was instructed to prepare a manifesto setting forth the reasons for the
suppression of the Inquisition which, together with the decree, should
be read in all parish churches for three consecutive Sundays, before the
offertory of the mass; that in all churches the insignia of those
condemned and penanced should be removed, and that a report should be
made as to the disposition of the archives of the tribunals. The
preparation of the manifesto delayed the publication of the decree until
February 22d, for it was a long and wordy document, in which the
decadence of Spain was attributed to the abuses of the Inquisition; the
ancient laws had therefore been revived, restoring their jurisdiction to
the bishops, in whose hands the Catholic faith and its sublime morals
would be secure; Religion would flourish, prosperity would return, and
perchance this change might some day lead to the religious brotherhood
of all the nations.[908]
It was not long before the imprudence of this step manifested itself,
for it gave the Church a battle-ground on which to contest, not only the
reading of the manifesto but the execution of the decree itself and, if
defeated, of occupying the advantageous position of martyrdom.
Opposition had for some time been in preparation. As early as December
12, 1812, the six bishops of Lérida, Tortosa, Barcelona, Urgel, Teruel
and Pampeluna, in the safe refuge of Majorca, had prepared a manifesto
widely circulated in private, representing the Church as outraged in its
ministers, oppressed in its immunities, and combated in its doctrines,
while the Jansenist members of the Córtes were described as adherents of
the Council of Pistoja.[909] No sooner was the decisive vote of February
5th taken than the chapter of the vacant see of Cádiz prepared for a
contest over the reading of the decree and manifesto. It had already
appointed a committee of three with full powers, and it now instructed
the committee to communicate secretly with refugee bishops in Cádiz, and
with chapters elsewhere, with a view to common action. Letters were sent
to the chapters of Seville, Málaga, Jaen and Córdova, representing that
the Cádiz chapter was ready to be the victim, but would be strengthened
by the union of others. Seville replied with promises to do the same;
the rest more cautiously, for they felt that they were treading on
dangerous ground.
[Sidenote: _RESISTANCE OF THE CLERGY_]
This dampened somewhat the ardor of the fiery Cádiz chapter and it
sought for other support. On February 23d the parish priests and army
chaplains of Cádiz were assembled and addressed the chapter at great
length. To read the decree and manifesto would be a profanation and a
degrading servility. The papal constitutions creating the Inquisition
were binding on the consciences of the faithful, until revoked by the
same authority, and from this obligation the secular power could not
relieve them. To obey would be to incur the risk of a dreadful
sacrilege, and the penalties for impeding the Inquisition imposed by
Julius III and Sixtus V; it was better to fall into the hands of man
than into those of God, and they were ready to endure whatever fate
might befall them. This was rank rebellion, slightly moderated by the
expression of a desire to learn the opinions of the holy prelates who
were in Cádiz. The chapter duly transmitted this address to the
prelates--the Bishops of Calahorra, Plasencia, San Marcos de Leon,
Sigüenza and Albarracin (Calahorra and San Marcos were deputies in the
Córtes and had signed the Constitution)--stating that it entertained the
same sentiments and repeated the request for their opinion. The bishops
replied cautiously, and in substance advised that representations be
made to the Government, which might be induced to modify its
decrees.[910]
Time was growing short, for March 7th had been designated as the first
Sunday for reading the decree and manifesto. On March 3d a capitular
meeting was assembled, in which it was unanimously resolved to obey, but
to make use of the provisions which authorize citizens to obey without
executing and to represent reverentially the reasons for suspending
action until further determination.[911] This was the first step in the
development of a somewhat formidable plot which was organizing. On March
5th the papal nuncio, Pedro Gravina, Archbishop of Nicæa, addressed to
the Regency a very significant protest against the decree itself. The
abolition of the Inquisition, he said, was contrary to the primacy of
the Holy See; he protested against this and he asked the Regency to
induce the Córtes to suspend its publication and execution until happier
times might secure the consent of the pope or of the National Council.
On the same day he was guilty of the indiscretion of writing to the
Bishop of Jaen and to the chapters of Málaga and Granada, under strict
injunctions of secrecy, advising them of the proposed resistance of the
Cádiz chapter and inviting their coöperation.[912] The next day, March
6th, the chapter sent to the Regency the address of the priests and
chaplains of Cádiz, with a communication setting forth the reasons which
not only prevented the execution of the mandate of the Córtes, but
imperiously required the secular power to protect the Church and relieve
it from an act in contravention of its honor and sanctity. The Chapter,
it argued, could not be accused of disobedience for insisting on the
spiritual law which was more binding than the temporal.[913]
The Regency evidently was participating in the plot to overthrow the
Córtes for the purpose of saving the Inquisition. The legislative and
executive branches of the Government had become estranged. There had
been dissension in the matter of the suppression of the convents, and an
investigation made by the Córtes into the affairs of the Regency had led
to a damaging report on February 7th. The Liberals were convinced that
it was planning a _coup d'état_ when, on the night of Saturday, March
6th the rumor spread that it had dismissed the Governor of Cádiz, D.
Cayetano Valdés, and had replaced him with D. José María Alós. Sunday
passed without the reading of the decree and manifesto in the churches
and, on Monday, the minister of Gracia y Justicia sent to the Córtes the
communications of the chapter to the Regency. A permanent session was at
once declared; the Córtes dismissed the regents and replaced them with
the three senior members of the Council of State, Cardinal Luis de
Bourbon, Archbishop of Toledo, D. Pedro Agar and D. Gabriel Ciscar, who
forthwith took the oaths and at 9 P.M. assumed possession of their
office, the dismissed regents offering no resistance.[914]
[Sidenote: _RESISTANCE OF THE CLERGY_]
Harmony between the legislature and the executive being thus restored,
on March 9th the Córtes ordered the Regency to compel obedience. Under
threats of measures to be taken, the chapter yielded at 10 P.M. and
promised that the next morning, and on the two following Sundays, the
decree and manifesto should be duly read. It was obliged to furnish
authentic copies of all papers and correspondence, on the basis of which
a sharp reprimand was addressed to the Seville chapter and, on April
24th, prosecution was commenced against the Cádiz capitular vicar and
the three members of the committee, for treasonable conspiracy. Their
temporalities were seized and for six weeks they were imprisoned,
incomunicado. The trial dragged on until the restoration of Fernando VII
rendered acquittal a matter of course and enabled them, in their
defence, to declare that to destroy the Inquisition or to impede its
action in matters of faith was the same as prohibiting the jurisdiction
of the Roman Pontiff, thus trampling under foot a dogma established by
Jesus Christ.[915]
The documents thus obtained showed that Nuncio Gravina had been active
in furthering the plot of resistance. Now that it had been crushed,
policy would have dictated dropping the matter but, on April 22d, the
minister of Gracia y Justicia addressed him a sharp letter, expressing
the confidence of the Regency that he would in future observe the limits
of his office, as otherwise it would be obliged to exercise all its
authority. To this he of course replied defiantly; whenever
ecclesiastical matters were concerned he might find himself obliged to
follow the same course, and the Regency could do as it pleased. Some
further correspondence followed in the same vein and then, after an
interval, his passports were sent to him, his temporalities were seized,
and he was informed that the frigate Sabina was at his disposal to
transport him whither he desired.[916] He declined the proffered frigate
and established himself in Portugal, near the border, whence he
continued busily to stir up disaffection, assuming that he still
retained his functions as nuncio. On July 24th he addressed a protest to
the Government and sent a circular to the bishops inviting them to apply
to him in cases requiring his aid. This led to a lively controversy, in
which the Government charged him with deceit and he retorted by accusing
it of falsehood and challenging it to publish the documents.[917]
This was by no means the only trouble excited by the enforced reading of
the decree and manifesto. Recalcitrant priests were found in many
places, whose cases caused infinite annoyance and bad blood and the
Bishop of Oviedo was recluded in a convent for refusing obedience.[918]
The Government triumphed, but it was a Pyrrhic victory, multiplying its
enemies, heightening its reputation for irreligion, and weakening its
influence.[919]
The result was seen in the elections for the new _Córtes ordinarias_,
when the deputies returned were largely reactionary, owing to clerical
influence. There were many vacancies, however, which were filled by the
old members for the corresponding places, and thus the parties were
evenly balanced. The new Córtes met, September 26th and, on November
29th adjourned to meet in Madrid, January 15, 1814; the Regency
transferred itself to Madrid, January 5th.[920] By that time the French
were virtually expelled from Spain; Wellington was following Soult into
France, and Suchet was barely holding his own against Copons in
Catalonia.
The return of Fernando el Deseado was evidently at hand and was eagerly
expected. The reaction following the prolonged excitement of the war was
beginning to be felt. There was widespread misery in the devastated
provinces, the relief of which was slow and difficult and was aggravated
by a decree of the Córtes requiring those which had been subjugated to
pay the arrears of the war contributions. Dissatisfaction with the
Córtes was aroused by what were regarded as their sins both of
commission and omission--the lowering of the value of French money
caused great suffering and trouble; all who had served under the intruso
were ejected from office; the parish priests were reinstated in their
old cures, which turned into the streets the new incumbents; people
began to grumble at the preponderance of the Liberals in the Córtes--in
short, there was no lack of subjects of complaint.[921] Exhaustion and
poverty, the inevitable consequences of so prolonged and desperate a
struggle, produced discontent, and it was natural that those who had
guided the nation through its tribulations should be held responsible,
while their services should be forgotten. The military also were
dissatisfied at finding that, at the close of a successful war, they had
not the importance that they considered to be their due, while the
clergy were outspoken in opposition and, through two widely circulated
journals, "El Procurador de la Nacion y del Rey" and " La Atalaya de la
Mancha," attacked the Government furiously.[922]
[Sidenote: _FERNANDO'S RETURN_]
During all this period, Fernando's existence at Valençay had been as
agreeable as was consistent with his safe-keeping. The only restriction
on his movements was a prohibition to ride on horseback; Napoleon is
said to have kept him supplied with women to satisfy his strongly
developed sensuality, and he manifested his characteristic baseness in
letters to his captor congratulating him on his victories and soliciting
the honor of a matrimonial alliance with his family. After the battle of
Leipzig, Napoleon, striving to save what he could from the wreck,
represented to Fernando that the English were seeking to convert Spain
into a Jacobin republic; Fernando was ready to agree to any terms and,
on December 11, 1813, there was signed what was known as the Treaty of
Valençay, under which peace was declared between France and Spain, the
English and French troops were to be withdrawn, the Afrancesados, who
had taken refuge in France, were to be restored to their property and
functions, and Fernando was to make a yearly allowance of 30,000,000
reales to his father and mother.[923]
Fernando sent the Duke of San Carlos with the treaty to Madrid for
ratification, instructing him that, if he found the Córtes and Regency
infected with Jacobinism, he was to insist on ratification pure and
simple; if he found them loyal, he was to say that the king desired
ratification, with the understanding that he would subsequently declare
it invalid. The treaty excited general indignation. As early as January
1, 1811, the Córtes had decreed that they would recognize no treaty made
by the king in captivity, and that he should not be considered free
until he was surrounded by his faithful subjects in Córtes. Now the
Córtes responded to Fernando's message with a decree of February 2,
1814, reissuing the former one and adding that obedience should not be
rendered to him until he should, in the Córtes, take an oath to the
Constitution; on his arrival at the frontier this decree was to be
handed to him, with a copy of the Constitution that he might read and
understand it; he was to follow a route prescribed by the Regency and,
on reaching the capital, he was to come directly to the Córtes, take the
oath, and the government would then be solemnly made over to him. All
this was agreed to with virtual unanimity; it was signed by all the
deputies and was published with a manifesto denouncing the treaty and
expressing the warmest devotion to the king. The publication aroused
general indignation at the treaty and the manifesto elicited universal
applause.[924]
To Fernando, trained in the traditions of absolutism, the Treaty of
Valençay was vastly preferable to the reception prepared for him, but he
uttered no word of dissent when, after Napoleon had liberated him
without conditions on March 7th, he was transferred by Suchet, on the
banks of the Fluviá, March 24th, to Copons, the Captain-general of
Catalonia. He exercised volition however in deviating from the route
laid down by the Regency, and made a detour to Saragossa on the road to
Valencia, but he preserved absolute silence as to his intentions.
Everywhere he was received with delirious enthusiasm; the people
idealized him as the symbol of the nationality for which they had
struggled through five years of pitiless war, and there were no bounds
to their exuberance of loyalty.
THE RESTORATION.
To few men has it been given, as to Fernando, to exercise so profound
and so lasting an influence on the destinies of a nation. His ancestor,
Henry IV, had a harder task when he undertook to impose harmony on
compatriots who, for a generation had been savagely cutting each others'
throats. Fernando came to a nation which had been unitedly waging war
against a foreign enemy. Differences of opinion had grown up, as to the
reception or rejection of modern ideas, and parties had been formed
representing the principles of conservatism and innovation; mistakes had
been made on both sides and bitterness of temper was rising, but a wise
and prudent ruler, coming uncommitted to either side and
enthusiastically greeted by both, could have exorcised the demon of
faction, could have brought about compromise and conciliation, and could
have gradually so trained the nation that it could have traversed in
peace the inevitable revolution awaiting it. This was not to be.
