… Waterloo, France's Armies Were Marching Again.
"NAPOLEON IN AMERICA takes place, in part, against the backdrop of a French invasion of Spain. The campaign was not invented for the novel. It actually happened, in 1823, to restore a Spanish Bourbon king to the throne. It was a huge deal at the time, both in Europe and the Americas. Newspapers, diplomatic reports, memoirs and letters of the period are full of commentary on the events leading up to the invasion, the resulting war, and its aftermath. Here is a very abbreviated account of what transpired.
In January 1820, a liberal revolt led by Spanish troops under General Rafael del Riego compelled absolutist King Ferdinand VII to implement the Constitution of 1812. The bill, which was full of goodies like universal suffrage (at least for men) and freedom of the press, had been drafted during the Peninsular War by the Spanish national assembly (the Cortes) when they were trying to rid the country of King Joseph Bonaparte and Napoleon's troops.
Now with the constitution's resurrection, Ferdinand became a de facto prisoner of the Cortes and retired to Aranjuez, south of Madrid. When a counter-revolt by extreme-royalists in July 1822 failed to liberate him, Ferdinand called on the other European monarchs to come to his assistance…"
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