Royalist Volunteers

The Royalist Volunteer Corps was a Spanish absolutist militia created on 10 June 1823 by the regency appointed in May by the Duke of Angoulême, commander-in-chief of the French army (the Hundred Thousand Sons of Saint Louis) that had invaded Spain in April to "liberate" King Ferdinand VII, who had been "captured" by the liberal regime established after the triumph of the Spanish Revolution of 1820. Many of the royalist troops organised in France to support the French invasion, and members of the royalist factions that had fought against the constitutionalists during the Liberal Triennium, joined this militia. It played a prominent role in the "White Terror" unleashed in the territory controlled by the Regency, forcing the Duke of Angoulême to intervene and issue the Ordinance of Andújar in August 1823. However, the arbitrary violence against the liberals continued.

When Ferdinand VII regained his "freedom" on 1 October 1823 and restored the absolute monarchy for the second time, he did not disband the Royalist Volunteer Corps and continued to use it as an instrument of repression. Most of its members were radical absolutists or ultra-absolutists, and the Corps was described as the "armed wing of ultra-royalism".

It was an absolutist counterpart to the liberal National Militia established by the Constitution of 1812 and expanded during the Triennium. The Corps was officially disbanded in 1833, following the death of Ferdinand VII, and many of its members joined the forces of the Infante Carlos María Isidro during the First Carlist War.