Unfortunately Fernando was one of the basest and most despicable beings
that ever disgraced a throne. Cowardly, treacherous, deceitful, selfish,
abandoned to low debauchery, controlled by a camarilla of foul and
immoral favorites, his sole object was to secure for himself the
untrammelled exercise of arbitrary power and to abuse it for sensual
gratification. Cruel he was not, in the sense of wanton shedding of
blood, but he was callously indifferent to human suffering, and he
earned the name of Tigrekan, by which the Liberals came to designate
him.[925]
[Sidenote: _REACTION_]
When Fernando entered Spain he was naturally undecided as to the
immediate attitude to be assumed towards the changes made during his
absence, but the enthusiasm of his reception and the influence of the
reactionaries who surrounded him emboldened him in the determination to
assert his autocracy. Several secret conferences were held during the
journey to decide whether he should swear to the Constitution, and the
negative opinion prevailed. In fact, to a man of Fernando's character,
voluntary obedience to the Constitution was an impossibility. Not only
did it declare that sovereignty resided in the nation, with the
corresponding right to determine its fundamental laws, but the powers of
the crown were limited in many ways; the Córtes reserved the right to
exclude unworthy aspirants to the succession, and to set aside the
incumbent for any cause rendering him incapable--clauses susceptible of
most dangerous interpretation. At this very time, indeed, the Córtes
were deliberating on the appropriation to be made to the king for the
maintenance of his court, which implied the right to subject him to the
most galling conditions.[926]
If anything was needed to induce him to assert the full powers enjoyed
by his predecessors it was afforded by a manifesto known as the
Representation of the Persians, from an absurd allusion to the ancient
Persians in the opening sentence. This was signed by sixty-nine deputies
to the Córtes; at much length and with turgid rhetoric it set forth the
sufferings inflicted on Spain by the Liberals; it argued that all the
acts of the Córtes of Cádiz were null and invalid; it pointed out the
limitations on the royal power prescribed by the Constitution, and it
asserted that absolute monarchy was recognized as the perfection of
government. It did not omit to declare that the Inquisition was
indispensable to the maintenance of religion, without which no
government could exist; it dwelt on the disorders consequent upon its
suppression and it reminded Fernando that, from the time of the Gothic
kingdom, intolerance of heresy was the permanent law of the nation. Even
if the king should think best to swear to the Constitution, the
manifesto protested that it was invalid and that its destructive
principles must be submitted to the action of Córtes assembled according
to the ancient fashion. This paper, dated April 12th, was drawn up and
secretly circulated by Bernardo Moza Reales, who carried it to Valencia
and presented it to Fernando, receiving as reward the title of Marquis
of Mataflorida.[927]
Fernando reached Valencia April 16th and paused there until May 4th,
while secret preparations were made to overthrow the government. The
Córtes, unaware of the contemplated treachery, were amusing themselves
in arranging the hall for the solemnity of the king's oath and his
acknowledgement as sovereign, and took no measures for self-protection.
Troops were secretly collected in the vicinity of Madrid, under General
Eguia, a violent reactionary, who was made Captain-general of New
Castile. On the night of May 10th, when Fernando was nearing the
capital, Eguia notified Joaquin Pérez, President of the Córtes, that
they were closed; troops took possession of the hall and the archives
were sealed, while police-agents were busy making arrests from a list of
thirty-eight marked for proscription, including two of the regents, two
ministers and all the more prominent liberal deputies.[928] No
resistance was encountered and the precedent was established which has
proved so disastrous to Spain.
[Sidenote: _DESPOTISM RE-ESTABLISHED_]
In the early dawn of the 11th, there was found posted everywhere a royal
manifesto dated at Valencia on the 4th. In this, after a rambling
summary of antecedent events, Fernando promised to assemble as soon as
possible Córtes of the old fashion and, in conjunction with them, to
establish solidly whatever was necessary for the good of the kingdom. He
hated despotism; the enlightenment and culture of Europe would never
permit it, and his predecessors had never been despots. But the Córtes
of Cádiz and the existing body were illegal and all their acts were
invalid; he did not intend to swear to the Constitution or to the
decrees of the Córtes, but he pronounced them all void and of no effect,
and any one supporting them in any manner or endeavoring to impede the
execution of this manifesto was declared to be guilty of high treason
and subject to the death-penalty.[929] It is perhaps needless to say
that the promised convocation of Córtes and the salutary legislation
never took place. All the modernized institutions framed since 1810 were
swept away at a word, the old organization of Government was restored,
and Fernando was an absolute despot, disposing at his pleasure of the
lives and property of his subjects who had fought so desperately for his
restoration.
How he used this power was manifested in the case of the fifty-two
prisoners who were arrested at the time of the coup d'état. Nineteen
months were spent in endeavoring to have them condemned by tribunals and
commissions formed for the purpose, but no crime could be proved that
would not equally affect all who had voted with them, many of whom stood
in high favor at court. The last tribunal convened for their trial
advised Fernando to sentence them in the exercise of his royal
omnipotence, and he did so, December 17, 1815, sending them to distant
fortresses, African presidios and convents, with strict orders to allow
them to see no one and to send or receive no letters.[930] As regards
the three specially obnoxious clerical deputies, Villanueva was recluded
for six years in the convent of la Salceda, from which we shall see him
emerge and again play a brief part on the political stage. Muñoz Torrero
was sent to the convent of Erbon, in Galicia. He finally fell into the
savage hands of Dom Miguel of Portugal and perished, after severe
torture, in 1829.[931] Ruiz de Padron was not on the list of the
proscribed; he had not been elected to the new Córtes but was detained
by sickness in Cádiz. On his return in May to his parish of Valdeorras,
his bishop, Manuel Vicente of Astorga, made a crime of his absence from
his cure without episcopal licence and prosecuted him for this and for
sustaining in the Córtes projects adverse to religion and the throne. On
November 2, 1815, he was sentenced to perpetual reclusion in the desert
convent of Cabeza de Alba and, to prevent appeal, the bishop sent the
process to the Inquisition of Valladolid. Ruiz appealed to the
metropolitan, but the bishop refused to allow the appeal. Then a
_recurso de fuerza_ to the Chancellery of Valladolid was tried, which
thrice demanded the process before the bishop, to escape exposure in a
secular court, allowed the appeal. Finally the metropolitan annulled the
proceedings and Ruiz was set at liberty, after four years' imprisonment,
broken in health and ruined in fortune. This action probably superseded
a prosecution against him for printing his speech in the Córtes against
the Inquisition, a prosecution commenced by the Madrid tribunal and
transferred to Valladolid.[932]
* * * * *
[Sidenote: _REORGANIZATION_]
It was at first thought that the manifesto of May 4th, by invalidating
all the acts of the Córtes, in itself re-established the Inquisition. In
fact, Seville, its birth-place, had not waited for this and, on May 6th,
a popular tumult restored it. The next day its banner, piously preserved
by Don Juan García de Negra, a familiar, was solemnly conducted to the
castle of Triana by a procession, at the head of which marched Juan
Acisla de Vera, coadministrator of the diocese; the Te Deum was sung in
the cathedral, the houses were illuminated and splendidly adorned with
tapestries.[933] All this was premature, as likewise were the attempts
made by some tribunals to reorganize, for the absence of an
inquisitor-general and Suprema rendered irregular the transaction of
business. Representations were made to the king by Seville and other
towns, by the chapter of Valencia, and by bishops, praying him to take
action, and the scruples as to the intervention of the civil power in
spiritual affairs vanished.[934] Fernando accordingly, by decree of July
21, 1814, recited the appeals made to him and announced that he deemed
it fitting that the Holy Office should resume the exercise of its
powers, both the ecclesiastical granted by the popes and the royal,
bestowed by his predecessors. In both of these the rules in force in
1808 were to be followed, together with the laws issued at sundry times
to restrain abuses and curtail privileges.
But, as other reforms might be necessary, he ordered that, as soon as
the Suprema should assemble, two of its members, selected by him, and
two of the Royal Council should form a junta to investigate the
procedure and the methods of censorship and, if they should find
anything requiring reform, they should report to him that he might do
what was requisite.[935] Even the Córtes could not assert more
authoritative domination.
The inquisitor-generalship was filled by the appointment of Francisco
Xavier de Mier y Campillo, Bishop of Almería, and the vacancies in the
Suprema were supplied. The junta of reform was organized and met and
consulted. In 1816 we hear of their being still in session, but we are
told that they found nothing requiring amendment.[936]
The Suprema lost no time in getting to work. A circular of August 8th,
to the tribunals, enclosed the royal decree and announced that, in
virtue of it, the council was that day restored to its authority and
functions, which had been interrupted only by the invasion and the
so-called Córtes. The tribunals were ordered to proceed, as in former
times, with all business that might offer, and the officials were to
discharge their accustomed duties, until the Bishop of Almería should
receive his bulls. Lists of all officials were to be sent, with
statements of their dates of service, and of popular report as to their
conduct during the troubles, and whether they had publicly attacked the
rights of the sovereign and of the Holy Office. A process of
"purification" ensued, investigating the records of all officials, many
of whom had bowed to the tempest during the short-lived triumph of
Liberalism. April 7, 1815, a circular letter directed that any one who
had petitioned the Córtes for the abolition of the Inquisition, or had
congratulated them on their action, was no longer to be regarded as in
office or entitled to wear the insignia, but considerable tenderness was
shown to the erring. Thus Don Manuel Palomino y Lozano, supernumerary
secretary of the Madrid tribunal, had signed an address of
congratulation to the Córtes, but on his pleading coercion and fear he
was allowed to retain office.[937]
Allusion has already been made (Vol. II, p. 445) to the difficulties
experienced in re-constituting an institution which, during five years
of war, had been exposed to spoliation and destruction, resulting, in
some places, in the wrecking of its buildings, the purloining of its
movables and the scattering of its papers. Thus, for instance, in
September and October 1815, the Logroño tribunal, which had lost its
habitation, was negotiating with the Marquis of Monasterio for his
house, which he offered rent-free, if it would keep the premises in
repair and make the necessary alterations; the Suprema instructed it to
secure better terms if it could, and to be very economical with the
alterations.[938] As late as 1817 we chance to learn that Santiago and
Valladolid had no prisons and, in 1819, that Llerena was in the same
plight.[939]
The financial question was even more serious. We have seen how, under
Godoy, the tribunals had been obliged to convert all their available
securities into Government funds, which of course had become worthless,
and how the Córtes, by decree of December 1, 1810, had applied the
suppressed prebends to the conduct of the war. It must therefore have
been well-nigh starved when suppressed by the Córtes, but there was no
disposition to expose individuals to suffering and, when its property
was declared to belong to the nation, elaborate provision was made for
the payment of salaries and the customary gratifications, though we may
safely assume that in the majority of cases, these kindly intentions
failed of effect.[940]
[Sidenote: _FINANCIAL TROUBLES_]
When re-establishment came the task of gathering the salvage from the
wreck of the past six years was most disheartening. The royal decree
simply called on the Inquisition to resume its functions and said
nothing about its property, the restoration of which was evidently taken
for granted, under the manifesto invalidating the acts of the Córtes.
There was no disposition, however, on the part of the treasury officials
to do this and, in response to a consulta of August 11th, the king, on
the 18th, issued an order on them to make over to the tribunals all real
estate of every kind that had been absorbed by the treasury, the account
of rents to be made up to July 21st and apportioned on that basis. This
left personal property out of consideration and a further decree was
procured, September 3d, ordering the restoration of everything that had
passed into the Caja de Consolidacion, as well as the fruits of the
suppressed prebends, balancing the accounts up to July 21st.[941] This
was slackly obeyed; the necessities of the tribunals were pressing, and
the Suprema presented consultas of October 1st and 23d asking that they
should be allowed to collect the revenues, and that restitution should
be made of all past collections or, in default of this, that a monthly
allowance of eighty thousand reales be made to the Inquisition. To this
Fernando replied that the needs of the royal treasury did not permit the
repayment of back collections, nor could it meet the proposed monthly
allowance, but it was his will that such payments as the General
Treasury and the Junta del Crédito Público could spare should be made as
a payment on account for the most necessary expenses of the Inquisition.
This last was doubtless an empty promise; the royal financiers were
determined not to go back of July 21st, and it appears, by a letter of
December 16th, that the royal officials were still making collections.
The most that the Suprema could accomplish was to procure from the Junta
del Crédito Público an order of January 9, 1815, and from the chief of
the Treasury one of January 30th, to their subordinates to cease
collecting from the property of the Inquisition, under the rigid
condition that an account should be kept by the tribunals of their
collections, so that whatever they might obtain of arrears due prior to
July 21st should enure to the benefit of the Government.[942] In this,
however, there was recognized the justice of a claim for the unpaid back
salaries of the officials, and elaborate arrangements were made to
ascertain and put these in shape, but it was labor lost. The treasury
was at too low an ebb, and the claimants for services rendered during
the troubled years of war and revolution were too numerous, for the
Inquisition to obtain what it demanded.
The Suprema was also diligent in seeking to recover the amounts which
the tribunals had been obliged to invest in Government securities, but
this was as fruitless as other attempts to save fragments of the wreck.
