DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.47347#0134
APPENDIX.
118
are exhibited by every people among which violence, the
agitation of the passions, and the interests of political par-
ties, have temporarily overthrown custom, and, in particular
circumstances, silenced the written laws: they know, too,
that phenomena of this kind disturb the political order, de
facto, but that they can never establish a new right.
We are too well acquainted with the agitated history of
Spain, which for whole periods has been a theatre of war
and drenched with blood, not to beware of asserting that the
legal order of succession has never been violated. He
must be equally ignorant of the nature of man and of his-
tory who can make such an assertion.
It is true that the history of Spain exhibits, about the end
of the 10th and the beginning of the 11th century, cases in
which the order of primogeniture was not only disregarded
in fact, but in which the monarchy was even parcelled out
like family property, as was done by Alphonso the Great,
who divided it among his sons. It is true that history also
draws a picture of the troubles excited in 1113 by the
grandees of the kingdom, to force queen Urraca to renounce
the crown ; of the violent usurpation of the crown by Henry
of Trastamare, natural brother of king Peter the Cruel, to
the detriment of the innate rights of Constance and Isabella,
the two legitimate daughters of the latter; of the plots of
the grandees, at the commencement of the 15th century,
against the rights to the throne of the Infante Don Juan,
son of Henry III., who had already been acknowledged by
the Cortes of Toledo. But in all these cases, and in
others which we refrain from enumerating, we shall never
be able to discover any thing but acts stamped with ille-
gality, and occasions on which the impulsive force and the
violence of political passions in the struggles of parties de-
cided events; over which, nevertheless, the law of las Par-
tidas has always risen paramount, and always maintained its
118
are exhibited by every people among which violence, the
agitation of the passions, and the interests of political par-
ties, have temporarily overthrown custom, and, in particular
circumstances, silenced the written laws: they know, too,
that phenomena of this kind disturb the political order, de
facto, but that they can never establish a new right.
We are too well acquainted with the agitated history of
Spain, which for whole periods has been a theatre of war
and drenched with blood, not to beware of asserting that the
legal order of succession has never been violated. He
must be equally ignorant of the nature of man and of his-
tory who can make such an assertion.
It is true that the history of Spain exhibits, about the end
of the 10th and the beginning of the 11th century, cases in
which the order of primogeniture was not only disregarded
in fact, but in which the monarchy was even parcelled out
like family property, as was done by Alphonso the Great,
who divided it among his sons. It is true that history also
draws a picture of the troubles excited in 1113 by the
grandees of the kingdom, to force queen Urraca to renounce
the crown ; of the violent usurpation of the crown by Henry
of Trastamare, natural brother of king Peter the Cruel, to
the detriment of the innate rights of Constance and Isabella,
the two legitimate daughters of the latter; of the plots of
the grandees, at the commencement of the 15th century,
against the rights to the throne of the Infante Don Juan,
son of Henry III., who had already been acknowledged by
the Cortes of Toledo. But in all these cases, and in
others which we refrain from enumerating, we shall never
be able to discover any thing but acts stamped with ille-
gality, and occasions on which the impulsive force and the
violence of political passions in the struggles of parties de-
cided events; over which, nevertheless, the law of las Par-
tidas has always risen paramount, and always maintained its