Ferdinand VII
Such symptoms were decisive, and, once made public, he had only to exercise the direct absolute authority which he had just seized. This is exactly what happened. The king signed on the 4th of May at Valencia the famous manifesto now so mournfully celebrated. In this he stated that not only did he refuse to swear to the constitution or to recognise any decree extraordinary or ordinary, but he declared that constitution annulled, of no value either to-day or forever, as its acts had never been nor could be effaced by time. Then, without making known his absolutist programme, he marched straight on Madrid with General Elio, having given orders to the cardinal De Bourbon and Luyando to retire, the one on Toledo, the other on Cartagena.
It seemed impossible that the arrival of General Wittingham almost under the walls of Madrid should not open the deputies’ eyes as to Ferdinand’s intentions; nevertheless, they took no measures for their personal security. The execution of the Valencia decree had been confided to General Eguia, nominated captain in general of New Castile, and known under the name of Coletilla because of his attachment to old costumes and his habit of wearing his hair in a plait at the back of his head as in Charles III’s time. Eguia, who was commander-in-chief of Elio’s first division of troops, and who only preceded the king by some days, was supported by Wittingham’s cavalry and the underhand movements of the count of Montijo, who had raised the slums of Madrid against those favourable to the representative system. Under these circumstances he had not any difficulty in executing the coup d’état with which he had been intrusted. Thus, while Ferdinand pursued his triumphal march from Valencia to Madrid in the midst of a joy and enthusiasm officially worked up, midst subversive cries around him for the suppression of the constitution and re-establishment of absolutism, while he refused to see the cortes’ deputation who came before him at La Mancha, all vestiges of the preceding system were being carefully destroyed in the city. A terrible persecution fell on all the men who had helped in establishing the constitutional system.
In the one night of the 10th of May, 1814,—a day so celebrated in the annals of the Spanish liberals,—Eguia took from their houses and imprisoned all regency members, all state councillors, all deputies who were known as partisans to the constitution whether in the actual cortes or the preceding one. Of this number were the two regents Don Pedro Agar and Don Gabriel Ciscar, the ministers Don Juan Alvarez Guerra and Don Manuel Garcia Herreros, the constituents Muñoz Torrero, Arguelles, Oliveros, Villanueva, the deputies Martínez de la Rosa, Canga-Arguelles, and Cepero. Some had the good luck to escape, among these Toreño and Isturiz. As to the others, they were surprised in their homes. So unexpected was such a ruse in the then circumstances of the country, that no one had dreamed of taking the slightest precautions. The day after their arrestation they were constantly exposed to the insults of the multitude who reproduced in Spain all the excesses of that blind reaction in the south of France. The Madrid populace, after having torn away the corner-stone of the constitution, went in tumultuous procession to the quiet street where the prisoners were shut up, and there shouting “Death to the liberals!” they begged with frightful cries permission to drag the corpses in the mud as they had dragged the stone of the constitution.
This tumult was the work of the count of Montijo and several monks who, seeing the star of their ascendency reappear in the horizon—an ascendency lost for six years—had, at the same time as the Valencia decree was proclaimed in all the squares, circulated a scandalous leaflet having for the object an organised proscription and the raising of the masses against all partisans of the liberal system. Thus the 13th of May, 1814, saw Ferdinand’s triumphal entry into his capital. He had already given his reign the distinctive character that marks it out in history: an obstinate return to old ideas; a cruel proscription against all the men devoted to culture and intelligence and gifted with liberal aspiration; a stirring up of the masses by a recrudescence of religious fanaticism; an exaltation of monarchical principle pushed as far as absolutism, and a near re-establishing of the Inquisition, convents, favouritism, and all their fatal consequences.[b]
The great mass of the people, who were not enlightened enough to feel the want, or appreciate the blessings, of political liberty, had not sufficient experience of the benefits which the new institutions were calculated to confer to have conceived any value for them; and the troops, who, from their intercourse with the English army, might have learned some respect for liberty and equal laws, were hostile to the cortes on account of the neglect and injustice with which they had frequently been treated.
Ferdinand proceeded to acts for which no palliation can be found, namely, inflicting punishments upon those who had defended his cause when he himself had abandoned it, but had, in his opinion, forfeited all claim to his gratitude, by seeking to limit the power they preserved for him. Fortunately, however, Sir Henry Wellesley extorted from the king a solemn promise that no blood should be shed for political opinions. No lives therefore were taken. But the cardinal De Bourbon was banished to Rome. The only symptom of gratitude shown by Ferdinand to those who had so zealously served him, was his confirming to Lord Wellington the honours and rewards conferred upon him by the cortes.
In America the long-pending dispute with the United States respecting the boundaries of Louisiana and West Florida was finally settled by the sale of both the Floridas to that power. The war with the colonies continued, but altered in character. Ferdinand there took part with the cortes he had condemned, pertinaciously refused to acknowledge the equality, the sort of federal connection with the mother-country that the colonies claimed, and wasted the resources of Spain by sending his best troops across the Atlantic to assert the old Spanish monopoly. The colonies, exasperated by this return for their loyalty, now disowned the authority of Ferdinand, and proclaimed their entire and absolute independence. Ferdinand resisted these pretensions yet more vehemently than the former, but it was evident from the beginning that Spain had finally lost her transatlantic empire. Cuba, Porto Rico, and the Philippines were her only remaining colonies.
As the short convulsion, which followed Napoleon’s return from Elba in the following spring and was terminated by the dreadful and glorious battle of Waterloo as finally sealing Bonaparte’s fall, produced no other effect in the peninsula than an order to arm, a detail of these affairs would be out of place here.[q]