Amid universal ovations Ferdinand assumed his intermitted reign, first promising to support the liberal Constitution which the Cortes presented for his acceptance. The Spaniards had spent more time in framing a Constitution than in fighting, and this guarantee of the people’s rights was a very liberal instrument—on paper. If Ferdinand had kept his pledges to sustain it, his would have been a very limited instead of the very absolute monarchy it was. But he did not keep his word, for the Inquisition, which had been abolished, was restored; the Jesuits were recalled; and of the liberal statesmen, who had at heart the good of Spain, some were sent to the galleys, and others executed. In fact, the despicable Ferdinand had learned nothing in his exile; a true Bourbon, he was at perpetual enmity with the people and republican institutions. Yet his countrymen had recalled him, supported him in power, and bared their necks to the naked sword of his despotism. The ignorant masses certainly ruled in Spain when Ferdinand VII, “worst of the Bourbon kings,” came back to his own. But even fools have feelings, and some of them rose against him in 1822, and he, true to his Bourbon instincts, called to his aid the Holy Alliance. French troops under the Duc d’Angoulême, to the number of one hundred and fifty thousand, came pouring into the peninsula, and stayed there five years, until the base monarch’s hold upon his throne was fixed again. Bolstered by foreign troops, Ferdinand gave vent to his brutal instincts by imprisoning thousands of his subjects who had ventured to protest against this incarnation of corruption and venality; he executed the leaders, banished others, and perpetrated atrocities such as he delighted in. His most beneficent act toward his harried kingdom was the involuntary deliverance afforded by his death; but even then he left a legacy of civil war, that has lasted to the present time. Like his great predecessor, Philip II, whom he so much resembled, he married thrice, his last wife being his niece (as was Philip’s), Maria Christina, daughter of the King of Naples. Hitherto childless, Ferdinand was delighted, on the 18th of October, 1830, at the birth of a daughter to Queen Christina. It was her birth that inaugurated the civil wars to which reference has been made, and of which we will treat in the following chapter.