FERDINANDO VII, king of SPAIN. — Born at S. Ildefonso on 13 October 1784, died at Madrid on 29 September 1833.
Son of Carlo IV and Maria Luisa of Parma, F. gathered the hopes of the nation around himself when he resolutely opposed Godoy, his father’s detested minister. Carlo IV proclaimed him a conspirator and rebel (30 October 1807), but, faced with popular indignation, was forced to abdicate, and F. became king of Spain on 19 March 1808. Napoleon I then intervened; under the pretext of reconciling father and son, he lured them both to the meeting at Bayonne, compelling them to renounce their respective rights while awaiting the restoration of order in Spain by him, the emperor of the French. Napoleon, as is well known, transferred the Spanish crown to his brother Joseph.
During the War of Independence that followed, F. was recognized as the legitimate sovereign by the insurgents, and all Spain welcomed him with sincere enthusiasm when, after Napoleon’s defeat at Leipzig, he ascended the throne. The disappointment was nevertheless profound when F., on 4 May 1814, declared that he did not recognize the liberal constitution proclaimed at Cádiz in 1812 and established an absolute regime.
Civil conflicts and the loss of the American colonies provoked the revolt of 1820. The King yielded and swore allegiance to the constitutional charter, but at the same time appealed for the aid of the Holy Alliance. A prisoner of the rebels at Cádiz, liberated by the French under the Duke of Angoulême, he abandoned himself, despite his formal promises of amnesty, to a repression that for a long time drenched the country in blood.
Since F. had no male offspring from four successive marriages, he replaced the Salic law with the “Pragmatic Sanction” of 29 March 1830. The heir to the throne thus became the infanta Isabella, born to Maria Cristina of Naples on 10 October 1830, thereby infringing the rights of the presumptive heir, her brother Don Carlo, beloved by the people for the firm support he had maintained in the face of the Napoleonic usurpation. This was the beginning of the Carlist wars, which so long devastated Spain after F.’s death.