User:Ixtal/sandbox

This sandbox is meant to be a drafting ground for my improvement of the article on the First Carlist War. The content is mostly copied from there aside from my improvements there-on. Before sharing, I should check this list to make sure my prose is correct and this criteria to make sure my article is of high quality. Quotes that remain unused could be added as a new subpage to the FCW article as a "dumping ground", as seen in the examples of Wikipedia:Workpages.

Useful Links and Websites:

(A) Information on Individual Regiments

(C) Some digitalized documents

(A) Sources list

Images

Books:

The English in Spain: Or, The Story of the War of Succession Between 1834 and 1840 by Francis Duncan (1997)

Historia de la Guerra Civil: Y de los partidos liberal y carlista (Vol. 4) by Antonio Pirala

Historia de la Guerra Civil: Y de los partidos liberal y carlista (Vol. 6) by Antonio Pirala

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

First Carlist War
Part of the Carlist Wars
The Battle of Irún, 17 May 1837.
Date 29 September 1833 – 6 July 1840 (6 years, 9 months and 7 days) Location Spain Result Liberal victory Lord Eliot Convention Convention of Vergara
Belligerents
Carlists Supported by: Portugal (until 1834)	Liberals Supported by: France United Kingdom Portugal (from 1834)
Commanders and leaders
See list Carlos V Tomás Zumalacárregui Ramón Cabrera Rafael Maroto González Moreno Miguel Gómez Damas Sebestian Gabriel	See list Maria Christina Isabella II Genaro de Quesada José Ramón Rodil Francisco Espoz Luis Fernández Baldomero Espartero Isidro de Alaix Jerónimo Valdés Marcelino de Oraá Manuel O'Doyle De Lacy Evans Joseph Bernelle Count of Antas
Strength
	Over 500,000 Over 18,000 French, British, Belgian, and Portuguese volunteers
Casualties and losses
Carlists: 15,000–60,000	Liberals: 15,000–65,000 French: 7,700 British: 2,500 Portuguese: 50
5% of the Spanish population, with half this number being military deaths 111,000-306,000

The First Carlist War was a civil war in Spain from 1833 to 1840, the first of three Carlist Wars. It was fought between two factions over the succession to the throne and the nature of the Spanish monarchy: the conservative and devolutionist supporters of the late king's brother, Carlos de Borbón (or Carlos V), became known as Carlists (carlistas), while the progressive and centralist supporters of the regent, Maria Christina, acting for Isabella II of Spain, were called Liberals (liberales), cristinos or isabelinos. Aside from being a war of succession about the question who the rightful successor to king Ferdinand VII of Spain was, the Carlists’ goal was the return to a traditional monarchy, while the Liberals sought to defend the constitutional monarchy.

It is the largest and most deadly civil war in nineteenth-century Europe and fought by more men than the Spanish War of Independence. Furthermore, it is considered the "last great European conflict of the pre-industrial age". The conflict was responsible for the deaths of 5% of the 1833 Spanish population—with military casualties alone amounting to half this number. It was mostly fought in the Southern Basque Country, Maestrazgo, and Catalonia and characterized by endless raids and reprisals against both armies and civilians.

Importantly, it is also considered a precursor to the idea of the two Spains that would surface during the Spanish Civil War a century later.

Background

Before the start of the Carlist wars, Spain was in a deep social, economic, and political crisis as a result of mismanagement by Charles IV and Ferdinand VII, and had stagnated from the reforms and successes of Charles III of Spain.

Demographic

Spain had only slightly more than 20 inhabitants per square kilometer in the early 19th Century, much less than other European countries. At the start of the Carlist war, the population was approximately 12.3 million people.

Loss of the Colonies

Map of territories that became independent from Spain in said wars (blue)

While the Spanish American wars of independence began in 1808, more than two decades before the death of Ferdinand VII, the social, economic and political effects of the American conflicts still were of great significance in the peninsula. In fact, not until the start of the Carlist conflict did Spain abandon all plans of military reconquest. Between 1792 and 1827 the value in millions of reales of imports of goods, imports of money, and exports from the Americas had decreased by a factor of 3.80, 28.0, and 10.3 respectively.

Furthermore, various conflicts with the British and especially the Battle of Trafalgar had left the Spanish without the naval strength to maintain healthy maritime trade with the Americas and the Philippines, leading to historically low overseas revenue. This economic weakness would prove crucial at restraining Spain's ability to climb out of the woes of the next decades and leading up to the Carlist wars.

War of Spanish Independence and the Napoleonic Wars

Joaquín Sorolla:Valencians prepare to resist the invaders (1884)

While Spain had been an ally of Napoleon, this changed in 1808 after France occupied Spain and installed Joseph Bonaparte as King in place of the Bourbons. Although the high nobility accepted this change, the Spanish people did not and soon a bloody guerilla war erupted. This war lasted until 1814, and during those years Spain would be ravaged by the estimated deaths of over a million civilians out of the twelve that populated Spain at the time. Furthermore, French troops heavily looted the country, especially as the focus of the army shifted towards the French invasion of Russia.

National Politics

Francisco Cea Bermudez, an important official during the Trienio Liberal, presided over the 1832-1834 cabinet

Portrait by Vicente López y Portaña, 1830

Portrait by Vicente López Portaña, c. 1823

In 1923, the Spanish Government during the Trienio Liberal had re-instated the Spanish Constitution of 1812, which had abolished the fueros and established a parliamentary monarchy, among other changes. Ferdinand VII repealed it later in the year after he appealed to European powers of the Congress of Vienna in order to restore his absolute powers and France sent a military expedition. The decade that followed the end of the Trienio became known as the Ominous Decade, in which Ferdinand suppressed his enemies, the press, and the institutional reforms of the liberals. He also established a militia called the Voluntarios Realistas ("Royalist Volunteers") which peaked at 284,000 men in 1832 in order to facilitate this suppression.

This decade was plagued by political instability, with a large ultra-conservative revolt breaking out in 1927 and an unsuccesful British-backed liberal Pronunciamiento in 1931. Ferdinand was unable to control the situation and cycled through ministers, being described by Friedrich von Gentz in 1814: "The king himself enters the houses of his prime ministers, arrests them, and hands them over to their cruel enemies;" and in 14 January 1815: "the king has so debased himself that he has become no more than the leading police agent and prison warden of his country." This assesment seems accurate, as the king himself described himself as "a cork in a bottle of beer": as soon as that cork was removed, all the troubles of Spain would explode into the open. In addition, as part of his police state Ferdinand revived the inquisition and expanded it to have "agents in every single village in the realm."

The divide between liberals and conservatives, both unhappy with Ferdinand's reign, was further strengthened by his publication in March, 1830 of the Pragmatic Sanction, which replaced the Salic system with a mixed succession system that would allow his daughters to inherit the throne (he had no male heir). This replaced his brother Charles as next-in-succession with his first daughter Isabella, who would be born later that year in October. Ferdinand died a month before her third birthday, his reign considered one of the worst in Spanish history, and so the kingdom fell into a regency led first by her mother Maria Christina of the Two Sicilies and then in 1840 by marshall Baldomero Espartero.

