1820-2] Comuneros and Anilleros 221

some other officers to Asturias in order to cut the matter short. This act of energy produced a sedition, which was promptly suppressed. La Fontana closed its sittings, the exiled officers departed, and the " Liberating Army " was disbanded without offering resistance.

But there was a definite divergence between the two Liberal groups. The partisans of Riego expelled the friends of the Government from the Lodges; and a new masonic centre was established, known as the comuneros, a name borrowed from that given to the Gastilian insurgents of 1520. The breach was delayed by the conclusion of an agreement at the end of 1820 between the extremists and the Government, whereby Riego was recalled from exile and appointed Captain-General of Aragon, while some of his friends entered the Ministry or obtained official posts ; but the beginning of 1821 brought a final rupture, and the establishment of the comuneros as a new secret society, opposed to the Freemasons, but imitating their organisation and ceremonies. This society was at first unimportant but afterwards gathered such strength that in 1822 it numbered 10,000 members, still maintaining its ultra-Liberal character and adhering to Riego. This split was fatal for the constitutionalists, all the more that it was complicated by the existence of other groups of conflicting views, always struggling with one another and exciting dissensions. Such were, first, the group of the afrancesados, who, after their return to Spain, soon showed themselves so moderate that they opposed the Liberals; secondly the societies of Carbonari, either modelled upon those of Italy, or actually founded by Italian refugees, such as General Pepe, after the failure of the Neapolitan and Piedmontese revolutions; and, thirdly, the republican legitimists and French adventurers, such as Bessieres, Montarlot, Vaudoncourt, and others, whose proceedings (to be mentioned later) were on the point of producing grave disturbances in Spain. Again, the moderate Liberals who desired a reform of the Constitution, such as Martinez de La Rosa, Toreno, Feliu, Caso Manuel, and others, formed at the end of 1821 a semi-secret society, named " Friends of the Constitution," and nicknamed the anilleros, from the gold ring which was their symbol. Their chief object was to strengthen and enlarge the power of the Government, in order to avoid anarchy. We shall presently trace the various incidents which marked the spread of the struggle between these several groups.

These dissensions were cleverly turned to account by Ferdinand and the absolutists. It is needless to say that the King had never, for a moment, sincerely accepted the revolution. The man, who in 1814 had not understood the force of accomplished facts and the meaning of Liberal opinion, could still less understand them when he found himself violently deprived of his absolute power. Thus it is not strange that, immediately after swearing to the Constitution, the King began to plot against it, and that there were repeated collisions between him and the successive Liberal Governments. From the beginning of 1820 there

222 " The King's pig-tail." — The Powers [1820-1

were various indications of reaction in several places, including Madrid. In October the King refused to sanction the law for the extinction of nunneries and diminution of monasteries, and only yielded before the threat of a revolt and the decided attitude of the patriotic societies. On October 25, Ferdinand went to the Escurial, whence he encouraged anticonstitutional conspiracies, at the same time carrying on, through Alcala Galiano and Fray Cirilo, ex-General of the Franciscans, negotiations with the Radicals, who with manifest folly accepted this ignoble and dangerous alliance, in order to overthrow the Government. As if these proceedings—publicly carried on — were not enough, there now appeared near the Escurial an armed party calling themselves " Defenders of the absolute King"; and finally, on November 15, the Ministers were astonished by the royal nomination, contrary to the Constitution, of the violent absolutist General Carvajal as Captain-General of Madrid. The actual holder of the post, General Vigodet, refused to give up the command; there was a serious sedition in Madrid, a proof of the unpopularity of Ferdinand, who was obliged to annul the appointment, to dismiss his confessor, and to return to Madrid. At his entrance into the city, the King heard many gross insults in which the natural indignation of the Liberals at the royal duplicity found vent. Ferdinand, concealing his rage, awaited an opportunity to strike a blow at the Government. He found it at the reopening of the Cortes, on March 1, 1821. Some days previously, the King had intimated that the Cortes ought to take measures to prevent insults to his person. At the opening ceremony he pronounced the usual speech, which had been composed by Argiielles; and at the end he added a paragraph in which, after declaring his loyalty to the Constitution, he bitterly complained of the insults heaped upon him in the streets and in the clubs, and of the backwardness of the executive in checking them ; this appendix became known as " the King's pig-tail." Its immediate result was the resignation of the Ministers and the nomination of others, among whom were several anilleros. Ferdinand's action was partly prompted by desire to rid himself of a Ministry which had discovered his intrigues with armed parties of Royalist insurgents.