The last we hear of it is in 1819, when the Suprema was still
endeavoring to meet the exigencies of the Treasury in framing lists of
the dates and numbers of the bonds.[943]
It was difficult to evolve order out of the chaos of destruction,
especially where the papers had been scattered, so that evidences of
indebtedness and accounts were lost, interfering greatly with efforts to
reclaim property. In November, 1814, we find the Valencia tribunal
issuing an edict requiring the return of all books and papers and
records within fifteen days, under pain of excommunication and two
hundred ducats; as to the furniture and other effects, they were to be
restored under threat of legal proceedings. Although Valencia had been
for two years under French occupation, it seems to have been more prompt
than some others in getting its finances into intelligible condition. In
November the Suprema calls upon it for a detailed schedule of resources
and expenses and, in the latter it is not to omit the contribution
required by the Suprema, amounting to 130,896 reales, and meanwhile it
is not to pay out anything for salaries or other purposes without
awaiting permission. Under this it was allowed, January 21, 1815, to pay
salaries up to the end of 1814, and in May to make further payments. Yet
in 1816 we find it reduced to seeking a loan wherewith to meet the
salaries and a sum of thirteen thousand reales demanded by the
Suprema.[944]
The Suprema itself, despite the contributions which it sought to levy
from the tribunals, was in a condition of penury so absolute that, on
July 3, 1815, it announced that it had no funds wherewith to pay the
salaries of its officials or the postage on the official communications
from the tribunals, which must therefore in future arrange with the
Post-Office to prepay the postage and settle monthly or quarterly. This,
however, as it explained August 19th, applied only to what was addressed
to it as, under a decree of May 19, 1799, letters to the
inquisitor-general and other heads of councils were carried free.[945]
[Sidenote: _RESUMPTION OF FUNCTIONS_]
There was gradual improvement, but it was slow. A carta acordada of
September 3, 1818, says that the Suprema cannot view with indifference
the deplorable financial condition of nearly all the tribunals, whose
diminished revenues force them to allow the meagre salaries of their
officials to fall into arrears, nor can it close its ears to the clamors
of these unfortunates, reduced as they are to the deepest indigence.
Seeking for partial remedies, it must insist on the avoidance of all
expenses not absolutely indispensable, and the suppression of all
superfluous offices. One of these is the notariate of the court of
confiscations; when it falls vacant it is not to be filled, and its
duties are to be performed by the secretary of sequestrations, whose
salary will consequently be raised by fifty ducats. This was a somewhat
exiguous conclusion of so solemn an exordium, seeing that the actual
work of the tribunals could readily have been performed by less than
half the officials who swelled their pay-rolls, but it is not without
interest as showing how persistently the old inflated organization was
maintained, and was struggling to support itself on the remnants of its
once prosperous fortunes. Under such a system, poverty naturally
continued to the last. When the Revolution of 1820 broke out, and the
Seville tribunal contributed six thousand reales to the committee
organized to resist the rising, it had no funds and was obliged to
borrow the money on interest. As almost the first act of the successful
revolutionists was to suppress the Inquisition, the lenders in this case
doubtless found themselves to be involuntary contributors.[946] At this
time the Seville tribunal had a force of twenty-eight officials, with a
pay-roll of 92,300 reales, while the amount of its work may be gathered
from the fact that the revolutionists found only three prisoners to
release.[947]
* * * * *
Thus amid difficulties and tribulations the tribunals one by one resumed
their functions. In October, 1814, Seville was prosecuting Lt. Colonel
Lorenzo del Castillo for propositions; Saragossa was receiving the
self-denunciation of Mathias Pintado, priest of Bujanuelo, for heregia
mista, and Valencia was suspending the sumaria of the Capuchin Fray
Pablo de Altea for _mala doctrina_, while in December Murcia was
prosecuting Don Josef de Zayas, a prominent lieutenant-general of the
royal army, for Free-Masonry.[948] Business, however, at the first was
scanty. In the book of secret votes of the Suprema, there is an interval
from December 22, 1814, until February 16, 1815. As the months of 1815
passed on, the breaks grow shorter and, by the summer of 1815, the
decrees follow each other closely. Valladolid seems to have been
dilatory in getting to work for, although it had three inquisitors
drawing salary, no case came up from it until January, 1817, and, from
this one it would seem that it had not been in operation until October,
1816.[949]
The prosecution of such a man as Zayas shows that the reorganized
Inquisition did not hesitate to grapple with those in high place, and
another early case illustrates this still more forcibly. During the
French occupation the Duke and Duchess of Sotomayor and the Countess of
Mora had obtained possession of the books and indecent pictures
accumulated in the Madrid tribunal. Apparently they refused to surrender
them; the tribunal prosecuted them and rendered a sentence, subject to
the royal permission, that these objects should be seized, but in such a
manner as not to attract attention or to provoke resentment. The Suprema
confirmed the sentence, ordering its execution by a single inquisitor,
accompanied by a secretary, so as to reconcile the respect due to the
parties with the secrecy that was essential.[950]
A politic act was the issue of a general pardon for all that had
"impiously and scandalously" been uttered and done against the
Inquisition under the fatal circumstances of the recent troubles.[951]
It could afford to assume this attitude of magnanimity, seeing that the
Government was pitilessly avenging it on its most prominent adversaries.
When the Government failed in this duty, the Inquisition had no
hesitation in nullifying its edict of pardon. We have seen its
prosecution of Ruiz de Padron, until it found that the Bishop of Astorga
was rendering this superfluous, nor was this by any means an isolated
case. In August, 1815, we find the Suprema acting on sumarias from
Canaries, in the cases of Mariano Romero, a priest, for a sonnet against
the Inquisition, and of Francisco Guerra for a sonnet and an epitaph of
the same character. So, in November, 1815, there is a prosecution of the
Duke of Parque Castrillo for congratulating the Córtes on the abolition
of the Inquisition and for a general order to the troops, December 2,
1812. His case dragged on until June 10, 1817, when its suspension was
ordered.[952]
[Sidenote: _FERNANDO'S FAVOR_]
Yet it was not easy to revive the old-time veneration for an institution
that had been so buffeted and roughly handled by the press and the
Córtes. A couple of cases in Madrid, in 1814, of women in whose shops
scandalous pictures and objects were exhibited, would seem to indicate
that its commands were not obeyed with alacrity.[953] It was doubtless
with a view of overcoming this indifference that Fernando himself
assumed the office of an inquisitor, February 3, 1815, when he visited
the Suprema, presided over its deliberations and participated in its
decisions, examined all the offices and expressed his royal satisfaction
with the methods of procedure. By royal permission the Suprema sent its
president and three members to return the visit and express its
gratitude for a mark of royal favor such as Ferdinand the Catholic nor
any of his successors had ever made. A full report was printed in the
Gaceta of February 16th, copies of which the Suprema sent to the
tribunals with orders to read it to the officials and place it in the
archives.[954] With the same purpose, he erected, as we have seen, the
Congregation of San Pedro Martir to a knightly Order, with a habit and
badge and, on April 6th, the feast of St. Peter Martyr, he presided over
the Congregation, with his brothers Carlos and Antonio, wearing the
insignia. In communicating this to the tribunals, the Suprema rendered
it especially impressive by ordering them to commence the payment of
salaries earned since July 21st and to continue it monthly.[955] Noble
courtiers doubtless found that assuming office in the Inquisition was an
avenue to royal favor, and we speedily see many of them submitting their
genealogies for this purpose. The great Duke of Berwick and Alva,
Fitzjames Stuart Silva Stolberg y Palafox, thus seeks the office of
alguazil mayor of the tribunal of Córdova; the Marquis of Altamira does
the same for the position of honorary secretary in that of Madrid, and
we happen to hear of the Count of Mazeda, a grandee of the first class,
serving as alguazil mayor of the tribunal of Santiago, and the Marquis
of Iscar as honorary secretary to the Suprema.[956]
In spite of all this, the Inquisition could not regain its former
position. Not only was it not respected but it dared not to enforce
respect. Two Edicts of Grace for Free-Masons were issued, January 2d and
February 12, 1815, when the Valladolid tribunal sent those for Medina
del Campo and its district to its commissioner Victor González to be
posted. The vicar-general and Ordinary, Doctor Josef Suárez Talavera, as
ecclesiastical judge, demanded that they should pass through his hands,
and when they were posted they bore the MS. subscription "Fixese, Doctor
Suárez," thus assuming that it was by his permission, and arrogating to
himself a jurisdiction superior to that of the Inquisition. When this
was reported to the tribunal it ordered González to take them down and
replace them with unsullied ones, which he did. Thereupon Suárez sent
him word that, but for starting on a journey, he would make him repent
and that, had he known of his being in Medina he would have cast him in
prison and seen who could get him out. The tribunal meekly swallowed
this flagrant insult; it was under instructions to perform no act
indicating jurisdiction superior to that of the Ordinaries, so it
quietly gathered evidence verifying the facts and sent the papers,
September 15th, to the Suprema.[957]
The Inquisition recognized and felt acutely its altered position. In a
report to the king on the subject of _visitos de navios_, made by the
Suprema, in 1819, there are repeated confessions of powerlessness; the
times are so unfortunate that its regulations fail to effect their
object.[958] The same consciousness of weakness is manifest in the
conduct of the occasional competencias which still occurred. In such of
these as I have had an opportunity of examining there are a studied
courtesy and evident desire to avoid giving offence, without wholly
abandoning the claims of the Holy Office.
[Sidenote: _MISGOVERNMENT_]
To the same cause we may, at least partially, ascribe the marked
tendency to mitigation of punishment--except in the case of political
offenders--and to avoid all unnecessary hardship and humiliation of
culprits. When, in March, 1819, the Madrid tribunal pronounced a severe
sentence on Teodoro Bachiller, for propositions, the Suprema moderated
it greatly in every way, in order, it said, to make him understand its
benignity in taking care of his honor and of the comfort of his family.
In January, 1817, Lorenzo Ayllon was tried in Seville for abusing a
priest while celebrating mass and endeavoring to snatch away the
host--offences for which, of old, he could scarce have escaped the
stake, but now he had only absolution _ad cautelam_, a reprimand, two
years of presidio followed by six years of exile, and the Suprema
relieved him of the vergüenza which had been included. Even more marked
was the case of Diego Blásquez, postmaster of Villanueba de la Serena,
who with some others committed the sacrilege of burying a dog with
funeral rites. The Llerena tribunal commenced a prosecution and sent the
sumaria to the Suprema, which contented itself with ordering a
courteous note to be addressed to the secular and ecclesiastical judges,
expressing a hope that they would not permit a repetition of such
scandals.[959] It would be easy to multiply similar instances, but these
will suffice to show how completely, in dealing with offences against
the faith, the spirit of the Inquisition had been tamed, and how
factitious was the claim that its existence was essential for the
preservation of religion, when there were over half a hundred episcopal
tribunals perfectly competent to try such offences and perfectly ready
to treat them with greater severity.
* * * * *
Meanwhile Fernando's reign had continued as it commenced. Under the
influence of a camarilla of low-caste and ignoble favorites, who
pandered to his vices and enriched themselves by trafficking in offices
and in contracts and in justice, his government was a compound of
brutality and imbecility, and the affairs of the nation fell into
complete disorder. All the abuses that had flourished under Godoy were
intensified and coupled with persistent cruel persecution of those
designated as Liberals, who filled the gaols through constantly
recurring lists of proscriptions. De Martignac, who, as royal
commissioner, accompanied the Duke of Angoulême in the invasion of 1823,
was a thoroughly well-informed and unprejudiced observer, who after a
vigorous description of the misgovernment of Fernando sums up by saying
"We can conceive the influence of such a régime on the prosperity of the
land, and yet it is difficult to realize the extent of disorder,
wretchedness and weakness to which it fell. It was necessary to resort
to arbitrary taxes, to exorbitant duties which destroyed commerce, to
loans raised without credit. It was impossible to provide for the most
pressing necessities of the State; everything was neglected or
abandoned; the army was unpaid; the navy, destroyed at Trafalgar,
remained in ruins; the administration, destitute of all means of action,
did nothing and could do nothing to improve conditions, or even to
preserve what there was. From this arose the discontent of the
people."[960] It can scarce excite surprise that the crazy enthusiasm of
Fernando's welcome in 1814 had evaporated.
THE REVOLUTION OF 1820.
During this disastrous period, every year saw an attempt at revolution.
In 1814 it was tried at Pampeluna by General Mina, who escaped; in 1815
in Galicia by Porlier, who was executed; in 1816 in Madrid by Richard,
who shared the same fate; in 1817 in Catalonia by Lacy, who was shot; in
1818 in Valencia by Vidal, who was put to death. Again in Valencia a
plot was formed to break out January 1, 1819, but it was betrayed and
thirteen of the conspirators were hanged. O'Donnell, Count of la Bisbal,
an able soldier and unscrupulous intriguer, was privy to this, but
averted suspicion and was appointed to command an expeditionary force
collecting at Cádiz for Buenos Ayres, against the revolted colony. With
customary negligence, transports were not provided; the troops lay idle
for months, discontent spread and a formidable conspiracy was organized,
which counted on la Bisbal's support; he concluded that loyalty was
safest and seized the leading plotters, for which he was rewarded with
the grand cross of Carlos III., but suspicion arose; he was removed and
replaced by the incapable Count of Calderon.
The situation, however, was growing impossible, and revolution was in
the air. A portion of the troops were cantoned at las Cabezas de San
Juan, a town not far from Cádiz. There, on January 1, 1820, Rafael de
Riego, commander of the battalion of Asturias, assembled his men, made
an inflammatory harangue, and they all declared for the Constitution. He
made a dash for Arcos, where he captured Calderon and three of his
generals, effected a junction with the battalions España and Corona,
under Colonel Antonio Quiroga, and failed in an attack on Cádiz. Delay
and irresolution followed, until January 27th, when Riego, at the head
of fifteen hundred men, marched to Algeciras, where he remained until
February 7th. Defeated in an attempt on Málaga, he reached Córdova on
March 7th, with some five hundred despairing followers. No effort was
made to capture them; the garrison and citizens looked on placidly,
while Riego refreshed his men and headed for the Sierra Morena; they
dropped off during the march and he was left with fifty followers; so
far as he was concerned, the movement was a failure.
