Time has softened the Spaniards’ animosity against the duke of Aosta. To-day they recognise his fine qualities, while they admit, and not without reason, that even apart from his foreign origin he was not made to rule in that country, whose spirit he so little understood and whose pompous and aristocratic customs he never would have been able to assimilate.
The Spaniards have not forgotten the memory of this thoroughly honest king, who, wishing to remain true to his agreements, preferred giving up the throne to violating them, who firmly refused to become the tool of anarchists or to use force against a country which was not his own. They have also retained a touching memory of Queen Maria Victoria and of her piety and boundless charity. The attitude of the Spanish press on the duke of Aosta’s death at Turin, January 18th, 1890, proved that his name is no longer unpopular across the Pyrenees; and in forgetting the mistake he committed in 1871, Spain knows how to give homage to the fine and brilliant qualities of her former king.[o]
REPUBLICAN SPAIN UNDER CASTELAR (1873 A.D.)
[1873-1874 A.D.]
The congress declared at once in favour of a republic on February 11th, and on February 12th chose a ministry to take charge of the executive, in which Figueras was president and Castelar was foreign minister. The programme of the new rulers was: “a federative republic for Spain, with self-government for the single states as in Switzerland and the United States; suppression of centralisation; abolition of the standing army; absolute separation of church and state; proclamation of the rights of the individual on the basis of a democratic constitution and under the authority of the law.” If these political fantasies were to be accepted into the constitution, Spain would cease to exist—there would be merely cantons, municipal republics, and communes, in which Parisian conditions repeated themselves. The cortes was dissolved, and on June 1st a new constitutional cortes convened. This declared for the federative republic on June 8th, and drew up a preliminary outline of a constitution in which the above principles were adopted. With this, the so-called Intransigentes were not yet satisfied; they wanted a red republic and a social revolution. Since they could not impose their demands on the cortes, they left it, went into the southern states, and raised the red flag of rebellion. Ministries and presidencies followed each other in quick succession.
Emilio Castelar
On September 7th, Castelar was chosen president of the executive, and at the outset found himself confronted with such chaos that he demanded and obtained unconditional authority for adopting military and political measures, including the declaration of a state of siege; he also postponed the debate on the constitution and adjourned congress from September 18th to January 2nd. Thus the visionary federative republican Castelar, understanding, however, the difference between theory and practice, had a full dictatorship in his hands. He needed such power. In the north, the Carlists were making decided advances, having with them in the field the pretender Don Carlos and his brother Don Alfonso; in the south, communes were being formed in single cities which renounced allegiance to the government; in the army shameless insubordination ran riot, soldiers fired on their officers, generals went over to the rebels. The cities of Alcoy, Seville, Cadiz, Valencia had to be taken by force, others surrendered at the approach of the generals.
Opposition lasted longest in the sea fortress of Cartagena, where General Contreras stood at the head of a committee of safety, as president of the republic of Murcia, had diplomatic dealings with foreign consuls, and bombarded and burned the neighbouring ports Almeria and Alicante. From these piratical excursions he came into contact with foreign warships, and the energetic German captain Werner, supported by an English captain, deprived him of two ships. Cartagena was surrounded from the land side and bombarded, but it did not surrender until after a siege of four months, on January 12th, 1874, to the governmental general Lopez Dominguez, after Contreras had left the harbour the day before, accompanied by the revolutionary junta, and after several hundred men had broken through the weak blockade of governmental ships and escaped to Algiers.[e]