Amadeo I of Spain

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Amadeo I of Spain
King of Spain
ReignJanuary 2, 1871 – February 11, 1873
(2 years)
Abdication: February 11, 1873[1]
CoronationNovember 16, 1870
PredecessorFrancisco Serrano y Domínguez
(Regent of the Kingdom)
SuccessorEstanislao Figueras
(President of the Executive Power of the Spanish Republic)
RegentFrancisco Serrano y Domínguez (1870–1871)[lower-alpha 1]
BornMay 30, 1845
Royal Palace of Turin
Turin, Kingdom of Sardinia
DiedJanuary 18, 1890
(aged 44)
Royal Palace of Turin
Turin, Kingdom of Italy
Burial
Basilica of Superga
Spouse
IssueSee Biography
HouseSavoy
FatherVictor Emmanuel II of Italy
MotherMaria Adelaide of Habsburg-Lorraine
ReligionCatholicism

Amadeo I of Spain, called "the Knight King" or "the Elected" (Turin, May 30, 1845 – ibidem, January 18, 1890[2]), was King of Spain between 1871 and 1873. He was also the first Duke of Aosta.

His reign in Spain, of little more than two years, was marked by political instability. The six cabinets that succeeded one another during this period were unable to resolve the crisis, which was aggravated by the pro-independence conflict in Cuba, which had begun in 1868, and by a new Carlist war, which started in 1872.

Biography

Amadeo of Savoy was the second son of Victor Emmanuel II, King of Piedmont-Sardinia and, from 1861, King of Italy, of the House of Savoy, and of Maria Adelaide of Austria (great-granddaughter of Charles III of Spain, who was therefore Amadeo's great-great-grandfather).

In 1867 he married Maria Vittoria dal Pozzo della Cisterna, Princess of La Cisterna and Belriguardo, with whom he had three sons: Emanuele Filiberto, 2nd Duke of Aosta, Victor Emmanuel, 1st Count of Turin, and Luigi Amedeo, 1st Duke of the Abruzzi.[3] After the premature death of his first wife on November 8, 1876, and a long period of widowhood, Amadeo married again in 1888, to his own niece, the French Princess Maria Letizia Bonaparte (daughter of his sister Maria Clotilde, who was married to Napoléon Joseph Bonaparte), with whom he had one more son: Umberto of Savoy-Aosta, 1st Count of Salemi.

He received the military training customary for members of royalty, and he amply demonstrated his courage at the Battle of Custoza.[4]

Reign in Spain

Amadeo I of Spain
Main article: Reign of Amadeo I
Portrait of Amadeo I (1872) by Vicente Palmaroli (Museo del Prado).

The Revolution of 1868 in Spain and the departure of Isabella II gave rise to a provisional government presided over by Serrano, in which the other rebel generals also took part. The new government convened Constituent Cortes, which, with a large monarchist majority, proclaimed the Constitution of 1869, establishing a constitutional monarchy as the form of government. A difficulty inherent in the change of regime was finding a King who would accept the office, since Spain at that time was a country that had been driven into impoverishment and a state of upheaval, and a candidate was sought who would fit the constitutional form of monarchy.[5]

Finally they found their monarch in the person of the Duke of Aosta, Amadeo of Savoy, son of the King of Italy, who met every requirement for the office: he came from an ancient dynasty (linked to the Spanish one), was a progressive and a baptized Catholic, although, according to some sources, he was a Freemason,[6] having attained the 33rd degree of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite.[6] In this regard, the republican writer Miguel Morayta y Sagrario (1834–1917) warned of the falsity of the document received by the lodges of Madrid in the name of Italian Freemasonry, which stated that Amadeo of Savoy was a Freemason. Morayta asserted that it was a forgery produced in Madrid itself by some member of the Grand Orient of Spain, coinciding with the pro-Amadeo campaign.[7] On the other hand, the latest research carried out by Alvarado Planas and collected in his publication Masones en la nobleza de España (2016) indicates that, despite what has been claimed, Amadeo was not a Freemason.[8]

Amadeo was the first King of Spain to be elected by a Parliament, which for traditional monarchists was a grave affront. On November 16, 1870, the deputies voted: 191 in favor of Amadeo of Savoy, 60 for the federal Republic, 27 for the Duke of Montpensier, 8 for the elderly General Espartero, 2 for the unitary Republic, 2 for Alfonso de Borbón, 1 for an undefined Republic and 1 for the Duchess of Montpensier, the Infanta María Luisa Fernanda, sister of Isabella II; there were 19 blank ballots. Thus the President of the Cortes, Manuel Ruiz Zorrilla, declared: "The Duke of Aosta is elected King of the Spaniards."

