Thereupon the two chambers combined as the sovereign power of Spain and voted for a republic. The two years of the republic were the stormiest in Spanish history, and it was then that the Carlists made the greatest progress. They numbered probably one-third of the people of Spain. A republic was not suited to the disposition of the Spaniards, and Castelar, who had the helm of the ship of state, gave up his task in disgust. Then Alfonso XII., son of the exiled Isabella, was proclaimed heir to the throne. Alfonso XIII., is his son. Alfonso XII.'s first task was to suppress the Carlists, and in this he succeeded. The people were tired of the continual strife. Royalists and republicans alike welcomed the new monarch. The number of his followers gradually dwindling and finding that continued resistance would be unavailable, Don Carlos was finally convinced that it would be useless to continue the struggle. So early in 1876 his army disbanded. Accompanied by his bodyguard he crossed the Pyrenees. As he stepped his foot on French soil he turned as if to bid farewell to Spain, but his last words, energetically pronounced, were: "Volvere, volvere! I will return, I will return!" And it is the belief of his followers that his time is near at hand. HIS LOYAL FOLLOWERS. No man has more devoted followers. The army that fought for him during the Carlist revolution was one of the most heroic that has ever been gathered together. To his standard came young men of good family from every nation. He was regarded as the representative of the old regime of monarchists, and in his ranks were those who hoped for the re-establishment of the now obsolete divine right of kings. He was the head of the house of Bourbon in all Europe. Except for the existence of Maria Theresa, daughter of Ferdinand of Modena, married the Prince Louis of Bavaria, Don Carlos would be the legitimate representative of the royal house of Stuart, and, barring the English act of settlement, King of Great Britain and Ireland. This fact may have had something to do with the cold shoulder that was turned to him by all of the powers of Europe. Don Carlos was regarded as the representative of the half-dozen pretenders to the throne who live in exile amid little courts of their own and build air castles peopled with things they will do when they mount the thrones of which they believe themselves to have been defrauded. The Carlists believe that with the support of one of the great governments they would have won. But they could obtain no recognition even of their belligerency, and that was in spite of the fact that, as early as 1873, the president of the Spanish Republic has declared in the cortes: "We have a real civil war. ... It has a real administrative organization and collects taxes. You have presented to you one state in front of another. It is in fact a great war."