Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 9.djvu/94

F E R F E R 1822, the royal guard broke out into open revolt with cries for " the absolute king." For the time they were repressed by the constitutionalists ; but meanwhile the state of the Peninsula had attracted the attention of the Holy Alliance, and at the congress of Verona (August 25 to December 14, 1822) it was agreed to send a French army into Spain, "to deliver Ferdinand from slavery." Madrid was entered on May 23, 1823; the cortes withdrew to Seville, where Ferdinand was declared incapable of governing, and a regency was appointed (llth June). Driven by the in vaders to Cadiz, and there compelled to surrender, the cortes yielded up their authority into the hands of Ferdinand, who in his turn promised a general amnesty to all who had been concerned in the revolutionary proceedings. This promise he broke the very next day, annulling every act of his government since 7th March 1820. Another period of proscriptions, banishments, and fusillades now set in. Enactments of the most tyrannical description were un scrupulously made with the avowed purpose of stamping out the last spark of constitutionalism. 1 Numbers were put to death for the most trivial offences, and it has been estimated that some 20,000 families were compelled to leave their country. Louis XVIII. offered counsels of moderation ; he reminded Ferdinand that " Christian princes ought not to rule by means of proscriptions," and that " a blind despotism, far from consolidating the power of sovereigns, weakens it ; " but his remonstrances were in vain. His successor Charles X. used similar language ; but Fer dinand s reply was that he was not able to control the reactionary party which had restored him to power. Dur ing the later years of his life he took little or no interest in public affairs ; and the absolutists began to turn their attention to the question of the succession. A scheme was matured for inducing the king to abdicate in favour of his brother Don Carlos ; but on the death of his third wife Maria Amalia of Saxony in May 1829 without issue, Fer dinand filled the " apostolicals " with consternation and the liberals with new hope by contracting a fourth marriage with Maria Cristina of Naples (December 1829). In March 1830 the king decreed the abrogation of the Salic law, a measure which excited the Carlists first to intrigue and afterwards to open insurrection on the birth of a daughter in October. In 1832 Ferdinand was seized with a threatening illness, and wavered from his formerly ex pressed will with regard to the succession ; but ultimately, in June 1833, his daughter (Isabella II.) was declared his successor, Cristina was nominated as regent, and Don Carlos with many of his followers was ordered to leave the kingdom. The death of Ferdinand at Madrid, September 29, 1833, was the signal for the outbreak of a long and bloody civil war. Ferdinand s selfishness, hypocrisy, mendacity, incapacity to understand even the idea of patriotism, have sometimes suggested a comparison with Charles I. of England. But such a comparison is unjust to Charles. Ferdinand was a Spanish Bourbon, and in him the characteristic qualities of that house reached their final perfection " imbecility, dissoluteness, ferocity, mutual hate, intellect never reach ing higher than cunning, with a religion that was the fetichism of a savage rather than the creed of a rational being." 2 His reign was a disastrous one for Spain. Its results may be summed up as follows : loss of her American possessions New Granada, New Spain (Mexico), Rio de la Plata, Chili, Venezuela, Guatemala, and Peru ; hopeless financial embarrassment ; thousands of her best citizens put 1 Thus the decree abolishing popular election of the ayuntamientos (17th October 1824) was expressly made " con el fin de que desaparezca para aiempre del suelo Espanol hasta la mas remota idea de que la soberam a reside en otro que en mi real persona." 1 Crowe, History of France, iv. 151. to death for political opinions ; myriads banished ; and a quarter of a million slain in unnecessary wars. FERDINAND I. and II., grand-dukes of Tuscany. See MEDICI. FERDINAND III. (1769-1824), grand-duke of Tus cany, and archduke of Austria, second son of the emperor Leopold II., was born on the 6th May 1769. On his father becoming emperor in 1790, he succeeded him as grand-duke of Tuscany. Ferdinand was the first sovereign to enter into diplomatic relations with the French republic ; and although afterwards compelled by England and Russia to join the coalition against France, he concluded peace with that power in 1795, and by observing a strict neutrality saved his dominions from invasion by Napoleon till 1799, when he was com pelled to vacate his throne, and a provisional republican government was established at Florence. Shortly after wards the French arms suffered severe reverses in Italy, and Ferdinand was restored to his territories, but in 1801 Tuscany was converted into the kingdom of Etruria, and he was again compelled to return to Vienna. In lieu of the sovereignty of Tuscany, he obtained in 1802 the elec torship of Salzburg, which he exchanged in 1805 for that of Wiirzburg. In 1806 he was admitted as grand-duke of Wiirzburg to the confederation of the Rhine. He was re stored to the throne of Tuscany after the abdication of Napoleon in 1814, but had again to vacate it for a short time in 1815, when Murat proclaimed war against Austria. The final overthrow of the French supremacy at the battle of Waterloo secured him, however, in the undisturbed possession of his kingdom during the remainder of his life. The mild and righteous rule of Ferdinand, his solicitude for the welfare of his subjects, his enlightened patronage of art and science, his encouragement of commerce, and his sympathy with freedom render him an honourable and striking exception to the generality of Italian princes. He died on the 18th of June 1824. FERDINAND (1721-1792), duke of Brunswick, a famous Prussian general, the fourth son of Duke Ferdi nand Albert of Brunswick, was born at Brunswick, llth January 1721. He was educated for the military pro fession, and having entered the Prussian service, com manded a regiment in the first and second Silesian wars. On the outbreak of the Seven Years War he was appointed to the command of a division, and he greatly contributed to the victory of Prague in 1757. He shortly afterwards received from George II. of England the supreme command of the allied forces, and for five years, by his energy, rapidity of movement, and masterly strategy, succeeded, notwithstanding the fewness of his troops and their very mixed and heterogeneous composition, in holding at bay both the large imperial army and several French armies much better organized and officered than his own. On the 1st of August 1 759 he gained a brilliant victory over Marshal Contades at Minden. In 1766 an estrangement occurred between Ferdinand and Frederick the Great, in consequence of which he retired from the military profession, and passed the remainder of his life at his castle cf Veschelde, where he occupied himself in building and other improvements, and became a patron of learning and art, and a great benefactor of the poor. He died 3d July 1792. See Knesebeck, Ferdinand Ilcrwg von Braunschweig und Liinc- lurg, u dhrcnddcsSicbenjiikrigcnKriegs, 2 vols., Hanover, 1857-58 ; Yon Westphalen, Geschichte der Feldzitgc dcs Hcrzogs Ferdinands TonBraunschu-cig-Liinelnirg, 5 vols., Berlin, 1859-72 ; and Carlyle s History of Frederick the Great. FERENTINO, the ancient Ferentinum, a town of central Italy, in the province of Rome, is situated on the Neapolitan railway about 45 miles S.E. of Rome. It lies on the side of a hill rising immediately to the left of the Via Latina. It.