Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume III.djvu/803

 CARLOS CARLOVINGIANS 793 father ; but recent historians have shown that j he was insane, and died of a fever brought on by his own extravagance in diet and expo- [ sure. The incompatibility of temper between a rigid, iron-hearted man like King Philip, and a morbid, impulsive youth like Don Carlos, the fact that the prince had been engaged to Eliza- beth of France, who subsequently became his stepmother, his sympathy with the revolt of the Netherlands, and his hatred of Alva and the other ministers of his father, all conspired to invest the melancholy fate of the prince with a halo of romance, which has been poetically treated by Alfleri, Campistron, Otway, and others, and above all by Schiller. II. Carlos Maria Isidor, pretender to the crown of Spain, son of King Charles IV., born March 29, 1788, died in Trieste, March 10, 1855. Many of the opponents of the constitutional regime which was restored in 1820 gathered around Don Carlos, hoping that, after the decease of his childless brother Ferdinand VII., he would ascend the throne. When absolutism was re- established in 1823, the most reactionary par- ty leaders, and especially the representatives of the clerical interest, continued to cluster around him. But their hopes were frus- trated by Ferdinand's marriage with Maria Christina, and by the abrogation of the Salic law, which placed Isabella upon the throne. In 1832, when Ferdinand was supposed to be on the eve of death, the Carlists succeeded in extorting from him a decree reestablishing the Salic law, and thus excluding Isabella ; but he recovered his health, and the fraud practised upon him was immediately redressed. In 1833, when Ferdinand died, Don Carlos pro- claimed himself king. Maria Christina, the regent, branded him as a rebel, and concluded with Britain, France, and Portugal the so- called quadruple alliance, the practical effect of which was to expel Don Carlos and Dom Miguel, the champions of absolutism, from Spain and Portugal. On July 1, 1834, Don Carlos left England, whither he had fled, smug- gled himself into Spain, and succeeded in kin- dling a civil war in the northern provinces, which raged for upward of six years. Don Carlos eluded the vigilance of his opponents till 1839, .when he was compelled to seek refuge in France, where, upon his refusal to renounce his claims, he was by order of the French gov- ernment detained at Bourges. The decree which ordained his perpetual expulsion from Spain was unanimously confirmed by the cortes in 1836. In 1845 he adopted the name of count of Molina, abdicated in favor of his eldest son the count of Montemolin, and on re- ceiving permission to leave France took up his abode in Austria. HI. Carlos Lnls Maria Feruan- do, son of the preceding, born Jan. 81, 1818, died at Trieste, Jan. 13, 1861. In 1846 he left Bourges, where he had resided with his father, and took up his abode in England un- der the name of the count of Montemolin. In April, 1849, he made an attempt to introduce himself in disguise into Spain, but he was ar- rested, detained from April 5 to the 10th in the citadel of Perpignan, and on April 15 he was again in London. In 1860 he entered Spain with 3,000 men, was defeated at Tor- tosa, and made prisoner. He was soon set at liberty, upon renouncing his claim to the throne, but immediately retracted his renunciation. His successor was his brother Don OAELOS JUAN MABIA IBIDOB, born May 15, 1822, who in Octo- ber, 1868, resigned his claims to the crown in favor of his son, CARLOS MARIA JUAN ISIDOB, the present pretender (born March 30, 1848), in whose favor an active insurrection is now in progress (1873). Don ALFONSO, brother of the pretender (born Sept. 12, 1849), is among his most active supporters. CARLOVINGIANS, or Carolinians, an imperial family who during the 8th, 9th, and 10th cen- turies gave sovereigns to Germany, France, and Italy. Their origin is traced back to Arnulf and Pepin of Landen, two powerful Frankish lords of Austrasia in the beginning of the 7th century, while they derived their name from Charles Mar- tel, the conqueror of the Saracens at the battle of Poitiers in 732. This hero, the son of Pepin of Heristal, was the founder of the greatness of his house. Satisfied with the titles of duke of the Franks and mayor of the palace, under the weak Merovingian kings, he ruled with an ab- solute power the Frankish kingdoms of Aus- trasia, Neustria, and Burgundy. His son, Pepin the Short, confining within the walls of a con- vent the last of those kings, Childeric III., as- sumed the royal title ; and his grandson Charles, afterward known as Charlemagne, having ex- tended his conquests as far as the Ebro and Garigliano on the south, the Oder on the north, and the Carpathian mountains and the Theiss on the east, restored the western Roman empire, and consequently styled himself emperor. This Carlovingian empire, consisting of a motley assemblage of nations brought together by conquest, and decidedly hostile to each other, could not long outlive its founder; it began to totter on his death, and then gradually fell into ruins. Its final disruption, which took place in the year 888, was followed by nine separate kingdoms, the most important of which, Ger- many, France, and Italy, continued for a while under the sway of the descendants of Charle- magne. The emperors of this family were Charlemagne, 800-814 ; Louis the Weak, or le Debonnaire, 814-840 ; Lothaire, 840-855 ; Louis II., son of Lothaire, 855-875 ; Charles the Bald of France, 875-877; Charles the Fat of Ger- many, 881-887. This was the last of the actu- al emperors of the Carlovingian dynasty ; but several princes, most of them in the feminine line, Guy of Spoleto, Lambert, Arnulf of Ca- rinthia, Louis and Berenger of Italy, boasted the empty title. The Carlovingian kings of Germany were Louis the German, 840-876 ; Louis the Younger or of Saxony, 876-882 ; Charles the Fat, 882-887; Arnulf of Carinthia, 887-899; Louis the Child, 899-911. To the