[Sidenote: _REVOLUTION ACCOMPLISHED_]
Still, its preliminary success had aroused the slumbering elements of
discontent. On February 21st revolution broke out at Coruña and spread
to Ferrol and Vigo, when the Count of San Roman abandoned Galicia
without a struggle. Saragossa followed on March 2d, the captain-general
and garrison joining the magistrates and people. When the news reached
Barcelona, on March 10th the people rose and sacked the Inquisition, but
did no injury to the officials.[961] Within a few days Tarragona, Gerona
and Mataró followed the example, the garrisons participating in the
movement. In Navarre, Mina's account of the rising shows that there was
prearrangement, and that the municipal authorities and military
officials were fully in accord. When he reached Pampeluna with a large
force, gathered on his way from the border, he found that the revolution
had already been peacefully accomplished on March 11th. Meanwhile la
Bisbal, seeing that the movement promised success, spared no promises to
obtain command of the forces concentrating in la Mancha to put down
Riego's rising. He received the appointment and, on reaching Ocaña, he
induced the regiment Alejandro to cry "Viva la Constitucion." The
revolution was accomplished and was bloodless, save a hideous massacre
at Cádiz of the unarmed multitude, perpetrated in cold blood by Don
Manuel Freyre.[962]
During the two months of this desultory movement, which prompt action
could so readily have suppressed, the court was nerveless and incapable.
When the news came of the rising in Galicia, Fernando issued, February
28th, a plaintive appeal, promising amendment. His terror increased as
evil tidings came pouring in, and on March 3d he published a decree
bewailing the state of the kingdom, and announcing that he had ordered
the Council of State to prepare a comprehensive scheme of reform. This
was followed, March 6th, by another calling an immediate convocation of
Córtes. It was too late; he found himself abandoned by all, even by his
Royal Guard, which General Ballesteros reported was planning to retire
to Buen Retiro and send a deputation asking him to swear to the
Constitution. This was decisive and, on the night of the 7th, he issued
another decree announcing his intention to do so. This was received, on
the 8th, with popular rejoicings, but, as no further action was taken,
an impatient mob, on the 9th, surrounded the palace with seditious cries
and threats. The guard was impassive; Fernando was deserted and was
absolutely alone when the crowd began to mount the stairs to demand that
he should swear to the Constitution, but they were restrained on
learning that he had ordered the reassembling of the Ayuntamiento of
Madrid as it had existed under the Constitution. Its members were got
together and proceeded immediately to the palace, where Fernando
received them with warm expressions of affection; he took the required
oath of his own free will, and ordered Ballesteros to make the army do
the same. A general illumination and bell-ringing for three nights were
ordered, and the people dispersed, not, however, without first visiting
the Inquisition, releasing the prisoners and scattering the archives.
Only two or three prisoners were found and these were political. Rodrigo
tells us that the mob wanted them to pose as victims of persecution, but
they prudently refused, and a neighboring cobbler was persuaded to
exhibit himself as the presiding figure of the celebration.[963]
[Sidenote: _INQUISITION SUPPRESSED_]
On the same day, March 9th, Fernando issued a decree abolishing the
Inquisition. This bore that, as its existence was incompatible with the
Constitution of 1812, for which reason it had, after mature
deliberation, been suppressed by the Córtes, and in conformity with the
opinion of the Junta this day established, he ordered that, from this
day, the Suprema and the Inquisition be suppressed throughout the
monarchy, setting at liberty all prisoners confined for political or
religious opinions, and transferring, to the bishops in their respective
dioceses, their cases to be determined in accordance with the decree of
the Córtes.[964] This was followed, March 20th, by a royal order
providing for inventories of all property pertaining to the Inquisition,
and reviving the decree of February 22, 1813; the Bureau of Public
Credit was to take possession of and administer the property, until its
destination should be determined by the Córtes shortly to be assembled,
while the salaries of officials were to be continued. When the Córtes
met, a decree of August 9th included this with other escheated property,
to be sold at auction by the Junta nacional de Crédito.[965]
During the slow progress of the Revolution, the Inquisition seems to
have been watching events with full consciousness of the fate in store
for it if the movement should prove successful. A letter of January
19th, from the Seville tribunal to the Suprema, states that it had
delayed the arrests of the Trinitarian, Fray Juan Montes, and of Don
Tomás Díaz in consequence, at first of the epidemic, and then of the
insurrection, to which the Suprema replied, January 24th, that it left
future action to the prudence of the tribunal.[966] Considering how
feeble at the time was the demonstration of Riego, this shows that its
ultimate consequences were fully apprehended. Still the Inquisition
continued at work, but the last case acted upon by the Suprema was its
confirmation, February 10th, of a sentence rendered January 28th, by the
Toledo tribunal, on Manuel de la Peña Palacios, priest of Ontoba. As the
last act of the dreaded Holy Office, after a career of three centuries
and a half, it has an interest beyond its inherent trivial character,
and it will be found in the Appendix.
At least one liberated prisoner gave expression to his delight at his
release. Don Antonio Bernabeu, a priest, had been a member of the Córtes
of Cádiz and had been arrested with the others in May, 1814, but seems
to have been released in about six months. He was a Jansenist of an
extreme type and, in 1813, had printed a pamphlet to prove that the
State could seize all ecclesiastical property and reduce the overgrown
numbers of the clergy, putting those who were left on moderate salaries.
The tract was a terrible indictment of the Church for its greed of
accumulation, its neglect of duty and its departure from the old
standards in concentrating all power in the pope, which he attributed to
the Isidorian Decretals. On his release from prison, December 14, 1814,
he hastened to denounce himself for this to the Inquisition and was
placed in reclusion. In 1816 he denounced himself a second time for
matters at first omitted. The fiscal presented the accusation, April 20,
1817, rather cleverly drawn, for it demanded precise definition of his
opinions on the wide range of subjects, in which he charged the Church
with deviation from primitive times, and specific proofs of his somewhat
vague declamation as to abuses. To satisfy this would require the
resources of a large library and years of research, while Bernabeu was
confined in a convent and was denied even a copy of his offending
pamphlet, besides being exposed to all manner of persecutions by his
fellow inmates. His trial was still pending when the decree of March 9th
liberated him; he was promptly returned as a deputy to the Córtes of
1820, and he celebrated his release by reprinting his pamphlet, with an
account of his sufferings and his answers to the charges of the
fiscal.[967]
* * * * *
[Sidenote: _SUICIDE OF LIBERALISM_]
It would carry us too far from our subject to recount in detail the
extravagancies and follies with which the triumphant Liberals invited
the cruel reaction that awaited them. Moderation, perhaps, was scarce to
be expected of men, smarting under the persecution of the last six
years, and suddenly brought from fortresses and presidios, or from
exile, to take charge of the Government, and to frame laws for the
nation. That they should in turn persecute their persecutors was natural
but impolitic; mutual hatreds were inflamed, and the land was divided
into factions between which harmony and forbearance became impossible.
The long centuries of despotism and the repression of independent
thought and action had rendered the people incapable of the large
measure of self-government provided by the Constitution. So-called
patriotic societies were rapidly formed--de Lorencini, de San Fernando,
la Fontana de Oro, la Cruz de Malta, la Landaburana and others--which in
reality were Jacobinical clubs, where the most radical measures were
advocated, and the most violent means of effecting them were urged. An
unbridled press was busy in adding fuel to the flames and in stimulating
the ardor which sought to realize anarchical dreams. Masonry had been
busy in preparing the revolution, and with its success Masonry became
the avenue to power and place; its lodges multiplied and were rapidly
filled. Then, with the progress of advanced ideas, Masonry became too
conservative for the _exaltados_, who left it and established the
Comuneros, whose statutes formed a state of revolutionary character
within the State. They rivalled the Masons in numbers and influence, and
the virulent struggle for supremacy between the two bodies at times
paralyzed the Government and neutralized the forces of order. The
disorderly element existing in all communities was utilized whenever
there was an object to be gained, and mob rule became of frequent
occurrence, not only in Madrid but in nearly all the cities. The orders
of the Government were obeyed or disregarded as suited the temper of the
populace or of its instigators. Officials commissioned as
captains-general or governors or magistrates were admitted or rejected;
orderly administration was becoming impossible, and everywhere
turbulence reigned supreme. Liberalism was committing suicide.
Yet Liberalism had need of its undivided strength to maintain itself
against the opposing forces. Fernando, while playing the part of a
constitutional king, was constantly plotting to throw off the yoke, and
was entertaining secret relations with those who were striving to
overthrow the Government. Successive Córtes seemed to take pleasure in
exacerbating the hostility of the clergy, whose influence over the mass
of the people was unbounded. Much of this legislation was no doubt
salutary in itself but, at the moment, it was dangerous, and the blows
succeeded each other so rapidly that the sufferers might well regard it
as systematic persecution. August 31, 1820, a law organizing the
national army exempted from service only such clerics as were actually
in holy Orders. One of September 26th subjected all clerics, secular and
regular, to secular jurisdiction for offences incurring corporal
punishment. Within a week, another decree suppressed a large portion of
the monastic Orders, and the Mendicants who were left were subjected to
the bishops and consolidated into houses of not less than twelve
inmates, and this was followed by other special decrees of suppression.
The property of the suppressed houses was applied to the _Crédito
público_ and, when Fernando refused his signature, a popular tumult was
organized which frightened him into acquiescence. October 26th it was
ordered that dispensations for marriage within prohibited degrees should
be issued without charge to those applying _in forma pauperis_, thus
cutting off a large source of income. When bands of insurgent royalists
began to make their appearance, and were joined or led by priests, the
bishops were ordered, April 20, 1821, to report what steps they had
taken to punish them and, within eight days, to issue edicts requiring
their flocks to obey the law. Then, on June 29th, without papal
authority, a contribution of thirty million reales was levied on the
clergy and, on the same day, the tithes were reduced one-half, while
allowing some compensation in the removal of certain imposts. The
clergy, not unnaturally, promoted disaffection, and to check this,
decrees of November 1, 1822, authorized the Government, at discretion,
to transfer from one place to another all parish priests and
ecclesiastics, the cost of maintenance of those thus deported being
thrown upon the bishops.[968]
[Sidenote: _QUARREL WITH THE CHURCH_]
In fact, the irreconcileable claims of State and Church rendered
hostility inevitable. It was impossible for the latter to understand
that, when it entered politics and became a political factor, it had to
be treated like other political bodies. The theocracy of the middle ages
had so long enjoyed power without responsibility that its immunity
became part of Latin doctrine. Elsewhere the impracticability of this
had been demonstrated, but in Spain the Church has never ceased to
struggle for the maintenance of medievalism, or has understood that
sedition in the pulpit should not be treated differently from sedition
in the tribune. It refused to recognize that self-preservation is the
first law of governments as of individuals, and that they cannot allow
artificial privileges to work their destruction. The theory of the
Liberals was that external ecclesiastical discipline was subject to the
civil authority, while internal discipline was reserved to the Church.
The Church asserted that in all things it ruled itself, and that any
secular interference was a laying of profane hands on the Ark. The gage
of battle was virtually thrown by Veremundo Arías, Archbishop of
Valencia, who, on October 20, 1820, addressed to the Córtes a long
manifesto, upholding all the extreme claims of the Church, and denying
the distinction between external and internal discipline. On November
10th he was arrested and, on the 24th, was put on board ship and sent to
France. This was the commencement of a persecution in which many bishops
suffered. Alvárez de Palma of Granada was set aside and replaced by the
liberal Archpriest Vinegas. Uriz y Lafaga of Pampeluna was summoned to
Madrid but, on the road, was rescued by royalists and conveyed to
France. Blas Beltran of Coria was banished. The Bishop-elect of Santa
Marta (Colombia) received his sentence of exile on his death-bed in
Plasencia. Cienfuegos of Cádiz had to fly to save his life. Pablo de
Sichar of Barcelona fled and remained absent until 1823. Rentería y
Reyes of Lérida was carried under guard to Barcelona, narrowly escaped
execution, and was detained in Málaga until 1823. Ramon Strauch y Vidal
of Vich was imprisoned in Barcelona, then sent to Tarragona and on the
road, under a pretext, was made to descend and was shot with his
attendant. Others who were exiled were Jaime Creus of Tarragona, Ceruelo
de la Fuente of Oviedo, Rafael de Velez of Ceuta and Castillon y Salas
of Tarazona.[969] It is true that the worst of these acts were committed
by mobs or irresponsible parties in the growing disorders of the times,
but they remained unrebuked and unpunished.
