The Spanish Civil War
The Spanish Civil War (1900-1902) represented the final and inevitable clash between the left and the right that Spain had been heading towards for a century. Throughout the 19th century Spain had swung violently between liberalism and absolutism, experiencing numerous civil wars as it did so.
Spanish Politics in the 19th Century
After throwing out the French in 1812 the Spanish people proclaimed the famously liberal 1812 Constitution that made Spain Europe’s most progressive state. The following year the restored King Ferdinand VII betrayed the liberals and ignored the constitution. However as Spain tried to reassert control over her American Empire the colonials flared up and soon Spain was entangled in a costly and hopelessly unwinnable attempt to maintain her old Empire. Dissatisfaction with Ferdinand led to a coup d’état by the liberals within the army in 1820 and the setting up of the Liberal Treinium which restored the 1812 Constitution. With the help of a massive French army the royalists restored Ferdinand to absolutism in 1823 and the King began to purge the Spanish left. For the last years of Ferdinand’s reign Spain enjoyed a sort of stability which was shattered by his death in 1833.
In the Carlist War (1833-1838) Ferdinand’s brother Carlos led the forces of reaction against the Queen-Regent Cristina and the infant Queen Isabella who were championed by Spain’s liberals. The war was extremely destructive, defeat for the liberals meant two decades in the shadows. Carlos V’s reign was the crowing success of absolutism. He held the belief that the King was the father of the nation – he was there to guide the country, by force if necessary, towards its betterment. He once wrote that if he ever believed that his rule was no longer in the interests of the Spanish people he would abdicate. However he led Spain towards industrialisation, a period of peace and the beginnings of a new Empire. Most importantly of all he stopped Spain’s rapid decline dead in its tracks and forced the country to push towards progress.
Yet with Carlos’ death in 1855 Spain swung back towards the left. The Communion Carlista did everything within its power to keep the liberal Juan from taking the Spanish throne but following a bloody coup by the Spanish military they were decisively beaten. The new King, Juan III, and his supporters then had to fight a brief civil war before order was restored. Rather than go to the extremes as both the left and the right had frequently attempted during the 19th century Juan found compromise between the parties and even allowed Carlists into his government. Spain entered a brief age of reform and it seemed that it might be possible for the liberals and the conservatives to make peace for good.
However it was not to be. In 1868 Juan died and was replaced by his son Carlos VI who was forced to make his way to the throne through the blood of his own people. Importantly he was opposed by a new, Republican, movement which introduced mass politics to Spain. Socialists and liberals joined together in common hatred of their King. Unlike his illustrious grandfather Carlos VI did not see himself as a guiding father set to lead the Spanish to a New Jerusalem. Instead he saw himself as their master, he demanding unconditional loyalty and was not afraid to use force to keep his people in their place. This was exemplified by Bloody Sunday on December 12th 1885 when Carlos ordered his soldiers to fire upon peaceful protesters outside his palace in Madrid. It was under Carlos VI that the ties between the common man and the government were forever severed, yet he did succeed in one thing that his predecessors had failed to do – he transformed the traditionally liberal Spanish Army into a force totally dedicated to the monarch and his absolute right to rule.
The Outbreak of the Civil War
The spark that set off the civil war came from non-other than the twice humiliated French Republic, a nation fresh from a second defeat to the Prussians and now surrounded by reactionary powers to both its South and East. On June 3rd 1900 the Prussians had taken Paris, within a couple of weeks the war was over and the French army started to demobilise.
Carlos VI had never tried to hide his hatred of the French Republic and his desire to destroy it, with the nation now appearing so weak he was desperate for war. For several months tensions between Spain and France reached boiling point as both states rushed troops to one another’s border. The decisive moment came at the start of October when France ordered the remobilisation of its entire army. Carlos, who had faced strong opposition from his people jumped at his chance and ordered the mobilisation of his own army. There was one problem with his plan – it relied on the men he called up agreeing to go to war.
On October 13th at least half a million anti-war protesters marched through Madrid championing the slogan ‘’no war but class war’’. On the same day similarly large protests occurred in all Spain’s great cities. More worrying than the fact that the traditionally politically active proletarians were protesting was the fact that huge numbers of peasants were brought in from the countryside to join the marchers. The protests were organised and supported by the Spanish Republican Party – an organisation unashamedly sponsored by the French Republic.
At this stage Carlos was in a terrible position. If he backed down now both within Spain and abroad his reputation would be shattered. His authority would be forever smashed if he backed down at this late stage with so much already invested in the war. He therefore ordered army units to go out and bring the conscripts into the army by force. Little did Carlos know that the French had been supplying the Republican Party with more than just money – by 1900 the party maintained secret arms depots across the country. When the military detachments started to forcibly conscript the people the people fought back. The traditional date for the start of the Spanish Civil War is October 27th as it was on that day that the first skirmish between would be conscripts and the army took place.
The War
Within a few weeks the Republican leadership had started to amalgamate the common people into a powerful military force. However from the end of October through into January 1901 the war remained very chaotic. Masses of people, some armed some not, rampaged through the major industrial cities attacking all signs of government. The first city to be abandoned by the government was, unsurprisingly, Barcelona (November 6th), it was soon followed by Valencia (November 25th) and Madrid (December 13th). Soon, using organised bands of troops known as Red Guards, the Republicans struck out from their urban powerbases into the countryside where they were met with celebratory approval by the peasantry. However in the first weeks of 1901 the government forces started to rally, using the poor, uneducated, un-industrialised regions in the North, the West and the South as power bases.
