[Sidenote: [1814-1902 A.D.]]
On the 7th of March, 1814, Ferdinand VII definitely received his
passports from the French. Master of himself once more, he began to think
of means of returning to the capital and recovering his former power.
But, at the same time, he resolved to avoid doing anything that would
seem to sanction modifications accomplished by the cortes, regarding such
as an attack on his sovereign power. To enter Spain without making any
promise at all was the essential point. The king’s counsellors proposed
he should send a king’s messenger to Madrid bearing a letter carefully
flattering the hopes of the Liberal party without undertaking to fulfil
the slightest engagement with regard to it. Ferdinand acted on this
advice, and charged General Zayas to bear to Madrid the news of his
immediate return, and to give the regency a letter wherein were these
ambiguous words:
“As to the re-establishment of the cortes and all they have
been able to do of use for the kingdom during my absence, my
approbation will be given in so far as it all conforms to my
royal intentions.”
The general set out for Madrid with this letter and hastened to arrive
thither, where his coming produced the liveliest enthusiasm. The cortes
affected to see in the message a pledge for the political future of
their sovereign, and abstained thenceforth from those energetic measures
alone able to save them. While they thus lulled themselves in fancied
security, Ferdinand had hastened to gain the Spanish frontier by Toulouse
and Perpignan. On the 24th of March he crossed the Fluvia, limit chosen
by Marshal Suchet as the theatre which was to see the solemn restoration
of the royal captive to the Spanish troops. The ceremony was carried out
amid general enthusiasm, and all the people eagerly ran to assist at such
a novel spectacle.
From this moment, Ferdinand, reinstated in his kingly prerogatives, found
himself under a double influence, one drawing him to the representative
system, the other towards that absolute monarchy which best suited his
desires and tastes. In all the towns he went through, and particularly in
Gerona where he had stayed some days, a people mad with joy, drunk with
enthusiasm, had cast themselves at his feet, had dragged his carriage,
and given most striking testimony of obedience and submission.[124]
Sure now of the destiny awaiting him, he decided to abandon the route
fixed by the decree of the 2nd of February.
During this triumphal journey (24th of March to the 6th of April), the
gravest events had taken place in France, and one may conceive that
Ferdinand, before attempting his _coup d’état_, did not want to get too
far away from the frontier, at any rate while the issues were doubtful.
Certain events were very favourable: the entry of the allies into Paris;
the creation of a provisionary government; Napoleon’s abdication, and
departure for Elba; and lastly the proclamation of Louis XVIII, which
should lead to the suppression of hostilities and the end of the war.
The Aragonese were just as unbridled as the Catalans in expressing
monarchial fanaticism. So while the authorities remained faithful to the
regency, the people showed such enthusiasm for the king that he could no
longer doubt for an instant that he could now venture all. Old courtiers,
interested in seeing the ancient court restored, constantly urged him to
retake absolute authority.
Yet, while the storm was slowly gathering that would sweep them away,
the cortes, always dominated by a perfectly unjustified feeling of
confidence, never ceased publishing decrees which served to feed the
general enthusiasm in the king’s favour. The weak royalist minority
which still existed in their midst had ceased to make common cause with
them. Its leader, Mozo de Rosales, had gone to Valencia carrying a
representation in which the events of the past six years were considered
as a passing saturnalia, similar to those which the Persians used
to celebrate during an interregnum, and which put forth that order
would only reign in Spain from that day when kingly authority should
be reinstated in its integrity. Whilst the cortes waited with lively
impatience to know their fate, they celebrated the fête of the 2nd of
May with great pomp; ascribed several civic rewards to soldiers who
had bravely fought in the war of Independence; transferred the seat of
their meetings from the theatre of Los Canos del Peral to the convent
of Doña Maria of Aragon; and decreed a death sentence against anyone
demanding constitutional reform before eight years. Such were the acts of
the cortes. The cardinal De Bourbon, president of the regency council,
accompanied by the minister of state, Don José Luyando, was to present
himself before the monarch, and a commission, presided over by the Bishop
of Urgel, was to go on in front of him as far as La Mancha plains.
Ferdinand arrived the 16th of April on the borders of Turia. There he
found everything had been prepared by the care of his uncle Don Antonio,
De Macanaz, and Escoiquiz, to whom were united Villamil and Lardizabal,
whose reverses at Cadiz had filled them with bitterness and spite against
the representative system. The highest aristocrats came to Ferdinand
offering him riches enough to enable him to act without the concourse
of the cortes. General Elio, betraying his first duty and oblivious of
obedience owing to the regency, promised the strongest assistance from
all his army corps. A special paper, entitled _Lucindo_, boldly advocated
a return to the old régime. The time had come to act in a decisive
manner. Ferdinand applied himself to the work. In receiving the cardinal
De Bourbon he affected to give him his hand to make him kiss it in sign
of homage, as if to show that the regency was nothing but an emanation
from his own authority. In the same fashion he received the commander’s
bâton which the latter presented before the troops, as if by this to
teach the soldiers that obedience was due to himself alone. He received
representatives from the Persians with cordiality.[125] He made a cavalry
corps precede him commanded by Don Santiago Wittingham, to Madrid, and
then received a solemn oath from all the officers to “support him in all
his rights.”
[Illustration: FERDINAND VII]
Such symptoms were decisive, and, once made public, he had only to
exercise the direct absolute authority which he had just seized. This
is exactly what happened. The king signed on the 4th of May at Valencia
the famous manifesto now so mournfully celebrated. In this he stated
that not only did he refuse to swear to the constitution or to recognise
any decree extraordinary or ordinary, but he declared that constitution
annulled, of no value either to-day or forever, as its acts had never
been nor could be effaced by time. Then, without making known his
absolutist programme, he marched straight on Madrid with General Elio,
having given orders to the cardinal De Bourbon and Luyando to retire, the
one on Toledo, the other on Cartagena.
It seemed impossible that the arrival of General Wittingham almost under
the walls of Madrid should not open the deputies’ eyes as to Ferdinand’s
intentions; nevertheless, they took no measures for their personal
security. The execution of the Valencia decree had been confided to
General Eguia, nominated captain in general of New Castile, and known
under the name of Coletilla because of his attachment to old costumes
and his habit of wearing his hair in a plait at the back of his head
as in Charles III’s time. Eguia, who was commander-in-chief of Elio’s
first division of troops, and who only preceded the king by some days,
was supported by Wittingham’s cavalry and the underhand movements of
the count of Montijo, who had raised the slums of Madrid against those
favourable to the representative system. Under these circumstances he
had not any difficulty in executing the _coup d’état_ with which he
had been intrusted. Thus, while Ferdinand pursued his triumphal march
from Valencia to Madrid in the midst of a joy and enthusiasm officially
worked up, midst subversive cries around him for the suppression of the
constitution and re-establishment of absolutism, while he refused to see
the cortes’ deputation who came before him at La Mancha, all vestiges
of the preceding system were being carefully destroyed in the city. A
terrible persecution fell on all the men who had helped in establishing
the constitutional system.
In the one night of the 10th of May, 1814,--a day so celebrated in
the annals of the Spanish liberals,--Eguia took from their houses and
imprisoned all regency members, all state councillors, all deputies who
were known as partisans to the constitution whether in the actual cortes
or the preceding one. Of this number were the two regents Don Pedro
Agar and Don Gabriel Ciscar, the ministers Don Juan Alvarez Guerra and
Don Manuel Garcia Herreros, the constituents Muñoz Torrero, Arguelles,
Oliveros, Villanueva, the deputies Martínez de la Rosa, Canga-Arguelles,
and Cepero. Some had the good luck to escape, among these Toreño and
Isturiz. As to the others, they were surprised in their homes. So
unexpected was such a ruse in the then circumstances of the country, that
no one had dreamed of taking the slightest precautions. The day after
their arrestation they were constantly exposed to the insults of the
multitude who reproduced in Spain all the excesses of that blind reaction
in the south of France. The Madrid populace, after having torn away the
corner-stone of the constitution, went in tumultuous procession to the
quiet street where the prisoners were shut up, and there shouting “Death
to the liberals!” they begged with frightful cries permission to drag the
corpses in the mud as they had dragged the stone of the constitution.
This tumult was the work of the count of Montijo and several monks
who, seeing the star of their ascendency reappear in the horizon--an
ascendency lost for six years--had, at the same time as the Valencia
decree was proclaimed in all the squares, circulated a scandalous leaflet
having for the object an organised proscription and the raising of the
masses against all partisans of the liberal system. Thus the 13th of
May, 1814, saw Ferdinand’s triumphal entry into his capital. He had
already given his reign the distinctive character that marks it out in
history: an obstinate return to old ideas; a cruel proscription against
all the men devoted to culture and intelligence and gifted with liberal
aspiration; a stirring up of the masses by a recrudescence of religious
fanaticism; an exaltation of monarchical principle pushed as far as
absolutism, and a near re-establishing of the Inquisition, convents,
favouritism, and all their fatal consequences.[b]
The great mass of the people, who were not enlightened enough to feel
the want, or appreciate the blessings, of political liberty, had not
sufficient experience of the benefits which the new institutions were
calculated to confer to have conceived any value for them; and the
troops, who, from their intercourse with the English army, might have
learned some respect for liberty and equal laws, were hostile to the
cortes on account of the neglect and injustice with which they had
frequently been treated.
Ferdinand proceeded to acts for which no palliation can be found, namely,
inflicting punishments upon those who had defended his cause when he
himself had abandoned it, but had, in his opinion, forfeited all claim
to his gratitude, by seeking to limit the power they preserved for him.
Fortunately, however, Sir Henry Wellesley extorted from the king a solemn
promise that no blood should be shed for political opinions. No lives
therefore were taken. But the cardinal De Bourbon was banished to Rome.
The only symptom of gratitude shown by Ferdinand to those who had so
zealously served him, was his confirming to Lord Wellington the honours
and rewards conferred upon him by the cortes.
In America the long-pending dispute with the United States respecting the
boundaries of Louisiana and West Florida was finally settled by the sale
of both the Floridas to that power. The war with the colonies continued,
but altered in character. Ferdinand there took part with the cortes he
had condemned, pertinaciously refused to acknowledge the equality, the
sort of federal connection with the mother-country that the colonies
claimed, and wasted the resources of Spain by sending his best troops
across the Atlantic to assert the old Spanish monopoly. The colonies,
exasperated by this return for their loyalty, now disowned the authority
of Ferdinand, and proclaimed their entire and absolute independence.
Ferdinand resisted these pretensions yet more vehemently than the former,
but it was evident from the beginning that Spain had finally lost her
transatlantic empire. Cuba, Porto Rico, and the Philippines were her only
remaining colonies.
As the short convulsion, which followed Napoleon’s return from Elba in
the following spring and was terminated by the dreadful and glorious
battle of Waterloo as finally sealing Bonaparte’s fall, produced no other
effect in the peninsula than an order to arm, a detail of these affairs
would be out of place here.[q]
THE REIGN OF TERROR
[Sidenote: [1814-1824 A.D.]]
A famous society, that of the Exterminating Angel, had extended its roots
over the whole country under the direction of a former regent, the bishop
of Osma, and was moving all the apostolics of the peninsula as by a
single mind. It had relations with the principal bishops to whom several
owed their offices; its ramifications crept into all the monasteries, and
much more violent than its French chapter it preached the extermination
of all the liberals.
The military commissions set to work with a new activity aided by a
mass of regulations whose laconism and hypocrisy were only equalled by
their vigour and violence. They had the power of condemning to death
all who were guilty of lèse-majesté, that is to say all who declared
themselves opposed to the rights of the king or in favour of the
constitution. With the help of this ambiguous phrase, any writer who
put into print any words in which the rights of Ferdinand were doubted,
anyone who in any manner whatever had co-operated in the revolution of
1820-1823; anyone who kept in his house a copy of the constitution, a
portrait of Riego, any souvenir whatsoever of the illustrious exiles
living in a foreign country, anyone who by a shout or word, spoken
even in drunkenness, showed hatred of tyranny--any of these could be
found guilty of lèse-majesté. A decree bearing the date of October
9th, 1824, which through some expiring sentiment of modesty was not
inserted in the official gazette, but nevertheless was applied with
care, suppressed all of the laws and delivered the lives of all citizens
over to these tribunals. A premium was put upon information and a secret
police penetrated into every household in order to divine the secret of
consciences and to purge Spain of all the liberal element. Not age, sex,
virtue, or poverty were protection against these terrible commissions;
wealth alone sometimes saved from death. He who had some fortune bought
his life with the greatest part of his property.
The commission of Madrid, presided over by a fierce brute named Chaperon,
who acquired the melancholy honour of giving his name to the whole
epoch, surpassed all its rivals in the number of condemnations and
severity of sentences. It sent to the scaffold all those in whose homes
portraits of Riego were discovered, and to the galleys the women and
children who committed the crime of not denouncing their husbands or
fathers. More than one well-born woman thrown into infamous prisons with
the most odious criminals died of despair in the midst of the unjust
abjection to which she saw herself reduced. Chaperon, like all the judges
who consented to make themselves the devoted instruments of social
hatred, rejoiced in the midst of the terror which his name inspired, and
under the general torpor that it created. He assisted at executions in
full uniform; they were fête days for him, and on one occasion, anxious
to hasten the execution of one of his condemned (it was a national
militiaman who had taken part in the defence of Madrid, the 7th of July,
against the revolted guards), he pulled, himself, the legs of the poor
victim already hanging from the fatal gibbet, and this exploit finished,
retired, proud to have exercised the functions of executioner and
judge.[b]
THE TYRANNIES OF FERDINAND “THE DESIRED”
[Sidenote: [1814 A.D.]]