A strong absolutist party feared that the regent Maria Christina would make liberal reforms, and sought another candidate for the throne. The natural choice, based on Salic Law, was Ferdinand's brother Carlos. The differing views on the influence of the army and the Church in governance, as well as the forthcoming administrative reforms paved the way for the expulsion of the Conservatives from the higher governmental circles.

Cea Bermudez's centrist government (October 1832-January 1834) inaugurated the return to Spain of many exiles from London and Paris, e.g. Juan Álvarez Mendizabal (born Méndez). The rise of Cea Bermudez was followed by a closer collaboration and understanding with the debtors, who in turn clearly encouraged the former's reforms and liberalization, i.e. the new liberal regime and the incorporation of Spain to the European financial system. However, with state coffers yet again empty, the impending war, and the Trienio Liberal loan issue with the financiers still not settled, Cea Bermudez's government fell.

As written by one historian:

The first Carlist war was fought not so much on the basis of the legal claim of Don Carlos, but because a passionate, dedicated section of the Spanish people favored a return to a kind of absolute monarchy that they felt would protect their individual freedoms (fueros), their regional individuality and their religious conservatism.

This opportunistic view of Carlism is further supported by the fact that "Carlism" was first mentioned in official correspondence in 1824, both after the restoration of absolutism to Spain by the French expedition and more than 35 years after the 1789 succession discussions which Ferdinand ratified in his Sanction.

Economic

The gale after Trafalgar, depicted by Thomas Buttersworth.

In the 19th century, Spain was heavily in debt and in a dire situation economically. Various conflicts with the British and especially the Battle of Trafalgar had left the Spanish without the naval strength to maintain healthy maritime trade with the Americas and the Philippines, leading to historically low overseas revenue and ability to control the colonies. The de facto independence of many of these colonies during the Napoleonic Wars and later wars of independence further strained the royal coffers. Between 1824 and 1833 the average annual income was "barely more than half" the pre-wars' level. Additionally, the political instability further constrained Spain's ability to collect taxes—the Riego revolt meant the government could only collect 12% of its projected revenue for the first half of 1820.

Spain had been heavily looted during the Napoleonic Wars and had only managed to fight as a junior partner under British leadership, financed and even clothed by British subsidies. Nonetheless, the Spanish government would be overburned with costs needed to establish control over the country over the following decades—88% of taxes collected in February 1822 went to fund the military—which increased when Ferdinand maintained a French garrison between 1824-1828 "as a Varangian Guard" to ensure his power. In 1833, Spain's forces comprised 100,000 Royalist Volunteers, 50,000 regulars, and 652 generals.

The progressives of the Trienio had managed to secure loans from British financiers, which Ferdinand then defaulted on. This made securing further loans even harder for the fledgling Spanish economy. Some historians argue that the Pragmatic Sanction was encouraged in order to please the politically-active liberal financiers, and in fact it was in the interest of loan repayment that the British and French protected the cristinos during the war. However, the former statement can be explained by the growing influence of Maria Cristina in the courts.

The castaway, also known as the smuggler, painted by Asensio Julià in 1815.

Furthermore, Spain was undergoing a deflatory spiral caused by both the Napoleonic War and the loss of the colonies, which left Spanish producers without the incredibly valuable market to sell their goods to as well as the Mint without the metal crucial to make coins. In order to protect the local industry, Spain established protectionist policies, which served to greatly encourage a black market. In fact, Great Britain was exporting three times as many products into Gibraltar than into the rest of Spain despite the dramatic discrepancy in population size.

Moreover, Spain's agricultural production had greatly stalled during Ferdinand's reign, partly due to the wars but also importantly due to a lack of improvements in practices and technology. Still, agriculture accounted for 85% of the Spanish GDP. While output had recovered to pre-war levels, the prices remained unattainable for many peasants. As most of the land was concentrated on the hands of wealthy nobles and the church who had no incentive to increase production, "vast tracks [of land] lay totally uncultivated". Areas like the Basque Country were privileged exceptions to a Spain where "the majority of the population was made up of landless workers who eeked out a miserable existence. One obstacle to increasing the productive use of land were the wide limits on noble, ecclesiastical, and town-owned lands' sale. These lands could be very profitable, such as in the case in mid-1700s Castile and León where land owned by the Church accounted for one-fourth of rent collected. All in all, unsellable land accounted for more than half of Spain's farmland, thus hiking the price of land and making it impossible for small farmers to acquire land.

In fact, many Spanish foods were invented in those times to combat the lack of food. In 1817 one finds the first reference to Spanish omelette as "…two to three eggs in tortilla for 5 or 6 [people] as our women do know how to make it big and thick with fewer eggs, mixing potatoes, breadcrumbs or whatever."

Ferdinand's governmental gridlock only further exacerbated the economic situation, as they were unable to create significant economic policies to tackle the issues or encourage internal demand. In fact, Ferdinand clashed with burghers as to how to manage the rural areas which were now extremely sparcely populated, to the shock of international observers. The sparseness of population as well as the general predicaments of Spanish labourers resulted in gross mismanagement of arable land and inability of Spain to significantly restart industrial and commercial activity after the Napoleonic War. The economic troubles were portrayed at the time as a result of moral faults in society, introduced by either the one's political enemies or the war.

Basque Carlism and the Fueros

See also: 1st Carlist War and the end of the fueros

Ferdinand the Catholic confirming the fueros of Biscay at Guernica in 1476

King James I of Aragon receives from Vidal de Canyelles, Bishop of Huesca, the first compilation of the Furs d'Aragó (the "Fueros of Aragon"), 1247

Historically, the loyalty of the Basque regions to the kings of Spain and, until the French Revolution, France depended on their upholding of traditional laws, customs, and special privileges. Their representative assemblies go back to the Middle Ages, yet their privileges had been consistently and progressively devalued by both monarchies. While the fueros that formerly made up the Crown of Aragon and included Catalonia, Aragon, Valencia, and the Balearic Islands had been violently abolished in the Nueva Planta decrees of 1717, the Basques managed to maintain a relative autonomy to the rest of the Spanish Kingdom in thanks to their support of Philip V of Spain in the War of the Spanish Succession.

Cover of the Nueva Planta decrees of Catalonia

The centralisers in the Spanish government supported some of the great powers against Basque merchants from at least since the time of the abolition of the Jesuit order and the Godoy regime. First they sided with the French Bourbons to suppress the Jesuits, following the formidable changes in North America after the victory of the United States in the American Revolutionary War. Then Godoy sided with the British against the Basques in the War of the Pyrenees of 1793, and immediately afterwards with the French of Napoleon, also against the Basques. The British interest was to destroy, for as long as possible, Spanish commercial routes and power, which were mainly sustained by the Basque ports and merchant fleet.

