FERDINAND VII, King of Spain. - B. at San Ildefonso on Oct. 13, 1784, d. at Madrid on Sept. 29, 1833.
Son of Charles IV and of Maria Luisa of Parma, F. gathered upon himself the hopes of the nation when he resolutely took his stand against Godoy, his father's abhorred minister. Charles IV proclaimed him a conspirator and rebel (Oct. 30, 1807), but in the face of popular indignation he had to abdicate, and F. was king of Spain on March 19, 1808. Napoleon I then intervened, and under the pretense of reconciling the father with the son, he lured both of them to the meeting at Bayonne, forcing them to renounce their respective rights in the expectation that he, the emperor of the French, would establish order in Spain: and Napoleon, as is well known, transmitted the Spanish crown to his brother Joseph.
During the war of independence that followed, F. was recognized as legitimate sovereign by the insurgents, and all Spain received him with sincere enthusiasm when, Napoleon having been defeated at Leipzig, he ascended the throne. Grave, however, was the disappointment when F., on May 4, 1814, declared that he did not recognize the liberal constitution that had been proclaimed at Cadiz in 1812 and established an absolute regime.
Civil strife and the loss of the American colonies provoked the revolt of 1820: the King yielded and swore fidelity to the constitutional charter, but at the same time invoked the help of the Holy Alliance. A prisoner of the rebels at Cadiz, liberated by the French of the duke of Angoulême, despite formal promises of amnesty, he abandoned himself to a repression that long bloodied the country.
From four successive marriages F. had no male offspring, and so he replaced the Salic law with the "pragmatic sanction" of March 29, 1830. Heir to the throne was thus the infanta Isabella, born of Maria Cristina of Naples on Oct. 10, 1830, injuring the rights of the presumptive heir, his brother Don Carlos, loved by the people for the firm support he had given in the face of the Napoleonic usurpation. This was the beginning of the Carlist wars, which desolated Spain for so long after the death of F.
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Renzo U. Montini