Manifest Of Persians

TEXTO 2: Manifiesto de los Persas (12-04-1814)


Text commentary:

INTRODUCTION

This text is the Manifest of the Persians. It is an historical document and a political text. Written by 69 conservative deputies of the Cadiz Cortes. It was addressed to Fernando VII, when he was returning from his exile in France and drafted in Madrid the 12th April 1814, after the Independence war.ANALYSIS

The main idea of this text is that 69 conservative deputies of the Cadiz Cortes wanted to abolish all the liberal legislation taken by the Cadiz Cortes, including the Cadiz Constitution, and restore the absolutism. There are many secondary ideas in this text:
– The firs is that that conservative deputies are making a comparison between the situation living in Spain and the one livedin Persia; as we can read in the 2nd line: “Era costumbre de los antiguos Persas pasar cinco días de anarquía después del fallecimiento del Rey...”
– Another secondary idea is that they are defending the absolute monarchy. In the 9th line of the text we can read “La monarquía absoluta (…) es la obra de la razón y de la inteligencia: está subordinada a la ley divina, a la justicia y a las reglasfundamentales del Estado:..”.
They are also giving reason of why did they support absolute monarchy; as we can see from the 11th line: “...el soberano absoluto no tiene faculta de usar sin razón de su autoridad; por esto ha sido necesario que el poder soberano fuese absoluto, para prescribir a sus súbditos todo lo que mira al interés común, y obligar a la obediencia a los que se niegan a ella(…).


DEVELOPMENT

Background:

Before 1788, until the start of Carlos IV's reign, Spain was governed by the Old Regime, based on absolutism, the privileged society and feudal regime. But the lack of leadership of Carlos IV and Godoy, along with the ideological and political crisis, led Spain into a war against revolutionary France, and later to the alliance with it. The internal instabilitymade Napoleon had fear to Spain broke their alliance and fight against the revolution, so he decided to occupy Spain, militarily and politically. Then he forced the king to abdicate and exiled he and his son, Fernando VII, in France. Napoleon gave the throne of Spain to his brother José Bonaparte, but he was rejected by the great majority of Spaniards. Soon started the revolts and in 1808 the War ofIndependence against French domination. Along with José Bonaparte's govern, the liberal patriots created the Cadiz Cortes at the end of 1810, taking the opportunity of the disappearance of the absolutist system. Spain won the war in 1814 but although it's final economy devastation due to it, those six years of war between Spain and France, represented the beginning of a long wanted reformsagainst the attitude of the monarchy, which has resulted in the loss of national independence and the reforms of The Constitution of Cadiz, starting the first liberal period in Spain's history.

Context:

In March 1824, Fernando VII decided to leave his retirement and return to Spain. Instead of moving to Madrid, the Cortes indicated him to go first to Zaragoza and then to Valencia, and in thatperiod he had the opportunity to knew the real support he had. As the Cadiz Constitution and the rest of The Cortes' legislation was drafted and issued while the country was under the French occupation, lower classes didn't know very much about the political situation and they only wanted the return of Fernando VII; but members of the middle and upper classes where supporters of the Absolutism andopponents of the Cadiz constitution. In April 1814, Bernardo Mozo de Rosales gave to Fernando VII the Manifest of the Persians, written by 69 conservative deputies and addressed to the king in order to abolish all the legislation of the Cadiz Cortes, including the Cadiz Constitution, and asking for the restoration of the Absolutism. These group compared the situation lived in Spain while the...