The Royalist War (Spanish: Guerra Realista), also called the civil war of 1822–1823, was an armed conflict that took place in Spain during the last year and a half of the Liberal Triennium. It began in the spring of 1822—there is no agreement among historians about the exact moment of its beginning—with the extension of the actions and the number of royalist parties that had already been acting since the spring of 1821 with the purpose to reestablish the absolute power of king Ferdinand VII. They were confronted by the constitutional armies that defended the liberal regime established after the triumph of the Revolution of 1820. Its fundamental setting was Catalonia, Navarra and Basque Country and in the first phase the royalist forces were defeated and were forced to take refuge in France (or Portugal). The war took a definitive turn in favor of the royalists when on April 7, 1823, the invasion of the French army of the Cien Mil Hijos de San Luis began, which had the support of reorganized Spanish royalist troops in France and of the royalist parties that had managed to survive the constitutionalist offensive. On September 30, 1823, King Ferdinand VII was "liberated" from his "captivity" and the next day he abolished the Constitution of 1812 and restored absolutism.
The civil war of 1822–1823 is considered by some authors to be the first civil war in the contemporary history of Spain, First Carlist War (1833–1840)— «characterized by the clash between revolution and counter-revolution. The royalists took up the motto "Religion, King and Country", used during the War of the Convention and by a sector of the "patriots"—the "serviles" identified with the Ancient Regime—during the War of Independence.
But not only the royalists resorted to religion to justify their positions and fight their enemies - they came to use the term Crusade to refer to the war they were fighting -, also the liberals. The liberal newspaper El Universal said that the friars who had joined the royalist rebellion "have given the sad and scandalous testimony of their irreligion, their immorality, their hypocrisy, their ingratitude." In this sense, it is no coincidence that the constitutional authorities of Barcelona decided to transfer the image of the Virgin of Montserrat to the city to prevent it from falling into the hands of the royalists.
Background
The Riego pronouncement in Las Cabezas de San Juan had reestablished the Constitution of 1812, which Fernando VII swore for the first time on March 9, 1820. However, the «counter-revolution» began from that very moment, since Ferdinand VII never accepted the constitutional regime and from the beginning conspired to overthrow it.
The armed wing of the "counterrevolution" was the royalist parties, organized by absolutists exiled in France and connected to the Royal Palace. The methods and way of operating of the games were very similar to those used by the guerrilla during the War of Independence (precisely some of those guerrillas will now be active on the royalist side). Although some began to act in 1820, the royalist parties experienced great growth from the spring of 1821 as a consequence of the connection of the counter-revolution of the old reactionary elites, with the "anti-revolution" of the popular classes "culturally and socially aggrieved by revolutionary and liberal praxis." «The confluence between the counterrevolution and the antirevolution under the hegemony of the former, formed the block that we call "royalist" because what unifies them is the fight against the constitutional system and the defense of absolute power of the king and the cultural hegemony of the Catholic Church».
It will be precisely the Catholic Church, mostly opposed to the liberal regime due to the disentailment, that will play a decisive role in the formation and the consolidation of this alliance between the counterrevolutionary elites and the "antirevolutionary" popular strata. Among other reasons because it provided the royalist bloc with ideological support by developing a discourse of "religious war" that penetrated especially in the rural world.
And at the top of the counterrevolution was the king. Installed from March 1822 in the Palace of Aranjuez, he established in a more discreet way than in Madrid contacts and meetings with nobles, diplomats, high officials and soldiers opposed to the constitutional regime as well as with the ambassadors of the European monarchies. and with the nuncio of the Holy See. Also from there he entrusted secret missions outside of Spain to men he trusted. The king's role was, above all, "to provide coherence to the counterrevolution by providing the element that gave unity to the movement; that of a paternal king, loved by the people - so much so that he takes up arms in their defense - and stripped of his legitimate throne by a conspiring and sectarian minority."
During the spring of 1822, the actions of the royalist partiesThey acted on favorable terrain: little constitutional military presence, growing poverty of the popular classes and negative effects of some liberal reforms on the peasants" and there were several attempts at absolutist rebellions that culminated in the failed coup d'état of July 1822, which was led by the king himself and starred by the Royal Guard.
The war
The royalist offensive
From the spring of 1822, "the royalist parties converged into better organized battalions and spread throughout almost the entire territory, forming what was known as the "army of faith", which would number between 25,000 and 30,000 men. The royalist uprising was organized from exile and had a dense counterrevolutionary network in the interior (in whose summit would be placed by King Fernando VII). It spread in such a way that "during the summer and autumn in Catalonia, the Basque Country and Navarra there was a true civil war in which it was impossible to stay out of it, and from which the civilian population came out very poorly. from both sides: reprisals, requisitions, war contributions, looting, etc.». The Marquis of Miraflores wrote in his Historical-Critical Notes (1834) that Catalonia in «May and June already presented the sad appearance of a civil war», to which they joined Vizcaya and Guipúzcoa, infested with bands, and Aragon and Galicia, with bands of "100 to 200 men." Miraflores concluded that on the eve of the «Day of July 7» of 1822 «Spain offered the horrible spectacle of a bloody civil war».
