Francisco Serrano, 1st Duke of la Torre

Baldomero Espartero has proven a disappointment to the radical progresistas, who now ally with his conservative opponents under his military and political rival, Ramón María Narváez.

In a pronunciamiento led by Generals Narváez, Juan Prim and Francisco Serrano, an alliance of Moderates, Progressives, and Republicans moves against Espartero.

Narváez, representing the new alliance, seizes Madrid on July 15, obliging Espartero to flee to England.

Narváez is asked to form a government under Isabella II, who, thirteen years old on October 10, 1843, is declared of age, and Narváez becomes Lieutenant General of the Kingdom, inaugurating what will be known as the Moderate Era.

Liberal army oligarchs led by Marshal Francisco Serrano and Progressive conspirators behind Juna Prim plot revolution in Spain.

Isabella II has spent the past twenty-five years attempting to impose despotic rule on an increasingly liberal-minded nation.

During Spain’s Moderate Era, which began with Isabella’s majority in 1843, several military men have become prominent in party leadership positions and the government has adopted three more constitutions.

Socialist ideas have begun to circulate and peasant anarchism has begun to attract adherents.

O'Donnell's death on November 6, 1867, in Biarritz had deprived Isabella of one of her strongest allies.

Ramón María Narváez, another of Isabella's staunchest supporters, dies on April 23.

The agreements made by Liberals and republican exiles abroad at Ostend in 1866 and Brussels in 1867 have laid the framework for a major uprising, this time not merely to replace the Prime Minister with a Liberal, but to overthrow Isabella herself, whom Spanish liberals and republicans have begun to see as the source of Spain's inefficacy.

Her continual vacillation between liberal and conservative quarters has, by 1868, outraged the moderates, the progressives and the members of the Unión Liberal, and enabled a front that crosses party lines.

Leopoldo O'Donnell's death in 1867 had caused the Unión Liberal to unravel; many of its supporters, who had crossed party lines to create the party initially, join he growing movement to overthrow Isabella in favor of a more effective regime.

Naval forces under Admiral Juan Bautista Topete mutiny on September 18 in Cadiz, the same place that Rafael del Riego had launched his coup against Queen Isabella's father a half-century before.

A slump caused by bad harvests, the series of mediocre ultraconservative governments, and a growth in democratic agitation among university intellectuals (whose main concern is the hold of the church over education) gives wide support to the military rising against Isabella, which rapidly spreads throughout Spain.

Prime Minister Luis González Bravo is one of the few politicians who have remained consistently faithful to Queen Isabella II throughout her ruling years, standing by her from the beginning of her effective monarchy, to the very last days of her reign in 1868.

In September 1868, however, upon facing the first battle of the revolution, he advises the Queen to substitute him in the country's presidency for an experienced army general as Prime Minister, to better fight the ready to strike armed forces organized against her government. 

Generals Juan Prim and Francisco Serrano denounce the government and much of the army defects to the revolutionary generals on their arrival in Spain.

The queen makes a brief show of force at the Battle of Alcolea, where her loyal moderado generals under Manuel Pavia are defeated by General Serrano on September 28.

Juan Prim reenters the country in triumph.

Isabella, whose armies will no longer defend her, flees to France and is declared deposed on September 29, ending Spain’s Moderate Era.

Her eldest surviving son, the eleven-year-old Alfonso, whose presumed father is her consort, the Duque de Cádiz, accompanies his mother into exile.

She retires from Spanish politics to Paris, whence she will she formally abdicate on June 25, 1870, and where she will remain until her death in 1904.

The revolutionary spirit that has just overthrown the Spanish government lacks direction; the coalition of liberals, moderates, and republicans are now faced with the incredible task of finding a government that will suit them better than Isabella.

Control of the government passes to Francisco Serrano, an architect of the revolution against Baldomero Espartero's dictatorship.

The Cortes initially reject the notion of a republic; Serrano is named regent while a search is launched for a suitable monarch to lead the country.

The liberal provisional government under Serrano and Prim, formed on October 5, abolishes the Jesuit order and provides for freedom of the press and universal suffrage.

Meanwhile, a revolt against Spanish rule begins in Cuba, which, along with Puerto Rico, is the last possession of Spain in America.

Cubans had long resented the failure to reform rule by captains general, to grant some autonomy, and to ease the economic sacrifices that had been imposed by the Spanish tariff system.

The Spanish Cortes votes on May 21 for a monarchical government.

Spains’ Democrats had become active in setting up juntas after the revolution: for the most part, they had rapidly become Federal Republicans under the influence of the theories of the late Proudhon as presented by their leader, Francisco Pi y Margall.

The Democratic intellectuals' main contribution has been to add a radical democratic content to the demands of the military oligarchy.

A new, liberal Spanish constitution had been proclaimed on June 6, 1869.

The generals are determined to keep the leadership of the revolution in their own hands by channeling it into a constitutional monarchy.

Although they had to concede universal male suffrage in the Constitution of 1869, they ruthlessly suppress republican risings in the summer of this year.

Serrano becomes Regent, and Prim the head of the government on June 15.

Prim proceeds to search for a suitable constitutional monarch for the nation.

He is opposed by adherents of Isabella's eleven-year-old son Alfonso de Borbón and advocates of a republic.

Spain's Republican Party is neither strong nor united.

When the Republican leaders, on legal scruples, refuse to declare for a federal republic, the provincial federal extremists revolt.

This Cantonalist revolt is serious in Cartagena, ...

...Alcoy, and ...