He faced the systematic rejection of the Carlists and the republicans, each for reasons inherent to their own interests; but also of the Bourbon aristocracy, which saw him as a foreign upstart; of the Church, for supporting the confiscations and for being the son of the Monarch who had put an end to the Papal States; and also of the people, because of his lack of social graces and his difficulty in learning the Spanish language.

A parliamentary commission immediately traveled to Florence to inform the Duke; on December 4 he officially accepted the election, embarking shortly afterward for Spain. While Amadeo I was traveling to Madrid to take up his office, General Juan Prim, his principal supporter, died on December 30 of the wounds sustained in an attack three days earlier on the calle del Turco in Madrid.

Embarkation of King Amadeo at the Port of La Spezia, Italy in 1870, a work by Luis Álvarez Catalá. In the tent that appears on the right, both the flags and the coats of arms of the kingdoms of Spain and Italy can be seen.

Amadeo landed at Cartagena on December 30, and arrived in Madrid on January 2, 1871. There he went to the Basilica of Our Lady of Atocha to pray before Prim's body. After this bitter ordeal he went to the Cortes, where he took the prescribed oath: "I accept the Constitution and swear to keep and to enforce the Laws of the Kingdom," the ceremony ending with the solemn declaration by the President of the Cortes: "The Cortes have witnessed and heard the acceptance and oath that the King has just given to the Constitution of the Spanish Nation and to the laws. Don Amadeo I is proclaimed King of Spain."

The only thing Amadeo's arrival in power achieved was to unite the entire opposition, from republicans to Carlists. As an example, it suffices to reproduce a few lines of the speech before the first Cortes of the new monarchy by the republican leader Emilio Castelar y Ripoll:

In view of the state of opinion, Your Majesty must leave, as Leopold of Belgium (sic, for Leopold of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen) would surely have left, lest you meet an end similar to that of Maximilian I of Mexico...

Amadeo had great difficulties because of Spanish political instability. The governing coalition that Juan Prim had built had fragmented after his death. The Liberal Union, except for Francisco Serrano and a small faction, embraced the still-expectant Bourbon cause. The progressives had split into radicals, led by Ruiz Zorrilla, and constitutionalists, headed by Sagasta.[9] There were six ministries in the little more than two years that his reign lasted, with abstention growing ever greater. After an assassination attempt against him on July 19, 1872, Amadeo I declared his anguish at the complications of Spanish politics: "Ah, per Bacco, io non capisco niente. Siamo una gabbia di pazzi" — "I understand nothing, this is a madhouse." The situation did not seem to improve, owing to the outbreak of the Third Carlist War and the intensification of the Ten Years' War in Cuba. Moreover, at the beginning of 1873, the governing coalition, beset by strong friction among the parties that made it up, broke apart definitively, and they ran separately in the elections.[9]

The last straw was a conflict between Ruiz Zorrilla and the Artillery Corps. The President had stated his firm decision to dissolve that military body, under threat of resigning, and the Army proposed to Amadeo I that he dispense with the Cortes and govern in an authoritarian manner.[10]

Madrid tradition holds that at noon on February 11, 1873, King Amadeo I was informed of his "dismissal" while he was waiting for his meal in the restaurant of the Café de Fornos; he immediately canceled the order, asked for a grappa, gathered his family, renounced the throne[11] and, without waiting for the authorization of the deputies (as required by article 74.7 of the Constitution of 1869), took refuge in the Italian embassy.

Amadeo wrote his message of renunciation, which was read by his wife. He did not address it to the President of the Council of Ministers, but to the representation of the Nation. It read as follows:

To the Congress:

Great was the honor that the Spanish Nation bestowed on me by electing me to occupy its Throne; an honor all the more appreciated by me since it was offered to me surrounded by the difficulties and dangers that the undertaking of governing so deeply disturbed a country entails.

