As usual, I wrote a wall of text that took me 4h.

PART 1

Summary

The First Republic is widely seen as a period of chaos and instability, with 4 presidents in just one year. For the regular citizen, that's about as much as they know about it, and many will not even know who Martínez Campos is. For the historians, the perception is about the same, if more nuanced. I guess the short summary would be: good idea, bad execution.

Setting

The Glorious Revolution of 1868 was a big coincidence. The politics of Spain during the last 35 years had been dominated by the enmity between the Moderate Party (conservative) and the Progressive Party (liberal). The leader in the Moderate side was General Narváez, who was the favourite of Queen Isabella II (who was a very impulsive and anti-intellectual woman); while the leader of the Progressives was General Espartero, the veteran of the South American independence wars and great hero who won the First Carlist War in favour of the Queen. The reason why the army had such a strong presence in Spanish politics was the endless wars during the first 40 years of the 19th century: Napoleonic wars, Peninsular war, American independence wars, and finally the Carlist War, between the supporters of Carlos (carlists), the brother of Ferdinand VII, and the ones of Isabella II (isabelines), his daughter. The carlists were unashamed absolutists and ultra-catholics, so the isabelines made an alliance wit the liberals to strengthen their support, which is a fun irony, considering Ferdinand was the biggest supporter of absolutism against liberalism.

Prologue

This is to say how things developed after the death of Ferdinand in 1833. After 7 years of civil war that ravaged the country, Espartero expelled the Regent, Queen María Cristina, and became Regent himself for 3 years. He was ousted by a military coup after his brutal repression of revolts in Barcelona made him lose most of his support. This was followed by Isabella being enthroned being 13 years old, and the recently formed Moderate Party taking power, which held for the next 10 years. This consolidated Narváez position, another veteran of the Carlist War, during the adolescence of the young Queen, who became very sexually active and definitely attracted to the handsome General, even though nothing happened between them. In 1854 another coup by the left wing of the moderates lead by General O'Donnell, another veteran, together with the progressives brought Espartero back into power. But his "radical" anticlerical policies, as well as his "strongman" ruling style, made him lose the support of O'Donnell and his ally General Serrano. The betrayal of his allies and the open enmity the Queen had against him, made Espartero resign two years later. This was followed by two years of Narváez in the government, which couldn't solve the civil strife, which forced the Queen to bring the Liberal Union (UL) into power.

This new party of O'Donnell and Serrano strived to reconcile the Moderate and Progressive parties into one united purpose against the real growing opposition to the regime: democrats, republicans and socialists. O'Donnell managed somehow, as his government was the longest lasting since before the Napoleonic wars, but still it only managed to stay 4 and half years in power. During his time Spain entered in a war against Morocco in 1859, romantically called "War of Africa", in which a young officer won a great deal of prestige, General Prim, the Hero of Castillejos. He was the youngest of all the military men of the age, having joined the Carlist War while being only 19, and represented the most progressive wing in UL, while Serrano and O'Donnell were part of the right one. In any case, in 1863 the Cabinet collapsed after Prim and other progressives abandoned it, and while it was strongly opposed by the Progressive and Moderate parties, which had regained strength. The Queen then decided to hand power again to Narváez and the moderates, which collapsed after a brutal repression of a student protest (the Night of San Daniel); then UL went back into power, but collapsed after a failed coup by Prim and his supporters, the execution of 66 of them was valued by Isabella as “too soft"; and finally the moderates came into power again until 1868.

Glorious Revolution

So finally, after this long introduction, let's get into the Glorious Revolution of 1868. Many factors coincided in time to bring it on. First, the two most prominent supporters of Isabella died in very short succession: O’Donnell in November 1867 and Narváez in April 1868. Then, an economic crisis brought by the collapse of the railroad building bubble exploded brought huge losses to many of the traditional supporters of the regime, like the big bourgeoise and the aristocracy, and misery to the common people. Finally, the repressive attitude of the Moderate Party and the Queen, which refused to share power with the moderately reformists of the Progressive Party or even the UL and did so only against their own wishes, consolidated a big coalition against the Regime. The Pact of Ostende, engineered by Prim, brought together the UL, now lead by General Serrano, the Progressive Party, lead by Prim himself, and the Democratic Party, its left-wing split, which included a substantial amount of Republicans. The objective of the coalition was very basic: kick the Queen out of power and call for Constituent elections.

