FERDINAND VI. (1713-1759), king of Spain, sometimes called the Sage, the younger son of Philip V. and Maria Louisa of Savoy, was born at Madrid, September 23, 1713. On the death of his elder brother Louis in 172 5, Ferdinand was proclaimed prince of the Asturias; and in 1729 he was betrothed to Barbara, daughter of J ohn V. of Portugal. He succeeded his father on July 9,1746. Since 1739 Spain had been involved in protracted war, first with England in consequence of disputes relative to British interests in the West Indies, and afterwards, since 1740, with Austria on the accession of Maria Theresa. It was Ferdinand’s first endeavour on coming to the throne to secure peace for his exhausted country, and one of the earliest acts of his government was to order the withdrawal of the Spanish troops from Italy (August 1746). Soon afterwards negotiations were opened for peace with England; and these, though frequently interrupted, ultimately resulted in the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, which terminated the war of the Austrian succession, thus restoring peace to Europe (October 1748). Weak in health and despondent in temperament, Ferdinand had no inclination thenceforward to take an active part in European affairs, and the management of the public business he abandoned almost entirely to his ministers Ensenada, Carvajal, and Wall. These, however, always found it necessary to take into their counsels the queen, to whom Ferdinand was much attached, the royal confessor Rabago, and the singer Farinelli, whose musical powers had given him extraordinary influence. During this reign the condition of Spanish finance was much improved; agriculture, commerce, and the arts were encouraged; by a concordat with Pope Benedict XIV., in 1753, many abuses of ecclesiastical patronage were ...reformed; nor were the affairs of the army and navy neglected. On the outbreak of the Seven Years’ War in 1756, Spain steadfastly maintained a strict neutrality, notwithstanding the repeated efforts both of France and of England to secure her intervention, the former offering Minorca and the latter Gibraltar as the price of her assistance. On the death of his consort in 1758, Ferdinand fell into a profound melancholy, which issued in a confirmed insanity, under which he died at Villaviciosa on the 10th of August 1759. Leaving no issue, he was succeeded, in terms of the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, by his half-brother Charles IIL Though he was in no sense an able sovereign, and was remarkable for nothing unless for a pacific and kindly disposition, his reign was an exceptionally prosperous one for Spain, and critics generally concur in the observation of Coxe that, “since the elevation of the house of Bourbon to the throne of Spain, no period occurs in which the interests and independence of the kingdom were so well and so consistently supported as during the reign of Ferdinand VL”
See Coxe, Memoirs of the Kings of Spain of the House of Bourbon, chaps. 48-58.
9th ed. Encyclopædia Britannica, vol. 9, p. 82 [493 words — estimated reading time: 3 minutes]
FERDINAND VII. (1784-1833), king of Spain, the eldest son of Charles IV, and of Maria Louisa of Parma, was born at San Ildefonso, October 14, 1784, and became prince of the Asturias on the accession of his father in 1788. The year of his birth had also been the year of Godoy’s arrival at court (see Alcudia) ; and the sinister influences of the royal favourite soon began to manifest themselves there. Ferdinand from a very early age learned to dislike Godoy, and he found many to sympathize with him in his not unnatural aversion. In 1802 he was married to Maria Antonietta, daughter of the king of Naples, and she, along with his former tutor Escoiquiz, the dukes of San Carlos, del Infantado, and others, fostered in him the spirit of resistance to the ascendency of “the Prince of the Peace.” Soon after her death in 1806 (attributed by him, though without sufficient evidence, to foul play), and the forcible removal of Escoiquiz, the court became openly divided into two hostile factions; but though Godoy had the entire confidence of the king and queen, Ferdinand had the almost undivided sympathies of. the people. On the 30th of October 1807, he was suddenly laid under arrest on a charge of conspiracy against the crown and life of his father; but no documentary evidence against him could be produced, except a draftmemorial, apparently intended for presentation to the king, in which the conduct of Godoy was bitterly complained of, and a letter to Napoleon appealing for protection, and expressing a desire to enter into a matrimonial connexion with the Bonaparte family. When it was found that the French ambassador had been cognisant of these intrigues, the matter was hushed up and Ferdinand pardoned; but meanwhile the rapid movement of events, political and military, had ...begun to make Godoy’s position an extremely precarious one. Ostensibly following out the terms of the agreement at Fontainebleau of October 27,1807, Napoleon had not only invaded Portugal, but had also begun to pour troops into Spain (December 1807). The Spanish people were beginning to show signs of restiveness, and, dreading an outbreak, Godoy had advised the withdrawal of the king and queen to Seville with a view to the possible necessity for a further flight to Mexico. But before this project could be carried out the revolutionary rising at Aranjuez had taken place (March 17-18, 1808), which resulted in the forced abdication of Charles, the final overthrow of Godoy, and the enthusiasticproclamation of Ferdinand as king (19th March). This last proceeding had been no part of Napoleon’s plan; and Madrid was occupied four days afterwards by the French troops under Murat. By the representations of the latter, both Charles and Ferdinand were induced to seek a personal interview with Napoleon at Bayonne, and submit to his arbitration their rival claims. The result was the treaty of Bayonne between Charles and Napoleon (5th May 1808), by which the former finally renounced the Spanish throne. Next day Ferdinand also was compelled to give up his claims; it was declared that the Bourbons had ceased to reign in Spain; and shortly afterwards Joseph Bonaparte was proclaimed king. Ferdinand was now interned at Valençay (Indre), where he remained during the whole of the Spanish war of independence, receiving from Napoleon an annual allowance of 600,000 francs. The letters he wrote to Napoleon from his captivity were certainly far from indicating patriotism: most people will doubt whether they were consistent with any self-respect. He had nothing but compliments to offer on the accession of Joseph; he assured his master of his ardent prayers for his prosperity, and of his most respectful and absolute attachment to his august person; he wrote to public men to say, “My highest desire is to prove myself to be the emperor’s adopted son, by my entire submission and obedience to his wishes and desires.”