Encouraged, however, by the resolve proper to my race, which seeks danger rather than shuns it; determined to be guided solely by the good of the country and to place myself above all parties; resolved to fulfill religiously the oath I promised to the Constituent Cortes, and ready to make every kind of sacrifice to give this valiant people the peace it needs, the liberty it deserves and the greatness to which its glorious history and the virtue and constancy of its sons entitle it, I believed that the short experience of my life in the art of ruling would be made up for by the loyalty of my character, and that I would find powerful help to avert the dangers and overcome the difficulties, which were not hidden from my sight, in the sympathies of all Spaniards who love their homeland and are already eager to put an end to the bloody and sterile struggles that have for so long torn at its entrails.

I recognize that my good intentions deceived me. For two long years I have worn the Crown of Spain, and Spain lives in constant struggle, seeing each day more distant the era of peace and happiness that I so ardently long for.

If the enemies of its happiness were foreigners, then, at the head of these soldiers, as brave as they are long-suffering, I would be the first to fight them; but all those who with the sword, with the pen, with the spoken word aggravate and perpetuate the ills of the Nation are Spaniards; all invoke the sweet name of the Homeland, all fight and agitate for its good; and amid the din of combat, amid the confused, thunderous and contradictory clamor of the parties, amid so many and such opposed manifestations of public opinion, it is impossible to discern which is the true one, and more impossible still to find the remedy for such great ills.

I have sought it eagerly within the law and have not found it. Outside the law it must not be sought by one who promised to observe it.

No one will attribute my resolution to weakness of spirit. There would be no danger that could move me to lay down the Crown if I believed that I wore it on my brow for the good of the Spaniards; nor was my spirit shaken by the danger to which the life of my august wife was exposed, who at this solemn moment expresses, as I do, the keen desire that the perpetrators of that attack be pardoned in due course.

But today I hold the firmest conviction that my efforts would be sterile and my purposes unattainable.

These, gentlemen deputies, are the reasons that move me to return to the Nation, and in its name to you, the Crown that the national vote offered me, renouncing it for myself, for my children and successors.

Rest assured that in parting with the Crown I do not part with my love for this Spain, as noble as it is unfortunate, and that I carry no other sorrow than that of not having been able to procure for it all the good that my loyal heart desired for it.

Amadeo.

Palace of Madrid, February 11, 1873.

— BOLAÑOS MEJÍAS, Carmen: El reinado de Amadeo de Saboya y la monarquía constitucional. Madrid, UNED, 1999, pp. 238-239.[12]

Portrait of King Amadeo I of Spain, by Carlos Luis de Ribera y Fieve (Bank of Spain).

That same day, the Congress and the Senate met in joint session to deliberate (in contravention of article 47 of the Constitution). Emilio Castelar y Ripoll drafted the reply of the National Assembly to the message renouncing the Crown.

Sire:

The sovereign Cortes of the Spanish Nation have heard with religious respect the eloquent message of Your Majesty, in whose chivalrous words of rectitude, honesty and loyalty they have seen a new testimony of the high qualities of intelligence and character that exalt Your Majesty, and of the pure love for this, your second Homeland, which, generous and brave, enamored of its dignity to the point of superstition and of its independence to the point of heroism, cannot forget, no, that Your Majesty has been Head of State, the personification of its sovereignty, the first authority within its laws, and cannot fail to recognize that in honoring and exalting Your Majesty it honors and exalts itself.

Sire, the Cortes have been faithful to the mandate they brought from their electors and keepers of the legality they found established by the will of the Nation through the Constituent Assembly. In all their acts, in all their decisions, the Cortes kept within the limits of their prerogatives, and respected the authority of Your Majesty and the rights that by our constitutional pact belonged to Your Majesty. Proclaiming this very loudly and very clearly, so that the responsibility for this conflict, which we accept with sorrow but which we shall resolve with energy, may never fall upon his name, the Cortes unanimously declare that Your Majesty has been a faithful, most faithful keeper of the respect due to the Chambers; a faithful, most faithful keeper of the oaths taken at the moment when Your Majesty accepted the Crown of Spain from the hands of the people. A glorious merit, most glorious in this age of ambitions and dictatorships, in which coups d'état and the prerogatives of absolute authority attract the humblest, not to yield to their temptations from the inaccessible heights of the Throne, which only a privileged few on earth attain.

