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Isabella II of Spain
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| Biography: Isabella II |
Isabella II (1830-1904) was queen of Spain from 1833 to 1868. She was Spain's first true constitutional monarch during a period of growing social and political conflicts.
Born in Madrid on Oct. 10, 1830, Isabella was the daughter of Ferdinand VII of Spain and Maria Cristina of Naples. Her uncle Don Carlos refused to recognize her right to the throne, and after the death of Ferdinand in late 1833 a bitter civil war broke out between the conservative elements, who supported Don Carlos, and the liberal groups, who supported the young princess and her mother, the Queen Regent. The Carlists were defeated in 1839, but the following year Baldomero Espartero, a liberal and the most powerful general in the country, forced Maria Cristina to leave Spain. Isabella remained behind.
Three years later, the conservatives overthrew Espartero and his liberal supporters and on Nov. 8, 1843, had 13-year-old Isabella declared legally of age and crowned queen. Isabella's education had been meager; she could scarcely read and was by all accounts relatively ignorant. But she was highly attractive and utterly charming. Between 1843 and 1868 Isabella reigned but did not rule. During most of this period Spain was governed by a coalition of civilian conservatives and army generals.
On Oct. 10, 1846, Isabella married her cousin Francisco de Asis. Now an attractive 16-year-old, she was generous, friendly, fond of dancing, and amorous, and the timid and effeminate Francisco was a great disappointment to her. On the day after the wedding he moved out of the Queen's quarters, and her first lover, the handsome Gen. Serrano, moved in. He was to be the first of many, until her active sex life (or what an English observer called her "terrible constitutional malady") was the talk of all Europe. Yet she considered herself a devout Catholic and was very much under the influence of the superstitious and often fanatical nuns and monks who surrounded her at court.
Isabella's scandalous private life, her antiliberalism, and Spain's economic crisis of 1866 brought about a popular revolution in September 1868. Isabella fled to France, and, on June 25, 1870, she abdicated in favor of her son Alfonso XII. He was crowned king of Spain in early 1875, after the republic which had been set up in 1873 was abolished.
In exile Isabella retained her enjoyment of men and fondness for dancing. However, the defeat of Spain in 1898 seems to have broken her spirit; after that year her health began to fail, and on April 19, 1904, she died in her Paris home.
Further Reading
The best biographies of Isabella in English are Peter De Polnay, A Queen of Spain: Isabel II (1962), and Ottilie G. Boetzkes, The Little Queen: Isabella II of Spain (1966). For a scholarly presentation of the economics and politics of her reign see Raymond Carr, Spain, 1808-1939 (1966).
| Columbia Encyclopedia: Isabella II |
Isabella II, 1830-1904, queen of Spain (1833-68), daughter of Ferdinand VII and of Maria Christina. Her uncle, Don Carlos, contested her succession under the Salic law, and thus the Carlist Wars began (see Carlists). Isabella was under the regency of her mother until 1840, when Espartero seized power. After his regency (1841-43) was overthrown, Isabella was declared of age. In 1846 the queen married her cousin, Francisco de Asís, and her sister, Luisa Fernanda, married a son of Louis Philippe of France, the duc de Montpensier. These Spanish marriages, which contravened earlier Anglo-French agreements about the choice of husbands for the two sisters, aroused the anger of England, who feared a Franco-Spanish rapprochement, and caused a temporary severance of the entente between England and France. Isabella's rule was one of party conflicts among moderates, progressives, and liberal unionists and of continuous cabinet changes. Narváez, Espartero, and O'Donnell were among her premiers. Frequent rebellions culminated in 1868 in the insurrection led by Serrano and Juan Prim, and Isabella was deposed (see Spain). She spent the rest of her life in France. In 1870 she abdicated her rights in favor of her son, Alfonso XII.
| Wikipedia: Isabella II of Spain |
- "Isabella II" redirects here. For the Queen of Jerusalem also known as Isabella II, see Yolande of Jerusalem.
