Spanish Robbers--A Robber Adventure--Guardias Civiles--Exaggerated
Accounts--Cross of the Murdered--Idle Robber Tales--French
Bandittiphobia--Robber History--Guerrilleros--Smugglers--Jose
Maria--Robbers of the First Class--The Ratero--Miguelites--Escorts
and Escopeteros--Passes, Protections, and Talismans--Execution of a
Robber.
An _olla_ without bacon would scarcely be less insipid than a volume on
Spain without banditti; the stimulant is not less necessary for the
established taste of the home-market, than brandy is for pale sherries
neat as imported. In the mean time, while the timid hesitate to put
their heads into this supposed den of thieves as much as into a house
that is haunted, those who are not scared by shadows, and do not share
in the fears of cockney critics and delicate writers in satin-paper
albums, but adventure boldly into the hornet’s nest, come back in a firm
belief of the non-existence of the robber genus. In Spain, that _pays de
l’imprévu_, this unexpected absence of personages who render roads
uncomfortable, is one of the many and not disagreeable surprises, which
await those who prefer to judge of a country by going there themselves,
rather than to put implicit faith in the foregone conclusions and
stereotyped prejudices of those who have not, although they do sit in
judgment on those who have, and decide “without a view.” This very
summer, some dozen and more friends of ours have made tours in various
parts of the Peninsula, driving and riding unarmed and unescorted
through localities of former suspicion, without having the good luck of
meeting even with the ghost of a departed robber; in truth and fact, we
cannot but remember that such things as monks and banditti were,
although they must be spoken of rather in the past than in the present
tense.
[Sidenote: A ROBBER ADVENTURE.]
The actual security of the Spanish highways is due to the _Moderados_,
as the French party and imitators of the _juste milieu_ are called, and
at the head of whom may be placed _Señor Martinez de la Rosa_. He,
indeed, is a moderate in poetry as well as politics, and a rare specimen
of that sublime of mediocrity which, according to Horace, neither men,
gods, nor booksellers can tolerate; his reputation as an author and
statesman--alas! poor Cervantes and Cisneros--proves too truly the
present effeteness of Spain. Her pen and her sword are blunted, her
laurels are sear, and her womb is barren; but, among the blind, he who
has one eye is king.
This dramatist, in the May of 1833, was summoned from his exile at
Granada to Madrid by the suspicious Calomarde. The mail in which he
travelled was stopped by robbers about ten o’clock of a wet night near
Almuradiel;--the _guard_, at the first notice, throwing himself on his
belly, with his face in the mud, in imitation of the postilions, who pay
great respect to the gentlemen of the road. The passengers consisted of
himself, a German artist, and an English friend of ours now in London,
and who, having given up his well-garnished purse at once with great
good-humour, was most courteously treated by the well-satisfied
recipients: not so the Deutscher, on whom they were about to do personal
violence in revenge for a scanty scrip, had not his profession been
explained by our friend, by whose interference he was let off.
Meanwhile, the _Don_ was hiding his watch in the carriage lining, which
he cut open, and was concealing his few dollars, the existence of which
when questioned he stoutly denied. They, however, re-appeared under
threats of the bastinado, which were all but inflicted. The passengers
were then permitted to depart in peace, the leader of their spoilers
having first shaken hands with our informant, and wished him a pleasant
journey: “May your grace go with God and without novelty;” adding, “You
are a _caballero_, a gentleman, as all the English are; the German is a
_pobrecito_, a poor devil; the Spaniard is an _embustero_, a regular
swindler.” This latter gentleman, thus hardly delineated by his Lavater
countryman, has since more than gotten back his cash, having risen to be
prime minister to Christina, and humble and devoted servant of
Louis-Philippe, _cosas de España_.
[Sidenote: GUARDIAS CIVILES.]
Possibly this little incident may have facilitated the introduction of
the mounted guards, who are now stationed in towns, and by whom the
roads are regularly patrolled; they are called _guardias civiles_, and
have replaced the ancient “brotherhood” of Ferdinand and Isabella. As
they have been dressed and modelled after the fashion of the
transpyrenean gendarmerie, the Spaniards, who never lose a chance of a
happy nickname, or of a fling at the things of their neighbour, whom
they do not love, term them, either _Polizontes_ or _Polizones_, words
with which they have enriched their phraseology, and that represent the
French _polissons_, scoundrels, or they call them _Hijos de
Luis-Philipe_, “sons of Louis-Philippe;” for they are ill-bred enough,
in spite of the Montpensier marriage, and the Nelsonic achievements of
Monsieur de Joinville, to consider the words as synonymes.
The number of these rogues, French king’s sons, civil guards, call them
as you will, exceeds five thousand. During the recent Machiavelianisms
of their putative father, they have been quite as much employed in the
towns as on the highway, and for political purposes rather than those of
pure police, having been used to keep down the expression of indignant
public opinion, and, instead of catching thieves, in upholding those
first-rate criminals, foreign and domestic, who are now robbing poor
Spain of her gold and liberties; but so it has always been. Indeed, when
we first arrived in the Peninsula, and naturally made enquiries about
banditti, according to all sensible Spaniards, it was not on the road
that they were most likely to be found, but in the confessional boxes,
the lawyers’ offices, and still more in the _bureaux_ of government; and
even in England some think that purses are exposed to more danger in
Chancery Lane and Stone Buildings, than in the worst cross-road, or the
most rocky mountain pass in the Peninsula.
[Sidenote: THE MURDERED MAN’S CROSS.]
It will be long, however, before this “great fact” is believed within
the sound of Bow-bells, where many of those who provide the reading
public with correct information, dislike having to eat their own words,
and to have their settled opinions shaken or contradicted. Nor is it
pleasant at a certain time of life to go again to school, as one does
when studying Niebuhr’s Roman History, and then to find that the
alphabet must be re-begun, since all that was thought to be right is in
fact wrong. Distant Spain is ever looked at through a telescope which
either magnifies richness and goodness, from which half at least must be
deducted according to the proverb, _de los dineros y bondad, se ha de
quitar la mitad_, or darkens its dangers and difficulties through a
discoloured medium. A bad name given to a dog or country is very
adhesive; and the many will repeat each other in cuckoo-note. “Il y a
des choses,” says Montesquieu, “que tout le monde dit, parcequ’elles ont
été dites une fois;” thus one silly sheep makes many, who will follow
their leader; _ovejas y bobas, donde va una, van todas_. So in the end
error becomes stamped with current authority, and is received, until the
false, imaginary picture is alone esteemed, and the true, original
portrait scouted as a cheat.
[Sidenote: EXAGGERATED ROBBER NOTIONS.]