Your Majesty may well say in the silence of your retirement, in the bosom of your beautiful Homeland, in the home of your family, that if any human being were capable of halting the irresistible course of events, His Majesty, with his constitutional education, with his respect for constituted law, would have completely and absolutely halted them. The Cortes, convinced of this truth, would have made, had it been in their hands, the greatest sacrifices to persuade Your Majesty to desist from your resolution and withdraw your renunciation. But the knowledge they have of Your Majesty's unbreakable character, and the justice they do to the maturity of your ideas and the perseverance of your purposes, prevent the Cortes from begging Your Majesty to reconsider your decision, and lead them to notify you that they have assumed the supreme Power and the sovereignty of the Nation in order to provide, in such critical circumstances and with the speed counseled by the gravity of the danger and the extremity of the situation, for the salvation of democracy, which is the basis of our politics; of liberty, which is the soul of our law; of the Nation, which is our immortal and loving mother, for which we are all determined to sacrifice without effort not only our individual ideas, but also our name and our existence.

Our fathers found themselves in more difficult circumstances at the beginning of the century and knew how to overcome them by drawing inspiration from these lines and these sentiments. Abandoned by their Kings, the native soil invaded by foreign hosts, threatened by that illustrious genius who seemed to hold within himself the secret of destruction and war, the Cortes confined on an island where the Nation seemed to come to an end, they not only saved the Homeland and wrote the epic of independence, but also created the new society upon the scattered ruins of the old societies. These Cortes know that the Spanish Nation has not degenerated, and they hope not to degenerate themselves either from the austere patriotic virtues that distinguished the founders of Spanish liberty.

When the dangers have been averted; when the obstacles have been overcome; when we emerge from the difficulties that every period of transition and crisis brings with it, the Spanish people, which, while Your Majesty remains on its noble soil, will give you every token of respect, loyalty and consideration, because Your Majesty deserves it, because your most virtuous wife deserves it, because your innocent children deserve it, will not be able to offer Your Majesty a Crown in the future; but it will offer you another dignity, the dignity of a citizen in the bosom of an independent and free people.

Palace of the Cortes, February 11, 1873.

— FERNÁNDEZ-RÚA, José Luis: 1873. La primera república. Madrid, Tebas, 1975, pp. 231-233. [13]

Despite the attempts of Ruiz Zorrilla to ask for time to convince the Monarch to return, an alliance between the republicans and part of the radicals (the majority) accepted the renunciation of the throne as valid. That same afternoon of February 11, the First Spanish Republic was proclaimed.[10]

During his brief reign he had hardly any friends or confidants: his compatriot and personal secretary, the Marquis Giuseppe Dragonetti-Gorgoni, or his aide, Emilio Díaz Moreu.[4]

Return to Italy

Amadeo with his sons (1880), by Giacomo Di Chirico.

After abdicating he moved to Lisbon, accompanied by the head of the government and his last supporter, Manuel Ruiz Zorrilla, and from there to Turin, his native city, where he settled with his wife and his three sons.[4]

Back in Italy, Amadeo assumed the title of Duke of Aosta. After the death of his first wife he married again on September 11, 1888, in Turin, the French princess Maria Letizia Bonaparte (Paris, November 20, 1866 – Moncalieri, October 25, 1926), with whom he had one more son: Umberto of Savoy-Aosta, 1st Count of Salemi (Turin, June 22, 1889 – Crespano del Grappa, October 19, 1918). Maria Letizia was also his niece by blood, since she was the daughter of his sister Maria Clotilde of Savoy.

Shortly afterward, on January 18, 1890, Amadeo of Savoy died in Turin of pneumonia, at the age of 44.

One of Amadeo's grandsons, Aimone, would reign briefly in Croatia between 1941 and 1943 as Tomislav II.

Assessment

Amadeo of Savoy portrayed by Luigi Montabone.