They accomplished their goal in September 1868, when the Coalition leaders sailed from England and landed in Cádiz (a very symbolic city) and called for armed insurrection with the cry “Long live an honourable Spain!”. They gathered the military troops that supported their goals and defeated the pro-regime armies in the Battle of Alcolea, near Córdoba. Seing as her support was very small, Isabella left the country. A [Provisional Government](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Gobierno_Provisional_1869_(J.Laurent).jpg) of concentration was formed lead by Prime Minister General Serrano. The Constitutive Cortes formed after the elections of 1869 included members of all the political spectrum, from republicans to carlists. After a complicated debate, it was stated that Spain would be a Monarchy, which provoked a split inside the Democratic Party, with a majority of it forming the Republican Party and the monarchical minority reuniting with the Progressive party.

Monarchy of Amadeus

The Government’s main job was to find a suitable Monarch for Spain, so meanwhile Serrano was made Regent and Prim became PM. The remnants of the Moderate Party, which would transform into the Conservative party lead by António Cánovas, pushed for the son of Isabella, Alfonso, to become the new king, but he was rejected on the basis that he would become too influenced by his mother. Another candidate was the nephew of Wilhelm I of Prussia, whose candidacy was vehemently opposed by Emperor Napoleon III of France, who demanded the Germans to reject the proposal, which they didn’t.; this sparked the Franco-Prussian war. General Espartero, now years into retirement, was another proposed candidate, but he refused the offer. Finally, the accepted candidate was Amadeus of Savoy, the second son of the King of Italy, which was a man hugely in favor of a constitutional liberal monarchy, and was thus the favorite of General Prim.

But alas, in December 1870, the day before Amadeus came to Spain, Prim was shot and died shortly after. His murder is still a mystery, and the possible culprits are Serrano, the republicans, or the powerful Cuban landlords. Cuba is another subject of focus, as the First Cuban Independence War started in October 1868, sparked by the Glorious Revolution, and would last until 1878. With this not very hopeful scenario, Amadeus became Amadeus I, King of Spain, and his was not an easy reign. He had very few real supporters, a Cortes in disarray, and a war in the colony. To make it even better, in 1872 a new carlist insurrection started in the Basque provinces, Navarre, Aragon and Catalonia, which gain a lot of support thanks to its defense of the traditional Charter Law of this regions, which were either suppressed in the 18th century (Aragon and Catalonia) or wanted to be suppressed by the liberal regimes (Basque Country and Navarre). With this crazy scenario, Amadeus lasted only 2 years, and abdicated in march 1873.

Republic

With no possible candidate in sight and the Parliament building surrounded by republican supporters, the Cortes voted overwhelmingly in favor of a Republic, which provoked the dismay of the original members of the revolutionary coalition like Zorrilla from the Progressive Party and Serrano from the UL-successors-now-called Constitutionalists.

But the Republic was shortly lived, caused mainly by the disunity in the Republican leaders, divided between federalists and unitarians. During the first few months the former were in power, but after their Constitutional projects scared the Spanish nationalists, which saw in them the beginning of the dismemberment of the country, the latter took power. This sparked a rebellion by federalists supporters around the country demanding for the creation of cantons like in Switzerland, this movement had most support on Valencia, Múrcia and Andalucía. Facing three wars at the same time (Cuban, carlist and cantonal), the Republic didn’t even have a chance. A Constitution was never even approved, and after the fourth government lead by unitarian professor Castelar also failed to gain support to win all of the wars, a coalition of Progressive and Constitutionalists made a coup d'État in January 1874 by disbanding the Cortes with soldiers and placing General Serrano as President of the Republic.