Item: i111227

Authentic Coin of:

Spain –  King Amadeo I (Ruled 1870-1873)
1871 Silver 5 Pesetas 37mm (24.86 grams) 0.900 Silver (0.7234 oz. ASW)
Reference: KM# 666
AMADEO I REY DE ESPAÑA L·M· * *, Bust left.
LEY 900 MILESIMAS 40 PIEZAS EN KILOG· PLUS ULTRA S·D· 5 PESETAS ·M· The coat of arms of Spain.
Edge Lettering: * | * JUSTICIA | * * Y * * | LIBERTAD *

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Amadeo I (Italian: Amedeo, sometimes anglicized as Amadeus; 30 May 1845 – 18 January 1890) was the only King of Spain from the House of Savoy. He was the second son of King Vittorio Emanuele II of Italy and was known for most of his life as the Duke of Aosta, but he reigned briefly as King of Spain from 1870 to 1873.

He was elected by the Cortes as Spain’s monarch in 1870, following the deposition of Isabella II, and was sworn in the following year. Amadeo’s reign was fraught with growing republicanism, Carlist rebellions in the north, and the Cuban independence movement. He abdicated and returned to Italy in 1873, and the First Spanish Republic was declared as a result.

Granted the hereditary title of Duke of Aosta in the year of his birth, he founded the Aosta branch of Italy’s royal House of Savoy, which is junior in agnatic descent to the branch descended from King Umberto I that reigned in Italy until 1946, but senior to the branch of the Dukes of Genoa.

Prince Amedeo of Savoy was born in Turin (then part of the Kingdom of Sardinia). He was the second son of King Vittorio Emanuele II (King of Piedmont, Savoy, Sardinia and, later, first King of Italy) and of Archduchess Adelaide of Austria. He was styled the Duke of Aosta from birth.

Entering the army as captain in 1859 he fought through the Third Italian War of Independence in 1866 with the rank of major-general, leading his brigade into action at the Battle of Custoza and being wounded at Monte Torre. In 1868, after his marriage, he was created vice admiral of the Italian navy, but this position ended when he ascended the Spanish throne.

In 1867 his father yielded to the entreaties of parliamentary deputy Francisco Cassins, and on 30 May of that year, Amedeo was married to Donna Maria Vittoria dal Pozzo. The King initially opposed the match on the grounds that her family was of insufficient rank, as well as his hopes for his son’s marriage to a German princess.Despite her princely title, Donna Maria Vittoria was not of royal birth, belonging rather to the Piedmontese nobility. She was, however, the sole heir of her father’s vast fortune, which subsequent Dukes of Aosta inherited, thereby obtaining wealth independent of their dynastic appanage and allowances from Italy’s kings. The wedding day of Prince Amedeo and Donna Maria Vittoria was marred by the death of a stationmaster who was crushed under the wheels of the honeymoon train.

In March 1870, the Duchess appealed to the King to remonstrate with his son for marital infidelities that caused her hurt and embarrassment. But the King wrote in reply that, while understanding her feelings, he considered that she had no right to dictate her husband’s behaviour and that her jealousy was unbecoming.

After the Spanish revolution deposed Isabella II, the new Cortes decided to reinstate the monarchy under a new dynasty. The Duke of Aosta was elected King as Amadeus (Amadeo) on 16 November 1870. He swore to uphold the constitution in Madrid on 2 January 1871.

The election of the new King coincided with the assassination of General Prim, his main backer. After that, Amadeo had to deal with difficult situations, with unstable Spanish politics, republican conspiracies, Carlist uprisings, separatism in Cuba, same-party disputes, fugitive governments and assassination attempts.

He could count on the support of only the progressive party, whose leaders were trading off in the government thanks to parliamentary majority and electoral fraud. The progressives divided into monarchists and constitutionalists, which made the instability worse, and in 1872 a violent outburst of interparty conflicts hit a peak. There was a Carlist uprising in the Basque and Catalan regions, and after that, republican uprisings happened in cities across the country. The artillery corps of the army went on strike, and the government instructed the King to discipline them.

Though warned of a plot against his life on 18 August 1872, he refused to take precautions, and, while returning from Buen Retiro Park to Madrid in company with the queen, was repeatedly shot at in Via Avenal. The royal carriage was struck by several revolver and rifle bullets, the horses wounded, but its occupants escaped unhurt. A period of calm followed the event.

