Ferdinand VII

First reign and abdication

Following a popular riot at Aranjuez, Charles IV abdicated in March 1808. Ferdinand ascended the throne and turned to Napoleon for support. He abdicated on 6 May 1808, and thereafter Napoleon kept Ferdinand under guard in France for six years at the Château de Valençay. Historian Charles Oman records that the choice of Valençay was a practical joke by Napoleon on his former foreign minister Talleyrand, the owner of the château, for his lack of interest in Spanish affairs.

While the upper echelons of the Spanish government accepted his abdication and Napoleon's choice of his brother Joseph Bonaparte as king of Spain, the Spanish people did not. Uprisings broke out throughout the country, marking the beginning of the Peninsular War. Provincial juntas were established to control regions in opposition to the new French king. After the Battle of Bailén proved that the Spanish could resist the French, the Council of Castile reversed itself and declared null and void the abdications of Bayonne on 11 August 1808. On 24 August, Ferdinand VII was proclaimed king of Spain again, and negotiations between the council and the provincial juntas for the establishment of a Supreme Central Junta were completed. On 14 January 1809, the British government acknowledged Ferdinand VII as king of Spain.

Second reign

Restoration

Five years later, after experiencing serious setbacks on many fronts, Napoleon agreed on 11 December 1813 to acknowledge Ferdinand VII as king of Spain, and signed the Treaty of Valençay so that the king could return to Spain. The Spanish people, blaming the policies of the Francophiles (afrancesados) for causing the Napoleonic occupation and the Peninsular War by allying Spain too closely to France, at first welcomed Fernando. Ferdinand soon found that in the intervening years a new world had been born of foreign invasion and domestic revolution. In his name, Spain fought for its independence and in his name as well juntas had governed Spanish America. Spain was no longer the absolute monarchy it had been when he had relinquished six years earlier. Instead, he was now asked to rule under the liberal Constitution of 1812. Before being allowed onto Spanish soil, Ferdinand had to guarantee the liberals that he would govern on the basis of the constitution, but he only gave lukewarm indications that he would do so.

On 24 March, the French handed him over to the Spanish Army in Girona, and thus began his procession towards Madrid. During this process and in the following months, he was encouraged by conservatives and the Church hierarchy to reject the constitution. On 4 May, he ordered its abolition, and on 10 May had the liberal leaders responsible for the constitution arrested. Ferdinand justified his actions by claiming that the constitution had been made by a Cortes illegally assembled in his absence, without his consent and without the traditional form. (It had met as a unicameral body, instead of in three chambers representing the three estates: the clergy, the nobility and the cities.) Ferdinand initially promised to convene a traditional Cortes, but never did so, thereby reasserting the Bourbon doctrine that sovereign authority resided in his person only.

Meanwhile, the wars of independence had broken out in the Americas, and although many of the republican rebels were divided and royalist sentiment was strong in many areas, the Spanish treasure fleets – carrying tax revenues from the Spanish Empire – were interrupted. Spain was all but bankrupt.

Ferdinand's restored autocracy was guided by a small camarilla of his favourites, although his government seemed unstable. Whimsical and ferocious by turns, he changed his ministers every few months. "The king," wrote Friedrich von Gentz in 1814, "himself enters the houses of his prime ministers, arrests them, and hands them over to their cruel enemies;" and again, on 14 January 1815, "the king has so debased himself that he has become no more than the leading police agent and prison warden of his country."

The king did recognise the efforts of foreign powers on his behalf. As the head of the Spanish Order of the Golden Fleece, Ferdinand made the Duke of Wellington, head of the British forces on the peninsula, the first Protestant member of the order.

During the aftermath of the Mexican War of Independence, the general of the Army of the Three Guarantees, Agustín de Iturbide, and Jefe Superior Juan O'Donojú, signed in 1821 the Treaty of Córdoba, which concluded the war of independence and established the First Mexican Empire. The imperial constitution contemplated that the monarch would be "a Spanish prince," and Iturbide and O'Donojú intended to offer the Mexican Imperial Crown to Ferdinand VII himself to rule Mexico in personal union with Spain. However, Ferdinand, refusing to recognise Mexican independence or be bound by a constitution, decreed that the Mexican constitution was "void", declined the Mexican crown, and stated that no European prince could accede to the Mexican throne. The imperial crown was consequently given to Iturbide himself, but the Mexican Empire collapsed and was replaced by the First Mexican Republic a few years later.

Revolt

There were several pronunciamientos, or military uprisings, during the king's second reign. The first came in September 1814, three months after the end of the Peninsular War, and was led by General Espoz y Mina in Pamplona. Juan Díaz Porlier revolted at La Coruña in the following year. General Luis Lacy led an uprising in Barcelona in 1817, and General Juan Van Halen did the same in Valencia in 1818. In 1820 Rafael del Riego undertook the most successful pronunciamiento, leading to the Trienio Liberal.

In 1820, a revolt broke out in favour of the Constitution of 1812, beginning with a mutiny of the troops under Riego. The king was quickly taken prisoner. Ferdinand had restored the Jesuits upon his return, but now they had become identified with repression and absolutism among the liberals, who attacked them: twenty-five Jesuits were slain in Madrid in 1822. For the rest of the 19th century, liberal political regimes expelled the Jesuits, and authoritarian regimes reinstated them.