The Count of Romanones, at the beginning of the 20th century, portrayed him thus:[4]

With a broad and somewhat prominent forehead, framed by curly hair; black eyes with an expressionless gaze; thick lips, strong white teeth, a full beard concealing the prognathism of the Habsburgs... In moral terms, he offered no outstanding trait, except his well-proven personal courage; free of ambition, a fervent Catholic, having inherited from his father a passionate inclination for the daughters of Eve.

— [14]

The writer Eslava Galán, in his 1995 Historia de España contada para escépticos, describes the figure of Amadeo as follows:

Amadeo had presence, and squeezed into his uniform, with its embroidery and epaulettes, he looked like a fashion plate; but apart from his presence he was a man of limited intelligence and, worst of all, a dangerous jinx.


What cannot be objected is that he was not eager to please. During a carriage ride through Madrid, the secretary and guide accompanying him pointed out that they were passing near the house of Cervantes, and he replied without batting an eye: "Although he has not come to see me, I will soon go and greet him." To show how malicious people are, on the basis of this incident some detractors spread the claim that he was a man of little learning. One might reply that nearly all the kings of Spain have been so, and it has not prevented them from reigning; but moreover, in Amadeo's case, it is false, since he was very fond of French pornographic novels.

A short space devoted to the tragedy of a man who was called to be king of a country in which none of his subjects was willing to give him the slightest chance.

— Eslava Galán 1995, p. 337

In fiction

  • In 2014 the director Luis Miñarro released his feature film titled Stella cadente (Shooting Star), based on the life of King Amadeo and Queen Maria Vittoria of Spain. The role of Amadeo was played by the actor Àlex Brendemühl.[15][16]

Honors

Military

Orders

Ancestry

Ancestors of Amadeo I of Spain

See also

Notes

  1. ↑ Until his proclamation in the Cortes.

References

  1. ↑ Gaceta de Madrid, no. 43, February 12, 1873, p. 495
  2. ↑ Campo, Carlos Robles do (2009). "Los Infantes de España tras la derogación de la Ley Sálica (1830)" (PDF). Anales de la Real Academia Matritense de Heráldica y Genealogía (in español) (12): 329–384. ISSN 1133-1240. Retrieved 2019-08-19.
  3. ↑ Campo, Carlos Robles do (2009). "Los Infantes de España tras la derogación de la Ley Sálica (1830)" (PDF). Anales de la Real Academia Matritense de Heráldica y Genealogía (in español) (12): 329–384. ISSN 1133-1240. Retrieved 2019-08-19.
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 Bahamonde Magro, Ángel (1996). España busca rey (in español). Historia 16. Historia Viva. p. 74. ISBN 9788476793169.
  5. ↑ Escudero, José Antonio (2012). Curso de Historia de Derecho (in español). Madrid: Edisofer. p. 828. ISBN 978-84-615-9787-1.
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 Archivo Histórico Nacional de Salamanca (A.H.N.S.) (1872). Carta de la Logia Nueva Sparta al hermano (masón) Amadeo de Saboya, Grado 33º (in español). Salamanca (A.H.N.S.).{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  7. ↑ Eduardo Higueras, Castañeda (2014). "Manuel Ruiz Zorrilla (1833-1895). Liberalismo radical, democracia y cultura revolucionaria en la España del s. XIX". Doctoral thesis, Universidad de Castilla-la Mancha, p. 322 (in español).
  8. ↑ Alvarado Planas, Javier (2016). "Masones en la nobleza de España. Una hermandad de iluminados". La Esfera de los libros, S. L., p. 224. (in español). ISBN 978-84-9060-575-2.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: periodical has ISBN (link)
  9. ↑ 9.0 9.1 Merino Merchant 1988.
  10. ↑ 10.0 10.1 Palacio Atard 1978.
  11. ↑ Almodóvar 2009.
  12. ↑ This abdication text can be viewed online at Fragment of the act of abdication
  13. ↑ See also the text in this magazine taken from the digital newspaper archive of the National Library of Spain: la ilustración liberal
  14. ↑ Arte Historia
  15. ↑ Fotogramas
  16. ↑ El Cultural

Bibliography

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