The places left in the power of the French were evacuated one by one,
and finally, on the 20th of July, Spain gave its assent to the treaty of
peace and friendship which the allies had concluded with France on the
30th of the preceding May. In the beginning of May the king had found
a ministry which he modified before the end of the month, but at the
head of it each time he placed the duke of San Carlos. The system of
persecution continued and everything which seemed to favour innovations
was vigorously opposed. Ferdinand regained his power, the cortes had
disappeared, the constitution of Cadiz existed only in people’s memories.
The Spain of 1814 became again the Spain of 1807; as before, she was
subject to the joint domination of prince and clergy. The legislative
bodies which constituted the government and the chief judicial magistracy
of 1808 were abolished in 1814.
Among the reforms introduced by Joseph’s government and by that of the
cortes after him, there were some which were unjust, extortionate,
contrary to the re-established order; but there were others which should
have been retained or modified with reservations. The king had no thought
of making a choice. He considered, not the nature of the acts, but their
origin; the good and the bad, salutary reform and disastrous measure, all
were included in a general proscription. The state, impoverished by a
long war, had at hand timely assistance in the estates of the religious
communities, without being obliged to impose heavy burdens on the
people; never had there been such a favourable opportunity for limiting
and regulating these exaggerated possessions which had fallen into
_mortmain_. A measure calling for investigation and reform which had been
authorised by a papal bull under Charles IV might now have been carried
into effect. But no attention was paid to anything of the kind. All their
goods of which the cortes had disposed were returned to the convents,
and at the same time a royal order re-established the holy office of
the Inquisition on the ground that the government of usurpation and the
pretended cortes had regarded the suppression of this tribunal as a very
efficacious method of furthering their perverse schemes. The Jesuits were
recalled, receiving again the goods which had belonged to them in the
preceding century.
The administration of the realm was with great pains thrown again into
the secular confusion out of which so many ministers had laboured to
disentangle it. Instead of the happy division of territory decreed
by the cortes, there reappeared the spectacle of provinces governed
by captains-general, who added to their plenitude of military and
administrative authority certain judicial attributes. Lastly the councils
of Castile, of the Indies, of the orders, of finance, marine and war,
authorities independent of the ministry, whose traditions made them
hostile to any reform undertaken in the interests of the reigning power
or of the people, began again to operate.
Around Ferdinand was formed that too famous _camarilla_[126] controlled
by the Russian minister, which, wholly lacking in a broad outlook, seemed
to have no object but destruction and vengeance. At the same time that
it overturned all which the revolution had done for the unity of Spain,
it struck at all those men who had incurred its hatred. Ten thousand
Spaniards had had the misfortune to attach themselves to the French
cause; they were banished and their goods confiscated. The members of the
regency, those of the cortes, all the ministers, all the individuals who
had taken part in framing the constitution or had been zealous partisans
of it, were brought before commissioners to be tried with no legal
formality. The number of the condemned was considerable: _presides_,
imprisonment in the citadels, exile--such were the penalties inflicted;
the king made no use of his right of pardon and these acts continued with
cold perseverance. Two years after the king had regained his full power,
the prisons were still full, and long proscription lists still appeared
at intervals.
Such a government could not fail to have a dire influence on the interior
prosperity of the country; but it is difficult to imagine the extent of
the disorder into which everything had been thrown. It was necessary to
resort to arbitrary taxes which caused discontent without affording much
relief to the treasury and to exorbitant custom duties which completed
the destruction of commerce by breaking off all relations with foreign
countries. The old régime, to remain in possession of Spain, would have
needed the treasures of the New World to hold the country in subjection,
and to defray the expenses of an administration useless at its best. But
then it would have had to get the better of the insurrections already
victorious or soon to be so in Venezuela, Chile, Peru, Buenos Ayres,
and Mexico, and to combat all the points of that immense continent at
once. In order to quell their revolution, which was termed a revolt,
an army needed first to be procured. To embark this army a fleet was
necessary for the equipment of which both time and means were lacking;
the government was reduced to bargaining for ships with Russia. In order
to obtain immediate assistance it had to resort to a system of credit and
give some assurance of a good administration together with securities for
the public debt. This necessity was so pressing that in the ministerial
council Don Martin Garay, surnamed the Necker of Spain, and several
others of the same school were placed at the side of men like Eguia and
Lozano de Torres, those defenders of ancient customs.
Garay had to promise services for which he had no resources and at the
same time establish credit for an enormous public debt, the securities
for which had just been taken away. Garay had counted on resources
which were daily becoming more illusory through the complete cessation
of commerce and the disastrous state of agriculture. Events in America
demanded an expenditure of forces which Spain could not have mustered
even in her palmiest days. When Garay wished to resort to more radical
measures, he was sent into exile. Nothing seemed able to uplift the
credit of the industrial situation of Spain, blockaded from Cadiz to
Corunna by the corsairs of the insurgent colonies, compromised with the
United States for Florida, and obliged to purchase the seeming neutrality
of England in the struggle with the colonies.
A SERIAL REVOLUTION (1814-1822 A.D.)
[Sidenote: [1814-1818 A.D.]]
By reason of so much capricious violence the upper classes had become
discontented and the people indifferent, the government was reduced to
relying on armed force. But the army itself, ill equipped and ill paid,
was become a hotbed of insurrection. Secret societies were organised
everywhere and complaints led to plots. The well-known guerilla Mina
responded by an armed revolt to a refusal to give him the title of
captain-general in Navarre, but he was abandoned by his companions and
escaped death only by flight to France in 1814. In 1815, General Diaz
Porlier incited the garrisons of Corunna and Ferrol to revolt for a brief
space, and proclaimed the constitution of Cadiz. He was also abandoned
and ended his life on the gallows. Even in Madrid a conspiracy was formed
headed by War Commissioner Richard, who perished on the scaffold in
1816. The next year General Lacy undertook in Catalonia what Porlier had
attempted in Galicia. The plot was discovered and Lacy shot. In Valencia
in 1818 also revolts took place; the captain-general Elio[127] seized
the insurgent chief Vidal, who was immediately hung with twelve of his
accomplices.
[Illustration: GENERAL FRANCISCO MINA]
So many unsuccessful attempts served only to irritate the malcontents who
still hoped to find better support among their companions at arms. Such
was the disposition of a number of officers at Cadiz, where an army was
slowly and with difficulty being got together for a definitive expedition
against the rebellious colonies, upon which all the hopes of the Spanish
government were concentrated. The soldiers were frightened by tales of
old mutilated warriors who had returned from Colombia. They were made to
see the possibility of escaping the misfortune which awaited them without
being exposed to the reproach or suspicion of a lack of courage. They
were told stories of the last war, of the liberty conquered and then
lost, of honour compromised.
[Sidenote: [1818-1820 A.D.]]
The conspirators had more hope of success because they had the chief of
the expedition himself, O’Donnell, the count of Abisbal, on their side;
but this general turned traitor, denounced the conspirators, and even
arrested some of them. But he too was later suspected, and was recalled
with all the signs of disgrace. Persecutions recommenced. Everything
pointed to a redoubling of rigour which in turn produced a redoubling of
irritation and also of hope. The conspirators again took up their plans
which had been interrupted for an instant, but this time they did not
look to generals for help. A less distinguished leader gave the impulse
to revolt in one of the cantonments.
The 1st of January, 1820, Rafael del Riego assembled a battalion encamped
in a village, presented it with the constitution of 1812 as the law
of the country, to which he made it swear allegiance, marched upon
Arcos, surprised and captured O’Donnell’s successor Calderon with his
staff, and continued his march upon San Fernando where he was joined by
Colonel Quiroga. But the gates of Cadiz remained closed to them, the
garrison and the fleet took on a hostile attitude toward the rebels.
At the same time an army of thirteen thousand men under General Freire
arrived with forced marches to quell the insurrection. Thereupon Riego
advanced towards the centre of Andalusia preaching insurrection and
proclaiming the constitution of Cadiz. But the general indifference of
the country was enough to thwart the enterprise of the insurgents. There
was discouragement in the camp at the isle of Leon and, the governmental
forces accumulating in Andalusia, it seemed that the rebellion was about
to expire.
But the emissaries charged with arousing the provinces worked without
relaxation. The 21st of February they succeeded in proclaiming the
constitution in the capital of Galicia. Ferrol followed this example
the 23rd. The same thing took place at Vigo. The government tried to
compromise with the revolution and offered to assemble the cortes, but no
confidence was placed in these promises because it was remembered that
the decree of May 4th, 1814, by which the constitution was abolished,
had promised to convoke the cortes but had not been carried into effect.
The revolutionaries of the capital incited by the feebleness of the
government worked openly towards their object. General Ballesteros,
who came to Madrid to declare to the monarch that he must accept the
constitution, was hailed as a deliverer by the king; the 9th of March
Ferdinand took the oath for this act which he detested, at the moment
when Riego’s column, reduced to a few men, was forced to disband, and the
garrison at Cadiz was energetically opposing the insurrection.
When the king had sworn to observe the constitution of 1812, the people
and the troops which still remained faithful gave up without resistance.
Everyone had been affected by the disastrous effects of the régime to
which the country had been subjected for several years and all were
glad to be freed from it without a civil war. The prisons were opened.
The reins of government were in the hands of ministers whose ideas were
wholly popular. Several provinces were governed by juntas, one was
established even in the capital, which was known as the provisional
junta. The government consulted it on all important matters. The country
awaited with impatience the arrival of the deputies who were to give it a
better order of things than that from which it had just been delivered,
instead of giving thought to the necessary improvements. Thoughtful
minds perceived that it was necessary substantially to modify the civil
legislation; to render remunerative large masses of untaxed property;
to negotiate with Rome a reform which would alter the position of the
clergy; to re-establish the financial situation; to place the provinces
under a common law, combining extensive local liberty with unity of
administration; above all not to imitate the preceding government in its
deeds of violence.
The first acts of the cortes showed that it understood its task. An
important law concerning entailed estates was passed in a spirit of
wisdom; they were placed in the category of free property and their
owners could dispose of them with certain reservations and just
conditions. But the assembly was largely composed of members of the
special cortes of Cadiz who considered the work of the constitution
perfect and would suffer no change in it. Thus, before proceeding to
anything else, it was necessary to deal with those who had opposed their
constitution in 1814--the sixty-nine deputies known as the Persians, who
had presented the king at Valencia with an address in favour of absolute
power. On the other hand the enthusiasts wanted to advance much more
quickly in the path of improvement. There soon came to be a distinction
between the liberals of 1812 and those of 1820. The radical party soon
kept no bounds; its papers, its clubs attacked the ministers, the cortes,
the king. It was supported by the army of the isle of Leon, and the
government wished to disperse the bodies composing the latter among the
different garrisons. The men of the isle of Leon thereupon took occasion
to send to Madrid Riego, who was commander-in-chief during the absence of
Quiroga, deputy to the cortes. Here applause and ovations were lavished
upon the leader of the men of 1820, who, carried away by popular favour,
braved the cortes and the ministers. But the garrison and the national
militia decided for the established order. Riego was exiled to Oviedo,
the army of the isle was disbanded.
[Illustration: GENERAL RAFAEL DEL RIEGO]
Nevertheless the presence of Riego at Madrid gave an impulse to the
radicals which remained after his departure. Fresh conspiracies were
brought to light against the new régime. The discussion of the law
regarding religious orders was affected by their attitude of mind. They
tried to accomplish at once, what should have been the work of years. In
immediately suppressing the greater part of the religious congregations
and putting their goods up for sale, difficulties of more than one kind
were created. In Catalonia and Valencia troops had to guard the gates of
the monasteries day and night to prevent pillage and massacre. The king
had hesitated to sanction the decree, and, after the session closed on
the 9th of November, he made an unsuccessful trial of absolute power by
nominating General Carvajal captain-general of New Castile, without the
signature of the minister of war. The fermentation then became terrible
and the minister augmented it in order to frighten the king. The latter
threatened and insulted on all sides was forced to return to Madrid
from his retreat in the Escorial. When one day his bodyguard was moved
to pity by the dangers he ran, their quarter was besieged and the corps
disorganised. The _ayuntamiento_ of Madrid imposed their measure on the
government.
[Sidenote: [1820-1821 A.D.]]
After having swallowed so many affronts Ferdinand wished to make an
attempt to shake off the yoke. He hoped with his new resolution to
impose on his adversaries, who were troubled by the attitude of the
great European powers, since England alone had frankly recognised the
constitutional government. Russia had not concealed her displeasure at
the triumph of the insurrection. Prussia and Austria held themselves in
a reserve which boded no good, and France had tried to bring about a
change in the position of the king of Spain. Ferdinand chose the opening
of the second session of the cortes, on March 1st, 1821, to deliver his
attack. After finishing the customary address prepared by his ministers
he read a supplement added by himself complaining of the ministers who
had permitted his person to be subjected to such outrages. The next day
he dismissed them and chose a new cabinet from the moderate party of
the chamber. Events in Piedmont and Naples gave cause for conflicting
sentiments. Attempts of the absolutists gave rise to disturbances in
Valencia, Corunna, Seville, and Barcelona. The king in order to ward off
the anger of the demagogues sent a message to the cortes expressing his
grief over events in Italy and his sympathy with the Italian patriots.
