Isabel II, Reina de España

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• Queen of Spain: Reign 29 September 1833 – 30 September 1868, Proclamation 23 July 1843, Abdication 25 June 1870

Predecessor: Ferdinand VII Successor: Amadeo I

Isabella II (born Oct. 10, 1830, Madrid, Spain — died April 9, 1904, Paris, France) Queen of Spain (1833 – 68).

She was the daughter of Ferdinand VII, and the issue of her succession to the throne precipitated the First Carlist War (see Carlism). During her minority (1833 – 43), her mother and Baldomero Espartero acted as regents; in 1843 Espartero was deposed by military officers, and Isabella was declared of age. Liberal opposition to the regime's authoritarianism, scandalous reports about her private life, and her arbitrary political interference led to the Revolution of 1868, which drove her into exile. She abdicated in favour of her son, Alfonso XII.

Isabella II was the first and so far only Queen regnant of Spain. She came to the throne as an infant, but her succession was disputed by the Carlists, who refused to recognise a female sovereign, leading to the Carlist Wars in Spain; the last major European civil wars in which pretenders fought to establish their claim to a throne. Several times during the period from 1833 to 1876 the Carlists — followers of Infante Carlos and his descendants — rallied to the cry of "God, Country, and King."

After a troubled reign, Isabella was deposed in the Spanish Revolution of 1868, and formally abdicated in 1870. Her son Alfonso XII became king in 1874.

Isabella II of Spain

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Isabella II (October 10, 1830 – April 10, 1904), Isabel II in Spanish, was Queen regnant of Spain ("Queen of the Spains" officially from August 13, 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 regents of Leon and Castile were counted as kings and queens of Spain.

Isabella was born in Madrid in 1830, the eldest daughter of Ferdinand VII, king of Spain, and of his fourth wife and niece, Maria Christina, who was a Neapolitan Bourbon and also the niece of Marie Antoinette. Maria became queen-regent on September 29, 1833, when her daughter Isabella, at the age of three years, was proclaimed queen 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 Bourbons 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, Christina, 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.

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 queen aged 16 marry her cousin, Prince Fernando I Francisco de Asis de Bourbon-Cadige (1822–1902), the same day (October 10, 1846) her younger sister married the duke of Montpensier.

These marriages suited France and Louis Philippe, 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, a homosexual. For instance, the heir to the throne, who later became Alfonso XII, was widely believed to be conceived by a captain of the guard, Enrique Puig y Moltó.

Isabella had twelve children, but only four reached adulthood:

Ferdinand (1850)

Maria Isabel (1851–1931), Princess of Asturias, who married Prince Gaetano of the Two Sicilies.

Maria Cristina (1854)

Alfonso XII

Maria de la Concepcion (1859-1861)

Maria de Pilar (1861-1879)

María de la Paz (1862–1946), who married her cousin Prince Ludwig Ferdinand of Bavaria.

Francisco de Asis (1863)

Eulalia de Asis de la Piedad (1864–1958), who married her cousin [Antonio de Orléans y Borbón], Infante of Spain.

Isabella reigned from 1843 to 1868, a period of palace intrigues, back-stairs and antechamber influences, barrack 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. Moderados and Unión Liberals quickly succeeded each other and kept out the Progressists, 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 favour 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 an 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.

Her exile helped cause the Franco-Prussian war, as Napoleon III could not accept the possibility that a German, Prince Leopold of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen, may replace Isabella, who was a Bourbon (a member of the old French royalty).

Isabella was induced to abdicate in Paris on June 25, 1870 in favour of her son, Alfonso XII, and the cause of the restoration was furthered. She had separated from her husband in 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 April 10, 1904 and is entombed in El Escorial.

[edit]Titulary

In 1837, Spain developed legislatively into a constitutional monarchy. Before that date, the underage Isabella was still known by the feudal-like centuries-old, symbolic long titulary: 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.

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).

Espanjan Isabella II oli Espanjan kuningatar vuosina 1833–1868. Hän eli Espanjan vallankumouksen jälkeen loppuikänsä maanpaossa Pariisissa, ja hänen hautansa on El Escorialissa. Isabella II:n kahdestatoista lapsesta neljä saavutti aikuisiän. Wikipedia

syntyi: 10. lokakuuta 1830, Madrid, Espanja
Kuoli: 19. huhtikuuta 1904, Pariisi, Ranska

Puoliso: Francis of Spain, Duke of Cádiz (v. 1846–1902) Lapset: Alfonso XII, Isabella, Princess of Asturias, Infanta Eulalia of Spain, Infanta María de la Paz of Spain Vanhemmat: Maria Christina of the Two Sicilies, Ferdinand VII

Sisarukset: Infanta Luisa Fernanda, Duchess of Montpensier, María Amparo Muñoz, 1st Countess of Vista Alegre, Agustín Muñoz, 1st Duke of Tarancón, Fernando, 2nd Duke of Riansares and Tarancon, Maria Christina, Marchioness of La Isabella, Maria de los Milagros, Marchioness of Castillejo, Jose, Count of Gracia, Juan, Count of Recuerdo