Isabella II of Spain

Isabella II (Spanish: Isabel; 10 October 1830 – 9 April 1904), also known as La de los Tristes Destinos (She of the Sad Destinies), was Queen of Spain from 1833 until 1868.

"Isabella II" redirects here. For other monarchs, see Queen Isabella. For the 1830s steam frigate, see SS Royal William. For the 1886 steel cruiser, see Spanish cruiser Isabel II.
Isabella II
Formal photo portrait by Jean Laurent, 1860
Queen of Spain
Reign29 September 1833 – 30 September 1868
Enthronement10 November 1843
PredecessorFerdinand VII
SuccessorAmadeo I
Regents
Prime Ministers
Born10 October 1830
Madrid, Kingdom of Spain
Died9 April 1904(1904-04-09) (aged 73)
Paris, French Third Republic
Burial
El Escorial
Spouse
​
(
m. 1846; died 1902)
IssueInfanta Isabel, Countess of Girgenti
Alfonso XII of Spain
Infanta María del Pilar
Infanta María de la Paz
Infanta Eulalia
Full name
María Isabel Luisa de Borbón y Borbón-Dos Sicilias
HouseBourbon
FatherFerdinand VII of Spain
MotherMaria Christina of the Two Sicilies
ReligionRoman Catholicism
Signature

Shortly before her birth, the King issued a Pragmatic Sanction to ensure the succession of his firstborn. She came to the throne a month before her third birthday, but her succession was disputed by her uncle the Infante Carlos (founder of the Carlist movement), whose refusal to recognize a female sovereign led to the Carlist Wars. Under the regency of her mother, Spain transitioned from an absolute monarchy to a constitutional monarchy adopting the Royal Statute of 1834 and Constitution of 1837. After a troubled reign, she was deposed in the Glorious Revolution of 1868, and formally abdicated in 1870. Her son, Alfonso XII, became king in 1874.

Birth and regency
Isabella II as a child. She is depicted wearing the sash of the Order of Queen Maria Luisa.

Isabella was born in Royal Palace of Madrid in 1830, the eldest daughter of King Ferdinand VII of Spain, and of his fourth wife and niece, Maria Christina of the Two Sicilies. Queen Maria Christina became regent on 29 September 1833, when her three-year-old daughter Isabella was proclaimed sovereign on the death of the king.

Isabella succeeded to the throne because Ferdinand VII had induced the Cortes Generales to help him set aside the Salic law, introduced by the Bourbons in the early 18th century, and to reestablish the older succession law of Spain. The first pretender to the throne, Ferdinand's brother Infante Carlos, Count of Molina, fought seven years during the minority of Isabella to dispute her title. Carlos' and his descendants' supporters 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 reign was maintained only through the support of the army. The Cortes and the Moderate Liberals and Progressives reestablished constitutional and parliamentary government, dissolved the religious orders and confiscated their property (including that of the Jesuits), and tried to restore order to Spain's finances. After the Carlist war, the regent, Maria Christina, resigned to make way for Baldomero Espartero, Prince of Vergara, the most successful and most popular Isabelline general. Espartero, a Progressive, remained regent for only two years.

Baldomero Espartero was turned out in 1843 by a military and political pronunciamiento led by Generals Leopoldo O'Donnell and Ramón María Narváez. They formed a cabinet, presided over by Joaquín María López y López. This government induced the Cortes to declare Isabella of age at 13.

Marriage
Queen Isabella II of Spain with her daughter Isabella by Franz Xavier Winterhalter, 1852
Main article: Affair of the Spanish Marriages

Three years later, on 10 October 1846, the Moderate 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 that her younger sister, Infanta Luisa Fernanda, married Antoine d'Orléans, Duke of Montpensier.

