893 



FERDINAND VII. 



FERDINAND II. 



801 



among the guards at Araujuez, and Qodoy was in danger of his life ; 

 but Ferdinand himself came to rescue him from the hands of the 

 mutineers, saying that he would answer for his appearance before the 

 proper court. King Charles being alarmed for his own safety, and 

 perceiving the popularity of his son, abdicated on the 19th of March 

 iu favour of Ferdinand, who assumed the title of King of Spain and 

 the Indies. But this did not suit Napoleon, who contrived under 

 specious pretexts to draw both father and son to Bayonne, and there 

 obliged them both to resign in his favour. Ferdinand and his brother 

 Don Carlos were sent to Talleyrand's country residence at Valenjay, 

 where they were treated with outward marks of respect, but kept 

 under a strict watch. There Ferdinand remained passive and resigned 

 till the end of 1813, when the reverses of tlie French both in Spain 

 and in Germany induced Napoleon to restore Ferdinand to the throne 

 of Spain, on condition that he should send the English out of the 

 peninsula, who were, as Napoleon said, spreading anarchy and 

 jacobinism in the country. A treaty to that effect was signed at 

 Valen^ay between the two parties, but the Cortes of Madrid refused 

 to ratify it, and wrote to Ferdinand that they would receive him in 

 his capital as their lawful king, provided he would sign the constitu- 

 tion which had been proclaimed at Cadiz in 1812 by the repre- 

 sentatives of the nation. Ferdinand set off from Valenay in March 

 1814, and it was only on the road that he read for the first time a 

 copy of the new constitution, having been kept in ignorance till then 

 of the proceedings of the Cortes, except what he had read in the 

 garbled accounts of the French newspapers. On arriving at the 

 frontiers of Spain, instead of proceeding direct to Madrid, he went to 

 Zaragoza, and thence to Valencia, where he was surrounded by a host 

 of people, military and civilians, churchmen and laymen, who were 

 hostile to the constitution, and who advised him to reign, as his fathers 

 hud done before him, an absolute king : advice with which his own 

 inclination fully accorded. The lower classes, excited by the clergy, 

 and especially by the friars, were loud in their denunciations of the 

 constitution, which they called heretical, and Ferdinand easily per- 

 suading himself that the constitution was unpopular, determined not 

 to sanction it. At Valencia he appointed a ministry from among the 

 Berviles, or absolutists; and on the 4th of May 1814, he issued a 

 decree annulling the constitution and all the enactments of the Cortes 

 made in his absence. Soon afterwards he made his entrance into 

 Madrid among the acclamations of the populace and of the absolutists, 

 or clergy party ; an event which was speedily followed by a violent 

 proscription of the constitutionalists, or liberals, as they were styled, 

 including the members of the Cortes. As the British ambassador 

 had obtained from Ferdinand at Valencia a promise that the punish- 

 ment of death should not be inflicted for past political conduct, the 

 courts appointed to try the leading constitutionalists resorted to every 

 kind of subterfuge in order to find them guilty of some imprudent 

 demonstration or expression since the king's return, and sentences of 

 imprisonment, exile, banishment to the presidios in Africa, and con- 

 fiscation, were freely awarded. The military insurrections of Porlier, 

 Lac, and other*, came to add fresh fuel to the spirit of persecution. 

 AH the abuses of the old administrative and judicial system now 

 re-appeared ; the finances were in a wretched state, the American 

 colonists were in open revolt. Ferdinand was partly overawed by the 

 clergy and absolutist party, who, at that time, seemed to have on 

 their *idc the great mass of the popuktion, but he feared and hated 

 the liberals. 



On the 1st of January 1820, part of the troops stationed on tho Isla 

 of Leon, near Cadiz, under Colonels Quiroga and Riego, proclaimed the 

 constitution of 1812; the example was followed by other garrisons; 

 the ministers at Madrid hesitated, and Ferdinand, on the 9th of 

 March of that year, swore his adherence to the constitution. The 

 Cortes were assembled, and the deputies and other liberals, who had 

 been exiled or imprisoned, re-appeared on the political stage. During 

 the following three years the country was in a thoroughly dis- 

 organised condition. At one time Ferdinand appeared reconciled to 

 the constitutional system, but then would occur some opportunity for 

 the display of his old fears and antipathies; whilst, on the other side, 

 the partisans of absolutism, who still lingered near the king's person, 

 kept alive by their intrigues the mistrust even of the moderate con- 

 stitutionalists. Of this period of Ferdinand's reign there is a sketch 

 in a work written by a Spanish emigrant at Paris, styled ' Revolution 

 d'Espagne, Examen Critique,' 8vo, 1836, which is worth consulting. 



