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to retain his throne but only as a constitutional monarch, under the
provisions of the 1812 document. A virtual prisoner of his ministers,
the king was obliged to make speeches praising the new political order
in Spain and to experience such personal humiliations as walking in a
state funeral procession behind the coffin of a liberal conspirator whom
he had executed two years before. Ferdinand's sufferings came to an
end in 1823, when the conservative powers of the so-called Holy Alli-
ance (Austria, Russia, and Prussia) sponsored a French invasion force
(the 100,000 Sons of St. Louis) provided by the restored Bourbon
dynasty in Paris. Ferdinand offered to negotiate an honorable surrender
for the defeated liberals but betrayed them to the French, who executed
Riego and many others. Back in full power again Ferdinand resumed
his absolutist regime at home and his anti-independence operations in
America, although these came to an effective end when the Spanish
forces were defeated at the Battle of Ayacucho in 1824.
A new crisis arose for Ferdinand VII in 1830 when he precipitated a
confrontation, not with the liberals, but with his own conservative
adherents. The latter had pursued a consistent line ever since 1812
when they had opposed the constitution voted by the Cortes at Cádiz,
arguing for preservation of traditional institutions such as the Inquisi-
tion and press censorship. As soon as the French had been expelled,
they had rallied behind Ferdinand in his abolition of the odious consti-
tution. The ultraconservatives (who commonly referred to themselves
as “traditionalists”) supported the king in all his difficulties and tri-
umphs until it became a question of their principles colliding with his
ego. Having failed to produce a son through several marriages, Ferdi-
nand decided to name his daughter Isabella as heiress to the throne,
thus abandoning the Salic law, the ancient Germanic rule of succession
brought into Spain by the Bourbons. The traditionalists insisted that not
even the king had the absolute power to change so fundamental a rule,
with its exclusion of all but male inheritance. Even though there was a
Spanish custom of female inheritance that far predated the coming of
the Bourbons, the ultraconservatives now asserted that they were more
traditionalist than the king and declared that his brother Carlos was the
rightful heir. They maintained this position until the death of Ferdinand
in 1833, when the Carlists, as they were now known, rejected the suc-
cession of the king's daughter as Queen Isabella II and proclaimed his
brother as King Charles V. What followed was a civil war (First Carlist
War) that resembled the dynastic bloodletting that had vanished from
the rest of Europe centuries before, even though it was disguised by
modern political labels. The child queen was supported by liberal fac-
tions and recognized by the newly installed liberal regimes in Britain
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