Ferdinand VII was twice King of Spain: in 1808 and again from 1813 to his
death. He was known to his supporters as "the Desired" and to his detractors as
the "Felon King". After being overthrown by Napoleon in 1808 he linked his
monarchy to counter-revolution and reactionary policies that produced a
deep rift in Spain between his forces on the right and liberals on the left. He
reestablished the absolutist monarchy and rejected the liberal constitution of
1812. He suppressed the liberal press 1814-33 and jailed many of its editors
and writers. Spain entered into civil war on his death.
His reputation among historians is very low. Historian Stanley Payne says:
He proved in many ways the basest king in Spanish history. Cowardly, selfish,
grasping, suspicious, and vengeful, [he] seemed almost incapable of any
perception of the commonwealth. He thought only in terms of his power and
security and was unmoved by the enormous sacrifices of Spanish people to retain
their independence and preserve his throne.
Early life Ferdinand was the eldest surviving child
of Charles IV of Spain and Maria Luisa of Parma. His father being the son of
Spanish King Charles III and Maria Amalia of Saxony, Ferdinand was born in
the palace of El Escorial near Madrid. The Queen's confessor fray Juan Almaraz
wrote in his last will that she admitted in articulo mortis that "none, none of
her sons and daughters, none was of the legitimate marriage". In his youth
Ferdinand occupied the position of an heir apparent who was excluded from all
share in government by his parents and their favourite Godoy. National
discontent with the government produced a rebellion in 1805. In October 1807,
Ferdinand was arrested for his complicity in the El Escorial Conspiracy
in which liberals aimed at securing foreign support from the French dictator
Napoleon. When the conspiracy was discovered, Ferdinand submitted to his
parents. Abdication and restoration
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. Napoleon kept Ferdinand under guard in France for six years at
the Chateau of Valençay. 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. Subsequently, on 14 January 1809, the British government
acknowledged Ferdinand VII as king of Spain.
Five years later after experiencing serious setbacks on many fronts,
Napoleon agreed to acknowledge Ferdinand VII as king of Spain on 11 December 1813
and signed the Treaty of Valençay, so that the king could return to Spain. The
Spanish people, blaming the policies of the Francophiles 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 he had relinquished six years earlier. Instead he was now asked to
rule under the liberal Constitution of 1812. Before being allowed to enter
Spanish soil, Ferdinand had to guarantee the liberals that he would govern on the
basis of the Constitution, but, only gave lukewarm indications 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. 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 Manila
galleons and the Spanish treasure fleets - 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
favorites, 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 recognize 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. Revolt
In 1820 a revolt broke out in favor of the Constitution of 1812 which began
with a mutiny of the troops under Col. Rafael del Riego and the king was
quickly made prisoner. Ferdinand had restored the Jesuits upon his return;
now the Society 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, expulsions and reinstatements of the
Jesuits would continue to be the hallmarks of liberal and authoritarian
political regimes, respectively. At the beginning of 1823, as a result of
the Congress of Verona, the French invaded Spain "invoking the God of St
Louis, for the sake of preserving the throne of Spain to a descendant of Henry
IV, and of reconciling that fine kingdom with Europe." When in May the
revolutionary party carried Ferdinand to Cádiz, he continued to make promises of
amendment until he was free. When Fendinand was freed after the
Battle of Trocadero and the fall of Cádiz, reprisals followed. The Duke of
Angoulême, made known his protest against Ferdinand's actions 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 reign, and saw the restoration of a absolutism, the
re-establishment of traditional university programs and the suppression
of any opposition, both of the Liberal Party and of the reactionary revolt
which broke out in 1827 in Catalonia and other regions.
= Death and succession crisis= As Ferdinand lay dying his new wife,
Maria Christina of Bourbon-Two Sicilies had him set aside the Salic Law, which
would make his brother Don Carlos heir to the throne instead of any female.
Ferdinand was thus succeeded by his infant daughter Isabella II. Don Carlos
revolted and said he was the legitimate king. Needing support, the Queen 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, and the
Carlist Wars resulted. Marriages
Ferdinand VII was married four times. In 1802 he married his first cousin
Princess Maria Antonietta of the Two Sicilies, daughter of Ferdinand I of the
Two Sicilies and Marie Caroline of Austria. There were no children, because
her two pregnancies ended in miscarriages.
In 1816, Ferdinand married his niece Maria Isabel of Portugal, daughter of
his older sister Carlota Joaquina and John VI of Portugal. She bore him two
daughters, the first of whom lived only five months and the second of whom was
stilborn. In 1819, Ferdinand married Princess
Maria Josepha Amalia of Saxony, daughter of Maximilian, Prince of Saxony and
Caroline of Bourbon-Parma. No children were born from this marriage.
Lastly, in 1829, Ferdinand married another niece, Maria Christina of
Bourbon-Two Sicilies, daughter of his younger sister Maria Isabella of Spain
and Francis I of the Two Sicilies. She bore him two daughters.
Issue Ancestry
References This article incorporates text from a
publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed.. Encyclopædia
Britannica. Cambridge University Press. Further reading
Carr, Raymond. Spain, 1808-1975 Clarke, Henry Butler. Modern Spain,
1815-98 pp 1–92; old but full of factual detail online
Fehrenbach, Charles Wentz. "Moderados and Exaltados: The Liberal Opposition to
Ferdinand VII, 1814-1823." Hispanic American Historical Review: 52-69. in
JSTOR Payne, Stanley G. History of Spain and
Portugal: v. 2 pp 415–36 Woodward, Margaret L. "The Spanish Army
and the Loss of America, 1810-1824." Hispanic American Historical Review:
586-607. in JSTOR External links
Historiaantiqua. Fernando VII at Historia Antiqua