ABSTRACT
Trouble came at the top. The nominal leader of the party, General Baldomero Espartero, had ruled Spain from 1840 to 1843. In those three years he had managed to offend and alienate the army officers, the Catalan workers and industrialists, and many liberals. Finally he was ousted by an uprising of Moderate officers, supported by disgruntled Progressives. Since 1843 the battered remnants of the Progressive party had been led by a handful of civilian politicians, the few Progressive deputies whom the ruling Moderates allowed to be elected. Before February 1848 Narvaez had attracted a number of these Progressives to his side with promises of a turno pacifico, a p·eaceful alternation in power managed by electoral manipulation.11 Then came the news from Paris. Eco de/ Comercio, mouthpiece of the party, greeted it with glee:
Some of the Progressives in the Cortes, notably Madoz, Cortina, Sancho, Infante and Mendizabal, were suspicious of revolution; liberal though they were, they remained monarchists at heart and afraid of republicanism, universal suffrage and the masses. These men and their followers tacitly supported Narvaez.