The ministry, also desiring to forestall public defiance, on April 17th
proposed two laws, one of which pronounced a sentence of death on all who
should try to overturn the religion of the constitution, and a decree of
banishment against any person who used any expression tending to such an
overthrow. The second law provided that those accused of conspiracy and
arrested by armed force, whatever their social position, be placed before
a military tribunal chosen from the corps which had made the arrest.
Judgment was to be pronounced within six days, and executed within
forty-eight hours after being confirmed by the chief military authority.
There was to be no appeal or exercise of pardon by the king. The populace
would have liked to apply this law to all political offenders.
[Sidenote: [1821-1822 A.D.]]
Confusion increased from day to day. Republican uprisals took place in
Malaga and Barcelona. In the environs of Manresa were armed bands in
the name of “the faith.” There was conspiracy at Murcia and absolutist
agitation at Malaga. Bands were arming themselves on the frontier of
France, and no one knew where to turn for money to organise the sadly
needed troops. The cortes was moreover beginning to give way before the
weight of events which attacked it on all sides. The question of the
independence of America terrified it, and it did not care to renounce
the pretensions of despotic Spain over men who had made use of the right
of insurrection. But negotiations proved useless. Out of so many vast
possessions Spain retained only a few fortified places occupied by the
remnants of its armies.
Riots became more and more frequent at Madrid, but they were put down by
the courage and _sangfroid_ of Morillo. The cortes separated February
22nd, 1822, at a moment when Seville and Valencia were given up to
rebellion, the Basque provinces and Navarre were infested with bands
armed in the name of the altar and of the throne, others in Aragon,
Alcañiz, Calatayud, Alagon, and Caspe proclaimed the authority of the
Virgin and of religion.
The new cortes opened the 1st of March, 1822, with Riego as president,
who very soon fell into discord with the new ministry presided over by
Martínez de la Rosa. The quarrels between the branches of power incited
absolutist riots and revolutionary insurrection throughout the country.
The cortes finally decided to send a message to the king informing him of
the necessity of putting a stop to the critical situation of the realm.
After stating its complaints it demanded more resolute men at the head
of affairs, and also the expulsion of prelates and priests who preached
fanaticism and rebellion. The king relying on popular manifestation
in his favour did not reply to the deputation. In Catalonia was a
considerable body called Army of the Faith under the command of Miralles,
Romagosa, and Marañon, called the Trappist, who succeeded in capturing
Urgel by assault.[d]
CHÂTEAUBRIAND’S ACCOUNT OF THE CHAOS
The eminent writer Châteaubriand, who was a representative of France at
the Congress of Verona, and who was one of the principal advocates of the
French invasion of Spain, has brilliantly pictured the chaos of affairs,
in 1822, which led him to think French intervention necessary. We may
quote briefly his description:
The press, secret societies, clubs, had disorganised everything.
Barcelona, Valencia, Pamplona had risen. One side cried “_Vive Dieu!_”
the other “_Vive Riego!_” Killing was carried on in the name of Him who
murders not and of him who murders. At Madrid, regiments fought against
the royal grenadiers; young men walked about the streets crying for
absolute monarchy. God and the king! It was all one in Spain; _las ambas
magestades_. In the very house of cortes, deputies were saying that a
refusal to listen to the popular complaint authorised dagger justice.
Riego, the president, was powerless. He was always ready to sing the
_Trágala_.[128] A couplet of it might at any moment mean a crown; but,
if it was not good, the crown would vanish, and one would remain on the
highway with the throne changed into a mere stage.
The _serviles_, who paraded their name as proudly as though it were
a royal designation, profited by one hour’s respite and reaction
against secret societies to re-seize power. Royalist risings replaced
revolutionary insurrections. The Descamisados, matadors in _servile_
pay, were beaten in their turn. They revived the human sacrifices of
their Carthaginian ancestors. Monarchical sections appeared under the old
guise. Govostidi, Misas, Merino, fabulous heroes of the presbytery, rose
in Biscay, Catalonia, and Castile. Insurrection spread. Quesada, Juanito,
Santo-Ladron, Truxillo, Schafaudino, and Hierro were all alive with it.
Finally Baron Eroles showed himself in Catalonia. Near him was Antonio
Marañon. Antonio, called the Trappist, was first a soldier, then fled
into cloistered life under the influence of passion. He carried cross
and sword with equal enthusiasm. His military dress was a Franciscan
gown, on which hung a crucifix. At his waist hung a sword, pistols, and a
rosary. He used to gallop along carrying a whip. Peace and war, religion
and license, life and death, were united in one man, who alternately
blessed and exterminated. Crusades and civil massacres, psalms and war
hymns, _Stabat Mater_ and _Trágala_, genuflection and _jota Aragonese_,
triumphs as martyr or soldier, souls mounting heavenwards to strains of
the _Veni Creator_, rebels shot to military music--such was existence in
this corner of the world.
Ferdinand, on the banks of the Tagar, _rio qui cria oro e piedras
preciosas_, had sworn to the constitution only to betray it. Sincere
friends invited him to modify instructions, working with the cortes.
Shortsighted friends urged him to overthrow them; royalist successes
secretly flattered the king; the hope of an uncontrolled sovereignty
gratified him. Want of power to wield power made him love it the more.
The king’s birthday fell on the 30th of May. It was celebrated by the
peasants of La Mancha, reunited at Aranjuez. In vain the soldiers
repeated the patriotic cry of the peasants, even as the bodyguard
at Versailles sang “_O Richard! O mon Roi!_” If France had not soon
interfered, Ferdinand would have followed where Richard led Louis XVI.
The militia marched on the people, and a townsman lifted his sword
against Don Carlos--that last of the kings and one who waited so heavy a
crown. At Valencia, a detachment of artillery wanted to deliver General
Elio, shut up in the citadel. The Catalonian insurgents, now organised,
had taken the name of the Army of the Faith.[f]
CIVIL WAR
On the 21st of June, 1822, the Army of the Faith learned the isolated
condition of the feeble garrison in Seo de Urgel. Romanillo, Romagosa,
and Miralles, with the Trappist, arranged to meet under its walls. Helped
by the citizens, they immediately surrounded the citadel. An assault was
decided on, and the Trappist, setting an example to the soldiers, was the
first to scale the tower, a crucifix in one hand, in the other a long
whip, emblem of power. He braved the balls directed against him, and the
soldiers, persuaded of his invulnerability, followed after. The tower was
taken, the other forts were surrendered, and next day the citadel, with
sixty artillery pieces and sixteen hundred guns, was in the hands of the
apostolics. This first success was most important, for the French aides
had, in promising help, made a formal condition that the Army of the
Faith should possess at least one stronghold.
In proportion to the consternation excited among the leaders by the
taking of Seo de Urgel, so was Ferdinand strongly roused and the courage
of those about him stirred. It was now a question with them all of
quickly striking a decisive blow. The instrument for this was soon found
in the royal guard, wherein most lively discontent reigned because the
cortes had shown intention of reorganising it, and who, seeing themselves
in danger of losing all their privileges, had decided to fight against
the national militia, whose principles were particularly odious to them.
This guard at Madrid alone numbered six entire battalions; that is, a
more considerable force than the rest of the garrison, and there was,
moreover, a brigade of carbineers, then in garrison at Castro del Rio,
near Cordova. A young officer, already celebrated at Cadiz for his
royalist devotion, Don Luis Fernandez of Cordova, received from the king
or had a self-imposed mission to concentrate all this military force and
lead it against the established system. The projected reforms of the
cortes made this easy, and, on the 25th of June, the carbineers of Castro
del Rio raised the standard of revolt in Andalusia. At Aranjuez and
Madrid the royal guards began a series of struggles with the people and
the militia--struggles which every day became more animated. On the 27th
the court returned from Aranjuez to the capital, and this was the signal
for fresh outbreaks. The royal ceremony of closing the first session
of the cortes took place on the 30th. This important act was carefully
observed, because Ferdinand did not think himself really in a position
to act until he had freed himself from these importunate adversaries.
But on returning from the ceremony, when the king had just regained his
palace, a lively quarrel burst out. Some shouted “Long live our absolute
king!” and some “Long live the constitution!” The guards were simply
furious. Stationed at the Plaza de Oriente, they suddenly returned to the
crowd, drove them back, and chased away some national militia picketed on
the square. Then they organised themselves in military style as though
in an enemy’s city. Some among their officers belonged to the cortes,
one of them, Mamerto Landáburu, wanted to recall his men to discipline.
They insulted him, whereupon he drew his sword to punish the offenders
himself, but, far from being listened to, he became their first victim.
Three grenadiers struck him behind and he fell bathed in his own blood at
the very gates of the palace.
The Madrid populace had for two years been too accustomed to scenes of
tumult, to rise at the news of an isolated act. But the national militia
took arms incontinently, and seized two plazas.
It was a critical moment for Ferdinand. Supported by a military force
which would only take orders from himself, he could find a serious
concourse in the ministry against all his enemies, if he only consented
to the drawing up of a charter and granting the representative
institutions for which he had shown so much anxiety before M. de Villèle.
But the king thought himself now in a position to acquire absolute power.
He knew that a regiment of militia had joined with the carbineers at
Castro del Rio; and he had seen insurgent troops of Andalusia coming
to help his guards at the very doors of his palace. However, he had
to reckon with the militia and the garrison of Madrid, and these two
elements were preparing to fight with a calmness and courage that argued
success. These formed under the name of the Holy Battalion, and under
Don Evaristo San Miguel there was a special corps composed of ardent
patriots. The most distinguished generals, Ballesteros, Alava, and
Palarea, showed inclination to make the laws respected. For several days
the two parties remained face to face. The two battalions stationed at
the palace were vilely seduced by the king and his courtiers. Money was
freely scattered among the guards, and they were excited to fight by
promises of all kinds.
By the 6th the necessity of taking a definite step was felt. But
favourable news arriving of the insurrection of Castro del Rio, the
aspect of affairs suddenly changed. Orders were given that neither the
ministers, the state councillors, nor the political leader were to leave
the palace, as grave events might happen during the night.
And just so it happened. The four Pardo battalions marched on the capital
in the hope of surprising it and disarming the national militia. Arrived
at one of the chief gates, they divided into three columns, one making
for the artillery park, a second to the Puerta del Sol, and a third to
the Constitution square. As fate so willed, the first column met a
patrol of the Holy Battalion, and this circumstance decided the issue
of the struggle. A few stray shots awoke the people. In an instant
every patriot was afoot; each ran to his post, and the guards were
driven from the artillery park and the Plaza Mayor. They retired in
sufficiently good order on the Puerta del Sol column, which had tried
to take the Casa de Correos, but had been stopped by means of a strong
barricade put up behind the door. A governmental committee exacted that
the four rebellious battalions should lay down their arms, and allowed
the other two to go out armed to settle in the villages of Vicalvaro and
Leganes, with the one condition that they should give up the murderers of
Landáburu.
This capitulation ought to have ended the struggle, but did nothing of
the sort. The four battalions to be disarmed refused obedience, going out
of the palace by a gate which led to the Campo del Moro and fleeing in
the direction of Alcorcon, after discharging their arms at the militia.
After this, no conciliatory efforts were made. Three columns, commanded
by Ballesteros, Copons, and Palarea pursued and smote them hip and thigh,
killing a great number and taking many prisoners. If some stories can
be believed, Ferdinand crowned his infamy in these memorable days by
personally urging on the conquerors. “After them! After them!” cried he
to Morillo from his balcony, so ordering the extermination of those who
had given themselves to his cause.[b]
[Sidenote: [1822-1823 A.D.]]
The new administration began by banishing from the capital all those
who were suspected of having counselled this last attempt of the court,
and by appointing new officers; Quiroga received the command in Galicia
and Mina in Catalonia. At Valencia General Elio was condemned for an
imaginary crime by a council of war in obedience to the cries of the
populace, and was strangled on September 11th. But while the conquerors
of July 7th were pursuing their triumph, civil war was spreading its
ravages, and events of a new order gave it a more political character.
At Urgel a government was established with the title “supreme regency
of Spain during the captivity of the king.” This was recognised by a
majority of the officers in the so-called royal army, by General Eguia,
O’Donnell, the general inquisitor, the bishop of Pamplona and various
juntas of the provinces. The troops obtained some successes and were
aided by the French government. Its agents were favourably received by
the congress at Verona. Nevertheless it was compelled to evacuate Urgel,
and install itself at Puycerda, whence it was forced to retreat to France
and terminate its existence at Toulouse on December 7th. Mina pursued the
royalist bands relentlessly.
The next extra session of the cortes opened the 7th of October at a
moment when war was raging on the northern frontier. The famous brigand
Jayme Alfonso had raised the standard of the faith in Murcia; the priest
Merino had also re-entered the field. Civil war raged in Castile,
Andalusia, and in the province of Toledo.[d]
INTERVENTION OF THE HOLY ALLIANCE (1823 A.D.)