Isabella II with her three youngest daughters Pilar, Paz, and Eulalia

The marriages suited France and Louis Philippe, King of the French, who as a result bitterly quarrelled with Britain.[1] However, the marriages were not happy; persistent rumour had it that few if any of Isabella's children were fathered by her king-consort, rumoured to be a homosexual. The Carlist party asserted that the heir-apparent to the throne, who later became Alfonso XII, had been fathered by a captain of the guard, Enrique Puigmoltó y Mayans.[2]

Isabella had nine children, but only five reached adulthood:

The couple was rather caustically described by an English contemporary thus:

… The Queen is large in stature, but rather what might be called bulky than stately. There is no dignity either in her face or figure, and the graces of majesty are altogether wanting. The countenance is cold and expressionless, with traces of an unchastened, unrefined, and impulsive character, and the indifference it betrays is not redeemed by any regularity or beauty of feature.
The King Consort is much smaller in figure than his royal two-thirds, and certainly is not a type that could be admired for its manly qualifications; but we have to remember that in Spain aristocratic birth is designated rather by a diminutive stature and sickly complexion than by those attributes of height, muscular power, open expression, and florid hue, which in England constitute the ideal of ‘race.’[3]

Reign as an adult
Main article: Reign of Isabella II of Spain
Queen Isabella II of Spain, late 1860s
Spanish–Moroccan War in 1859

Isabella ruled directly from 1843 to 1868, a period marked by palace intrigues, back-stairs and antechamber influences, barracks conspiracies, and military pronunciamientos to further the ends of the political parties; Moderados ruled from 1846 to 1854, Progressives from 1854 to 1856, and Unión Liberals from 1856 to 1863. Moderados and Unión Liberals quickly succeeded each other to keep out the Progressives, thus sowing the seeds for the Revolution of 1868.[4]

Queen Isabella II often was active in politics. She showed favour to her reactionary generals and statesmen and to the Church and religious orders. Spain fought two wars during her reign: the war against Morocco in 1859, which ended in a treaty advantageous for Spain and cession of some Moroccan territory, and the fruitless Chincha Islands War (1864–1866) against Peru and Chile. Her reign saw tensions with the United States over the Amistad affair and over the war in the Pacific; independence revolts in Cuba and Puerto Rico; and some progress in public works, especially railways, and a slight improvement in commerce and finance. By virtue of a royal decree, she opened Iloilo in the Philippines to world trade on September 29, 1855, mainly to export sugar and other products to America, Australia and Europe.[5][6]

Exile and abdication
Main article: Glorious Revolution (Spain)
Isabella II of Spain in exile in Paris

At the end of September 1868, the defeat of Isabella's forces at the Battle of Alcolea led to her deposition and exile to France. The revolt against Isabella played out in the battle is known as the Glorious Revolution. In 1870, the provisional government replaced Isabella with Amadeo I, second son of Victor Emmanuel II of Italy, after much deliberation. Amadeo's abdication under pressure in 1873 led to the period of the First Spanish Republic (1873–74).

Isabella's exile helped cause the Franco-Prussian War, as Napoleon III could not accept the possibility that a German whose candidacy was supported by Prussia, Prince Leopold of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen, might replace Isabella, a dynast of the Spanish Bourbons and great-great-granddaughter of the French-born Philip V of Spain. Napoleon III's loss in the war led to his deposition and the permanent end of monarchical government in France.

The First Spanish Republic collapsed in December 1874. Already on 25 June 1870, Isabella had been induced to abdicate in Paris in favour of her son, Alfonso XII, a move that aided the cause of the Restoration in 1874. After the collapse of the Republic, Alfonso was placed on the throne.

A Statue of Isabella II in front of Puerta Isabel in Intramuros, Manila

Isabella had left her husband in March 1874 and continued to live in France after the Restoration surrounded by a small circle of retainers with the Marqués de Alta Villa as her secretary. On the occasion of one of her visits to Madrid during the reign of Alfonso XII, she began to intrigue with politicians in the capital and was peremptorily requested to go abroad again. She lived in Paris for the rest of her life, residing at the Palacio Castilla. She seldom travelled 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 marital problems of her youngest daughter, Eulalia. She died on 10 April 1904 and is entombed in El Escorial.

