as a traitor, and suffer death, the established law concerning offences against the faith remaining in full force. It was only by thus consenting to the persecution of religious opinions that the Liberales could make the Serviles concur in a law which gave them authority to persecute for political ones!
“Happy,” said a journalist who spoke the sentiments of the ruling party, “happy will be the day when Ferdinand, having been restored to his faithful subjects, may be thus addressed: Here is your throne, preserved by the loyalty of your subjects; here is your crown, repurchased for you by the blood of Spaniards; here is your sceptre, which Spanish constancy replaces in your hands; here is your royal robe, purpled with the blood of thousands who have fallen that you might wear it! Peruse our history; inform yourself of all that the Spaniards have done for you, and never forget that to the Spanish people you owe everything. Never forget that you are come to be the chief of a nation, the monarch of subjects who have abolished the vestiges of despotism! It is the law which orders; ... the King is the executive magistrate.... But, that such a day of jubilee may arrive, King Ferdinand must return absolutely free, neither influenced by the tyrant of France, nor by Spaniards who are ignorant of the state of Spain, or who regard our institutions with dislike.” This was written before the overthrow of Buonaparte, and before Ferdinand’s enlargement, and perhaps before the Liberales themselves apprehended the consequence in which their own rashness must inevitably involve them. Indifferent spectators saw clearly that either the constitution must be modified, or that the King would make himself absolute again: and even now, if the Liberales had not been possessed with an overweening opinion of their own strength, such a modification might have been effected as would have given the Spaniards all the liberty which they were willing to receive, and, indeed, all the political freedom which those who had the sincerest wish for their improvement and their prosperity could have desired for them. But when the last communication from Valençay was read in the Cortes, conciliatory as it was intended to be, and satisfactory as it ought to have been deemed, one member took a sudden exception to the word subjects: “We are not subjects!” he exclaimed. And another member, expressing his assent to the absurd exception, said, that the Spanish people were subjects of the law alone; but that the use of a word which he erroneously represented as being peculiar to the ancient despotism was accounted for by Ferdinand’s long imprisonment, and his consequent ignorance of the new political phraseology of Spain! Meantime the most preposterous projects were started by those who saw that such language and such opinions were likely to occasion a struggle, and who saw no farther. Some were for assembling an army to defend the Cortes against the King; others were for setting him aside, and appointing his brother, the Infante Don Carlos, to reign in his stead: and it is said that there was a party in the Cortes who dreamed of offering the crown to Lord Wellington!
Some of the Guerrilla chiefs are said at this time to have tendered their services to the Cortes; and this is rendered probable by their subsequent conduct. The Cortes is supposed to have reckoned, also, upon Lacy’s attachment to the constitution; but the enthusiasm with which Ferdinand was received by the troops might have shown them how little they could expect from any declarations of the military in their favour. When it was expected that he would proceed from Barcelona to Valencia, Elio, with the double purpose of rendering most honour to the King and affording most gratification to the soldiers, proposed a truce to General Robert, in order that the troops employed in the blockade of Tortosa might join ♦April.♦ their comrades, who were assembled at Amposta, to receive him on his way. When Ferdinand apprized them that he had changed his route, he assigned as a reason his desire of viewing the ruins of Zaragoza, and showing a mark of respect to that faithful city. But the season of festivity at Valencia was rather prolonged than retarded by this deviation; for the Infante Don Antonio proceeded immediately thither, and his arrival kept the inhabitants in a jubilant state till the King himself arrived. Ferdinand may have intended to gain time by this delay for making himself acquainted with the real state of public opinion; but the visit was probably suggested by Palafox, without any such view: he knew that it would be creditable to the King’s feelings, and honourable to the Zaragozans; and what could be so gratifying to himself as to return under such circumstances to Zaragoza, where, with a devoted heroism which had never been surpassed, he had performed his duty to the uttermost, and won for himself a glorious name not to be stained by calumny, and not to be obscured by lapse of ages, while any remembrance of these times shall endure.
♦Cardinal Bourbon’s reception by Ferdinand.♦
After tarrying some twelve days at Zaragoza, Ferdinand set out for Valencia. On the way he was met by his uncle, Cardinal Bourbon, whom, as President of the Regency, the Cortes had sent to meet the King, but with a strict injunction that he was not to kiss the King’s hand, because they deemed any such mark of homage inconsistent with their dignity. Ferdinand had been apprized of this; and, as a first and easy trial of his strength, when the Cardinal accosted him, he presented his hand, and commanded him to kiss it. The old prelate, who had weakly promised to obey the orders of the Cortes, which in his heart he disapproved, obeyed the King with better will than grace, after he had shown a wish to avoid the ceremony; but Ferdinand, having thus humbled him, turned his back upon him in displeasure, and presently deprived him of his archbishopric.
