Part 7

Through the terrible night of 7th October 1841, when Generals Concha and Leon made their determined attempt to kidnap Queen Isabella and her little sister, the Infanta Maria Luisa, the valiant eighteen halberdiers of the guard, commanded by Colonel Dalee, held the grand staircase of the palace against an army of revolutionists until the National Militia arrived to relieve them. Truly that night the halberdiers wrote a magnificent page of fidelity in the records of the guards.

After a hopeless struggle to reduce Spanish affairs into something like order, Amadeo of Savoy issued from the Royal Palace his valedictory address to his people, and on the following day, 12th February 1873, he left Madrid, as he had entered it, a chevalier _sans peur et sans reproche_. In the same palace Alfonso XIII. was born and baptized, from the palace he set out to the church of San Jeronimo to be married to Victoria Eugénie of Battenberg, and here was born and baptized the Prince of the Asturias, the heir to the throne of Spain.

End of Project Gutenberg's Royal Palaces of Spain, by Albert F. Calvert