La Première guerre carliste ou la guerre de la dernière chance : la communauté légitimiste face à son destin

When the first Carlist war starts in Spain, the fate of European absolutism, which is facing the increasing strength of liberalism, seems to be at stake there. The protagonists of this conflict, as well as the echoes of some battles, raise the interest of the European public opinion, essentially through the press and some magazines, but also through numerous circumstantial works that mostly are testimonies of soldiers having taken part to the conflict. This article will develop an analysis of the argument of the European legitimists that have been part of the first Carlist war as observers or active participants in a conflict which challenges went well beyond a mere dynastic dispute. An unfavourable conclusion for carlism in that civil war would mean for them the end of the legitimist influence in Europe. They are conscious that those fights could seal the fate of the legitimist cause. The possibility to fight for ideals that they could not always defend in their own countries leads some officers to engage into the Carlist army, but also to publish some works due to celebrate the heroism of their own party. Those defenders of legitimacy aim at meeting a collective memory, the one of the defeated that would deny them the right to existence. They are conscious that the present does not belong to them anymore and place all their hopes in the future and in the mark they will leave in History that, some day maybe, will do justice to them.