The War of the Aggrieved (in Catalan: Guerra dels Malcontents, in Spanish: Guerra de los Agraviados) was an "ultra-Absolutist" uprising that took place between March and October 1827 in Catalonia and, to a smaller extent, in Valencia, Aragon, the Basque Country and Andalusia. The aggrieved (in Spanish: agraviados) rose up against the absolutist "reformist" government that supposedly had "kidnapped" King Ferdinand VII. The insurrectionists, mostly peasants and artisans, mobilized between 20,000 and 30,000 men in Catalonia and by mid-September they occupied most of the Principality. The leaders of the rebellion were former royalist officers of the "army of faith" that had fought with the French army of the Hundred Thousand Sons of St. Louis that invaded Spain to put an end to the constitutional regime of the Triennium. To put an end to the rebellion Fernando VII had to go to Catalonia to demonstrate that he enjoyed full freedom and in this way the rebels laid down their arms.
This revolt constituted the most direct antecedent of the Carlist wars.
Background Just as the Liberal Triennium (1820-1823) saw the split of the liberals between "moderates" and "exalted", during the Ominous Decade (1823-1833) it was the absolutists who were divided between "reformist" absolutists —partisans of "softening" absolutism following the warnings of the Quadruple Alliance and the restored Bourbon France— and the "ultras" or "apostolic" absolutists who defended the complete restoration of absolutism, including the reestablishment of the Inquisition which King Ferdinand VII, under pressure from the European powers, had not reinstated after its abolition by the liberals during the Triennium. The "ultras" or "apostolics", also called "ultra-royalist" or "ultra-absolutists", had in the king's brother, Carlos María Isidro de Borbón —heir to the throne because Fernando VII after three marriages had not managed to have descendants— as their main supporter, that is why they were also sometimes called "Carlists". After the insurrections of Joaquín Capapé (1824) and Jorge Bessières (1825), the most serious conflict that the ultra-absolutists carried out was the War of the Aggrieved of 1827.
History
Uprising
In March 1827, the parties led by Colonel Trillas and Captain Salvador Llovet were formed in Terres de l'Ebre. They failed in their attempt to seize Tortosa in the early morning of the 12th of that month and were quickly defeated. Trillas and Llovet would be shot at the beginning of April. According to the French consul in Barcelona, these parties carried "a flag in which King Ferdinand is seen upside down and an exterminating angel who steps on a black man [a liberal] and pierces him with his sword. Their war cry is 'Long live King Charles V, long live the Holy Inquisition, out with the French'". According to an official report, this was a protest by officers "of whom it was said that the qualification of their services in the royalist ranks had dissatisfied them, as well as the delay with which they received their pay". On April 1 Narcís Abrés revolted near Girona, spreading the rebellion throughout the north of Catalonia.
The uprising reached its peak in summer, "following the evolution of the harvesting work, at the end of which many day laborers joined parties that paid a good salary, which shows that the organizers had abundant resources", said Josep Fontana. A French commander informed his government that the rebels "have lithographic presses and distribute proclamations; the officers carry appointments and printed instructions, and receive a salary that does not come exclusively from the contributions they collect". On July 31 Josep Busoms ('Jep dels Estanys') one of the leaders of those who were beginning to be known as "aggrieved" royalists, launched a proclamation from Berga ―Busoms attributed to himself the title of Count of Berga―:No, Spaniards, no; these are not our complaints and clamors against our King; neither are we trying to make the Government resign in any way. Our clamors are directed against that infernal rabble that after having been unfaithful sons to the Motherland... have managed to seize the jobs and destinies, to suck with abundance the blood of those that before they could not immolate.As Josep Fontana has warned, "the slogans in favor of the infant Don Carlos were now abandoned, and the uprising was justified with the argument that the king was imprisoned in the court, in the power of the Masons and the revolutionaries, who were the ones who really governed". "The purpose of our glorious alarm is that our beloved monarch Ferdinand VII be freed from several Masonic individuals who with cunning and shrewdness have managed to keep or seize the government", proclaimed Josep Clarà, one of the leaders of the rebellion, in Vic. By mid-September the insurrectionists already occupied most of the Principality of Catalonia. The leaders of the rebellion were former royalist officers of the "army of faith" that had fought with the French army of the Hundred Thousand Sons of St. Louis that invaded Spain to put an end to the constitutional regime of the Triennium. In a French report of August 1827 it was said:Since last March Catalonia has been in the throes of disturbances which, having begun partial and isolated, have later taken on a certain increase and are developing in such a threatening manner that it is to be feared that very soon they will cover the entire province. [...] At the beginning the cries of the rebels were: "Long live Charles the Fifth, long live the Inquisition, death to the blacks [the liberals], out with the French". As they moved from the south to the north, the sedition changed them and now they are: "Long live the absolute king, long live the Inquisition, out with the police and the sectarians". [...] They used to be called "Carlists"; now they are called "aggrieved royalists". The triumph of religion, the reestablishment of the Inquisition and the death of the blacks: here is what is common to the factious of the south and the north, those of yesterday and those of today.
