Trienio Liberal

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Kingdom of the Spains (Spain and the Indies) Reino de las Españas (España e Indias)
1820–1823
Flag Coat of Arms
Motto: Plus ultra (Latin) (English: "Further Beyond")
Anthem: Himno de Riego Anthem of Riego
Capital	Madrid
Common languages	Spanish
Religion	Roman Catholic Church (official)
Demonym	Spanish
Government	Unitary parliamentary constitutional monarchy
King
• 1820–1823	Ferdinand VII
Secretary of State
• 1820–1821	Evaristo Pérez
• 1821–1822	Ramón López-Pelegrín
• 1822	Francisco Martínez
• 1822–1823	Evaristo Fernández
• 1823	José María Pando
Legislature	Cortes Generales
Historical era	Revolutions during the 1820s
• Established	1 January 1820
• Restoration of the Constitution	7 March 1820
• First general election	April – May 1820
• Second general election	October – December 1822
• Disestablished	1 October 1823
Currency	Spanish dollar
Preceded by Succeeded by Sexenio Absolutista Ominous Decade

The Trienio Liberal, ([ˈtɾjenjo liβeˈɾal], lit. 'Liberal Triennium') or Three Liberal Years, was a period of three years in Spain between 1820 and 1823 when a liberal government ruled Spain after a military uprising in January 1820 by the lieutenant-colonel Rafael del Riego against the absolutist rule of Ferdinand VII.

It ended in 1823 when, with the approval of the crowned heads of Europe, a French army invaded Spain and reinstated the King's absolute power. This invasion is known in France as the "Spanish Expedition" (expédition d’Espagne) and in Spain as the "Hundred Thousand Sons of Saint Louis."

Revolution of Cabezas de San Juan

King Ferdinand VII provoked widespread unrest, particularly in the army, by refusing to accept the liberal Spanish Constitution of 1812. The King sought to reclaim the Spanish colonies in the Americas that had recently revolted successfully, consequently depriving Spain of an essential source of revenue.

In January 1820, soldiers assembled at Cádiz for an expedition to South America, angry over infrequent pay, bad food, and poor quarters, mutinied under the leadership of Rafael del Riego. Pledging fealty to the 1812 Constitution, they seized their commander.

Subsequently, the rebel forces moved to nearby San Fernando, where they began preparations to march on the capital, Madrid.

Liberal government

Despite the rebels' relative weakness, Ferdinand accepted the constitution on 9 March 1820, granting power to liberal ministers and ushering in the so-called Liberal Triennium (el Trienio Liberal), a period of liberal rule. However, political conspiracies of both right and left proliferated in Spain, as was the case across much of the rest of Europe. Liberal revolutionaries stormed the King's palace and seized Ferdinand VII, who was a prisoner of the Cortes in all but name for the next three years and retired to Aranjuez. The elections to the Cortes Generales in 1822 were won by Rafael del Riego. Ferdinand's supporters set themselves up at Urgell, took up arms and put in place an absolutist regency, the Urgel Regency.

Ferdinand's supporters, accompanied by the Royal Guard, staged an uprising in Madrid that was subdued by forces supporting the new government and its constitution. Despite the defeat of Ferdinand's supporters at Madrid, civil war erupted in the regions of Castile, Toledo, and Andalusia. ^{[citation needed]}

Three years of liberal rule (the Trienio Liberal) followed. The Progresista government reorganized Spain into 52 provinces, and it intended to reduce the regional autonomy that had been a hallmark of Spanish bureaucracy since Habsburg rule in the 16th and 17th centuries. Opposition of the affected regions, in particular, Aragon, Navarre, and Catalonia, shared in the king's antipathy for the liberal government. The anticlerical policies of the Progresista government led to friction with the Catholic Church, and attempts to bring about industrialisation alienated old trade guilds. The Spanish Inquisition, which had been abolished by both Joseph Bonaparte and the Cortes of Cádiz during the French occupation, was ended again by the government, which led to accusations of it being nothing more than afrancesados (francophiles), who, only six years earlier, had been forced out of the country.^{[citation needed]}

More radical liberals attempted to revolt against the entire idea of a monarchy, regardless of how little power it had. In 1821, they were suppressed, but the incident served to illustrate the frail coalition that bound the government together.^{[citation needed]}

The election of a radical liberal government in 1823 further destabilized Spain. The army, whose liberal leanings had brought the government to power, began to waver when the Spanish economy failed to improve, and in 1823, a mutiny in Madrid had to be suppressed. The Jesuits, who had been banned by Charles III in the 18th century, only to be rehabilitated by Ferdinand VII after his restoration, were banned again by the government. For the duration of liberal rule, Ferdinand (still technically head of state) lived under virtual house arrest in Madrid. The Congress of Vienna, ending the Napoleonic Wars, had inaugurated the "Congress system" as an instrument of international stability in Europe. Rebuffed by the Holy Alliance of Russia, Austria, and Prussia in his request for help against the liberal revolutionaries in 1820, by 1822, the "Concert of Europe" was so concerned by Spain's liberal government and its surprising hardiness that it was prepared to intervene on Ferdinand's behalf.^{[citation needed]}

