Cortes and became an absolute monarch. All the old abuses were
revived, including the re-establishment of the Inquisition. For six
years the people suffered their King's tyranny, then they revolted,
with the result that Ferdinand, bending to the wind, accepted a re-
imposition of the Constitution. In 1823 a French Army occupied
Madrid in support of Ferdinand, who promptly reverted to absolutism.

In 1829 Ferdinand married for the fourth time, and, on the birth of a
daughter, declared that the Salic law had no effect in Spain, and the
young princess was recognised as heir-apparent to the throne. This
drew from his brother, Don Carlos, who immediately left the country,
a protest against his exclusion from the succession. When his
daughter was four years of age, Ferdinand died, and the child was
proclaimed Queen as Isabel II.

A bitter war broke out between the respective adherents of the Queen
and her uncle Don Carlos. Prisoners and wounded were massacred
without discrimination, and an uncivilised and barbarous warfare
waged when Borrow crossed the Portuguese frontier "to undertake the
adventure of Spain."

Spain had always appealed most strongly to Borrow's imagination.


"In the day-dreams of my boyhood," he writes, "Spain always bore a
considerable share, and I took a particular interest in her, without
any presentiment that I should, at a future time, be called upon to
take a part, however humble, in her strange dramas; which interest,
at a very early period, led me to acquire her noble language, and to
make myself acquainted with the literature (scarcely worthy of the