History
The House of Bourbon - Part Four - The Pretenders
By m.p.
Jun 9, 2008 - 9:46 AM

Carlos María Isidro Benito de Borbón y Borbón-Parma, the younger brother of Fernando VII, lost the throne to his niece when, in May 1830, his brother decided to abolish the Salic Law of Succession which had only allowed women to inherit the throne unless all male lines – either direct or lateral – were extinct. The Infante Don Carlos had been the heir presumptive up until that time. Fernando’s decree, the Pragmatic Sanction of 1830, ratified a decree which had been issued by his father, Charles IV, in 1879, but which had never been formally promulgated.
Fernando’s daughter, Isabella, was born in October that year, and four days after her birth, was named heir to the throne, should the King fail to produce a male heir.
The Infante’s supporters managed to get the Pragmatic Sanction revoked in 1832 when the monarch was taken ill, but it was re-established by the King in 1833.
Don Carlos left Spain for Portugal, refusing to return to Madrid to swear allegiance to Isabella as the heir to the throne.
When Fernando died on 29th September 1833, Isabella, not yet three years old, was named Queen of Spain and her mother, María Cristina de las Dos Sicilias, as regent. Two days later, Don Carlos issued the Abrantes Manifesto, declaring his accession to the throne as Carlos V, giving rise to the First Carlist War, with liberals supporting the Queen and a constitutional monarchy, and the absolutists supporting the Carlists. Carlos fled to France in 1839 where he was briefly imprisoned, and in 1845 abdicated his rights to the Spanish throne in favour of Carlos Luis, the eldest of his three children from his marriage to his niece, María Francisca de Braganza, who was the daughter of his sister, Carlota Joaquín de Borbón, and Juan VI of Portugal. His second marriage to his first wife’s sister, María Teresa de Braganza, was childless. Don Carlos died in Trieste in 1855.

The First Carlist War had ended in August 1839 with the Agreement of Vergara – although some Carlist supporters continued to fight on for almost another year – but a second stage came after a failed attempt to marry Don Carlos’s son, Carlos Luis de Borbón y Braganza, the Count of Montemolín, and pretender to the Spanish throne as Carlos VI, to his cousin, Isabella II of Spain: she, in the event, married her cousin, Francisco de Asís de Borbón. Carlos Luis issued a manifesto from exile in Britain at the end of 1846 threatening to take to arms again if there was no negotiated solution to the situation.
The Second Carlist War, which lasted until 1849, was sparked by an uprising in Cataluña in 1846, although there was also fighting in Aragón, Navarra and Guipúzcoa. Carlos Luis was captured and taken prisoner while trying to cross into Spain from France, and was followed across the border by the last of the insurrectionists in May 1849. He made another attempt to seize the throne in 1860, but was captured and sent into exile in France after renouncing his claim to the throne. He died in January 1861, shortly after his youngest brother, Fernando, and his wife, Carolina de Borbón-Dos Sicilias. His other brother, Juan Carlos, was now pretender to the throne as Juan III.

The Third Carlist War came after the 1868 revolution had forced Isabella II into exile, and her later abdication in favour of her son, Alfonso, in 1870. There was no longer a Bourbon monarch on the Spanish throne, however, as the Cortes had offered the crown to Amadeo of Savoy, who became Amadeo I of Spain on Janaury 1871. The pretender, Juan III, had given up his claim to the throne to his son, Carlos María de Borbón y Austria-Este, the Duke of Madrid, in 1868, now the pretender Carlos VII.
Carlos María had been making preparations for months for an attempt to seize the Spanish throne, and had promised to restore the ‘fueros,’ the charters which had been abolished in Navarra, the Basque Country and Cataluña. He issued a manifesto on 21st April 1872 protesting the Carlist Party’s disappointing result in the recent election, and called for an uprising. The call was answered in the Basque Country and Navarra, and Don Carlos crossed the French border into Navarra on 2nd May, with fighting also taking place on the eastern front in Cataluña, where the war was to continue until November 1875.
Carlos had crossed back into France after a defeat at Oroquieta in May 1872, and the Amorebieta Agreement brought peace to Navarra and the Basque Country, until insurrection flared up again in December that year. The pretender returned to Spain in July 1873, and by September of 1874, Carlist forces were in control of much of Navarra and the Basque Country. Carlos VII was Head of State at the head of a government which came to have five secretaries of state, a penal code, a high court of justice and even Customs.
By the summer of 1875, Spanish government forces were beginning to encroach on Carlist territory, concentrating their forces in the North after fighting ended on the eastern front. The Carlist capital, Estella, was conquered in February 1876 and Don Carlos left Spain at the end of that month.
The Bourbon monarchy had already been restored to the Spanish throne the previous year, in the person of Alfonso XII, the son of the deposed Queen, Isabella II.
Don Carlos died in 1909 in Varese, northern Italy, at the age of 61.