The decisive victory of Wellington at Vittoria (21st June 1813), followed up by the invasion of France, induced Napoleon to treat with his captive on terms more nearly approaching those of equality (November 1813), and ultimately the title of Ferdinand and his dynasty to the throne of Spain was recognized on his agreeing to sign a convention in which it was undertaken on his part to expel the English from the Peninsula, to pardon all those who had given their obedience to Joseph Bonaparte, and to restore the harmonious relations of the two kingdoms as these had subsisted prior to 1792. On his return to Spain in March 1814, the cortes declined to recognize him until he should have sworn to the constitution which had been promulgated at Cadiz in 1812; but, listening to the counsels of the “servile” party, he first evaded and afterwards rejected this demand. On the 4th of May he, by the decree of Valencia, annulled the constitution of 1812 and all enactments made by the cortes in his absence; on the 30th of the same month he issued his decree of proscription and perpetual exile against the afrancesados or those who had given obedience to Joseph Bonaparte; on the 21st of July he re-established the Inquisition, with all the powers it had possessed under Torquemada, and began a hot crusade against “liberalism” or “constitutionalism,” in which no weapon of confiscation, or imprisonment, or banishment, or execution, which despotism could wield was' left unemployed. This policy of the absolutist “camarilla” was for some time interrupted by a revolutionary party headed by Quiroga and Riego at Cabezas de San Juan near Cadiz, which, on the 1st of January 1820, caused the constitution of 1812 to be again proclaimed. *Thθ insurrection gaining daily in strength, the king was compelled to make concession after concession, until at length on the 9th of March he solemnly professed his entire acceptance of the popular constitution, abolished the Inquisition, banished the Jesuits, and restored the freedom of the press. The cortes reassembled, and the citizens who had been banished reappeared. But very soon the king began to show how insincere his submission had been.. Sometimes secretly, sometimes openly, he did all in his power to encourage the opposition, until at last, in July 1822, the royal guard broke out into open revolt with cries for “the absolute king.” For the time they were repressed by the constitutionalists; but meanwhile the state of the Peninsula had attracted the attention of the Holy Alliance, and at the congress of Verona (August 25 to December 14, 1822) it was agreed to send a French army into Spain, “to deliver Ferdinand from slavery.” Madrid was entered on May 23, 1823; the cortes withdrew to Seville, where Ferdinand was declared incapable of governing, and a regency was appointed (11 th June). Driven by the invaders to Cadiz, and there compelled to surrender, the cortes yielded up their authority into the hands of Ferdinand, who in his turn promised a general amnesty to all who had been concerned in the revolutionary proceedings. This promise he broke the very next day, annulling every act of his government since 7th March 1820. Another period of proscriptions, banishments, and fusillades now set in. Enactments of the most tyrannical description were unscrupulously made with the avowed purpose of stamping out the last spark of constitutionalism. Numbers were put to death for the most trivial offences, and it has been estimated that some 20,000 families were compelled to leave their country. Louis XVIII. offered counsels of moderation; he reminded Ferdinand that “Christian princes ought not to rule by means of proscriptions,” and that “a blind despotism, far from consolidating the power of sovereigns, weakens it but his remonstrances were in vain. His successor Charles X. used similar language; but Ferdinand’s reply was that he was not able to control the reactionary party which had restored him to power. During the later years of his life he took little or no interest in public affairs; and the absolutists began to turn their attention to the question of the succession. A scheme was matured for inducing the king to abdicate in favour of his brother Don Carlos; but on the death of his third wife Maria Amalia of Saxony in May 1829 without issue, Ferdinand filled the “apostolicals” with consternation and the liberals with new hope by contracting a fourth marriage with Maria Cristina of Naples (December 1829). In March 1830 the king decreed the abrogation of the Salic law,—a measure which excited the Carlists first to intrigue and afterwards to open insurrection on the birth of a daughter in October. In 1832 Ferdinand was seized with a threatening illness, and wavered from his formerly expressed will with regard to the succession; but ultimately, in June 1833, his daughter (Isabella II.) was declared his successor, Cristina was nominated as regent, and Don Carlos with many of his followers was ordered to leave the kingdom. The death of Ferdinand at Madrid, September 29, 1833, was the signal for the outbreak of a long and bloody civil war.
Ferdinand’s selfishness, hypocrisy, mendacity, incapacity to understand even the idea of patriotism, have sometimes suggested a comparison with Charles I. of England. But such a comparison is unjust to Charles. Ferdinand was a Spanish Bourbon, and in him the characteristic qualities of that house reached their final perfection—“imbecility, dissoluteness, ferocity, mutual hate, intellect never reaching higher than cunning, with a religion that was the fetichism of a savage rather than the creed of a rational being.” His reign was a disastrous one for Spain. Its results may be summed up as follows :—lose of her American possessions—New Granada, New Spain (Mexico), Rio de la Plata, Chili, Venezuela, Guatemala, and Peru; hopeless financial embarrassment; thousands of her best citizens put to death for political opinions; myriads banished; and a quarter of a million slain in unnecessary wars.
9th ed. Encyclopædia Britannica, vol. 9, p. 83 [1,653 words — estimated reading time: 10 minutes]
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