But Spain was not allowed to work out its own salvation. Europe was
dominated at this time by the Holy Alliance, which disguised a resolution
to repress popular liberties and to maintain despotism under a pretended
zeal for piety, justice, and brotherly love. At the Congress of Verona
(October, 1822), France, Austria, Russia, and Prussia agreed upon armed
intervention in Spain, in spite of the protest of Canning on the part
of England. Spain was to be called upon to alter her constitution and to
grant greater liberty to the king, and if an unsatisfactory answer was
received France was authorised to take active measures.[a]
In the first days of January, 1823, France, Austria, Russia, and
Prussia presented notes at Madrid demanding a change in the political
constitution and the liberty of the king. On the 11th of the month the
cortes declared that it would make no concessions to the threatening
powers. The ambassadors of Russia, Austria, and Prussia demanded their
passports at once and left Madrid; the French minister followed soon
after.
A cruel blow to the strength of the constitutionals followed in the
success of various royalist armies. On February 19th, 1823, after the
closing of the extraordinary sessions of the cortes, the news of the
deposition of the ministry caused violent disorder. The palace was
besieged and the king forced to revoke the decree. The popular societies
of the free masons and the _comuneros_ fought strenuously with each
other: at the same time they agreed in rejecting all proposals to modify
the constitution, in spite of the vice of the duke of Wellington and the
ambassador of England. The new cortes which had opened the 1st of March
was engaged in transferring the government to Seville. The king was
notified that he must prepare himself for such a move, and in spite of
vague and uncertain plots the departure took place on the 20th.[d]
THE FRENCH INVASION
[Sidenote: [1823 A.D.]]
It does not lie within our province to give in detail all the various
incidents which signalled the union of the French army on the borders
of the Pyrenees, and finally the decision to brave events and to pass
the Bidassoa on the 7th of April before the liberals could develop their
plans to seduce the troops.
The French army was divided into five large corps and presented an
effective of ninety-five thousand light infantry and twenty-one thousand
horse. In addition to this very respectable number of troops, the
intervention counted equally on apostolic insurgents in the various
provinces. The baron d’Eroles could bring nearly nine thousand Catalans
in the pay of the Urgel regency. Eguia, at Bayonne, who for two years had
spent a sum of nearly two millions in fomenting civil wars in Navarre
and the Basque provinces, put at the duke of Angoulême’s disposition
all divisions and bands which, under the orders of Carlos, O’Donnell,
Quesada, Guergué, and Longa, had carried on a guerilla warfare against
governmental generals. Finally in the interior of the country relations
were established with all such leaders as Bessières, Sampère, Merino.
One might estimate at least thirty-five thousand men against the
constitutional system.
The French army expected to meet a vigorous resistance in the Basque
provinces, especially as the lay of the land lent itself so admirably
to intelligent strategy. But General Ballesteros, to whom had been
given the task of defending these provinces, surprised perhaps by the
rapidity of an invasion, ordered his troops to retire before the enemy’s
advance-guard. San Sebastian received the French with cannon-shot and
refused to open its gates, but Fuenterrabia and the Passage were occupied
immediately. The duke of Angoulême ordered Bourke to follow up the siege
of San Sebastian, and himself went straight on with the bulk of the army
for Vitoria. The French troops found without the slightest difficulty all
provisions and stores needed, thanks to the business-like ways of the
commissariat Ouvrard, who knew how to raise the speculative spirit in
the Basques, and faithfully paid for all goods brought him. This brought
into a country ravaged by poverty an unexpected good instead of ruin and
desolation. There was no danger encountered in scaling the Pyrenees.
The duke of Angoulême, conqueror without fighting, could establish his
headquarters at Vitoria and patiently wait the concentration of all his
columns before marching directly on the capital.
After the government departed, military authority was concentrated
at Madrid in the hands of General O’Donnell, the count of Abisbal. A
vigorous defence was expected in the Guadarrama defiles, but the count
was not straightforward in his dealing. He had arrived at the highest
honours by flattering each party successively. Instead of arming the
population and occupying the most important points, he entered into
secret negotiations with the staff of the duke of Angoulême, which had
received most detailed instructions to spare bloodshed by using means of
corruption, with which it had been generously provided. Gained over to
the cause against which he had pronounced in 1820, Abisbal openly pointed
out to his officers the impossibility of resisting the invasion. The army
officers, indignant, went in a body to his house and intimated that it
was time for him to resign. Abisbal realised the danger he ran, and fled
to France.
An army thus abandoned by its leader at the last moment, found itself
unfit to arrest the victorious march of the duke of Angoulême. Of the two
generals who had succeeded Abisbal, one of them, Castel dos Ruis, decided
to go on into Estremadura heading the bulk of his troops. The other,
Zayas, was left with a feeble corps of from twelve to fifteen hundred to
obtain a capitulation which would at least assure life and property to
the inhabitants of Madrid. This last measure was full of foresight, for
while the near coming of the French army was spoken of, Bessières, the
same leader of the band who a little before had threatened Madrid, had
made a bold move and pretended to occupy the city, while his followers
hoped to give it over to pillage. But Zayas, with the help of the
garrison and national militia, fearlessly barred his passage, forced him
to retreat, and kept him outside the city walls until the arrival of the
first French troops--this, in spite of his repeated threats and the rage
of all the bad subjects greedily anticipating an easily won booty.
The multitude in all large cities are always ready for a spectacle,
fête, or anything emotional. Moreover, Madrid had within her a crowd
of partisans of absolutist principles--all those who belonged to the
palace or the clergy, all those whom a liberal administration had
deprived of employment, and the relations of refugees. These warmly
welcomed him who was conqueror over a constitutional system. But the
duke of Angoulême, although received with open arms, with acclamation,
song, and dance, could hardly mistake the general feeling. For while
the absolutists thronged the streets, the middle class, who alone
desired and upheld liberty, hid their humiliation by their firesides.
The duke had to put an end to the excesses of a mad populace who would
overthrow the constitution and pillage the houses of all the well-known
constitutionists. For three days the _manolas_ overran the town singing
the _Pitita_; they went into the churches and solemnly put Ferdinand’s
portrait on the altar in place of the saints. In the hope of getting out
of this anarchistic situation, the duke hastened to give a definite form
to the new government, which would definitely take matters in hand, in a
proclamation dated from Alcobendas (23rd of May, 1823), announcing his
intention of leaving the Spaniards to govern themselves and inviting the
former counsellors of Castile and the Indies to choose a regency to take
the helm of the state until Ferdinand had recovered his full liberty. The
duke of Angoulême made the terrible mistake of sanctioning nominations
that were fatal and soon to be regretted. Then having seen the regency
commence work with the duke of Infantado as president, and the new
ministry formed wherein Canon Victor Saez was minister of foreign affairs
and Don J. B. Erro minister of finance, he thought he could rest with
perfect security and have nothing but his military operations to occupy
him until Ferdinand was seized from the cortes.
The unlucky prince did not realise that, in confiding the government of
Spain to personages picked out by former counsellors, he was practically
condemning the unhappy country to ten years of a horrible system of
persecution and religious fanaticism; that he was making the French flag
responsible for the organisation of the most odious government which
the human mind could conceive, and soiling the white flag he wished to
hold high by making it the symbol of ignorance, fanaticism, and shameful
arbitration.[b]
Meanwhile the cortes held Ferdinand practically a prisoner in Seville.
On the approach of the French the king, protesting violently, was haled
to Cadiz, after the appointment of a regency of three. In his diary
Ferdinand describes vividly the humiliation of his position, and it is
evident that he was treasuring up a wealth of grudges to repay with all
his liberality in spite. Late in June Cadiz was besieged by land and sea.
After a heavy bombardment, during which Ferdinand kept signalling to the
duke of Angoulême, Cadiz fell on the 23rd of September, 1823, and on
October 1st Ferdinand was delivered free to the French at Puerto de Santa
Maria.
THE RETURN OF FERDINAND (1823 A.D.)
The 1st of October Ferdinand crossed from Cadiz to Santa Maria. He was
scarcely in possession of his authority before he annulled every act
which had been passed since March 7th, 1820, and announced that he
considered himself released from all obligations towards his rebellious
subjects and that he was going to punish their assaults. The extreme
party which carried him with it no longer restrained its vengeance. The
duke of Angoulême returned to Madrid and left immediately for Paris.
The king proceeded to the capital where the absolutist party welcomed
him in triumph. But there he saw that he must submit to a new yoke, for
when certain officers of the voluntary royalists were presented to him,
remembering the national militia he remarked that they were “the same
dogs with different collars.”
The conquerors gave themselves up to the intoxication of vengeance. One
of the victims most passionately demanded was Riego, who paid the penalty
for his deeds on the 7th of November in the public square of Madrid.[129]
The generals Ballesteros and Morillo went into exile. The prisons were
full to overflowing. The populace hurled its rage against the liberals,
who were proscribed under the name of Negros; during the ministry of
Victor Saez, the king’s confessor, the hangman seemed to be the most
active instrument of power.
[Sidenote: [1823-1826 A.D.]]
Ferdinand felt himself too strongly ruled by the absolutist faction[130]
and he feared moreover the projects the latter seemed to be forming
in connection with his brother, the infante Don Carlos, for whom they
hoped for a more complete devotion. His old partisan Bessières, now at
the mercy of the faction, having called together his troops without the
government’s order, paid for it on the scaffold. Ferdinand was forced
to retard the evacuation of Barcelona by the French for fear of the
hostility from the partisans of pure despotism; he was obliged to go to
Catalonia to scatter the assemblies of troops clamouring too loudly for
an absolute king, and he returned to Madrid full of fear and suspicion.
His reign after the fall of the Saez ministry is easy to characterise.
No new principle was proclaimed, no abuse was solemnly repudiated. Not
one word of authority gave reason to suppose that at some time any
thought would be given to reforming ancient customs, to modifying the
absolute right of the throne which is inseparable from that of religion.
In 1826, when the Brazilian charter was established in Portugal, a
governmental proclamation still comprised all the duties of a Spaniard in
the following precepts: “Love the king, obey the king, and die for his
absolute power.”
[Illustration: CALOMARDE
(Minister of Ferdinand VII)]
[Sidenote: [1826-1833 A.D.]]
In spite of these formulas another spirit directed affairs. The council
of state had to be purged of its most influential personages. Old
adherents of the constitution and even of King Joseph surrounded the
throne at times, because the king had no other sentiment than that of
personal safety; he did not wish to give himself up completely to the
party which was already proclaiming another name than his own. He had
always had a horror of the constitution, but he did not ignore the fact
that the exclamation of _Vive l’inquisition!_ had been accompanied by
another cry. Thus he saw himself compelled to crush both parties, to
sacrifice without pity the authors of audacious attempts, no matter on
which side they might be. Moreover he had good cause to treat with the
new spirit because he had need of money for his administration and army,
and to get it he had to revert to foreigners. It was declared by the
government which succeeded him that from 1823 to the end of his reign the
public debt increased 665,000,000 francs.
Ferdinand did not wish to constitute a party, to proclaim his
principles, to cause his interests to dominate. He merely chose men
reputed to be skilful and opposed them in his council to men who were
necessary but dangerous. Spain lent itself to this oblique course because
her passions had died out: the voluntary royalists who opposed the Negros
had been punished. The majority of the episcopal body turned a deaf ear
to cries for the re-establishment of the Inquisition. In 1827 the old
hands “of the faith,” who had arisen in Catalonia against Ferdinand and
his ministers, had been crushed with no hope of return. The same causes
brought about the extinction of the liberal effervescence. Mina himself
was obliged to escape by flight from the persecutions of populations
which had once celebrated his exploits.
Ferdinand appeared equally indifferent or undecided in regard to the
members of his family. On March 29th, 1830, when his young wife Maria
Christina of Naples was pregnant, he issued a “pragmatic sanction”
proclaiming as a law of the state a resolution of King Charles IV, made
in accord with a demand of the cortes of 1789, abolishing the Salic
law instituted in 1713 by Philip V, and thus re-established the right
of women to inherit the throne of Spain; but he afterwards showed no
predilection for the young princess Maria Isabella Louisa, who was born
in July of the same year.
[Illustration: DON CARLOS I]
Again he assembled the most devoted partisans of his brother Don Carlos
about his throne, and when an attack of the gout brought him to the
edge of the tomb in September, 1832, he signed a decree revoking the
new law of succession. Then, returned to life again, he placed the
infante Don Carlos at a distance, drove away the ministers who had wrung
the fatal signature from his feeble hand and denounced their odious
manœuvres; and as though to protect himself against new obsessions he
placed the government in the hands of the queen, his wife, until his
health should be restored. He let her publish decrees of amnesty for
political criminals, take measures to destroy the existence of the
voluntary royalists, reduce the privileges of the council of Castile;
then, for fear of seeing her advance too rapidly in the way of reforms,
he had her announce in a manifesto of December that he did not intend
to introduce the slightest innovation into the constitutional laws of
the monarchy, nor to change anything that was established. On January
4th, 1833, he announced that, as his health was sufficiently recovered,
he had reassumed the reins of government. The day before, so that they
might receive full authenticity, the queen placed in the archives the act
of the cortes of 1789 and the revolution of Charles IV in regard to the
abolition of the Salic law. In spite of his antipathy towards innovators
Ferdinand felt that it was necessary to constitute a political force
around the cradle of his daughter. Men for whom the name of Don Carlos
was a menace came together to defend the young princess. A decree of
April 7th, 1833, convened the cortes at Madrid. The 3rd of June, the
nobles, prelates, and delegates of the cities took an oath of allegiance
to the princess of the Asturias, as heiress of the crown of Spain and
the Indes. The 29th of September, 1833, Ferdinand died, leaving a heavy
sceptre in the hands of his daughter.[d]
RISE OF CARLISM
[Sidenote: [1833-1834 A.D.]]
