s was driven to an immediate decision.

The fugitive Queen Isabella had with her in exile a young son Alfonso,
seventeen years of age. Alfonso was invited to return upon the sole
condition that his mother should be excluded from his kingdom. An
insurrection which was being fomented by Don Carlos II. led to this
action of the Cortes, which was perhaps the wisest possible under the
circumstances. The young Prince of the legitimate Bourbon line was
proclaimed King Alfonso XII. in 1874.

A romantic marriage with his cousin Mercedes, daughter of the Duke de
Montpensier, to whom he was deeply attached, speedily took place. Only
five months later Mercedes died and was laid in the gloomy Escurial.
A marriage was then arranged with Christina, an Austrian Archduchess,
who was brought to Madrid, and there was another marriage celebrated
with much splendor. The infant daughter, who was born a few years
later, was named Mercedes; a loving tribute to the adored young Queen
he had lost, which did credit as much to Christina as to Alfonso.

The hard school of exile had, no doubt, been an advantage to Alfonso;
and at the outset of his reign he won the confidence of the Liberals
by saying "he wished them to understand he was the first Republican in
Europe; and when they were tired of him they had only to tell him so,
and he would leave as quickly as Amadeo had done." There was not time
to test the sincerity of these assurances. Alfonso XII. died in 1885,
and joined Mercedes and his long line of predecessors in the Escurial.
Five months later his son was born, and the throne which had been
filled by the little Mercedes passed to the boy who was proclaimed
Alfonso XIII. of Spain, under the Regency of his mother Queen
Christina.

CHAPTER XXIV.

At the beginning of the nineteenth century the foreign dominions of
Spain, although reduced, were still a vast and imperial possession.
The colonial territory over which Alfonso XIII. was to have
sovereignty at the close of that century, consisted of the
Philippines, the richest of the East Indies; Cuba, the richest of the
West Indies; Porto Rico, and a few outlying groups of islands of no
great value.

Nowhere had the Constitution of 1812 awakened more hope than in Cuba;
and from the setting aside of that instrument by Ferdinand VI. dates
the existence of an insurgent party in that beautiful but most unhappy
island. Ages of spoliation and cruelty and wrong had done their work.
The ir