After ruling Spain for 39 years
Carlos III died on 14 December 1788.
His oldest son, Felipe, suffered from epilepsy and learning
disabilities and was passed over as the next son became
Carlos IV at the age of forty.
Spain’s imperial power was at its peak with increasing
revenues from its American colonies and secure defenses.
On the continent Andalucía, Cataluña, and Castile were
exporting agricultural products and providing income for Spain.
Public works, construction, factories,
and other businesses were thriving.
In 1788 a royal decree had authorized owners to enclose
their land, and it would last until 1839.
Spain had about 11 million people including 403,000 nobles
and 170,000 clergy who between them owned about
two-thirds of the land with entailed estates.
Only 1,300 of the nobles had titles.
About one-third of the people were peasants.
More than 600 towns and villages were
controlled by military orders.
By 1789 Barcelona had 100,000 workers in the cotton industry.
Valencia had 3,000 looms for silk,
and Granada also developed the silk and wool industries.
In the Cadiz area 70,000 artisans worked
to support colonial trade.
Bilbao produced 4,000 tons of iron for export in 1790.
Yet Bourbon Spain still had the Inquisition,
oligarchical town councils, seigneurial jurisdiction
and privileges, entails, and corporate fueros (laws).
Unlike his father, Carlos IV had little education and political
experience, and he spent six hours every day
hunting in order to avoid melancholia.
His 37-year-old Queen Maria Luisa of Parma was more
capable and was interested in government.
She accompanied him as he saw ministers.
She had met young Manuel Godoy in September 1788
and introduced him to Carlos IV who retained
the Count of Floridablanca as his chief minister.
A poor harvest in 1788 led to bread riots
at Barcelona in February 1789.
In Castile food was scarce and expensive.
In August the government created a debt of 266,667 reales
in order to give Godoy an annuity.
The economist Pedro Rodríguez Compomanes presided over
the Spanish Cortes that met in September 1789
and recognized 5-year-old Fernando as Prince of Asturias.
The 74 procurators repealed the Salic law of succession
brought from France by Felipe V
so that females would not be excluded.
They met for only a few weeks
but did not pass proposed agrarian reforms.
Carlos IV was concerned about his cousin Louis XVI,
and Floridablanca opposed the French Revolution and issued
decrees to protect Spain from its influence.
Spain began censoring all news from France in September 1789,
and in October they sent troops to the Pyrenees frontier.
In November an edict ordered foreigners to leave Madrid
if their work did not require them to stay;
or they had to pay a fine of 50 ducats, but the law was
mostly enforced against the French.
In December the Inquisition banned publications from France
related to the Revolution, and on 1 January 1790 the
Spanish government did the same.
Floridablanca negotiated with Britain a peaceful settlement
of the dispute over territory of the Nootka Sound on the
Pacific coast of North America with the Nootka Convention
on 28 October 1790.
Revolutionary literature still came in despite using the
Inquisition to help customs posts.
Tax protests and peasant uprisings disturbed Galicia
and Asturias in the winter of 1790-91.
On 24 February 1791 a royal edict suspended all private
periodicals in Spain, leaving only the government’s
censored publications.
They removed Compomanes from the presidency
of the Council of Castile.
Every foreigner in Spain had to take an oath of allegiance
to the King and the Catholic faith,
and half of the foreigners were French.
Floridablanca’s severe policy against France concerned
King Carlos because of his cousin Louis XVI,
and on 28 February 1792 he dismissed Floridablanca
who was allowed to retire to his native Murcia.
He was replaced by his adversary, the Count of Aranda,
who on 11 July had troops move Floridablanca to the Pamplona
fortress where he was imprisoned until April 1794.
Aranda also investigated Floridablanca for corrupt use of funds.
Aranda was considered too indulgent of the Revolution,
and Queen Maria Luisa and Godoy began taking more power.
The arrest of Louis XVI and his family in August 1792
and the military victories of revolutionary France led to
replacing Aranda with 25-year-old Godoy on November 15.
Godoy was made Captain-general of the army
and governed as Secretary of State and Prime Minister.
He claimed he worked 14 hours a day, and families
often sent pretty women to ask for his aid.
He was made a grandee and a duke.
He tried to reform the army but was blocked by special interests,
and he alienated the royal guard by reducing their strength.
Godoy had married the King’s cousin Maria Teresa;
but he maintained his mistress Pepita Tudo,
made her a countess, and had two children by her.
In his Memorias he claimed that he harmed no one,
held no political prisoners, and worked to maintain peace.
Godoy tried to save the life of Louis XVI,
and the French resented this.
After the execution of Louis XVI in January 1793
Spain allied with Britain in March.
When Godoy rejected French demands for mutual
disarmament that would let France keep troops near Bayonne,
France declared war on Spain on March 7.
Spanish priests considered it a religious war
and supported it from their pulpits.
A royal edict on May 24 ordered the municipal government
in Extremadura to distribute land to peasants.
Spanish forces invaded Roussillon in April and were victorious,
but the French army managed to push back
the Spanish invasion during the rest of the year.
In March 1794 Aranda criticized the war as dangerous
to the monarchy and unjust, and Godoy persuaded
the King to exile Aranda to Jaén.
Godoy was careful not to weaken the Spanish navy
and declined to send ships to blockade Toulon
until a British squadron was there.
The Spanish navy also avoided losing warships
in the Mediterranean in 1794.
In April a French army of 40,000 men attacked
12,000 Catalans at Roussillon, and by the summer of 1795
French forces occupied much of Cataluña.
In July 1794 the French invaded Guipuzcoa,
and San Sebastian surrendered to them on August 4.
In October the French had 50,000 troops in Navarre
and Guipuzcoa facing 23,000 Spaniards defending Pamplona.
Spaniards had to retreat across the Pyrenees
and from northern Cataluña.
In November the fortress of Figueres capitulated
to the French without fighting.
Yet the Catalans set up defense committees in Barcelona,
and in January 1795 they agreed to raise 20,000 more soldiers.
In February the conspiracy of San Blas to create a revolutionary
government was so easily stopped that no one was executed.
Catalan peasants went on the offensive,
and peace was agreed at Basle on July 22.
Spanish territory that had been lost was restored,
but they ceded the colony of Santo Domingo to France.
The peace with France allowed French books to become
available in Spain.
Godoy was honored as the Prince of Peace.
He founded the Royal College of Medicine, an astronomical
observatory, and a veterinary school.
He extended primary schooling in rural areas and initiated
a national campaign to vaccinate children against smallpox.
To reward those who fought in the war Godoy’s government
abolished the tax that exempted nobles from the tax on farmers.
Carlos IV got papal permission to end the exemption from tithes
by privileged persons and religious institutions,
and the crown was allowed to take two-ninths of Church tithes.
The wars would bring about reforms designed
to increase government revenues.
Godoy also gave prestigious positions to various relatives.
On 18 August 1796 Godoy signed the second treaty of
San Ildefonso allying with France against the British.
Spain promised to assist the French with 18,000 infantry,
6,000 cavalry, and 21 warships,
and Spain declared war on Britain on October 5.
Godoy informed bishops in November that a new periodical
for parish priests would promote new methods of agriculture
and manufacturing, and it was published from January 1797
until the French invasion in 1808.
In December 1796 a decree ended price regulation
on cloth and other products.
In February 1797 the Spaniards were defeated
at Cape St. Vincent and lost Trinidad.
In April the British blockaded Cadiz severing Spanish
shipping from the colonies.
In 1796 cargoes worth 54 million pesos from America
came to Cadiz on 171 ships, but in 1797 this fell to
goods valued at only 500,000 pesos on 9 ships.
Exports also were drastically reduced,
and the price of European goods doubled.
American treasure coming to Spain declined gradually
in the 1790s but fell to less than half 1796-1800.
In November 1797 Godoy named the financial reformer
Francisco Cabarrus the ambassador to France.
Gaspar Melchor de Jovellanos had published a book
on agrarian reform in 1795, and he was recalled from Asturias
to administer ecclesiastical relations; but he was upset at lunch
to see Godoy sitting between his wife and his mistress.
Cabarrus recommended Francisco de Saavedra as finance
minister, and Godoy promoted foreign minister
Mariano Luis de Urquijo, who had translated Voltaire.
Yet he imprisoned for seven years Gaspar de Jovellanos
who embodied the Spanish enlightenment.
The government was running a deficit of 800 million reales,
and the French Directory resented
Godoy’s support for French royalists.
He was also criticized by conservatives and the Queen,
and on 28 March 1798 he resigned
and was replaced by Saavedra.
In September the government auctioned property of hospitals,
poor-houses, orphanages, and other charities
for a redemption fund at 3% interest.
In the next ten years more than a sixth of ecclesiastical
properties were sold mostly to the rich.
Saavedra was blamed for bad finances, and in poor health
he resigned and was replaced by Mariano Luis de Urquijo.
The wealthy were forced to provide loans, and taxes were
imposed on servants, horses, mules, carriages,
and on rental income.
In October Pope Pius VII allowed an extra ninth on tithes
that gave the government 31 million reales.
In 1800 Church tithes brought in 650 million copper reales.
Peasants had to give up a quarter of their produce for rent
to officials, lawyers, and merchants,
and they also had to pay taxes.
Hospitals, poorhouses, and orphanages were over-crowded.
Madrid had so many beggars that some groups
formed corporations and had legal status.
More peasant uprisings broke out in Galicia in 1798,
Valencia in 1801, and Bilbao in 1804 while there were
bread riots in Segovia in 1802 and Madrid in 1804.
On 1 October 1800 Urquijo signed the third treaty of
San Ildefonso in which France promised to make
Prince Fernando, the Duke of Parma, a king in central Italy
in exchange for Spain one month later
giving France six 74-gun ships.
Six months after that Spain ceded Louisiana back to France.
Spain prohibited the establishment of manufacturing in the
colonies on 28 November 1800.
That year yellow fever took 79,000 lives in Cadiz.
Urquijo was dismissed in December and was replaced
by the return of Godoy to even greater power.
Napoleon was pressuring Spain to subjugate Portugal
because of its alliance with Britain, and in May 1801
Godoy took command of the army of 60,000 men.
The costly “War of the Oranges” lasted only three weeks
before the Portuguese surrendered.
France and Britain included Spain in the peace treaty
at Amiens on 27 March 1802.
Spain gained only Olivenza from Portugal.
Godoy was named Generalissimo and Admiral,
but some thought he appointed too many
high officers and had too few troops.
Prince Fernando married Maria Antonia of Naples in October,
and he became the head of an opposition party in Madrid.
He resented Godoy for turning his parents against him.
The Prince was supported by his former tutor Juan de Escoiquiz,
the Duke Infantado, and the Count of Montijo
who had been banished from the court in 1794.
Spain was neutral for two years and allowed the French
to transfer troops to bases in Portugal.
The British complained, but Godoy would not ally with them.
Radical clerics demanded reforms based on the Jansenist ideas
of the Italian Scipione de’ Ricci, Bishop of Pistoia.
A papal bull in 1794 had condemned the synod of Pistoia.
Urquijo opposed the papacy, but Godoy supported tradition
and allowed the bull to be published in Spain in 1801.
In May 1803 the British renewed their war against France
and warned that they would not allow Spanish treasure
from America to aid the French.
To recognize Spain’s neutrality Napoleon demanded
a monthly subsidy of 6 million livres,
and Spain had to borrow money in France at 10% interest.
On 15 September a decree allowed landowners
to raise rents without limits.
Desperate people formed gangs of bandits.
The wealthy bought Church land with depreciated bonds
to reduce their taxes, and they speculated in grain.
The military had to stop banditry, riots, and help collect taxes.
The army cost about 40 million reales annually.
Officers and men bullied civilians.
Common soldiers faced brutal discipline and were poorly paid,
and conscription during the wars was unpopular.
The harvests of 1803-04 were bad, and food shortages
caused riots in Madrid in 1804.
That year cities in Andalucía were devastated by cholera.
In October the British navy captured three Spanish frigates
and destroyed another headed for Cadiz with 4.7 million pesos.
Spain declared war against the British on 12 December,
and they formed a naval alliance with France on 4 January 1805.
That year Cataluña’s cotton employment
had fallen to 30,000 workers.
Godoy’s most unpopular action was banning bull fights.
On 21 October the British navy led by Admiral Nelson
devastated the Spanish fleet off Trafalgar, dramatically
changing the relative sea power of the two empires.
From 1793 to 1814 only 1803 was without a war in Spain.
The kingdom was suffering from underemployment in the cities
and too little cultivation in the country which lacked
large-scale farming and intensive techniques.
Taxes and rents moved money from rural areas to the capital.
In May 1806 Godoy sent 24 million livres to Napoleon,
but in the fall he called Spain to arms, hoping that
the Prussians would defeat Napoleon.
After France’s victory Godoy claimed he was arming against
the British, and he sent 14,000 troops to Napoleon’s army
and agreed to join the Continental Blockade against Britain.
Spain had only twelve armed ships of the line,
and most of them lacked crews or needed repairs.
Godoy in November sponsored a school in Madrid
using Pestalozzi’s teaching methods.
In February 1807 Godoy allowed a papal brief to be
published that allowed the King to sell
a seventh of the ecclesiastical property.
That year only one ship left a Catalan port.
Princess Maria Antonia helped organize an opposition party
on behalf of her husband Fernando; but she died of tuberculosis
in May 1806, some suspecting she had been poisoned.