It has so long and annually been considered permissible, when writing
about romantic Spain, to take leave of common sense, to ascend on
stilts, and converse in the Cambyses vein, that those who descend to
humble prose, and confine themselves to commonplace matter-of-fact, are
considered not only to be inæsthetic, unpoetical, and unimaginative, but
deficient in truth and power of observation. The genius of the land,
when speaking of itself and its things, is prone to say the thing which
is not; and it must be admitted that the locality lends itself often and
readily to misconceptions. The leagues and leagues of lonely hills and
wastes, over which beasts of prey roam, and above which vultures sulkily
rising part the light air with heavy wing, are easily peopled, by those
who are in a prepared train of mind, with equally rapacious bipeds of
Plato’s unfeathered species. Rocky passes, contrived as it were on
purpose for ambuscades, tangled glens overrun with underwood, in spite
of the prodigality of beauty which arrests the artist, suggest the lair
of snakes and robbers. Nor is the feeling diminished by meeting the
frequent crosses set up on classically piled heaps, which mark the grave
of some murdered man, whose simple, touching epitaph tells the name of
the departed, the date of the treacherous stab, and entreats the
passenger, who is as he was, and may be in an instant as he is, to pray
for his unannealed soul. A shadow of death hovers over such spots, and
throws the stranger on his own thoughts, which, from early associations,
are somewhat in unison with the scene. Nor is the welcome of the
outstretched arms of these crosses over-hearty, albeit they are
sometimes hung with flowers, which mock the dead. Nor are all sermons
more eloquent than these silent stones, on which such brief emblems are
fixed. The Spaniards, from long habit, are less affected by them than
foreigners, being all accustomed to behold crosses and bleeding
crucifixes in churches and out; they moreover well know that by far the
greater proportion of these memorials have been raised to record
murders, which have not been perpetrated by robbers, but are the results
of sudden quarrel or of long brooded-over revenge, and that wine and
women, nine times out of ten, are at the bottom of the calamity.
Nevertheless, it makes a stout English heart uncomfortable, although it
is of little use to be afraid when one is in for it, and on the spot.
Then there is no better chance of escape, than to brave the peril and to
ride on. Turn, therefore, dear reader, a deaf ear to the tales of local
terror which will be told in every out-of-the-way village by the
credulous, timid inhabitants. You, as we have often been, will be
congratulated on having passed such and such a wood, and will be assured
that you will infallibly be robbed at such and such a spot a few leagues
onward. We have always found that this ignis fatuus, like the horizon,
has receded as we advanced; the dangerous spot is either a little behind
or a little before the actual place--it vanishes, as most difficulties
do, when boldly approached and grappled with.
[Sidenote: BANDITTIPHOBIA OF FRENCH TOURISTS.]
At the same time these sorts of places and events admit of much fine
writing when people get safely back again, to say nothing of the dignity
and heroic elevation which may be thus obtained by such an exhibition of
valour during the long vacation. Peaked hats, hair-breadth escapes from
long knives and mustachios, lying down for an hour on your stomach with
your mouth in the mud, are little interludes so diametrically opposed to
civilization, and the humdrum, unpicturesque routine of free Britons who
pay way and police rates, that they form almost irresistible topics to
the pen of a ready writer. And such exciting incidents are sure to take,
and to affect the public at home, who, moreover, are much pleased by the
perusal of _authentic_ accounts from Spain itself, and the best and
latest intelligence, which tally with their own preconceived ideas of
the land. Hence those authors are the most popular who put the self-love
of their reader in best humour with his own stock of knowledge. And this
accounts for the frequency, in Peninsular sketches, personal
narratives, and so forth, of robberies which are certainly oftener to be
met with in their pages than on the plains of the Peninsula. The writers
know that a bandit adventure is as much expected in the journals of such
travels as in one of Mrs. Ratcliffe’s romances; such fleeting books are
chiefly made by “_striking events_;” accordingly, the authors string
together all the floating traditional horrors which they can scrape
together on Spanish roads, and thus feed and keep up the notion
entertained in many counties of England, that the whole Peninsula is
peopled with banditti. If such were the case society could not exist,
and the very fact, of almost all of the reporters having themselves
escaped by a miracle, might lead to the inference that most other
persons escape likewise: a blot is not a blot till it is hit.
[Sidenote: PSEUDO-BANDIT LOOKS.]
Our ingenious neighbours, strange to say in so gallant a people, have a
still more decided bandittiphobia. According to what the badauds of
Paris are told in print, every rash individual, before he takes his
place in the dilly for Spain, ought by all means to make his will, as
was done four hundred years ago at starting on a pilgrimage to
Jerusalem; possibly this may be predicated in the spirit of French
diplomacy, which always has a concealed arrière pensée, and it may be
bruited abroad, on the principle with which illicit distillers and
coin-forgers give out that certain localities are haunted, in order to
scare away others, and thus preserve for themselves a quiet possession.
Perhaps the superabundance of l’esprit Français may give colour and
substance to forms insignificant in themselves, as a painter lost in a
brown study over a coal fire converts cinders into castles, monsters,
and other creatures of his lively imagination; or it may be, as
conscience makes cowards of all, that these gentlemen really see a
bandit in every bush of Spain, and expect from behind every rock an
avenging minister of retaliation, in whose pocket is a list of the
church plate, Murillos, &c. which were found missing after their
countrymen’s invasion. Be that as it may, even so clever a man as
Monsieur Quinet, a real Dr. Syntax, fills pages of his recent _Vacances_
with his continual trepidations, although, from having arrived at his
journey’s end without any sort of accident, albeit not without every
kind of fear, it might have crossed him, that the bugbears existed only
in his own head, and he might have concealed, in his pleasant pages, a
frame of mind the exhibition of which, in England at least, inspires
neither interest nor respect; an over-care of self is not over-heroic.
[Sidenote: IDLE ROBBER TALES.]
It must be also admitted that the respectability and character of many a
Spaniard is liable to be misunderstood, when he sets forth on any of his
travels, except in a public wheel conveyance; as we said in our ninth
chapter, he assumes the national costume of the road, and leaves his
wife and long-tailed coat behind him. Now as most Spaniards are muffled
up and clad after the approved melodrame fashion of robbers, they may be
mistaken for them in reality; indeed they are generally sallow, have
fierce black eyes, uncombed hair, and on these occasions neglect the
daily use of towels and razors; a long beard gives, and not in Spain
alone, a ferocious ruffian-like look, which is not diminished when gun
and knife are added to match faces à la Brutus. Again, these worthies
thus equipped, have sometimes a trick of staring rather fixedly from
under their slouched hat at the passing stranger, whose, to them,
outlandish costume excites curiosity and suspicion; naturally therefore
some difficulty does exist in distinguishing the merino from the wolf,
when both are disguised in the same clothing--a _zamarra_ sheepskin to
wit. A private Spanish gentleman, who, in his native town, would be the
model of a peaceable and inoffensive burgess, or a respectable
haberdasher, has, when on his commercial tour, altogether the appearance
of the Bravo of Venice, and such-like heroes, by whom children are
frightened at a minor theatre. In consequence of the difficulty of
outliving what has been learnt in the nursery, many of our countrymen
have, with the best intentions, set down the bulk of the population of
the Peninsula as one gang of robbers--they have exaggerated their
numbers like Falstaff’s men of buckram; the said imagined Rinaldo
Rinaldinis being probably in a still greater state of alarm from having
on their part taken our said countrymen for robbers, and this mutual
misunderstanding continues, until both explain their slight mistake of
each other’s character and intention. Although we never fell into the
error of thus mistaking Spanish peaceable traders for privateers and
men-of-war, yet that injustice has been done by them to us; possibly
this compliment may have been paid to our careful observation of the
bearing and garb of their great Rob Roy himself and in his own country,
which, to one about to undertake, in those days, long and solitary
rides over the Peninsula, was an unspeakable advantage.
