1823

THE Spanish Government was resolved to maintain the national independence of Spain. It would make no concession. The French Ambassador in Madrid was recalled. At the opening of the French Chambers in January, the King himself announced his decision: "I have ordered the recall of my Minister. One hundred thousand Frenchmen, commanded by a prince of my family, whom I fondly call my son, are ready to march with a prayer to the God of St. Louis that they may preserve the throne of Spain to the grandson of Henri IV. They shall save that fair kingdom from ruin and reconcile it to French invasion of Spain Europe." By the middle of March, the Duke of Angoulême and his staff left Paris. On April 7, the French vanguard crossed the Bidassoa, and the Duke entered Irun, welcomed by Spanish royalists. About the same time the Cortes and Constitutional Ministry left Madrid, and compelled King Ferdinand VII. to accompany them to Seville. The forces of the Spanish Government fell back without striking a blow. Bands of freebooters calling themselves royalists went pillaging throughout the northern provinces. The commandant of Madrid felt constrained to beg the French to hasten their advance lest the city fall a prey to the freebooters. Already the looting of the suburbs had begun, when the French entered the Spanish capital on the 24th of May. A regency was appointed under the Duke of Infantado. The Continental powers sent accredited representatives to Madrid. Meanwhile the Cortes withdrew to Cadiz. King Ferdinand refused to accompany them; so they suspended his powers and appointed a regency over his head. The French prepared to lay siege to Cadiz.

Civil war broke out in Spain. Across the border in Portugal, Dom Miguel, Revolution in Portugal the second son of the absent king, excited a counter revolution. This state of affairs in the Peninsula gave a finishing stroke to the royal cause in America. In Central America, the revolutionists of Costa Rica and Independence of Central America Guatemala, who had made common cause with Mexico, proclaimed their independence. In Mexico, Santa Anna proclaimed the republic at Vera Cruz. Emperor Iturbide, who felt his throne tottering beneath him, retired, and was banished from Mexico with an annuity. His sympathizers in Costa Rica were overthrown in a battle at Ochomoco. On the first day of July, Costa Rica was united with its neighboring States in the federation of Central America. Nor had Peru been idle. Two royalist armies under Santa Cruz had entered the upper provinces. During the summer months they overran the The South American struggle country between La Paz and Oruro. But in early autumn they were forced back by the revolutionists under Bolivar, who entered Lima on September 1, and had himself proclaimed dictator of Peru. In Brazil, during this interval, the Constitutional Assembly had been convoked in accordance with Dom Pedro's promise. Under the leadership of the two Andrade brothers the delegates insisted on the most liberal of constitutions. Dom Pedro's first attempt to suppress the liberal leaders was foiled by the Assembly. Finally he dissolved the contentious assembly and exiled the Andrade brothers to France. In the provinces of Pernambuco and Ceara a republic was proclaimed. Rebellion broke out in Cisplatina.

In Spain, the two opposing regencies vied with each other in retaliatory Warring factions in Spain measures. Odious persecutions were instituted on both sides. In vain the Duke of Angoulême tried to restrain the reprisals of the Spanish royalists. In August he appeared before Cadiz. He called upon King Ferdinand to publish an amnesty and restore the medieval Cortes. But the Spanish Ministry, in the King's name, sent a defiant answer. Cadiz was thereupon Siege of Cadiz besieged. On August 30, the French stormed the fort of the Trocadero. Three weeks later the city was bombarded. For the Spanish liberals, the cause had become hopeless. The French refused all terms but the absolute liberation of the King. On Ferdinand's assurance that he bore no grudge against his captors, the liberals agreed to release him. At last, on the 30th of September, Ferdinand signed a proclamation of absolute and universal amnesty. Next day he was taken across the bay to the French headquarters. The Cortes dissolved.

The Duke of Angoulême received King Ferdinand Release of Ferdinand VII. with misgivings. Already he had written to France: "What most worries the liberals is the question of guarantees. They know that the King's word is utterly worthless, and that in spite of his promises he may very well hang every one of them." Angoulême's first interview confirmed his impression. In reply to his demand for a general pardon, Ferdinand pointed to the ragged mob shouting in front of his windows, and said: "You hear the will of the people." Angoulême wrote to Villèle: "This country is about to fall back into absolutism. I have conscientiously done my part, and shall only express my settled conviction that every foolish act that can be done will be done."