A government which thus treated its clergy was not likely to maintain
friendly relations with the Holy See. One of the earliest measures of
the new government was an act of August 17, 1820, suppressing the
Jesuits.[970] Pius VII met this with a letter of September 16th to
Fernando, deploring the perils that threatened religion and the Church
and reciting the obnoxious measures taken, for which he had ordered his
nuncio to make reclamation, but without effect.[971] Relations were not
improved when, April 21, 1821, a decree suppressed all payments, whether
in money or other equivalent, for papal bulls for archbishops, bishops,
matrimonial dispensations and other rescripts, in lieu of which the
paltry annual sum of 9000 silver dollars was offered.[972] This was
unwise but still more so was the sending to Rome as ambassador of
Joaquin Lorenzo Villanueva, towards the close of 1822, when the
intervention of the Holy Alliance was impending. At Turin he was met by
a papal order forbidding him to come further and asking the ministry to
appoint some one else. Evaristo San Miguel, the Secretary of State,
insisted; the papal foreign secretary replied that the opinions
expressed by Villanueva in the "Cartas de Don Roque Leal" and in the
Córtes were such that the Holy See could never receive him. To this the
answer was to send to the nuncio his passports with orders to leave
Spain. The rupture with Rome was complete and, in the eyes of pious
Spaniards, the government had justified the clerical definition of the
Constitution as heresy.[973]
The clerical temper thus stimulated is fairly exhibited in a little
pamphlet by Padre Miguel Canto, parish priest of Callosa de Segura,
celebrating the downfall of Constitutionalism. He is fairly drunk with
joy and consigns the Liberals to the bottomless pit for eternity with
vigorous delight. That the civil power should dare to assume any control
over the externals of the Church fills him with astonishment and rage,
all the greater in view of the suffering which it inflicted, especially
on the regulars. Canto tells us that the fabric of his church had
enjoyed a revenue of four thousand pesos, and that it was reduced to
such poverty that he had not wherewith to provide wafers and wine for
the sacrament, or oil for the lamps.[974] Yet the resources of the
Spanish Church were such that it still had ample funds for political
uses. When, in October, 1823, after his release by the French, Fernando
travelled from Cádiz to Madrid, he received in voluntary offerings from
the chapters of Toledo, Seville, Granada, Jaen and Cuenca, 11,970,000
reales in silver, although the land was in a condition of complete
exhaustion.[975]
[Sidenote: _DEVELOPMENT OF REVOLT_]
It is not difficult to believe that the pulpit and the confessional were
energetically used to inflame and organize the disaffection that rapidly
succeeded to the enthusiasm for the Constitution. The new administration
was no more efficient than the old. Ministries, hampered with the
underhand intrigues of the king, perpetually guarding against eager
rivals, and speedily engrossed with suppressing the armed resistance
springing up on every hand, had little opportunity of rectifying the
abuses which had made Fernando unpopular. To the people at large the
only visible result of the revolution was that the Liberals in turn
were persecuting the Serviles. The nobles, moreover were alienated by
the suppression of _Mayorazgos_ and _Vinculaciones_, or entails and
perpetual charges on lands, a reform which had long been urged by
statesmen such as Jovellanos.[976] Willing and receptive listeners to
clerical invective were abundant, and movements to overthrow the
Government speedily began taking shape. Before the year 1820 was out, in
Galicia there was organized a Junta Apostólica and in Burgos there was a
crazy conspiracy of some frailes and a general.[977] Soon wandering
bands of insurgents sprang up, among whom members of the clergy were
conspicuous, as though it was a holy war. Suppressed in one place, they
appeared in another, waging a guerrilla warfare like that against
Napoleon. The land was torn with faction, and Liberals and Royalists
seemed to emulate each other in contributing to its ruin. Early in July,
1822, the royal guards, with the secret connivance of the king,
endeavored to gain possession of Madrid; after a sanguinary conflict in
the streets they were defeated, when Fernando, from a balcony of his
palace, stimulated the nationals in pursuit of the flying wretches.
Civil broils are apt to be pitiless, but in Spain they assumed a
ferocity not often witnessed elsewhere. If the Royalists in Catalonia
massacred in cold blood the garrison of the Seo de Urgel, a Liberal
noyade in Coruña despatched fifty-one political prisoners, many of them
ecclesiastics and persons of distinction.[978]
The revolt was constantly assuming proportions more alarming, especially
in Catalonia, where it had the almost unanimous support of the
peasantry. The insurrectionary bands coalesced into a force of five
thousand men styling itself the Army of the Faith which, on June 21,
1822, captured the Seo de Urgel and made it their stronghold. There, on
August 15th, was organized a royalist Regency, composed of Creus, the
exiled Archbishop of Tarragona, the Baron of Eroles, a soldier of some
reputation, and the Marquis of Mataflorida. The Counter-revolution thus
adopted a public and official character; the Regency assumed to speak
for the king, held in durance by the Jacobins--in fact, as early as June
1st he had authorized Mataflorida to organize it, and was in constant
communication with it, through one of the officials of the court. It
obtained quasi-recognition abroad; it negotiated a loan of 8,000,000
with the Parisian capitalist Ouvrard and, with the support of Pius VII,
it opened negotiations with Austria and Russia, offering surrenders of
territory in exchange for aid.[979]
Spain was rapidly drifting into anarchy. The Government was too weak to
suppress disorder, whether committed by friends or foes. Compromise
between the factions was not to be hoped for, and even patriots could
see that the only path to order lay through intervention from abroad.
That this was impending became more and more evident. The example of
Spain had been followed by Naples and Portugal, and then by Piedmont, in
forcing on their sovereigns constitutions like that of 1812; the Holy
Alliance took the alarm; the Congresses of Troppau in 1820 and of
Laybach in 1821 ordered armed intervention, and the new institutions of
Naples and Piedmont were readily overthrown. In May, 1821,
communications from Russia to Spain, and a Russian circular to the
courts of Europe, openly expressed dissatisfaction at the success of
armed rebellion, with scarcely veiled threats of action in case the
Córtes should prove disobedient to the monarch; and the conflict with
the royal guard, in July 1822, gave the foreign ministers in Madrid a
pretext for warnings which were diplomatically veiled threats of
intervention.[980] Preparations for it were already on foot in France.
An epidemic of yellow fever in Barcelona served as an excuse for
establishing a _cordon sanitaire_ on the border, gradually strengthened
until it became an army of observation and in reality a support for the
Catalan insurgents, as Mina found when he conducted a successful
campaign which in the beginning of 1823 forced the Regency to take
refuge in France.[981]
[Sidenote: _INTERVENTION OF THE HOLY ALLIANCE_]
The Congress of Verona met in the autumn of 1822. The Urgel Regency sent
there the Count de España as its representative to urge that Spain
should be restored to the condition prior to March 9, 1820; the
Government sent no envoy, relying on the friendly aid of England,
represented by the Duke of Wellington. Without his knowledge the Allied
Powers signed, on November 22d, a secret treaty, in which they declared
against the sovereignty of the people, representative government and the
freedom of the press, and in favor of the clergy as an instrument for
enforcing the passive obedience of the subject; and each signatory
pledged itself to a subsidy of twenty millions of francs annually to
France, to which was assigned the duty of suppressing these destructive
principles in Spain and Portugal, and of restoring the Peninsula to the
conditions prior to 1820.[982] Even yet intervention was not certain,
for France was not eager for the task, and there were some negotiations
looking to modifications of the Constitution, but the Liberals would not
listen to such suggestions. Châteaubriand, however, that curious
compound of idealism, bombast and vanity, who, as French foreign
minister and representative at Verona, takes to himself all the credit
for the enterprise, is especially careful to point out that its real
object was the restoration of France to the hegemony of the Continent,
after the abasement of the Restoration by foreign bayonets--an object
which he assumes was fully accomplished.[983]
Early in January, 1823, four notes from the Allies were presented
collectively, offering, in more or less offensive fashion, the
alternative of a return to absolutism or invasion.[984] These portentous
communications were received with the utmost nonchalance. On the night
of their reception, Secretary of State San Miguel carried them to the
Grand Orient and drew up his replies, in which Fernando is said to have
cunningly stimulated defiance to banded Europe. Whatever might be the
decision of France, San Miguel said, Spain would tranquilly follow the
path of duty and justice; its rule of conduct would be firm adhesion to
the Constitution of 1812 and refusal to recognize the right of
intervention on any side.[985]
These would be dignified and resolute words in a united nation facing a
coalition but, under the circumstances, they were mere idle vaporing.
The Government, in fact, was barely able to make head against the
insurrection, save in Catalonia. Navarre, Biscay and Aragon were in open
civil war, with forces equally balanced. In Murcia, the famous robber
Jaime Alfonso was posing as the defender of the faith; in Castile, the
Cura Merino and el Rojo de Valderas were levying war; in Andalusia,
Zaldivar held his own in spite of repeated defeats; in Toledo and
Cuenca, Joaquincillo and the Cura Atanasio were maintaining the
rebellion; in Sigüenza the insurrection of Cuesta was organizing and
was soon to break out. In short, the whole of Spain was in
convulsion.[986]
The only explanation of the attitude of the Liberals is that they were
living in a fool's paradise, and seem to have welcomed intervention in
the belief that it would kindle national feeling and restore national
unity. Hallucination was carried to the point that they anticipated a
popular rising like that of 1808, that the forty thousand insurgents in
arms would turn against the invader, even that the French troops would
abandon their standards for those of Spain, and that England, which had
calmly seen the Constitution overthrown in 1814, would provoke a war
with all Europe in its defence. They closed their eyes to the fact that,
in 1808, the clergy aroused the masses against the French and were now
their warmest allies, eager to revenge systematic persecution; that the
throne was secretly undermining them, and that they were without
resources, for the treasury was exhausted, the army scarce existed save
on paper, the magazines were empty, and the party in power was rent into
bitterly opposing factions. A kind of delirium seized the deputies when
San Miguel on January 9th laid the correspondence before the Córtes, and
his replies were clamorously approved without distinction of party.[987]
[Sidenote: _THE FRENCH INVASION_]
Yet this effervescence soon subsided. A decisive victory gained by the
insurgents at Brihuega, not far from Madrid, on January 24th, threw the
capital into a tremor and, on February 16th, the Córtes adopted a decree
looking to the transfer of the Government in case of necessity.[988] New
Córtes opened their sessions March 1st and their first thought was to
place themselves in safety, carrying with them Fernando, both as a
hostage and as necessary to the assumption that the government of Spain
travelled with them. Resistance on his part postponed the move until
March 20th, when the exodus to Seville took place. There they remained
until June, when the approach of the French necessitated a further
flight and, on the 9th, Cádiz was selected as the place of refuge. This
time Fernando resolutely refused to fly from his liberators and, as
coercion of the monarch was incompatible with the theory that he was
still governing, it was assumed that he was incapacitated by reason of a
temporary delirium; he was deposed and a Regency was appointed which
ordered the transfer to Cádiz; on the 12th the king and royal family
left Seville; the Córtes adjourned to meet in Cádiz June 18th; in four
days Fernando was declared to be again in his right mind and the Regency
resigned. The spectacle of a flying Government dragging with it a
captive king, whom it recognized as still actively reigning, was worse
than ludicrous; it gave to Fernando a claim on the sympathy which he had
forfeited, and served as an incentive and an excuse for cruel
reprisals.[989]
Meanwhile the army of invasion had been gathering on the border under
the Duke of Angoulême, nephew of Louis XIV. From Bayonne, on April 2d,
he issued a manifesto to the effect that he did not come to make war but
to liberate a captive king, to restore the Altar and the Throne, to
release the priesthood from exile, and the whole people from a
domination that was preparing the destruction of Spain. On April 7th the
army crossed the Bidassoa, consisting of 91,000 men, of whom 35,000 were
Spanish royalists. Its discipline was perfect and its conduct admirable.
Everywhere it was received as a liberator, with cries of "Viva el Rey
absoluto, Viva la Religion y la Inquisicion." Resistance was impossible
and, although five armies had been organized, none worthy of mention was
attempted, except in Catalonia, where the indomitable Mina prolonged the
useless struggle until November, and at Cádiz, where the so-called
Government was battling for existence. Siege was laid there on June 23d,
and was prolonged until October 1st, when Fernando was ceremoniously
conveyed to the camp of his French deliverers. Yet, if rhetoric could
have repelled the invaders, they would have been glad to escape from the
eloquence which accompanied a solemn declaration of war on April 29th,
when Flórez Calderon boasted that the breasts of the deputies would make
an impenetrable rampart around the constitutional King and his
family.[990]
If the French came as pacifiers, they made a mistake in bringing with
them a Junta Provisional of four rabid royalists, formally installed at
Ozarzun, April 9th. It assumed to be the Government and issued a
manifesto rescinding all the acts of the Revolution and restoring the
conditions prior to March 7, 1820.[991] It used its authority in such
unsparing proscriptions that even the royalists became alarmed and
appealed to de Martignac, the royal commissioner accompanying Angoulême,
pointing out the evils to be apprehended from such ferocity. Quarrels
within the Junta afforded an excuse for superseding it, and Angoulême,
on reaching Madrid, empowered the Councils of Castile and Indias to
nominate a Regency, at the head of which was the Duke del Infantado.
