Alfonso XII

Biography

Alfonso was born in Madrid in 1857, the eldest son of Queen Isabella II; rumours that her husband was not his father were later used against him by the Carlists. When the revolution of 1868 drove the queen from Spain he went with her to Paris and was then sent to study at the Theresianum in Vienna. In June 1870 his mother abdicated her claim in his favour, while the Cortes gave the crown to Amadeo of Savoy, whose brief reign was followed in 1873 by the First Spanish Republic.

Antonio Cánovas del Castillo, leader of the movement to restore the Bourbons, took charge of the young prince's education and sent him to the Royal Military College at Sandhurst. From there, on 1 December 1874, Alfonso issued the Sandhurst Manifesto, drafted by Cánovas, presenting himself as a constitutional heir of the Spanish monarchy. At the end of that month General Martínez Campos declared for him at Sagunto, the republican government gave way, and Alfonso was proclaimed king on 29 December 1874.

With Cánovas as prime minister, his reign set up the Restoration system under the Constitution of 1876, in which conservative and liberal governments took turns in power. Alfonso took part in the 1876 campaign that ended the Third Carlist War, and in 1881 he brought the Liberal leader Sagasta into office. His first wife, his cousin María de las Mercedes, died months after their wedding in 1878; in 1879 he married Archduchess Maria Christina of Austria, and the couple survived a shooting on their honeymoon.

Popular for visiting areas struck by cholera and by the 1884 Andalusian earthquake, he died of tuberculosis and dysentery at El Pardo in November 1885, aged 27. His widow became regent, and their son Alfonso XIII was born king the following year.