Spain's First Carlist War was an unlikely agent of modernity. It pitted town against country, subalterns against elites, and Europe's Liberal powers against Absolute Monarchies. This book traces the individual, collective and international experience of this conflict, giving equal attention to battle fronts and home fronts.

CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title 2017 This book provides a comparative history of the domestic and international nature of Spain's First Carlist War (1833-40) and the Spanish Civil War (1936-39), as well as the impact of both conflicts. The book demonstrates how and why Spain's struggle for liberty was won in the 1830s only for it to be lost one hundred years later. It shows how both civil wars were world wars in miniature, fought in part by foreign volunteers under the gaze and in the political consciousness of the outside world. Prefaced by a short introduction, The Spanish Civil Wars is arranged into two domestic and international sections, each with three thematic chapters comparing each civil war in detail. The main analytical perspectives are political, social and new military history in nature, but they also explore aspects of gender, culture, nationalism and separatism, economy, religion and, especially, the war in its international context. The book integrates international archival research with the latest scholarship on both subjects and also includes a glossary, a bibliography and several images. It is a key resource tailored to the needs of students and scholars of modern Spain which offers an intriguing and original new perspective on the Spanish Civil War.

"The First Carlist War was an important but often overlooked conflict that raged between 1833 and 1840. It began a series of wars that ultimately led to the Spanish Civil War in 1936. This is the first book in English to cover its military history and uniforms."--P. 4 of cover.

The First Carlist War broke out after the death of King Ferdinand VII, the king restored at the end of the Peninsular War thanks to Wellington's victory. The crown was claimed by both his daughter Isabella, backed by the Liberal party and his brother Don Carlos, at the head of northern ultra-conservatives centred in the Basque provinces and Navarre. The Liberals or 'Cristinos' were supported by a 10,000-strong British Legion of volunteers led by a former aide to Wellington as well as the British Royal Navy, a Portuguese division, and the French Foreign Legion. With both armies still using Napoleonic weapons and tactics, early victories were won by the Basque general Zumalacarregui. After his death in 1835 a see-saw series of campaigns followed, fought by conventional armies of horse, foot and guns, supported by many irregulars and guerrillas. This little known multi-national campaign provides a fascinating postscript to the Peninsular War of 1808–14, and its uniforms present a colourful and varied spectacle.

This work explores the background and first two years of the First Carlist War--a conflict that pitted conservative northern peasants against the liberal Madrid government in the largest and most sustained case of armed peasant resistance to modernization in nineteenth-century Europe. Originally published in 1984. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

The First Carlist War broke out after the death of King Ferdinand VII, the king restored at the end of the Peninsular War thanks to Wellington's victory. The crown was claimed by both his daughter Isabella, backed by the Liberal party and his brother Don Carlos, at the head of northern ultra-conservatives centred in the Basque provinces and Navarre. The Liberals or 'Cristinos' were supported by a 10,000-strong British Legion of volunteers led by a former aide to Wellington as well as the British Royal Navy, a Portuguese division, and the French Foreign Legion. With both armies still using Napoleonic weapons and tactics, early victories were won by the Basque general Zumalacarregui. After his death in 1835 a see-saw series of campaigns followed, fought by conventional armies of horse, foot and guns, supported by many irregulars and guerrillas. This little known multi-national campaign provides a fascinating postscript to the Peninsular War of 1808–14, and its uniforms present a colourful and varied spectacle.

The two Carlist wars are probably the least remembered, outside Spain, of the civil conflicts of the country. In the first of these, as in 1936, foreign volunteers fought on both sides, among them the 10,000 men of the British Auxiliary Legion, an arm of Palmerston's foreign policy supporting the liberal Cristino cause and the young Queen Isabella II against her uncle, Don Carlos, pretender to the throne. With the Foreign Enlistment Act suspended in 1835, troops were recruited in Britain and Ireland to fight in a savage struggle. Ill-paid, poorly supplied and inadequately accommodated in appaling weather, the Legion suffered heavy mortality from typhus, yet fought bravely in battle, contributing to an eventual Cristino victory. Ireland played a prominent role in the Legion with four designated Irish regiments and many more men serving in other units.