Monarchical rule having failed them, the Spaniards now turned to a republic, as the ideal toward which they had striven through these hopeless, turbulent, and chaotic years. But they did not take into account their inborn reverence for a king, their superstitious faith in the sanctity of the royal office; and so the “republic” had a thorny road to travel, first under Señor Pi y Margall, the first “president of the executive power,” lastly under the great jurist, orator, and patriot, Emilio Castelar. Away back in the time of the regent Christina, that queen was troubled by the dissensions of the so–called liberals, who, split into two parties, the _moderados_ and the _progresistas_, impeded whatever advance might have been possible had the occupant of the throne been inclined toward the people. So now, the actual arrival of the republic found dissensions among the very “patriots” who should have served it disinterestedly and with fervour. The misnamed “republic” served but as a bridge for another king to pass over from exile to the throne. When Prim was dying, mortally wounded by unknown assassins, he whispered to a friend, “I die, but your king is coming!” The king came, and went; the “republic” came, and went out in the _coup–d’état_ of January, 1874, with militarism triumphant, and the administration of the government in the hands of military officers. Their action in putting down anarchy and ending the civil war—for “Don Carlos” had again taken the field, with his Basque retainers, in support of his inalienable “male succession”—would seem to prove that Spain, like Mexico, needed the mailed hand of the military dictator to force it into paths of prosperity and development. Serrano might have been that dictator; but if he had designs, they did not succeed, for he soon resigned in favour of one who proclaimed himself “the first republican in Europe”—no less a personage than the seventeen–year–old son of Isabella the exile, who was ferreted out by the king–makers and offered the crown, that a Bourbon might again occupy the throne of his ancestors. The Spaniards were now content, for had they not travelled the road of republicanism and found it a failure? tried the rule of a foreigner, and found him wanting? At last they were in possession of their own again! In his veins ran the blood of Isabella the corrupt; but his reputed father was an amiable man, and so was the new king, Alfonso XII, who was proclaimed at Madrid in January, 1875.