The Constitution of 1812 was written without Basque input, but they agreed to it due to the ongoing war against the French. As one example, the 1812 Constitution was signed by Gipuzkoan representatives under the watch of a sword-wielding general Castaños, and tellingly the San Sebastián council representatives took the oath to the 1812 Constitution with the smell of smoke still wafting and surrounded by rubble.This Constitution abolished Basque home rule, and in the following years the contrafueros (literally "against fueros") removed provisions such as fiscal sovereignity and specificity of military draft.The resentment against the growing intervention of Madrid (e.g. attempts to take over Biscayan mines in 1826) and the loss of autonomy was considerably strong.

The Basque districts during the First Carlist War period

However, King Ferdinand VII found an important support base in the Basque Country. The 1812 Constitution of Cádiz had suppressed Basque home rule, and was couched in terms of a unified Spanish nation which rejected the existence of the Basque nation, so the new Spanish king garnered the endorsement of the Basques as long as he respected the Basque institutional and legal framework.

The conchas of Haro, where the Ebro passes into La Rioja forming the border with the Basque country

Most foreign observers, including Charles F. Henningsen, Michael B. Honan, or Edward B. Stephens, English writers and first-hand witnesses of the First Carlist War, spent time in the Basque districts were highly sympathetic to the Carlists, which they regarded as representing the cause of Basque home rule. A notable exception was John Francis Bacon, a diplomat residing in Bilbao during the Carlist siege of (1835), who also praising Basque governance, could not hide his hostility towards the Carlists, whom he regarded as "savages." He went on to contest his compatriots' approach, denied a connection between the Carlist cause and the defense of the Basque liberties, and speculated that Carlos V would be quick to erode or suppress them if he took the Spanish throne.

The privileges of the Basque provinces are odious to the Spanish nation, of which Charles is so well aware, that if he was king of Spain next year, he would quickly find excuses for infringing them, if not their total abolition. A representative government will endeavour to raise Spain to a level with the Basque provinces, – a despot, to whom the very name of freedom is odious, would strive to reduce the provinces to the same low level with the rest.

Modern historian Mark Lawrence agrees:

The Pretender’s foralism was not proactive but purely in reaction to the fact that the rest of Spain (which had long been stripped of its fueros) had failed to rally to his cause. He was forced to rely on the fueros because no other wing of the Fernandine state, neither the army nor (mostly) the Church, defected to the Carlist cause. In fact, the fueros grew in importance only when military victory seemed impossible in the wake of the failed Royal Expedition, and as Carlist peace feelers voiced a growing willingness to abandon Don Carlos who, since 1834, had been the fueros’ champion.

and further notes that "the powers of the fueros themselves were increasingly curtailed by the Carlist Royal Government in the name of the war effort."

The interests of the Basque liberals were divided. On the one side, fluent cross-Pyrenean trade with other Basque districts and France was highly valued, as well as unrestricted overseas transactions. The former had been strong up to the French Revolution, especially in Navarre, but the new French national arrangement (1790) had abolished the separate legal and fiscal status of the French Basque districts. Despite difficulties, on-off trade continued during the period of uncertainty prevailing under the French Convention, the War of the Pyrenees (1793-1795), Manuel Godoy's tenure in office, and the Peninsular War. Eventually, Napoleonic defeat left cross-border commercial activity struggling to take off after 1813.

Overseas commerce was badly affected by the end of the Guipuzcoan Company of Caracas (1785), the French-Spanish defeat at the Battle of Trafalgar (1805), independence movements in Latin America (started 1808), the destruction of San Sebastián (1813), and the eventual breakup of the Royal Philippine Company (1814). By 1826 all the grand Spanish (including the Basque) fleet of the late 18th century with its renowned Basque navigators was gone, and with it, the Atlantic vocation of the Enlightened Spain.

Notwithstanding the ideology of Basque liberals, overall supportive of home rule, the Basques were getting choked by the above circumstances and customs on the Ebro, on account of the high levies enforced on them by the successive Spanish governments after 1776. Many Basque liberals advocated in turn for the relocation of the Ebro customs to the Pyrenees, and the encouragement of a Spanish market.

On Ferdinand VII's death in 1833, the minor Isabella II was proclaimed queen, with Maria Christina acting as regent. In November, a new Spanish institutional arrangement was designed by the incoming government in Madrid, homogenising Spanish administration according to provinces and conspicuously overruling Basque institutions.

The early attempts of the Viceroy of Navarra to recruit villagers into Cristino ranks failed miserably, even when service wages were offered of double, then treble, what the Carlist insurgents promised. Coverdale summarised four factors as to why this was so: (1) traditional society was still economically viable for most of population, hence liberalism was seen a threat; (2) natural leadership strata (clergy, landowners) lived cheek by jowl with peasants and supported the Carlist cause; (3) the terrain was sufficiently abrupt and broken to prevent the use of cavalry and to facilitate small bands to escape (to change their shirts and fight another day), whilst the landscape was densely populated enough to allow regular food and supplies; and (4) the appearance of the extremely gifted guerrilla leader, Tomás de Zumalacárregui. Other parts of Spain may have had one, or some of these factors, but not all four.

In this context the additional importance of the loss of the colonies arises. The basques had traditionally emigrated to the New World in order to get better jobs and deal with their rising population in a highly mountainous region which could not support large populations. The end of this option during a period of accelerated population growth meant that the Basque region "faced a bottleneck of impoverished and underemployed men of military age who had little [to] lose by joining Carlist insurrections". It is important to note that Basque support for Carlism was "far more conditional than [historian] tradionalists, neo-traditionalists, and even Liberals believed." As Mark Lawrence writes, "it would be superficial to explain Basque Carlism as a war in defence of the fueros" but also states that "Basque Carlism is also impossible to understand without them, not least because their most outspoken defenders were to be found in Carlist ranks and their most outspoken critics amongst the Cristino Liberals." He details:

Whereas Carlist propaganda defended the fueros, it did so in the defensive tone of the ‘ancient constitution’ violated by the pre-war police state (which in the Basque country intensified its activities after 1830 whilst relenting elsewhere in Spain), and by the martial law of Cristino ‘pashas’ once the war had started. In fact early Basque Carlists did not place foral interests foremost. The Carlists’ second-in-command claimed that the Basque insurgents of 1833 saw the fueros as secondary to the legitimate royal succession, and his subaltern, Wilhelm von Rahden, whose foreignness made him disinterested, agreed.

Not only this, but the Basque region was not unilaterally Carlist. The cities of Bilbao and San Sebastian (major trading ports) "welcomed their Cristino garrisons" and "even in the rural areas most satisfied with the fueros, local juntas and deputations were split between Cristinos and Carlists in 1833." Basque Carlism, while in character separate to the rest of Spain, also should not be grouped with modern-day Basque nationalism. In fact, Sabino Arana, founder of the Basque Nationalist Party and father of the movement rejected Carlism because in his eyes it sacrificed Basque interests to Spanish dynastic policies Stanley G. Payne contends that no connection to the emergence of Basque nationalism can be postulated either.

