Eduardo González
This Friday, April 7, 2023, marks the 200th anniversary of the entry into Spain of the so-called Hundred Thousand Sons of St. Louis, an armed force commanded by Bourbon France, consecrated by the Holy Alliance and supported from within by the so-called Apostolic Party, to overthrow the Liberal Triennium established three years earlier by Rafael del Riego and restore the absolutist regime of Ferdinand VII.
On January 1, 1820, a contingent of troops preparing to leave for America under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Rafael del Riego revolted against the absolutist regime in the Sevillian town of Cabezas de San Juan. The sending of that contingent was part of Ferdinand VII’s decision to order the “reconquest” of America, a decision that concealed a double objective: on the one hand, to recover the colonies (and their contributions to an absolutely ruined Treasury) and, on the other (a less obvious objective, although probably more important for the Monarch), to send to the other side of the sea tens of thousands of soldiers and officers who had participated in the war against Napoleon and who were particularly inclined to pronounce themselves in favor of the liberal regime of 1812.
The origin of the King’s misgivings lay in one of the most relevant reforms of the Cortes of Cadiz -the same Cortes that in 1812 approved the first liberal Constitution in the history of Spain-: the abolition of the nobility test for access to the army officers. That change, undoubtedly linked to the needs of the fight against Napoleon, not only contributed to create a new class of officers promoted by authentic war merits, but also turned the Armed Forces into one of the main bulwarks of the liberal regime.
Thus, after demonstrating his true intentions through a self-coup and the subsequent reinstatement of absolutism, Ferdinand VII decided to get rid of about 40,000 potentially revolutionary soldiers and officers by sending them overseas. Many of them (possibly the majority) never returned and some even joined the rebel forces. It was during one of those shipments when the uprising of Riego’s troops took place under the notes of the march that, as time went by, would become the official anthem of Spain during the Second Republic.
That adventure, called the Liberal Triennium and which forced Ferdinand VII to swear the Constitution of 1812, only lasted three years because of its strong internal divisions, his inability to take strong social measures (which deprived him of popular support) and, above all, the conspiracies that the king himself led from the shadows while, in public, he followed “the constitutional path”. Throughout 1822, Ferdinand VII repeatedly requested the help of the monarchies of the Holy Alliance (founded by Austria, Russia and Prussia and joined by France and England) to restore absolutism. Finally, the Congress of Vienna in 1822 agreed to send a French force to Spain, despite the opposition (or rather, inhibition) of the English government.
The Hundred Thousand Sons of Saint Louis
On April 7, 1823, the Hundred Thousand Sons of Saint Louis, a French military force of 90,000 men commanded by Louis Antoine de Bourbon, Duke of Angoulême, crossed the Spanish border without having previously declared war. In fact, the Spanish government itself did not take the step of declaring war on France until two weeks later, on April 23.
The invading army, which was commanded by generals who had fought alongside Napoleon, some of them even in the Spanish War of Independence (it is said that the most veteran soldiers offered a “sightseeing tour” in Madrid to their younger comrades), increased throughout the campaign to 120,000 soldiers, 45,000 of whom would later stay in Spain as an occupying force to help the new absolutist regime. They were joined by about 30,000 Spanish royalist volunteers (the Army of Faith). To oppose this army, the liberal government could barely muster 50,000 troops, poorly defended strongholds and a king unwilling to defend the Constitution.
In its advance to “liberate Ferdinand VII”, and unlike what happened in 1808, the French army encountered very little popular resistance and did not need to fight to occupy almost any walled city (an exception was Pamplona, which held out for five months) nor was it forced to fight any major battle, except for a few battles in Catalonia or a skirmish near Cadiz, the constitutionalist city par excellence. Thanks, among other factors, to the treachery of many generals who surrendered without fighting (an exception was Francisco Espoz y Mina, who resisted in Catalonia), the Hundred Thousand Sons of Saint Louis took control of the whole country in September 1823, after crushing the last attempts at resistance.
On October 1, 1923, Ferdinand VII was received with great pomp by the Duke of Angoulême in Puerto de Santa María and, that same day, he signed in this Cadiz city the decree annulling “all the acts of the so-called constitutional government”, which allowed him not only to restore his absolute power with full rights, but also to approve the “edict of proscription” which lifted the ban on “the hunting of liberals”. The first great victim was Rafael del Riego himself, who was hanged in November in the Plaza de la Cebada in Madrid. The repression was so violent that the French themselves, who kept the troops of Angoulême in Spain until 1828 with the purpose of containing the radical absolutism of the Spaniards, tried to stop it. It was not possible, and the repression continued with all its rigor until 1826 under the leadership of the so-called Spanish “apostolic party”.