Titles, styles and honours

Titles and styles
  • 10 October 1830 – 29 September 1833: Her Royal Highness The Princess of Asturias
  • 29 September 1833 – 25 June 1870: Her Most Catholic Majesty The Queen of Spain
  • 25 June 1870 – 10 April 1904: Her Majesty Queen Isabella II of Spain

The underage Queen Isabella II was known by the centuries-old feudal, symbolic, long title that included both extant and extinct titles and claims:

Isabel II by the Grace of God, Queen of Castile, Leon, Aragon, of the Two Sicilies, of Jerusalem, of Navarre, of Granada, of Toledo, of Valencia, of Galicia, of Majorca, of Seville, of Sardinia, of Córdoba, of Corsica, of Murcia, of Menorca, of Jaén, the Algarves, Algeciras, Gibraltar, the Canary Islands, of the East and West Indies, Islands and Mainland of the Ocean Sea; Archduchess of Austria; Duchess of Burgundy, Brabant, Milan; Countess of Habsburg, Flanders, Tirol and Barcelona; Lady of Biscay and Molina

In 1837, Spanish legislation produced a constitutional monarchy and a new format of the title was used for Isabel:

By the grace of God and the Constitution of the Spanish monarchy, Queen Isabel II of the Spains

Honours

Honorific eponyms

Ancestry

Film portrayal

In the 1997 film Amistad, she was played by Anna Paquin, and is depicted as a spoiled 11-year-old girl.

gollark: I've already invented the "Macron machine" and am publishing papers retroactively in 1903.
gollark: Yes.
gollark: APL2bf?
gollark: Imagine using Litecord and not APIONET.
gollark: You've been harvesting my data without consent however.

See also

References
  1. Jasper Ridley, Lord Palmerston (1970) pp 308-15.
  2. Juan Sisinio Pérez Garzón, Isabel II: Los Espejos de la Reina (2004)
  3. Mrs. Wm. Pitt Byrne, Cosas De España, Illustrative of Spain and the Spaniards as they are, Volume II, Page 7, Alexander Strahan, Publisher, London and New York, 1866.
  4. F.H. Gribble, The tragedy of Isabella, II (1913).
  5. Demy Sonza. "The Port of Iloilo: 1855 - 2005". Graciano Lopez-Jaena Life and Works and Iloilo History Online Resource. Dr. Graciano Lopez-Jaena (DGLJ) Foundation, Inc. Archived from the original on 2016-01-19.
  6. Henry Funtecha. "Iloilo's position under colonial rule". thenewstoday.info.
  7. , VV. AA., Boletín de la Real Academia de la Historia, Tomo CLXXVI, Cuaderno I, 1979, Real Academia de la Historia, Madrid, España, páginas = 211 & 220, español, 6 de junio de 2010 Information Containing the Orders and Decorations received by Isabella II of her European tour after her coming of age to reign as Queen
  8. Staatshandbuch für das Großherzogtum Sachsen / Sachsen-Weimar-Eisenach (1864), "Großherzogliche Hausorden" p. 13
  9. "GENEALOGY OF THE ROYAL HOUSE OF SPAIN". Chivalricorders.org. Retrieved 2017-05-23.
  10. Genealogie ascendante jusqu'au quatrieme degre inclusivement de tous les Rois et Princes de maisons souveraines de l'Europe actuellement vivans [Genealogy up to the fourth degree inclusive of all the Kings and Princes of sovereign houses of Europe currently living] (in French). Bourdeaux: Frederic Guillaume Birnstiel. 1768. p. 9.
  11. Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Ferdinand VII. of Spain" . Encyclopædia Britannica. 10 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.
  12. Genealogie ascendante jusqu'au quatrieme degre inclusivement de tous les Rois et Princes de maisons souveraines de l'Europe actuellement vivans [Genealogy up to the fourth degree inclusive of all the Kings and Princes of sovereign houses of Europe currently living] (in French). Bourdeaux: Frederic Guillaume Birnstiel. 1768. p. 96.
  13. Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Francis I. of the Two Sicilies" . Encyclopædia Britannica. 10 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.
  14. Ortúzar Castañer, Trinidad. "María Cristina de Borbón dos Sicilias". Diccionario biográfico España (in Spanish). Real Academia de la Historia.
  15. Navarrete Martínez, Esperanza. "María de la O Isabel de Borbón". Diccionario biográfico España (in Spanish). Real Academia de la Historia.

Further reading
Isabella II of Spain
Cadet branch of the Capetian dynasty
Born: 10 October 1830 Died: 10 April 1904
Regnal titles
Preceded by
Ferdinand VII		 Queen of Spain
1833–1868		 Vacant
Title next held by
Amadeo
Spanish nobility
Vacant
Title last held by
Ferdinand (VII)		 Princess of Asturias
1830–1833		 Succeeded by
Isabella
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