Niko,
I don't think the Carlists could have won in the long run either since i'm pretty sure Britain, France and Portugal would have poured more and more troops in to shore up the Christino's. HOWEVER! hehe that being said...that leads to all sorts of interesting possibilities as well.
If it comes to a stalemate, what are the possibilities? I don't see Zumalacarregui being defeated in the field. He consistantly beat everything thrown at him even when overwhelmingly outnumbered. He fought and won some battles where his troops had less than 3 rounds of ammunition per man. The guy was truly stellar.
Having taken 800 unarmed raggedy ass peasants and turned them into 20,000 highly trained, well disciplined troops while in the field and under constant attack is a feat worthy of the ages. Having done that, I really am tortured by the sheer possiblities of the man. Realistically he was doomed from the outset as Don Carlos was, from all i've been able to find on him, a wretched ungracious little shit and they probably would have ended up murdering Zumalacarregui anyway but......
I drool over the possibility of the Carlist army in the field, in force, facing the combined armies of 4 nations on the plains outside of madrid, led by a lamb chop whiskered, beret wearing figure on a white war horse.
Really...this haunts me hehe.
So, what sorts of internal stresses were the Christino's under that might have torn them apart? Would the French, English or Portuguese have stepped in with the own puppet attempts if things got bad? If so, would the Iberian penninsula have turned into the Vietnam of Europe?
What happens if Zumalacarregu pulls off the impossible and takes Madrid?(maybe not so impossible really as I think he would have had a VERY good chance of taking it had they gone after it instead of hitting Bilbao as he wanted at the time.)
I agree in general, however, Zumalacarregui was a pre-eminent strategist. I think he would have known that for a lasting victory of any sort they would have needed to take Madrid. And, for that matter, later in the war during Gomez's march his forces were made up largely of Basque troops, so they WOULD march out of their home territories.
Also, EVERYONE who fought under him loved Zumalacarregui, that included Englishmen, French, Germans etc etc. I don't think his troops would have hesitated for a second to follow him. I think that's the terror that he inspired in Don Carlos and his sycophants, they were petrified that a man such as he would command the loyalty of the common man, I think in the end it was his (unproven but strongly hinted at) doom.
Yes, I agree with you about Zumalacárregui's genius and about Don Carlos (after all he was a spanish Bourbon, and I let you to understand this as you want, because I don't want to be banned

) Although, I'm not sympathetic with Zumalacárregui for ideological reasons, and I'm glad that he died early in the war, so I'm a bit baised.
In the case of stalemate, I think, the internal divisions in each side would be exacerbated. In the Cristino side we have the division between more "progresists" and more "conservative" liberals, and besides them a proto-revolutionary popular movement. They managed to keep the order, more or less, makin concesions to everybody, but that was only a provisional solution and the true problems behind the political game kept unsolved.
Specially, the popular movement, called
"juntistas*", could become a true threat not only to the government but to the system itself if the things become nasty and the exigences of the war last too much.
I had not thought about the possibility of greater foreing involvement, but it sounds interesting. Actually, I don't know at what extent Britain, France or Portugal would have the will to engage themselves indefinably and spending more resources in the spanish mess. But if their commitenment in the war seems serious, maybe other rival powers could intervene favouring the carlist side (specially Prussia and A-H, maybe also Russia, I think)
If Zumalacárregui arrives to Madrid, I can be wrong but probably he will face a house by house fight, after crossing the mountainous pass of Guadarrama, easily defensible (although Napoleon crossed it) I don't know if he could win the battle or not, because despite his genius, urban warfare is always a problem. Though, if Cristino army, with or without foreing support, prefer face him in the plains outside Madrid, maybe he can get a sounding victory and things change radically. But that should be a blitz operation. You are right about the loalty of his men, but they are still very attached to their land and cause (
fueros y
leyes viejas) and more important, their money and supplies were payed by the basque and navarre insititutions. For example, during the siege of Bilbao, the Navarrese troops wanted return to home, and Navarra's deputation menaced with cutting their money if their men didn't return to home. Bear in mind that most of the soldiers were paseants with obligations, and the crops can't wait. It's not only loyalty.
Wow, one of my personal heroes (Note: I am not a Carlist, nor even a Spaniard, I just admire the guy).
I think if you want a Carlist or a semi-Carlist state to come out of the first Carlist revolt, your POD is probably too late.
If he lives, I think you can make a plausible case for an even longer, bloodier war that may butterfly the latest Carlist revolts. This is especially true if he is offered and takes an amnesty. In other words, he might become a Robert E. Lee figure.
I think a good POD to get a Carlist Spain is in 1832 during the incidents at La Granja. If Carlos' partisans can have succes and force the abolition of the Pragmatic Sanction, the succesor would have been Carlos instead Isabel. But in that case, perhaps the uprising after Ferdinand VII deathcomes from the liberals.
Also, ironically, Basque localism was always a huge part of Carlism (defending the fueros), so moving out of the Basque areas is definitely going to be hard.
Indeed. In fact I'm with those who thinks there is an ideological continuum between the Carlism and Basque nationalism.
Spain has always held a bit of awe to me for the sheer amount of passion its struggles stir up. I am also really fascinated by the underlying causes of the war aside from the stated Liberal / Conservative boot the Inquisition standard lines spouted by the history books. I find it intriguing that the last great competitor of the British trading empire was essentially dealt away with as a matter of the conflict.
I can think of several story lines in the background featuring the handlers behind the thrones greedily rubbing their mitts together as the industrial heart of Spain is torn to pieces yet again. Maybe

.
Yes. The reasons of spanish struggles in the XIX century and first third of the XX are deeper than the traditional historiograpy's interpretations. Fortunatelly, in the last two or three decades many historians in Spain are going beyond the traditional lines. That's also an interesting debate, but I should post a very long response about it

.
While doing some more research over the weekend I also started reading about Blas de Lezo. Good lord. Why aren't there movies on these people? It's like England has managed to drop a shroud over century of history

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GOOD STUFF! WI are always enhanced by a few good conspiracy theories tossed in hehe.
As Abdul Hadi Pasha stated in another thread, people don't like to remember the battles they lost. But that's not only a british vice.
Cheers.
*Although the word
junta has passed to english language meaning a militar government, in spanish it has more meanings. It's political origin comes from the war against Napoleon when, without King, the sovereignity was devolved to the people, following the hispanic juridical tradition (specially XVI century thinker Francisco Suárez) That soverignity had as basic entity of development the
municipio (municipality) and its elected body of government (usually the
cabildo) was the first echelon in the popular representativity and had the right and obligation to form a
junta to defend the rights of severeignity. Therefore, the spanish democratic movements, but not them exclusively, adopted the
juntismo as political structure during the XIX century