Within twelve hours Ferdinand annulled all acts of the Constitutional Royalist reprisals Government during the preceding three years. By approving an act of the regency of Madrid, which declared all those who had taken part in the removal of the King to be traitors, Ferdinand practically signed the death warrant of those men whom he had just left with fair promises on his lips. Even before reaching Madrid, Ferdinand VII. banished for life from Madrid and from the country fifty miles around it every person who had served the government in Spain during the last three years. Don Saez, the King's confessor, was made Secretary of State. He revived the Inquisition, and ordered the prosecution of all those concerned in the pernicious and heretical doctrines associated with the late outbreak. Ferdinand justified his acts with a royal pronunciamiento containing this characteristic passage: "My soul is confounded with the horrible spectacle of the sacrilegious crimes which impiety has dared to commit against the Supreme Maker of the universe.... My soul shudders and will not be able to return to tranquillity, until, in union with my children, my faithful subjects, I Riego executed offer to God holocausts of piety." Thousands of persons were imprisoned, or forced to flee the country. On November 7, Riego was hanged. Young men were shot for being Freemasons. Women were sent to the galleys for owning pictures of Riego.

The Duke of Angoulême was indignant and would have nothing more to do with the King. In a parting letter of remonstrance he wrote: "I asked your Majesty to give an amnesty, and grant to your people some assurance for the future. You have done neither the one nor the other. Since your Majesty has recovered your authority, nothing has been heard of on your part but arrests and arbitrary edicts. Anxiety, fear, and discontent begin to spread everywhere." Angoulême returned to France thoroughly disenchanted with the cause for which he had drawn his sword.

In France, as in England, the return of absolute rule in Spain was viewed with extreme disfavor by the Liberals. The success of the French arms, to be sure, gave the government an overwhelming majority at the elections. The voice of the Liberals was heard, however, in the first debate over the The French elections Spanish war. Manuel, a Liberal deputy, denounced foreign intervention in Spain. He said: "Can any one be ignorant that the misfortunes of the Stuarts in England were caused by nothing so much as the assistance granted them by France—an assistance foreign to the Parliament and to the people. The Stuarts would have avoided the fate that overtook them had they sought their support within the nation." For this alleged defence of regicide Manuel was excluded from the Chambers. On his refusal to give up his constitutional rights, he was forcibly ejected by the National Guards. "It is an insult to the National Guard," exclaimed the venerable Lafayette. In spite of the momentary triumph of the Royalists, Guizot's final verdict on French intervention in Spain expresses the true attitude of France:

"The war was not popular in France; in fact, it was unjust, because Guizot's verdict unnecessary. The Spanish revolution, in spite of its excesses, exposed France and the Restoration to no serious risk; and the intervention was an attack upon the principle of the legitimate independence of States. It really produced neither to Spain nor France any good result. It restored Spain to the incurable and incapable despotism of Ferdinand VII., without putting a stop to the revolutions; it substituted the ferocities of the absolutist populace for that of the anarchical populace. Instead of confirming the influence of France beyond the Pyrenees, it threw the King of Spain into the arms of the absolutist powers, and delivered up the Spanish Liberals to the protection of England."

During this year in France occurred the deaths of Dumouriez, the famous general of the Revolution, and of Marshal Davoust, the hero of Eckmühl, Auerstädt, and a score of other victories won during the Napoleonic campaigns. At Rome, Pope Pius VII., the one time prisoner of Napoleon, died in old age, and was succeeded by Pope Leo XII.

Dr. Edward J. Jenner, the great English surgeon and originator of Death of Jenner vaccination, died in the same year at London. Jenner was led to his great discovery by the remark of an old peasant woman: "I can't catch smallpox, for I have had cowpox." In 1796, Jenner performed the first vaccination on a boy patient, James Phipps, whom he subsequently endowed with a house and grounds. The scientific results of this experiment and those that followed were embodied by Jenner in his "Inquiry into the causes and effects of the Vaccination variolæ vaccinæ," published on the eve of the Nineteenth Century. Unlike so many other medical innovations, Jenner's epoch-making cure for the dread disease of smallpox won him almost instant general renown. Parliament, in 1802, voted him a national reward of £10,000, and a few years later added another gift of £20,000. After his death a public monument was erected to Jenner's memory on Trafalgar Square.

Amherst Governor in India

In India, Lord Hastings retired from the governorship at Calcutta and was succeeded by Lord Amherst. At the time of his accession to office, Dutch influence had already become paramount in Borneo, whereas the British were firmly settled in Singapore.

In North America it was a year of industrial progress. On October 8, the first boat passed through the new Erie Canal from Rochester to New York. In Brooklyn the first three-story brick houses were built and the paving of streets was begun. The new system of numbering houses came in vogue. The earliest steam printing press was set up in New York and issued its first book. The manufacture of pins was begun, and wine in marketable quantities American letters was first made in Cincinnati. American letters saw the appearance of Cooper's novels, "The Pioneers" and the "Pilot." Halleck published his famous poem, "Marco Bozarris." During this year an American squadron under Commodore Porter put an end to piracy and freebooting in the West Indies. On the first day of December the Eighteenth Congress met and Henry Clay was once more elected Speaker of the House.