The First Carlist War: Context

Abstract

The defeat of what historians call the Liberal Triennium strengthened Spanish royalism, although not in the way that Don Carlos’s faction demanded. In order to trace how the ‘Carlist’ movement campaigned not just against the vanquished revoluciónaries, but also against the Ferdinand’s restored absolutism, we must first explain how the social crisis undid constitutionalism and bequeathed the conditions for renewed civil war. The reasons for the constitutional collapse are threefold. The regime had made itself unpopular with its repeated drive for taxes, conscription and the liberal property revolución, which, owing to both elite disdain for the character and capabilities of the masses and the constant economic crisis, had generally benefited elite interests at the expense of commoners. Thus, the Constitution was discredited, and the counter-revolución vengefully triumphant. A royalist officer in Cordoba proclaimed: ‘the whole nation has been subverted by secret societies which have foisted upon us the foul Constitution of 1812, which, in the three years of its existence, has produced evils which will take three centuries to resolve’.¹ This was good propaganda, but the terror royalists unleashed against local Liberals was even more impressive.² The other reasons lay with the Spanish army, where divisions and political unreliability stretched from top to bottom. Whereas some officers (like Manuel Llauder) had remained royalist throughout the Triennium, many more (like Vicente Quesada) opportunistically defected to royalism during 1822–23.