The contenders

Carlos, the Church, and the Nobility

Zones under Carlist military control (dark orange) and areas where they found popular support (light orange)

Carlos had refused to openly challenge either the Pragmatic Sanction nor his brother while the latter remained alive, as the "recent legitimist rising knowns as the Agraviados had taught him the wisdom of awaiting events." This may be due to nineteenth century Spain being highly politically unstable in the 19th century through endless pronunciamientos. María Cristina had offered him a marriage between her daughter and his son to alleviate tensions, but Carlos refused on religious grounds. He warned her that God would punish him in the afterlife for giving away a throne that was rightfully his. Nonetheless, his allies in the courts and important positions of the Spanish state had been purged by the liberals towards the last months of Ferdinand's life, weakening various centers of Carlist strength. For example, in one dispatch the captain-general of Extremadura proposed the removal of 12 governors, king's lieutenants, and garrison adjutants; 1 colonel; 5 field officers of the Royalist Volunteers; 3 employees of the military treasury; 5 employees of the captain-general's office; the former chief of police; 7 employees of the treasury office; 1 artillery captain; and 3 post office employees. Few private citizens, however, were persecuted for their political opinions during this time.

In order to strengthen public support, the Carlist created significant amounts of propaganda, both during the war and in the years leading up to it. Carlos's refusal to swear an oath to Isabel in a letter to his brother was widely published, as well as a supposed response from universities about Carlos's right to the throne and two articles published in French periodicals that also focused on the judicial right of Carlos to the throne. The pamphlets and manifestos are divided into two types: the first includes legal arguments for why Don Carlos was the sole rightful heir to the Spanish throne while the second was composed by political arguments that were often laden with heavily religious overtones.

Most of these propagandist pamphlets published before the war were printed in France by Carlist exiles who then smuggled them into Spain, and so were most widely distributed in the northern regions of the Basque Country, Navarre, Aragon, and Catalonia.

Carlos found allies in the same areas that resisted the Liberals near the end of the Trienio: primarily in upland Navarra and the Basque provinces but also in inland Catalonia, Aragon, Galicia, and Old Castille. One historian called the minor civil war between Liberals and royalists in 1823 "a geographic dress rehearsal for the Carlist War".

Nonetheless, support for Carlos was not politically uniform. Basque Carlism was socially conservative and supported their stable rural economy, whereas in the Maestrazgo and Catalonia it was more of a protest vehicle for peasants against the negative effects of urbanization and new Liberal property regulations were having on their livelihood Such regulations were threatening to abolish the de facto rights to use-ownership of land by peasants and move towards a more contract and cash-based system.

In addition, Carlism did not represent a rural fight against urban development, as "[urban] artisans threatened by recurrent Liberal abolition of the guilds and redundant officeholders (cesantes) could be drawn to Carlism, whilst, by contrast, villagers who had benefited from the Liberal property revolution would correspondingly turn Cristino; flight either from or to the countryside in many cases entrenched a rural (Carlist) versus urban (Cristino) divide, but as an effect rather than a cause of the conflict."

It is highly likely that there were nobles outside of the three Carlist "heartlands" that were in favour of his cause, but any public show of support would have resulted in the Cristino court banishing those nobles from Madrid and seizing their extensive lands and income. Northern nobles, simply speaking, had much less land to lose. Carlism in Cristino areas can be differentiated into civic and faccioso (insurgent) Carlists. The latter were often bandits looking for political cover, while civic Carlists were subject to progressively harsher treatment as the war radicalized Spanish politics.

Overall, the Carlist position can be summarized as a radical reactionary policy to restore the privileges of the church and nobles, decentralise legislative and judicial powers, and bring the monarchy to a more medieval role that was less absolutist and more dependent on nobles. "In other words, the Carlists wanted to revise not just the recent Liberal revolution but the entire eighteenth-century legacy of enlightened absolutism."

Maria Christina, the Great Powers, and the Liberal Government

Isabella II

On the other side, the liberals and moderates united to defend the new order represented by María Cristina and her three-year-old daughter, Isabella. They controlled the institutions, almost the whole army, and the cities; the Carlist movement was stronger in rural areas. The liberals had the crucial support of United Kingdom, France and Portugal, support that was shown in the important credits to Cristina's treasury and the military help from the British (British Legion or Westminster Legion under General de Lacy Evans), the French (the French Foreign Legion), and the Portuguese (a Regular Army Division, under General Count of Antas).

Military

It is important to note that the liberals were just as multi-faceted as the Carlists, carrying on the factionalism that had characterized them during the Peninsular War. They disagreed in regards to military, with the guerilleros (patriot guerilla bands), the Bourbon army, and the National militia (a part-time citizen's force organized at a local level and "in the hands of property owners" which was written into the Constitution yet saw only "ephemeral" involvement at the end of the Napoleonic war) all favored by different politicians and at different times both before and during the war. The national militia was championed by the Liberals during the Trienio, but required a literacy test and ability to afford the uniform from those enlisted. However, they received the same privileges and immunity as the military while having as only requirement the condition of "when active in their duties" which led to significant in-fighting and an "extra-paramilitary double regime" during the Trienio.

The growing anti-militarist sentiment amongst the liberals resulted in the emergence in the Napoleonic War amongst the army of a faction that "was hostile to the whole constitutional experiment" due to the "shabby treatment" received from politicians. Conditions were not significantly better during the Ferdinandine reign, as soldiers faced late payments and inadequate rations and its Liberal officers placed on half-pay or remote garrisons by the distrustful king (many of these officers later led Rafael del Riego's pronunciamiento). Note also that conscripts had no a priori reason to be committed to the Cristino cause, while officers had a career they were willing to sacrifice their men and military considerations for.

The Liberal generals, such as Vicente Genaro de Quesada and Marcelino de Oraá Lecumberri, were often veterans of the Peninsular War, or of the wars resulting from independence movements in South America. For instance, Jerónimo Valdés participated in the battle of Ayacucho (1824).

Army organization

Special troops and foreign volunteers

Carlist forces

Both sides raised special troops during the war. The Liberal side formed the volunteer Basque units known as the Chapelgorris, while Tomás de Zumalacárregui created the special units known as aduaneros. Zumalacárregui also established the unit known as Guías de Navarra from Liberal troops from La Mancha, Valencia, Andalusia and other places who had been taken prisoner at the Battle of Alsasua (1834). After this battle, they had been faced with the choice of joining the Carlist troops or being executed.

The term Requetés was at first applied to just the Tercer Batallón de Navarra (Third Battalion of Navarre) and subsequently to all Carlist combatants.

The war attracted independent adventurers, such as the Briton C. F. Henningsen, who served as Zumalacárregui's chief bodyguard (and later was his biographer), and Martín Zurbano, a contrabandista or smuggler, who:

soon after the commencement of the war sought and obtained permission to raise a body of men to act in conjunction with the queen's troops against the Carlists. His standard, once displayed, was resorted to by smugglers, robbers, and outcasts of all descriptions, attracted by the prospect of plunder and adventure. These were increased by deserters...

