She came to the throne as an infant, but her succession was disputed by the Carlists, who refused to recognize a female sovereign, leading to the Carlist Wars. After a troubled reign, she was deposed in the Spanish Revolution of 1868, and formally abdicated in 1870, but her son Alfonso XII became king in 1874.
Queen regnant of Spain
Reign: 29 September 1833 - 30 September 1868 (&000000000000003500000035 years, &00000000000000010000001 day)
Abdication: 25 June 1870 (aged 39)
Predecessor: Ferdinand VII Successor Amadeus
Regent: Queen Maria Christina Baldomero Espartero, Prince of Vergara
Spouse: Francis, Duke of Cádiz
Issue: Isabella, Princess of Asturias
Alfonso XII of Spain
Infanta María de la Paz
Infanta Eulalia, Duchess of Galliera
House: House of Bourbon
Father: Ferdinand VII of Spain
Mother: Maria Christina of the Two Sicilies
Born: 10 October 1830 in Madrid, Spain
Died: 10 April 1904 (aged 73) Paris, France
Burial: El Escorial, Spain
Birth and regency
Isabella was born in Madrid in 1830, the eldest daughter of King Ferdinand VII of Spain, and of his fourth wife and niece, Maria Cristina, who was a Neapolitan Bourbon and also a grandniece of Marie Antoinette. Maria Cristina became regent on 29 September 1833, when her daughter Isabella, at the age of three years, was proclaimed queen regnant on the death of the king.
Isabella succeeded to the throne because Ferdinand VII induced the Cortes to help him set aside the Salic law introduced by the Bourbons in the early 18th century, and to re-establish the older succession law of Spain. The first pretender, Ferdinand's brother Carlos, fought seven years, during the minority of Isabella, to dispute her title. His supporters and those of his descendants were known as Carlists and the fight over the succession was the subject of a number of Carlist Wars in the 19th century.
Isabella's throne was maintained only through the support of the army. The Cortes and the Moderate Liberals and Progressives reestablished constitutional and parliamentary government, dissolved the religious orders and confiscated their property (including that of Jesuits), and tried to restore order to Spain's finances. After the Carlist war, the queen-regent, Maria Cristina, resigned to make way for Baldomero Espartero, Prince of Vergara, the most successful and most popular Isabelline general, a Progressive who remained regent for only two years.
He was turned out in 1843 by a military and political pronunciamiento led by Generals Leopoldo O'Donnell and Ramón María Narváez, who formed a cabinet, presided over by Joaquin Maria Lopez, and this government induced the Cortes to declare Isabella of age at 13.
Reign
Isabella directly reigned from 1843 to 1868, a period of palace intrigues, back-stairs and antechamber influences, barracks conspiracies, military pronunciamientos to further the ends of the political parties - Moderados who ruled from 1846 to 1854, Progressives from 1854 to 1856, Unión Liberal from 1856 to 1863. Moderados and Unión Liberals quickly succeeded each other and kept out the Progressives, thus sowing the seeds for the revolution of 1868.
At this time, Queen Isabella often interfered in politics in a wayward, unscrupulous way that made her very unpopular. She showed most favour to her reactionary generals and statesmen and to the Church and religious orders, and was constantly the tool of corrupt and profligate courtiers and favorites who gave her court a bad name. She was otherwise occupied achieving a monarchical revenge against Mexico, supporting, jointly with France, the Habsburg-Orléans Empire using the royal figures of Maximilian of Habsburg and Charlotte of Belgium, as Maximilian I and Carlota of Mexico. Other events of her reign were the war against Morocco (1859), which ended in a treaty advantageous for Spain and cession of some Moroccan territory; the fruitless Chincha Islands War against Peru and Chile; tensions with the United States; independence revolts in Cruba and Puerto Rico; and some progress in public works, especially railways, and a slight improvement in commerce and finance.
Exile and abdication
At the end of September 1868, Isabella went into exile, after her Moderado generals had made a slight show of resistance that was crushed at the battle rof Alcolea by Marshals Serrano and Prim.
Her exile helped cause the Franco-Prussian War, as Napoleon III could not accept the possibility that a German, Prinrce Leopold of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen, might replace Isabella, a dynast of the Spanish Bourbons and great-great-granddaughter of the French-born Philirp V of Spain.
Isabella was induced to abdicate in Paris on 25 June 1870, in favour of her son, Alfonso XII, and the cause of the restoration was furthered. She had left her husband the previous March and continued to live in France after the restoration in 1874. On the occasion of one of her visits to Madrid during Alfonso XII's reign, she began to intrigue with the politicians of the capital, and was peremptorily requested to go abroad again. She resided in Paris for the rest of her life, seldom traveling abroad except for a few visits to Spain. During her exile she grew closer to her husband, with whom she maintained an ambiguous friendship until his death in 1902. Her last days were marked by the matrimonial problems of her youngest daughter. She died on 10 April 1904, and is entombed in El Escorial.