But even in those perilous times, robberies were the exception, not the
rule, in spite of the full, whole, and exact particulars of natives as
well as strangers; the accounts were equally exaggerated by both
parties; in fact, the subject is the standing dish, the common topic of
the lower classes of travellers, when talking and smoking round the
venta fires, and forms the natural and agreeable religio loci, the
associations connected with wild and cut-throat localities. Though these
narrators’ pleasure is mingled with fear and pain, they delight in such
histories as children do in goblin tales. Their Oriental amplification
is inferior only to their credulity, its twin sister, and they end in
believing their own lies. Whenever a robbery really does take place, the
report spreads far and wide, and gains in detail and atrocity, for no
muleteer’s story or sailor’s yarn loses in the telling. The same dire
event,--names, dates, and localities only varied,--is served up, as a
monkish miracle in the mediæval ages was, at many other places, and thus
becomes infinitely multiplied. It is talked of for months all over the
country, while the thousands of daily passengers who journey on unhurt
are never mentioned. It is like the lottery, in which the great prize
alone attracts attention, not the infinite majority of blanks. These
robber-tales reach the cities, and are often believed by most
respectable people, who pass their lives without stirring a league
beyond the walls. They sympathize with all who are compelled to expose
themselves to the great pains and perils, the travail of travel, and
they endeavour with the most good-natured intentions to dissuade rash
adventurers from facing them, by stating as facts, the apprehensions of
their own credulity and imagination.
[Sidenote: SPANISH ROBBER HISTORY.]
The muleteers, _venteros_, and masses of common Spaniards see in the
anxious faces of timid strangers, that their audience is in the
listening and believing vein, and as they are garrulous and egotists by
nature, they seize on a theme in which they alone hold forth; they are
pleased at being considered an authority, and with the superiority which
conveying information gives, and the power of inspiring fear confers;
their mother-wit, in which few nations surpass them, soon discovers the
sort of information which “our correspondent” is in want of, and as
words here cost nothing, the gulping gobemouche is plentifully supplied
with the required article. These reports are in due time set up in type,
and are believed because in print; thus the tricks played on poor Mr.
Inglis and his note-book were the laughter of the whole Peninsula, grave
authorities caught the generous infection, until Mr. Mark’s robber-jokes
at Malaga were booked and swallowed as if he had been an apostle instead
of a consul.
As it was our fate to have wandered up and down the Peninsula when
Ferdinand VII. was king of the Spains, and Jose Maria, at whose name old
men and women there tremble yet, was autocrat of Andalucia, the moment
was propitious for studying the philosophy of Spanish banditti, and our
speculations were much benefited by a fortunate acquaintance with the
redoubtable chief himself, from whom, as well as from many of his
intelligent followers, we received much kindness and valuable
information, which is acknowledged with thankfulness.
Historically speaking, Spain has never enjoyed a good character in this
matter of the highway; it had but an indifferent reputation in the days
of antiquity, but then, as now, it was generally the accusation of
foreigners. The Romans, who had no business to invade it, were harassed
by the native guerrilleros, those undisciplined bands who waged the
“little war,” which Iberia always did. Worried by these unmilitary
voltigeurs, they called all Spaniards who resisted them “_latrones_;”
just as the French invaders, from the same reasons, called them
_ladrones_ or brigands, because they had no uniform; as if the wearing a
schako given by a plundering marshal, could convert a pillager into a
honest man, or the want of it could change into a thief, a noble patriot
who was defending his own property and country; but l’habit ne fait pas
le moine, say the French, and _aunque la mona se viste de seda, mona se
queda_, although a monkey dresses in silk, monkey it remains, rejoin the
Spaniards.
[Sidenote: GUERRILLEROS.]
Armed men are in fact the weed of the soil of Spain, in peace or war; to
have their hand against all mankind seems to be an instinct in every
descendant of Ishmael, and particularly among this Quixotic branch,
whose knight-errants, reformers on horseback, have not unfrequently been
robbers in the guise of gentlemen. During the war against Buonaparte,
the Peninsula swarmed with insurgents, many of whom were inspired, by a
sense of loyalty, with indignation at their outraged religion, and with
a deep-rooted national loathing of the _gabacho_, and good service did
these Minas and Co. do to the cause of their lawful king; but others
used patriotic professions as specious cloaks to cover their instinctive
passion for a lawless and freebooting career, and before the liberation
of the country was effected, had become formidable to all parties alike.
The Duke of Wellington, with his characteristic sagacity, foresaw, at
his victorious conclusion of the struggle, how difficult it would be to
weed out “this strange fruit borne on a tree grafted by patriotism.” The
transition from murdering a Frenchman, to plundering a stranger,
appeared a simple process to these patriotic scions, whose numbers were
swelled with all who were, or who considered themselves to be, ill
used--with all who could not dig, and were ashamed to beg. The evil was
diminished during the latter years of the reign of Ferdinand VII., when
the old hands began to die off, and an advance in social improvement was
unquestionably general, before which these lawless occupations gave way,
as surely as wild animals of prey do before improved cultivation. These
evils, that are abated by internal quiet and the continued exertions of
the authorities, increase with troubled times, which, as the tempest
calls forth the stormy petrel, rouse into dangerous action the worst
portions of society, and create a sort of civil cachexia, as we now see
in Ireland.
[Sidenote: SMUGGLERS.]
