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.