About 250 foreign volunteers fought for the Carlists; the majority were French monarchists, but they were joined by men from Portugal, Britain, Belgium, Piedmont, and the German states. Friedrich, Prince of Schwarzenberg fought for the Carlists, and had taken part in the French conquest of Algeria and the Swiss civil war of the Sonderbund. The Carlists' ranks included such men as Prince Felix Lichnowsky, Adolfo Loning, Baron Wilhelm Von Radhen and August Karl von Goeben, all of whom later wrote memoirs concerning the war.

Treatment of prisoners

Liberal forces

Both sides executed prisoners of war by firing squad; the most notorious incident occurred at Heredia, when 118 Liberal prisoners were executed by order of Zumalacárregui. The British attempted to intervene, and through Lord Eliot, the Lord Eliot Convention was signed on April 27–28, 1835.

The treatment of prisoners of the First Carlist War in the Basque region became regulated and had temporary positive effects. A soldier of the British Auxiliary Legion wrote:

The British and Chapelgorris who fell into their hands [the Carlists], were mercilessly put to death, sometimes by means of tortures worthy of the North American Indians; but the Spanish troops of the line were saved by virtue, I believe, of the Eliot treaty, and after being kept for some time in prison, where they were treated with sufficient harshness, were frequently exchanged for an equal number of prisoners made by the Christinos.

However, Henry Bill, another contemporary, wrote that, although "it was mutually agreed upon to treat the prisoners taken on either side according to the ordinary rules of war, a few months only elapsed before similar barbarities were practiced with all their former remorselessness." Importantly, the agreement never went into effect outside of the Basque area.

Both sides did not hesitate to execute civilians related to soldiers on the opposide side, such as in the case of Carlist general Cabrera's mother.

Prisoners would often be made to fight for their captors, with the only alternative being execution. They also served as military labor, such as in the construction of siege trains.

Prisoners also were the worst sufferers of the long forced marches that were common in the conflict. Most died of hunger or disease in the few months after being captured and were forced to scavenge for food, resorting first to unripe root crops and eventually to cannibalism. For example, during the Royal Expedition Cabrera executed a number of Cristino cannibals that were caught during the act but the prisoners could not even stand up to receive the bullets. Thankfully after some months the surviving prisoners of the expedition were exchanged between sides.

Logistics

Army conditions

Armies on both sides had difficulties securing food and medical treatment for their troops. The food situation was so bad that Wilhelm von Radhen wrote of Carlos subsisting on "a pan of fried potatoes a day".

Many wounded would be left for dead on the battlefield or taken to dirty field hospitals with high mortality rates. For example, 3/4 of the wounded Liberals in the Morella campaign died within days. Wounded soldiers, depending on the source, account for 11.1-37% of combat fatalities. However, it is hard to estimate exactly how many soldiers died due to army conditions as contemporary sources often had partisan agendas and distorted figures.

Use of Intelligence

Carlist forces had significantly superior access to and quality of information due to their support in the regions where the conflict was fought. This allowed them to develop internal lines of communication, which were then used to devastating effect by Carlist generals. As reported by British Ambassador George Villiers, they would use spy networks and flash telegrammes to gather and communicate information. Cristino armies were often forced to use the valleys when travelling in the front lines, while Carlists were able to use hillpaths to transport troops and supplies using mule trains. Cabrera was specially known for diversions, such as driving herds of cattle to leave false footprints or luring enemies by creating false exposed flanks.

Defenses

While permanent fortresses placed in vantage points and equipped with artillery were used, guerilla patrols and armed farmers often served to control remote hilltops and roads between villages and cities.

Use of Propaganda and the Role of Newspapers

Text

But the greater duration and irregular quality of the First Carlist War created a press-driven ‘myth-cycle’ which flourished on patchy knowledge of the march of events, and reduced strange experiences and inexplicable events to a conspiracy of Carlist fifth-columnists, poisonings, prison breaks, arms storage in churches and so forth. Confused and poorly led Cristino conscripts in unfamiliar territory sometimes fired on each other by mistake, but these shots were reported to have been fired by ‘Carlist’ inhabitants: with dire results. As the war in 1835 expanded beyond the Basque country, demographic factors increased the scope both for actual and ‘reported’ atrocities to take place. Cristino atrocities were often harsher in such irregular areas of Carlist control as northern Castile and, especially, Aragón and Catalonia, precisely because, in contrast to the Basque country, ‘suspect’ men of military age were usually encountered inside hostile villages. (The Carlist Basque country, by contrast, had been thoroughly militarised by mid-war and thus offered greater resistance to Cristino incursions, and those incursions that did take place usually encountered few ‘suspect’ combatants as virtually every available man was at the front.) Equally, Carlist raiders into Cristino territory encountered a vulnerable population disproportionately composed of women and children. Masculine anxieties in a culture of honour must account for part of the rise in reports in the press of rape and murder.

Also

Much of the political radicalisation of Cristino Spain was caused by ‘news’ as much as lived experience. This news often came from anonymous sources, a routine cause of frustration for historians interested in the social background of protagonists and in corroborating facts.

Newspapers would alternatively praise and condemn enemy commanders for propaganda purposes. Positive assessments (such as praise of Cabrera's organizational genius) and negative ones (referring to his troops as bandits and giving him the nickname "Tiger of the Maestrazgo") could exist simultaneously.

Early stages (1833-1834)

Basque region

The first hostilities occured in the Navarre in October of 1833.

The Maestrazgo

The Carlist effort here was, until 1835, dispersed by the Cristinos and confined to rural guerilla warfare.

Fall of Zumalacárregui and Foreign Aid (1834-1835)

Zumalacárregui carried off after being injured (1835)

In 1835, Spain secured indirect military assistance from France, Britain, and Portugal in the form of volunteers. The Carlists received much smaller support from Prussia, Austria, and the Italian states. However, Cristino conscripts began to desert in large numbers between 1835-1837 of the war as government logistics broke down due to Carlist military successes.

The Maestrazgo

From 1835, Ramón Cabrera became leader of Carlist troops in the Maestrazgo. He pursued an aggressive system of punishment towards villages in the region that did not support his cause, pillaging and attacking them and using the goods to improve conditions in the villages that did support the insurgency. Eventually, the aggressiveness and superiority of his army in terms of information forced the Cristinos in the Maestrazgo to undertake a defensive even when equipped with superior numbers.

1836

Basque region

Theater of operations of the Liberal Army of the North, May 1836

The Carlists launched the Gomez expedition, an attempt to strengthen support in the Northern provinces with small localized insurgencies. Gomez was prevented from consolidating support in Galicia due to a response by General Espartero, who forced him southwards. He took temporary control of some provincial capitals and Mediterannean ports but was strategically unsuccessful in the aims of the raid. In addition, the Basque ports had remained blockaded. The expedition was more successful from a propaganda point of view, as the Cristinos were humiliated by the ability of the raid to penetrate within government-backed land.