Another source was, not to say is, Gibraltar, that hot-bed of
contraband, that nursery of the smuggler, the _prima materia_ of a
robber and murderer. The financial ignorance of the Spanish government
calls him in, to correct the errors of Chancellors of Exchequers:--“trovata
la legge, trovato l’inganno.” The fiscal regulations are so ingeniously
absurd, complicated, and vexatious, that the honest, legitimate merchant
is as much embarrassed as the irregular trader is favoured. The
operation of excessive duties on objects which people must, and
therefore will have, is as strikingly exemplified in the case of tobacco
in Andalucia, as it is in that, and many other articles on the Kent and
Sussex coasts: in both countries the fiscal scourge leads to breaches of
the peace, injury to the fair dealer, and loss to the revenue; it
renders idle, predatory and ferocious, a peasantry which, under a wiser
system, and if not exposed to overpowering temptation, might become
virtuous and industrious. In Spain the evasion of such laws is only
considered as cheating those who cheat the people; the villagers are
heart and soul in favour of the smuggler, as they are of the poacher in
England; all their prejudices are on his side. Some of the mountain
curates, whose flocks are all in that line, deal with the crime in their
sermons as a conventional, not a moral, one; and, like other people,
decorate their mantelpieces with a painted clay figure of the sinner in
his full _majo_ dress. The smuggler himself, so far from feeling
degraded, enjoys the reputation which attends success in personal
adventure, among a people proud of individual prowess; he is the hero of
the Spanish stage, and comes on equipped in full costume, with his
blunderbuss, to sing the well-known “_Yo! que soy contrabandista! yo
ho!_” to the delight of all listeners from the Straits to the Bidasoa,
custom-house officers not excepted.
The _prestige_ of such a theatrical exhibition, like the ‘Robbers’ of
Schiller, is enough to make all the students of Salamanca take to the
high-road. The contrabandista is the Turpin, the Macheath of reality,
and those heroes of the old ballads and theatres of England, who have
disappeared more in consequence of enclosures, rapid conveyances, and
macadamization (for there is nothing so hateful to a highwayman as gas
and a turnpike), than from fear of the prison or the halter. The
writings of Smollett, the recollections of many now alive of the dangers
of Hounslow Heath and Finchley Common, recall scenes of life and manners
from which we have not long emerged, and which have still more recently
been corrected in Spain. The contrabandista in his real character is
welcome in every village; he is the newspaper and channel of
intelligence; he brings tea and gossip for the curate, money and cigars
for the attorney, ribands and cottons for the women; he is magnificently
dressed, which has a great charm for all Moro-Iberian eyes; he is bold
and resolute--“none but the brave deserve the fair;” a good rider and
shot; he knows every inch of the intricate country, wood or water, hill
or dale; in a word, he is admirably educated for the high-road--for what
Froissart, speaking of the celebrated Amerigot Tetenoire, calls “a fayre
and godlie life.” And the transition from plundering the king’s revenue,
to taking one of his subjects’ purse on the highway, is easy.
[Sidenote: FIRST-CLASS BANDITS.]
Many circumstances combined to make this freebooting career popular
among the lower classes. The delight of power, the exhibition of daring
and valour, the temptation of sudden wealth, always so attractive to
half-civilized nations, who prefer the rich spoil won by the bravery of
an hour, to that of the drudgery of years; the gorgeous apparel, the
lavish expenditure, the song, the wassail, the smiles of the fair, and
all the joyous life of liberty, freemasonry, and good fellowship,
operated with irresistible force on a warlike, energetic, and
imaginative population.
This smuggling was the origin of Jose Maria’s career, who rose to the
highest rank and honours of his profession, as did _Napoleon le Grand_
and “Jonathan Wild the Great,” and principally, as Fielding says of his
hero, by a power of doing mischief, and a principle of considering
honesty to be a corruption of _honosty_, the qualities of an ass
(ονος). But it is a great mistake to suppose that there always
are men fitted to be captains of formidable gangs; nature is chary in
the production of such specimens of dangerous grandeur, and as ages may
elapse before the world is cursed with another Alaric, Buonaparte, or
Wild, so years may pass before Spain witnesses again another Jose Maria.
[Sidenote: FIRST-CLASS BANDITS.]
The _Ladron-en-grande_, the robber on a great scale, is the grandee of
the first class in his order; he is the captain of a regularly-organized
band of followers, from eight to fourteen in number, well armed and
mounted, and entirely under command and discipline. These are very
formidable; and as they seldom attack any travellers except with
overwhelming forces, and under circumstances of ambuscade and surprise,
where every thing is in their favour, resistance is generally useless,
and can only lead to fatal accidents. Never, for the sake of a sac de
nuit, risk being sent to Erebus; submit, therefore, at once and with
good grace to the summons, which will take no denial, of “_abajo_,”
down, “_boca á tierra_,” mouth to the earth. Those who have a score or
so of dollars, four or five pounds, the loss of which will ruin no man,
are very rarely ill-used; a frank, confident, and good-humoured
surrender not only prevents any bad treatment, but secures even civility
during the disagreeable operation: pistols and sabres are, after all, a
poor defence compared to civil words, as Mr. Cribb used to say. The
Spaniard, by nature high-bred and a “_caballero_,” responds to any
appeal to qualities of which he thinks his nation has reason to be
proud; he respects coolness of manner, in which bold men, although
robbers, sympathise. Why should a man, because he loses a few dollars,
lose also his presence of mind or temper, or perhaps life? Nor are these
grandees of the system without a certain magnanimity, as Cervantes knew
right well. Witness his graphic account of Roque Guinart, whose conduct
to his victims and behaviour to his comrades tallied, to our certain
knowledge, with that observed by Jose Maria, and was perfectly analogous
to the similar traits of character exhibited by the Italian bandit Ghino
de Tacco, the immortalized by Dante; as well as by our Robin Hood and
Diana’s foresters. Being strong, they could afford to be generous and
merciful.
Notwithstanding these moral securities, if only by way of making
assurance doubly sure, an Englishman will do well when travelling in
exposed districts to be provided with a decent bag of dollars, which
makes a handsome purse, feels heavy in the hand, and is that sort of
amount which the Spanish brigand thinks a native of our proverbially
rich country ought to have with him on his travels. He has a remarkable
tact in estimating from the look of an individual, his equipage, &c.,
how much ready money it is befitting his condition for him to have about
him; if the sum should not be enough, he resents severely his being
robbed of the regular perquisite to which he considers himself entitled
by the long-established usage of the high-road. The person unprovided
altogether with cash is generally made a severe example of, pour
encourager les autres, either by being well beaten or stripped to the
skin, after the fashion of the thieves of old, near Jericho. The
traveller should have a watch of some kind--one with a gaudy gilt chain
and seals is the best suited; not to have one exposes him to more
indignities than a scantily-filled purse. The money may have been spent,
but the absence of a watch can only be accounted for by a premeditated
intention of not being robbed of it, which the “_ladron_” considers as a
most unjustifiable attempt to defraud him of his right.
[Sidenote: THE RATERO.]
