In 1812 Wellington with his
allied British and Spanish troops won the great victory of Salamanca,
captured Madrid, and drove Joseph and the French north to Valencia. In
the same year radical groups of Spaniards, who had learned
revolutionary doctrines from the French, assembled at Cadiz and drafted
a constitution for what they hoped would be their regenerated country.
This written constitution, next in age to the American and the French,
was more radical than either and long served as a model for liberal
constitutions throughout southern Europe. After a preamble in honor of
the "old fundamental laws of this monarchy," the constitution laid down
the very principle of the Revolution: "Sovereignty is vested
essentially in the nation, and accordingly it is to the nation
exclusively that the right of making its fundamental laws belongs." The
legislative power was intrusted to the Cortes, a single-chamber
parliament elected for two years by indirect universal suffrage. The
executive power was given to the king to be exercised by his ministers.
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