Isabella II


Isabella II was Queen of Spain from 1833 until her deposition in 1868. She is the only queen regnant in the history of unified Spain.
Isabella was the elder daughter of King Ferdinand VII and Queen Maria Christina. Shortly before Isabella's birth, her father issued the Pragmatic Sanction to revert the Salic Law and ensure the succession of his firstborn daughter, due to his lack of a son. She came to the throne a month before her third birthday, but her succession was disputed by her uncle, Infante Carlos, whose refusal to recognize a female sovereign led to the Carlist Wars. Under the regency of her mother, Spain transitioned from an absolute monarchy to a constitutional monarchy, adopting the Royal Statute of 1834 and Constitution of 1837.
In 1843, Isabella was declared of age and began her personal rule. Her reign was a period marked by palace intrigues, back-stairs and antechamber influences, barracks conspiracies, and military pronunciamientos. Her marriage to Francisco de Asís, Duke of Cádiz was an unhappy one, and her personal conduct as well as recurrent rumours of extramarital affairs damaged her reputation. In September 1868, a naval mutiny began in Cádiz, marking the beginning of the Glorious Revolution. The defeat of her forces by Marshal Francisco Serrano, 1st Duke of la Torre, brought her reign to an end, and she went into exile in France. In 1870, she formally abdicated the Spanish throne in favour of her son, Alfonso. In 1874, the First Spanish Republic was overthrown in a coup. The Bourbon monarchy was restored, and Alfonso ascended the throne as King Alfonso XII. Isabella returned to Spain two years later but soon again left for France, where she resided until her death in 1904.

Birth and regencies

Isabella was born in the Royal Palace of Madrid in 1830, the eldest daughter of King Ferdinand VII of Spain, and of his fourth wife and niece, Maria Christina of the Two Sicilies. She was entrusted to the royal governess María del Carmen Machín y Ortiz de Zárate. Queen Maria Christina became regent on 29 September 1833, and Isabella, at just two years old, was proclaimed sovereign following the death of Ferdinand VII.
Isabella succeeded to the throne because Ferdinand VII had induced the Cortes Generales to help him set aside the Salic law, introduced by the Bourbons in the early 18th century, and to reestablish the older succession law of Spain. The first pretender to the throne, Ferdinand's brother Infante Carlos, Count of Molina, fought for seven years during Isabella's minority to dispute her title. The supporters of Carlos and his descendants were known as Carlists, and the fight over the succession was the subject of a number of Carlist Wars in the 19th century.
Isabella's reign was maintained only through the support of the army. The Cortes and the Moderate Liberals and Progressives reestablished constitutional and parliamentary government, dissolved the religious orders and confiscated their property, and tried to restore order to Spain's finances. After the Carlist war, the regent, Maria Christina, resigned to make way for Baldomero Espartero, Prince of Vergara, the most successful and most popular Isabelline general. Espartero, a Progressive, remained regent for only two years.
Her minority saw tensions with the United States over the Amistad affair.
Baldomero Espartero was deposed in 1843 by a military and political pronunciamiento led by Generals Leopoldo O'Donnell and Ramón María Narváez. They formed a cabinet, presided over by Joaquín María López y López. This government induced the Cortes to declare Isabella of age at 13. Between the beginning of her reign in 1833, and the abdication of Margrethe II of Denmark in 2024, at any given time, there was a queen regnant in Europe.

Reign as an adult

Beginnings

Isabella was declared of age and swore the 1837 Constitution on 10 November 1843, age thirteen. Despite the alleged parliamentary supremacy, in practice, the "double trust" led to Isabella having a role in the making and toppling of governments, undermining the progressives. The uneasy alliance between moderates and progressives that had toppled Espartero in July 1843 was already disintegrating by the time of the coming of age of the queen. Following a brief government led by progressive Salustiano de Olózaga, the moderates elected their candidate, Pedro José Pidal, to the presidency of the Cortes. After the subsequent decision to dissolve the hostile Cortes by Olózaga on 28 November, rumours about an alleged forcing of the queen to sign the royal decree spread. As a result, Olózaga was prosecuted, removed from political office, and forced to exile, with the Progressive Party already being beheaded, in what was the starting point of their growing disaffection from the Isabelline monarchy.

