This work explores the background and first two years of the First Carlist War--a conflict that pitted conservative northern peasants against the liberal Madrid government in the largest and most sustained case of armed peasant resistance to modernization in nineteenth-century Europe. Originally published in 1984. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.