On August 28 they established in Manresa, taken days before and turned from then on into the capital of the rebellion, a "Provisional Superior Board of government of the Principality", integrated by four members (two clerics and two seculars) and presided by Colonel Agustín Saperes, called "Caragol", who in a proclamation of September 9 insisted on the fidelity to King Ferdinand. The proclamation, addressed to the "good Spaniards", began by saying: "The time has come for the meritorious royalists to re-enter into a fight more bloody perhaps than that of the twentieth year". Then they took the towns of Vic, Cervera, Solsona, Berga, Olot, Valls and Reus ―the latter by Joan Rafí Vidal, accompanied by a group of bandits led by "Padre Puñal"― and laid siege to Gerona, where they would maintain for a month. They edited in Manresa from September 4 the newspaper El Catalán realista in whose number of the 6th of that month appears the slogan of the insurrection: "Long live Religion, long live the absolute King, long live the Inquisition, death to the Police, death to Masonism and all the ungodly sect". To legitimize the rebellion they alleged that King Ferdinand VII was "kidnapped" by the government and therefore their objective was "to sustain the sovereignty of our beloved King Ferdinand", although cheers were given to "Carlos Quinto", the king's younger brother and heir to the throne, who shared the "ultra" ideology. A French report recounted the impact the rebellion was having in Catalonia:A general agitation reigns throughout the province. Communications offer less and less security every day, commercial operations have largely ceased and industry, which needs peace to develop, is in a total languor. The exchanges between the coast and the interior are at a standstill: everything is stagnation, and only the large towns enjoy tranquility.
Response from the government
Ferdinand VII’s trip to Catalonia and repression. Faced with the magnitude of the rebellion and its extension outside Catalonia, the government decided to send an army to the Principality, with the notorious absolutist Count of Spain at the head as the new captain general, replacing the Marquis of Campo Sagrado, and endowed with broad powers ―such as the power to judge the rebels in court martial without taking into account the jurisdiction of the military and clergy―, and, at the same time, to organize a visit of the king to Catalonia (where he arrived, via Valencia, at the end of September accompanied by only one minister, the "ultra" Francisco Tadeo Calomarde) to dispel any doubt about his supposed lack of freedom and to exhort the rebels to lay down their arms (the official reason was: "to examine for myself the causes that have produced the disturbances in Catalonia"). It has been affirmed that the idea that Ferdinand VII traveled to Catalonia came from the rebels themselves, who were eager to make the reasons for their rebellion known to the king personally, since they were convinced that as soon as he knew them he would change his government and policy (thus it was assured in El Catalán Realista: "that if we have the joy of seeing the King, and that with frankness and free of Masonic ties we can speak the truth to him, everything will be calm..."). On September 28 a Manifesto of Fernando VII was made public from the Archbishop's Palace of Tarragona in which he said:
I am already among you as I offered you by my Decree of the 18th of this month [of September]; but know that as a Father I am going to speak for the last time to the seditious ones the language of clemency, still ready to listen to the claims that they address to me from their homes, if they obey my voice; [...] You see disproved with my coming the vain and absurd pretexts with which up to now they have tried to coax their rebellion. Neither am I oppressed, nor are the people who deserve my confidence conspiring against our Holy Religion, nor is the Motherland in danger, nor has the honor of my Crown been compromised, nor is my Sovereign authority being undermined by anyone.The effect of the Manifesto was immediate and provoked the surrender or the disbandment of many of the insurgents. A few days later Manresa, Vic, Olot and Cervera surrendered without resistance. Although the rebellion would continue for some months, by mid-October it could be considered over. During this time, as Juan Francisco Fuentes has pointed out, "the repression acted relentlessly against the rebels, with summary executions and arrests of suspects both in Catalonia and in the rest of Spain, where the uprising had many supporters". The repression in Catalonia was directed by the Count of Spain, "an unbalanced character", according to Josep Fontana, who also extended it to the liberals, after the abandonment of Catalonia by the French troops that until then had protected them. The king, upon learning of the brutal methods that the Count of Spain was using, commented: "He may be crazy, but for these things there is no alternative".
"The Catalans would take time to forget the harshness practiced by the Count of Spain in the repression of the rebels", said Emilio La Parra López. Throughout the month of November the leaders of the revolt were shot (with their backs turned as traitors), among them Joan Rafí Vidal and Narcís Abrés. In February 1828 it was the turn of Josep Busoms, shot in Olot. Hundreds of "aggrieved" were condemned to prison sentences or deported to Ceuta, and the most committed ecclesiastics were imprisoned in convents far away from Catalonia ―this was also the case of the famous "ultra" Josefina de Comerford, great sympathizer of the revolt, who was confined in a convent in Seville―.
Actors of the rebellion