The Spanish “_ladrones_” are generally armed with a blunderbuss, that
hangs at their high-peaked saddles, which are covered with a white or
blue fleece, emblematical enough of shearing propensities; therefore,
perhaps, the order of the golden fleece has been given to certain
foreigners, in reward for having eased Spain of her independence and
Murillos. Their dress is for the most part very rich, and in the highest
style of the fancy; hence they are the envy and models of the lower
classes, being arrayed after the fashion of the smuggler, or the
bull-fighter, or in a word, the “_majo_” or dandy of Andalucia, which is
the home and head-quarters of all those who aspire to the elegant
accomplishments and professions just alluded to. The next class of
robbers--omitting some minor distinctions, such as the “_salteadores_,”
or two or three persons who lie in ambuscade and _jump out_ on the
unprepared traveller--is the “_ratero_,” “the rat.” He is not brought
regularly up to the profession and organized, but takes to it on a
sudden, and for the special occasion which, according to the proverb,
makes a thief, _La ocasion hace al ladron_; and having committed his
petty larceny, returns to his pristine occupation or avocation.
[Sidenote: MIGUELITES.]
The “_raterillo_,” or small rat, is a skulking footpad, who seldom
attacks any but single and unprotected passengers, who, if they get
robbed, have no one to blame but themselves; for no man is justified in
exposing Spaniards to the temptation of doing a little something in that
line. The shepherd with his sheep, the ploughman at his plough, the
vine-dresser amid his grapes, all have their gun, ostensibly for their
individual protection, which furnishes means of assault and battery
against those who have no other defence but their legs and virtue. These
self-same extemporaneous thieves are, however, remarkably civil to armed
and prepared travellers; to them they touch their hats, and exclaim,
“Good day to you, my lord knight,” and “May your grace go with God,”
with all that innocent simplicity which is observable in pastorals,
opera-ballets, and other equally correct representations of rural life.
These rats are held in as profound contempt by the higher classes of the
profession, as political ones used to be, before parties were betrayed
by turncoats, who, with tails and without, deserted to the enemies’
camp. The _ladron en grande_ looks down on this sneaking competitor as a
regular M.D. and member of the College of Physicians does on a quack,
who presumes to take fees and kill without a licence. However
despicable, these rats are very dangerous; lacking the generous feeling
which the possession of power and united force bestows, they have the
cowardice and cruelty of weakness: hence they frequently murder their
victim, because dead men tell no tales.
The distinction between these higher and lower classes of rogues will be
better understood by comparing the Napoleon of war, with the Napoleon of
peace. The Corsican was the _ladron en grande_; he warred against
mankind, he led his armed followers to pillage and plunder, he made his
den the receiving house of the stolen goods of the Continent: but he did
it openly and manfully by his own right hand and good sword; and valour
and audacity are qualities too high and rare not to command
admiration--qualified, indeed, when so misapplied. Louis-Philippe is a
_ratero_, who, skulking under disguise of amity and good faith, works
out in the dark, and by cunning, his ends of avarice and ambition; who,
acting on the artful dodger (no) principle, while kissing the Queen,
picks her pocket of a crown.
[Sidenote: MIGUELITES.]
It must be stated for the purposes of history that at the time when
Spain was, or was said to be, overrun with rats and robbers, there was,
as Spaniards have it, a remedy for everything except death; and as the
evils were notorious, it was natural that means of prevention should
likewise exist. If the state of things had been so bad as exaggerated
report would infer, it would have been impossible that any travelling or
traffic could have been managed in the Peninsula. The mails and
diligences, being protected by government, were seldom attacked, and
those who travelled by other methods, and had proper recommendations,
seldom failed in being provided by the authorities with a sufficient
escort. A regular body of men was organized for that purpose; they were
called “_Miguelites_,” from, it is said, one Miguel de Prats, an armed
satellite of the famous or infamous Cæsar Borgia. In Catalonia they are
called “_Mozos de la Escuadra_,” “Lads of the squadron, land marines;”
they are the modern “_Hermandad_,” the brotherhood which formed the old
Spanish rural armed police. Composed of picked and most active young
men, they served on foot, under the orders of the military powers; they
were dressed in a sort of half uniform and half _majo_ costume. Their
gaiters were black instead of yellow, and their jackets of blue trimmed
with red. They were well armed with a short gun and a belt round the
waist in which the ammunition was placed, a much more convenient
contrivance than our cartouche-box; they had a sword, a cord for
securing prisoners, and a single pistol, which was stuck in their
sashes, at their backs. This corps was on a perfect par with the
robbers, from whom some of them were chosen; indeed, the common
condition of the “_indulto_,” or pardon to robbers, is to enlist, and
extirpate their former associates--set a thief to catch a thief; both
the honest and renegade _Miguelites_ hunted “_la mala gente_,” as
gamekeepers do poachers. The robbers feared and respected them; an
escort of ten or twelve _Miguelites_ might brave any number of banditti,
who never or rarely attack where resistance is to be anticipated; and in
travelling through suspected spots these escorts showed singular skill
in taking every precaution, by throwing out skirmishers in front and at
the sides. They covered in their progress a large space of ground,
taking care never to keep above two together, nor more distant from each
other than gun-shot; rules which all travellers will do well to
remember, and to enforce on all occasions of suspicion. The rare
instances in which Englishmen, especially officers of the garrison of
Gibraltar, have been robbed, have arisen from a neglect of this
precaution; when the whole party ride together they may be all caught at
once, as in a casting-net.
[Sidenote: TRAVELLING ESCORTS.]
It may be remarked that Spanish robbers are very shy in attacking armed
English travellers, and particularly if they appear on their guard. The
robbers dislike fighting, and the more as they do so at a disadvantage,
from having a halter round their necks, and they hate danger, from
knowing what it is; they have no chivalrous courage, nor any more
abstract notions of fair play than a Turk or a tiger, who are too
uncivilized to throw away a chance; accordingly, they seldom join issue
where the defendants seem pugnacious, which is likely to be the case
with Englishmen. They also peculiarly dislike English guns and
gunpowder, which, in fact, both as arms and ammunition, are infinitely
superior to those of Spain. Though three or four Englishmen had nothing
to fear, yet where there were ladies it was better to be provided with
an escort of _Miguelites_. These men have a keen and accurate eye, and
were always on the look-out for prints of horses and other signs, which,
escaping the notice of superficial observers, indicated to their
practised observations the presence of danger. They were indefatigable,
keeping up with a carriage day and night, braving heat and cold, hunger
and thirst. As they were maintained at the expense of the government,
they were not, strictly speaking, entitled to any remuneration from
those travellers whom they were directed to escort; it was, however,
usual to give to each man a couple of _pesetas_ a-day, and a dollar to
their leader. The trifling addition of a few cigars, a “_bota_” or two
of wine, some rice and dried cod-fish for their evening meal, was well
bestowed; exercise sharpened their appetites; and they were always proud
to drink to their master’s long life and purse, and protect both.