Though Ferdinand while alive had been accumulating legal acts in favour
of direct descent, he had attached more and more importance to obtaining
the acquiescence of his brother Don Carlos in his sovereign will. He had
sent a royal order asking when he thought of recognising the already
proclaimed heiress. Don Carlos, not to be behindhand, profited by this
to take up a definite position as claimant in the eyes of the public. He
wrote his brother a letter which he hastened to make public, in which
these words were found:
You ask whether or not I intend recognising your daughter as
princess of the Asturias? My conscience and honour will not
permit this. My rights to the crown, if I survive you, or
you leave no male posterity, are so legitimate that I need
not enumerate them. These rights were given by God when he
willed my birth, and he alone can take them away by granting
you a son, an event that I desire perhaps even more than you.
Moreover, I am defending the rights of all those who come
after me. Thus I find myself obliged to send you the enclosed
declaration, of which I send a formal copy to you and other
sovereigns, to whom I hope you will communicate it.
Adieu, very dear brother of my heart. I am always yours, always
yours lovingly, and you are ever present in the prayers of your
most affectionate brother,
CARLOS.
The declaration was thus worded:
SIRE:
I, Carlos-Maria-Isidoro de Bourbon, infante of Spain, am
thoroughly convinced of my legitimate rights to the Spanish
throne in case of my surviving you, or your not leaving male
issue. I say that my conscience and my honour will not permit
me to swear to or recognise any other rights, and this I
declare.
Your affectionate and faithful servant,
DON CARLOS, Infante.
RAMALHAO, April 29th, 1833.
In answer to this declaration Ferdinand wrote to his brother saying
that, without dreaming of violating his conscience, he nevertheless must
forbid his returning to Spain, “for very serious political reasons and
in consideration of the country’s laws.” He could not, he continued,
make the declarations to foreign kings, basing his refusal on the
principle that foreign governments ought not to interfere in interior
state affairs. The salutations used were always full of an affectionate
tenderness that formed a curious contrast to the real purport of the
letters.
Don Carlos submitted to the banishment imposed, but had no idea of
leaving Portugal, so as soon as an order came to go to Italy, he busied
himself with reasons for not doing anything of the kind, not openly
refusing that obedience which he had always affected to owe his brother,
but inventing a crowd of pretexts for not rendering it. The now published
correspondence between the two brothers on this occasion shows, on the
infante’s part, a series of successive inventions to excuse his stay in
Portugal, and from the king a refutation of the vain pretexts advanced,
and a constant endeavour to remove obstacles to departure. Ferdinand, at
length, left off using a tone of fraternal love and spoke as an annoyed
king, desiring his brother to say whether he intended to obey or not. The
answer was proud and disdainful. Don Carlos said if he left Portugal,
he would have the air of a fugitive who had committed some crime: that
he declined to put himself in such a shameful position, and, if really
guilty, demanded a trial according to the laws of the realm (July, 1833).
From this date Don Carlos led a party quite in opposition to his
sovereign, although keeping up an appearance of not stirring up civil war
before his brother’s death. He began to gather round him in his little
court at Ramalhao, then at Mafra and Coimbra, all those who had refused
their oath to Princess Isabella. Inflammatory pamphlets went thence in
every direction to spread doubt in men’s minds as to the legality of
Ferdinand’s testamentary arrangements. A few active men were already
engaged in raising army corps. Baron Los Valles was sent into France and
England to convince those two governments of the justness of the claim
put forth by the Spanish infante.[b]
WAR OF THE CHRISTINOS AND CARLISTS (1833-1839 A.D.)
Scarcely had King Ferdinand VII closed his eyes, when the apostolic
party in northern Spain, especially in Navarre and the Basque provinces,
proclaimed Don Carlos, brother of the king, as King Charles V. In order
successfully to oppose the Carlists, who fought for absolutism and
priesthood, there was nothing for the regent, Maria Christina, to do
but to throw herself into the arms of the liberal party. Thus the seven
years’ war between Carlists and Christinos grew out of a fight for the
throne into a civil war and a battle for principles. The Carlists had
the upper hand to start with, owing to the ability of their general,
Zumalacarregui, against whom the Christinos could place no equally
matched leader. From Portugal, where Don Carlos was residing with his
beloved nephew, Don Miguel, this general threatened the frontiers of
Spain.
[Illustration: QUEEN MARIA CHRISTINA]
[Sidenote: [1834-1855 A.D.]]
Hence Christina turned to England and France, and the Quadruple Alliance
of April 22nd, 1834, was concluded between these states and Spain and
Portugal, the object of which was to maintain the constitutional throne
of Isabella and of Maria da Gloria and to drive out the two pretendants,
Carlos and Miguel. Still, in that same year, these two men, who enjoyed
the favour of the eastern powers and of the pope to a high degree, were
obliged to leave Portugal. Carlos went to England in June, on an English
ship, but he escaped again in July, and, after an adventurous journey
through France, appeared suddenly in Navarre to reanimate the courage of
his followers by his royal presence. The war was carried on with passion
and cruelty on both sides. After the death of Zumalacarregui, who lost
his life on June 14th, 1835, at the siege of Bilbao, the Christinos,
who exceeded in numbers, seemed to have the advantage. But they could
accomplish little against the restless Cabrera, who had just received
his first ecclesiastical orders, and had gone over into the camp of the
pretender. He was a most able guerilla leader. The turning-point came
first when the command of the Christino army was intrusted to Espartero.
He conquered the Carlists in 1836 in a bloody battle at Luchana, hastened
to the relief of the capital when the Carlists advanced to the vicinity
of Madrid in 1837, and compelled Carlos to retreat.
[Illustration: THOMASO ZUMALCARREGUI]
To these losses was added discord in the camp itself. The pretender,
wholly lacking in competence and independence, was the tool of his
_camarilla_,[131] who in the choice of a general paid more attention to
a knowledge of the catechism than of the arts of war and displaced the
most able leaders to put up their own creatures in their stead. The new
general, Guergué, was beaten several times by Espartero in 1838, which
gradually cooled the enthusiasm of the northern provinces. He was deposed
and the chief command given to the crafty Maroto, who, as an enemy of the
_camarilla_ could have maintained himself against their continual attacks
only by gaining great victories. Since he could not win these against the
superior force of Espartero, he concluded the Treaty of Vergara with him
on August 31st, 1839, according to which he went over to the Christinos
with his army and obtained in return an amnesty and the confirmation of
the freedom of Basque and Navarre. With this, the cause of Don Carlos was
hopelessly lost. The latter went to France in September with many of his
followers, and had to pass six years under police supervision in the city
of Bourges. Not until 1845, after he had transferred all his pretensions
to his eldest son, the count of Montemolin, did he receive permission
to depart, whereupon he betook himself to Italy. He died at Trieste on
March 10th, 1855. His followers continued to fight for some time longer
in Catalonia under Cabrera. But they also were overpowered by Espartero,
and in July, 1840, with a force of about eight thousand men, were obliged
to flee to France, where they were kept under supervision. The civil
war was now at an end, but the strife continued. Espartero, entitled
duke of victory (Vittoria) was the most influential and the most popular
personage in Spain, with whom everyone, even the queen-regent, had to
reckon.
THE STORMY REGENCY OF CHRISTINA (1833-1841 A.D.)
[Sidenote: [1833-1841 A.D.]]
In the meanwhile the latter neither by her private life nor by her
political conduct had been able to win the love and respect of the
Spaniards. Her liberal attacks did not go very deep and as soon as
the immediate necessity was past they gave place to the most opposite
tendencies. At the spread of the Carlist rebellion in 1834, she had
placed the once persecuted Martínez de la Rosa, known as a poet and
writer, at the head of the ministry and had given the country a
constitution [the _estatuto real_] which satisfied no one. The cortes
convened again after a long interval and soon became divided into the
two hostile factions of the moderates (_moderados_) and the progressists
(_progresistas_). The ministries changed rapidly. The progressists
demanded abolition of the monks’ orders and confiscation of their
property, which was in part carried out. In single cities it came to
bloody excesses; cloisters were destroyed, monks and nuns murdered,
priests and Jesuits driven over the border. The continual wavering,
the frequent dissolution of the cortes increased the discontent; the
progressists in 1836 feared a reaction and wanted to make concessions.
Revolts were organised in the larger cities, the constitution of 1812 was
placed on the programme. The government responded by placing Madrid in a
state of siege, by disbanding the national guard. Revolt broke out in the
summer residence, La Granja, whither Christina had retreated. Soldiers of
the guard forced their way into the palace and compelled her to adopt the
constitution of 1812.
A constitutional assembly discussed a revision of the same, and thus the
new constitution of 1837 came into being. Christina took oath to keep it,
but hoped by watching over the election to bring the _moderados_ into
the cortes and the ministry. When she succeeded in accomplishing this in
1840, she issued a municipal law in accordance with which the election
of municipal authorities was placed in the hands of the government.
This caused a revolt in Madrid and other cities, and when Christina
commissioned Espartero, who had just returned victoriously, to quell
the uprisal in Madrid he refused to be made the tool of an unpopular
policy. And yet he was the only man who could check the revolution which
was threatening on all sides. Hence Christina was obliged to appoint
Espartero as ministerial president on September 16th, 1840. He chose all
progressist members for his cabinet, made a triumphal entry into Madrid
on September 29th, and placed his programme before the queen-regent in
Valencia on October 5th. In this he demanded repeal of the municipal law,
dissolution of the cortes, and dismissal of the _camarilla_.
The regency had little attraction more for Christina under such
conditions. Other influences were also at work. Shortly after the death
of her husband, she had taken a handsome life-guardsman, called Muñoz,
into her favour, had made him chamberlain, and had secretly married him.
The union was soon proclaimed by a large number of children, but not
until 1844 was there a public marriage, whereupon Muñoz was made duke
of Rianzares and grandee of Spain. By this act she had thrown away her
womanly respect and laid herself open to all sorts of attacks, so that
she preferred to leave the country. On October 12th, she resigned her
position as regent and travelled to France.
ESPARTERO REGENT (1841-1843 A.D.)
[Sidenote: [1841-1843 A.D.]]
The newly elected cortes, on May 8th, 1841, named Espartero regent of
Spain and guardian of the queen Isabella and her sister the infanta
Luisa Fernanda. Nor did he prove unworthy of this high position, seeking
to establish order in all branches of the state administration and to
preserve his respect before the clergy and the pope. Since he knew
how energetically Christina, supported by Louis Philippe, was working
against him with her influence and her money, he attached himself more
to England, whereupon those who were envious of him, and his rivals,
accused him of selling Spain’s commercial interests to England. The fact
that he quelled a rebellion in Barcelona in 1842 by a bombardment, was
charged against him as tyranny. New revolts broke out in the south in
1843; Colonel Prim hastened to Catalonia and placed himself at the head
of the soldiers who had been won over through large expenditures of money
by Christina’s agents. Espartero’s bitterest enemy, General Narvaez,
landed in Valencia and entered Madrid with his troops. Espartero, against
whom moderados and progressists had conspired together, found himself
abandoned and set sail for England from Cadiz on July 26th, 1843. Not
until 1848 was it safe for him to return.
[Illustration: ESPERTERO, REGENT]
THE PROFLIGATE QUEEN ISABELLA II (1843-1868 A.D.)
[Sidenote: [1843-1851 A.D.]]
In November, 1843, the thirteen-year-old Isabella was declared of age.
She took over the reins of government, appointed Narvaez, who had been
raised to be duke of Valencia, president of the ministry, and called back
her mother. This opened the doors and gates to French influence, to the
game of intrigue and reaction. The constitution of 1837 was changed in
1845 in favour of absolutism, the freedom of the press was limited, the
national guard abolished, and the cortes even more than in France reduced
to a nominal existence. In order to insure for his house a lasting
influence in Spain and to obtain for it a reversion of the Spanish
throne, Louis Philippe, acting with Christina, brought about a marriage
on October 16th, 1846, between Isabella and her cousin Francis de Asis,
and between the infanta Luisa and the duke of Montpensier, the youngest
of his sons. (Louis Philippe had planned at first to marry Isabella also
to one of his sons, the duke of Aumale, but he gave this up on account
of the decided protest of Palmerston’s cabinet and chose instead for
Isabella in Francis de Asis that person who, on account of his mental and
bodily weakness, would stand least in the way of his son, Montpensier).
This marriage which was conducted wholly in secret cost Louis Philippe
the friendship of the English cabinet. The pleasure-loving Isabella,
following in the footsteps of her mother, soon grew heartily tired of
her Francis and enjoyed herself in July, 1847, at La Granja, with the
handsome and agreeable progressist General Serrano and other officers,
while Francis found himself condemned to a hermit’s life at the hunting
castle of Pardo. The marriage was a very unfortunate one, and Christina,
the evil genius of Spain, fled one day and came back the next.