This body, on June 4th, published a manifesto promising to use its power
to prevent persecutions and excesses, to maintain internal peace,
execute the laws and make the royal power respected.[992]
These were fair words, belied by acts. The whole arrangement had been
dictated by secret instructions from Fernando, and proscription and
persecution continued as active as ever. The Regency confirmed a measure
of the Junta organizing bodies of so-called Royalist Volunteers, whose
duties consisted in arresting and imprisoning all whom greed or
malevolence might designate as objects of suspicion, in which work they
were aided by the mob, always ready for violence and rapine. In
Saragossa fifteen hundred persons were dragged to prison by the populace
led by priests and frailes. In Navarre, the guerrilla chief known as el
Trapense committed revolting excesses. In Madrid and Córdova the gaols
were crowded with prisoners. This work went on in most of the towns, as
the national forces retreated, the victims being mostly citizens of
wealth and position, while the pulpits resounded with exhortations to
persecution and extermination and the French troops, in so far as they
could, restrained the outrages.[993]
[Sidenote: _RELEASE OF FERNANDO_]
Despite his reluctance to interfere, Angoulême felt called upon to put
an end to the cruelty and impolicy of these persecutions and, on his way
to Cádiz, he issued from Andujar, August 8th, a decree forbidding
arrests by the Spanish authorities without authorization from the
commandants of the troops of the districts, who were instructed to
liberate all political prisoners, and to arrest those who contravened
these orders, while all periodicals were subjected to the inspection of
the commandants. The foreign ministers, however, protested against this
as an invasion of Spanish independence, which emboldened the Regency to
remonstrate in a haughty and insolent manner. The Royalist Volunteers
of Navarre, in a manifesto of August 20th, were prodigal of insults and
menaces to the duke; a memorial addressed to him, August 23d, signed by
Eguia and a large number of military chiefs and priests, stigmatized his
effort at pacification as an attempt to perpetuate an impious faction,
and demanded the restoration of the Inquisition. Wherever there were no
French troops the decree was ignored and finally Angoulême, whether
instructed by his court or afraid openly to oppose the Regency, issued
an explanatory order, which virtually annulled the decree. Evidently
there was to be no peace for the distracted land.[994] Even the Regency
felt it necessary to disclaim responsibility for the horrors enacting on
every hand. August 10th, it ordered the prosecution of the rioters who,
at Alcalá, Guadalajara and Torrejon had committed terrible excesses
under pretext of avenging the transfer of the king to Cádiz and, on
August 13th, it commanded the people to restrain their zeal in making
arrests but, while it was powerful to excite passion it was powerless to
enforce order.[995]
When, in view of the hopelessness of further resistance at Cádiz,
Fernando was informed, September 28th, that he was at liberty to seek
the French camp, a tumult arose and a demand for guarantees. He summoned
the ministers, telling them that he desired to give assurances and
ordering José María Calatrava to draw up a decree declaring of his own
free will and, on the faith of his royal word, that he would adopt a
form of government assuring the happiness of the nation, the personal
security, the property and the civil liberty of Spaniards, with complete
oblivion of the past. The amnesty was rendered complete with elaborate
details and, when it was presented to him for signature on the 30th, he
said that, to remove all doubts, he would make some changes with his own
hand, which he accordingly did, rendering some of the clauses clearer
and more emphatic.[996] When, on the next day, he was received by
Angoulême, he shut himself up with the Duke del Infantado and Victor
Damien Saez, his former confessor, whom he appointed universal minister
and, before the colloquy was over, there was drawn up and signed a
decree of two articles; the first declared null and void all acts since
March 7, 1820; the second confirmed the proscriptions of the Junta of
Ozarzun and the Regency. Printed copies of this, together with that of
the day before, were circulated to the no small perplexity of all
concerned. Then General Bourmont, the French commander, learned that
Ferdinand had passed secret sentence of death on some prominent liberals
there present, whereupon they were conveyed on naval vessels to
Gibraltar and saved from his sanguinary vengeance. This was but a
foretaste of the wrath to come.[997] Prescriptive and oppressive
measures followed each other and the persecution inaugurated by the
Regency was sharpened and systematized.
TEN YEARS OF REACTION.
The French had already discovered that they had raised a demon whom they
could not exorcise. They had restored unconditionally to absolute power
a prince who was utterly faithless, whom no promises could bind, who
cared only for the gratification of his passions, and who was surrounded
by vindictive counsellors, eager for the blood and spoils of their
countrymen. The prisons were crowded to repletion and the untamed
ferocity of the multitude, stimulated by the pulpit, was let loose upon
defenceless victims. It was a scandal in the face of all Europe and was
felt acutely. Effort was made to repair the mischief, but with scant
success. Fernando, on leaving Cádiz, had written to Louis XVIII,
expressing his gratitude, and Louis seized the opportunity, in his
reply, to impress on him his own example and that of their ancestor
Henry IV, as the only means of bringing peace to a distracted land,
warning him that a blind despotism weakened instead of strengthening
royal power. Angoulême had manifested his disapprobation of the decree
of October 1st, and a coolness arose between him and Fernando, which
went on increasing. They parted, October 11th, Angoulême refusing all
honors on his homeward journey, and leaving Bourmont in command. The
French army was gradually reduced, but the last detachments did not
leave Spain until November, 1827.
[Sidenote: _CHÂTEAUBRIAND'S FAILURE_]
Secure in this protection, Fernando was deaf to remonstrances. It is
true that, when the ambassadors of the powers met him in Seville, under
their pressure, he issued a decree, October 22d, holding out
expectations of what he would do on reaching Madrid, but promises cost
him nothing and these were as futile as those of September 30th. To
emphasize the necessity of conciliation, the French cabinet prevailed
upon the Russian ambassador, Pozzo di Borgo, to visit Madrid, in the
name of the Holy Alliance. He arrived there October 28th and held long
conferences with Fernando and Victor Saez, urging clemency and a general
amnesty, but he met, in reply, with nothing but vague generalizations.[998]
If the welfare of a nation had not been at stake, the reflections of
Châteaubriand on the success of his enterprise, and his correspondence
with Talaru, the French ambassador, might well raise a smile. He was
disgusted, he said, with having to do with a monarch who would burn his
kingdom in a cigar, and he declared that the sovereigns of today seem
specially created to destroy a society ready to perish. In Spain, the
political sore is the king and it is almost impossible to apply a
remedy. At first he assumed that he could dictate a policy, and asserted
that he would not tolerate the follies of the king nor allow France to
appear as an accomplice in stupidity and fanaticism. Talaru was to speak
as a master; if the ministry was not to his mind, he was to have it
changed, the threatened withdrawal of the troops being what would force
Fernando to listen to reason. He soon found, however, that behind the
ministry was the camarilla--the real power that could not be
dislodged--and that the clergy was also a body to be reckoned with.
Châteaubriand's effervescence wore itself out against the
impenetrability to reason and argument of Fernando and his advisers, and
his demands shrank to asking for a decree of amnesty--it would be badly
framed, he knew, but at least it would have the appearance of doing
something. After months of urgency, at last Fernando agreed to it. A
fairly liberal scheme was drawn up but, after it had been submitted to
the revision of the friends of Don Carlos, of the bishops, of the secret
Junta de Estado and of the Council of Castile, its framers could scarce
recognize it. While it offered pardon to all participants in the
disturbances since 1820 in support of the Constitution, there were
fifteen excepted classes, some of them vague and comprehensive. It
ordered the discharge of all prisoners not comprised within the
exceptions, but this was not obeyed. It ordered the bishops to
contribute to bring about union, but few of them did so. It was dated
May 1, 1824, but was not published until the 20th, and the interval was
employed all over Spain in gathering evidence to bring individuals under
the excepted classes, so that they could be arrested simultaneously with
the publication of the decree; the prisons were filled with new victims,
and the courts were overwhelmed with prosecutions. The courts, moreover,
were supplemented with military commissions, whose procedure was
informal and summary. The _Gaceta de Madrid_, between August 24th and
October 12, 1824, chronicled 112 executions by shooting or hanging.
Whatever scanty favor was shown to Liberals in the decree was more than
counterbalanced by another of July 1st, granting pardon for all assaults
and injuries committed on them or their property except when murder had
resulted.[999] The Royalist Volunteers thus had full licence, and the
Liberals were virtually outlawed.
[Sidenote: _DEMANDS FOR THE INQUISITION_]
Proscription and persecution were systematized in a manner without
precedent, by the compilation of lists of all suspects. During the
constitutional period, Fernando had kept a Libro Verde, noting down the
names of all who displeased him, thus marking them for future vengeance.
On his restoration to power, a secret Junta de Estado, consisting
chiefly of ecclesiastics, was formed, whose business it was to gather
information against all who were opposed to absolutism. Denunciations
were invited from priests and frailes, from enemies and from the lowest
class of informers, to whom inviolable secrecy was promised, and all the
scandal and false evidence thus accumulated was recorded opposite the
name of the party, for use as occasion might require. The list was
divided into districts, and copies were sent to the respective
intendants of police, who contributed such further names and charges as
they could gather from all sources however vile. Thus every man's
liberty and property were at the mercy of secret and irresponsible
informers. It was a Libro Verde on a scale which the Inquisition itself
had never imagined, and the system was more thorough and more dangerous
to the innocent than that of the Inquisition.[1000] Such was the
condition of Spain during the terrible ten years, from 1823 to 1833,
known as the _Epocha de Chaperon_--Chaperon being the president of the
military commission of Madrid and notorious for his cruelty.
One result of this is well set forth in a singularly outspoken
representation addressed by Javier de Burgos to Fernando, January 24,
1826. He had been sent to Paris to negotiate a loan, and he ascribes his
failure, not so much to the poverty of the land, as to the absence of
peace essential to prosperity, and this arose from the successive
proscriptions which had desolated Spain. Now, he says, simple police
orders deprive of common rights whole classes, and subject them to
penalties which in well-ordered countries can be inflicted only by
tribunals. Much is said of the league of European bankers against
Spanish credit, but this has only been made invincible by the efforts of
the six or eight thousand proscribed exiles in England, France and
Belgium. A few days ago the journal which represents commerce and
industry said "As for Spain, it continues to fall rapidly into
barbarism. It is a second Turkey, only more miserable and worse
governed." Mexico, Colombia, Peru and Chile obtain loans, even though
their independence is not recognized, but Spain cannot get a
maravedí.[1001] It is creditable to Fernando that he took this
plain-speaking good-naturedly and subsequently gave the writer the cross
of Carlos III, but he was impervious to the good advice.
* * * * *
The decrees of the Regency and of Fernando, restoring the conditions
prior to March 7, 1820, and invalidating all subsequent acts, seemed
necessarily to revive the Inquisition. Its officials, however, hesitated
to resume their functions without positive orders, and it was known that
the French were opposed to its restoration. Numerous petitions for it
were made to Angoulême, but he evaded categorical replies, saying that
he would procure the liberation of the king and leave him to determine
what would best promote the happiness of the nation.[1002] After
Fernando's release, felicitations came pouring in, warmly thanking him
for his proscriptive measures and among these were many urging that the
Inquisition should be set to work. If, at the moment, he desired to meet
these wishes, he was restrained by the earnest opposition of the Allies,
who especially shrank from the responsibility of resuscitating an
institution so universally abhorred. As Châteaubriand wrote to Talaru,
December 1st, "We will not permit our victories to be dishonored by
proscriptions or that the fires of the Inquisition be raised as altars
to our triumphs" and, on December 11th, he declared it to be necessary
that the royal confessor should not be an inquisitor.[1003]
Fernando, however, seems already to have questioned whether the
Inquisition would really be of service to him politically and, as
religion with him was merely a matter of policy, he preferred to let the
question slumber, without committing himself. It is related that once,
when a bishop of extreme views was urging upon him the utility which the
Inquisition had always been to the crown, he walked across the room to a
balcony and, looking up at the serene sky, exclaimed "What a cloud! a
great storm is coming."[1004] His intentions, however, were indirectly
manifested, by a decree of January 1, 1824, which withdrew from the
_Crédito público_ the administration of the property of the Inquisition
and placed it with the _Colector-general de Espolios_, who was charged
to pay the salaries of all the officials of the tribunals.[1005] This
indicated that there was no intention to restore the institution to
activity, and to this Fernando adhered, notwithstanding the urgency
which continued.
[Sidenote: _THE INQUISITION DORMANT_]
In fact, as the reaction established itself, Fernando could not but
recognize that he had nothing to gain from the Inquisition and might
risk something. His one object was unlimited absolutism. Circumstances
had enabled him to attain this to a degree which none of his
predecessors had enjoyed. The defeat of the Liberals was so complete,
and the servility of the Royalists so great, that he could disregard
whatever remnants of the old Spanish institutions had still placed some
restraints on the crown. There was no secret made of this. A royal order
of October 17, 1824, destroyed at a blow all the municipal
self-government of Spain; the _Ayuntamientos_ of the towns were no
longer to be elective; those in office were to choose their successors
in thirds at a time, and the appointees were subjected to revision by
the royal Audiencias while, in the preamble, the object of this was
openly stated to be that there should disappear for ever from Spanish
soil the most remote idea that sovereignty resided elsewhere than in the
royal person, and the people should know that not the slightest
alteration would ever be made in the fundamental laws of the
monarchy.[1006]
The only claim of the Inquisition to efficiency, greater than that of
the police and royal tribunals, was in its delegated faculties from the
pope and, to a monarch thus resolved to concentrate in his own hands all
power, it was naturally distasteful to employ for political ends foreign
authority which, nominally at least, was not under his own control. This
objection he might have disregarded, if he had reason to expect from the
Inquisition any special service, but such there was not. While there
still was law in Spain the Inquisition might be useful as being above
the law, but now that law was merely the sic volo, sic jubeo, the
Inquisition was superfluous, while its secret procedure was more tardy
and cumbrous--perhaps even less certain--than that of the military
commissions; and the system described above of lists of suspects with
evidence gathered from every source by thousands of informers was far
more comprehensive in plan and in detail than anything that the
inquisitorial organization had ever attempted.
The Inquisition thus had nothing to offer and, careless as was Fernando
of the public opinion of Europe, even he could recognize the wisdom of
avoiding the odium of re-establishing an institution so generally
condemned. To the victims it made little difference whether their judges
were called military commissioners or inquisitors; their offences were
justiciable by either, for the pulpits resounded with the doctrine that
all Constitutionalists and Liberals were Jansenists and heretics--a
doctrine justified by a royal order of May 2, 1824, to the bishops,
requiring them to celebrate, in their dioceses, Missions calling the
Liberals to repentance.[1007]
Yet there was a lurking Jansenism in this tacit assumption that the
regalías enabled the king to prolong at his pleasure that suppression of
the Holy Office which, in 1813, had been proved by learned theologians
to be in violation of the canons and of the authority of the Holy See.
