Seeing the Spanish Revolution spreading rapidly toward Madrid like an ignited wildfire, the promiscuous Queen Isabella finally panicked.
Faced with the choice of resisting or fleeing, Queen Isabella didn’t hesitate at all, taking her family and fleeing north to France in a hurry.
The Queen’s flight also accelerated the Spanish Revolution.
The revolutionary army entered Madrid effortlessly and announced the demise of the Kingdom of Spain.
On October 8, 1868, Francisco Serrano appointed himself as the President of the provisional government, while Juan Prim, who enjoyed great prestige in the revolutionary army, served as the Minister of War of the provisional government.
Spain officially entered a state of extreme chaos.
Whether this vigorous revolution was the savior of the Spanish people remained unknown, but the chaotic situation in Spain created an opportunity for Cuba, far away in the Americas, to fight for independence.
On October 10, a famous Cuban plantation owner and lawyer, Carlos Manuel de Céspedes, led a group of Cuban patriots to launch an uprising near Yara in the eastern province of Oriente.
They issued a call to all areas of Cuba, urging all Cubans to fight for freedom, equality, and independence.
This was a heavy blow to the hastily established Spanish provisional government because Cuba was one of the few remaining Spanish colonies that could bring positive returns.
The Cuban War of Independence not only forced the Spanish provisional government to dispatch troops to suppress it, but also caused the newborn government to face massive military expenditures under extremely difficult financial conditions.
But this was not the only problem facing the provisional government.
The revolution succeeded, but the provisional government had not yet taken control of all of Spain.
At the same time, the biggest challenge was how to stabilize the provisional government’s rule and establish an administrative system entirely different from the former absolute monarchy.
Moreover, the provisional government wasn’t a monolith.
The relationships among the major classes and factions were as incompatible as fire and water.
The chaotic situation of the provisional government wasn’t much better than the former Spanish kingdom’s government.
The initiators of this revolution were the Spanish upper bourgeoisie and liberals; their original intention was to overthrow the old absolute monarchy and establish a democratic monarchy with power concentrated in the national government.
However, the petty bourgeoisie, workers, and peasants in Spain had suffered enough from the oppression of the monarchy and nobility.
They preferred to establish a federal republic with decentralized power but unified administration, and favored replacing the king with a president to uniformly govern all of Spain.
Carlo was also nervously following the situation in Spain.
The good news was that Italy and Spain faced each other across the sea, separated by land only by France, so news traveled very quickly.
Right now, what Carlo least wanted to hear was that the Spanish provisional government decided to abolish the monarchy, which would mean Carlo completely lost his connection to the Spanish throne.
On November 9, the Spanish provisional government finally issued a decree regarding the formation of a parliament, announcing that parliamentary elections would be held the next year, in February 1869.
Although this decree made no mention of the composition of the future Spanish government, anyone following Spanish news understood that the outcome of the parliamentary elections would determine the fate of Spain.
If big capital and liberal reformists secured a majority in the parliament, the new parliament would have the power to enact legislation for a constitutional monarchy.
Similarly, once the working or peasant classes secured a majority in parliament, the Spanish monarchy could vanish completely, and a republican system was very likely to take the stage in Spain.
As of now, there was a high probability that the situation in Spain would develop as it did historically.
Prim, who supported a constitutional monarchy, still controlled the power of the Spanish government and was very likely to gain an advantage in the parliamentary elections a few months later.
The timing of the parliamentary elections was also worth pondering.
Only four months passed from the establishment of the provisional government to the parliamentary elections, and less than three months from the issuance of the decree to the elections.
These three months were hardly enough to change the attitudes of the Italian people, nor could they easily alter the entrenched influence of those nobles and big capital in Spain.
However, to make his plan more secure, Carlo decided to blow some wind over the Spanish public.
What kind of wind?
Naturally, the wind of advocating for the monarchy.
As for the harm brought to the Spanish people by the Spanish Bourbon dynasty, it could all be blamed entirely on the rule of the absurd and incompetent Queen Isabella.
Carlo also had grounds for advocating the monarchy.
Currently, the world’s strongest navy was undoubtedly Britain, which was a constitutional monarchy.
The world’s strongest land army was probably France (still basking in Napoleon’s afterglow), which was also a monarchy.
The established European powers—Russia and the Austrian Empire—and the rising power, the Kingdom of Prussia, were all monarchies.
Even Italy, which had just achieved unification and joined the ranks of great powers, was a monarchy.
Looking around the world, the only non-monarchic state among the great powers was the United States, and the US was not viewed as incredibly powerful by Europeans at this time.
The rise of the US would have to wait until after WWI and WWII; the US of this era didn’t yet possess such an exaggerated scale of industry and economy.
Since the vast majority of powerful nations in Europe were monarchies, what reason did the Spanish people have to voluntarily abandon this highly advanced system?
As for the previous failure of the monarchy, that was entirely the fault of the Bourbon family and Queen Isabella.
If everyone wanted to blame someone, just blame Queen Isabella.
Carlo doing this was not only to retain a shred of trust in the monarchy in the hearts of the Spanish people, but also to make the Spanish people hate the Bourbon dynasty and Queen Isabella as much as possible.
Only this way would the Spanish people not strongly reject a foreign dynasty, and Carlo’s hopes of taking over Spain would be much greater.
As for the Bourbon family, Queen Isabella, and the famous Alfonso XII—well, they had sucked blood in Spain for decades anyway, so it was about time they made a little contribution to the Spanish people.
And this couldn’t be considered a smear campaign against the Bourbon family.
Queen Isabella’s rule in Spain was universally known, marked mainly by absurdity, incompetence, and chaotic tyranny.
If the Spanish people lost their trust in the Bourbon dynasty, the Carlist rebellion that had plagued Spain for a long time could also be properly resolved.
After all, the Carlist faction was also part of the Bourbon family, and Spain’s chaos partly went to their credit.
On November 27, 1868, the now wildly popular Italian Il Sole 24 Ore published an article titled “We Want Bread, Not a Republic,” and it quickly spread across northern and southern Italy.
The main content of this article discussed the advancement of the current monarchic system and the success of major European monarchies, stating that the monarchy was the most rational choice for European countries, and that a republic would be an abnormal mutation for Europe.
Set aside whether this article made sense or not.
For the monarchic countries of Europe at this time, having such an article was definitely better than not having one.
Publishing such articles in newspapers was always better than publishing those that advocated for republicanism and liberal democracy; at least such reports wouldn’t cause the public to grow dissatisfied with the monarch’s throne.
With no country opposing it, this report began to spread on a small scale along the Mediterranean coast, particularly in the Mediterranean countries centered around Italy.
(END CHAPTER)