o had taken part in the
removal of the King to be traitors, Ferdinand practically signed the death
warrant of those men whom he had just left with fair promises on his lips.
Even before reaching Madrid, Ferdinand VII. banished for life from Madrid
and from the country fifty miles around it every person who had served the
government in Spain during the last three years. Don Saez, the King's
confessor, was made Secretary of State. He revived the Inquisition, and
ordered the prosecution of all those concerned in the pernicious and
heretical doctrines associated with the late outbreak. Ferdinand justified
his acts with a royal pronunciamiento containing this characteristic
passage: "My soul is confounded with the horrible spectacle of the
sacrilegious crimes which impiety has dared to commit against the Supreme
Maker of the universe.... My soul shudders and will not be able to return
to tranquillity, until, in union with my children, my faithful subjects, I
offer to God holocausts of piety." Thousands of persons were imprisoned, or
forced to flee the country. On November 7, Riego was hanged. Young men were
shot for being Freemasons. Women were sent to the galleys for owning
pictures of Riego.

The Duke of Angouleme was indignant and would have nothing more to do with
the King. In a parting letter of remonstrance he wrote: "I asked your
Majesty to give an amnesty, and grant to your people some assurance for the
future. You have done neither the one nor the other. Since your Majesty has
recovered your authority, nothing has been heard of on your part but
arrests and arbitrary edicts. Anxiety, fear, and discontent begin to spread
everywhere." Angouleme returned to France thoroughly disenchanted with the
cause for which he had drawn his sword.

[Sidenote: The French elections]

In France, as in England, the return of absolute rule in Spain was viewed
with extreme disfavor by the Liberals. The success of the French arms, to
be sure, gave the government an overwhelming majority at the elections. The
voice of the Liberals was heard, however, in the first debate over the
Spanish war. Manuel, a Liberal deputy, denounced foreign intervention in
Spain. He said: "Can any one be ignorant that the misfortunes of the
Stuarts in England were caused by nothing so much as the assistance granted
them by France--an assistance foreign to the Parliament and to the people.
The Stuarts would have avoided the fate that overtook them had they sough