Those, whether natives or foreigners, who could not obtain or afford the
expense of an escort to themselves, availed themselves of the
opportunity of joining company with some party who had one. It is
wonderful how soon the fact of an escort being granted was known, and
how the number of travellers increased, who were anxious to take
advantage of the convoy. As all go armed, the united allied forces
became more formidable as the number increased, and the danger became
less. If no one happened to be travelling with an escort, then
travellers waited for the passage of troops, for the government’s
sending money, tobacco, or anything else which required protection. If
none of these opportunities offered, all who were about to travel joined
company. This habit of forming caravans is very Oriental, and has become
quite national in Spain, insomuch that it is almost impossible to travel
alone, as others will join; weaker and smaller parties will unite with
all stronger and larger companies whom they meet going the same road,
whether the latter like it or not. The muleteers are most social and
gregarious amongst each other, and will often endeavour to derange their
employer’s line of route, in order to fall in with that of their
chance-met comrades. The caravan, like a snow-ball, increases in bulk as
it rolls on; it is often pretty considerable at the very outset, for,
even before starting, the muleteers and proprietors of carriages, being
well known to each other, communicate mutually the number of travellers
which each has got.
[Sidenote: ESCOPETEROS.]
Travelling in out-of-the-way districts in a “_coche de colleras_,” and
especially if accompanied with a baggage-waggon, exposes the party to be
robbed. When the caravan arrives in the small villages it attracts
immediate notice, and if it gets wind that the travellers are
foreigners, they are supposed to be laden with gold and booty. Such an
arrival is a rare event; the news spreads like wildfire, and collects
all the “_mala gente_,” the bad set of idlers and loiterers, who act as
spies, and convey intelligence to their confederates; again, the bulk of
the equipage, the noise and clatter of men and mules, is seen and heard
from afar, by robbers if there be any, who lurk in hiding-places or
eminences, and are well provided with telescopes, besides with longer
and sharper noses, which, as Gil Blas says, smell coin in travellers’
pockets, while the slow pace and impossibility of flight renders such a
party an easy prey to well-mounted horsemen.
[Sidenote: PASSES AND PROTECTIONS.]
This condition of affairs, these dangers real or imaginary, and these
precautions, existed principally in journeys by cross roads, or through
provinces rarely visited, and unprovided with public carriages; if,
however, such districts were reputed the worst, they often had the
advantage of being freer from regular bands, for where there are few
passengers, why should there be robbers, who like spiders place their
nets where the supply of flies is sure?--and little do the humbler
masses of Spain care either for robbers or revolutionists; they have
nothing to lose, and are beneath the notice of pickpockets or
pseudo-patriots. Their rags are their safeguard, a fine climate clothes
them, a fertile soil feeds them; they doze away in the happy want and
poverty, ever the best protections in Spain, or strum their guitars and
sing staves in praise of empty purses. The better provided have to look
out for themselves; indeed, whenever the law is insufficient men take it
into their own hands, either to protect themselves or their property, or
to administer wild justice, and obtain satisfaction for wrongs, which in
plain Spanish is called revenge. An Irish landlord arms his servants and
raises walls round his “demesne”--an English squire employs watchers and
keepers to preserve his pheasants--so in suspected localities a Spanish
hidalgo protects his person by hiring armed peasants; they are called
“_escopeteros_,” people with guns--a definition which is applicable to
most Spaniards. When out of town this custom of going armed, and early
acquaintance with the use of the gun, is the principal reason why, on
the shortest notice, bodies of men, whom the Spaniards call soldiers,
are got together; every field furnishes the raw material--a man with a
musket. Baggage, commissariat, pay, rations, uniform, and discipline,
which are European rather than Oriental, are more likely to be found in
most other armies than in those of Spain. These things account for the
facility with which the Spanish nation flies so magnanimously to arms,
and after bush-fighting and buccaneering expeditions, disappears at once
after a reverse; “every man to his own home,” as of old in the East, and
that, with or without proclamation. These “_escopeteros_,” occasionally
robbers themselves, live either by robbery or by the prevention of it;
for there is some honour among thieves; “_entre lobos no se come_,”
“wolves don’t eat each other” unless very hard up indeed. These fellows
naturally endeavour to alarm travellers with over-exaggerated accounts
of danger, ogres and antres vast, in order that their services may be
engaged; their inventions are often believed by swallowers of camels,
who note down as facts, these tricks upon travellers got up for the
occasion, by people who are making long noses at them, behind their
backs; but these longer lies are among the accidents of long journeys,
“_en luengas vias, luengas mentiras_.”
[Sidenote: TALISMANIC DEFENCES.]
As we are now writing history, it may be added that great men like Jose
Maria often granted passports. This true trooper of the Deloraine breed
was untrammelled with the fetters of spelling. Although he could barely
write his name, he could _rubricate_[9] as well as any other Spaniard in
command, or Ferdinand VII. himself. “His mark” was a protection to all
who would pay him black mail. It was authenticated with such a
portentous griffonage as would have done credit to Ali Pacha. An
intimate friend of ours, a merry gastronomic dignitary of Seville, who
was going to the baths of Caratraca, to recover from over-indulgence in
rich ollas and valdepeñas, and had no wish, like the gouty abbot of
Boccaccio, to be put on robber regimen, procured a pass from Jose Maria,
and took one of his gang as a travelling escort, who sat on the
coach-box, and whom he described to us as his “_santito_,” his little
guardian angel.
[Sidenote: TALISMANIC DEFENCES.]
While on the subject of this spiritual and supernatural protection, it
may be added that firm faith was placed in the wearing a relic, a medal
of the Virgin, her rosary or scapulary. Thus the Duchess of Abrantes
this very autumn hung the _Virgen del Pilar_ round the neck of her
favourite bull-fighter, who escaped in consequence. Few Spanish soldiers
go into battle without such a preservative in their _petos_, or stuffed
waddings, which is supposed to turn bullets, and to divert fire, like a
lightning conductor, which probably it does, as so few are ever killed.