The Maestrazgo

Daguerreotype of Ramón Cabrera, 1850. He was the leader of the Carlist effort in the Maestrazgo

Ramón Cabrera, the Carlist leader in the Maestrazgo, "expanded the boundaries of the Carlist safe zone and turned it into a military state." Cristino Captain-General Evaristo Fernández de San Miguel successfully stormed the Carlist fortress of Cantavieja in October, taking advantage of the diversion of Carlist troops in the Gomez expedition.

Catalonia

By March, Carlist actions had driven 4,000 families to seek refuge in fortified centers. The food situation was dire, with a delegate to the Cortes Generales complaining that "300 villages have not eaten bread for 3 months, and the July harvest will be exposed to Carlist depredations".

Royal Expedition and end of the war (1837-1839)

Carlos' seat at Durango in 1837

1837 was a year of poor harvests, leading insurgents to sieze oxen from local populations as food.

Royal Expedition

Main article: Royal Expedition

Map of the Royal Expedition based on the accounts of Von Rahden

On 15 May, the Carlists launched from their capital in Estella-Lizarra what was termed the Royal Expedition: a massive raid on Madrid. There were multiple causes for this, both diplomatic and economic.

By then, both the Basque region and the Maestrazgo had been strained after years of militarization and living in a war economy, which forced the Carlists to resort once again to the raids that had characterized the first years of fighting. Due to the Basque blockade, Carlists had difficulties paying soldiers and had faced mutinies in March. Advisors told the pretender that the Basque army could only sustain 15 more days of operations. In addition, Klemens von Metternich told the Carlists that the Austrians would stop financial support if the insurgents could not establish themselves past the Ebro, while the French suggested that they'd back them if they were able to take control of the Franco-Spanish border. Finally, Maria Cristina was rumoured to be willing to strike a peace involving her exile and marriage of her daughter to a Carlist prince, an agreement that would necessitate Carlos renouncing his claim and thus was unacceptable.

At the start of the expedition, the Carlists had no artillery with them and had to wait until they marched for some days to get artillery units when joining up with other Carlist forces. The Cristino army was debilitated by this point by a year of mutinies. Furthermore, the Cristinos territories had been the source of widespread anti-clericalism, with over 400 parishes closing in the first half of 1836 due to lack of ministers, giving the Carlist troops a religious fervor that increased their morale.

Both the expedition and a 12,000-strong contingent of the Cristino National Militia and the Army of the North under Espartero met at the Battle of Huesca on 25 May. A victory for the Carlists in which they killed or captured over a thousand Cristinos allowed them to then occupy the city. Three days later the Carlists took Barbastro without fighting. All throughout, underfed Carlist soldiers "resorted to routine excesses against the villages". On 2 June, the Cristinos attacked the town in the Battle of Barbastro, where they were once again defeated. The Carlists defeated the equally-sized army of 12,400 infantry and 1,400 cavalry and artillery under the command of General "Grey Fox" Oraá, though "vastly" outnumbered in Artillery. As it had been throughout the war, their superior knowledge of terrain proved a dominant advantage.

The British ambassador to the Cristino court outlined the Carlist strategy in Aragon as follows: "the same as in Navarra: to deceive the Queen’s Generals by false information, and to harass the troops by constant marches and counter-marches and then to beat them in detail". This was additionally effective by the revolutionary crisis the Cristinos faced, as instead of being able to field significant troop numbers to fight against Carlist raids they instead kept them in population centers to prevent radical citizens from rebelling.

The Carlists crossed the Ebro on 29 June, linking up with Cabrera's forces at Xerta and preventing a Cristino counter-insurgency in Catalonia. The only places Carlists were unable to take control of were major towns and the coastline. The Carlists were now beginning to strain their supply lines and their armies grew exhausted from marching. On 15 July, they suffered their first defeat of the expedition at the Battle of Chiva, where the bulk of the Carlist forces were almost routed by a smaller Cristino force. This forced the Expedition to retreat northwards, with villages on the path being then raided by both sides. On 24 August, while retreating, the Carlists managed to defeat the equally-sized Cristinos at the Battle of Villar de los Navarros, taking prisoners and badly-needed supplies.

At the same time as the expedition was underway, the Carlist launched another raid from the Navarre under the leadership of Juan Antonio de Zaratiegui. While originally intended as a diversion, they made such rapid progress through exposed and badly defended Cristino territory that they conquered Segovia early in August. Thus, both expeditions were closing in on Madrid at approximately the same time. The Cristino frontline "appeared to be evaporating across Castille", leading to panic in the capital. In response, on the 6th of August the Liberals declared Madrid in a state of siege decreeing a wide range of pro-Carlist activities as punishable by council of war. The Cristinos offered token resistance as they surrendered the towns and cities surrounding Madrid in order to regroup their forces. In Valladolid, for example, the double-administration common throughout the war allowed for a peaceful taking of the city as the Cristino leaders resigning to Madrid and pro-Carlists taking their place in a "gentlemanly manner". This calm transition spared the city from the pillaging and other atrocities exemplified by other frontline cities, until a later Cristino counter-attack forced Zaratiegui to abandon the city and join the Royal Expedition in its south. Meanwhile, politically-charged mutinies started to occur within the Cristino ranks outside Madrid, which were not punished by their officers as the indiscipline was much less threatening than the Carlist raid.

On 10 September, the Carlists had reached the walls of Madrid while a possible diplomatic solution was rumoured. Some members of the Madrid community called for siege warfare preparations. However, all this proved unnecessary as Espartero's Army of the North was able to force the Carlist vanguard to retreat via a show-of-strength march as the march made Carlos "fear the worst". The Carlists retreated to Alcalá de Henares and then again farther back, removing any threat from Madrid and outraging some of their troops. The retreat greatly spurred Cristino morale, and the Carlists suffered a string of rear-guard defeats as they retreated, having lost all momentum they gained in the months prior. They lost increasing numbers of weapons and manpower to desertions and the prestige they had cultivated in the villages they conquered was "shattered". Carlos attempted to convince Cabrera to replace Moreno as Commander-in-chief, but he refused "in thinly-veiled disgust at the failure of the king's leadership". Cabrera had supported a very fast raid on Madrid to last two weeks rather than the leisurely "throne-and-altar" march that the Carlists had undertaken under the command of Infante Sebastian and Carlos. The foreign auxiliaries like Von Rahden were also angry: they "did not understand the decorative time-wasting of the Carlist political community" which had wasted many opportunities for decisive victories with "masses and festivals of grace".

The retreat to the Basque Country was ruthless, with Carlists that fell out from fatigue would be shot by their own army in order to discourage desertions. Espartero was equally harsh in his treatment of the civilian populations of Castille. Many of them had defected to the Carlists during the Expedition, and were now facing the situation common in areas that had been in the frontline during the war. Large food shortages, double administrations, and armies that repressed the towns they crossed. Such was the situation that Espartero promised a death penalty to those that were found hoarding food and drink. His soldiers did not fare much better, even if they now had the advantage, with the clothing of his army in a bad state (shoes, for example, would sometimes have cardboard heels that would break apart within weeks). On the 4th of October, the Cristinos won a close Battle of Retuerta by using the last of their reserves, thereby pushing the Carlists back to the other side of the Ebro and signaling the end of the Royal Expedition.

