Ferdinand VII

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FERDINAND VII

FERDINAND VII (1784–1833), king of Spain (ruled March–May 1808, 1814–1833).

Ferdinand VII has the reputation of being the worst monarch in Spanish history. In some respects this is unfair. So great were the problems faced by Spain during his reign that even the greatest of rulers would have been hard put to cope with them. That said, however, Ferdinand was hardly an admirable figure. Deeply hurt by the hold that the favorite, Manuel de Godoy, possessed over his parents, Charles IV (r. 1788–1808) and María Luisa, he emerged as a cowardly, narrow-minded, unintelligent, suspicious, and highly vindictive young man whose chief characteristic was a violent hatred for king, queen, and favorite alike.

Ferdinand was both extremely foolish and easily malleable, and from 1800 on he fell prey to an aristocratic faction eager to reverse the inroads that Bourbon enlightened absolutism had made on the privileges of the nobility. This faction saw him as a puppet whom they would be able to manipulate at will once the aging Charles IV had died. Terrified of retribution, these conspirators encouraged Ferdinand to seek Napoleon's protection, while also popularizing him as a "prince charming" who was going to initiate a new golden age.

The result was a serious crisis at court, considerable popular agitation, and, in the end, French intervention in Spain and the overthrow of the Bourbon monarchy. Exiled to France by Napoleon, Ferdinand spent most of the war that followed in comfortable imprisonment. Back in Spain, patriot propaganda conjured up visions of Ferdinand bravely defying Napoleon, but, in reality, he not only made no attempt at resistance but wrote frequent letters to Napoleon congratulating him on his victories.

Released by the emperor in 1814 in a desperate bid to end the Peninsular War, Ferdinand in May of that year overthrew the constitution of 1812—a highly progressive document elaborated in the so-called cortes of Cádiz by a group who became known as the liberales and thereby provided posterity with the modern term liberal—with the aid of a faction of the officer corps that had been alienated by the reforms of the constitution's progenitors and their handling of the war effort. In fairness, Ferdinand did not simply turn the clock back to 1808. Recognizing that some of the changes introduced in the course of the Peninsular War were actually long-standing goals of Bourbon enlightened absolutism, he adopted a surprisingly pragmatic attitude: the abolition of feudalism, for example, was never reversed, while 1817 saw the de facto reintroduction of the system of taxation introduced at Cádiz. Yet the liberals remained unreconciled. More worryingly, trouble also quickly developed in the military. A minority of officers had always been loyal to the constitution and this group was now joined by a number of other malcontents (typically generals who had not been given the rewards they hoped for and lower-ranking figures who had been placed on half-pay in the wake of the army's demobilization).

From 1814 onward, then, Spain witnessed a series of conspiracies in favor of the constitution of 1812, though it was not until March 1820 that Ferdinand's opponents succeeded in overthrowing the regime. There followed the "liberal triennio" of 1820–1823. A new cortes was assembled in Madrid while Ferdinand was reduced to playing the role of a constitutional monarch. Yet the constitution of 1812 brought no more happiness than it had eight years before. Split into increasingly antagonistic factions, the liberals had inherited a bitter war in South America, Ferdinand having strained every nerve to put down the rebellions that had broken out against Spanish rule from 1810 onward. No more willing to give up Spain's empire than the king had been, they sought to build up their forces by imposing conscription. Allied with desperate economic conditions, this provoked serious unrest in the countryside and enabled traditionalist opponents of the liberals to whip up widespread popular rebellion.

An attempt to restore absolutism on the part of the royal guard miscarried in July 1822, but the growing chaos provided a pretext for foreign intervention and in the summer of 1823 a French army crossed the frontier to restore order. Effectively a prisoner, Ferdinand was carried off to Cádiz by the fugitive Spanish government, but resistance collapsed and he was quickly liberated. Absolutism then returned but, a brief period of intense repression notwithstanding, Ferdinand refused to go along with his more extreme supporters and continued to operate in the bureaucratic traditions of his predecessors, Charles III (r. 1759–1788) and Charles IV. In response, his more traditionalist backers themselves rose in revolt in 1827. Defeated in a brief civil war, they then began to coalesce around the figurehead provided by the king's disaffected younger brother, Charles.

Until this point Ferdinand had been childless, but in October 1830 his fourth wife, Maria Cristina of Naples, presented him with a baby daughter. This situation presented many complications. According to the law as it was generally understood, women were excluded from the royal succession, but in 1789 this proscription, which dated from only 1713, had been lifted. Ferdinand could therefore legitimately claim that he now had an heir, but Charles and his supporters could just as legitimately maintain that the change in the law was null and void (for reasons that remain a mystery, it had, in fact, never been published).

In any case, the cause of traditionalism was now in serious trouble, for in his last years Ferdinand's commitment to bureaucratic absolutism was such that he had started to restore to favor many of the reformist thinkers and bureaucrats who had backed the French in the Peninsular War. Civil war therefore loomed yet again, and no sooner had Ferdinand died on 29 September 1833 than the first of three terrible "Carlist" wars broke out. To conclude, then, Ferdinand VII was never a pleasant individual—his ministers, for example, found him cold and ungrateful—and he was often very foolish, particularly in his handling of the army. Underlying his defects, however, was a certain canniness, and this in the end ensured that he was never quite the figure of black reaction of legend.