ALFONSO XII, RE DI SPAGNA

ALFONSO XII, king of SPAIN. – Son of Queen Isabella II and of the “consort” King Francis Alfonso of Bourbon; b. in 1857, d. at the Prado on 25 Nov. 1885. After his mother had been deposed by the revolution of Sept. 1868, Alfonso accompanied her into France; but Isabella, seeing the insuperable difficulty of regaining the throne, abdicated two years later in favour of her thirteen-year-old son. Since, however, the liberal parties of the nation were so strongly opposed to the Bourbon dynasty, the prince Amadeus of Savoy was invited in 1871 to assume the crown under the name of Amadeus I. Unable to restore harmony in the country, he abdicated after two years, and in 1873 the republic was proclaimed. After its fall, General Martinez Campos easily restored the ancient monarchy by a coup d’état in Dec. 1874, and on 9 Jan. 1875 Alfonso was able to recover the throne. The new king married his cousin Mercedes of Orléans in 1878, and, after her death a few months later, he wed in 1879 the Archduchess Maria Christina of Austria, by whom he had two daughters and a son: King Alfonso XIII. The Carlist civil war in the north of the peninsula having ended in 1876, a period of relative peace ensued, thanks to the constitution of that year and to the alternating rule of the liberal and conservative parties. The rebellions in the island of Cuba in 1878 and 1880 were suppressed, while abroad the serious dispute over the Carolines was settled by an agreement between Spain and Germany, procured by Pope Leo XIII.