enerals and
the ecclesiastics who exercised unbounded influence over his mind. The
defeat of his cause, which had many chances of success, was
unquestionably due to a very large extent to his want of capacity, his
apathy, and his increasing absorption in practices of puerile piety. His
first wife having died in England, Don Carlos married her elder sister,
the princess of Beira, in Biscay in October 1837. After his flight from
Spain, Don Carlos led a life of increasing insignificance. He abdicated
in May 1845, took a title of count of Molina, and died at Trieste on the
10th of March 1855.

By his first marriage, Don Carlos had three sons, Charles (1818-1861),
John (1822-1887), and Ferdinand (1824-1861). Charles succeeded to the
claims of his father, and was known to his partisans as Don Carlos VI.,
but was more commonly known as the count of Montemolin. In 1846, when
the marriage of queen Isabella was being negotiated, the Austrian
government endeavoured to arrange an alliance between her and the count
of Montemolin. But as he insisted on the complete recognition of his
rights, the Spanish government refused to hear of him as a candidate.
The Carlists took up arms on his behalf between 1846 and 1848, but the
count, who had been expelled from France by the police, did not join
them in the field. In April 1860 he and his brother Ferdinand landed at
San Carlos de la Rapita, at the mouth of the Ebro, in company with a
feather-headed officer named Ortega, who held a command in the Balearic
islands. They hoped to profit by the fact that the bulk of the Spanish
army was absent in a war with Morocco. But no Carlist rising took place.
The men who had been brought from the islands by Ortega deserted him.
Montemolin and his brother, together with their devoted partisan General
Elio, who had accompanied them from exile, lurked in hiding for a
fortnight and were then captured. Ortega was shot, but the princes saved
their lives, and that of Elio, by making an abject surrender of their
claims. When he had been allowed to escape and had reached Cologne, the
count of Montemolin publicly retracted his renunciation on the 15th of
June, on the ignominious ground that it had been extorted by fear.
Montemolin and his brother Ferdinand died within a fortnight of one
another in January 1861 without issue.

The third brother, John, who had advanced his own claims before his
brother's retraction, now came forward as the representative of the
l