Moderate decade

Dominated by the figure of Marshal Narváez, the Espadón of Loja, the so-called "Moderate decade" began in 1844. The constitutional reforms devised by Narváez moved away from the 1837 Constitution by rejecting national sovereignty and reinforcing the power of the monarch, to the point of a "co-sovereignty" between the Cortes and the Queen.
On 10 October 1846, the Moderate Party made their sixteen-year-old queen marry her double-first cousin Francisco de Asís, Duke of Cádiz, the same day that her younger sister, Infanta Luisa Fernanda, married Antoine d'Orléans, Duke of Montpensier. Disgusted by her marriage, Isabella reportedly commented later to one of her intimates: "what shall I tell you about a man whom I saw wearing more lace than I was wearing on our wedding night?"
The marriages suited France and Louis Philippe, King of the French, who as a result bitterly quarrelled with Britain. However, the marriages were not happy; persistent rumour had it that few if any of Isabella's children were fathered by her King Consort, rumoured to be a homosexual. The Carlist party asserted that the heir-apparent to the throne, who later became Alfonso XII, had been fathered by a captain of the guard, Enrique Puigmoltó y Mayans.
In 1847, a major scandal took place when Isabella, age seventeen, publicly showed her love for General Serrano and her willingness to divorce from her husband Francisco de Asís; though Narváez and Isabella's mother Maria Christina solved the problem posed to the monarchical institution—Serrano was shifted away from the capital to the post of Captain General of Granada in 1848—, the deterioration of the public image of the queen increased from then on. Following the near-revolution of 1848, Narváez was authorised to rule as dictator to repress insurrectionary attempts up until 1849.
In late 1851, Isabella II gave birth to her first daughter and heir presumptive, who was baptised on 21 December as María Isabel Francisca de Asís. Historians have attributed the Princess of Asturias' biological parenthood to José Ruiz de Arana, Gentilhombre de cámara.
On 2 February 1852, Isabella and the Royal Guard were caught by surprise while the Queen was leaving the Chapel of the Royal Palace intending to go with her parade to the Basilica of Nuestra Señora de Atocha:, an ordained priest and liberal activist approached the queen giving the impression of wanting to deliver her a message, and stabbed her. The impact was reduced by the gold embroidery of her dress and by the baleen stays of her corset, and what was intended to be a stab wound to the chest only resulted in a minor incision at the right side of the belly. Merino, quickly seized by the halberdiers of the Royal Guard, was defrocked and executed by garrote.
Under the government of the Count of San Luis, the system was in a critical state by June 1854. On 28 June 1854 a military pronunciamiento intending to force the queen to oust the government of the Count of San Luis, featuring Leopoldo O'Donnell, took place in Vicálvaro, the so-called Vicalvarada. The military coup had a mixed result and O'Donnell proceeded then to seek for civilian support, promising new reforms not in the initial plans in order to appeal to progressives, by bringing a "liberal regeneration", as proclaimed in the Manifesto of Manzanares, drafted by Antonio Cánovas del Castillo and issued on 7 July 1854.
Days later, the situation was followed by a full-scale people's revolution, with revolutionary juntas organised on 17 July in Madrid, and barricades erected in the streets. With the prospect of a civil war on the horizon, Isabella was advised to appoint General Espartero as prime minister. This renewed ascension of Espartero marked the beginning of the bienio progresista.

Progressive biennium

Espartero entered the capital of Spain on 28 July, and proceeded to separate again Isabella from the influence of María Christina. In any case, though Isabella accepted advice from María Christina, she was not characterised for displaying a profound filial love towards her mother.
By virtue of a royal decree, the port of Iloílo in then-Spanish Philippines was opened to world trade on 29 September 1855, mainly to export sugar and other products to America, Australia and Europe.
A Liberal Constitution was drafted in 1856, yet it was never enacted as the counter-revolutionary coup by O'Donnell seized power.

Later reign

On 28 November 1857, Isabella II gave birth to a male heir, who was baptised on 7 December 1857 as Alfonso Francisco de Asís Fernando Pío Juan María Gregorio y Pelagio. Assumed by historians to be the biological son of, the toddler, who replaced infanta Isabella as Prince of Asturias upon his birth, was known under the moniker el Puigmoltejo, in reference to the rumours about his presumed biological parenthood. Isabella II showed a special affection for the child, greater than that shown to her daughters.
The later part of her reign saw a war against Morocco, which ended in a treaty advantageous for Spain and cession of some Moroccan territory, the Spanish retaking of Santo Domingo, and the fruitless Chincha Islands War against Bolivia, Chile, Ecuador, and Peru.