With the possibility of reigning without popular support, Amadeus issued an order against the artillery corps and then immediately abdicated from the Spanish throne on 11 February 1873. At ten o’clock that same night, Spain was proclaimed a republic, at which time Amadeo made an appearance before the Cortes, proclaiming the Spanish people ungovernable.

Completely disgusted, the ex-monarch left Spain and returned to Italy, where he resumed the title of Duke of Aosta. The First Spanish Republic lasted less than two years, and in November 1874 Alfonso XII, the son of Isabella II, was proclaimed king, with Antonio Cánovas del Castillo, Spanish intermittent prime minister from 1873 until his assassination in 1897, briefly serving as regent.

After the death of his first wife, Amadeo married his French niece, Princess Maria Letizia Bonaparte (20 November 1866 – 25 October 1926), daughter of his sister Maria Clotilde and of Napoléon Joseph Charles Paul Bonaparte, a nephew of Napoleon I. They had one child, Umberto (1889-1918), who died of the flu during the First World War.

Amadeo remained in Turin, Italy until his death on 18 January 1890, less than two years after marrying his second wife. His friend Puccini composed the famous elegy for string quartet Crisantemi in his memory.

Lake Amadeus in central Australia is named after him, as is the Philippine municipality of Amadeo, Cavite.

Spain, officially the Kingdom of Spain (Spanish: Reino de España), is a country mostly located on the Iberian Peninsula in Europe, with there also being two large archipelagoes, the Balearic Islands in the Mediterranean Sea and the Canary Islands off the African Atlantic coast, two cities, Ceuta and Melilla, on the African mainland and several small islands in the Alboran Sea near the African coast. The country’s mainland is bordered to the south and east by the Mediterranean Sea except for a small land boundary with Gibraltar; to the north and northeast by France, Andorra, and the Bay of Biscay; and to the west and northwest by Portugal and the Atlantic Ocean. It is the only European country to have a border with an African country (Morocco) and its African territory accounts for nearly 5% of its population, mostly in the Canary Islands but also in Ceuta and Melilla.

With an area of 505,990 km² (195,360 sq mi), Spain is the largest country in Southern Europe, the second largest country in Western Europe and the European Union, and the fourth largest country in the European continent. By population, Spain is the sixth largest in Europe and the fifth in the European Union. Spain’s capital and largest city is Madrid; other major urban areas include Barcelona, Valencia, Seville, Bilbao and Málaga.

Modern humans first arrived in the Iberian Peninsula around 35,000 years ago. Iberian cultures along with ancient Phoenician, Greek and Carthaginian settlements developed on the peninsula until it came under Roman rule around 200 BCE, after which the region was named Hispania, based on the earlier Phoenician name Sp(a)n or Spania. At the end of the Western Roman Empire the Germanic tribal confederations in migration from Central Europe invaded the Iberian peninsula and established themselves in relatively independent realms in its western provinces, including the Sueves, Alans and Vandals. Eventually, the Visigoths would integrate by force all remaining independent territories in the peninsula, including Byzantine provinces into the Kingdom of Toledo that more or less unified politically, ecclesiastically and legally all the former Roman provinces or successor kingdoms of what was then known in documents as Hispania.

The Visigothic kingdom fell to the Moors except in the north where shortly after started a process known as Reconquista. Spain emerged as a unified country in the 15th century under the Catholic Monarchs, who completed the eight centuries-long Reconquista in 1492. In the early modern period, Spain became one of history’s first global empires, leaving a vast cultural and linguistic legacy that includes over 500 million Hispanophones, making Spanish the world’s second most spoken native language, after Mandarin Chinese.

Spain is a parliamentary democracy and constitutional monarchy, with King Felipe VI as head of state. It is a major developed country with the world’s fourteenth largest economy by nominal GDP and sixteenth largest by purchasing power parity. It is a member of the United Nations (UN), the European Union (EU), the Eurozone, the Council of Europe (CoE), the Organization of Ibero-American States (OEI), the Union for the Mediterranean, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), OSCE, the Schengen Area, the World Trade Organization (WTO) and many other international organisations. Spain has a “permanent invitation” to the G20 summits that occur generally once a year.