Connecticut western news., 1878-07-04
THE DEAD QUEEN.
Queen Maria de les Mercedes of Spain.

Queen Maria de les Mercedes of Spain.
 There seems to be fatal star shining over Spanish royalty. The position of the Kings of Spain has at all times been precar1ous enough but the fate of the Queens is possibly still worse. Natural ealamities join in their lives political disasters. Ex-Queen Christina is living the life of an exile in Paris. Ex-Queen Isabella is in @ like position. Ex-Queen Maria, wife of Amaden, had to take to flight out of child-bed, and, never hay ing recovered from the shock, died when barely thirty years old. And now Queen Maria de las Mercedes is car ried away after only five months of wedlock.
 Deep and sincere will be the popular sorrow both in Spain and outside, for it was well known that the marriage of Alphonso XIL was not an ordinary royal union-it was a love match. The hus- band and wife, being in this case first cousins, were brought up together. Their affection for each other overcame all political difficulties and even the ami mostly of their parents. Queen Isabella detests the Duke of Montpensier, who conspired with Serrano and Topete for her overthrow in 1868. She has ever since objected to her son having any thing to do with the family of her brother-in-law yet Alphonso's attach ment to his cousin stood uhshaken. He was separated from her for over six years; but the moment he came to power and was enabled to return to Spain, he declared that his personal sym pathies should not be regulated either by Cabinet Ministers or by his relations, and that he would not marry any woman except the one he had loved from his childhood.
 Strangely enough, this love match came to be the realization of an old political scheme. It was always the dream of the late King Louis Philippe to make an alliance between his dynasty and that of the Spanish Bourbons. AL most every one of his sons was in turn proposed as the husband of the young and then maiden Queen Isabella; but England put in her veto. Intensely jealous of any increase of the power of France, she declared that no Prince of the reigning French dynasty should be the consort of the Queen of Spain. The long contest which took place in regard to this subject between the Cabinets of Guizot and Sir Robert Peel will always stand 8 memorable page in the diplo- matic history of Europe. It resulted in victory for the English. Isabella was married to 8 man she detested, Don Francisco d'Assise, and by way of con- pensation to France, her sister, Maria Louise, was allowed to become the wife of Louis Philippe's youngest son, the Duke of Montpensier.
 The members of the Orleans dynasty did not, however, despair of attaining their object. From the beginning of Isabella's misrule they exerted all their efforts to put Montpensier upon the throne of Spain. But the Spaniards hated the French too intensely to give any hope of success to scheme of this nature. They refused to accept him even as deputy in the Cortes.
 After this defeat at the elections, the Duke retired from political life and be- came aaoranjero, an orange merchant, as he is popularly called, on account of the immense orange plantations he pos sesses around Seville. The constantly growing affection between his daughter and the son of the ex-Queen made him evidently confident that if he was unable to get the crown for himself, it would at all events be secured for one of his descendants.
 And he was not mistaken. On the 23d of last January his third daughter became the Queen of Spain. The nup- tial ceremony was performed in the an- cient Church of Atocha by the Cardinal Primate, assisted by the Patriarch of the Indies and long array of other distin- guished priests. The ceremony was of unsual splendor even for Spain, where pageantry is carried to absurd extrava- gance. The festivities throughout the country lasted five days; and nobody would have believed that five months later the nation would be thrown into mourning.
 The bereaved -widower is not fully twenty-one years of age. The poor Queen was eighteen.