The clerical party was restless and dissatisfied, the more so because,
as Fernando's theory of government was to render his own power secure by
promoting discord among his followers, he occasionally favored the
moderate Royalists against the extremists. The latter were not content
even with the prevailing cruel persecution, and longed for one more
searching with the Inquisition as its instrument. The secret
organization known as the _Junta Apostólica_, or _Angel Exterminador_,
had cast its eyes upon Don Carlos as a leader who could realize their
aspirations, for he was completely under priestly influence and belonged
to the extreme faction, besides being heir presumptive in the probable
case of Fernando dying without issue. Carlos, however, though not a man
of strong character, was strictly honorable and was bound to Fernando
with ties of a mutual affection which endured to the end. He was quite
content to await the chances of succession, but his wife Francisca of
Portugal and her sister the Princess of Beira, widow of the Infante
Pedro, were ambitious. His apartments in the royal palace were the
centre of intrigues, in which he did not personally participate, while
Fernando who, through his spies, was kept informed of them, did not
interfere, confiding in his brother's loyalty and his own ability to
crush attempts against himself.
[Sidenote: _RISING IN CATALONIA_]
In 1824 and 1825 there were movements and risings of the extremists in
various provinces, which indicated concerted action and were suppressed
with more or less facility, except in Catalonia. There the hidden
leaders of the conspiracy found a population discontented with what they
deemed the lukewarmness of the Government, which they were told was now
controlled by Free-Masons. The old members of the Army of the Faith,
moreover, deemed themselves insufficiently rewarded for their services,
and organized under the name of _Agraviados_, forming the nucleus of a
"Federacion de Realistas puros," more royalist than the king. Towards
the end of 1826 there was circulated a manifesto from the Federation
urging the necessity of placing Don Carlos on the throne; its
organization rapidly extended, and April 1, 1827, was appointed for the
rising, which was readily suppressed and a free pardon was granted to
the insurgents. The pacification was but temporary. In July, at Manresa,
a _Junta superior_ was formed, and in August the tolling of the bells
summoned the _somatenes_ or levies _en masse_ to arms, when a portion of
the troops joined the insurrection, which was soon supreme in Catalonia.
A report made, August 27th, by Dehesa, fiscal of the court of
Barcelona, states that the war-cry of the insurgents was "Long live the
Inquisition! Death to the Constitution! Death to the negros! Death to
the police!" They were told that the rising was by order of the pope and
that the king was surrounded by Free-Masons; it was supposed to be the
work of the clergy, who desired the re-establishment of the Inquisition,
and to make themselves all-powerful by working on the fanaticism of the
ignorant mountaineers.[1008]
That the situation was becoming dangerous is manifested by the only
kingly act in Fernando's record, for he resolved to visit Catalonia
himself, after sending the Count de España there with full powers. He
reached Tarragona September 28th, being received everywhere with
enthusiasm, though there was an abortive project of abducting him by a
large body of Royalist Volunteers assembled as though to do him honor.
From Tarragona he issued a proclamation to the effect that those who
should not lay down their arms within twenty-four hours must expect no
mercy, and that he would deal with their leaders as he saw fit. The
secret societies had already issued orders of pacification; organized
resistance was abandoned, nine of the chiefs were hanged and the land
was speedily at peace. Carlos took no part in the rising, but he knew of
the plans and had not opposed them, and the name of Carlists was
thereafter used to designate the extreme royalists.[1009]
It is significant that, when Fernando ordered the bishops to exhort
their subjects to peace, some of them obeyed, but Pablo de Jesus de
Corcuera y Caserta, the prelate of Vich, refused in a letter of October
6th, on the ground that he could not conscientiously do so. Fernando, he
said, had not kept his promises; he had assembled a junta to examine all
books in circulation, yet poisonous ones, like that of Thomas à Kempis,
were allowed to be read; he had ordered the restoration of everything to
the conditions prior to March 7, 1820, yet the Inquisition had not been
re-established; other royal short-comings were pointed out and, in the
face of all this it was impossible for a bishop not to take part in
temporal matters; to preach obedience as required would be to compromise
the episcopate and to become the instrument of the enemies of God, nor
would it avail anything, for it would be impossible to make the people
think otherwise. These outspoken sentiments of the fiery bishop explain
much that is saddest in modern Spanish history; he was not punished for
them but, when the Count de España came to Vich he summoned the
recalcitrant prelate before him and reminded him of the fate of Acuña of
Zamora, which might be repeated if it so pleased the Catholic
king.[1010]
After this there was no further demand for the restoration of the
Inquisition, as Fernando's determination was recognized as unalterable.
For awhile however it had not accepted its suppression as final, and it
still sought to perform some of its functions in hopes of being again
revived. This is demonstrated by the Valencia register, laboriously and
faithfully compiled and brought up to the end of 1824, and the same
seems to have been done in Madrid for, in a document of 1817, there is
an appended note referring to the Madrid register of January 31, 1824.
As the salaries were continued, an organization was kept up and a show
was made of performing some kind of work. The Valencia register thus
contains several cases in which it acted in 1824, though it modestly
styles itself "este tribunal eclesiastico" and not "Santo Oficio." Thus
Valero Andreu was accused to it of a blasphemous proposition and was
duly sentenced. The criminal court of Valencia regarded it as still
functioning and, when in trials there came evidence of matters
cognizable by the Inquisition, the proofs would be sent to the tribunal
which would summon the offender and pass judgement on him, the penalty
however being not more than a reprimand. Three cases of this kind are
recorded, the latest being July 3, 1824.[1011] We may fairly assume that
in some, at least, of the other tribunals, trivial work of this kind was
similarly performed.
[Sidenote: _REMNANTS OF THE INQUISITION_]
Some papers connected with a quarrel between the officials of the
Majorca tribunal give us an insight into its internal condition in 1830.
Its business consisted in the collection of the censos and other sources
of revenue. There were many of these--loans to towns and villages as
well as to individuals throughout the islands; payments were apt to be
tardy and the labor of collection was considerable, frequently
involving legal proceedings. The inquisitor had disappeared, although
from another document we learn that he was named Francisco Antonio
Andraca and that he was drawing his salary elsewhere. The existing head
of the tribunal was a _juez subdelegado_, a representative of the old
juez de bienes; there was a treasury and an auditing department with an
_administrador tesorero_, Juan Antonio Togores, who was disabled and
represented by his son, José Antonio Togores. The secretary of the
secreto was Bartolomé Serra y Bennassar, acting as auditor _ad interim_,
whose clerk was Pedro Mascaro, notary of sequestrations. The only other
official was the portero, Sebastian Banza. Togores claims that, when the
buildings were destroyed in 1820, he incurred many enmities by efforts
to compel restitution of plundered materials--among others a Count of
Ayamans was sued for purloining building stone. Togores constructed a
wall around the site, and the heaps of stone and tiles still lay
scattered there. Outside of the enclosure, a couple of small buildings
were erected for offices, with a warehouse below for the storage of the
rescued materials. One of the charges against him was that he had used
the site of the old garden of the senior inquisitor to raise vegetables
and flowers for himself.[1012] There is impressiveness in this glimpse
of the old officials clinging to the ruins of what had once been so
formidable.
From this quarrel we learn that the central authority of the Inquisition
was the General Superintendent of the Property of the Inquisition--apparently
a subordinate of the Colector-general de Espolios, to whom the
assets were confided by the decree of January 1, 1824. In 1830 this
General Superintendent was an old inquisitor, Valentin Zorilla, and
he had as fiscal another inquisitor, Vicente Alonso de Verdejo. The
Inquisitor-general, Gerónimo Cavillon y Salas, Bishop of Tarazona,
was still drawing his salary of 71,491 reales 24 mrs. and did not die
until 1835. Of the Suprema there were but two survivors, the Dean
Ethenard and Cristobal Bencomo, Archbishop of Heraclea, who by 1833 had
disappeared, leaving Ethenard alone. There was still a _relator_, a
private secretary of the inquisitor-general, a keeper of the archives,
and four minor officials. All these, however, were mere pensioners. The
active organization consisted of the superintendent and his fiscal,
with a treasurer and receiver-general _ad interim_, Don Angel Abad,
whose accounts for 1830 show that he had received by drafts drawn upon
the several tribunals
From Valencia 35,000 rs.
Córdova 26,000
Barcelona 28,000
Granada 60,000
America 93,417.17
Santiago 52,000
Murcia 60,000
Majorca 50,000
Saragossa 84,000
Canaries 112,635.17
Logroño, Madrid, Cuenca and Llerena apparently contributed nothing. The
sums credited to America and Canaries were probably old balances. The
receipts from prebends must have gone directly to the Superintendent,
for the decree of final extinction in 1834 shows that they were still
held for the benefit of the Inquisition. There were other sources of
revenue, principally from censos, of which the most notable was one of
the Count of Altamira, from whom was collected, in 1830, the sum of
272,335 reales 25 mrs., being arrearages that seem to run back to 1818.
He was still hereditary alguazil mayor of the Seville tribunal, in which
capacity he was receiving a yearly salary of 4411 reales 26 mrs. The
Duke of Medinaceli, as alguazil mayor of the Madrid tribunal, was still
drawing his yearly stipend of a thousand reales and personally signing
monthly receipts. There are scattering entries of payments to officials
of various tribunals, showing that they were gradually thinning out, and
refugees from the American Inquisitions were kept on the pay-roll.[1013]
Such was the moribund condition of the Holy Office on the eve of its
extinction.
* * * * *
While the Inquisition was thus suspended, the more zealous bishops
replaced it with so-called _Juntas de fe_, based on the same principles,
with secrecy of procedure and exercising jurisdiction in the external as
well as internal forum. No record of the proceedings of these anomalous
tribunals seems to have been preserved except in the case of Valencia,
where the archbishopric was held by Simon López, in reward for his
defence of the Holy Office in the Córtes of Cádiz. Almost his earliest
act on assuming his new dignity, in 1824, was to issue a pastoral
confirming the junta de fe, established by his predecessor Veremundo
Arias, and empowering it to receive denunciations. He took the
presidency with Dr. Miguel Toranza, the former inquisitor of Valencia as
his colleague, Dr. Juan Bautista Falcó as fiscal and Dr. José Royo as
secretary.[1014]
[Sidenote: _JUNTAS DE FE_]
Thus the old tribunal was revived under another name, and it speedily
proved that such juntas were more dangerous than those of the
Inquisition, as they were not subject to the supervision and control of
the Suprema. A poor schoolmaster of Rizaffa, named Cayetano Ripoll, had
served in the War of Liberation and had been carried as a prisoner to
France, where he became a pervert. He abandoned Christianity for Deism,
while at the same time he was a living embodiment of the teachings of
Christ, sharing his scanty pittance with the needy, and constantly
repeating "Do not unto others what you would not have done unto you." He
did not seek to propagate his beliefs, but he was denounced to the Junta
by a beata for not taking his scholars to mass, for not making them
kneel to the passing viaticum, and for substituting in his school the
ejaculation "Praise be to God" instead of "Ave Maria purissima." He was
arrested September 29, 1824, and his trial lasted for nearly two years.
The testimony confirmed the denunciation and showed that the only
religious instruction which he gave his pupils was the Ten Commandments.
During his prolonged trial he made no complaints; he shared his meagre
prison fare with his fellow-prisoners; he openly avowed his convictions,
and the repeated efforts of the theologians to convert him were futile.
The sentence bore that the tribunal had consulted with the Junta de Fe
and concluded that he be relaxed, as a formal and contumacious heretic,
which had been confirmed by the archbishop. There was no hypocritical
plea for mercy, and the Sala del Crimen of the Audiencia, to which he
was handed over, gave him no hearing or opportunity for defence. Its
function was purely ministerial, and he knew nothing of its action until
the sentence was announced to him that, within twenty-four hours, he was
to be hanged and burnt, but the burning might be figurative by painting
flames on a barrel, in which his body should be thrust into
unconsecrated ground. He listened to this with the patient resignation
that he had exhibited throughout his trial, and his last words on the
gibbet, July 26, 1826, were "I die reconciled to God and man."[1015]
This barbarity scandalized all Europe and proved to be the last
execution for heresy in Spain. While it gratified the zealots, who were
clamoring for the resurrection of the Inquisition, it displeased
Fernando, who caused the Audiencia to be notified that the Government
recognized no such tribunals as the juntas de fe.[1016] In spite of this
rebuke, the episcopal juntas continued to exercise an irregular and
irresponsible jurisdiction, until the sufferers sought from the Holy See
the protection denied to them at home. Pius VIII listened to their
prayer, whether from motives of humanity or of establishing in Spain the
jurisdiction which the Inquisition had sought so sedulously to exclude,
and, in a constitution of October 5, 1829, he recited the numerous
prayers reaching him from those persecuted in Spain for matters of
faith, asking that they might have opportunity of appealing from
sentences rendered by archbishops and bishops, before being subjected to
punishment. To save them from the expenses and delays of appeals to
Rome, he empowered the tribunal of the Rota, in the papal nunciature, to
hear all appeals in matters of faith, even twice, thrice, four or five
times in succession, until three concording sentences should be
rendered.[1017] Fernando was less sensitive than his predecessors as to
papal encroachments, and he gave this the force of law by a royal order
of February 6, 1830.
CRISTINA.