But these armed bands were not the chief danger for the Constitutionalists. Ferdinand, distrusting his Spanish partisans, had early applied to the foreign sovereigns for help in overthrowing the Liberals. His first application was made on October 25, 1820, the day on which he went to the Escurial, in a letter carried to Louis XVIII by the Portuguese diplomatist Saldanha: in it Ferdinand declared that he was a captive, and that Spain was about to plunge into anarchy, and begged the French King to obtain the aid of the Allied Powers. Already in March, the Tsar Alexander, alarmed by the success of the Spanish Revolution, had upon his own initiative presented to the Powers a proposal for armed intervention in Spain; but Austria, Prussia, and England, dreading

1820-1] The Cortes of 1821. — Murder of Vinuesa 223

the increase of Russian or French influence in the Peninsula, opposed it, as did also Louis XVIII himself, who was sufficiently occupied with the public affairs of his own kingdom. The revolution at Naples, where the Spanish Constitution of 1812 was proclaimed, brought forward again the project of an anti-revolutionary combination of the Powers. At the Congress of Troppau the matter was discussed both generally and with special reference to Italy; and the Tsar took occasion to express to one of the French envoys his desire that France should do in Spain what Austria had done in Naples. But again the project fell through. Ferdinand, however, continued to solicit Louis XVIII; and events in Spain certainly told in favour of his applications.

In fact the evident disloyalty of the King had aroused Liberal sentiment; and, on the other hand, the extremists redoubled their efforts to remove the Moderates from power. The conflict was twofold, and gave rise to the gravest occurrences. The Cortes of 1821, after the change of Ministry, continued their labours until June 30, passing some important laws concerning judicial administration, revenue, education, and other matters. Debates upon the failure of the Neapolitan and Piedmontese revolutions showed that the deputies did not grasp the bearing of these events upon Spanish affairs. Certainly the domestic situation was enough to absorb the attention of earnest constitutionalists. The armed bands of absolutists daily increased; the higher ranks of the clergy vehemently resisted the execution of the laws concerning ecclesiastical matters. The Government used sometimes vigorous, sometimes moderate, measures, but logically refrained from refusing to their enemies the advantages of Liberal government. The extremists regarded this as a weakness, allowing the absolutists to conspire and to harass the Government. Hence followed various disturbances in several cities, and on the part of the Liberals a change from their generous bearing of earlier days towards those who were suspected of absolutism to one of violence and persecution. The gravest episode of this period of political excitement was the assassination of Vinuesa, parish priest of Tamajon, who was imprisoned in Madrid as author of a conspiracy, regarded by some as the dream of a madman, by others as a device deliberately contrived in concert with the King. After a long trial he had been condemned to a term of imprisonment, which seemed to the extremists a trifling punishment, indicative of royal bribery or pressure. On May 4 the mob attacked the prison and murdered Vinuesa. In these outbreaks of political feeling refugees from abroad took no small part. Among them two Frenchmen were prominent — Bessi&res, who attempted to start a Republican revolt in Barcelona, and Cugnet de Montarlot, who attempted to obtain the support of Riego for an invasion of France in order to promote a French Republican movement. Some historians have denied the reality of these dealings, assuming that Montarlot was an agent of the French Government who hoped to

224 Riego. — Growing disorder [1821-2

compromise Riego by this pretended conspiracy. But the fact of Montarlot's dealings with Riego and also with other extremists is certain. Although the levity and quixotism of Riego seemed to invite such proposals, a letter written by him on August 12 to another French refugee, Vaudoncourt, who shared Montarlot's aims, proves that Riego recognised the duties of his position, and was not prepared for an enterprise involving international complications. Nevertheless the French Government complained to the Spanish Ministry of the real or supposed complicity of Riego in these fantastic plots; and, the complaint being supported by Ferdinand, Riego was harshly and rashly removed from his command in Aragon. This act produced in many places seditions or demonstrations of extremists, who took for their banner the portrait of Riego. The demonstration which took place in Madrid was dispersed by the police without bloodshed in the spot known as Las Platerias, near the Plaza Mayor (September 17). But the agitation continued and was reflected in the Cortes themselves, which met in extraordinary session (September 24, 1821, to February 14, 1822), and, in spite of the violent discussions following the fall of the Ministry, devoted their attention to projects and laws of great importance, such as the administrative division of the Peninsula, customs and taxes, a proposed Penal Code, and public charity.