[Illustration: QUEEN ISABELLA II]
Isabella kept more and more to the path of her father Ferdinand, and
pursued an administrative policy which joined military despotism to
clerical absolutism and in which confessors and soldiers played a rôle,
and even guided the rudder of state. While such conduct repelled the
liberal elements from her side the frivolity of her private life made her
lose all claims to respect.[132] She even went so far that the legitimacy
of all her children was doubted. No wonder that from time to time revolts
broke out, which, as is customary in Spain, were incited and led by
officers. The government saved itself by executions and deportations.
The ministerial president Marshal Narvaez, who bore the title duke of
Valencia, was always ready for such drastic measures. His successor was
Gonzalez Bravo [or Brabo] Murillo, who soon had the whole army against
him.[e] His cabinet was very significant and important, not only because
of the question of economies, but also because of Bravo Murillo’s project
to abolish or diminish the military preponderance which was not very
beneficial to the country. The germs of discord remained, to be united
with those displayed in other acts, such as the ostentatious reception of
Narvaez in Paris by the Spanish representative, the duke de Sotomayor,
who was replaced by the marquis de Valdegamas, and the ridiculous
prohibition of the farce called the _entierro de la sardina_ (the burial
of the sardine) and the piñata ball. The burial of the sardine is part of
the carnival festivities on Ash Wednesday. The piñata ball is a masked
ball at the theatre--the piñata being a large earthenware jar full of
sweets; the dancers are blindfolded, turned round, and have to try and
break the jar with poles, after which there is a general scramble for
the sweets. These sports were prohibited by the minister of government
without consulting his colleagues, whom he thus compromised, occasioning
resignations and annoyances, while the prestige of the new cabinet in the
palace suffered somewhat from the ill-judged and useless measure of one
of its members. In an unfriendly spirit towards the ministry, Napoleon
showed marked honour to Narvaez and Sotomayor. General O’Donnell [who had
won distinction in the Morocco wars of 1860 and become duke of Tetuan]
showed himself somewhat disrespectful towards the minister of war because
he had made several military appointments out of the order of seniority,
the young officer of infantry wishing to put an end to this injustice.[j]
[Illustration: MARSHAL NARVAEZ]
[Sidenote: [1851-1868 A.D.]]
Spain was, on the surface, a monarchy akin to that of France, Belgium,
and England. Below the surface, as soon as the dynastic peril had
subsided and the throne of the queen was somewhat consolidated, the old
reactionary undercurrent set to work. A novel and powerful instrument
of reaction--militarism--appeared on the scene and made Spain sadly
famous. Its interference in politics and its _pronunciamientos_ were
fatal to discipline and, what was far worse, to the sense of respect
for parliamentary legality which is the corner-stone of modern
institutions. It must be said that Castilian militarism somewhat atoned
for its interference in politics by using its extraordinary influence
quite as often in the cause of liberty and of progress as in defence
of reactionary cabinets and palace favourites. It will suffice to say
that Marshal Espartero acted thus from 1836 to 1843 to crush the first
Carlist risings, and to check the caprices of the regent Doña Christina,
and then, in 1854-1856, again stepped in to check another reaction.
Marshal O’Donnell was the champion of moderate liberalism from 1856 to
1866, which might have preserved the crown of Queen Isabella had she
not always harboured preferences for retrograde statesmen and generals.
Marshals Prim and Serrano, too, were in the van of the progressists and
advanced liberals who would fain have served their queen, but went over
to revolution and conspiracies at last in sheer disgust. Such names can
well be set against those of the military champions of political reaction
and religious intolerance--marshals Narvaez [who died in 1868], Cheste,
Novaliches, and Calonje.[k]
[Sidenote: [1868-1869 A.D.]]
In July, 1868, a great military revolt was to break out. The minister
caused the most important generals, among them Serrano and Dulce, to be
deported to the Canary Isles, and even banished from Spain the queen’s
brother-in-law, the duke of Montpensier, whose name seemed to serve as a
watchword for the revolution. Excitement increased in the land. Isabella
thought herself compelled to enter into closer relations than hitherto
with her friend and ally, as she called Napoleon III, and arranged an
interview with him for the 18th and 19th of September in the two frontier
posts Biarritz and San Sebastian. Napoleon was accredited with the plan
of recalling his troops from Rome and filling their places with Spanish
soldiers in the event of his beginning his long-threatened war with
Germany. Isabella, who had just been honoured by receiving the Golden
Rose of the Faith and Virtue from the pope, was very much in favour of
such a project.
THE REBELLION OF 1868 A.D.
[Illustration: GENERAL LEOPOLD O’DONNELL]
But at the very moment when the Franco-Spanish alliance was to have been
concluded and their majesties were at their appointed posts, rebellion
broke out in Cadiz. It was the 18th of September. The banished generals
Serrano and Prim returned, the rear-admiral Topete joined them with
the whole fleet, the few faithful troops were conquered by Serrano
on September 28th, near Alcolea. All the larger cities, even Madrid,
took sides with the revolution with the cry, “Down with the Bourbons!
down with the Jesuits!” on the 29th; and so there was nothing left for
Isabella but to leave San Sebastian the next day and to take refuge on
French soil. She at once took up her residence at Pau whence she uttered
a passionate but unavailing protest against her exile. When she realised
that all hope of restoration, for the present, was gone, she went to
Paris, where she died in 1902.
The direction of the state was intrusted to the leaders of the
revolution. Marshal Serrano took the position of president of the
ministry, Prim became minister of war, Topete of marine. The order of
Jesuits and a number of cloisters were abolished, freedom of faith was
proclaimed; in Barcelona and Madrid even Protestant services were held.
The newly elected cortes, convened on February 18th, 1869, deliberated
over a new constitution, declared in favour of a constitutional monarchy,
and appointed Serrano regent, until a suitable candidate could be found.
The political outlook, however, was not favourable for Spain. There
existed a strong republican party, which threatened to oppose with arms
the establishment of a new throne; the island of Cuba, that “pearl of the
Antilles,” was in full revolt, ready to break loose from Spain and found
an independent republic; and Carlism again raised its head.[e]
PIRALA ON THE “MILD ANARCHY” OF 1869 A.D.
[Sidenote: [1869-1870 A.D.]]
At the end of the year 1869, the state of the nation clearly showed
that when parties pursue private rather than public aims the result
can be no other than what then existed--that is, a monarchy without a
monarch, a powerless regency, a constitution disregarded and infringed,
an ill-directed and expiring _camara_, a dictatorship without a dictator,
and an empty treasury and a retrograding revolution.
We do not lay the fault of this upon any of the men concerned in our
revolution, and we do not think that history does so either, but we
cannot cease to lament the lack of one of those men of genius who take
the lead without imposing themselves. The situation had not improved at
the beginning of the year 1870.
The cortes again resumed its labours. With praiseworthy frankness,
Prim, as president of the council, said that they had reached a pitch
of confusion in which, surrounded by thick clouds, they might come near
to realising the fable of the two wolves who met on a dark night and
devoured each other so that nothing was left but their tails.
Union facilitates the work of construction which is gradually perfected
in every detail, but dissension entails the fate of the builders of the
tower of Babel. A nation can show no sadder or more futile spectacle; and
yet it is the history of all. Is mankind condemned ever to turn in this
vicious circle and never to get free from it? It is impossible to think
so, for in the midst of this continual conflict of interests and bastard
ambitions the nineteenth century has achieved imperishable victories.
Nations conquer their sovereignty and of their own right make their
laws, and struggle unceasingly to overcome ancient traditions, uproot
absurd vices and tyrannical tendencies. Thus even as science pierces
the mountains, explores the depths of the sea, discovers and explains
the spots on the sun, and almost realises the aforetime foolish and
chimerical ambition of the Titans; so politics, that science of modern
societies and of free and civilised nations, will find the solution of
the social problem bringing the rights of all men, the interests of
all nations, and the good of all humanity into combined and harmonious
action. A vast idea like a great discovery suffices to bring the whole
world into close relationship. And like the electric current which
flashes words and ideas from pole to pole, a grand political inspiration,
social, human, fraternal, moral, just, and worthy, needs but to be
hinted to triumph. Printing had but to be invented to extend over the
whole world; steam came into immediate use, and Franklin needed but a
lightning-conductor for Turgot to exclaim:
“_Eripuet cœlo fulmen_
_Sceptrumque tyrannis._”
And the lightning-conductor alone produced the cable which brings
both worlds into constant communication, the thread which annihilates
distances and transmits thoughts and events. Politics is indeed a
science, and if nothing is impossible to science, shall anything be
impossible to politics?
This work of social reconstruction advances slowly, all collecting
materials and contributing their ideas to its perfectionment; the work
will be completed; it is but a question of time, and what appears long in
the life of the individual is very short in the life of nations. Liberty
and civilisation being inseparably welded, where civilisation is least,
liberty finds most obstacles, and the task must be more difficult and
laborious.
In the meanwhile Spain was going through a troubled period, and it was
said in the press and in the cortes that a heavy responsibility lay upon
those who had taken part in a political movement the issue of which was
so unfortunate, and cut off the country from the civilising progress of
the century and the social importance to which it had so many claims;
that the triumphant liberal spirit was suffocating for want of guidance,
and could not succeed in laying definitive institutions upon a solid
basis; that the perils surrounding the revolution were increasing; that
all was unstable and that “a mild anarchy” reigned everywhere, as was
said by the minister of government himself, who was yet so dilatory in
framing fundamental laws.
There followed the famous session of March 19th, 1870, when the forced
harmony exploded between unionists, progressists, and democrats, placing
regency, government, and country in a terrible position. Thus it was
published by a deputy of recognised ability, who had good reason to
be well acquainted with the internal workings of the camara, that “it
would be difficult to conceive worse confusion than that to which it
was a prey. Without true unity in the ministry, without true unity
in the majority, without unity even in the midst of the oppositions,
every individual, whether minister or deputy, radical or conservative,
republican or traditionalist, in the questions natural or incident to
the debate expressed his own opinion without thought for the general
interests of any party; the result of which was that every one of the
three hundred representatives who had their seat upon the benches of the
congress spoke a different language, and if such a state of moral anarchy
continued, the assembly would before long be converted into a regular
tower of Babel.”[l]
ESTIMATE BY CHERBULIEZ OF GENERAL PRIM
There are in every country men who accomplish their ends by romantic
adventures, and this is more common in Spain than anywhere else. There
it is an ancestral or fictitious adventurer, who has really no other
god but his own interests, but succeeds by his audacities and a kind of
native generosity in giving an air of grandeur to his exploits, a varnish
of glory and poetry to his cupidity. So the favourite Spanish hero, the
famous Cid Campeador, appears to us when criticism has rolled away the
luminous clouds with which pure legend has surrounded him. The Rodrigo
whom Corneille celebrated was only the vision of a poet; the true Cid of
history was a man of prey, not troubled with scruples, ready to espouse
all causes, bearing into every camp the restlessness of his moods and
courage, fighting alternately for or against his prince, serving Christ
or Mohammed, and, if one can believe the Arabic chroniclers, preferring
a bushel of gold to a smile from Ximena. His mighty sword thrusts, his
haughty bearing, his natural grandiloquence, redeemed everything; he
had received from heaven the art of persuasive speech, and posterity
remembers words more than intentions. The _romancero_ relates that,
being in a hurry to set out on an expedition, and having need of money,
he borrowed a very large sum from a Jew, giving him as guarantee a
coffer full of jewels, which coffer being opened after his departure,
was found to contain only sand. On his return, the Jew reproached him
with deception. “Yes, it was sand,” he answered loftily, “but this sand
contained the gold of my given word.” The idea was good, albeit a trifle
extravagant.
It is not with any evil intention to the memory of General Prim, to
suggest that he also was a hero with too easy a conscience. Is one bound
to have more convictions, more principles than the Cid? “Do you know,”
said Castelar[m] when orator of the opposition, “who is General Prim’s
god? It is Chance. Would you know his religion? It is Fatalism. And
his ideal? The dream of always keeping power in his own hands. To that
everything is brought to bear and to that everything is sacrificed.
Institutions matter nothing to him; he bends them to his convenience.
Laws count even less for him. They are mere spider webs, to be brushed
aside by the swords of his captain-generals. Parties are as nothing, he
dissolves them. Engagements have never hampered him, for he forgets them.
The most inconceivable alliances are not repugnant, provided he and his
are advantaged thereby.”
[Illustration: GENERAL PRIM]
But it is just to add that General Prim, when he came into power,
astonished his enemies as much as his friends by the continued wisdom
of his conduct. The most redoubtable trial of an adventurer is success.
His ideas must grow with his fortune; having gained the coveted rank, he
must break with his past, his habits and memories, so as to transform
himself into a statesman. Only those who have good stuff in them lend
themselves to such changes, and Don Juan Prim soon proved that the
Aranjuez conspirator possessed the qualities of a politician, a quick
sense of justice, a power of realising situations, skilful management
of men and interests, and tact sufficient to use his authority without
doing anything irregular. He could use strategy in councils, employing
a sober yet nervous eloquence which went straight to the point, and
possessed above the art of speaking the more useful one of being silent.
A Portuguese has remarked that this last talent, strongly admired among
a talkative people, made a man resemble a Gothic cathedral, and gave him
the prestige of obscurity and mystery.