| Isabella II | |
|---|---|
| Queen of the Spains | |
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| Reign | 29 September 1833–30 September 1868 |
| Predecessor | Ferdinand VII |
| Successor | Amadeus |
| Regent | Queen Maria Christina Baldomero Espartero, Prince of Vergara |
| Spouse | Francis, Duke of Cádiz |
| Issue | |
| Isabella, Princess of Asturias Alfonso XII of Spain Infanta María de la Paz Infanta Eulalia, Duchess of Galliera |
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| House | House of Bourbon |
| Father | Ferdinand VII of Spain |
| Mother | Maria Christina of the Two Sicilies |
| Born | 10 October 1830 Madrid, Spain |
| Died | 10 April 1904 (aged 73) |
| Burial | El Escorial, Spain |
Isabella II (Spanish: Isabel II; 10 October 1830 – 10 April 1904) was Queen regnant of Spain ("Queen of the Spains" officially from 13 August 1836, Isabella II the "Queen of Castile, Leon, Aragon,...") She was Spain's first and so far only queen regnant, although she is sometimes considered the third Queen Regnant of Spain, as previous monarchs of Leon and Castile were counted as kings and queens of Spain. Counting the monarchs of Aragon as well, she is the fourth Queen regnant of Spain.
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Birth and regency
Isabella was born in Madrid in 1830, the eldest daughter of Ferdinand VII, King of Spain, and of his fourth wife and niece, Maria Cristina, who was a Neapolitan Bourbon and also a grandniece of Marie Antoinette. Maria Cristina became regent on 29 September 1833, when her daughter Isabella, at the age of three years, was proclaimed queen-regent on the death of the king.
Isabella succeeded to the throne because Ferdinand VII induced the Cortes Generales to help him set aside the Salic law introduced by the Borbons in the early 18th century, and to re-establish the older succession law of Spain. The first pretender, Ferdinand's brother Carlos, fought seven years, during the minority of Isabella, to dispute her title. His supporters and descendants were known as Carlists and the fight over the succession was the subject of a number of Carlist Wars in the 19th century.
Isabella's throne was only maintained through the support of the army. The Cortes and the Liberals and Progressives, who at the same time established constitutional and parliamentary government, dissolved the religious orders, confiscated their property (including that of Jesuits), and tried to restore order in finances. After the Carlist war the queen-regent, Maria Cristina, resigned to make way for Baldomero Espartero, Prince of Vergara, the most successful and most popular Isabelline general, who remained regent for only two years.
Marriage
Main article: Affair of the Spanish Marriages
He was turned out in 1843 by a military and political pronunciamiento led by Generals O'Donnell and Narvaez, who formed a cabinet, presided over by Joaquin Maria Lopez, and this government induced the Cortes to declare Isabella of age at 13. Three years later the Moderado party or Castilian Conservatives made their sixteen-year-old queen marry her double-first cousin Francisco de Asís de Borbón (1822–1902), the same day (10 October 1846) that her younger sister, Infanta Luisa Fernanda, married Antoine d'Orléans, Duke of Montpensier.
These marriages suited France and Louis Philippe, King of the French, who nearly quarrelled in consequence with Britain. But the marriages were not happy; persistent rumor had it that few if any of the Spanish Queen Regnant's children were conceived by her king-consort, remoured to be an homosexual. For instance, the heir to the throne, who later became Alfonso XII, the Carlist party asserted had been conceived by a captain of the guard, Enrique Puig y Moltó.
Isabella had twelve children, but only four reached adulthood:
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Reign
Isabella reigned from 1843 to 1868, a period of palace intrigues, back-stairs and antechamber influences, barracks conspiracies, military pronunciamientos to further the ends of the political parties — Moderados who ruled from 1846 to 1854, Progressives from 1854 to 1856, Unión Liberal from 1856 to 1863. At this time, Queen Isabella was otherwise occupied achieving a monarchical revenge against Mexico, supporting, jointly with France, the Habsburg-Orleans Empire using the royal figures of Maximilian of Habsburg and Charlotte of Belgium, as Maximilian I and Carlota of Mexico. Moderados and Unión Liberals quickly succeeded each other and kept out the Progressives, thus sowing the seeds for the revolution of 1868.
Isabella often interfered in politics in a wayward, unscrupulous way that made her very unpopular. She showed most favor to her reactionary generals and statesmen and to the Church and religious orders, and was constantly the tool of corrupt and profligate courtiers and favourites who gave her court a bad name. She went into exile at the end of September 1868, after her Moderado generals had made a slight show of resistance that was crushed at the battle of Alcolea by Marshals Serrano and Prim. Other events of her reign were a war against Morocco (1859), which ended in a treaty advantageous for Spain and cession of some Moroccan territory; the fruitless Chincha Islands War against Peru and Chile; tensions with the United States; independence revolts in Cuba and Puerto Rico; and some progress in public works, especially railways, and a slight improvement in commerce and finance.
