Representative British Orations Volume 4 (of 4): With Introductions and Explanatory Notes
History
Representative British Orations Volume 4 (of 4): With Introductions and Explanatory Notes
Speeches, addresses, etc., English
He would hear of nothing short of absolutism; instead of listening
to compromise, he made a feint of marching on Madrid; and, after
being soundly beaten by the Government General, Espartero, escaped
into Portugal, Sept. 14, 1839, having racked Spain with a civil war
of six years’ duration, with no gain even to himself. So the revolt
collapsed. Cristina had been ousted from the Regency by the popular
hero Espartero. Next Espartero was driven into exile by his own party.
Cristina then came back to Madrid, where her daughter Isabella, made of
age by a legal fiction, although only a girl of fourteen, was crowned
(November, 1843) Queen of Spain, with a Ministry of the Moderado party,
under General Narvaez.
NOTE 19, p. 208.--“While the Carlist War was still continuing, Lord
Palmerston had convinced himself that Louis Philippe intended to marry
the young Queen Isabella, if possible, to one of his sons. Some years
later this project was officially mentioned by Guizot to the English
statesman, who at once caused it to be understood that England would
not permit the union.... Louis Philippe now suggested that his youngest
son, the Duke of Montpensier, should wed the Infanta Fernanda,
sister of the Queen of Spain. On the express understanding that this
marriage should not take place until the Queen should herself have been
married and have had children, the English Cabinet assented to the
proposal. That the marriages should not be simultaneous was treated by
both governments as the very heart and substance of the arrangement,
inasmuch as the failure of children by the Queen’s marriage would make
her sister, or her sister’s heir, inheritor of the throne. This was
repeatedly acknowledged by Louis Philippe and his Minister, Guizot,
in the course of communications which extended over some years.
Nevertheless, in 1846, the French Ambassador at Madrid, in conjunction
with the Queen’s mother, Maria Cristina, succeeded in carrying out
a plan by which the conditions laid down at London, and accepted at
Paris, were utterly frustrated. Of the Queen’s Spanish cousins, there
was one, Don Francisco, who was known to be physically unfit for
marriage. To this person it was determined by Maria Cristina and the
French Ambassador that the young Isabella should be united, her sister
being simultaneously married to the Duke of Montpensier.”--Fyffe,
“Modern Europe,” vol. ii., pp. 504, 505, New York, 1877.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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