Stirrings of Revolt 587Venezuela in 1821 and defeated Spanish troops in Peru in 1824. The exam
ple of the War of American Independence in North America provided inspi
ration. Spanish forces, lacking resources and badly led, were obliged to fight
over enormous stretches of wildly varying territory. Spain recognized the in
dependence of Mexico in 1821. Of the overseas empire that had stretched
from North America to the southern tip of South America in the sixteenth
century, Spain retained only the Caribbean islands of Cuba and Puerto
Rico, as well as the Philippines in Asia.
Against this background, a revolt broke out in Spain in 1820. Army offi
cers who led the insurrection against Ferdinand were soon joined by mer
chants and lawyers. The king now agreed to convoke the Cortes and abide
by the liberal constitution of 1812. Metternich and Tsar Alexander I of Rus
sia, supported by Prussia, demanded allied armed intervention; so did Louis
XV1I1 of France, eager to prove himself a reliable ally. Great Britain, how
ever, remained adamantly opposed to any intervention in Spanish internal
affairs, first as a matter of principle, and secondly because of fear that the
presence of foreign troops in Spain might jeopardize British commerce or
increase French influence on the Iberian Peninsula.
Meanwhile, the fires of liberalism also spread to Portugal. Liberal army
officers took advantage of the
continued absence of King
John VI, who had fled to
Brazil during the Napoleonic
Wars, to rise up against the
British-backed regent in 1820.
They drafted a liberal consti
tution, based on that penned
in Spain in 1812. That same
year, a military coup d’etat led
to the return of King John
from Brazil as a constitutional
monarch. The constitution
proclaimed that year guaran
teed religious toleration, civic
rights, and the sanctity of
property. The influence of this
revolution, which undercut
the influence of the Church,
led to civil war from 1832 to
1834 between royalists and an
alliance of liberals and radi
cals, and then in 1851, after
some forty different govern
ments and another coup d e- A secret meeting of the members of the Car
tat, to the establishment of a bonari, Italy c. 1815-1830.