Exile and abdication
Main article: Franco-Prussian War
Main article: German Unification
Her exile helped cause the Franco-Prussian War, as Napoleon III could not accept the possibility that a German, Prince Leopold of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen, might replace Isabella, a dynast of the Spanish Borbons and two generations removed from her French-born grandfather Philip V of Spain.
Isabella was induced to abdicate in Paris on 25 June 1870, in favour of her son, Alfonso XII, and the cause of the restoration was furthered. She had left her husband the previous March and continued to live in France after the restoration in 1874. On the occasion of one of her visits to Madrid during Alfonso XII's reign, she began to intrigue with the politicians of the capital, and was peremptorily requested to go abroad again. She resided in Paris for the rest of her life, seldom traveling abroad except for a few visits to Spain. During her exile she grew closer to her husband, with whom she maintained an ambiguous friendship until his death in 1902. Her last days were marked by the matrimonial problems of her youngest daughter. She died on 10 April 1904, and is entombed in El Escorial.
Titulary
In 1837, Spain developed legislatively into a constitutional monarchy. Before that date, the underage Isabella was still known by the centuries-old feudal, symbolic, long titulary that included both extant and extinct titles and claims: Doña Isabel II por la Gracia de Dios, Reina de Castilla, de León, de Aragón, de las Dos Sicilias, de Jerusalén, de Navarra, de Granada, de Toledo, de Valencia, de Galicia, de Mallorca, de Sevilla, de Cerdeña, de Córdoba, de Córcega, de Murcia, de Menorca, de Jaen, de los Algarbes, de Algeciras, de Gibraltar, de las Islas Canarias, de las Indias Orientales y Occidentales, Islas y Tierra firme del mar Océano; Archiduquesa de Austria; Duquesa de Borgoña, de Brabante y de Milan; Condesa de Aspurg, Flandes, Tirol y Barcelona; Señora de Vizcaya y de Molina &c. &c.
In English: Lady Isabella II, by the grace of God Queen of Castille, León, Aragon, the Two Sicilies, Jerusalem, Navarre, Granada, Toledo, Valencia, Galicia, Majorca, Seville, Sardinia, Cordoba, Corsica, Murcia, Minorca, Jaen, Algarve, Gibraltar, the Canary Islands, the Eastern and Western Indies, the Islands and Lands of the Ocean; Archduchess of Austria; Duchess of Burgundy, Brabant and Milan; Countess of Habsburg, Flanders, Tirol and Barcelona; Lady of Biscay and Molina, etc etc.
At the change, a new format of the titulary was taken into use for Isabella: Por la gracia de Dios y la Constitución de la Monarquía española, Reina de las Españas (By the grace of God and the Constitution of the Spanish monarchy, Queen of the Spains).
Queen Isabella II in popular culture
In the 1997 film Amistad, she was portrayed, as a child, by Anna Paquin.
See also
- Carl Schurz, who was U.S. ambassador to Spain for a brief time at the beginning of Lincoln's presidency, in his Reminiscences (New York, McClure's Publ. Co., 1907, Volume II, Chapter VI) describes Isabella II and her court.
References
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Wikisource has the text of the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica article Isabella II. |
- This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica, Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.
Ancestors
| Isabella II of Spain | Father: Ferdinand VII of Spain |
Paternal Grandfather: Charles IV of Spain |
Paternal Great-Grandfather: Charles III of Spain |
| Paternal Great-grandmother: Maria Amalia of Saxony |
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| Paternal Grandmother: Maria Luisa of Parma |
Paternal Great-Grandfather: Philip, Duke of Parma |
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| Paternal Great-Grandmother: Princess Louise-Élisabeth of France |
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| Mother: Maria Christina of the Two Sicilies |
Maternal Grandfather: Francis I of the Two Sicilies |
Maternal Great-Grandfather: Ferdinand I of the Two Sicilies |
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| Maternal Great-Grandmother: Marie Caroline of Austria |
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| Maternal Grandmother: Maria Isabel of Spain |
Maternal Great-grandfather: Charles IV of Spain |
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| Maternal Great-Grandmother: Maria Luisa of Parma |
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Isabella II of Spain
Cadet branch of the Capetian dynasty
Born: 10 October 1830 Died: 10 April 1904 |
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| Regnal titles | ||
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| Preceded by Ferdinand VII |
Queen of Spain 1833 – 1868 |
Succeeded by Amadeus |
| Spanish royalty | ||
| Vacant
Title last held by
Prince Ferdinand |
Princess of Asturias 1830-1833 |
Succeeded by Princess Isabel |
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