In the more romantic days of Spain no duel or tournament could be fought
without a declaration from the combatants, that they had no relic, no
_engaño_ or cheat, about their persons. Our friend Jose Maria attributed
his constant escapes to an image of the Virgin of Grief of Cordova,
which never quitted his shaggy breast. Indeed, the native districts of
the lower classes in Spain may be generally known by their religious
ornaments. These talismanic amulets are selected from the saint or relic
most honoured, and esteemed most efficacious, in their immediate
vicinity. Thus the “Santo Rostro,” or Holy Countenance of Jaen, is worn
all over the kingdom of Granada, as the Cross of Caravaca is over
Murcia; the rosary of the Virgin is common to all Spain. The following
miraculous proof of its saving virtues was frequently painted in the
convents:--A robber was shot by a traveller and buried; his comrades,
some time afterwards passing by, heard his voice,--“this fellow in the
cellarage;”--they opened the grave and found him alive and unhurt, for
when he was killed, he had happened to have a rosary round his neck, and
Saint Dominick (its inventor) was enabled to intercede with the Virgin
in his behalf. This reliance on the Virgin is by no means confined to
Spain, since the Italian banditti always wear a small silver heart of
the Madonna, and this mixture of ferocity and superstition is one of the
most terrific features of their character. Saint Nicholas, however, the
English “Old Nick,” is in all countries the patron of schoolboys,
thieves, or, as Shakspere calls them, “Saint Nicholas’s clerks.” “Keep
thy neck for the hangman, for I know thou worshippest St. Nicholas as a
man of falsehood may;” and like him, Santu Diavolu, Santu Diavoluni,
Holy Devil, is the appropriate saint of the Sicilian bandit.
San Dimas, the “good thief,” is a great saint in Andalucia, where his
disciples are said to be numerous. A celebrated carving by Montañes, in
Seville, is called ‘_El Cristo, del buen ladron_,’--“the Christ, _of_
the good thief;” thus making the Saviour a subordinate person. Spanish
robbers have always been remarkably good Roman Catholics. In the
Rinconete y Cortadillo, the Lurker and Cutpurse of Cervantes, whose
Monipodio must have furnished Fagin to Boz, a box is placed before the
Virgin, to which each robber contributes, and one remarks that he “robs
for the service of God, and for all honest fellows.” Their mountain
confessors of the Friar Tuck order, animated by a pious love for dollars
when expended in expiatory masses, consider the payment to them of good
doubloons such a laudable restitution, such a sincere repentance, as to
entitle the contrite culprit to ample absolution, plenary indulgence,
and full benefit of clergy. Notwithstanding this, these ungrateful “good
thieves” have been known to rob their spiritual pastors and masters,
when they catch them on the high road.
To return to the saving merit of these talismans. We ourselves suspended
to our sheepskin jacket one of the silver medals of Santiago, which are
sold to pilgrims at Compostella, and arrived back again to Seville from
the long excursion, safe and sound and unpillaged except by _venteros_
and our faithful squire--an auspicious event, which was entirely
attributed by the aforesaid dignitary to the intervention vouchsafed by
the patron of the Spains to all who wore his order, which thus protects
the bearer as a badge does a Thames waterman from a press-gang.
[Sidenote: EXECUTION OF A ROBBER.]
An account of the judicial death of one of the gang of Jose Maria, which
we witnessed, will be an appropriate conclusion to these remarks, and an
act of justice towards our fair readers for this detail of breaches of
the peace, and the bad company into which they have been introduced.
Jose de Roxas, commonly called (for they generally have some nickname)
_El Veneno_, “Poison,” from his viper-like qualities, was surprised by
some troops: he made a desperate resistance, and when brought to the
ground by a ball in his leg, killed the soldier who rushed forward to
secure him. He proposed when in prison to deliver up his comrades if
his own life were guaranteed to him. The offer was accepted, and he was
sent out with a sufficient force; and such was the terror of his name,
that they surrendered themselves, _not however to him_, and were
_pardoned_. Veneno was then tried for his previous offences, found
guilty, and condemned: he pleaded that he had indirectly accomplished
the object for which his life was promised him, but in vain; for such
trials in Spain are a mere form, to give an air of legality to a
predetermined sentence:--the authorities adhered to the killing letter
of their agreement, and
“Kept the word of promise to the ear,
But broke it to the hope.”
As Veneno was without friends or money, wherewith Gines Passamonte
anointed the palm of justice and got free, the sentence was of course
ordered to be carried into effect. The courts of law and the prisons of
Seville are situated near the Plaça San Francisco, which has always been
the site of public executions. On the day previous nothing indicates the
scene which will take place on the following morning; everything
connected with this ceremony of death is viewed with horror by
Spaniards, not from that abstract abhorrence of shedding blood which
among other nations induces the lower orders to detest the completer of
judicial sentences, as the smaller feathered tribes do the larger birds
of prey, but from ancient Oriental prejudices of pollution, and because
all actually employed in the operation are accounted infamous, and lose
their caste, and purity of blood. Even the gloomy scaffolding is erected
in the night by unseen, unknown hands, and rises from the earth like a
fungus work of darkness, to make the day hideous and shock the awakening
eye of Seville. When the criminal is of noble blood the platform, which
in ordinary cases is composed of mere carpenter’s work, is covered with
black baize. The operation of hanging, among so unmechanical a people,
with no improved patent invisible drop, used to be conducted in a cruel
and clumsy manner. The wretched culprits were dragged up the steps of
the ladder by the executioner, who then mounted on their shoulders and
threw himself off with his victims, and, while both swung backwards and
forwards in the air, was busied, with spider-like fingers, in fumbling
about the neck of the sufferers, until being satisfied that life was
extinct he let himself down to the ground by the bodies. Execution by
hanging was, however, graciously abolished by Ferdinand VII., the
beloved; this father of his people determined that the future death for
civil offences should be strangulation,--a mode of removing to a better
world those of his children who deserved it, which is certainly more in
accordance with the Oriental bow-string.
[Sidenote: EXECUTION OF A ROBBER.]
Veneno was placed, as is usual, the day before his execution, “_en
capilla_” in a chapel or cell set apart for the condemned, where the
last comforts of religion are administered. This was a small room in the
prison, and the most melancholy in that dwelling of woe, for such
indeed, as Cervantes from sad experience knew, and described a Spanish
prison to be, it still is. An iron grating formed the partition of the
corridor, which led to the chamber. This passage was crowded with
members of a charitable brotherhood, who were collecting alms from the
visitors, to be expended in masses for the eternal repose of the soul of
the criminal. There were groups of officers, and of portly Franciscan
friars smoking their cigars and looking carefully from time to time into
the amount of the contributions, which were to benefit their bodies,
quite as much as the soul of the condemned. The levity of those
assembled without formed, meantime, a heartless contrast with the gloom
and horror of the melancholy interior. A small door opened into the
cell, over which might well be inscribed the awful words of Dante--
“Lasciate ogni speranza, voi ch’entrate!”
[Sidenote: EXECUTION OF A ROBBER.]