Ferdinand VII was an ardent opponent of Freemasonry in Spain, seeing it as a vehicle for secular liberal revolutions, an enemy of the Spanish Crown, aristocracy and the Catholic faith, subordinated to foreign interests (the Grand Orient of France primarily). After reinstating the Spanish Inquisition and the Jesuits, on 4 May 1814, he publicly declared all Spanish freemasons to be traitors. The same year, Pope Pius VII issued a decree against Freemasonry, approved by Ferdinand VII and became an edict of the Spanish Inquisition. Freemasons in high places in Spanish society were arrested, and the Masonic Lodges were suppressed. Ferdinand blamed Freemasonry for the 1820 coup, the Trienio Liberal, as well as for the loss of Spanish colonies in Latin America, with his return to the throne for the so-called "Ominous Decade", the Anti-Masonic campaign stepped up and members who would not renounce Freemasonry were hanged. He had his police compile reports on Freemasons and former Freemasons active in Spanish society.

In the spring of 1823, the restored Bourbon French King Louis XVIII of France invaded Spain, "invoking the God of St. Louis, for the sake of preserving the throne of Spain to a fellow descendant of Henry IV of France, and of reconciling that fine kingdom with Europe." In May 1823, the revolutionary party moved Ferdinand to Cádiz, where he continued to make promises of constitutional amendment until he was free.

When Ferdinand was freed after the Battle of Trocadero and the fall of Cádiz, reprisals followed. The Duc d'Angoulême made known his protest against Ferdinand's reneging on his promise of amnesty for the people of Cadiz by refusing the Spanish decorations Ferdinand offered him for his military services.

During his last years, Ferdinand's political appointments became more stable. The last ten years of his reign (sometimes referred to as the Ominous Decade) saw the restoration of absolutism, the re-establishment of traditional university programs and the suppression of any opposition, both by the Liberal Party and by the reactionary revolt (known as "War of the Agraviados") which broke out in 1827 in Catalonia and other regions.

Death and succession crisis

In May 1830, Ferdinand VII published the Pragmatic Sanction, again allowing daughters to succeed to the Spanish throne as well as sons. This decree had originally been approved by the Cortes in 1789, but it had never been officially promulgated. On 10 October 1830, Ferdinand's wife gave birth to a daughter, Isabella, who thereupon displaced her uncle, Infante Carlos María Isidro of Spain, in the line of succession. After Ferdinand's death in late September 1833, Carlos revolted and said he was the legitimate king. Needing support, Maria Christina, as regent for her daughter, turned to the liberals. She issued a decree of amnesty on 23 October 1833. Liberals who had been in exile returned and dominated Spanish politics for decades, leading to the Carlist Wars.

Legacy

Ferdinand VII's reign is typically criticised by historians, even in his own country. Historian Stanley G. Payne wrote that Ferdinand was "in many ways the basest king in Spanish history. Cowardly, selfish, grasping, suspicious, and vengeful, D. Fernando seemed almost incapable of any perception of the commonwealth."

Marriages

Ferdinand VII married four times. His first wife died of tuberculosis, the second died in childbirth, and the third died of "a fever". His fourth wife outlived him by 45 years.

In 1802, he married his first cousin Princess Maria Antonia of Naples and Sicily (1784–1806), daughter of Ferdinand I of the Two Sicilies and Marie Caroline of Austria. Her two pregnancies in 1804 and 1805 both ended in miscarriages.

In 1816, Ferdinand married his niece Maria Isabel of Portugal (1797–1818), daughter of his older sister Carlota Joaquina and John VI of Portugal. They had a daughter who lived only five months, and a stillborn daughter.

On 20 October 1819, in Madrid, Ferdinand married the daughter of his father's first cousin Maximilian, Prince of Saxony and of his mother's niece Caroline of Parma, Princess Maria Josepha Amalia of Saxony (1803–1829). They had no children.

Lastly, on 27 May 1829, Ferdinand married another niece, Maria Christina of the Two Sicilies (1806–1878), daughter of his younger sister Maria Isabella of Spain and of their first cousin Francis I of the Two Sicilies, who was also the brother of Ferdinand's first wife. They had two surviving daughters, the older of whom succeeded Ferdinand upon his death.

Issue

Honours

• Spain:
  • Knight of the Golden Fleece, 14 October 1784
  • Grand Cross of the Order of Charles III, 1784
  • Founder and Grand Master of the Military Order of St. Ferdinand, 31 August 1811
  • Founder and Grand Master of the Military Order of St. Hermengild, 28 November 1814
  • Founder and Grand Master of the Order of Isabella the Catholic, 24 March 1815
• Kingdom of Portugal: Grand Cross of the Sash of the Three Orders, 1796
• France:
  • French Empire: Grand Eagle of the Legion of Honour, 1806/07
  • Kingdom of France: Knight of the Holy Spirit, 1814
• Kingdom of Prussia: Knight of the Black Eagle, 3 June 1814
• United Kingdom: Knight of the Garter, 10 August 1814
• Russian Empire:
  • Knight of St. Andrew, 23 May 1815
  • Knight of St. Alexander Nevsky, 23 May 1815
• Denmark: Knight of the Elephant, 29 August 1818
• Austrian Empire: Grand Cross of St. Stephen, 1825
• Two Sicilies:
  • Knight of St. Januarius
  • Grand Cross of St. Ferdinand and Merit

Ancestry