Prince Fernando was supported by the party of fernandistas.
On 18 October 1807 General Junot led a French army of
28,000 men that crossed the Bidassoa River into Spain.
Godoy sought foreign help.
On 27 October Spain and France agreed to a treaty at
Fontainbleau that aimed at conquering Portugal to complete
the blockade against the British and allowed
French troops to pass through Spain.
Godoy hoped to gain the principality of the Algarve for himself.
Then Napoleon turned toward Fernando
who had asked for a bride from his family.
Fernando patronized a libelous campaign against his mother
and Godoy, and he signed an undated document
as King of Castile naming military commanders.
Godoy accused Fernando of conspiracy. Maria Luisa warned
Carlos IV of a plot against his life, and also on October 29
at the Escorial palace they arrested Fernando
and confiscated his papers.
The next day Carlos announced that Fernando
had conspired to take the throne,
and he published his son’s confession on November 5.
The charges were not proven, and Godoy merely banished
the conspirators Escoiquiz, Infantado, and Montijo from court.
On 22 December a French army of 25,000 men led by
General Dupont occupied several towns in Old Castile.
In early January 1808 Marshal Moncey led a French army of
30,000 men into Navarre and the Basque provinces of Spain.
A Franco-Italian army of 14,000 crossed the eastern end of
the Pyrenees, and 30,000 more troops followed Dupont
and Morcey, giving Napoleon more than 100,000 soldiers
in the Iberian peninsula.
He appointed Joachim Murat his lieutenant emperor in Spain
on February 20, and the next day he ordered that no
Spanish ships were to be allowed to depart from Cadiz.
On March 9 he ordered Murat to march 50,000 men to Madrid.
Fernando summoned the Count of Montijo
there to organize an uprising.
At the royal palace in Aranjuez on 17 March 1808 a clash
between Godoy’s personal guard and the rebellious royal guard
led to soldiers, palace workers, and peasants rioting.
Carlos IV ordered the arrest of Godoy
who hid in his attic and was found two days later.
On that day Carlos and Maria Luisa abdicated in favor
of their son Fernando who pardoned Godoy.
A mob led by the radical Count of Montijo disguised
as a worker sacked and burned the houses of Godoy’s
mother, brother, and sister in Madrid.
Finance Minister Miguel Cayetano Soler was assassinated,
but a proclamation by King Fernando VII restored order.
On 23 March a French army led by Marshal Murat entered
Madrid to shouts for Napoleon and against Godoy.
Fernando VII arrived the next day and was cheered by a crowd.
He absolved all those involved in the Escorial conspiracy,
and he reversed Godoy’s sales of church property.
Murat and the French ambassador François de Beauharnais
refused to recognize Fernando, and they sent
Carlos IV and Maria Luisa to France.
Fernando had formed a regency council that included
Escoiquiz and Infantado, and he ordered
Urquijo and Jovellanos released.
Murat persuaded Fernando to leave Madrid
on April 10 to meet with Napoleon.
At Burgos he found French troops but not Napoleon.
Urquijo prophetically warned Fernando not to go to Bayonne
because it would lead to the French taking over Spain;
or if the British aided the Spaniards, Spain would become
a battlefield in their war against France.
Such conflict would lead to the loss of Spain’s colonies.
Fernando crossed the bridge over the Bidassoa River
to enter France on April 20.
At Bayonne the Emperor Napoleon told the Canon Escoiquiz
that he would end the Bourbon dynasty in Spain
even if he had to sacrifice 200,000 men.
Escoiquiz replied that Spaniards would fight for independence
which would ruin their country.
Godoy arrived at Bayonne on the 26th,
followed by Carlos IV and Maria Luisa two days later.
On 29 April the council received a letter from Fernando
that he was a captive.
On the first of May a large crowd waited for news from
Bayonne at the Puerta del Sol post office.
They hissed Murat as he passed by and cheered Fernando’s
uncle Antonio who was president of the Junta which that day
agreed to the departure of the youngest prince Francisco de Paula.
On 2 May 1808 a pamphlet in Spanish issued by Murat told
Spaniards to abandon their Bourbon monarchs
and accept a Napoleonic king.
Many workers took Mondays off,
and a crowd gathered outside the palace gates.
Cries of treachery that the French were taking away
their royal family aroused the crowd.
An official from a balcony shouted that the prince
was being abducted and that they should take up arms.
People in the streets shouted, “Viva Fernando VII!”
Two officers sent by Murat were threatened
and had to be escorted away by French soldiers.
Then the French fired a cannon into the crowd.
French cavalry attacked the large crowd in the Puerta del Sol
where a firing squad was depicted in
Francisco de Goya’s famous painting.
He made several paintings showing
the disastrous consequences of this war.
The fighting lasted about five hours, and 252 Spaniards
were killed (including 19 women who also fought bravely)
with about 560 wounded before
Murat’s 35,000 troops restored order.
He reported that 31 French were killed
and that 114 were wounded.
The French had executed about 125 people including
at least 17 who were not fighting.
News of Fernando’s abdication reached Madrid on May 9.
A national revolt against the French broke out in various places
as word spread during May.
At Bayonne on May 4 Carlos IV was forced to name
Josef Bonaparte Lt. General of Spain.
The next day a treaty was signed,
and news arrived of the revolt in Madrid.
Napoleon persuaded Fernando to abdicate on the 6th
so that his brother Josef could become King of Spain.
He had been King of Naples since 1806,
and that position went to Murat.
Napoleon guaranteed refuge in France for Carlos and his family
with an annual subsidy of 6 million francs for the royal couple.
Fernando was promised a chateau in Navarre
and 400,000 francs a year with the same amount
going to his brother Carlos and his uncle Antonio.
Reports of the revolt against the French went out
in the Gazeta de Madrid.
Valencia was the first major city to get the news
and join the uprising on May 23.
The next day resistance erupted in Zaragoza and Oviedo.
José Palafox was made governor and a revolutionary
captain-general in Zaragoza,
and he summoned the Cortes of Aragon.
The Marqués de Santa Cruz led the Junta in Oviedo.
On May 25 the General Assembly of Asturias
declared war on Napoleon.
On the evening of the 26th a revolt broke out in Seville.
The uprisings spread to Cadiz, Cordoba, Granada, Jaén,
Malaga, and the Badajoz fortress in Extremadura.
Spaniards also set up juntas at Tarragonia, Murcia,
Santander, and the Balearic Islands.
The juntas were drawn mostly from municipal, military,
and church leaders, and workers were rarely represented
and were often dissatisfied.
The Valencia Junta had fifty old authorities.
The canon Baltasar Calvo led anti-French smallholders
who wanted to remove “traitors” from the Junta,
and on the night of June 5 they murdered 200 French.
Calvo was caught, tried, and executed
in the Inquisition prison on July 4.
The Junta formed a tribunal of public safety and executed
68 people for slaughtering the French in Valencia and Segorbe,
and they also killed the Ayora governor.
French forces controlled only Toledo, Madrid, Lerma,
Aranda de Duero, Burgos, Vitoria, San Sebastian, Pamplona,
Barcelona, and Figueras.
Marshal Moncey led 8,400 men out of Madrid for Valencia
on June 4, the day that 3,800 French troops left Barcelona
to march into western Cataluña.
About fifty powerful Spaniards who refused to join
the uprising were assassinated, and half of these
were in Cataluña, Valencia, and Aragon.
On 15 June 1808 the British foreign secretary announced
that they would assist the Spanish patriots.
That day a force of 4,500 French besieged Zaragoza.
Palafox escaped and organized resistance in the country.
French attacks failed to take the city,
and they withdrew on August 14.
Marshal Moncey’s French army of 9,000 men
attacked Valencia on June 26-28 without success
and then retreated to Madrid.
On 7 July Napoleon issued a “constitution” which maintained
Catholicism as the only religion in Spain with its Inquisition.
Yet it called for reforms in finance, the judiciary,
and commerce to remove the vestiges of feudalism.
Torture and arbitrary arrests were banned.
The law was to be applied to all equally in Spain
and the colonies as special tax privileges were abolished.
King Josef crossed the border into Spain on 9 July escorted by
French troops with 100 carriages carrying the Spanish deputies.
He entered Madrid on the 20th to a few cheers by those
paid to do so, and he was proclaimed King of Spain
five days later.
A few nobles and local authorities swore loyalty,
but not the Council of Castile nor the people.
In 1808 Spain’s public debt had reached 7 billion reales,
equal to ten years’ revenues.
On July 14 about 14,000 French led by Marshal Bessières
defeated 22,000 Spaniards at Medina de Rioseco in Valladolid.
However, the army of the Seville Junta won a decisive victory
over the French led by Dupont at Bailén on July 16-19
as they killed 2,200 French while suffering only 978 casualties;
by the 23rd they had 17,635 prisoners
who were taken to the prison hulks in Cadiz harbor.
On 31 July 1808 King Josef left Madrid followed by the
French rear guard, and the next day
the people of Madrid celebrated.
Galicia, Castile, and Leon agreed to a union treaty on August 10.
A force of 8,000 Valencians and Murcians came to Madrid
on the 13th, and ten days later they were joined
by an army from Andalucía.
Catalans in Gerona fought off an attack
led by General Duhesme on August 17.
The Council of Castile met on August 11, and on the 24th
they proclaimed Fernando VII King of Spain and began
negotiating with the provincial juntas
to form a Supreme Central Junta.
On September 25 about 400 villagers in Oviedo broke into
the council chamber and arrested one of the junta’s deputies.
On the same day two deputies from each junta formed
the Junta Suprema which met in the palace of Aranjuez.
The 80-year-old Count Floridablanca
was elected the first president.
The Council of Castile and the provincial juntas soon
recognized the Suprema which referred to the juntas
as Superior Provincial Juntas of Observation and Defense.
The Suprema revived censorship of pamphlets.
By the end of September the French had gathered
60,000 soldiers north of the Ebro River.
The Suprema’s only known commoner, the merchant
Lorenzo Calvo de Rozas, was sent in early November to
Madrid where he got promises for 12 million reales for the
Central Army from his colleagues who wanted grandees
and the wealthy to pay as well.
In one day Rozas increased Madrid’s contribution
from 1.75 million to 6 million reales.
The eminent poet Manuel Quintana gave an address
on October 26 that was published two weeks later.
The Junta hoped to raise an army of 500,000 men with
50,000 horses, and his manifesto promised reforms
of the laws and improvements in education.
By September the British had provided £1,100,000
(about 66 million reales) as loans to five juntas, most of it
going to Galicia, Asturias, and Seville, and by December
the British had sent 195,000 muskets.
Spaniards blamed Emperor Napoleon for French troops
who plundered Spanish churches,
killed priests, and raped nuns.
On 4 November 1808 Napoleon led his Grand Army
of 250,000 men into Spain,
and they assembled along the Ebro River.
Spain had raised 130,000 soldiers with 6,000 cavalry
and 2,000 artillerymen with 140 cannons.
On the 11th French forces led by General Claude Victor
defeated the Spaniards at Expionsa de los Monteros.
On the 23rd a French army of 31,000 men overcame
33,000 Spaniards at Tudela in Navarre.
Napoleon advanced to Aranda del Duero.
The Suprema ordered Madrid fortified,
and on the first of December they fled
from Aranjuez toward Cadiz.
The next day Napoleon’s army reached the gates of Madrid
and prepared their artillery to bombard
the city from the Retiro height.
He threatened to execute all men caught with arms
if they did not surrender by dawn on December 4.
That morning they opened the gates for the French.
The Emperor then by decree abolished feudal rights,
the Council of Castile, and the Inquisition, and he reduced
religious communities to a third but designated funds
from their property to raise the salaries of secular priests.
Customs barriers in Spain were to be gone
by the end of the year.
Only the religious changes actually went into effect.
The Suprema was welcomed into Andalucía’s capital
at Seville on December 17.
On that day General St. Cyr led
25,000 French soldiers into Barcelona.
One week later a French army crossed
a bridge into Extremadura.
On the 28th the Suprema authorized a new kind of militia
of volunteers under army command, but they did not approve
of deserters from the enlisted forces joining them.
They lacked uniforms and often went without shoes.
The French besieged Zaragoza again on December 20,
and 54,000 died before 8,000 survivors from the city
surrendered on 20 February 1809.
The French had lost about 10,000 men.
Victor’s French army also defeated the Spaniards
at Uclés on 13 January 1809.
Many people resented the aristocratic juntas,
and so many riots broke out that the
Suprema ordered them suppressed on 3 February 1809.
Leaders could be shot, and followers could get 200 lashes
and 10 years in a penal colony.
The minimum sentence was forced enlistment in the army.
That month a riot in Cadiz overthrew the local junta
and removed a criminal judge.
On March 28 at Medellín a French army led by Marshal Victor
used its advantage in cavalry and cannons to defeat a larger
Spanish army that was mostly infantry and fled;
the French killed 8,000 and captured 2,000
while bearing only a thousand casualties.
On April 4 the Suprema ordered churches to hand over to them
treasure to prevent it from being taken by French troops,
but most prelates sent it to provinces in less danger instead.
Floridablanca died on December 30
and was replaced by Vice President Astorga.
Quintana had begun publishing the weekly
Semanario Patriotico in September 1808.
In 1809 José Blanco became the editor, and it was published
until the Constitution of Cadiz was proclaimed in March 1812.
In the fall of 1809 the poet Alberto Lista
began publishing El Espectador sevillano.
