The First Carlist War in Spain: influences from Britain

 The first Carlist war in Spain took place between 1833 and 1839 between forces loyal to the Regent Maria Cristina (known as Cristeros) and those who wanted Don Carlos the brother of the previous King (Ferdinand VII) to take the Spanish throne. The Carlists were the conservative forces favouring the church and an authoritarian state whereas the Cristeros supported a liberal form of government. Foreign intervention in wars where one side was on the left of the political spectrum became justified in the 1830s due to John Stuart Mill’s “Spanish Essay”. Volunteers were motivated by unemployment, adventure, escape and ideological commitment or by a mixture of these motives. Some said that volunteers joined up just to ensure that they obtained regular meals. Any who did volunteer would discover that alcohol consumption was forbidden on both sides in the Carlist War (and later in the Spanish Civil war of 1936-1939). This was a shock for Northern European recruits and resulted in problems in the taverns and hostelries that did exist, such as at a tavern in Santander in 1837 when drunken British and Portuguese auxiliaries assaulted the people and property who were in it.

John Stuart Mill produced practical as well as moral reasons for supporting the Liberal cause seeing the medieval fueros (privileges)of the Carlist Basque country as obstructions to economic progress. The British establishment was divided in the Carlist War. Tories tended to be neutral or have pro-Carlist sympathies. Carlists were crestfallen when the Duke of Wellington declared approval of the victory of the liberal Cristino side. Recruitment for the Carlist War in Scotland focussed on hand loom weavers from the rural Highland areas where poverty and a tradition of feudalism made overseas service more attractive to men of military age than in England. From England recruits were most likely to come from the Durham coalfields and so too in Wales recruits were from the coal producing areas in the South. Due to the British interest in the Carlist siege of Bilbao and its defeat, a fund was set up in this country to aid the victims of the War.

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