To be president of the council was no easy task. It was already difficult
to govern an assembly composed of two parts; the difficulty was still
greater when there were three. Oscillations from the Centre, who formed
the necessary support for the majority, gave the minister perpetual
anxiety and forced him to see-saw politics. The radicals, or democratic
monarchists, led by a highly popular man, Rivero, and a man of great
talent, Martos, played a very considerable rôle in the constituent
cortes of 1869. They were at one with the liberal unionists in desiring
a king, even as they agreed with the republicans to make a democratic
constitution with all possible speed. Government could only expect a
conditional support from them. It was inconvenient to satisfy them,
dangerous to let them be discontented. It was necessary then perpetually
to negotiate with these monarchists by circumstance. A single imprudence
might have lost all.
Monarchists by conviction were themselves divided into a crowd of small
parties, each having its candidate for the throne.
General Juan Prim needed all his attention and skill to maintain some
degree of cohesion among so variegated a majority. He had to dominate
the unruly, satisfy the ambitious by a portfolio, and the vain by a
decoration; to reassure the timorous, calm the impatient, even like a
good sheepdog who runs ceaselessly round a flock, heading the foremost,
driving in the scattered, hastening the laggards. Each party sought to
gain the general for their candidate, for Don Juan, as someone said at
the congress, resembled a political zero, which, placed at the right
of a figure, increased its value tenfold, and a candidature quoted at
nine on the political bourse would be worth ninety when it had gained
the approving smile of the president. His reigning principle was to
discourage no illusion. “He knows quite well,” said the opposition,
“that he cannot maintain his position much longer in this unstable
equilibrium, which consists in keeping in with all parties, being against
all parties, and above them all. The secret of his politics is to keep
everyone hoping. He gives them no promises, for he is circumspect and
never commits himself. He never betrays himself by his acts, being very
reserved, diplomatic, and making no engagements; but he gives hope by his
enigmas, his reticences, his air of mystery.”
Don Juan, however, was not always so reserved. When occasion demanded,
he denounced to the majority the dangers which threatened them, adjuring
them to seek safety in conciliatory politics, short of which only misery
and disaster could be expected. If his advice was ill received, he
complained that they made government impossible, and spoke of retiring.
This manœuvre, executed with military precision, never failed of its
effect. Thanks to his warning, his threats, and his reticences, that
same majority, composed of men who never agreed nor loved one another,
persisted in remaining united, a rare spectacle in Spain.[n]
THE HUNT FOR A KING
[Sidenote: [1870-1871 A.D.]]
Thus there existed a monarchical constitution with no monarch; and a
large number of republicans took pains to make a monarchy impossible by
speeches in the cortes and by revolts in the provinces. No one seemed
desirous of the crown of a country politically lamed by its party
system and financially rotten. The ministerial president and minister
of war, Count Prim, made every effort to find a suitable personage,
but for a long time in vain. The former regent of Spain, Espartero;
the Coburg prince, Don Ferdinand, father of the king of Portugal; King
Luiz of Portugal himself; Prince Thomas of Genoa, nephew of the king of
Italy--refused in turn. The duke of Montpensier, whose wife was sister
to the ex-queen Isabella, was ready to accept it, but on account of this
very relationship he had many opponents among the monarchs, who, when it
came to selecting a Bourbon, preferred Prince Alfonso, Isabella’s son, to
her brother-in-law.
Isabella made her plan with this end in view. Acting on the advice
of her friend the empress Eugénie she signed her resignation on June
25th, 1870, and made over all her political rights to her son Alfonso.
First, however, there was question of another prince. Among those
who in 1869 had returned a negative answer was Prince Leopold of
Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen, who, as a Catholic, as husband of a Portuguese
princess, as a relative of the Napoleonic house, and as belonging to the
reigning house of Prussia, seemed a very suitable person in the eyes of
the government. The latter returned to this choice in 1870 and in June
sent a deputation to him. This time the prince accepted. The deputation
returned to Madrid, a ministerial council was held, and on June 2nd it
was decided to offer the crown of Spain to Prince Leopold of Hohenzollern
officially and to proclaim this candidacy publicly. The news was brought
to all the capitals of Europe on July 3rd, by telegraph. The country
stood at a new crisis of affairs.[e]
Napoleon III of France opposed the giving of the crown of Spain to a
Prussian prince, and secured his resignation. This success led him to
further demands, which he pressed so outrageously that Prussia, long
ready to avenge its old disgraces before French armies, returned answers
that led Napoleon to declare war. The Franco-Prussian War of 1870-1871
was the result. Prussia took a new place in the world and in Germany, the
French armies were surrendered in droves by their king and his general
officers, and France was rid both of her Napoleon III and of her military
reputation. And all this as the result of the Spanish advertisement for a
king. The prince Hohenzollern, who had refused the bauble once, and had
had it taken away when he reached out to accept it, was dropped from the
eligible list.[a]
AMADEO’S REIGN (1870-1873 A.D.); AND THE REPUBLIC (1873-1874 A.D.)
Marshal Prim had persuaded the second son of the king of Italy, Prince
Amadeo, duke of Aosta,[133] to accept the candidacy. The cortes elected
him king of Spain on November 16th, 1870, with a vote of 191 to 98. He
arrived in Madrid on January 2nd, 1871, and took oath to support the
constitution a few days after Prim had fallen a victim to a murderous
assault. The government of the new king, who had made Marshal Serrano
first ministerial president, was a continual fight for the ministry
between the monarchic factions, while the republicans and Carlists
organised revolts in the south and north.[e]
Serrano was a soldier risen to the highest ranks through the favour
of Queen Isabella, whom he had not hesitated to betray the moment he
believed that others would be put over him in the highest offices of
politics and the army. His real ability as a general was more than
mediocre. Allied with Prim in the insurrectional movement and the
pronunciamiento of 1868 he was able to overthrow his benefactress’
throne; but the day after the 29th of September he saw himself
transformed by his colleague into a puppet king. Prim, who was his
superior in a hundred ways, especially in ability and energy, henceforth
ruled over him. Not daring to revolt against his comrade, he submitted
tranquilly, contenting himself with the pomp of the regency which he had
received in exchange for his submission to the imperious will of the
minister of war.
[Sidenote: [1871-1872 A.D.]]
After the assassination of the marshal, Serrano found himself again in
the highest place and obliged by his position to direct the beginnings
of a young king, lacking in great political qualifications and the
indispensable knowledge of Spain’s needs and aspirations as well as being
very unpopular on account of his foreign origin. To succeed in such a
task a man of exceptional ability was required and Serrano’s talents were
but mediocre. Under the marshal’s feeble hand, passions far from being
calmed flared up much fiercer than ever and discord penetrated every
element of official life.
Marshal Serrano and his colleagues having given in their resignations,
Amadeo determined to try the experiment of a radical régime. But Señor
Zorilla was incapable of rising above the violent and mean passions of
the party to which he belonged. Amadeo was compelled to dismiss him in
less than three months. Admiral Malcampo was invested with the power
on October 6th; six weeks later he too was compelled to hand in his
resignation.
Amadeo now confided the power to Señor Sagasta, December 20th, 1871.
The situation, however, became more critical day by day. The king
was absolutely isolated in the midst of his people. The educated and
especially the aristocratic classes, justly wounded at seeing a foreign
prince seated without any right whatever on the throne, held aloof from
the court. The clergy could scarcely be expected to sympathise with a
régime that exhibited decided Voltairian tendencies.
The people had never sanctioned the arbitrary choice and protested
against the accomplished act sometimes by noisy demonstrations, more
often by a still more dangerous attitude of cold and irreducible
hostility. The republicans benefited largely by the situation. Amadeo was
daily covered with mud and the ministry found it impossible to make the
royal dignity and person respected. In order to quell so formidable a
storm, the genius of a Napoleon I, the skill of a Cavour would have been
required, and even then it is more than doubtful that with the prestige
which genius gives and the resources which the most perfect art of
governing men can provide, Amadeo would have settled his dynasty firmly
in Spain. In truth the greatest fault found was with his foreign origin,
and this intrinsic defect could not be overcome by personal merit.
How often, turning his thoughts towards his absent country, towards that
city of Turin where he was the idol of its citizens, must Amadeo have
regretted not having resisted more vigorously the demands of his father
and the Italian ministers, as they prayed him to accept that crown of
Spain for which he had so little vocation.
His tastes were simple and his habits modest--altogether too modest for
Spain. He was affable, received everyone, and forced himself to appear as
amiable with the common people as with the politicians and the few great
nobles who had not deserted the court. He understood the low condition
of the treasury and did not take a penny of the civil list which the
constitution allowed him. He lived upon his own personal income, spending
freely, and always tried to make use of Spanish articles and purveyors.
The queen on her part zealously occupied herself with good works. Yet
when Amadeo passed through the Madrid streets those who did not salute
him were assuredly in greater number than those who through politeness
took off their hats as he went by. The reception was no better in the
provinces whenever the king and queen visited them.
And the situation kept on getting worse and worse. Señor Zorilla’s
downfall deeply incensed that statesman. In place of carrying on an
honest opposition to Señor Sagasta, Zorilla, who had once promised
Victor Emmanuel to be “the most faithful of servants,” hastened as
soon as he was no longer minister to ally himself with the monarchy’s
worst enemies, made common cause with the most violent anarchists in
order to undermine not only the cabinet, but the throne he had helped to
establish. King Amadeo’s position was becoming more and more critical.
Placed between the republicans and Alfonsists, who fought him both in and
out of parliament, and the Carlists who, less attached to constitutional
forms and the manners of modern nations, openly declared war, raising the
standard of war under the very eyes of his generals and officials, the
king could not even count on the co-operation of his partisans, whose
differences were now entirely incurable. Prime minister Sagasta was
retired at the end of two months’ sterile work and troubled existence.
What could all this statesman’s abilities do towards consolidating a
monarchy deprived of a nation’s support and condemned in public opinion?
The second Serrano ministry, of which Señor Sagasta was also a member,
began its labours May 26th, 1872; but the king’s hopes were again
deceived. Serrano and his colleagues, judging the situation too critical
to be remedied by ordinary measures, submitted a decree for the king’s
approbation which arbitrarily suspended several privileges guaranteed by
the constitution, at the same time inviting his majesty to take in person
the chief command of the army against the Carlists. Amadeo returned an
energetic refusal to Marshal Serrano’s requests. It was asked that he
take part in civil war, and he could not stoop to this exigency. Ready
to shed his blood for Spain the day on which his adopted country should
be threatened from abroad, it was absolutely repugnant to him to direct
a campaign in which his subjects would simply cut one another’s throats.
If he had not abdicated before, it was only to let his people and the
whole of Europe see that he knew how to face danger, and that he had no
intention of shirking his duties the moment they became most serious and
pressing--a noble line of conduct, which even those who never approved of
Amadeo’s taking the Spanish throne must highly and unreservedly praise.
[Illustration: SAGASTA]
Marshal Serrano was incensed by the king’s attitude and sent in his
resignation. The monarch now thought for a moment of throwing aside the
crown, which weighed more heavily on his brow than the leaden capes
on the shoulders of the damned in Dante’s _Inferno_. But to avoid the
appearance of fleeing before the Carlists, he decided to postpone
the execution of his resolve. He resigned himself to trying one last
experiment with the radicals, by calling the famous Zorilla once more to
the head of affairs, June 13th, 1872.
Zorilla’s return to power immeasurably increased the audacity and
violence of the sectarians. Sure henceforth of impunity, and impatient
to attain their proposed end, they did not shrink from crime. On July
18th, 1872, towards evening, as Amadeo was preparing to visit a circus,
a warning was hastily brought him that his life was to be attempted and
that the police were on the track of a plot. In vain did the queen, his
ministers, and household officials implore him to renounce his visit.
The king, scorning their advice and taking no notice of the threatening
danger, would not consent to stay in the palace. He wished his people
to know that he feared not in the least to brave the assassins who were
preparing an ambush in which he was to suffer the sad fate of Marshal
Prim. Maria Victoria and the marquis Dragonetti, in despair of convincing
the king, determined to accompany him in his drive across the capital.
[Illustration: KING AMADEO]
[Sidenote: [1872-1873 A.D.]]
When the royal carriage reached the Calle del Arenal, at precisely the
spot indicated by the police as the place where the attack would be
attempted, a discharge of firearms suddenly came from a side street and
wounded one of the horses without touching the king or queen, who owed
their lives to their coachman’s cool-headedness. As for the assassins,
they easily made off under cover of the night, protected by their
accomplices. Maria Victoria returned almost fainting to the royal palace.
Amadeo, on the contrary, as intrepid before murderers’ bullets as he had
been on the field of Custozza, never lost for a moment that impassible
calm, witness both of his contempt for danger and strength of soul. He
himself announced the attempt to his father in the following telegram:
“I advise your majesty that this evening we have been object
attack. Thanks to God, all safe.--AMADEO.”
This infamous deed, far from provoking the fall of the monarchy,
retarded it. After this event it would appear that he was laying down
the sceptre through fear of assassination. Meanwhile political affairs
grew ceaselessly worse. While the Carlist insurrection, in spite of the
efforts of General Moriones and the captain-general of Catalonia, assumed
more and more disquieting proportions, chaos attained its apogee in
governmental spheres, in the street, and in the heart of the cortes. The
army now began to make some sign. It could no longer endure the despotism
of the discredited advocates who were governing and ruining the country.