He defined “public opinion” as “the general voice of a
whole people convinced of a truth which
they have examined through discussion.”1
On 18 August 1809 Napoleon eliminated the old councils
and aristocratic titles.
On the same day he decreed that all male religious orders
were abolished, and he gave monks fifteen days
to dress as secular clergy.
On November 23 at Ocaña near Madrid 29,000 French
led by King Josef and Marshal Soult defeated
52,000 Spaniards and captured 14,000 men and 45 cannons.
Spain’s Central Army had 50,000 men when they moved
into La Mancha in November; but on the 26th
a French army of 16,000 men defeated a Spanish army
of 32,000 at Alba de Tormes.
Josef tried to divert the people of Madrid
with fiestas, theater, and bull fights.
The Suprema gave the colonies representation
in the government in early January 1809.
That month Spain received 66 million reales at Cadiz
rom the American colonies, and they would
get 218 million more that year.
On January 16 Lt. General John Moore led a British army
of 16,000 men that defeated an equal army of French under
Marshal Soult at La Coruña in Galicia,
but Moore was mortally wounded.
The next day Napoleon left Spain, and he never came back.
On 28 July about 55,000 Spaniards and British claimed
a victory over 46,000 French at Talavera,
though casualties on each side were about the same.
Another force led by Soult forced the Allies to retreat,
and the French were able to defeat the army
of La Mancha at Almonacid on August 11.
Criticism of the Suprema Junta increased in 1809,
and people began demanding a regency.
On 27 January 1810 Calvo de Rozas proposed that
a regency be formed, and four days later a 5-man regency
led by General Castaños replaced the Suprema Junta.
Riots in Seville had led the local junta to proclaim supremacy;
but they fled from the French, and Seville surrendered
without a fight on the first of February.
On the 5th the French besieged Spain’s major naval base
at Cadiz by forces on land that also
bombarded the fortress of Matagorda.
The Spaniards at Cadiz refused to surrender,
and they held out for more than two and a half years
until their allies helped them drive away the French.
On 28 January 1810 the citizens of Cadiz
had replaced the local junta with an election.
On 8 February the Emperor Napoleon decreed that
his generals would govern Cataluña, Aragon, Navarre,
and the Basque country north of the Ebro.
He soon added Burgos and the Valladolid-Palencia-Toro
district, and he put Marshal Soult in command of Andalucía.
On the night of 15 May more than 600 French prisoners
aboard the Castilla at Cadiz overcame the guards
and escaped with the ship during a storm.
In northern Spain the French besieged Ciudad Rodrigo
on 26 April 1810, and a French army of 42,000 men
overwhelmed the Spanish garrison of 5,500 men on July 10
capturing about 4,000 survivors.
Deputies who could get by sea to the Isla de Leon
met as the Cortes on September 24.
While the Spanish government was besieged at Cadiz,
the guerrilla fighting increased.
In 1810 El Empecinado was leading a thousand guerrillas.
By 1811 about 9,000 guerrillas were fighting against
the French on horses, and those on foot
were about five times as many.
They used mobility, speed, and surprise.
One tactic was for a band of about 20 men to seal off village
entrances and take over the town square to challenge notables
of suspected patriotism and take money and provisions.
The guerrillas increased the disease among the French troops
by seizing sheep, cattle, and grain carts
from their supply columns.
The French also stole food and money.
From 1810 to 1814 Marshal Suchet took from Aragon
150 million reales and just as much from Navarre.
In three years the French tried more than 2,000 people
accused of crimes and sentenced about 400 to death.
On 24 February 1811 the Cortes moved its assembly meetings
from the Isle of Leon to a church in Cadiz.
On March 5 a force of 9,600 Spaniards and 5,000 British
attacked Cadiz and inflicted heavier casualties on the French
but failed to break the siege.
On August 6 the Cortes abolished seigneurial privileges.
Landlords who could prove their title
kept their land as property,
but other territory reverted to the nation.
On the 17th the Cortes opened all military academies
to any Spaniard from an honorable family,
ending the exclusion of all but aristocrats.
On November 10 the Cortes decreed freedom
from censorship except for religious issues,
and they transferred religious censorship
from the Inquisition to the bishops.
On December 4 they prohibited deputies
from having other employment.
On 26 December a French army led by Marshal Suchet
surrounded Valencia, and food became scarce.
On 3 January 1812 soldiers took over friaries as barracks
while others sold their muskets and ammunition
so that they could buy food.
On the 8th Valencia capitulated, and 16,000 Spanish soldiers
were taken prisoner.
Suchet demanded that the region pay a war contribution,
and by the end of 1812 they paid 500,000 reales
and promised to loan 2 million.
The Duke of Wellington led British and Portuguese troops
from Portugal and captured the northern fortress
of Ciudad Rodrigo on January 19.
His army of 50,000 men occupied Salamanca.
The grain harvest in 1811 had been poor,
and in one year the price of wheat multiplied by five.
On 7 and 8 April 1812 starving people
assaulted bakeries in Madrid, and soldiers arrested forty.
During 1812 about 20,000 died during the famine in the capital,
and the secret police reported that 1,996 adults in Madrid
succumbed in May.
In Seville the major victims were children.
A Constitutional Commission presented the Cortes with a draft
on 18 August 1811, and after debating for five months
they approved the Constitution and elected five new regents
on 21 January 1812.
On 18 March 184 deputies signed
the Constitution that unified Spain.
The Cortes was given authority to make laws,
but their power was balanced by the
monarchical executive and the judiciary.
The King could veto laws but could be
overridden by a third annual session.
Deputies to the national assembly were elected
by equal districts of 70,000 male voters.
The king could appoint ministers, and the Cortes held them
responsible for following the Constitution.
The King could not stop the Cortes from meeting
and could not leave Spain, marry, abdicate, or make an alliance
or a commercial treaty without the consent of the Cortes.
Taxes were to be paid by all Spaniards based on their assets,
and they planned to establish primary schools in all townships.
Agustin de Arguelles argued for banning the slave trade,
but the Cortes rejected his proposal.
The Constitution made Roman Catholicism
the national religion protected by laws.
The librarian for the Cortes, the liberal Bartolomé Gallardo,
published his Critical and Satirical Dictionary in April,
but the Cadiz Junta’s censor had him arrested for three months.
On 26 January 1812 Napoleon decreed
his control over Cataluña.
The French army had 300,000 men in Spain in July 1811,
but by May 1812 they were down to 230,000 troops.
Guerrillas notified Wellington of a vulnerable French force,
and on July 22 his Anglo-Portuguese army of 52,000 men
defeated nearly 50,000 French near Salamanca,
taking 7,000 prisoners and opening the road to Madrid.
King Josef fled to Valencia.
On 12 August guerrillas and Wellington’s army
were cheered as they entered the capital.
Josef ordered Soult’s army of 70,000 men
to evacuate Andalucía.
Wellington moved north and besieged Burgos
as the French retreated.
As Josef and Soult’s army moved toward Madrid,
Wellington’s outnumbered army retreated to Portugal.
On 22 January 1813 the Cortes voted 90-60 to abolish
the Inquisition, and it was decreed on February 18.
In May they appointed the Duke of Wellington the supreme
commander of the Spanish armies.
Josef fled from Madrid again and made Valladolid his capital.
Wellington led an army of 75,000 allies and attacked Vitoria
on June 21, routing the French.
Josef fled to France and never returned.
Wellington wanted to give back to Spain more than
200 Spanish paintings he captured from the French,
but Fernando VII gave them to him.
Wellington’s army besieged San Sebastian and Pamplona.
Soult had an army of 85,000 that fought the Allies in the
Pyrenees for nine days in late July.
The Allies sacked and burned Sebastian on September 8.
On 14 September 1813 the emergency Cortes completed
its work, and after elections a newly elected Congress
opened on the first of October.
An outbreak of yellow fever motivated their move
to the Isla de Leon until November 29.
Napoleon signed the treaty of Valençay on December 11
restoring Fernando VII on the throne of Spain
and calling for an armistice.
They made a secret agreement that Fernando would use
the Spanish army to fight the British and Portuguese
if they continued to fight the French.
However, the Cortes in Cadiz had decreed in 1811 that
they would not recognize any deal made by Fernando
while he was not in Spain.
They announced that after he returned to Madrid.
On 15 January 1814 the national congress began meeting
at Madrid, and the liberals still held a reduced majority.
They voted not to consider Fernando VII free until
he returned to Spain and swore an oath to the Constitution.
Fernando entered Cataluña on March 22, but he visited
Zaragoza and avoided going to Madrid.
On April 16 he was enthusiastically received in Valencia.
His General Elio made a speech supporting the
King’s “natural rights” which was named the Persian Manifesto
(Manifiesto de los Persos).
On May 2 the Valencians smashed a tablet in the square
calling it the “plaza de la Constitucion.”
Two days later by decree Fernando abolished the
1812 Constitution and all the decrees of the Cortes,
claiming absolute power.
He appointed General Francisco Equia captain-general
and Secretary of War, and on the 11th Equia told the Cortes
president that the King had dissolved the assembly.
He began arresting liberals in Madrid and the provinces.
A mob probably led by the Count of Montijo tore down
the Constitution stone in the plaza
and destroyed the Cortes chamber.
Educated Spaniards were now divided
between the constitutional liberals and the royalists.
When Fernando VII returned to Madrid in May 1814,
the Spanish army had only 184,000 troops,
and the government was bankrupt.
Many unpaid soldiers turned toward the liberals while officers
were often attracted to the principles of the Masons.
The royal government refused to recognize the guerrillas
as regular troops and ordered them to disband.
On 2 October the King restored the rights of the
sheep ranchers’ council (Mesta), causing conflicts
over uncultivated land, and banditry increased.
The snubbed guerrilla leader Francsico Espoz y Mina
tried to seize Pamplona at night on September 25;
but not enough men followed him, and he fled.
In February 1815 Fernando VII sent 10,000 troops led by
Pablo Morillo to fight the rebels in Venezuela.
Juan Diaz Porlier rebelled, and for supporting the liberal Toreno
he was imprisoned in La Coruña where he incited a revolt
on September 19.
His attempt to seize Santiago failed, and he was taken back
to La Coruña and executed.
In December 1816 Martin de Garay was appointed
Finance Minister, and he applied the tax system
of the Cadiz Cortes.
Yet this provoked unrest.
General Lacy had commanded an army in Cataluña,
but he was demoted to the garrison at Barcelona.
He joined the guerrilla Francisco Milans del Bosch,
and they persuaded some of the garrison to revolt
and declared their purpose on 4 April 1817.
They were overcome and had to flee.
Milans escaped to France,
but Lacy was captured and executed.
Conscription of 17,500 men a year began in 1817.
From that year to 1819 many conspiracies arose
that included priests, officials, artisans, and businessmen
as well as soldiers.
Fernando VII ordered a large army to gather at Cadiz
to suppress the revolution in Buenos Aires;
but not enough ships could be found,
and Francisco Javier Isturiz
contacted the waiting soldiers on behalf of merchants.
On the first of January 1820 Lt. Col. Rafael del Riego
in a small town north of Cadiz
proclaimed the Constitution of 1812.
Many of the conspirators were devastated
by yellow fever in Cadiz.
The soldiers got little support from the people,
and many deserted.
Riego led some troops inland,
and they were trapped on March 11 and dispersed.
Riego marched into Andalucia
where he was welcomed as a hero.
In February the towns rising up included La Coruña, Vigo,
El Ferrol, Pontevedra, Murcia, and Zaragoza.
Fernando offered to make reforms on March 3;
but Count Abisbal, the Captain General of Andalucia,
and Madrid’s governor General Ballesteros turned
against him as rioting broke out in Madrid.
On the 7th the King agreed
to restore the Constitution of 1812,
and two days later in the Cortes
he took his oath to that Constitution.
General Ballesteros led the Provisional Junta Government
that supported King Fernando VII but urged him
to appoint moderate ministers.
Men of property attempted to control the town councils
(ayuntamientos), delegations (diputaciones), militias,
and patriotic clubs that rose up.
The aristocratic Pedro Agustin Giron became the Minister of War.
This government revived the institutions of the Constitution
of 1812 and the laws made by the Cortes of Cadiz.
Those servile to the King were removed from the administration.
A new Cortes was elected and opened on July 9.
Political power was decentralized, and people were
given relief from taxes, conscription, tithes, and feudal dues.
The Galicia junta and some southern juntas abolished taxes.
Deputies had to be at least 25 years old.
Young people joined the patriotic societies and became
the radical exaltados opposed
to the well established Moderates.
Riego became Captain-general of Galicia,
but some officers planned a revolt.
He went to Madrid in August 1820,
and the clubs protested in the streets.
To mollify him the Minister of War Giron was replaced
by a commander who had opposed the coup of 1814.
The Overseas Army was to be abolished,
and an exaltado demonstration turned angry.
In reaction Riego was dismissed and banished.
To stop the disturbances the Cortes restricted
freedom of the press and banned political clubs.
King Fernando VII appointed an opponent of the Constitution
as Archbishop of Valencia; but the Cortes rejected him
before it closed on November 9.
The King then named José Maria de Carvajal
the Captain-general of New Castile.
The Cortes canceled the ban on the clubs,
and they supported Riego who became
Captain-general of Aragon.
When the government moved against the political clubs,
the exaltados formed secret societies they called comuneros.