The villagers on the Carlists' path feared the pursuing Cristinos more than the fleeing insurgents and so refused to make shoes or equipment for them. Thus, they were forced to pillage and steal, and thus Villiers reported that "every village through which the [Cristino] army has passed has been found barefooted". However, the Liberals were also in a dire logistical situation as their system (based on private contractors) was often intercepted by Carlists and consequently were only able to supply less food and clothing that was needed by Espartero's army.

Aftermath of the Royal Expedition

The Embrace of Bergara put an end to the First Carlist War in the Basque Country (1839)

The expedition showed that the Carlists were too weak to decisively carry out military operations deep within Cristino territory and were only effective within areas already strongly under their control. Their failure to take the Capital resulted in significantly reduced international support and on the 23rd of October the Manifesto of Arceniega led the path to purges. In a proclamation made at this town, the insurgent king Carlos said that the Expedition had been just a "promising dress rehearsal", back-tracking on claims that the previous march on Madrid would be the "definitive" end of the war, for a future offensive of "national liberation". Radical members of a political ideology called apostolicism (a branch of Spanish absolutism) started to dominate the Carlist court, "launch[ing] public proclamations describing the Expedition’s failure as the work of [a] hated peace faction". Moderates were removed from cabinet positions leading to leaders such as Teijeiro and Guergué to take over. These new cabinet members antagonized the army, especially the Commander-in-chief Rafael Maroto, resulting in deep division within the Carlist ranks.

Additionally, as most of the successes during the raid came from Cabrera's efforts in the Maestrazgo, the Expedition consolidated his leadership in the region. He gained veto powers on all matters, both political and military. Furthermore, the strong propaganda created from the local victories led to a growing enlistment of conscripts into the Carlist army in this region. As the Northern front stalled, the focus of the Carlist efforts thus shifted towards the Eastern regions commanded by Cabrera.

Carlist territory under Cabrera reached its peak expansion in 1838. He escalated reprisals against prisoners in a "villainous war to the death" and refused to expand the provisions of the Eliot Treaty to his territory. He took Morella on the 25th of January and turned it into his de facto capital. He began turning into a military dictator, over-ruling the Carlist junta and the Church's privileges. He began smelting church bells into weapons and demoted the Carlist Bishop of Mondoñedo after he complained to Carlos of Cabrera's expulsion of friars from Morella for refusing to take up weapons in its defence during a siege. In June he sent out envoys to Livorno to seek foreign support for a new operation in Catalunya but these were intercepted by British ships. In December a Carlist arms dealer was caught by the British seeking 15,000 firearms and consequently the British increased their efforts to intercept suspicious cargo on the Spanish Eastern coast, reducing the Carlist supply of weapons.

On 31 August 1939, the Basque provinces agreed to conditional surrender in the Convention of Vergara, freeing Espartero's army to use its full strength on the Maestrazgo. Cabrera's territory fell into a "reign of terror" and he fell gravely ill in February of 1940. By his recovery in May most of the east had been lost to the Cristinos, and in June he went into exile to France. Thus, the First Carlist War was over.

Aftermath

Spain in 1854. It shows what areas remained with different law, tax and military draft systems after the First Carlist War, merged into a sole Spanish jurisdiction after the Third Carlist War (1876)

Demographics

Areas not involved in the conflict were not affected demographically, but the main areas of battle were decimated. Cities such as Bilbao (which went from 15,000 to 10,234) lost between a quarter and half of its population. The worst victim was Segura de los Baños, which lost 52% of its inhabitants. Direct losses due to the conflict, especially at the national level, are harder to count due to the state of contemporary statistical records.

Economics

The war left Spain significantly weakened. During the war, populations in conflict zones were frequently moved to fortified centers, which would destroy the ability of the first location to grow crops (due to loss of labor) and place oversized burdens on the area of the fortified center.

Politics

See also: End of Basque home rule (Spain)

The Basques managed to keep a reduced version of their previous home rule (taxation, military draft) in exchange for their unequivocal incorporation into Spain (October 1839), now centralized, and divided into provinces.

In 1840, General Baldomero Espartero became premier and regent with the support of the Progressives in Spain. The financial and trading bourgeoisie burgeoned, but after Carlist war the Treasury's coffers were depleted and the army pending discharge.

In 1841 a separate treaty was signed by officials of the Council of Navarre (the Diputación Provincial, established in 1836), such as the Liberal Yanguas y Miranda, without the mandatory approval of the parliament of the kingdom (the Cortes). That compromise (called later the Ley Paccionada, the Compromise Act) accepted further curtailments to self-government, and more importantly officially turned the Kingdom of Navarre into a province of Spain (August 1841).

In September 1841, Espartero's uprising had its follow-up in the military occupation of the Basque Country, and subsequent suppression by decree of Basque home rule altogether, definitely bringing the Ebro customs over to the Pyrenees and the coast. The region was gripped by a wave of famine, and many took to overseas emigration at either side of the Basque Pyrenees, to America.

Espartero's regime came to an end in 1844 after the moderate Conservatives gained momentum, and a settlement was found for the stand-off in the Basque Provinces.

Legacy

The war is often paralleled to the Spanish Civil War a century later. In the words of Mark Lawrence:

[...] the enduring stereotype of the 'Two Spains'—which for so long was deemed central to understanding modern Spain—might have seemed an equally compelling paradigm for the First Carlist War: whereas the Spanish Civil War saw Nationalists and Republicans fighting for their respective hegemonic visions of Spain, the First Carlist War offers a comparable struggle between legitimist Carlists and modernising Liberals which took twice as long to resolve as its successor, exalted relatively more casualties, and even anticipated the International Brigades.

Paul Johnson agrees with the characterization, writing "both royalists and liberals began to develop strong local followings, which were to perpetuate and transmute themselves, through many open commotions and deceptively tranquil intervals, until they exploded in the merciless civil war of 1936-39."

Spanish historiography

Spanish memory of the conflict is disproportionately based on the Carlist side, even when the vast majority of Spain's land and population remained Liberal throughout the conflict. A large factor in this is the official encouragement by the Spanish government at different points in its history (most recently Francoist Spain) of pro-Carlist historians. Francoist historians depicted the Carlist Wars as part of the fight between Roman Catholicism and anti-Spanish liberals that "waging war against their own people". Melchor Ferrer, for example, authored a 30 volume work on Spanish traditionalism. Marxist historians of the 70s criticized Carlism, but were not as highly influential as their Carlist counterparts. Since the fall of the Franco dictatorship, however, Spanish historiography has become much less partisan.