At the head of this room was placed a table, with a crucifix, an image
of the Virgin, and two wax tapers, near which stood a silent sentinel
with a drawn sword; another soldier was stationed at the door, with a
fixed bayonet. In a corner of this darkened apartment was the pallet of
Veneno; he was lying curled up like a snake, with a striped coverlet
(the Spanish _manta_) drawn closely over his mouth, leaving visible only
a head of matted locks, a glistening dark eye, rolling restlessly out of
the white socket. On being approached he sprung up and seated himself on
a stool: he was almost naked; a chaplet of beads hung across his exposed
breast, and contrasted with the iron chains around his limbs:--Superstition
had riveted her fetters at his birth, and the Law her manacles at his
death. The expression of his face, though low and vulgar, was one which
once seen is not easily forgotten,--a slouching look of more than
ordinary guilt: his sallow complexion appeared more cadaverous in the
uncertain light, and was heightened by a black, unshorn beard, growing
vigorously on a half-dead countenance. He appeared to be reconciled to
his fate, and repeated a few sentences, the teaching of the monks, as by
rote: his situation was probably more painful to the spectator than to
himself--an indifference to death, arising rather from an ignorance of
its dreadful import, than from high moral courage: he was the Bernardine
of Shakspere, “a man that apprehends death no more dreadfully than a
drunken sleep, careless, reckless, and fearless of what’s past, present,
and to come, insensible of mortality, and desperately mortal.”
[Sidenote: EXECUTION OF A ROBBER.]
Next morning the triple tiers of the old balconies, roofs, and whole
area of the Moorish and most picturesque square were crowded by the
lower orders; the men wrapped up in their cloaks--(it was a December
morning)--the women in their mantillas, many with young children in
their arms, brought in the beginning of life to witness its conclusion.
The better classes not only absent themselves from these executions, but
avoid any allusion to the subject as derogatory to European
civilization; the humbler ranks, who hold the conventions of society
very cheap, give loose to their morbid curiosity to behold scenes of
terror, which operates powerfully on the women, who seem impelled
irresistibly to witness sights the most repugnant to their nature, and
to behold sufferings which they would most dread to undergo; they, like
children, are the great lovers of the horrible, whether in a tale or in
dreadful reality; to the men it was as a tragedy, where the last scene
is death--death which rivets the attention of all, who sooner or later
must enact the same sad part.[10] They desire to see how the criminal
will conduct himself; they sympathise with him if he displays coolness
and courage, and despise him on the least symptom of unmanliness. An
open square was then formed about the scaffold by lines of soldiers
drawn up, into which the officers and clergy were admitted. As the
fatal hour drew nigh, the increasing impatience of the multitude began
to vent itself in complaints of how slowly the time passed--that time of
no value to them, but of such precious import to him, whose very moments
were numbered.
[Sidenote: EXECUTION OF A ROBBER.]
When at length the cathedral clock tolled out the fatal hour, a
universal stir of tiptoe expectation took place, a pushing forward to
get the best situations. Still ten minutes had to elapse, for the clock
of the tribunal is purposely set so much later than that of the
cathedral, in order to afford the utmost possible chance of a reprieve.
When that clock too had rung out its knell, all eyes were turned to the
prison-door, from whence the miserable man came forth, attended by some
Franciscans. He had chosen that order to assist at his dying moments, a
privilege always left to the criminal. He was clad in a coarse yellow
baize gown, the colour which denotes the crime of murder, and is
appropriated always to Judas Iscariot in Spanish paintings. He walked
slowly on his last journey, half supported by those around him, and
stopping often, ostensibly to kiss the crucifix held before him by a
friar, but rather to prolong existence--sweet life!--even yet a moment.
When he arrived reluctantly at the scaffold, he knelt down on the steps,
the threshold of death;--the reverend attendants covered him over with
their blue robes--his dying confession was listened to unseen. He then
mounted the platform attended by a single friar; addressed the crowd in
broken sentences, with a gasping breath--told them that he died
repentant, that he was justly punished, and that he forgave his
executioner. “Mi delito me mata, y no _ese hombre_,”--my offence puts me
to death, and not _this fellow_; as “Ese hombre” is a contemptuous
expression, and implies insult, the ruling feeling of the Spaniard was
displayed in death against the degraded functionary. The criminal then
exclaimed, “_Viva la fé! viva la religion! viva el rey! viva el nombre
de Jesus!_” All of which met no echo from those who heard him. His dying
cry was “_Viva la Virgen Santisima!_” at these words the devotion to the
goddess of Spain burst forth in one general acclamation, “_Viva la
Santisima!_” So strong is their feeling towards the Virgin, and so
lukewarm their comparative indifference towards their king, their faith,
and their Saviour! Meanwhile the executioner, a young man dressed in
black, was busied in the preparations for death. The fatal instrument
is simple: the culprit is placed on a rude seat; his back leans against
a strong upright post, to which an iron collar is attached, enclosing
his neck, and so contrived as to be drawn home to the post by turning a
powerful screw. The executioner bound so tightly the naked legs and arms
of Veneno, that they swelled and became black--a precaution not unwise,
as the father of this functionary had been killed in the act of
executing a struggling criminal. The priest who attended Veneno was a
bloated, corpulent man, more occupied in shading the sun from his own
face, than in his ghostly office; the robber sat with a writhing look of
agony, grinding his clenched teeth. When all was ready, the executioner
took the lever of the screw in both hands, gathered himself up for a
strong muscular effort, and, at the moment of a preconcerted signal,
drew the iron collar tight, while an attendant flung a black
handkerchief over the face--a convulsive pressure of the hands and a
heaving of the chest were the only visible signs of the passing of the
robber’s spirit. After a pause of a few moments, the executioner
cautiously peeped under the handkerchief, and after having given another
turn to the screw, lifted it off, folded it up, carefully put it into
his pocket, and then proceeded to light a cigar
------ “with that air of satisfaction
Which good men wear who’ve done a virtuous action.”
[Sidenote: EXECUTION OF A ROBBER.]
The face of the dead man was slightly convulsed, the mouth open, the
eye-balls turned into their sockets from the wrench. A black bier, with
two lanterns fixed on staves, and a crucifix, was now set down before
the scaffold--also a small table and a dish, into which alms were again
collected, to be paid to the priests who sang masses for his soul. The
mob having discussed his crimes, abused the authorities and judges, and
criticised the manner of the new executioner (it was his maiden effort),
began slowly to disperse, to the great content of the neighbouring
silversmiths, who ventured to open their closed shutters, having
hitherto placed more confidence in bolts and bars, than in the moral
example presented to the spectators. The body remained on the scaffold
till the afternoon; it was then thrown into a scavenger’s cart, and led
by the “_pregonero_,” the common crier, beyond the jurisdiction of the
city, to a square platform called “_La mesa del Rey_,” the king’s table,
where the bodies of the executed are quartered and cut up--“a pretty
dish to set before a king.” Here the carcase was hewed and hacked into
pieces by the bungling executioner and his attendants, with that
inimitable defiance of anatomy for which they and Spanish surgeons are
equally renowned--
“Le gambe di lui gettaron in una fossa;
Il Diavol ebbe l’alma, i lupi l’ossa.”
“The legs of the robber were thrown in a hole,
The wolves got his bones, the devil his soul.”
[Sidenote: THE SPANISH DOCTOR.]