On 21 January 1821 the honorary royal chaplain
Agustin Vinuesa was arrested for conspiracy
in Madrid during the carnival.
On 6 February crowds disrupted the King’s carriage ride
and clashed with his Royal Guards.
Fernando VII agreed to dissolve the Guards
in exchange for peace two days later,
and his soldiers who had not escaped were imprisoned.
While opening the Cortes that month Fernando complained,
and the next day he replaced his government by appointing
new ministers led by Eusebio de Bardaji.
The Cortes passed military reforms.
The Cortes reduced tithes by half in March.
Guerrilla bands and insurgent juntas were forming,
and in April disturbances occurred
in Alava and Old Castile.
Bands were active in Cataluña, Valencia,
and the Basque provinces.
In the American colonies Mexicans
began a revolt in January 1821.
Bolivar’s forces were victorious at Carabobo in June
and moved into Ecuador,
and San Martin’s army captured Lima.
Spain was no longer getting treasure from America
and had a national debt of 14,219,000,000 reales.
The Cortes refused to compromise and rejected
a proposed transatlantic federation.
To raise revenue the government sold Church lands at auctions,
and those who bought them raised rents on the peasants.
Morillo returned to Spain and was made
Captain-general of Madrid.
When the government learned that Riego was encouraging
the exaltados, they dismissed him, provoking more resistance.
Demonstrators in Madrid were dispersed on September 18.
The Cortes held a special session and mobilized 16,000 men.
Later in 1821 revolts broke out in Cadiz, Seville, Cartagena,
Murcia, Valencia, and La Coruña.
Moderates responded by supporting the
counter-revolutionaries.
Royalists in Cataluña fled to France.
Barcelona suffered economically and then
was devastated by yellow fever.
Guerrillas burned monasteries and churches,
and they murdered clergy.
The militia executed at least fifty clerics.
On 28 February 1822 Fernando VII appointed a ministry
of moderate liberals led by Martinez de la Rosa.
In early July the Royal Guards came into conflict with the militia,
and on the 7th four Pardo (tri-racial) battalions marched into
Madrid and helped the militia overcome the Royal Guards.
After this defeat some royalists began turning toward the
King’s brother Carlos.
On 21 June royalists captured the Seo de Urgel in northern
Cataluña and slaughtered the garrison.
The Royal Guards revolted on the first of July,
but forces led by General Ballestero defeated them
by the 7th, saving the Constitution.
One week later a major uprising occurred at Orihuela
in the Levante.
Royalist juntas backed rebellions
in Navarre, Aragon, and Galicia.
In the general elections of 1822 the exaltados won a majority,
and Fernando VII had to appoint
Evaristo de San Miguel to head the administration.
Yet landed proprietors increased in the Cortes from 45 to 61,
and agrarian policy was not changed.
The Cortes had another extraordinary session from
15 September to 19 February 1823 and called up
about 60,000 troops and borrowed 348 million reales.
Mina led the army in Cataluña and regained Seo de Urgel.
On 9 January 1823 the Cortes refused to let San Miguel
modify the Constitution.
Fernando VII dismissed San Miguel’s ministry,
but the Regency riots on February 19 forced him to recall them.
Morillo in Galicia opposed the Constitutional Regency in Cadiz
and the Royalist Regency, and he tried to negotiate
a constitutional settlement with the French.
The radical revolts reminded monarchical France of the Jacobins
in the Revolution, and on April 7 a French army of 60,000 men
invaded Spain. Riego led an army against the French,
but on September 15 he was betrayed and taken
as a prisoner to Madrid.
He was convicted of treason for having voted to take power
away from the King,
and he was hanged on November 7.
Fernando VII appointed more radicals.
A mob persuaded him to reinstate San Miguel,
and he left for Seville.
The Spanish armies retreated from the Pyrenees
while in the east Mina took refuge in Barcelona
which the French then blockaded for months.
Moderates such as Morillo, Abisbal, and Ballestros
defected or surrendered to the French.
San Miguel resigned at Seville and was replaced
by a government led by José Maria Calatrava.
They decided to move to Cadiz and forced the reluctant
Fernando VII to go with them by declaring him insane.
The French besieged Cadiz again on June 23,
and the city surrendered on the first of October.
On 30 September 1823 the French restored Fernando VII
after he promised an amnesty.
Resistance ended at Alicante on November 5.
During the three years of revolt the administration
and judiciary were purged.
Most of the army was disbanded,
and much property was confiscated.
Fernando issued a partial amnesty.
He made his trusted ally, Luis Lopez Ballesteros,
his Minister of Finance in 1824.
He reformed taxes to try to reduce the national debt.
By January 1826 Spain had lost all its American colonies
to independence except for Cuba and Puerto Rico.
Fernando VII would allow no liberals at his court
nor any talk about a constitution.
The ministers imposed his despotism that was supported
by the French occupying forces.
In 1827 a revolt broke out in Cataluña,
but troops restored order.
Madrid had a stock exchange, and in 1828
they put on an Industrial Exhibition.
Alberto Lista promoted his conservative reforms as based on
“progressive education in the natural sciences and useful arts.”
The Minister of Justice Francisco Tadeo Calomarde
from 1824 to 1832 backed royal absolutism
and opposed representative government.
The second restoration of Fernando VII from 1823
to his death in 1833 was a time of repression
and vigilantes with royalist volunteers.
Attempts to revive the economy applied
some liberal economic policies.
Queen Maria I reigned over Portugal 1777-1815;
but she suffered from melancholy, and in February 1792
Francis Willis, the physician who treated George III,
diagnosed her as insane and doctored her too.
José Seabra da Silva became Prime Minister of Portugal
in December 1788, and Luis Pinto de Sousa Coutinho
was the Minister for Foreign Affairs and War.
Seabra drafted the order that led to Prince João
being made Regent, and the document was signed
by 17 physicians on 10 February 1792.
The 24-year-old João had also been ill
and was reluctant to rule himself.
He agreed to govern but was not formally
declared regent until 1799.
The French Revolution influenced Portugal,
and in 1794 the board of censorship was transferred
from the Inquisition to an appeal judge for political affairs.
Portugal formed a convention with Britain, and in 1793 João
sent a force of 5,000 soldiers for the Roussillon campaign in
the
Pyrenees and in September 6,000 troops to the Catalan front.
In January 1796 Prince João met with
Spain’s Carlos IV on the frontier.
Spain declared war against England on October 8,
but the Portuguese tried to negotiate neutrality in Paris.
A Portuguese frigate provided intelligence that helped
the British defeat the Spanish fleet off
Cape St. Vincent on 14 February 1797.
The French Directory expelled the Portuguese
diplomat from France in April.
In March three regiments of French émigrés had arrived
in Portugal, and in June 6,000 British troops reached the Tagus.
The Directory negotiated with the Portuguese and the English
in Paris in August and proposed that Portugal pay a large
indemnity, not aid Britain, and limit foreign powers
to six ships in Portuguese ports at one time.
This would have violated their alliance
and ended the negotiation.
The Portuguese envoy was arrested
and detained in Paris until March 1798.
In July a Portuguese squadron aided the British navy at
Alexandria, angering Napoleon who threatened revenge.
In November 1800 the British envoy Hookham Frere at
Lisbon said that they could not aid Portugal.
In January 1801 Napoleon and Spain’s Godoy demanded
that Portugal close its ports to the British and open them
to Spain and France, give a quarter of its territory to Spain,
and pay indemnities.
Although Prince João sent a negotiator to Madrid,
Spain declared war.
On May 20 the Spaniards invaded Portugal
and occupied Olivença.
Godoy sent oranges to Queen Maria Luisa and wrote
that he would go to Lisbon without anything.
However, the two sides at Badajoz soon ended the
“War of the Oranges” as the Portuguese agreed to close
their ports to English ships, grant France commercial
concessions, and pay an indemnity of 20 million livres
of which 5 million was secretly split between
Godoy and Lucien Bonaparte.
Napoleon’s demand to partition Portugal arrived on June 7,
the day they agreed; but they antedated the treaty.
The French sent General Lannes as their ambassador
at Lisbon, and he demanded that Pina Manique be
dismissed to stop his blocking their revolutionary
propaganda; but the ministers refused to give him
access to Prince João, and Lannes left.
In June 1803 the British consented to Portugal’s declaration
of neutrality, and they agreed to avoid Portuguese ports.
French troops entered Spain, and Napoleon persuaded Spain
to get one million livres a month from Portugal.
Lannes came back and with threats gained the dismissal of
Portugal’s Foreign Secretary and Chief of Police
and the expulsion of the émigré regiments.
Portugal in December agreed to pay
16 million livres in 16 months.
After the British captured Spain’s treasure fleet in October,
France pressured Godoy to declare war on Portugal
by offering him a principality in Portugal.
Napoleon sent General Andoche Junot as his ambassador
to Lisbon where he arrived in April 1805.
In June 1806 Britain and France made peace,
and Godoy convinced France to guarantee Portugal’s
independence in September.
On 19 July 1807 the French insisted that Portuguese
ports be closed to British ships before September.
On 12 August the French and Spanish demanded that Portugal
declare war on Britain, dismiss the English ambassador,
arrest the British in Portugal, and confiscate their goods.
Portugal’s Council decided to close their ports
but not break off relations with their longtime ally.
French and Spanish diplomats left Lisbon on the first
of October, and on the 18th Junot led a French army into Spain.
On the 27th the treaty at Fontainebleau called for partitioning
Portugal, giving the north to Spain, the central region
with the capital to France, and the south to Godoy.
A British fleet reached the Tagus River on November 17,
and the Portuguese Council decided to send
the royal family to Brazil.
The royal court with their retainers boarded fifteen
Portuguese ships and departed on the 29th for Brazil.
That day Junot arrived with 10,000 French troops,
and on the first of February 1808 he proclaimed
his government under Napoleon.
Junot drafted a constitution asserting personal liberty,
religious tolerance, legal equality, and separation
of executive, legislative, and judicial powers.
At the same time 50,000 French and Spanish troops
were plundering the country.
The Bragança family would remain in Brazil from 1808 to 1821.
Viscount Strangford went to Rio de Janeiro in July 1808
and made a treaty on behalf of the British with Prince João
in February 1809; but Foreign Secretary Canning insisted
on changes, and it was finalized in May 1810.
On 6 June 1808 the Portuguese in Oporto arrested
the French governor and proclaimed
Prince João with the bishop as president.
Similar rebellions occurred in Braga,
Bragança, Viana, and Guimarais.
By July central Portugal except Lisbon was liberated,
followed by the Algarve.
Prince João in Brazil declared war on France.
The Oporto Junta and Spanish juntas appealed to Britain,
and Arthur Wellesley (later Duke of Wellington) led a forc
that landed at the Montego in early August
and advanced to Leiria and Alcobaça.
On the 17th they pushed back the French at Roliça.
The British had 16,700 troops at Vimeiro
with 2,000 Portuguese,
and on 21 August they defeated the French at Lourinha.
The convention of Sintra made on the 30th allowed Junot’s
army to be taken back to France on British ships.
The Portuguese Regency Council was restored in Lisbon
in September, and they included representatives of the juntas.
In January 1809 William Carr Beresford was named
commander-in-chief of Portugal’s army,
and he began training 4,500 men.
Marshal Soult led the second French invasion of Portugal,
and they occupied Chaves and reached Oporto on March 24.
Portuguese led by Pinto da Fonseca regained Chaves,
and Wellesley returned to Lisbon on April 21,
and 17,000 British and 7,000 Portuguese gathered at Coimbra.
These allies and the French both lost more than
7,000 men in the battle at Talavera on July 27-28.
The French forces retreated into Spain,
and Wellesley was given the title Duke of Wellington.
Marshal Masséna was put in command of 62,000 French
and the generals Reynier, Victor, and Junot.
In August 1810 they crossed the Beira frontier into Portugal.
Wellington’s army of 25,000 British and as many Portuguese
defeated the French army of 65,000
at Bussaco on September 27.
Masséna moved on and sacked Coimbra,
but the Portuguese drove out the garrison he left there.
In November the French were forced to retreat to Santarem
which they held until March 1811.
Wellington’s army attacked them near Sabugal on April 3
and then Masséna’s army withdrew from Portugal,
leaving a garrison in the fortress of Almeida.
Wellington’s army was victorious at Fuentes de Oñoro on May 5,
and the remaining French forces withdrew from Portugal.
The treaty of Paris on 30 May 1814 canceled the treaties
that France and Spain made against Portugal,
and article 105 was supposed to restore
Olivença to Portugal; but Spain retained the territory.
Queen Maria I died on 20 March 1816, and her son João
already ruling as Regent was crowned as King João VI.
In May 1785 he had married the 10-year-old Carlota Joaquina,
who was the daughter of Spain’s King Carlos IV
and sister of the now reigning Fernando VII.
She was ambitious and after 1807 hoped she might become
regent in Spain during Fernando’s exile in France or of
Spanish America when her husband’s
family was in exile in Brazil.
João became aware of her intrigues
and had her secretary removed in March 1812.
They had two sons and four daughters.
In Brazil they lived apart except for state occasions.
The older Prince Pedro lived with João while
Prince Miguel resided in Carlota’s country house.
The Bragança João VI ruled the United Kingdom
of Portugal, Brazil and the Algarve.
In 1817 Antonio de Araujo, Count of Barca, gained influence
for the French, and Prince Pedro became a leading liberal.
