Canovas was listened to in silence, and his auditors uttered no protest; but they remained unchanged. Four years of republican rule ruined the country; liberty was betrayed by a license which permitted everyone to live according to his own caprice. Religion, buffeted and persecuted, its temples and property confiscated, its ministers proscribed, the public safety destroyed, with pillage unpunished in the cities conflagrations started in the country places, were the fruits of the new ideas which reigned in the high places of the state. Valencia, Grenada, and Seville became principalities, created Parliaments, frontiers, custom houses, coined monies, and levied taxes; it was a form of anarchy. Carlism took up arms again; Cuba revolted; and the government found itself powerless to bring matters to a peaceful condition. In its anxiety the country looked to Canovas de Castillo. To those who spoke of insurrection he answered: "Let us wait; there is no need of bloodshed." On December 28, 1874, he appeared at the head of the troops at Sagonta, and proclaimed Alphonso XII. as King. The news spread quickly, and was accepted as a signal of deliverance. There was no resistance; the old government was gone; and the Cortes was dispersed. _CANOVAS IN POWER._ Canovas was at once recognized as the representative of the absent King, and the country was ready to obey his directions. Armed with this power, he set to work to put the country in order. He exiled Zorilla, the chief of the demagogues, he banished the revolutionaries and expelled the teachers of disorder, who had the impudence to call themselves "the Intellectuals." As the Constitution was but the legalization of tyranny, he drew up another, in which Catholic principles were respected. The moment had come for inaugurating an era of peace. His ministry again declared that "the Catholic religion is the religion of the State," though it professed a tolerance for dissident sects. The monastic orders were received back into the land; churches were restored, the clergy received as much of the ecclesiastical property as had not been absolutely alienated. The Carlists were pacified, and the whole country once more brought within the bonds of patriotic union. It was unfortunate that this great statesman, who had placed Alphonso XII. upon the throne, and watched over the first years of the present King Alphonso XIII., was assassinated by an anarchist, August 8, 1897. _SPAIN IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY._ During the regency of Maria Christina, and the reign of her son, Alphonso XIII., the Church was not at first openly attacked, although various legislative measures have been proposed to cripple the religious orders and deprive the clergy of all authority in matters of education. [Illustration: ALFONSO XII., KING OF SPAIN.]