The treasury was in the most pressing distress, and from all directions
the violent tide of general discontent rose towards the throne on which
an honourable but powerless king was sitting. Zorilla, not content with
the ruin which he had accomplished, tried to overcome the resistance of
the army by a vigorous action as inopportune as unjust. He proposed to
the king to entrust a man named Hidalgo who was a by-word for treachery
in the army with the command of a division in Catalonia. The king
implored Zorilla to give this plan up. Zorilla threatened to resign.
Finally Amadeo signed a decree as fatal as it was mad, not however
without manifesting his anger and disgust. As soon as Hidalgo appeared,
the artillery officers resigned _en masse_. The disorganisation of the
army had become complete and put the finishing touches to the state of
disorder; Zorilla prepared new decrees which, under pretext of mastering
the military recalcitrants, would have provoked a general explosion. But
this time Amadeo I did not show himself disposed to follow the wishes
of the radical leader. He would not consent to accomplish Spain’s ruin
and determined to abdicate. In vain did Zorilla and his supporters make
an effort to deter the king from a resolution which would shatter their
ambitious calculations. Amadeo would not listen to their prayers. He
obliged the prime minister to communicate the act of abdication to the
cortes, February 8th, 1873.
Amadeo left Spain as soon as possible after his abdication, February
12th. He returned to Italy by way of Lisbon. Every noble heart, even
among his enemies, gave impartial homage to his chivalric character and
loyalty; but the aversion of the people to a foreign monarchy was such
that the king’s departure was one of the saddest ever known. While on the
way near Badajoz some cowardly assassins fired upon the train which was
bearing the son of Victor Emmanuel and his family back to the Italy they
never should have left.
Time has softened the Spaniards’ animosity against the duke of Aosta.
To-day they recognise his fine qualities, while they admit, and not
without reason, that even apart from his foreign origin he was not
made to rule in that country, whose spirit he so little understood and
whose pompous and aristocratic customs he never would have been able to
assimilate.
The Spaniards have not forgotten the memory of this thoroughly honest
king, who, wishing to remain true to his agreements, preferred giving up
the throne to violating them, who firmly refused to become the tool of
anarchists or to use force against a country which was not his own. They
have also retained a touching memory of Queen Maria Victoria and of her
piety and boundless charity. The attitude of the Spanish press on the
duke of Aosta’s death at Turin, January 18th, 1890, proved that his name
is no longer unpopular across the Pyrenees; and in forgetting the mistake
he committed in 1871, Spain knows how to give homage to the fine and
brilliant qualities of her former king.[o]
REPUBLICAN SPAIN UNDER CASTELAR (1873 A.D.)
[Sidenote: [1873-1874 A.D.]]
The congress declared at once in favour of a republic on February 11th,
and on February 12th chose a ministry to take charge of the executive,
in which Figueras was president and Castelar was foreign minister. The
programme of the new rulers was: “a federative republic for Spain, with
self-government for the single states as in Switzerland and the United
States; suppression of centralisation; abolition of the standing army;
absolute separation of church and state; proclamation of the rights of
the individual on the basis of a democratic constitution and under the
authority of the law.” If these political fantasies were to be accepted
into the constitution, Spain would cease to exist--there would be merely
cantons, municipal republics, and communes, in which Parisian conditions
repeated themselves. The cortes was dissolved, and on June 1st a
new constitutional cortes convened. This declared for the federative
republic on June 8th, and drew up a preliminary outline of a constitution
in which the above principles were adopted. With this, the so-called
_Intransigentes_ were not yet satisfied; they wanted a red republic and
a social revolution. Since they could not impose their demands on the
cortes, they left it, went into the southern states, and raised the red
flag of rebellion. Ministries and presidencies followed each other in
quick succession.
[Illustration: EMILIO CASTELAR]
On September 7th, Castelar was chosen president of the executive, and
at the outset found himself confronted with such chaos that he demanded
and obtained unconditional authority for adopting military and political
measures, including the declaration of a state of siege; he also
postponed the debate on the constitution and adjourned congress from
September 18th to January 2nd. Thus the visionary federative republican
Castelar, understanding, however, the difference between theory and
practice, had a full dictatorship in his hands. He needed such power. In
the north, the Carlists were making decided advances, having with them
in the field the pretender Don Carlos and his brother Don Alfonso; in
the south, communes were being formed in single cities which renounced
allegiance to the government; in the army shameless insubordination ran
riot, soldiers fired on their officers, generals went over to the rebels.
The cities of Alcoy, Seville, Cadiz, Valencia had to be taken by force,
others surrendered at the approach of the generals.
Opposition lasted longest in the sea fortress of Cartagena, where General
Contreras stood at the head of a committee of safety, as president of
the republic of Murcia, had diplomatic dealings with foreign consuls,
and bombarded and burned the neighbouring ports Almeria and Alicante.
From these piratical excursions he came into contact with foreign
warships, and the energetic German captain Werner, supported by an
English captain, deprived him of two ships. Cartagena was surrounded
from the land side and bombarded, but it did not surrender until after a
siege of four months, on January 12th, 1874, to the governmental general
Lopez Dominguez, after Contreras had left the harbour the day before,
accompanied by the revolutionary junta, and after several hundred men had
broken through the weak blockade of governmental ships and escaped to
Algiers.[e]
THE BASQUES AND CARLISM
Carlism would long since have been reduced to impotency by the opposition
it aroused among all classes of Spanish society, if one particular
circumstance had not associated with its cause those interests and
passions which it had taken under its protection. There are provinces
in northeastern Spain which are Spanish only in name and which enjoy a
veritable autonomy of which they are both jealous and proud. Furnishing
the state neither soldiers nor money, they themselves regulate the
use they make of their revenue, the equipment and employment of their
militia--in fact all the details of internal administration. Honest,
loyal, hardy, maintaining their roads and highways in their own
fashion, which indeed left nothing to be desired; cultivating the least
accessible of their mountains up to the very edges of the precipices,
more industrious than the majority of the Spanish, the Basques of
Guipuzcoa, Avala, and Biscay, had governed themselves for centuries, and
they constituted a true mountain republic very similar to the primitive
cantons of Switzerland. Who has not heard of the famous and everlasting
oak of Guernica, under whose shade they held their patriarchal assemblies
or _calzaras_ and which in bygone days inspired Rousseau in the _Contrât
Social_ to utter these memorable and oft-quoted words: “When we see the
happiest people in the world regulating their affairs of state by a body
of peasants under an oak, and always conducting themselves wisely, what
is to prevent one scorning the refinements of other nations which make
themselves famous and miserable with so much art and mystery?”
Like all truly republican peoples the Basques regarded their freedom as
a prerogative or a happy accident. They gave no thought to letting their
neighbour share it and had never sought to make their happiness a subject
of propaganda. Their language--the Eskuara--which has nothing in common
with Spain or indeed with any known idiom, was a barrier between them and
the rest of the peninsula, and reduced them to a state of isolation in
which their freedom rejoiced. As their language possesses no literature,
the few general ideas which circulate in their villages and townships
come from their priests, who teach them what goes on in the world,
what is said and planned at Madrid. Thus, narrow in mind as they are
suspicious and defiant, their sole aim is to preserve their _fueros_.
It had been easy to make them understand that the liberal monarchy
nourished the dark design of depriving them of these, and that it was
disposed to reduce them to the same system of government as the other
Spanish provinces. And it was not more difficult for the pretender
to persuade them that only an absolute monarchy could guarantee the
franchises which were dearer to them than life. Did they not know that
their liberty was a privilege, and that privileges have less to fear
from a king who can do as he pleases than from a constitutional régime,
whether monarchy or republic, where everything is governed by law?
So, with the exception of the village _bourgeoisie_, won over to liberal
ideas, these mountaineers belong body and soul to the Carlist cause,
and thus we have seen the singular phenomenon of a republican people
trying to impose upon others a government they would not have had at any
price, and working to set upon the Spanish throne an absolute king who
promised to let them remain a republic as a reward. “We hope that before
long,” wrote Señor Castelar on the 12th of September, 1873, “these Basque
provinces which furnish subsidies and spies to the Carlist and where the
army of the republic can nowhere find either protection or assistance,
will receive the chastisement their errors deserve, since these the
happiest and freest provinces of Spain are fighting not to obtain a king
for themselves or to offer him of their sons and the fruits of their
economy, but to impose one upon the Spanish nation while continuing to
live themselves as a republic. Certainly the government will respect a
legislation which is in harmony with its principles and ideas, but I am
its spokesman in saying to these people that if anything threatens their
future and that tree celebrated by Rousseau as the monument of liberty,
it will be due to their blind obstinacy in supporting at the price of
their blood, as the Swiss did formerly, the monster of absolutism.”
It was among these sandalled republicans in hides and blue berets,
indefatigable walkers and great players of _peloto_, that Carlism
recruited its ranks as well as in Navarre and a part of Catalonia. The
mountain regions in general were in the hands of the clergy and the
pretender. They furnished them brave, sober, robust soldiers, nimble as
smugglers, knowing all the secret passes and defiles, skilful at making
off after a defeat and dispersing so as to rally elsewhere, possessing
in fact all the necessary qualities for this species of tricky and
partisan war in which Spain has always excelled. The country also lent
itself to it. It was rugged and cut up, well fitted for ambuscades and
surprises--full of difficulties for the invader who could not operate in
detachments without exposing himself, nor in masses without being uneasy
without sustenance.
However, if Carlism had preserved its troops, it was weakened by the
loss of some of its most noteworthy chiefs. The spirit of the times is
a subtle and penetrating gas, and the élite of the party was unable
to resist its malign influence. One of the heroes of the seven years’
war--the illustrious general Cabrera, whose name alone was worth an
army to the pretender--had found the latter deaf to his advice and was
compelled to refuse him his services.
Among Don Carlos’ faithful adherents there were men of heart and
intelligence who grumbled under their breath at his mistakes. As for the
pretender himself, he was no longer master of his actions. The church was
the mouthpiece of his will and it announced to Spain that if Don Carlos
wished to mount the throne it was to give the people back their God--him
of former days, whose glance rested with delight on the _san-benito_
of a scourged and repentant heretic. They did not take the trouble to
conceal from the Spaniards the designs they had upon them. When certain
persons spoke to France, they had recourse to the precautions of the
oratory, to the subtleties taught by casuistry, to reticences and
equivocation, to denials which did not deny, and to promises which did
not promise anything. If they did the country of Voltaire and Mirabeau
the honour of lying to her, they inflicted on Spain the affront of their
outrageous sincerity. They openly declared to her that they intended to
bring back the Golden Age when the monk reigned and sent free-thinkers
to peaceful sleep. The struggle which was now steeping the Pyrenees and
the Cantabrian mountains in blood was a war to the death waged upon the
_bourgeoisie_ by fanatical priests, of shepherds upon their lambs; it
was the white demagogy, which despairing of triumph had not scrupled to
league itself with the pirates of Cartagena for the extermination of
liberal ideas.[n]
THE DICTATORSHIP OF SERRANO
Castelar’s former party associates, who had forgotten nothing and
learned nothing, could not forgive him for having brought the federative
republicans to order with powder and shot; for having appointed
conservative generals, and entered into negotiations with the papal
see in regard to vacant bishoprics. When the cortes re-assembled on
January 2nd, 1874, its president, Salmeron, brought about a vote of lack
of confidence in Castelar’s government, whereupon the latter promptly
resigned.
Before further action could be taken the cortes was dispersed by Pavia,
the captain-general of Madrid, on January 3rd,[134] and a military
dictatorship established under Marshal Serrano. Republican revolts which
broke out in several cities were quickly suppressed and a large force was
sent against the Carlists. The latter kept the important fortress Bilbao
closely invested, had captured Portugalete, the port belonging to it, had
forced Moriones first to take refuge on a ship, and on February 24th,
1874, when he again advanced from the west, had driven him to retreat,
after being defeated at Somorrostro.
[Illustration: MARSHAL SERRANO]
Serrano, entitled “president of the executive power of the republic,”
now hastened to the scene of action, but in the battles of March 25th
and 26th he did not succeed in breaking through the firm position of the
Carlists at Somorrostro. He procured reinforcements, however, renewed the
attack on April 28th, and compelled the enemy on May 1st to give up its
position, abandon the investment of Bilbao, and to evacuate Portugalete.
General Concha, appointed commander-in-chief of the northern army,
on June 25th attacked the Carlists under Dorregaray, who were firmly
entrenched on the heights of Estella, but was repulsed and fell after
a battle of three days. The Carlists neglected to take a strategical
advantage of their victory and shot down a large number of prisoners. Don
Alfonso, the brother of the pretender, did no better in Catalonia, for
after conquering the Castilian city Cuenca he delivered it up to plunder,
fire, and sword. The Carlist general Mendiri did not succeed in capturing
the fortress Irun in the northern field of war: he was compelled to
retreat on November 10th from Laserna, but he himself on December 9th
forced the advancing general Loma to retreat to San Sebastian. Hereupon
Serrano again hastened to the scene with the purpose of making a general
attack on the enemy, at the head of four army corps, and forcing it back
to the French frontier. He needed time, however, to get the necessary
number of troops together.
[Sidenote: [1874-1875 A.D.]]