The growing Masons opposed royal absolutism,
and in March 1817 their republican movement began in
Pernambuco, Brazil and continued for seven weeks.
General Gomes Freire became grandmaster of the Portuguese
Masons, but in May he was arrested and hanged.
Marshal Beresford was blamed for this harsh sentence
which increased discontent.
In June the British Foreign Secretary Castlereagh urged
João to go back to Portugal or send his heir Pedro.
The magistrate Manuel Fernandes Tomas fostered Jacobinism
by founding a Masonic lodge in Oporto in January 1818.
By then the regency was near bankruptcy.
Beresford could not pay the soldiers,
and he went back to Brazil.
The liberal insurrection that broke out in Spain in 1820
spread to Portugal, and on 24 August two colonels
read proclamations to their troops in Oporto.
They wanted to remove Beresford and make
the Bragança family return to Portugal.
The municipal council of Oporto formed a national junta
and sent a message to João VI.
The regents in Lisbon condemned the rebellion;
but they agreed to a Cortes and told the junta to dissolve itself.
The junta refused, and on 15 September a Lisbon junta
announced a provisional government led by Gomes Freire.
On 27 October the two juntas formed two other bodies
to prepare for a Cortes supported by Fernandes Tomas.
João sent a message pardoning the rebels, approving
the Cortes convocation, and promising that he
or his son would return but did not say when.
In October when Beresford reached Lisbon,
he was not allowed to land and went on to England.
Portugal’s Academy of Sciences advised a Cortes
of three estates with 30 nobles, 23 clergy,
and 150 commoners nominated by municipalities.
Fernandes Tomas suggested nominating one elector
per 600 families.
Before the election some Jacobin soldiers urged adopting
Spain’s 1812 Constitution, but they agreed to accept
reducing the electoral districts to 200 families.
The elected deputies met at Lisbon on 24 January 1821.
They worked on a constitution and agreed to end feudalism,
the Inquisition, and offices not authorized by the constitution.
This offended the Church,
and the Cardinal refused to take the oath.
The Cortes voted 88-1 to remove citizenship from anyone
who did not take the oath and 84-5 to banish ex-citizens.
On March 9 the draft was promulgated, and the nuncio
refused to light his palace and had his windows broken.
The Austrian and Russian ambassadors complained and left.
In December the Count of Palmela went to Rio de Janeiro
to urge King João to make concessions
and send his son to Portugal.
In January 1821 a similar movement had begun in Brazil,
and on February 26 they formed a liberal ministry.
João decided to leave Pedro in Brazil, and the
King arrived in Lisbon three days after
the Constitution had been published on June 30.
Austria, Prussia, and Russia had formed a “Holy Alliance”
and had opposed a liberal government in Naples,
but the British promised to support Portugal if their
government was moderate and accepted by João.
On 13 May 1822 Pedro proclaimed himself
“Perpetual Defender and Protector” of Brazil,
and he sent back most of the Portuguese troops in Brazil.
When Portugal’s government sent more soldiers,
Pedro refused to let them land.
The deputies asked him to return to Europe to
complete his education, or he could be dismissed.
Pedro responded that he wanted “independence or death,”
and on October 12 he proclaimed himself
the constitutional Emperor of Brazil.
The deputies had finished the Constitution,
and on 23 September João VI took the oath.
The executive was the King and his ministers, but they were
not represented in the Cortes and could not dissolve it.
The Cortes was the legislative power, but it had no nobles
or clergy at its first dispensation in December.
Royalists objecting were led by the Count of Amarante.
The French returned to Spain in April 1823,
and Fernando VII was restored on May 24.
Three days later the Portuguese rose up at
Vila Franca de Xira just north of Lisbon.
Some in Lisbon’s garrison joined them, and they were
supported by Prince Miguel and his mother Carlota
who had refused to take the constitutional oath.
Because of her poor health she was not exiled and was
allowed to live in the palace at Queluz near Sintra.
After King João joined Miguel and the royalists
at Vila Franca, the deputies yielded with only 61 of 211
showing up for the last session of the Cortes.
João appointed moderate ministers such as Palmela
and General Pamplona,
and Miguel was named generalissimo.
A committee was formed in June
to consider the future but did little.
Palmela asked for British mediation in September.
In November the new Spanish ambassador brought
a message from the Holy Alliance opposing
constitutional government for Portugal.
British and Austrian mediators did not meet
in London until the middle of 1824.
In February 1824 the Marquis of Loulé went hunting
with Miguel and his friends and was later found dead.
In April some royalists from the Lisbon garrison
recognized Miguel as king.
He issued a proclamation alleging a conspiracy
to murder the royal family,
and he had the police chief and others arrested.
Palmela and Subserra hid on a ship in the Tagus,
leaving João isolated in the Bemposta palace.
Carlota joined Miguel at Ajuda.
The French diplomat Hyde de Neuville supported
the legitimate King João whom he found
with the returned Beresford at Bemposta.
João boarded the British ship Windsor Castle,
demoted Miguel and ordered him to come there.
The Prince was detained on the ship,
and his mother went back to Sintra.
After five days João sent Miguel to Paris,
but he moved on to Vienna.
Palmela asked Canning to send British troops,
but he only maintained the British fleet
at Lisbon with 750 marines.
On 13 May 1825 King João recognized
his son Pedro as sovereign in Brazil.
The British sent Charles Stuart to Lisbon, and he went
to Rio de Janeiro and affirmed Brazil’s independence.
The treaty signed on August 29 reached Lisbon in
November when João recognized Brazil as
an independent empire with his daughter Maria-Isabel
as president of the regency council.
João VI died on 10 March 1826.
The regency council offered their allegiance to Pedro
who was also recognized by Britain, Austria, France,
Russia, and Miguel in Vienna.
Fernando VII and his sister Carlota refused.
Pedro confirmed the regency of his sister, and he promised
a constitutional Charter for Portugal
which was signed on April 29.
Pedro offered to abdicate in favor of his 7-year-old daughter
Maria da Gloria if Miguel would be betrothed to her
and accept the new constitution.
Stuart brought the Charter to Lisbon in July.
Maria da Gloria would not come of age for seven years,
but she would be queen until Miguel’s 25th birthday
in October 1827 because of the Charter.
Miguel in Vienna accepted this.
The Minister of War João Carlos Saldanha was liberal
and supported the Charter, and the royalists fled
into Spain where they were welcomed.
Spain’s government declined to disarm them,
and Regent Maria-Isabel appealed to Britain.
Canning sent a small force under General Clinton,
and this persuaded the royalist bands who had returned
to go back to Spain where this time they were disarmed.
The new Cortes assembled in October 1826
with an upper house of 69 aristocrats
and 15 prelates and a lower house of 111 deputies.
Metternich urged Pedro to appoint Miguel regent,
but he refused to do so.
Yet Pedro did send Maria da Gloria to Portugal to unite the
moderates, and he appointed Miguel his lieutenant in Portugal.
Miguel returned by way of Paris and London,
reaching Lisbon on 22 February 1828.
He took the oath to Pedro and the Charter
and became lieutenant-general.
Carlota came and gathered friends and named enemies.
Miguel appointed royalists, and disturbances
began on the first of March.
Carlota removed provincial governors
and military leaders who opposed them.
Moderates as well as radicals began fleeing,
and by the 12th the British ships were filled with refugees.
The traditional Cortes was convoked
in April 1828 and met in June.
They recognized Miguel as the legal heir
and declared the Charter invalid.
The foreign diplomats including the Spaniards with the
exception of the United States and Mexico protested
the suppression of the charter and refused
to recognize the new government.
On 24 April the British recalled their forces from Portugal.
On 18 May the Oporto garrison announced loyalty to Pedro,
Maria da Gloria, and the Charter, and this movement spread.
Miguel was crowned king on 11 July. Palmela and Saldanha
returned from England to Oporto to lead the junta;
but Miguelites came and dissolved the junta.
Saldanha and Palmela fled while the liberal forces
retreated to Galicia and then Plymouth.
Maria da Gloria learned of the change at Gibraltar
and went to England where George IV
received her as Queen on December 22.
The royalists arrested about 8,000 in Oporto and 30,000
in Lisbon, and they executed 115.
In a debate on the first of June 1829 Lord Palmerston
in Parliament criticized the Miguelites.
Yet European politics would begin changing after the
French overthrew the Bourbon monarchy in July 1830.
By the end of the year Miguel’s troops were seven months
behind in pay, and government money was discounted 30%.
From 1789 the French Revolution influenced the various Italian
governments, and many Freemasons
supported revolutionary reforms.
Masonic lodges in Milan, Bologna, Rome, and Naples had
Illuminati cells that wanted republican constitutions.
Lodovico Ricci worked for the Duchy of Modena and Reggio
to reform charity, and he used statistics to base tax rates
on the land’s capacity and production from 1788 to 1791.
In 1790 people rose up against nobles
and landlords in Pistoia and Florence.
In October of 1791 Brissot urged a crusade
against rulers to liberate the people of Europe.
In the fall of 1792 French Revolutionary forces invaded Savoy,
and King Ferdinando IV of Naples yielded
to the French fleet in December.
On the 15th Pierre-Joseph Cambon instructed French officers
that people liberated would have to pay
for the armies that freed them.
The French policy was to set up sister republics beyond
their natural frontiers that would provide
protection and financial support.
On 18 September 1794 Cambon proposed that priests
should not be supported by the French Republic but by
their own congregations, and the French Assembly
accepted this enthusiastically.
One year later France proclaimed the principle of
separation of Church and State with freedom of religion.
Naples joined the allies fighting France in the summer of 1793.
Tenant farmers in Piedmont were starving under their landlords,
and conspiracies formed as in Naples at the Celestini Lodge.
They were discovered, and the leaders
were executed in October 1794.
Freemasons were also suppressed in Turin, Rome, and Palermo.
In 1795 French agents promoted
patriotic societies throughout Italy.
Philippe Buonarroti, a descendant of Michelangelo,
became a Freemason in 1786, and in 1787 he founded
the Gazetta Universale in Tuscany that
Grand Duke Pietro Leopoldo condemned as subversive.
He went to Corsica where he started another patriotic
journal in Italian to advance the French Revolution.
Buonarroti was expelled and returned
to Tuscany where he was imprisoned.
In 1793 he moved to Paris and became a French citizen.
In 1794 the French Army of Italy appointed
him the National Commissioner of Oneglia in Liguria
that had been invaded by Sardinia’s King Vittorio Amadeo III.
Buonarroti founded a republic based on the Revolution;
but after the overthrow of the Jacobins, he was recalled
to France in March 1795 and imprisoned
with the conspirator Babeuf for seven months.
In November they founded the Panthéon Club, and then
opposing private property they formed
the Conspiracy of Equals.
Early in 1796 Buonarroti urged France to liberate Italy.
The Conspiracy was discovered on May 10,
and they were arrested again.
Babeuf was beheaded.
Buonarroti was imprisoned until Napoleon freed him in 1799.
The French led by Napoleon Bonaparte invaded Italy again
in March 1796 and defeated the Piedmontese army three
times in April at Montenotte, Millesimo, and Mondovi.
On the 28th Sardinia’s King Vittorio Amadeo III signed
an armistice at Cherasco that let him keep Piedmont,
but he gave France control over Savoy, Nice,
Alpine passes, and five fortresses.
In 1796 some central Italian states paid ransoms
to France to prevent military occupation.
A prize was offered for the best essay written in Italian,
French, or Latin on what kind of
free government would suit Italy.
Melchiorre Gioia won the prize advocating
a unitary republic that could resist invasion.
Napoleon’s army defeated the Austrians at Lodi on
10 May 1796, and five days later they took over Milan from
the Austrians and then drove their army
back to the Venetian Republic.
Milan was ordered to supply 20 million francs
and provisions for the French army.
On May 21 Napoleon announced that
he intended to march on Rome.
A French army besieged Mantua on June 4 while other
French forces captured Ravenna, Ferrara, and Bologna
where they made peace on the 23rd.
The Papacy agreed to pay 15 million livres within three months
and provide goods worth 5.5 million along with 100 works
of art and 500 manuscripts selected by French experts.
In October 1796 representatives from Bologna, Ferrara,
and Reggio Emilia met in Modena, and the four provinces
formed the Cispadane Republic on December 27.
Napoleon persuaded them to hold another congress in January.
On the first of March 1797 the Congress of Modena adopted
a constitution that restrained the Catholic Church in the
Cispadane Republic.
For the next two years the Italian peninsula would experiment
with republics imposed by the French.
Napoleon ordered that any revolts against French rule
be ruthlessly suppressed.
In the winter of 1796-97 the French defeated the Austrians
in Venetian territory, and their siege
took over Mantua on 2 February 1797.
On 31 January 1797 Napoleon declared war
against the Papal States.
On February 19 Pope Pius VI made peace at Tolentino, and
he agreed to transfer Bologna and the northern Papal States
to France and pay an indemnity of nearly 33 million francs.
The French conquered the Po plain in April.
Then they occupied Modena and invaded Tuscany
to the commercial port at Livorno where
the French seized goods abandoned by the British.
Lodovico Manin was elected the last
Doge of Venice on 9 May 1789.
Venice had only about 5,000 soldiers on land, and they tried
to remain neutral during the French invasion of Italy.
Napoleon blamed them for letting Austrians take over their
Peschiera fortress in May 1796, and he threatened to
burn down Verona if it did not surrender
and support the French troops.
