erdinand VII.*--Upon the fall of
Napoleon the legitimate sovereign, under the name of Ferdinand VII.,
was established forthwith upon the Spanish throne. At one time he had
professed a purpose to perpetuate the new constitution, but even
before his return to Madrid he pronounced both the constitution and
the various decrees of the Cortes "null and of no effect," and when
the Cortes undertook to press its claims to recognition it found
itself powerless. In the restoration of absolutism the king was
supported not only by the army, the nobility, and the Church, but also
by the mass of the people. For constitutional government there was
plainly little demand, and if Ferdinand had been possessed of even the
most ordinary qualities of character and statesmanship, he might
probably have ruled successfully in a perfectly despotic manner
throughout the remainder of his life. As it was, the reaction was
accompanied by such glaring excesses that the spirit of revolution was
kept alive, and scarcely a twelvemonth passed in the course of which
there were not menacing uprisings. In January, 1820, a revolt of
unusual seriousness began in a mutiny at Cadiz on the part of the
soldiers who were being gathered for service in America. The revolt
spread and, to save himself, the king revived the constitution of 1812
and pledged himself to a scrupulous observance of its stipulations.
The movement, however, was doomed to prompt and seemingly complete
failure. The liberals were disunited, and the two years during which
the king was virtually a prisoner in their hands comprised a period of
sheer anarchy. The powers of the Holy Alliance, moreover, in congress
at Verona (1822), adopted a programme of intervention, in execution of
which, in April, 1823, the French government sent an army across the
Pyrenees under the command of the Duke of Angouleme. A six months'
campaign, culminating in the capture of Cadiz, whither the Cortes had
carried the king, served effectively to crush the revolution and to
reinstate the sovereign completely in the position which he had (p. 606)
occupied prior to 1820. Then followed a fresh period of repression, in
the course of which the constitution of 1812 was again set aside, and
throughout the remaining decade of the reign the government of the
kingdom was both despotic and utterly unprogressive.[838]

[Footnote 838: On the period covered by Ferdinand's
reign see Cambridge Mode