The Bourbons in France And Spain

After the Spanish Habsburg royal line died out, without an heir, the two next-in-line parties for the crown of Spain went to war. The war is known as the War of the Spanish Succession and was between the French House of Bourbon and the Austrian Habsburgs. It was won by the House of Bourbon, which still reigns in Spain today.

The French House of Bourbon was overthrown in the French Revolution of 1789, which made way for the First French Republic. That was brought to an end by Napoleon, which ruled over the First French Empire. Napoleon conquered a vast area, lands such as Germany and Italy and much of Russia, spreading the ideals of the French Revolution.

Ironically, while Napoleon's attempt to conquer Russia was ultimately unsuccessful the following century would see a revolution, the October Revolution, that was remarkably similar to the French Revolution, the ideals of which Napoleon was spreading, overthrow the Romanov Dynasty in Russia that had resisted Napoleon's invasion.

The monarchy, the House of Bourbon, made a limited comeback after the time of Napoleon, until it was displaced by it's cadet branch the House of Orleans. The French monarchy was ended for good by the series of revolutions that swept Europe in 1848.

The republic, led by a president, was then restored which was the Second French Republic. But Napoleon's nephew, known as Napoleon III, became president. When his term of president was over, in true Napoleonic fashion, he simply declared himself as emperor. This brought the republic to an end and inaugurated the Second French Empire. That ended with the capture of Napoleon III during the Franco-Prussian War, and brought in the Third Republic.

In France, a new republic simply means a new constitution. The Third Republic continued until the Second World War, and the Fourth Republic was ended by the Algeria Crisis in 1958. We are in the Fifth Republic today.

Now, let's look at Spain and how developments there compare with that of France.

The House of Bourbon still rules Spain, although it is a republic constitutional monarchy where the president holds the effective power. Napoleon conquered Spain, and appointed his brother Joseph as king. Just as the French House of Bourbon was interrupted by the First Republic and then by Napoleon, the Spanish House of Bourbon was interrupted by the brief First Spanish Republic, an unsuccessful attempt to end the monarchy, in 1873.

France never had a civil war as such, but there was the long battle between Protestants and Catholics after the Reformation. Spain's counterpart was the 1930s Civil War between the Nationalists and the Republican forces of Francisco Franco, which ultimately prevailed.

The monarchy had actually been ended to make way for the Second Spanish Republic, during the 1930s. Francisco Franco seems to be very much the Spanish counterpart of Napoleon, and he ended a republic just as had Napoleon, and the monarchy was restored after the end of his rule, his death in 1975. But instead of following the French Revolution hostility to the church, Franco expressed support for the Catholic Church.

I find it amazing how Franco was the inverse of Napoleon when it came to the nations that had formerly been in Napoleon's field of conquest. Napoleon invaded countries like Germany, Italy and, Russia. Franco, in an inversion of this, had those countries involved in his civil war at home, Germany and Italy supporting Franco's side and Russia supporting the other side.

Franco was, in this way, the inverse of Napoleon but the two leaders who supported him, Hitler and Mussolini, would go on to dominate a field of conquest that was virtually identical to that of Napoleon.

In France, there was an unsuccessful attempt to repeat the French Revolution, by the Communards or Paris Commune in 1871. In Spain there was likewise an unsuccessful attempt to being back Francoism by a coup in 1981.

The case of rule by the House of Bourbon in both France and Spain provides interesting insights into how history repeats and reflects itself.