In March 1797 Bergamo and Brescia rebelled against Venice;
but Venetian rule was restored at Salò as they took
about 300 prisoners including 200 Poles.
On the 27th Crema opened its gates to the French
and was declared free.
Venice recruited more soldiers and increased
their army to about 10,000 men.
Napoleon sent General Junot with an ultimatum
for Venice where he arrived on Good Friday.
He insisted on delivering his message the next day (April 15).
Bonaparte’s letter asked if they wanted war or peace,
and he demanded that they disperse their militias.
That evening the Senate approved
a letter of apology and loyalty,
and they released the political prisoners they took at Salò.
People at Verona rose up against the French on April 17
and imprisoned 400 Frenchmen.
Other French took refuge in the citadel and castles,
and three days later French troops arrived
and released them, restoring order by April 23.
Napoleon demanded an indemnity of 120,000 ducats
and seized artworks in Verona, letting his soldiers loot the city.
He demanded 40,000 pairs of boots and took other provisions
and horses, and a firing squad shot eight leaders of the revolt.
On 18 April 1797 at Leoben the French and Austrians
negotiated an armistice that included eleven secret articles
which included ceding the Venetian Republic and Romagna,
Ferrara, and Bologna to Austria which gave up Lombardy,
Istria, Dalmatia, and territory between the Oglio,
the Po, and the Adriatic.
Venice’s Council of Ten had closed its harbor to foreign warships.
On April 20 the Libérateur d’Italie commanded by
Citizen Ensign Jean-Baptiste Laugier sought refuge
signaling surrender, but he and four crewman were killed.
The Venetian Senate commended Pizzamento for ordering
the attack, and this incident outraged Napoleon.
He demanded that they abdicate in favor of a democracy.
The Senate would not meet after April 29.
The Great Council met on May 1 and promised
to release all political prisoners.
Napoleon had already sent 15 proofs of their hostility,
and on the 9th his secretary Villetard presented his list of
demands that included abolishing the death penalty,
erecting a Tree of Liberty, a manifesto creating a democracy,
general amnesty for political offenders, freedom of the press,
3,000 French troops in Venice, putting the Venetian fleet
under French command, and replacing Venetian
ambassadors with democrats.
On May 12 the Great Council approved 512-20
the Doge’s motion for the oligarchy to surrender to
a provisional democratic government.
On June 4 the French celebrated the liberation of Venice.
However, elections were never held because on October 17
the Emperor Napoleon gave the Venetian Republic
to Austria in the treaty at Campo Formio.
Those supporting French reforms had risen up in Genoa,
and they proclaimed the Ligurian Republic on 6 June 1797.
Democrats formed the Cisalpine Republic in Lombardy
on 29 June, and four weeks later
they annexed the Cispadane Republic.
They nationalized Church lands, abolished feudal privileges
and primogeniture, and decreed free trade within the republic
which was expected to pay for their 30,000 troops
and the occupying French army of 25,000.
Napoleon in the Campo Formio treaty refused to let the
Venetians join the Cisalpine Republic, and his ceding Venice
to Austria offended the French Directory and Italian patriots.
The Cisalpine Republic paid 178,000 francs
to support the French occupying army in 1798.
In February 1798 people in the Cisalpine Republic
rebelled against French officers.
That year the French had to impose four coups d’etat
to exclude those in the legislatures
who were opposing French directives.
On December 9 the French and violent conspiracies
drove Carlo Emanuele IV from Piedmont
which France annexed in February 1799.
Napoleon had left Italy in November 1797 to return to France,
and he invaded Egypt next.
On 11 January 1798 the French government ordered the
army to march on Rome, and they occupied
Monte Mario and the Ponte Molle on February 9.
The next day the College of Cardinals surrendered Rome,
and on the 15th the French proclaimed the Roman Republic.
Two days later Pope Pius VI was ordered to leave
within three days, and he did so.
He was escorted to Siena and then to Tuscany
until war there forced him to go north.
The Pope died at Valence in southern France
on 29 August 1799.
The conclave met at a monastery in Venice on November 30
but did not elected Bishop Chiaramonti
to be Pope Pius VII until 14 March 1800.
In 1798 and 1799 the French had many conflicts between
their civilian commissars and the military generals.
In January 1799 French forces took over Lucca and forced
nobles to loan them 2.25 million francs, but in July
they left to avoid the invading Austrians and Russians.
Ferdinando IV of Naples occupied Rome in November 1798
to restore Pius VI.
French forces defeated Ferdinando’s army, and in December
the Neapolitan royal family fled to Sicily where
the British protected them.
Jean-Étienne Championet had commanded the French Army
of Rome, and he and Commissary Marc-Antoine Jullien,
who had supported Babeuf, proclaimed the revolutionary
Parthenopean Republic in the territory
of Naples on 21 January 1799.
Two days later the French entered Naples and overcame
the popular resistance in three days.
Cardinal Fabrizio Ruffo recruited peasants into the Army
of the Holy Faith, and they landed at Calabria in February
and overcame the democratic militia.
They conquered castles and occupied communal lands
that had been taken over by barons.
Cardinal Ruffo organized the Sanfedisti (Holy Faithful) to fight
against the French, and by April they controlled Calabria.
Ruffo‘s forces entered Naples on June 13
as the French army retreated; but Royalists controlled the city,
and both sides agreed to an armistice that ended the
Parthenopean Republic.
Ferdinando IV returned to Naples on July 10 and violated
the terms of the surrender by executing more than
a hundred patriots who had been granted safety.
In March 1799 the Second Coalition opposing Napoleon
sent an Austro-Russian army led by Suvorov that invaded
the Cisalpine Republic, defeated a French army at Cassano
on April 27, and entered Turin on May 26 and Milan on June 5.
They defeated the French again at the Trebbia River on June 20,
regaining the Po plain.
Religious rebellions erupted at Arezzo on May 6 and in Siena.
The Austrians imposed strict censorship, restored primogeniture
and entails, and they deported 800 Italian Jacobins
to prisons in Hungary and Dalmatia.
The French pushed Grand Duke Ferdinando III out of Tuscany
on March 27 and occupied Florence until they were driven out
on July 7 as Jews and suspected Jacobins were slaughtered.
On the 28th the French surrendered Mantua.
Coalition armies overthrew the Roman Republic on
September 30, and the remaining Jacobins
held out in Genoa or returned to France.
After taking power in France on 9 November 1799
Napoleon revived the Italian campaign.
He crossed the Alps and regained Milan on 2 June 1800
from the Austrians whom he defeated at Marengo on the 14th.
In July Lomonaco’s “Coup d’oeil on Italy”
once again urged a united Italy.
Napoleon restored the Cisalpine Republic with martial law,
and in the next ten months the French army extracted
82 million francs, though the annual budget was only 52 million.
French forces returned to Lucca where
they collected 22 million francs over the years.
In September the French annexed
Piedmont’s fertile Novarese provinces.
Marshal Murat visited Florence in January
and was horrified by the conflicts and corruption.
The French captured Siena on 14 January 1801.
At Lunéville on February 9 the Austrians gave back the
Cisalpine region and Venetian territory up to the Adige River,
and they recognized the Cisalpine, Ligurian, Helvetic,
and Batavian republics.
North Italy in 1801 suffered severe economic hardships.
Napoleon ordered the closure of
political clubs and radical papers.
In the treaty at Aranjuez on March 21 the Spanish persuaded
Duke Ferdinando to cede Parma to France,
and his son Ludovico was named King Louis of Etruria
over Tuscany under France.
In the treaty of Florence one week later Ferdinando IV
of Naples agreed to peace with France by giving up
his Tuscan garrisons and Presidi to the Kingdom of Etruria.
He agreed to pay France an indemnity of 500,000 francs,
and he accepted French garrisons in Abruzzi and Apulia
on the coast of the Adriatic Sea.
Russian Tsar Paul had promised to protect Sardinia’s
King Carlo Emanuele IV and his control over Piedmont;
but Paul was assassinated on March 23, and on April 12
a French army occupied Piedmont and divided it into
six departments, declaring it France’s 27th military district.
The French language was made compulsory in schools
and for official business.
Religious orders were suppressed,
and freedom of religion was proclaimed.
In October 1801 Napoleon gave Genoa a constitution,
and it became the Ligurian Republic.
He nominated their doge and 30 senators.
Napoleon’s Corsican friend, the French Commissioner
Cristoforo Saliceti, represented Lucca in 1801-02.
King Carlo Emanuele IV of Sardinia abdicated on
4 June 1802 in favor of his brother Vittorio Emanuele.
In July the Bolognese rebelled against Milan’s rule
as the French dissolved Bologna’s national guard.
The revolt spread to Ferrara, Ravenna, Brescia,
Verona, and Novara.
The Ligurian Republic was reinstated,
and France annexed Piedmont on 11 September 1802.
After Duke Ferdinando died on October 9,
the French occupied Parma and annexed Elba and Piombino.
Francesco Melzi d’Eril hoped to unite northern Italy
in a constitutional monarchy, and he persuaded Napoleon
to authorize an Italian Constitutional Assembly at Lyon
in January 1802 attended by 484 notables who paid high taxes.
Pierre-Louis Roederer drafted the constitution that called for
three electoral colleges of landowners at Milan,
businessmen in Brescia, and intellectuals in Bologna,
but they were to meet only once
every two years for two weeks.
They nominated half of two governing councils of state,
and Napoleon nominated the other halves.
The Catholic Church was established in the Italian Republic
which paid clergy and for seminaries;
but dioceses were aligned with the state departments,
and clergy had to swear allegiance to the state.
On 25 January 1802 Napoleon made himself president
with Melzi as vice president, and the Cisalpine Republic
was renamed the Italian Republic.
Britain, Russia, and Denmark refused to recognize it,
and Napoleon would not let the Republic
send diplomats to other states.
All the ministers were Italians; but Napoleon nominated
the judges, and only he could remove them.
The Lombard noble Ferdinando Marescalchi was
Foreign Minister, but he lived in Paris
and connected Napoleon with Melzi who governed in Italy.
Milan became the French center of power in northern Italy,
and six great roads that converged there were improved.
A canal was begun to link Milan with Pavia,
but it was not completed.
A college for women was started in Milan,
and the larger universities of Bologna, Padua, and Pavia
were endowed with academic chairs;
but the smaller universities at Parma, Reggio, and Ferrara
were closed while Modena became
a military academy and a veterinary school.
Napoleon ordered universities to require
two hours of military training per week.
The Finance Minister Giuseppe Prina was skilled
at extracting money with taxes.
In March 1803 he consolidated the public debt,
and he managed to balance the budget.
Land taxes were heavy especially for smallholders while
customs tariffs increased agricultural exports
and manufactured imports, reducing local factories.
The price of grain increased, benefiting large landowners.
Melzi did not like Jacobins, and he dismissed 129 officials
out of 171 from the Olona department centered in Milan,
and Prina removed all 133 of his own staff in one day.
General Murat was in command of the French army in Italy,
and he came into conflict with Melzi.
Murat arrested Captain Giuseppe Ceroni for having circulated
his poem criticizing Napoleon and France,
and he blamed Melzi for being negligent.
Napoleon supported Melzi and had Murat transferred to Paris.
Military conscription was begun in 1802, and by July 1803
the Italian Republic had recruited 18,000 soldiers.
The Republic was paying a third of its revenue to France,
and by August 1804 the Italian army had 30,000 men.
In 1804 Napoleon decreed his civil code
the law in the Italian Republic.
Melzi opposed the papal concordat, and he asserted his
Organic Articles that empowered the state over the church.
However, Pope Pius VII refused to ratify them,
and Napoleon ignored them.
The French code included the death penalty,
and it was resented in the Kingdom of Italy and Tuscany.
Ecclesiastical property was used
to repay loans forced on the rich.
At the same time the abolition of feudal dues and divided
inheritances advanced the redistribution of land.
On 18 May 1804 France’s Senate proclaimed Napoleon
Emperor of the French, and with Pope Pius VII attending
Napoleon crowned himself Emperor in Paris on December 2.
On 17 March 1805 he announced that
the Italian Republic had become a kingdom.
He appointed his step-son Eugène de Beauharnais as viceroy,
and he ruled there until 1814.
Napoleon ordered him to give priority to French interests.
The cooperative Antonio Aldini replaced
Melzi as Foreign Minister.
The Order of the Iron Crown was founded
mostly for the French.
Napoleon advised Eugène to think of Italians
as malevolent children, writing to him,
Italians … only obey the voice of a master;
they will only respect you in so far as they fear you,
and they will only fear you as long as
they perceive you know their duplicitous and false nature.2
Saliceti governed Liguria in 1805 and arranged for its
annexation to the French Empire on June 4.
Napoleon gave the principate of Piombino to his sister
Elisa Baciocchi and Lucca to her husband
Felice Baciocchi on June 23.
On July 21 Napoleon made his sister Paolina Borghese
the honorary ruler of Parma, Piacenza, and Guastalla,
but they were administered from Paris.
On July 27 the prohibition against importing British goods
was extended to the Kingdom of Italy.
After more French victories the treaty at Pressburg on
26 December 1805 annexed Venice with a separate
constitution that included Dalmatia and Istria.
Napoleon ordered warships constructed at Venice,
but the French did not gain naval control of the Adriatic.
Venice had to pay France 2.5 million francs a year,
plus 1.2 million for the salaries of the Grand Army’s officers.
In April 1808 the Marches were added to the kingdom.
