[8] Although some began to act in 1820, the royalist parties experienced great growth from the spring of 1821 [note 2] as a consequence of the connection of the counter-revolution of the old reactionary elites, with the "anti-revolution" of the popular classes "culturally and socially aggrieved by revolutionary and liberal praxis."

[note 3] It will be precisely the Catholic Church, mostly opposed to the liberal regime due to the disentailment,[11] that will play a decisive role in the formation and the consolidation of this alliance between the counterrevolutionary elites and the "antirevolutionary" popular strata.

Installed from March 1822 in the Palace of Aranjuez, he established in a more discreet way than in Madrid contacts and meetings with nobles, diplomats, high officials and soldiers opposed to the constitutional regime as well as with the ambassadors of the European monarchies.

"[15] During the spring of 1822, the actions of the royalist parties[16]They acted on favorable terrain: little constitutional military presence, growing poverty of the popular classes and negative effects of some liberal reforms on the peasants" and there were several attempts at absolutist rebellions that culminated in the failed coup d'état of July 1822, which was led by the king himself and starred by the Royal Guard.

[23] The decisive event that started the civil war (or gave it the definitive impetus)[24][25] was the takeover by the leaders of the royalist parties Romagosa and El Trappist, in command of a troop of two thousand men, from the fortress of the Seo de Urgel on June 21.

This is how it appeared in the Manifesto that the lovers of the Monarchy make to the Spanish Nation, to the other powers and to the Sovereigns of the Marquis of Mataflorida that circulated throughout Europe: «The immobile and frightened people did not take part in such betrayal the revolution that he always condemned with silent indignation compressed by force.”[33] Starting with the constitution of the Regency of Urgel, which "provided the counterrevolution with a centralized direction and a certain ideological coherence," the royalists consolidated their dominance over large areas of the northeast and north of Spain by establishing their own institutions to administer the territory they controlled: Juntas de Cataluña, Navarra, Aragón, Sigüenza and the Basque Country, the latter chaired by General Vicente Quesada and which had a member for each of the three provinces.

He quotes the liberal deputy José María Moscoso who in a report he presented to the Cortes wrote: «There has hardly been a party in Spain that did not have in its ranks and at its head unworthy ministers of a religion sweet and tolerant by essence.

Immediately he lowered the priest from the pulpit, mounted his horse and all the young men of the town followed him.To address the critical situation that was being experienced in the northern half of Spain, extraordinary Cortes were convened and inaugurated on October 7.

Some convents were suppressed because they were believed to be a nest of absolutists, which was true; Emphatic patriotic statements were made in honor of the Seventh of July, to raise the public spirit — to which the foundation that same month of October of the Landaburian Society also contributed.

[29] For its part, the government led by Evaristo San Miguel decreed in October 1822 a fifth extraordinary general aimed at recruiting 30,000 soldiers and got the Cortes to authorize him to discretionally replace military leaders whom he considered disaffected to the constitutional cause.

[44] The military measures adopted by the Cortes and the Government—which were added to the declaration of the state of war in Catalonia on July 23 [note 4] bore fruit and during the autumn and winter of 1822-1823, after a tough campaign that lasted six months, the constitutional armies, one of whose generals was the former guerrilla Espoz y Mina, turned the situation around and forced the royalists of Catalonia, Navarra and the Basque Country to flee to France (about 12,000 men) and those from Galicia, Old Castile, León and Extremadura to flee to Portugal (about 2,000 men).

In November the Regency itself had to abandon Seo de Urgel, whose siege by the army of Espoz and Mina had begun in October after taking Cervera the previous month, and cross the border.

Various historians, such as Juan Francisco Fuentes, have highlighted the paradox that many of the members of the parties and the royalist support troops had fought fifteen years earlier against the French in the War of Independence.

The bells and bars of Our Lady of Pilar rang with all their force in honor of those against whom, less than fifteen years before, the Aragonese had held two fierce sieges.The invaders were very careful not to repeat the same mistakes as in the Napoleonic invasion of 1808—for example, they did not resort to requisitions to supply the troops—and presented themselves as the coming saviors.

[53] In The proclamation made to the Spaniards before beginning the invasion stated that their intention was to put an end to that "revolutionary faction that has destroyed the royal authority in your country, that has held your king captive, that calls for his deposition, that threatens his life and that of his family, [and that] he has taken his guilty efforts to the other side of your borders.