By February the lines between the two sides had started to settle down as the thrusting, storm trooper style, tactics of the Red Guards started to fail – their units facing numerous defeats to government forces. A Winter of warfare had also started to take its toll on both sides, starvation was only avoided by large-scale donations of food by the French (to the Republicans) and the Germans (to the government). Despite their offensives running out of momentum time was most definitely on the side of the Republicans – every day hundreds, even thousands of more men were added into their increasingly professional looking army whilst the government struggled to get more than a trickle of new recruits and still suffered from a significant problem of desertion. Realising this the government Generals decided to launch a major offensive in March 1901 with the aim of taking Madrid and breaking the back of the Republican army before it could gather even more strength.
The Battle of Madrid (March-July) was by far the bloodiest and most decisive engagement of the entire war. The initial government attack smashed through the flimsy Republican defensive and by the start of April government troops were entering the fringes of Madrid itself. However this success was short lived as just when the capital was most under threat the Republicans unleashed a massive counterattack involving some 180,000 men (it is estimated only 2/3s were properly armed and far less had any real training). This force suffered horrendous casualties but forced the government troops back from Madrid. From this period on, realising that the cream of the Republican army was on the field, the government forces switched their primary aim from taking Madrid to destroying the core of the Republican army. Feint assaults on Madrid that provoked rash counterattacks from the Republicans continued on for the rest of the battle – over the course of the Battle of Madrid 3 Republicans died for every government soldier killed. The core of the Republican army was destroyed; both sides lauded the battle as a great victory with the government celebrating the damage to the rebel army and the Republicans citing their continued ownership of Madrid.
At this moment, when for the first time the rebellion looked to be at risk of losing momentum, the most crucial event of the war took place in Cadiz – the base of the fearsome Spanish Fleet. On August 26th Grand Admiral Elcano, listening to a wave of liberal and socialist sentiment amongst his officers and the common sailors, renounced the Kingdom of Spain and joined forces with the Republic along with his entire fleet – the single most powerful and modern on earth. Units of sailors quickly surged inland from Cadiz and captured Seville (one of the few largely industrial cities not in Republican hands) and encouraged the tired Republican army to launch and offensive to join up his enclave in the South with the main body of Republican territory (an enterprise that was wholly successful). Not only had Elcano’s mutiny provided the Republicans with thousands of trained and armed troops (in the form of the sailors) but it also effectively separated the government from the Empire. Up until now the overseas Empire had tried to stay non-committal whilst most provinces still supported the government, but few actually sent troops. Now with the fear of a Republican attack at any time Cuba, the Caribbean and the Philippines (traditionally left wing colonies) declared openly for the Republic whilst assistance from Africa and Asia for Carlos effectively ceased.
The government’s position quickly started to collapse. Divided from the main government territory to the North the Carlist troops in Andalucía surrendered at the start of October. In December Republican probing offensives resumed across the front and found the government army to be lacking. Around this time Carlos requested assistance from the Madrid Pact in a humiliating but highly necessary move. South America refused to help, the Italian states were suffering from instability of their own, the Islamic states had no means to help whilst Portugal point blank refused to use its tiny army in against the Republican – who appeared likely to win. From this stage on Carlos seemed certain that he was to fight to the last and began to turn La Caruna into a formidable fortress, defending from both the sea and from in land threats.
In the Spring of 1902 the Republican launched a grand offensive against the government army. Despite being stronger on paper the demoralised and increasingly rebellious government army started to surrender in great swathes. Were ever they attacked the Republicans were greeted by white flags – despite resorting to shooting hundreds of their own troops in attempts to frighten their soldiers into battle there was nothing the government hierarchy could do but to withdraw back to La Caruna with the die-hard supporters of Carlos. As the Republicans started to surround the city by land and sea in June it was apparent that these supporters were few and far between.
For two weeks the Republicans pummelled the city with their artillery and with the guns of battleships off shore. The aim was to force Carlos to give up – the Republican hierarchy had already offered him an amnesty on the condition that he abdicate and surrender all his estates – and in that it was unsuccessful. However the brutal barrage did bring an end to the war without a bloody climax on the streets of La Caruna. Whilst Carlos might have been set on a heroic death on the battlements of the last fortress of absolutism his Generals were not. On June 21st they turned Carlos over to the Republicans and surrendered the city.
When news of the surrender and the capture of Carlos reached the newly formed Republican government in Madrid the army was ordered to return the King to the capital where his abdication and the passing of his estates to the state could be dealt with. However General Silva, the man in control Carlos in La Caruna, had other ideas. Unlike the government in Madrid Silva was violently socialist rather than placidly liberal. Unlike the government he supported his troops who were baying for the blood of their former tyrant. And unlike the government he had the power to as he wished with the dethroned King of Spain.
On June 27th Carlos VI was led up to a specially built gallows in front of thousands of cheering soldiers. The crowds were briefly silenced as Silva read out a proclamation directly to Carlos ‘’you are a tyrant, an enemy to the Spanish people, a murder, a common criminal and a herby sentence you to death’’. Moments later Carlos was hung, his neck snapped in the initial drop and he was spared a slow and agonising death by strangling. Carlos VI of Spain joined Charles I of England and Scotland and Louis XVI of France amongst the famous regicides of history.
The story of the Carlists was over.
The End