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 General Concha, and other chiefs of the Moderado party, and was sentenced to six years' imprisonment in a colonial fortress. But early in 1845 the Queen pardoned him and made him Governor General of Porto Rico. In 1849 he returned to Spain, and finding no active employment in the army, he secured a seat in the Cortes, where he joined the opposition to the Moderado ministry. His opposition becoming troublesome, he was, in 1853, sent on a diplomatic mission to Paris. This displeased him, and he went instead to Constantinople, joined the staff of Omar Pasha, and was present at several engagements with the Russians. But political conditions in Spain having changed, he was called back in the autumn of 1854, and, a year later, appointed Captain General of Granada. Again he became involved in political plots, and was once more sentenced to five years' confinement in a fortress. Again the Queen pardoned him, and made him, in 1860, Inspector General of the engineer department of the army. In the war against Morocco, he greatly distinguished himself by his skill and bravery, and was rewarded with the title of Marquis de los Castillejos and the dignity of a grandee of Spain.

Such a career, with its heroism and political plots, its good services and insubordinations, its honors and disgraces, its sudden changes from palace to prison and prison to palace, would not have been possible in any European country but Spain, where the monarchy was degraded successively by two dissolute women on the throne; where, since the breaking out of the Carlist War in 1833, the people were in a constant state of ferment; where army commands were changed with the change of party in power; where military officers were active partisans, inured to political intrigue and demagogy; where revolution had become a popular habit, and where hardly a year elapsed without some more or less formidable