—although some authors have increased the figure to 130,000, but recognizing that they had a different degree of organization and preparation—[55] which placed it in a position of manifest inferiority ,[49][51] and, according to Víctor Sánchez Martín, the government of the liberal exalted Evaristo San Miguel, although he had adopted energetic measures (such as the extraordinary fifth of 30,000 soldiers), "he barely had time to prepare the army for the imminent French invasion."

[58] In 1834, a deputy of the Cortes of the Royal Statute, Pedro Alcalá-Zamora Ruiz de Tienda, attributed it to the "dazzling" produced in them by what the Duke of Angoulême told them that "it was not coming "to destroy freedom or current laws, but to modify them, to level them with those of their country."

"[60] The historian Juan Francisco Fuentes points out another factor: the demoralization that caused the defeatism that they demonstrated the liberal government and the Cortes by deciding to abandon Madrid even before the invasion began to settle first in Seville and finally in Cádiz.

[62] Also playing a relevant role, according to Fontana, was the fiscal policy that "fell very hard on the peasants, by demanding new taxes in cash, at a time when, with the drop in prices, it was much more difficult for them to obtain money".

In a proclamation of August 1821 addressed to the farmers of Zaragoza, it was denounced that they "work themselves to death and then sell their fruits for extremely low prices at four abaros sic[63] The Duke of Angoulême himself communicated this to Count de Villèle: «The king has the clergy and the common people on his side.

Angoulême justified it by saying: "The time has come to establish in a solemn and stable manner the regency that must be in charge of administering the country, organizing the army, and agreeing with me on the means of carrying out the great work of liberating to your king.

[65] As the French troops advanced southwards, the Spanish royalists unleashed "a general explosion of violence" that "covered the country with revenge and abuses, carried out without subjecting themselves to any authority or following any rule" and whose victims were the liberals.

») and as soon as he disembarked in the Port of Santa María, he promulgated another decree in which he repealed all the legislation of the Triennium (which also failed to fulfill the promise he had made to the king of France and the tsar of Russia that he was not going to « return to reign under the regime they call absolute»).

[citation needed] As soon as he was free, he said: «The most criminal betrayal, the most shameful cowardice, the most horrendous contempt for my Royal Person, and the most inevitable violence, were the elements used to essentially vary the paternal Government of my kingdoms in a democratic code».

[83] As pointed out Modesto Lafuente: «the civil war was meanwhile raging in the peninsula, mainly devastating the provinces of Catalonia, Aragon, Navarra and Vizcaya, and on a lesser scale those of Castilla, Galicia, Valencia and Extremadura, also reaching the Andalusias».

There their first victims were two Capuchins who lost their lives on May 22 during the absolutist insurrection of Cervera and in total there were eighty ecclesiastics killed, fifty-four in the diocese of Barcelona (some of these Some deaths occurred in combat or after a trial, but others were pure murders, sometimes accompanied by torture).

In this course of violence, the spiral became increasingly ferocious and cases occurred such as the assault and death of bishop of Vich who died in the citadel of Barcelona, where he had been transferred as a prisoner after being detained in his episcopal residence, or he was shot when he was being taken to Tarragona, according to other versions, due to the proximity of the One Hundred Thousand Sons of San Luis,[86][87] or the shooting of twenty-five friars in Manresa fifteen, according to Fontana or the devastation of the Poblet monastery, not at the hands of the liberal soldiers, but of the peasants of the neighboring towns who cut down forests and desecrated graves for the "cry of the flattering voices of freedom and equality", according to the abbot himself, although their lands had already been sold to individuals, or perhaps precisely for this reason.

"[88] Among the clerics who led the royalist parties were cura Merino and the Trappist and new leaders "such as Gorostidi, Eceiza or Salazar, emulators of the previous ones in cruelty and in raising the cross to commit all kinds of misdeeds.

In general, they committed all kinds of outrages against the liberals in the occupied towns, a violence encouraged by the absolutist clergy as manifested in their writings, such as that of the canon of Malaga, Juan de la Buelga y Solís, who wrote as soon as the Triennium ended: "I will never make peace" with anyone who is not an absolute royalist and Catholic, apostolic and Roman.

In the attacks on temples and monasteries - such as those of Poblet, Santes Creus or Montserrat - sacrilegious acts were carried out, although sporadically, such as stealing the ciborium with the hosts, stabbing the images or unearthing the corpses of some religious "playing and doing a thousand indecent things with them", according to a witness.