Ominous Decade
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España Reino de España |
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 Seal of Spain
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| Capital | Madrid | |||||||||
| Government | Absolutist monarchy | |||||||||
| Historical era | 19th century | |||||||||
| • | Hundred Thousand Sons of Saint Louis | 1823 | ||||||||
| • | Death of Ferdinand VII | 1833 | ||||||||
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The Ominous Decade (Castilian: Década Ominosa) is a traditional term for the last ten years of the reign of King Ferdinand VII of Spain, dating from the abolition of the Spanish Constitution of 1812, on 1 October 1823, to his death on 29 September 1833.
Ferdinand VII had become king after the victorious end of the Peninsular War, by which Spain was freed from Napoleonic domination. He returned to Spain on 24 March 1814 and his first act was the abolition of the 1812 liberal constitution; this was followed by the dissolution of the two chambers of the Spanish Parliament on 10 May.
These were only the first moves towards a severe anti-liberal reaction, which caused a series of military riots, started in January 1820 by General Rafael del Riego. The monarch was forced to reintroduce a constitution, with a solemn oath during a ceremony in Madrid on 10 March 1820. This began the so-called Trienio Liberal ("Liberal Triennium", or Constitutional Triennium), during which Ferdinand had to witness the fall of the main absolutist institutions and privileges, and the increasing shift towards radicalism of the Parliament's majority.
Ferdinand, however, had not abandoned his reactionary goals, and appealed to the Holy Alliance established at the Congress of Vienna in 1814, by which the main absolutist monarchies of Europe had agreed to help each other in case one of them had to suffer a democratic revolution. On 7 April 1823, France launched an expedition, by which a military corps, known as the One Hundred Thousand Sons of St. Louis (Los Cien Mil Hijos de San Luis) and led by Louis Antoine, Duke of Angoulême, invaded the Spanish territory. Louis was welcomed on 24 May in Madrid, after the liberals had abandoned the city and taken refuge in the commercial city of Cádiz, where Ferdinand was kept as prisoner.
Here the democratic Cortes met to declare the king's deposition. The French troops besieged the city, until 31 August, when the Battle of Trocadero marked the liberals' defeat and the capitulation of the city.
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Wikipedia