Alfonso XII of Spain - The Republic

The Republic

After Amadeus abandonment in 1873, Parliament declared the Federal Republic (including the Cuba, Puerto Ico and he Pacific Archipelagos), the first act of President Estanbislao Figueras was to extend the Abolition Act to Puerto Rico. Cuban slaves would have to wait until 1889.

But the republicans were not in agreement either, and they had to contend with the War in Cuba, the Islamist terrorists in Spanish Morocco and the continuance of the Carlist Wars. This led to the creation of a group in favor of the Bourbon restoration, made by some sectors of the moderates led by Canovas del Castillo.

The Prince of Asturias, Alfonso, is the person chosen to develop the new roadmap proposed by Canovas, which led to the June 1870 abdication of Queen Isabel II in favour of her son Prince Alfonso. The new roadmap which indeed ended the eternal crisis begun in 1810 was called 'Alfonsismo' and the moderate centrist Cánovas del Castillo became the spokesman. As having Alfonso in Spain, would be a problem Cánovas became responsible for his education. So, he sent Alfonso to the Sandhurst Military Academy in England, where the training Alfonso received was severe but more cosmopolitan than Spain, given the current athmosphere

In 1 December 1874, Alfonso issues the Sandhurst Manifesto where he sets the ideological basis of the Bourbonic Restoration. It is drafted in reply to a birthday greeting from his followers, a manifesto proclaiming himself the sole representative of the Spanish monarchy. At the end of 1874, when Field Marshal Serrano left Madrid to take command of the northern army in the Carlist War, Brigadier Martínez Campos, who had long been working more or less openly for the king, led some battalions of the central army to Sagunto, rallied to his own flag the troops sent against him, and entered Valencia in the king's name. Thereupon the President resigned, and his power was transferred to the king's plenipotentiary and adviser, Antonio Cánovas. The 29 December 1874, military coup of Gen. Martinez Campos, in Sagunto ended the failed republic and meant the rise of the young Prince Alfonso.