Year: 1876

"
were not recognized impossibility for any
impression to be made on the Bourbon mind
/ by experience, it might be hoped that the
career of the present prince of the race of
Spanish pretenders would suffice to eradicate
finally the grand infatuation of their attempt
to secure throne No previous Don Carlos
of this species ever saw so many opportuni-
ties as offered themselves to this one none
other ever saw the stones of the mountains
turn themselves into soldiers at his will to
such an extent, nor did any other ever see
himself so aided by the distractions and i'm
becilities of his enemies, nor find crown
so often within the grasp of n resolute hand.
1t is safe to say that no previous prince ever
saw SO frequently the smile of fortune. No
successor will have an equal happiness in
this respect and the fact that with so much
in his favor Don Carlos yet failed and is a
fugitive may be taken as a final evidence
that the Bourbons of this branch are not of
the race of men who conquer kingdoms.
But it is, perhaps, too much to
hope that the Don Carloses of the future
will profit by this example. 1t is
recognized that if n certain kind of
pigeon flies in peculiar way and interrupts
his flight with particular series of tum
bles, that this habit of the nerves and
muscles becomes hereditary, and that the
latest scion of the race will indulge in the
| same vagaries that distinguished his remote
ancestor In the race of Don Carloses it is an
inherited popularity to tumble over the
D. 10 ak
issue pronunciamentos and claim the throne,
and it will take many ages to breed out the
habit.


Don Carlos is the fourth of the pretenders
who, under that name, have claimed the
Spanish throne. His grandfather was the
son of King Charles w., and, consequently,
the brother of Ferdinand VII Upon the
death of Ferdinand that earliest Don Carlos
claimed the throne, to the exclusion of Ferdi-
nands daughter Isabella, upon the ground
that the Salic law excluded female heirs,
and that though decree had been made by
| Ferdinand to set aside that law he had no
! power to make such Decree and that if he
had right to make it he had also made
second decree overruling the first. This is
the ground of the claim made by all the fam
| lily since Ferdinand's brother, or the first
| Don Carlos, waged in his own cause the So
! called ''seven years war" of Carlist annals,
which began in 1884. His two sons were sue
cessive Don Carloses, and the second of them
| renounced lis claims in 1868 in favor of his
| son, the Carlos now on the hands of the
French government, who thus succeeds in
the pretence his father, his uncle and his
grandfather.


With n claim of this nature in abeyance
with well defined descent from the throne
and an argument at least presentable that no
other descent was equally legitimate, and
himself in the vigor of life and ambition, it
was but natural that Don Carlos should come
before the world when the revolution that
| drove Isabella from the throne of Spain
seemed to open the way for candidates.
From the standpoint of Carlos Prim,
Serrano and the rest were indistinguishable
from Isabella; for all were usurpers alike and
all equally concerned in the conspiracy to
exclude him from his rights, despite which
he might have accepted the throne from
them if they had been willing to give it, and
they, it is possible, might have given it but
for the consideration that such q step could
not be taken without reviving party that
would repay the gift with slaughter and pro-
scription. But when the throne was given
TO Amadeus of Savoy the cause of Carlos
was directly strengthened before the whole
country for in the exclusion of Isabella, if the
magnates of the kingdom decided not to take
Isabellas son from apprehension of the con-
sequences of a minority reign and a regency,
then the natural course was to recur to the
nearest collateral line, and this process
would have led to Carlos as the legitimate
heir. Nearly the whole Spanish nobility
did, in fact at that period have its eyes
turned toward Don Carlos. Accepting the
dethronement of Isabella, content with the
exclusion of Alfonso because of minority.
they yet had the prejudices of their
order and their race in favor of
scion of the royal family, and
Carlos filled the requirement, and they
saw o foreign prince favored against him with
discomfort which they did not endeavor to
disguise. An intense Spanish jealousy of
foreigners favored the growth of the senti-
ment far beyond the limits of the nobility,
and when Amadeus abdicated and the coun-
try found itself surprised with the possession
of republican government in the hands of
the few republicans in the Cortes-though
this was hailed effusively by many de-
claimers-it had no safe foundation in pub
lie opinion but it helped Carlos with all
conservatives and threatened at one moment
to fairly stampede the officers of the army to
the standard of the Pretender.


For this individual Pretendor, therefore,
the scene was grandly prepared by events