[Illustration: GENERAL ESPARTERO, PRINCE OF VERGARA From a Painting by Casado del Alisal] The severe rebuke administered in the Congress by General Sevanes to the commanding officers whose sergeants had rebelled at La Granja against all royal authority led to a duel between the speaker and Captain Fernando Fernandez de Cordova, in which the General was wounded. Madrid was soon threatened by another revolution, for Don Carlos appeared before the city, with a large number of followers, but, annoyed at the threat, 20,000 citizens armed themselves in defence of their Queens. This remarkable body of loyal subjects was reviewed in the morning on which they assembled by the Infante Don Francisco; and when the Queen-mother, accompanied by Isabel, who was then seven years old, and her little sister, drove down the lines of Royalists in the afternoon, the enthusiasm of the assembly was intense. When Espartero arrived at Madrid, Don Carlos withdrew from the capital, and from that time the General became the most influential man in the kingdom, though he had a powerful rival in Don Ramon Maria Narvaez. It was certain that a Government which had witnessed twice in one year peril at the hand of rebels could hardly be called successful, and Espartero thought to put it on a more secure basis by instituting military rule. He seems to have wished to act the part of a Roman military consul, and the fact of Narvaez leading eleven battalions past the Palace of Madrid aroused his jealousy to a great degree. Don Carlos, whose wife had died in England in 1834, now, in 1838, married the Princess of Beira, and when this lady came to Madrid she boldly proclaimed herself the Queen of Spain, and the eldest son of Don Carlos the Prince of Asturias. The effect of two Courts in the country was most disastrous, and, in this fresh struggle with the Portuguese Princess, Maria Cristina did not have the support of her sister Luisa Carlota, as in the early days of her arrival in Spain, when the same lady had, with her sister, been so jealous of her popularity in Spain; for Luisa Carlota, who had, indeed, been instrumental in the marriage of Maria Cristina to King Ferdinand, and who had always been the ally of her sister, was no longer on friendly terms with her. The main reason for this quarrel with the Queen-Regent was evidently her secret marriage with Don Fernando Muñoz, whose rapid rise in the royal favour savoured very much of that of Godoy with Queen Maria Luisa. The story of this passion of Ferdinand’s widow is graphically told in an unpublished manuscript by a Don Fermin Caballero, who was a contemporary of the episode.