In 1822, the Congress of Verona authorized France to intervene. Louis XVIII was only too happy to put an end to Spain's liberal experiment, and a massive army, the 100,000 Sons of Saint Louis, was dispatched across the Pyrenees in April 1823. The Spanish army, fraught by internal divisions, offered little resistance to the well organised French force, who seized Madrid and reinstalled Ferdinand as absolute monarch. The liberals' hopes for a new Spanish War of Independence were dashed.^{[citation needed]}

Consolidation of Spanish American independence

The army rebellion led by Rafael del Riego brought Spain into the so-called Liberal Triennium and led Spanish America to the consolidation of independence. The military uprising pursued a twofold objective: to restore the Constitution of 1812 and to prevent the Great Expedition from reaching the American continent. The coup was organized by secret societies or Masonic lodges and by Spanish American pro-independence agents, and was promoted chiefly by the liberals of Cádiz known as veinteañistas or "exaltados". The king, lacking military support, had to renounce his despotic absolutism and submit to the former constitution and the new liberal Cortes.

The Cortes of the Liberal Triennium passed two fundamental laws on military matters: the Constitutive Law of the Army (June 1821) and the Organic Law of the Navy (December of the same year). Both strengthened control over the armed forces in accordance with the principles of the Constitution of 1812. In application of these provisions, on 28 January 1822 the dissolution of the overseas infantry and cavalry depots established in Andalusia was ordered, as their existence was considered incompatible with the decrees enacted by the Cortes the previous year. The rebellion of the expedition, the dissolution of the troop depot for the overseas territories and the lack of new reinforcements at such a decisive moment ultimately guaranteed the independence of America. José de La Serna foresaw the fall of the Peruvian viceroyalty. In December 1820, Pablo Morillo, after having requested it on sixteen previous occasions, relinquished command of the expeditionary army of Costa Firme and returned to Spain.

They do not want to be Spaniards; they have said so loudly since they proclaimed independence, they have maintained it without ever contradicting their opinion in any circumstance or vicissitude of the Peninsula, they repeat it now without laying down their arms, and they will always repeat it, whatever our conduct and our Government may be: absolute independence or war is the only choice they leave us to make.

Regarding America, the new government replaced repression with negotiation. Instead of sending troops, it appointed commissioners to bring pro-independence leaders back under royal authority in exchange for recognition by Spain. The government announced a ceasefire for negotiations with the insurgents, conditional on their acceptance of the Constitution of 1812, which Ferdinand VII had abolished in 1814 and which had been restored in 1820.^{[citation needed]} Under the ceasefire, Spain would end the persecution and grant a general amnesty; otherwise, the war would continue.^{[citation needed]} The patriots demanded recognition of their independence, and the eleven commissioners failed to reach an agreement.^{[citation needed]}

The government nonetheless avoided a clear position on independence. It appointed commissioners without full negotiating powers and halted military support for the royalists in America, which caused demoralization and a loss of allegiance among those who remained loyal to the monarchy.^{[citation needed]} During this period, the army assembled to recover the Río de la Plata rebelled, the viceroyalties of New Spain and New Granada collapsed, and Peru was invaded, leaving the last royalist strongholds isolated.^{[citation needed]}

French intervention

In 1822, Ferdinand VII applied the terms of the Congress of Vienna, lobbied for the assistance of the other absolute monarchs of Europe, in the process joining the Holy Alliance formed by Russia, Prussia, Austria and France to restore absolutism. In France, the ultra-royalists pressured Louis XVIII to intervene. To temper their counter-revolutionary ardour, the Duke of Richelieu deployed troops along the Pyrenees Mountains along the France-Spain border, charging them with halting the spread of Spanish liberalism and the "yellow fever" from encroaching into France. In September 1822, the cordon sanitaire became an observation corps and then very quickly transformed itself into a military expedition.^{[citation needed]}

The Holy Alliance (Russia, Austria and Prussia) refused Ferdinand's request for help, but the Quintuple Alliance (United Kingdom, France, Russia, Prussia and Austria), at the Congress of Verona in October 1822, gave France a mandate to intervene and restore the Spanish monarchy. On 22 January 1823, a secret treaty was signed at the congress of Verona, allowing France to invade Spain to restore Ferdinand VII as an absolute monarch. With that agreement from the Holy Alliance, on 28 January 1823, Louis XVIII announced that "a hundred thousand Frenchmen are ready to march, invoking the name of Saint Louis, to safeguard the throne of Spain for a grandson of Henry IV of France".^{[citation needed]}

See also

• Bienio progresista – Period of Spanish history under the Progressive Party (1854–1856)
• Sexenio Democrático – 1868–1874 period of Spain under a provisional government

Bibliography

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References