La fuerza militar española en defensa de Pío IX (1848-1850)
La historia europea de mitad del XIX encuentra en la actuación militar española en Italia una interesante línea de investigación para entender la complejidad política de la España isabelina, en un contexto de guerra y revolución en Europa. En el caso del proceso de unificación italiano, respondía a una política exterior asentada en el liberalismo moderado, y que mediaba a nivel interno entre las tendencias más progresistas y la oposición del carlismo. Aunque este tema ha sido tratado desde otros puntos de vista, el impulso de los estudios militares acontecido en España en los últimos años ha despertado el interés de la investigación de este país sobre la creación de la nación italiana desde una perspectiva comparada. Igualmente, ha seguido aportando nuevos datos al debate sobre la presencia de tropas españolas en el contexto de la unificación italiana para continuar una discusión historiográfica que afecta a España e Italia. En este artículo analizamos estos hechos para reordenarlos y, al mismo tiempo, aportamos una interpretación más heterodoxa que la que puede consultarse en trabajos clásicos, fruto del conocimiento producido sobre el tema en la actualidad, de una novedosa investigación hecha en el Archivo Secreto Vaticano, y de la consulta de periódicos y novelas españoles del siglo XIX que opinaron e informaron sobre la fuerza militar española en defensa de Pío IX, decantando a la opinión pública en diversos sentidos según fuera su línea política editorial o la sensibilidad del autor. The European history of central years of the 19th century finds in the Spanish military action in Italy an interesting line of research in order to understand the political complexity of Isabelline Spain, within a context of war and revolution in Europe. In the case of the process of the Italian unification, it responded to a foreign policy based on moderate liberalism, which mediated internally between the most progressive tendencies and the Carlist opposition. Although this subject has been addressed from other standpoints, the impulse of the military studies taken place in Spain in recent years has aroused the interest of Spanish research on the creation of the Italian nation from a comparative perspective. Likewise, it has continued to contribute with new data to the debate on the presence of Spanish troops in the context of Italian unification, continuing an historiographical discussion that affects Spain and Italy. In this article we analyze these facts to reorder them and at the same time we contribute with a more heterodox interpretation than that which can be consulted in classical works, fruit of the knowledge produced on the subject at present, of a novel investigation made in the Vatican Secret Archive, and of the consultation of nineteenth-century Spanish newspapers and novels that opined and reported on the Spanish military force in defense of Pius IX, decanting public opinion in various ways according to its editorial policy line or the sensitivity of the author. What we want to demonstrate here is that although the Spanish operation in Italy between 1848-1850 did not have the desired importance on the part of the government of Narvaez, causing that a significant part of the Spanish public opinion to be disappointed and reinforcing the critical political positions with that external intervention, they were a remarkable success in several aspects. On the one hand, to resituate Isabel II''s liberal Spain between the great European powers of the moment, once the Carlism had been defeated in the civil war, and the military defeats in the American continent had diminished sensibly the national-imperial idea of the Old Regime. On the other hand, it also helped to temper the internal moods between liberal liberals favourable to Italian unification and patriotic legitimists, who were addicted to the cause of the Papal States because of the reactionary sense the war had.
