Alfonso XII

Alfonso XII (1857-1885), King of Spain (1874-1885), born in Madrid. His mother, Queen Isabella II, took him with her from Spain when she was deposed in the Revolution of 1868. He was educated in Paris, Vienna, and Sandhurst, England. Isabella formally abdicated in favour of her son in 1870, but he did not return to Spain to take up his royal duties until 1875, when the monarchist general Arsenio Martínez de Campos summoned him to the throne. In 1876 Alfonso suppressed the last of the Carlists—that is, those who supported the claim of the descendants of Don Carlos to the Spanish throne. In the same year he ordered the Cortes, the representative assembly, to draft a new constitution that introduced a two-party system on the English model into Spanish politics. Throughout his reign Alfonso was greatly influenced by his prime minister, Antonio Cánovas del Castillo. His untimely death from tuberculosis was followed by the long, troubled regency of his second wife, Maria Christina of Austria.