The decisive event that started the civil war (or gave it the definitive impetus) was the takeover by the leaders of the royalist parties Romagosa and El Trappist, in command of a troop of two thousand men, from the fortress of the Seo de Urgel on June 21. The next day the Provisional Superior Board of Catalonia was established there, which strove to create a regular army and establish an administration in the interior areas of Catalonia occupied by the royalists. A month and a half later, on August 15, what would be known as the Urgell Regency was established there, «established at the request of the people» and «desiring to free the Nation and its King. of the cruel state in which they find themselves." "Both in strategic terms and in symbolic terms, the establishment of a capital that embodied the contestation of the constitutional regime was an important advance,” Pedro Rújula and Manuel Chust have pointed out. The idea of establishing a Regency had been defended by the marquis of Mataflorida —in fact in June he had received powers from the king to establish it— and it was also one of the demands of the French government to provide support to the royalists. The Regency was formed by Mataflorida himself, the baron of Eroles, and Jaime Creus, archbishop of Tarragona, advised by a small government formed by Antonio Gispert responsible for State, Fernando de Ortafà in War and Domingo María Barrafón, responsible for the rest of secretariats of the Office. The creation of the Regency was "justified" by the idea defended by the royalists that the king was "captive", "kidnapped" by the liberals, in the same way that he had been by Napoleon during the War of Independence. In fact, the first proclamation of the Regency began by saying that it had been established “to govern Spain during the captivity of S.M.C. Mr. Don Fernando VII. Another of the arguments used was the lack of popular support that, according to the royalists, the constitutional regime had. This is how it appeared in the Manifesto that the lovers of the Monarchy make to the Spanish Nation, to the other powers and to the Sovereigns of the Marquis of Mataflorida that circulated throughout Europe: «The immobile and frightened people did not take part in such betrayal the revolution that he always condemned with silent indignation compressed by force.”
Starting with the constitution of the Regency of Urgel, which "provided the counterrevolution with a centralized direction and a certain ideological coherence," the royalists consolidated their dominance over large areas of the northeast and north of Spain by establishing their own institutions to administer the territory they controlled: Juntas de Cataluña, Navarra, Aragón, Sigüenza and the Basque Country, the latter chaired by General Vicente Quesada and which had a member for each of the three provinces."The royalists consolidated their dominion over the northwest of Catalonia, the Maestrazgo (Aragon and the Valencian Country), half of Navarra and areas of the Basque Country, Galicia, Castilla y León" The Baron de Eroles, hero of the defense of Gerona during the Spanish War of Independence, was appointed Generalissimo of the Royalist Armies in Catalonia and extended the uprising, taking the cities of Balaguer, Puigcerdá, Castellfollit de Riubregós and Mequinenza.
On the other hand, the formation of the Regency was received with enthusiasm by the European courts, although not so much by the French because the Regency had proclaimed the restoration of absolutism as its objective, while France continued to support the establishment in Spain of a regime of Letter Granted, like yours. A representative of the Regency, the count of Spain, attended the Congress of Verona, while the Spanish Government was not invited. For his part, King Ferdinand VII continued to secretly correspond with the European courts to ask them to come to "rescue" him. In a letter sent to the Tsar of Russia in August 1822, the same month in which the Regency of Urgel was established, he told him: «Check the penetration of V.M.Y. the pernicious results that the constitutional system has produced in two years, with the very advantageous ones produced sic by the six years of the regime they call absolute».
Among the factors that would explain the success of the uprisings of the realistas historians have highlighted that the counterrevolutionaries knew how to take advantage of the discontent of the peasantry with the economic policy and fiscal of the liberals. «The peasantry tended to identify liberalism with a very aggressive taxation and with an economic regime harmful to their interests, because it replaced the payment in kind of taxes and seigneurial rights due to their payment in cash, always more burdensome in economies that are poorly integrated into the market and poorly monetized", to which "is added the crisis that Spanish - and European - agriculture was experiencing due to the general fall in prices—a decrease of 50 percent in just ten years—». «That is, a complex social world that nourishes resistance to change», which includes « above the elites of class world». "For everyone, liberalism was the alteration, in some cases more tangible for their economies or their privileges and in general for their mental world and secular patterns of life."
Ramon Arnabat has added the following six factors: "the conspiratorial work of the counterrevolutionary leadership and the economic support that it provided, under French protection"; "the military weakness of the constitutionals, both due to the low number of troops and the incapacity of some of their leaders"; "the agitating and channeling role played by a good part of the clergy"; "the actions of the party leaders who were a key piece of the connection between the counterrevolution and the antirevolution, thanks to the help of sectors of the well-to-do peasants"; «the attitude of the city councils, some committed to the royalists and others indifferent, which allowed the free movement of the parties and made the action of the constitutional ones difficult»; and "the use of guerrillas war and the mobilization of somatén in specific actions that allowed diverse social sectors to be integrated into the counterrevolution."
Ramón Solans, for his part, has highlighted the fundamental role played by the clergy. He quotes the liberal deputy José María Moscoso who in a report he presented to the Cortes wrote: «There has hardly been a party in Spain that did not have in its ranks and at its head unworthy ministers of a religion sweet and tolerant by essence. " He also cites the harangue of a parish priest from Gerona in August 1822 with the purpose of mobilizing the members of the royalist groups that formed «the armies of faith»:
The armies of faith call the faith of Jesus Christ a public cause, and the constitutionalists call the Constitution a public cause. That is why those of faith wear the ribbon of "Dying for Religion" and the others that of "Constitution or Death" and what Catholic Christian will doubt for a moment the party they should embrace? Which of you does not instantly know the true public cause? You have to say it yourself, which one do you want more? faith or freedom. Religion or Atheism. To Christ or to the Constitution. Everyone shouted long live the faith of Jesus Christ. Long live Religion: Death, death to the Constitution. Immediately he lowered the priest from the pulpit, mounted his horse and all the young men of the town followed him.