In September those holding offices were named counts for life.
In February 1803 Napoleon had ordered Etruria’s
King Louis to besiege the British at Livorno
and to put French garrisons at Piombino and Orbetello.
He complied even though he disliked the expense.
Louis died on May 27 and was succeeded by his wife,
Queen Maria Luisa, the pious daughter of Carlos IV of Spain.
Tuscany at this time had a population of 1.2 million people
with 25,000 clergy, 800 monks, 15 bishops,
and 3 archbishops.
Napoleon agreed to let the Queen replace the
French forces in Livorno with Spanish troops.
She reluctantly had some British spies arrested in Florence.
British merchants did much business at Livorno.
In 1800 Livorno had 713 ships enter the port,
but this fell to only seven in 1811.
The treaty of Fontainebleau gave Etruria to Emperor Napoleon,
and in compensation Queen Maria Luisa
and her son were given northern Portugal.
They left after French troops arrived
in Florence on 10 December 1807.
She was being punished for refusing to enforce the
Continental Blockade against the British.
France annexed and dissolved the Kingdom of Etruria,
dividing it into three departments, and in May 1808
France took over Parma and Piacenza.
France lowered customs on manufactured goods
moving between France and Spain in 1808.
That year the electoral colleges in the Kingdom of Italy
stopped functioning until Napoleon’s abdication in 1814.
On 14 October 1809 the treaty of Schönbrunn ceded Trentino
and south Tyrol to the Kingdom of Italy.
The Tyrolians revolted and were
finally suppressed in January 1810.
On 31 March 1806 Napoleon transferred Massa and Carrara
from the Kingdom of Italy to his sister Elisa.
In May she reformed the clergy in Lucca and Piombino
by nationalizing their property,
and she implemented the Napoleonic Code.
In 1807 she founded the Committee of Public Charity
to expand medical care, and in May she set up the Committee
for the Encouragement of Agriculture, Arts, and Commerce.
She also promoted education.
She got marble from quarries at Carrara,
and in January 1809 she sold 9,000 busts of Napoleon.
On March 2 Elisa became the Grand Duchess of Tuscany,
and she soon learned how unpopular
military conscription was there.
In 1813 she had to abdicate in favor of Ferdinando III.
She returned to Lucca, but she had to flee
from a British attack on 13 March 1814.
During the War against Austria a revolt broke out
in Emilia and Veneto.
On 16 April 1809 an Austrian army defeated the
Franco-Italian army led by Eugène de Beauharnais at Sacile.
Yet after the French defeated Austria and the Fifth Coalition
at Wagram in July, France made Dalmatia, Istria, and part of
Carniola and Carinthia the Illyrian provinces
in the Kingdom of Italy.
The French army strengthened the Venetian fortresses
at Mantua, Peschiera, Legnago, and Verona.
The cost of building the fortresses was 30 million francs
including 8 million for Venice’s arsenal.
Napoleon restrained himself from removing
any artworks from Venice.
The city was cleaned, the canals cleared, and it was given
a public park and lighthouses as well as fortifications;
but the population declined after 1810.
That year the kingdom’s army had 40,000 desertions in four months.
By 1810 the Napoleonic Code was fully implemented with juries.
The Italian Kingdom conscripted more than 165,000 men
from 1802 to 1815, reaching a peak with
about 72,000 soldiers in 1812.
Of the 28,000 sent to Germany only 3,000 survived.
They sent 30,000 troops to Spain, and only 9,000 came back.
Of the 27,000 sent to Russia, 1,000 barely returned.
Venice suffered from a famine in 1813 and 1814.
Yet the population of the Italian Kingdom
grew from 3 million in 1805 to 7 million in 1814.
Europeans suffered from a severe shortage of grain in
September 1810, causing an economic crisis in 1810 and 1811
as rising prices provoked popular uprisings.
Commercial and bank failures increased,
and by 1811 the Italian market was the main support
of French trade and manufacturing.
After Napoleon’s defeat at Leipzig in October 1813
Eugène Beauharnais led his army of 45,000 men
to the Adige River by November and to the Mincio
where on 8 February 1814 they fought the Austrians.
After Napoleon’s abdication Beauharnais made an
agreement on April 16 with the Austrians at Schiarino-Rizzino
outside of Mantua that let him keep his territory.
He summoned the Senate,
but they no longer recognized him as viceroy.
The senators assembled on the 19th, and the next day
a mob in Milan found Finance Minister Prina and killed him.
On the 24th Beauharnais signed the Convention of Mantua
with the Austrian commander Bellegarde
that returned northern Italy to Austrian rule.
The Austrians took advantage of the rebellion
and reoccupied Milan on the 28th.
They restored Ferdinand III in Tuscany, Pope Pius VII,
Francis IV of Modena, and Vittorio Emanuele I of Sardinia,
and the Congress of Vienna ratified them.
Napoleon once said, “No society will survive without
a code of morals, and there can be no proper
code of morals without religion.”3
In September 1801 he signed a concordat with Pope Pius VII
that was published in January 1802.
This made the Roman Catholic Church the majority religion
in France but not the state religion, and it was extended
to the empire in Italy and Germany.
Church buildings became state property,
and the French government gained the right
to nominate French bishops.
Napoleon also took control over the right
to publish papal bulls and briefs in France.
He agreed to withdraw his troops from the Papal States,
and he loaned the Pope two French brigs
to fight off Barbary pirates.
Pope Pius VII opposed the ban on British trade,
and the French occupied Ancona in October 1805,
Civitavecchia in April 1806,
and the Papal Marches in November 1807.
That year a new catechism was imposed on the Italians,
and many bishops refused to accept the exaltation
of Napoleon and submission of men to conscription
on pain of eternal damnation.
In Tuscany only the Bishop of Fiesole refused
to take the oath, and he was banished.
Pius VII agreed to close ports to the British,
and he renounced sovereignty over Naples;
but he refused to join a military alliance
or fill the sees with Napoleon’s nominees.
In January 1808 Napoleon invaded the Papal States,
and he ordered General Sextus de Miollis
to take control of Rome.
Murat urged Napoleon to depose
Pope Pius VII who was arrested.
France annexed Rome on 17 May 1809 as an imperial city.
The Pope was deprived of temporal power
and was reduced to the Bishop of Rome.
Pius VII was taken to France and imprisoned.
Miollis became acting governor of Rome in February 1810.
Rome was declared the second imperial city in the Empire
after Paris and became the capital of the Tevere department
while Perugia was the major city for the Trasimene department.
On 17 April religious houses were abolished in Italy,
and 519 houses were dissolved in the two Roman departments.
When they resisted, Napoleon sent the anticlerical Montbreton
de Norvins as the police chief to purge the disobedient clergy.
Many were deported to France, Corsica,
and Fenestrelle in Turin.
When clerics refused to accept the bishops he nominated,
Napoleon had three canons imprisoned in Florence
and four and the vicar-general in Asti.
The French Empire absorbed Rome’s public debt.
The French imposed their currency and excise taxes,
and they organized the postal system and a fire brigade.
Marshland was drained.
They abolished the Inquisition, and they granted civil rights
to Jews who were allowed to leave the Ghetto.
After Napoleon’s abdication Pope Pius VII
returned to Rome on 24 May 1814,
and on August 7 he issued a bull
re-establishing the Jesuit Order.
In 1803 the war between Britain and France resumed,
and Napoleon ordered French forces to reoccupy
the Neapolitan ports in Apulia on the Adriatic coast.
Joseph Bonaparte had earned a law degree
from the University of Pisa.
In 1805 he governed in Paris
while Napoleon was fighting in Austria.
In November an Anglo-Russian army landed at Naples;
but after the Third Coalition’s defeat at Ulm and Austerlitz
the British withdrew to Sicily,
and the Russians retreated to the island of Corfu.
King Ferdinando IV of Naples had promised Napoleon
that he would be neutral in this war,
but on 27 December 1805 Napoleon proclaimed
from Vienna that Ferdinando had lost his kingdom
and that the French would invade Naples.
Four days later the Emperor ordered Joseph
to go to Rome to lead the French army south.
Napoleon made his brother Joseph the King of Naples
on 30 March 1806, and he introduced the French civil code.
The city of Naples had a half million people but so much
poverty that the King was expected
to feed a third of the people.
About 50,000 of the poorest had supported
King Ferdinando IV, and they were called the Lazzaroni.
The kingdom owed nearly 30 million francs (130 million ducats),
and the annual revenue was 12 million ducats.
The army’s pay was six months in arrears,
and they lacked shoes and uniforms.
On 2 July 1806 Joseph put Church land up for sale.
That month he asked Napoleon for at least three million francs,
but he sent only 500,000 from Milan
and told him not to expect any more.
On 6 August a decree abolished entails and the personal
and jurisdictional rights of the barons,
but their land rights were confirmed.
In September the government began dividing
manorial land between barons and the communes.
Calabria and Abruzzi had major rebellions from 1806 to 1811.
Russia ceded Corfu to France in 1807.
That year King Joseph wrote that he needed
a million francs a month, but his brother sent only one million.
Joseph wrote that he needed at least 15 million
to pay 60,000 French troops and 30,000 Neapolitans.
He had 800 servants at his court.
His Finance Minister Roederer had replaced
104 Bourbon
taxes with a single tax on land and industry,
but he found it necessary to reduce these
and add a poll tax on all men.
Joseph took Roederer with him to Spain,
and the King left his mistress,
the Duchess of Arti, with 472,000 ducats.
In 1808 Napoleon made Joseph King of Spain,
and he decreed Marshal Joachim Murat
the King of the Two Sicilies in August.
He ruled Naples as King Joachim
and employed few French ministers.
He abolished feudal privileges, but about 250 of the nobles,
officials, and wealthy bought 65% of the land
confiscated from the Church.
In 1809 Napoleon created four new duchies in Naples:
Reggio in Calabria for General Oudinot,
Taranto for General MacDonald, Otranto for
Minister of Police Fouché, and Gaeta
for Finance Minister Gaudin.
Each was to receive an endowment of 80,000 francs
from the revenues of Naples.
Murat complained as the kingdom was 14 million francs
behind in its debt payments.
Trade was scarce because of the British blockade,
and taxes were almost impossible to collect.
Yet Napoleon blamed Murat
for not enforcing the trade boycott.
Napoleon’s sister Caroline was Murat’s wife,
and he hoped that her intelligence
would guide Murat’s poor judgment.
Napoleon forced Naples to impose military conscription,
and it was resented there.
Murat managed to raise a Neapolitan army of 40,000 men,
but then Napoleon wanted him to reduce it to 15,000.
Murat ignored this,
and by 1814 Naples had an army of 80,000.
In 1809 King Joachim refused to send soldiers north
because he feared a British invasion from Sicily;
but he relented and sent two French regiments.
Napoleon objected to Joachim’s naturalizing the French
because Naples was part of the French Empire.
The Emperor ordered the army of Naples disbanded
to be replaced by an army of observation under
the French General Grenier,
and the garrison at Gaeta was to be French.
Murat wanted to invade Sicily and drive out the British,
but Napoleon opposed that.
An attempt was made in September 1810;
but French commanders refused, and it was canceled.
Two months later Napoleon urged
an assault to harass the British,
and he did so again in May 1811;
but Murat believed his kingdom was too broke.
Napoleon demanded more than 10,000 troops,
and Murat sent 11,500.
Neapolitan conscripts often deserted.
In 1811 King Joachim allowed only Neapolitan citizens
to hold offices, and the Neapolitan army
was increased and given a national flag.
In 1812 Murat resumed his position as commander
of the Grand Army’s cavalry in the Russian invasion,
and Caroline ruled Naples as regent.
Naples contributed 8,000 troops to the Russian campaign.
Murat abandoned the French army in Russia in December
and returned to Naples in January 1813.
That year he banned imports from France,
and in November he proclaimed an end to the
economic blockade which lowered prices.
In February 1814 he defected from Napoleon
who recalled the French in his service.
Murat’s army took control of Rome,
and they advanced as far as Florence and Bologna.
The Carbonari started as a secret society in Naples,
and now they tried to get a constitution
for the Two Sicilies by fighting.
On 15 August 1814 the Cardinals Ercole Consalvi
and Bartolomeo Pacca outlawed secret societies
and began punishing those who aided them.
Murat made peace with Austria, but in November
the Congress of Vienna would not admit his representatives.
He rejoined Napoleon’s supporters, but Austrian armies
defeated Murat’s army at Tolentino on 3 May 1815
and again at San Germano on the 17th.
Murat fled, and on the 20th the Neapolitans made a treaty
at Casalanza with the Austrian Empire and the British.
On 30 May Murat’s proclamation at Rimini
of an Italian war of liberation began:
Providence is at last calling you to be
an independent nation.
From the Alps to the Straits of Sicily
can be heard a single cry: “Italian independence!”
By what title do foreigners deny you
this primary right of every people?
By what right do they lord it over your
beautiful country, taking your wealth elsewhere,
conscripting your children to fight and die
far from the tombs of their ancestors?4
After Napoleon’s final defeat at Waterloo in June
Murat went to Corsica, gathered about a thousand men,
and sailed to Pizzo to try to lead a revolt in Calabria.
In the town square the crowd turned against him,
and the forces of Ferdinando IV captured him.
Murat was executed by a firing squad on 13 October 1815.
In Sicily the Viceroy Caracciolo had brought about some
reforms 1781-86.
