When George Borrow, in the month of November, 1835, steamed up the Tagus on his adventurous journey to distribute the Bible in Spain, the political situation throughout the Peninsula was so complicated and so extraordinary, that a brief review of the events of the few years immediately preceding his arrival will be necessary to enable any one but a specially instructed reader to appreciate, or even to understand, his position and his adventures.

When Ferdinand VII. was restored to his kingdom by the British arms in 1814, Spain was still governed by the Cortes elected under the Liberal Constitution of 1812.

Ferdinand, having sworn many oaths to maintain this Constitution and Parliamentary Institutions in the country, no sooner found himself firmly seated on the throne, than, encouraged by the clergy within his dominions, and by the Holy Alliance in Northern Europe, he issued an edict dissolving the Cortes, and reviving the old absolutism with all the old abuses in Spain.The nobles were once again exempted from taxation; the monasteries were restored; the Jesuits returned to Spain; the Inquisition was formally re-established; all Liberal politicians were persecuted to the death. For six years this royalist reign of terror—more dreadful by far than the Terreur blanche in contemporary France—was continued, until at length, the great American colonies having asserted their independence, [2] the standard of revolt was raised in Spain by Riego and Quiroga, two officers in command of an expedition which was just about to sail from Cadiz to renew the war against the colonists in South America in January, 1820. The success of this political revolution was prompt and complete. In March the king gave way, and once more accepted the Constitution of 1812; and an administration of moderate reformers was formed under Martinez de la Rosa, a well-known man of letters, and was generally acceptable to the country.

After much intrigue and factious opposition, both on the part of the extreme Royalists and the extreme Radicals, the election of Riego to the Presidency of the Cortes in 1822 marked the extreme limit of the triumph of the Liberal party in Spain.

The Congress of Verona in October, 1822; the growing pretensions of the Holy Alliance; the mission of the Duke of Wellington, with George Canning’s protest against the armed intervention of any of the Powers in the domestic affairs of the Peninsula; and the ultimate invasion of Spain by a French army of 100,000 men under the Duc d’AngoulÊme, eldest son of the Comte d’Artois, afterwards Charles X., in April, 1823;—these things belong as much to European as to Spanish history, and need only be referred to in passing.

The French army, as may be supposed, met with no serious opposition. Madrid was easily occupied before the end of May. Cadiz, maintaining a brief but honourable resistance, yielded to a bombardment in September; and Ferdinand VII., reinvested with absolute power over his subjects by foreign artillery and foreign bayonets in October, 1823, immediately unswore all his oaths, and restored all the old tyranny and abuses in Spain. Riego was at once put to death. All Liberals and even moderados were exposed to a sanguinary and relentless persecution. The leaders and their richer and more important partisans were as a rule able to make good their flight, in many cases to England; but their humbler followers paid the penalty of their liberalism with their lives. The French army of occupation remained in Spain for four years—1823–1827—and Cadiz was not evacuated until 1828.

In September, 1824, Charles X. succeeded the more liberal Louis XVIII. on the throne of France, and George Canning, unable to compel or persuade the French to leave the Spanish people to themselves in Spain, “called a new world into existence to restore the balance in the old,” and recognized the independence of the Spanish American colonies.

In 1829 Ferdinand VII. married, as his fourth wife, Maria Christina of Naples, a sister of the Duchesse de Berri; [3] and on October 10, 1830, the queen gave birth to a daughter, who was christened Isabella, afterwards so well known as Isabel II. of Spain. [4a] The king, her father, immediately issued a Pragmatic Sanction, declaring the Salic law to be of no effect in Spain; and the young princess was accordingly recognized as heir-apparent to the crown. A formal protest was made by King Ferdinand’s younger brother, Don Carlos, who found himself thus excluded from the succession, against this decree, and who soon afterwards quitted Spain.

On Michaelmas Day, 1833, Ferdinand VII. died, and his daughter Isabella was immediately proclaimed queen, as Isabel II., with her mother DoÑa Cristina as regent, [4b] of Spain throughout Spain.

Don Carlos, who had taken refuge in Portugal, found himself unable to cross the frontier, and was constrained to make his way from Lisbon by sea to London, and thence by way of France into the Basque provinces, where he arrived in September, 1834. Thus were founded the Carlist and the Cristino parties; and on the side of the former were at once ranged all the Basques, and the representatives of the absolutist and ultra-clerical party throughout Spain.

Don Carlos himself, unable to cross the frontier, [4c] made his way from Portugal to England, and thence through France (May, 1834), where his pretensions were not unfavourably regarded, into Northern Spain (September, 1834). Mendizabal, a Cadiz Jew of much financial skill, who had acquired great experience and some consideration in England during his exile from 1823 to 1833, became Prime Minister of the Regency.