At the beginning of 1823 Louis XVIII. declared to the French 

 chambers that ho was going to sen'd his nephew the Duke of Angou- 

 leme, with an army of 100,000 Frenchmen into Spain to deliver 

 Ferdinand VII. from the slavery in which he was kept by a factious 

 party, and to restore him to his freedom of action. The English 

 mini-try protested against this interference, and the Cortes of Spain, 

 on their side, rejected the mediation of the northern courts, who, to 

 prevent the entrance of the French, required certain modifications in 

 the constitution of 1812. The Cortes, on the 20th of March, removed 

 to Seville, wlure the king was induced to follow them. On the 7th 

 of April the French entered Spain, with little or no opposition, and 

 on the 23rd they entered Madrid, where they were received with 

 acclamations by the clergy and the lower classes, while the grandees 

 or high nobility presented a congratulatory address to the Duke of 

 Angoulumc, The Cortes, not judging themselves safe at Seville 



removed to Cadiz, and, as Ferdinand refused to quit Seville, they 

 passed a resolution, after a stormy debate on the llth of Jane, 

 declaring the king in a state of incapacity, and appointing a regency 

 pro tempore. Ferdinand was then compelled to s>t off with his 

 family on the evening of the 12th, under a strong escort, for Cadiz, 

 where he arrived on the loth. In the following September the 

 French besieged Cadiz, and after some negociations Ferdinand was 

 allowed by the Cortes to repair to the French camp to treat with tho 

 Duke of Angouleme. Before leaving Cadiz Ferdinand published a 

 proclamation on the 30th of September, in which he promised a 

 general amnesty for the past; he acknowledged all the debt} and 

 obligations contracted by the constitutional government, and " declared 

 of hia own free and spontaneous will that if it should be found 

 necessary to make alterations in the actual political institutions, he 

 would adopt a system of government which should guarantee tho 

 security of persons and property and the civil liberty of the Spaniards." 

 None of these solemn promises were kept : nor were they iu all pro- 

 bability ever intended to be kept. Ferdinand was one to whom false- 

 hood was habitual, and an oath offered no obstacle. The liberals 

 were persecuted worse than before, the debts contracted under the 

 Cortes were disavowed, and the old system of absolutism with all its 

 Dial-administrations was resumed. The sequel is well known. Fer- 

 dinand continued to govern, at least nominally, checked on one side 

 by fear of the liberals, and on the other by mistrust of the more 

 violent absolutists, or apostolical party as it was called, who found 

 even Ferdinand too moderate for them, and who would have re-estab- 

 lished the Inquisition, and ruled Spain by terror. In his latter years 

 Ferdinand, never of a very active intellect, became more and more 

 lethargic ; seemed to take little or no interest in public affairs, and 

 left things to go on as they could. Having lost his third wife, who 

 was a Saxon princess, and having yet no children, he married in 

 November 1829, Maria Christina, daughter of Francis, king of the 

 Two Sicilies, and his own niece by the mother's side [CHRISTINA, 

 MARIA]. By her he had two daughters Maria Isabella, now queen 

 of Spain, born 10th October 1830, and Maria Louisa Ferdinanda, born 

 1832. Ferdinand died on the 29th of September 1833, after being 

 long in a bad state of health. He was buried with great pomp in the 

 royal vaults under the chapel of the EscuriaL 



FERDINAND I. of Naples was the natural son of Alfonso V. of 

 Aragon and of Sicily. His father obtained of the Neapolitan barons iu 

 Parliament assembled, in 1442, the acknowledgment of Ferdinand as 

 duke of Calabria and heir to the Crown of Naples, thus securing to hia 

 favourite and only sou one of his several kingdoms, as Aragon, Sardi- 

 nia, and Sicily devolved upon John of Aragon, Alfonso's brother. In 

 1458, after the death of his father, Ferdinand assumed tho crown of 

 Naples. Pope Calixtus III. refused him the investiture, which how- 

 ever was granted to him by Pius II., the successor of Calixtus. His 

 reign began well, but a conspiracy of the barons, who called in John 

 of Anjou, who had some remote claim to the throne, threw the 

 country into a civil war. Ferdinand, assisted by Soanderbeg, princo 

 of Albania, gave battle to John near Troja, in Apulia, and defeated 

 him completely, iu the year 1462. After the battle he concluded a 

 peace with the revolted barons upon conciliatory terms; but in a 

 short time, breaking the treaty, he put to death two of them, an act 

 which kept alive the jealousy and fears of the rest. In 1180, Mohaii- 

 med II. sent an armament on the coast of Apulia.'which took the 

 town of Otranto, and caused great alarm in all Italy. Ferdinand, 

 however, quickly recalled his son Alfonso, duke of Calabria, who was 

 then in Tuscany at the head of an army, and who retook Otrauto. A 

 fresh conspiracy of the barons broke out, encouraged by Pope Inno- 

 cent VIII., but it was again repressed, and Ferdinand solemnly pro- 

 mised a general amnesty. But ho kept his word no better than 

 before ; for having contrived, on the occasion of the marriage of hia 

 niece, to collect at Naples most of the leading barons, ho arrested 

 them all, and threw them into prison, where most of them were 

 strangled. The whole of this tragedy, which was attended by 

 circumstances of fearful treachery and cruelty, is eloquently related 

 by Porzio, in his work, ' La Congiura dei Baroni contra il K<5 Ferdi- 

 nando I.* Ferdinand continued to reign for several years after this, 

 feared and hated by his subjects, and himself in perpetual anxiety, 

 which was increased by the advance of Charles VIII. of France, who 

 was coming for the purpose of asserting his claims, derived from the 

 Anjous, to the throne of Naples. In the midst of the alarm at the 

 approaching storm, which he had not the means of averting, 

 Ferdinand died in 1494, at the age of 71. He was succeeded by his 

 son Alfonso, a gloomy and cruel prince, who, terrified at the approach 

 of the French, abdicated in favour of his son Ferdinand, and retired 

 to a convent iu Sicily. 



FERDINAND II. was very young when he found himself occupy- 

 ing a throne threatened by enemies from without and by disaffection 

 from within. He endeavoured to rally his troops against the French, 

 but being forsaken by all, he withdrew to Sicily with his uncle 

 Frederic. The French occupied Naples, where their conduct soon 

 disgusted the Neapolitans, while the other states of Italy formed a 

 league against them in the North. Ferdinand seized the opportunity 

 to ask assistance from Ferdinand V. of Spain, who sent him his great 

 Captain Gonzalo of Cordova, with a body of troops, who soon recon- 

 quered the kingdom of Naples, Ferdinand returned in triumph to 