The objection to the word subjects might have been imputed to the folly of the individuals who started and supported it; ... but this refusal of a ceremony which was as old as the monarchy itself, was the act of the Cortes as a body, and might well be considered as one more proof that they, who had so preposterously assumed the title of Majesty for themselves, were resolved to leave the sovereign little but his bare title. But Ferdinand had seen the disposition of the people at Zaragoza; he had seen that all classes heartily united in reprobating the measures of the Cortes, and that the re-establishment of the Inquisition was one of the blessings which they expected from his return The disposition of the ♦Elio meets the King. April 15.♦ army was distinctly declared by Elio, who met him at Jaquesa, on the frontiers of Aragon and Valencia, and addressed him in the name of the second army, that army, he said, which had shed most blood, and made most sacrifices for the deliverance of their country and their King. “Your Majesty,” said he, “arrived in a happy hour to occupy the throne of your fathers; and the God of Hosts, who by such strange and wonderful ways has brought your Majesty hither to restore the monarchy of the Spains, which Nature has given you, may He give you all the strength of mind and body that are required for governing it worthily: then, Sire, you will not forget the armies which have deserved so well, those armies who, having moistened with their blood the land which they have delivered, find themselves at this day in want, neglected, and what is worse, outraged; but they trust that you, Sire, will do them justice!” Elio then offered to resign his General’s staff; and upon Ferdinand’s declining to receive it, and saying it was well placed in his hand, the General, with ready adulation, said, “Take it, Sire, ... let your Majesty grasp it but for a moment, and in that moment it will acquire new worth, new strength!” The King took the staff accordingly, and instantly returned it. Elio then requested permission to kiss his royal hand, and in a short but studied speech, which concluded this ominous scene, he pledged himself that 40,000 strong right arms should be as they had been in the worst of times, the support of his throne.
♦Ferdinand enters Valencia.♦
Ferdinand entered Valencia on the following evening, drawn into the city as he had been into every place upon the road by the joyous people who yoked themselves to his carriage, and who testified by every possible expression of word and deed their desire of taking the old yoke upon themselves and upon their children. An English traveller, who had the good fortune to be present on this memorable day, describes their enthusiasm as bordering upon madness; he had seen before the King’s deliverance the extreme unpopularity of the Cortes throughout Spain, but the feeling which was now manifested surprised him by its intensity and its eagerness, and by the sudden conversion of those who but a few days before professed fidelity to the new constitution; those very persons were now ready to shed their blood in Ferdinand’s cause, that he might be restored, they said, to the full enjoyment of all the rights which his fathers had possessed. “Long live the Absolute King!” was the cry, “and down with the Constitution!”
♦April 17.♦
On the morrow the King went on foot to the cathedral, to be present at a thanksgiving service for his restoration. The streets were lined with soldiers; the colours of the crown regiment were lowered as he passed, so as to be spread before him, that he might see they were stained with blood; and Elio, who had prepared this scene, said, “I have detained you for a sight worthy of you! The stains which you see upon this flag are of the blood of the officer who now holds it, and who, when covered with wounds, saved it from the enemy at Castalla. The crown which this blood has dyed seems to say that the blood which the loyal Spanish army has shed is that which has recovered for you your crown; and the blood which remains in all the Spanish armies they are ready to shed for securing you upon the throne in the plenitude of those rights which Nature has made your portion!” Ferdinand could not have performed his part better at that moment if he had studied it; he stooped and kissed the flag, and announced to the standard-bearer, who had before received no promotion for his services, that he was now promoted. In the afternoon, after the officers had been presented and had kissed hands, Elio, in their name and presence, renewed for the army under his command the oath which the whole loyal Spanish nation had taken in the year 1808, when Ferdinand was acknowledged King: the constitution was not mentioned in his address, nor the Cortes; “this oath,” said he, “they renew by me as their organ upon your royal hand (and he knelt and kissed the hand at this part of his speech), and they promise your Majesty that at the price of their blood they will preserve the throne for you with all those rights to which the heroic Spanish ♦The officers swear fidelity to him.♦ nation at that time swore.” Turning then to the officers, he asked whether these were the sentiments which animated them? He was answered by a general acclamation of assent: many of them burst into tears in the strength of their emotion, and some cries were heard of death to those who did not hold such sentiments, and would not maintain them! The time came when General Elio paid with his own life’s blood for this and other services to the absolute cause.