In this contest two distinct political parties had developed--the Liberal party and the party of Absolutism. As Ferdinand VII. became the choice of the Liberals, and his brother Don Carlos of the party of Absolutism, we must infer either that it was a Liberalism of a very mild type, or that Ferdinand's views had been modified since the "Holy Alliance" took his kingdom into its own keeping. But his brother Carlos was the adored of the Absolutists, and a plot was made to compel Ferdinand to abdicate in his favor. This was the first of the Carlist plots, which, with little intermission, and always in the interest of despotism and bigotry, have menaced the safety and well-being of Spain ever since. From the year 1825 to 1898 there has been always a Don Carlos to trouble the political waters in that land. So the mission of the "Holy Alliance" had failed. Instead of rehabilitating the sacred principle of the "Divine Right of Kings," they saw a powerful liberal party established in a kingdom which was the very stronghold of despotism. And instead of stamping out free institutions, six Spanish-American colonies had been recognized as free and independent states (1826). Spain had for three centuries ruled the richest and the fairest land on the earth. She had shown herself utterly undeserving of the opportunity, and unfit for the responsibilities imposed by a great colonial empire. She had sown the wind and now she reaped the whirlwind. She did not own a foot of territory on the continent she had discovered! CHAPTER XXIII. In 1833 King Ferdinand VII. died, leaving one child, the Princess Isabella, who was three years old. Here was the opportunity for the adherents of Don Carlos. The "Salic law" had been one of the Gothic traditions of ancient Spain, and had with few exceptions been in force until 1789; when Carlos IV. issued a "Pragmatic Sanction," establishing the succession through the female as well as the male line; and on April 6, 1830, King Ferdinand confirmed this decree; so, when Isabella was born, October 10, 1830, she was heiress to the throne, _unless_ her ambitious uncle, Don Carlos, could set aside the decree abrogating the old Salic law, and reign as Carlos IV. In the three years before his brother's death he had laid his plans for the coming crisis. Isabella was proclaimed Queen under the regency of her depraved mother Christina. The extreme of the Catholic party, and of the reactionary or absolutist party, flocked about the Carlist standard; while the party of the infant Queen was the rallying point for the liberal and progressive sentiment in the kingdom; and her cause had the support of the new reform government of Louis Philippe in France, and of lovers of freedom elsewhere. The party of the Queen triumphed. But the Carlists survived; and, like the Bourbons in France, have ever since in times of political peril been a serious element to be reckoned with.