Carlist troops from Navarre

Battles of the First Carlist War (Chronology)

Battle of Behobia, May 1837

• Battle of Malays (April 10, 1834) - Liberal victory
• Battle of Alsasua (April 22, 1834) - Carlist victory
• Battle of Gulina (June 18, 1834) - Carlist victory
• Battle of Alegría de Álava (October 27, 1834) - Carlist victory
• Battle of Venta de Echávarri (October 28, 1834) - Carlist victory
• Battle of Mendaza (December 12, 1834) - Liberal victory
• First Battle of Arquijas (December 15, 1834) - Liberal victory
• Second Battle of Arquijas (February 5, 1835) - Carlist victory
• Battle of Artaza (April 22, 1835) - Carlist victory
• Battle of Mendigorría (July 16, 1835) - Liberal victory
• Battle of Arlabán (January 16–18, 1836) - Carlist victory
• Battle of Terapegui (April 26, 1836) - Liberal victory
• Battle of Villarrobledo (September 20, 1836) - Liberal victory
• Battle of Majaceite (November 23, 1836) - Liberal victory
• Battle of Luchana (December 24, 1836) - Liberal victory
• Battle of Oriamendi (March 16, 1837) - Carlist victory
• Battle of Huesca (March 24, 1837) - Liberal victory
• Battle of Irún (May 17, 1837) - Liberal victory
• Second Battle of Huesca (May 25, 1837) - Carlist victory
• Battle of Barbastro (June 2, 1837) - Carlist victory
• Battle of Chiva (15 July, 1837) - Cristino victory
• Battle of Villar de los Navarros (August 24, 1837) - Carlist victory
• Battle of Andoain (September 14, 1837) - Carlist victory - End of the British Auxiliary Legion as an effective fighting force
• Battle of Aranzueque (September 1837) - Liberal victory
• Battle of Retuerta (October 4, 1837) - Liberal victory, end of the Royal Expedition
• Battle of Maella (October 1, 1838) - Carlist victory
• Battle of Peñacerrada (June 20–22, 1838) - Liberal victory
• Battle of Ramales (May 13, 1839) - Liberal victory

Further reading

• Lawrence, Mark. Spain’s First Carlist War, 1833-40. Palgrave: Basingstoke, 2014.
• Atkinson, William C. A History of Spain and Portugal. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1960.
• Brett, Edward M. The British Auxiliary Legion in the First Carlist War 1835-1838: A Forgotten Army. Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2005.
• Carr, Raymond. Spain, 1808-1975 (1982), pp 184–95
• Chambers, James. Palmerston: The People's Darling. London: John Murray, 2004.
• Clarke, Henry Butler. Modern Spain, 1815-98 (1906) old but full of factual detail online
• Coverdale, John F. The Basque Phase of Spain's First Carlist War. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984.
• Holt, Edgar. The Carlist Wars in Spain. Chester Springs (Pennsylvania): Dufour Editions, 1967.
• Payne, Stanley G. History of Spain and Portugal: v. 2 (1973) ch 19-21
• Webster, Charles K. The Foreign Policy of Palmerston 1830-1841. London: E. Bell & Sons, 1951. (2 volumes).
• Wellard, James. The French Foreign Legion. London: George Rainbird Ltd., 1974.
• Williams, Mark. The Story of Spain. Puebla Lucia (California): Mirador Publications, 1992.

In Spanish

• Alcala, Cesar and Dalmau, Ferrer A. 1a. Guerra Carlista. El Sitio de Bilbao. La Expedición Real (1835-1837). Madrid : Almena Ediciones, 2006.
• Artola, Miguel. La España de Fernando VII. Madrid: Editorial Espasa-Calpe, 1999.
• Burdiel, Isabel. Isabel II. Madrid: Santillana Ediciones, 2010.
• Bullón de Mendoza, Alfonso. La Primera Guerra Carlista. Madrid: Editorial Actas, 1992.
• Bullón de Mendoza, Alfonso (Editor): Las Guerras Carlistas. Catálogo de la exposición celebrada por el Ministerio de Cultura en el Museo de la Ciudad de Madrid. Madrid, Ministerio de Cultura, 2004.
• Clemente, Josep Carles. La Otra Dinastía: Los Reyes Carlistas en la España Contemporanea. Madrid: A. Machado Libros S.A., 2006.
• Condado, Emilio. La Intervención Francesa en España (1835-1839). Madrid: Editorial Fundamentos, 2002.
• De Porras y Rodríguez de León, Gonzalo. La Expedición de Rodil y las Legiones Extranjeras en la Primera Guerra Carlista. Madrid: Ministerio de *Defensa, 2004.
• De Porras y Rodríguez de León, Gonzalo. Dos Intervenciones Militares Hispano-Portuguesas en las Guerras Civiles del Siglo XIX. Madrid: Ministerio de Defensa, 2001.
• Fernandez Bastarreche, Fernando. Los Espadones Románticos. Madrid: Edito-rial Sintesis, 2007.
• Garcia Bravo, Alberto; Salgado Fuentes, Carlos Javier. El Carlismo: 175 Años de Sufrida Represión. Madrid: Ediciones Arcos, 2008.
• Henningsen, Charles Frederick. Zumalacarregui. Buenos Aires: Espasa-Calpe Argentina, 1947.
• Moral Roncal, Antonio Manuel. Los Carlistas. Madrid: Arco Libros, 2002.
• Moral Roncal, Antonio Manuel. Las Guerras Carlistas. Madrid: Silex Ediciones, 2006.
• Nieto, Alejandro. Los Primeros Pasos del Estado Constitucional: Historia Administrativa de la Regencia de Maria Cristina. Barcelona: Editorial Ariel, 2006.
• Oyarzun, Roman. Historia del Carlismo. Madrid: Ediciones Fe, 1939.
• Perez Garzon, Juan Sisinio (Editor). Isabel II: Los Espejos de la Reina. Madrid: Marcial Pons Historia, 2004.
• Pirala, Antonio. Historia de la Guerra Civil. Madrid: Turner SA / Historia 16, 1984. (6 Volumes).
• Romanones, Conde de. Espartero: El General del Pueblo. Madrid: Ikusager Ediciones, 2007.
• Urcelay Alonso, Javier. Cabrera: el Tigre del Maestrazgo. Madrid: Ariel, 2006.
• Vidal Delgado, Rafael. Entre Logroño y Luchana: Campañas del General Espartero. Logroño (Spain): Instituto de Estudios Riojanos, 2004.

In Portuguese

• J.B. (Full name unknown). "Relaçao Historica da Campanha de Portugal pelo Exercito Espanhol as Ordens do Tenente General D. Jose Ramon Rodil (1835)". Published as part of D. Miguel e o Fim da Guerra Civil: Testemunhos. Lisbon: Caleidoscopio Edição, 2006.

In French

• Montagnon, Pierre. Histoire de la Legion. Paris: Pygmalion, 1999.
• Porch, Douglas. La Legion Etrangere 1831-1962. Paris: Fayard, 1994.
• Bergot, Erwan. La Legion. Paris: Ballard, 1972.
• Dembowski, Karol. Deux Ans en Espagne et en Portugal, pendant la Guerre Civile, 1838-1840. Paris: Charles Gosselin, 1841.

External links

• Chronology of the First Carlist War
• Site by the Zumalakarregi Museum dedicated to the First Carlist War