An edict in 1789 increased smallholdings in order to bring
more land into cultivation; but many peasants could not afford
the rent, and bosses had gunmen enforce their interests.
King Ferdinando IV (r. 1759-1825) feared that political liberty
would weaken his power and the Church.
Francesco di Blasi tried to lead a revolt during a
Good Friday procession in 1795,
but he was arrested, tortured, and beheaded.
When Napoleon’s army invaded Naples in 1798,
Ferdinando was taken on Nelson’s ship to Palermo
where the Sicilians welcomed him.
The two upper houses in Sicily’s parliament wanted
Caracciolo’s reforms ended, and the King promised
that Sicily’s taxes would not go to Naples.
However, Ferdinando soon made a treaty with Napoleon
that enabled him to return to Naples
with his court and some Sicilian funds.
Ferdinando IV and his family took refuge in Sicily again in 1806,
but Sicilians resented Neapolitans taking over their positions.
Ferdinando asked the British for assistance.
They sent a military force to occupy the island
and provided a subsidy, loans, and investments.
The continuing war brought about inflation
and financial difficulties, and the Sicilian Parliament
was summoned in 1810.
Prince Giuseppe Belmonte persuaded the barons to reduce
the government’s request for money by half,
and the clergy joined the barons in
opposing the Archbishop of Palermo.
The barons agreed to accept a single tax of 5% on income
from property, though Palermo was excepted.
Belmonte conspired with the British and tried to form
an alternative parliament at Messina
and accept a king appointed by the British.
Several months later Ferdinando IV had Belmonte
and four other members of parliament arrested
on 19 July 1811, and they were deported
to penal colonies on offshore islands.
That month General William Bentinck had arrived at the
court in Palermo as the British representative,
and on the 20th the Sicilian Parliament accepted
a moderate constitution that maintained the power
of the nobles while reducing the king’s absolute power.
Bentinck was concerned about
the 17,000 British troops in Sicily.
He managed to take over the government,
and he summoned a new parliament that met in June 1812.
In July they abolished feudal privileges and worked on
a liberal constitution that was unanimously accepted.
The parliament would have two houses instead of three,
and the king still had the executive power with a veto
and the right to dissolve parliament.
When the Parliament met in 1813 the reactionary
House of Peers opposed the reforms
of the radical majority in the Commons.
People wanted cheaper food with agrarian reform,
a new land survey, fairer taxes, abolition of entails,
and distribution of Church property.
Bentinck supported reforms, but he warned
against too much freedom for the violent Sicilians.
Diplomats at the Congress of Vienna decided the sovereignties
in Italy in the final treaty on 9 June 1815.
Austria’s Emperor Franz had proclaimed the
Kingdom of Lombardy-Venetia on April 7,
and he became its king on 9 June.
He imposed military conscription for eight years
and ruled the kingdom along with his Habsburg Empire
from Vienna until his death in 1835.
Austria also annexed the principality of Trent.
Austrians made Trieste their imperial port
to the disadvantage of Venice.
Metternich, the driving influence on the Concert of Nations,
maintained spies in Italy as well as in Germany and Austria.
In 1820 the Austrian Emperor ordered the
Director-General of Police and the secret service
in Venice to use various means to get information
and control public affairs.
Liberals published The Conciliator from September 1818
to October 1819 with contributions from Giuseppe Pecchio,
Gian Domenico Romagnosi, and Melchiorre Gioia.
King Vittorio Emanuele regained Savoy
and acquired the Ligurian territory.
He canceled the Napoleonic Code in Piedmont
and refused to grant a liberal constitution there,
but on 13 March 1821 he abdicated in favor of
his brother Charles Felix who succeeded him
in Sardinia and Savoy in 1824.
Napoleon’s Austrian wife Marie-Louise had become
the Duchess of Parma, Piacenza, and Guastalla
when her husband abdicated on 11 April 1814,
and the Vienna Congress ratified that for her life
which lasted until 1847;
but she was not allowed to bring her son into Italy.
She fell in love with Metternich’s confidant,
Count Adam Albert von Neippeng,
in the summer of 1814 and married him in 1821.
She maintained the French reforms in her duchy
while Austrian troops had the right to garrison Piacenza.
She introduced a new law code in 1820 that was respected.
The Bourbon-Parma house was given Lucca,
and the Este-Austrian Francesco IV ruled Modena and
Reggio 1815-46 abolishing
most of the Napoleonic Code.
Austrians were restored in a strengthened Piedmont where
the Napoleonic Code was replaced by Piedmont’s
previous laws that suppressed Jews and Waldensians.
Customs duties between Piedmont and Genoa made
the famine of 1817 worse and were abolished the next year.
The Presidi garrisons in Piombino and Elba were added
to Ferdinando III of Lorraine who was
Grand Duke of Tuscany 1790-1801 and 1814-24
with Vittorio Fossombroni as his prime minister
who promoted legal equality.
Tuscany accepted liberals especially after Ferdinando III
was succeeded by his son Leopoldo II (r. 1824-59).
Pope Pius VII returned to the Papal States and was assisted
by his Secretary of State, Cardinal Ercole Consalvi,
who modernized administration and the judiciary
by the motu proprio on 6 July 1816.
The 17 provinces of the Papal States were separated
from Rome and were governed
by cardinal legates or apostolic delegates.
Napoleonic codes were abolished and were replaced
by civil laws and regulated commerce.
The clergy’s public education and charity were inadequate
as the number of beggars increased.
Consalvi also arranged another concordat with France
on 28 July 1817 in which three French cardinals
nominated by King Louis XVIII were approved.
Ferrara was given back to the Pope,
but Austria sent troops to its garrison.
The British occupation of Sicily ended in 1815,
and King Ferdinando IV was restored and made
a defensive alliance with Austria on June 12.
When he returned to Sicily, he was cheered
more than the liberals.
The British expenditure of £12 million was stopped
after 1815, causing much unemployment.
The Parliament failed to pass taxes,
and Ferdinando dissolved both houses.
In January 1815 he appointed the Prince of Canosa
the police chief, and he suppressed the carboneria
for the next five months.
Ferdinando IV went back to Naples,
and on 12 December 1816 he was proclaimed
King Ferdinando I of the Two Sicilies.
Freedom of the press was abolished
along with the Sicilian flag,
and for the next four years he ruled without a parliament.
The Napoleonic Code that had been imposed
on Naples was applied to Sicily.
In 1818 Ferdinando agreed to a concordat with
Pope Pius VII that confirmed the sales of Church lands,
allowed the King to nominate bishops,
imposed censorship, and restored monasteries.
Italians suffered a famine in 1816 and 1817.
Then Russia sent so much grain that overproduction
led to peasants getting pellagra, rioting, and stealing.
The revolutionary activity in Spain in 1820
influenced the Italians, and on July 2 the Carbonari
led by the priest Luigi Minichini in Nola
marched on Naples calling for a liberal constitution.
A joint Parliament was granted, but three days
of Sicilian riots at Palermo in mid-July
upset the plans of the Neapolitan liberals
who opposed the secession of Sicily.
The Palermo junta sent representatives to Naples,
but the Parliament there had them arrested.
People in Marsala rebelled against their provincial capital
at Trapani and destroyed crops and forests.
Messina turned against Palermo,
and villages near Messina had to choose sides.
A Neapolitan army arrived to subdue Sicilian rebels,
and the Palermo junta sent the Prince of Villafranca
to negotiate peace with that army at Termini Imerese.
Some who did not want to give up their independence
gathered at Palermo with arms to defend the city
which was bombarded until they surrendered.
The Naples government was persuaded
to cut the salt tax in half,
and the carbonari formed democratic
governments in Basilicata and Capitanata.
The five allies Austria, Russia, Prussia, Britain, and France
met at Troppau on October 20 to decide
how to suppress the Neapolitan revolt.
Ferdinando and Giuseppe Zurlo
attempted a coup on December 7,
and this united against them the moderates with democrats.
In January 1821 Ferdinando attended Metternich’s Laibach
Congress, and they approved the military intervention.
He sent his best troops to put down the revolt at Palermo,
leaving General Guglielmo Pepe with an unreliable army.
His 10,000 Neapolitan men attacked 14,500 Austrians
at Rieti on March 7 but were driven back.
Two days later an Austrian army invaded Naples
and restored Ferdinando’s monarchy there.
Sicilians at Palermo fought against Pepe’s troops.
On 5 October they agreed on electing deputies;
but the Parliament of Naples rejected it
because they feared the Palermo barons.
Sicily was occupied by 10,000 Austrian troops,
and Sicilians had to pay their expenses for the next five years.
Ferdinando suspended the constitution again,
and he banned the word “parliament” from official documents.
Sicily was left with low taxes.
Conscription was canceled because of so many desertions,
and Ferdinando abolished the guilds.
News of the Neapolitan revolt caused uprisings
to spread in Piedmont and to Savoy.
At Milan in October 1820 a Carbonarian lodge was attacked,
and some were deported.
Cesare Balbo’s friends with the carbonari led an uprising;
but resistance ended after a student protest was crushed
by aristocratic officers on 12 January 1821.
On March 9 the carbonari and citizens proclaimed
the Spanish constitution at Alessandria,
but that month the police discovered a federati conspiracy
led by the noble Federigo Confalonieri,
a constitutional moderate who opposed Austrian rule.
In the next two years he and other carbonari leaders
were found and given long prison sentences.
On 11 January 1821 four Carbonari were arrested in Turin,
and the next day students and teachers
occupied the university until the army removed them.
Santorre di Santarosa was an officer who led
some guards ready to use force.
He argued that once the Neapolitan parliament had
adopted the Spanish constitution, the Piedmontese
liberals must act to prevent more discord in Italy,
and he wrote,
Arbitrary royal rule is now confusing
the great issue which confronts Europe.
Italy is more involved in this than other nations.
We have to conquer our national identity
and win internal liberties, both at the same time.5
On 2 March police captured conspirators’ letters in the carriage
of Prince Della Cisterna that implicated Charles Albert in the plot.
Four days later Santarosa and other leaders
met with Charles Albert, and they planned
an insurrection against Austrian rule for the 10th;
but that day Charles Albert confessed
to his brother Vittoria Emanuele.
That night the Alessandria garrison mutinied and with the
carbonari occupied the city of 30,000 people.
On 11 March about 1,200 people seized the citadel in Turin
and raised the carbonari flag of black, red, and blue.
The next day Vittoria Emanuele abdicated in favor of
his brother Charles Felix, who was in Modena.
Charles Albert was named as regent,
and on 13 March he decreed a liberal constitution
subject to approval by the new king.
The brothers negotiated by letters.
On 3 April Charles Felix pardoned the soldiers
but imposed sanctions against rebellious officials.
Fighting broke out for a few days.
Those favoring a constitution were defeated at Novara
on the 10th, the day that an Austro-Savoyard army sent
by Charles Felix occupied Turin.
Charles Felix was crowned King of Sardinia on April 25.
He set up commissions and tribunals
to investigate and try rebels.
By October they had sentenced 71 people to death
and others to prison, and 627 officers had been dismissed.
Charles Felix issued pardons
for most offenders on September 30.
Charles Albert led a force that
went to Spain to help suppress the revolt.
At Genoa in 1825 Emperor Franz, Metternich,
and Charles Felix persuaded Charles Albert
to renounce liberal politics.
Pope Felix VII died on 20 August 1823.
Two days later a conservative Italian became Pope Leo XII,
and he dismissed his rival Ercole Consalvi.
Leo reduced taxes making finances poor,
and he enforced a law against Jews owning property.
In 1825 the extraordinary legate, Cardinal Rivarola,
had more than 500 people arrested in the Romagna.
In 1824 Ferdinando decreed a law to restrain Neapolitan
and Sicilian landlords who made agriculture inefficient,
but the result was that
landowners and church corporations benefited.
Another law in 1825 tried to reform land laws,
but the commission enforcing it
was controlled by the landowners.
King Ferdinando died on 4 January 1825 and was
succeeded by his son Francesco who ruled the Two Sicilies
until his death in November 1830.
He was weaker than his father and intolerant,
and his ministers were incompetent.
Not trusting their peasant soldiers,
in 1826 Naples hired four Swiss regiments.
In 1827 expensive Austrian troops
were withdrawn from Naples.
The secret society of the Filadelfi demanding
a constitution led a revolt at Cilento in June 1828
which led to a purge of suspected sectarians.
Luigi Angeloni and Santarosa were expelled from France.
Angeloni published Of Force in Political Matters in 1826.
He argued that they agree on “sovereignty of the people,
hatred of tyrants, love of liberty, the overthrow of monarchical
and aristocratic power and the use of force,”
and he urged landholding by peasants.
Philippe Buonarroti was expelled from Switzerland,
and he wrote his History of Babeuf’s ‘Conspiracy of Equals’
in 1828, the year he founded a new sect called “The World.”
The Marquis di Salvo urged independence
and creating a national character.
1. Quoted in Napoleon’s Cursed War: Spanish Popular Resistance in the Peninsular War, 1808-1814 by Ronald Fraser, p. 356.
2. Quoted in Napoleon’s Italy by Desmond Gregory, p. 74.
3. Religious History of Modern France From the Revolution to the Third Republic by Adrien Dansette,
tr. John Dingle, p. 124.
4. Joachim Murat Roi de Naples, la dernière de régime, by J.-H. Weil (Paris, 1909), p 504.
5. De la revolution piémontaise by Santorre di Santarosa (London, 1821).
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