In 1822 symptoms of growing disorder showed themselves both in the division of the Liberals and in the activity of armed bands of absolutists, which received from the French Government, not indeed official aid — for Villele did not venture so far — but encouragement and assurance of impunity for the conspiracies planned in France and for the aid in money and arms thence derived. At the beginning of the year, Ferdinand, through his uncle the King of Naples, once more solicited aid from the Powers; but as before, the matter, notwithstanding the support of the Tsar, remained for the time undecided. In the new Cortes of 1822, the extremists, favoured by the law forbidding the re-election of former deputies, obtained a large majority, a serious matter under the circumstances, and all the more so seeing that a Moderate, Martinez de La Rosa, was head of the Government. The Cortes soon showed their tendency by appointing as their President Riego, who had no qualifications for the post. The parliamentary conflict which at once began was complicated by seditions and repression in the provinces. The number of bands was so great as to constitute a state of civil war, carried on without quarter. In Aranjuez, in Valencia, and in Madrid itself, there were in May and June attempts at absolutist demonstrations and risings, in the last of which (June 30), an officer of the King's Guard, a man of Liberal ideas, named Landabum, was killed by his own soldiers. This event was the prelude to a veritable insurrection, begun by four battalions of Guards, which left Madrid and encamped in the Pardo. Fearing an attack, the people of Madrid made

1822] The Congress of Verona 225

preparations; and, when the battalions from the Pardo silently entered Madrid, they were beaten off, %chiefly by the stout resistance of the National Militia (July 7). The King, upon whose connivance the mutineers had reckoned, is said to have appeared after their defeat upon a balcony of the Palace and to have encouraged the pursuit. The Guard was disbanded, and a new Ministry of Radicals was formed.

But the international danger was now taking definite shape. The French Government, not satisfied with indirectly supporting the Royalists, lent to Ferdinand a large sum through its ambassador La Garde to aid a counter-revolution. La Garde himself, with the envoys in Madrid of Russia, Austria, Prussia, and other States, after the events of July 7, addressed a note to the Minister of State, speaking of " the horrible situation of his Catholic Majesty and his family," and of " the dangers threatening their august persons," and plainly declaring that "the relations of Spain with all Europe would depend upon the treatment of his Majesty." This threat was soon to be translated into the decision of the Congress of Verona, which was preparing to meet.

The new Ministry attempted to strengthen the Liberal position by placing proved Liberals in important posts in Madrid and in the provinces, and by vigorously pressing the war against the insurgent bands. These had seized La Seo de Urgel, a Catalan town, where they established a " Supreme Regency of Spain during the captivity of Fernando VII." On August 15 this Regency addressed a proclamation to the country urging the liberation of the so-called " captive King," and also applied to Metternich for help; but Metternich was not disposed for an intervention which might favour Russian plans.

The proclamation of Urgel, the spread of the civil war, and the known attitude of the foreign Powers roused the activity of the Liberals. Arrests, seditions, orations in the clubs, attempts to rouse public feeling against the enemies of liberty, were redoubled, while the civil war increased in ferocity on both sides, the constitutionalists gaining some success and forcing the Regency to fly to France. But the decision of the Congress of Verona modified the situation. Although the application of the Regents of Urgel was not entertained by Metternich, it was viewed with favour by the French envoys Montmorency and Chateaubriand, who, contrary to the instructions and desires of Villele, worked steadily for an intervention, to be carried out by France. At the meeting of October 20 Montmorency asked the other envoys whether the Allied Powers would recall their ambassadors from Madrid if France should recall hers, and, whether, in case of war between France and Spain, Louis XVIII might reckon upon the aid of his allies. The Tsar replied in the affirmative, offering a large army either to maintain order in France during the war, or to enter Spain; but the opposition of the British plenipotentiary, Wellington, and of Metternich, frustrated this plan. Yet the design was not abandoned; and it now seemed certain that,

c. M. H. x. 15