Sagasta derived much benefit from the divisions which made democracy powerless; and he Was able to cope with Carlism chiefly because the efforts of the pretender himself abroad, and of his partisans in Spain, were first restrained and then decisively paralysed by the influence of foreign courts and governments, above all by the direct interference of the Vatican in favor of the Spanish regency and of the successor of Alphonso XII.
The young anti most impatient adherents of Carlism vainly pleaded that such an opportunity would not soon be found again, and threatened to take the law into their own hands and unfurl the flag of Dios, Patria, y Rey in northern and central Spain.
He was too well acquainted with the domestic politics of the Peninsula to suppose that Carlism could ever do more than disturb for a while the tranquillity of Spain.