[Sidenote: _QUESTION OF SUCCESSION_]
The death of Queen Amalia, May 17, 1829, was an abundant source of
intrigue, for a fourth marriage of Fernando might prove fruitful and
thus destroy the prospects of Don Carlos. The efforts of the Carlists to
prevent it were vain and, on December 9th, Fernando married his neice,
the Neapolitan princess, María Cristina de Bourbon, whose sister
Carlotta was the wife of the Infante Francisco de Paula, the second
brother of Fernando. There was soon prospect of an heir to the throne,
and the uncertainty as to sex rendered it advisable to determine in
advance whether the Salic law excluding females from the succession was
in force or not. The ancient Spanish law, as expressed in the Partidas,
provided for the succession of a daughter in the absence of sons or of
children of a son.[1018] Under this, Spain had seen the glorious reign
of Isabella the Catholic and the unfortunate one of Juana la Loca, and
female succession, in default of male children, was firmly established
in the tradition of the nation until 1713, when María Luisa of Savoy
persuaded her husband Philip V to effect a change. Much pressure was
required to bring this about, but a pragmática, agreed to by the Córtes,
provided that only in the event of the total default of male
representatives should the daughters of the last reigning sovereign
succeed, according to age, and all laws to the contrary were
annulled.[1019]
In 1784 there was talk of revoking this pragmática, but it was postponed
until after the accession of Carlos IV, when the Córtes of 1789
petitioned for the revival of the law of the Partidas. The king assented
but, to avoid giving offence to reigning houses whose possible claims to
the succession were thus cut off, it was kept a profound secret,
although filed away in the archives.[1020] This was the position when
Fernando, to assure the succession to a possible daughter, by a
pragmática of March 29, 1830, ordered that of 1789 to be published and
commanded the literal observance of the law of the Partidas.[1021] The
proceedings of 1789 were freely denounced as fraudulent by the Carlists,
they were confident in the support of two hundred thousand Royalist
Volunteers, and they regarded the new pragmática as a reason for more
energetic organization.
In due time, on October 10th, a girl was born, known to history as
Isabel II. Carlos believed that his rights had been sacrificed and,
though he refused to snatch at the sceptre during his brother's
life-time, he assured his partizans that he would not permit his neice
to mount the throne. Fernando's health was rapidly giving way under
repeated attacks of gout and, on September 17, 1832, his life was
despaired of. The prospect was most critical. Propositions were made to
Carlos about sharing the government, but he declared that conscience and
honor would not permit him to abandon rights given to him at his birth
by God. In the perplexity of the situation, Calomarde, who for ten years
had been the king's most trusted minister, represented to Cristina the
terrors of the inevitable civil war, and the dangers to herself and her
children, for she had recently given birth to a second daughter, María
Luisa Fernanda. She yielded, Fernando assented and signed a paper
annulling the pragmática of 1830, which was read to the assembled
ministers on the night of September 18th, under the strictest
injunctions of secrecy, but it was treacherously divulged, and copies
were posted about the court. Cristina's servants commenced packing her
effects for departure and Carlos, in his apartments, was saluted as
king.
Fernando however commenced to rally; many nobles offered their lives to
Cristina and formed an association to defend the claims of Isabel.
Carlotta, who was in Andalusia, hastened to Madrid, reaching it on the
22d and, being of a determined character scolded Cristina and threatened
Calomarde--it is even said that she cuffed him in the face, when with
ready wit he quoted Calderon--"White hands inflict no disgrace."
Fernando agreed to recall the decree, when she obtained the original and
the copies and destroyed them. This only led the followers of Carlos to
prepare to assert his claims by force, and there was no time to be lost
in organizing a party to resist them.[1022]
This necessitated a reversal of the policy of the last ten years,
identified with Calomarde--in fact the period was often designated as
the _Epocha de Calomarde_. The ministry was dismissed; Calomarde was
banished to his native place, and then was ordered to the citadel of
Minorca, but he was concealed in a convent from which he escaped to
France. Fernando, on October 6th signed a decree constituting Cristina
regent during his illness; the next day she issued a general pardon of
all political prisoners and, on the 15th, a general amnesty, including
the exiles who were allowed to return, the only exceptions being those
who at Seville had voted to replace the king with a regency, and those
who had commanded bodies of troops against him, all of whom Fernando
obstinately refused to pardon. This complete reversal of policy led to
some premature insurrectionary movements by the Carlists, but they were
easily suppressed.[1023]
[Sidenote: _ISABELLA RECOGNIZED_]
The declaration of September 18th had been destroyed, but it had not
been invalidated. To effect this in the most impressive manner an
assembly was held on December 31st of all the great officers of the
Government, representatives of the grandees, and deputations of the
provinces, in which Fernando presented a holograph paper setting forth
that advantage had been taken of his desperate illness to threaten him
with civil war and induce him to sign a revocation of the pragmatic
sanction of March 29, 1830; now, convinced of his inability to alter the
immemorial customs of the land, he pronounced the nullity of the
declaration which had been snatched from him by surprise. Then he signed
and rubricated the paper, all present were asked whether they had
understood its purport, and the next day, January 1, 1833, the
proceedings of the Córtes of 1789 and their confirmation by Carlos IV
were published.[1024]
The next step was the assembling of Córtes to take the oath of
allegiance to Isabel, and for this summons were issued April 4th
appointing June 20th. Carlos was got out of the way by inducing Dom
Miguel of Portugal to invite him, but, when Fernando desired to remove
him still further to Italy, a long and very curious correspondence
ensued between the brothers, couched in the most affectionate terms, in
which Carlos evaded obedience. He was the only absent member of the
royal family when the Córtes met, where all, including bishops,
grandees, nobles and the procurators of the cities duly took the oath
of allegiance. The whole kingdom followed the example, and the
Biscayans, under the historic Oak of Guarnica, spontaneously recognized
Isabel as the heiress of Biscay. Yet sparks of rebellion manifested
themselves in one place after another, and there were symptoms of
insubordination in the army, showing that the Carlist organization was
at work and was awaiting only the death of Fernando.[1025]
By the beginning of September he was scarce more than a living corpse
and on the 29th the end came. The obsequies were held on October 3d, the
leaden coffin having a glass plate through which the face could be seen
and verified. The Duke of Alagon, as captain of the body-guard,
commanded silence and, in a loud voice exclaimed Señor! Señor! Señor! As
there was no reply, he added "Since his majesty does not answer, he is
truly dead." Despite the leaden coffin, the stench was such that several
persons fainted.[1026] It might be said that his malignant influence
lasted until the grave covered him--or, perhaps, the truth is more fully
expressed by Benito Pérez Galdos: "That king, who deceived his parents,
his masters, his friends, his ministers, his partizans, his enemies, his
four wives, his people, his allies, all the world in fact, deceived also
death, who thought to make us happy in delivering us from such a devil,
for he left us his brother and his daughter, who kindled a fearful war,
and the legacy of misery and scandal is yet unexhausted."[1027]
* * * * *
[Sidenote: _DEFINITE EXTINCTION_]
It is not our province to enter into the horrors of the savage Carlist
war, which broke out forthwith and lasted until the Convenio de Vergara
in 1839. The rapid sketch which we have given of its antecedents
suffices to show how Cristina, in order to make head against the
extremists, was perforce obliged to consolidate a party composed of the
moderate Royalists and the Liberals, while the progress of events threw
her more and more into the arms of the latter. The solemn proclamation
of Isabel's succession, October 20th, was accompanied by measures
restricting the oppressive powers of the Royalist Volunteers, restoring
the laws respecting mayorazgos and other reforms of the Constitutional
period. That this process, once begun, should continue with accelerated
momentum was inevitable, and also that it should sweep aside the poor
remnants of the Inquisition. This was so much a matter of course and, in
the comatose condition of the institution, was of importance so slender,
that the memoir writers and historians of the period, if they allude to
it at all, do so in the briefest and most perfunctory manner. Yet the
profound roots which it had struck in the national life, and the hold
which it had acquired on popular veneration, are manifested in the fact
that the struggle for its extinction had extended over a period of more
than twenty years, and required for its consummation a change in the
ideals of a majority of the people. The time for this had at last come,
and the final dissolution was accomplished with only so much of
discussion as to show that the opinions of those called upon to decide
were virtually unanimous in principle and only different as to the
opportuneness of the measure.
At a meeting of the Consejo de Gobierno, July 9, 1834, there was
submitted the project of a decree for the extinction of the Inquisition
and the disposition of its property. This was considered, July 11th,
when the majority, consisting of the Archbishop of Mexico, the Duke of
Bailen, the Marquis of las Amarillas and Don José María Puig, approved
of the decree, with some unessential modifications. The minority,
consisting of the Marquis of Santa Cruz, the Duke of Medinaceli and Don
Francisco Xavier Caro, opposed the article extinguishing the
Inquisition, on the ground that it was already extinguished, matters of
faith were treated in the episcopal tribunals, and it was inopportune to
call public attention to an affair which all the world regarded as
settled, while the application of the property ought to be submitted to
the approaching Córtes. At the next meeting, held July 13th, a dictamen
was adopted, embodying the views of the majority and suggesting certain
amendments, of no special moment in principle, which were virtually
accepted by the Regency.[1028] No time was lost in making the final
draft, which was published July 15th. The preamble recited the desire of
the Regency to strengthen the public credit in all ways compatible with
justice; that the late king had considered the imprescriptible episcopal
jurisdiction and the laws of the land sufficient for the protection of
religion; that a decree of January 4, 1834, had committed to the
bishops censorship over writings on religion, morals and discipline;
that the labors on the criminal code, now completed, established
appropriate penalties for assaults on religion, and that the _Junta
eclesiastica_, created by decree of April 22d, was occupied with
proposing what was deemed necessary to this end. Therefore the Regent,
in order to provide a remedy, in so far as the Real Patronato extended
and with the concurrence of the Holy See, as far as this was necessary,
after consulting the Council of Government and the ministers, decreed--
Art. I. The tribunal of the Inquisition is declared to be definitely
suppressed.
Art. II. Its property is appropriated to the extinction of the public
debt.
Art. III. The one hundred and one canonries annexed to the Inquisition
are applied to the same object, subject to the royal decree of March 9th
last, and for the time expressed in the Apostolic bulls.
Art. IV. The employees who possess prebends or obtain salaried civil
offices will have no claim on the funds of the Tribunal.
Art. V. The other employees will receive from the sinking fund the exact
salaries corresponding to the classification which they will establish
with the Junta eclesiastica.[1029]
Such was the brief and decisive decree which terminated the existence of
the institution created by the piety of Isabella and the fanaticism of
Torquemada.
[Sidenote: _VICISSITUDES OF TOLERATION_]
There still remained the juntas de fe of the bishops, some, at least, of
whom persisted in maintaining them, with the old inquisitorial methods,
in spite of the constitution of Pius VIII and the royal decree of
February 6, 1830. Their continuance was incompatible with the rapidly
increasing anticlerical spirit of the dominant party, and they were
prohibited by a decree of July 1, 1835, in which, after alluding to the
disregard of the papal and royal utterances, Cristina ordered that they
should cease immediately wherever they had been established. The
ordinary episcopal courts were required to observe the law of the
Partidas, the canons and the common law in all cases of faith and
others, of which the extinguished Inquisition had had cognizance,
conforming their procedure to that in other ecclesiastical matters and
admitting the appeals allowed by law. Cases of solicitation were
provided for by a clause providing that, where scandal or offence to
morals might ensue, a prudent secrecy should be observed, the hearings
to be held with closed doors, in the presence of the accused and his
counsel, from whom nothing was to be withheld.[1030] Thus the last trace
of inquisitorial procedure was forbidden on Spanish soil.
* * * * *
After so many centuries of conscientious intolerance, the lesson of
toleration was hard to learn. On August 14, 1836, the _Motin de la
Granja_ forced Cristina to proclaim once more the Constitution of 1812,
with its prohibition of any religion save Roman Catholicism. This
instrument, with all its crudities, was soon found to be unworkable, and
the Constitution of 1837 marked an advance, in its simple declaration
that the State obligated itself to maintain the cult and ministers of
the Catholic religion, which was that of Spaniards. Then came a reaction
and, when the Constitution was revised in 1845, the principle of
intolerance was reaffirmed. The European disturbances of 1848
strengthened this spirit in the Church, and it found expression in the
penal code of 1851, of which Articles, 128, 129, 130 and 131 inflict
imprisonment and exile for any attempt to change the religion of Spain,
for public worship in other faiths, for apostatizing from Catholicism,
or for publishing doctrines in opposition to it.[1031] The Spanish
bishops were even encouraged to call for the revival of the Inquisition
under their management, but this would have been superfluous.[1032] That
the law was quite sufficient for the repression of Protestant propaganda
was shown, in 1855 by the long imprisonment and exile of Francisco Ruet
at Barcelona. It is true that in 1856, during the brief return of the
Liberals to power, a Constitution on a more tolerant basis was framed,
but a speedy reaction prevented this from going into effect, and the
instrument of 1845 remained in force until the revolution of 1868.
Ruet's chief disciple was Manuel Matamoros, who made numerous converts
in Málaga, Granada and Seville, but, in 1860, prosecution caused to fly
to Barcelona, where he was thrown in gaol and taken back to Granada.
Some twenty more were arrested, among whom were his two principal aids
José Alhama and Trigo. Matamoros and Alhama were condemned to eight
years of presidio and Trigo to four, while similar sentences were
pronounced in Seville on Tomas Bordallo and Diego Mesa Santaello. The
affair made a sensation throughout Europe; the Evangelical Alliance
bestirred itself and a deputation representing nearly every nation
assembled in Madrid to intercede for the convicts. The pressure was so
great that, on May 20, 1862, the sentence rendered three weeks before
was commuted to nine years' of exile, which enabled the Evangelicals,
from the safe refuge of Gibraltar, to maintain relations with their
secret converts.[1033] That under this reaction the resuscitation of the
Inquisition was seriously considered, may be assumed from the
publication, in 1859, of a pamphlet containing the speech of Ostolaza,
in the Córtes of Cádiz, in favor of the Inquisition, and those of Muñoz
Torrero and Toreno against it, with the manifesto of the Córtes, thus
contributing to the debate, under the guise of impartiality, the weight
of argument against the Holy Office.[1034]
When came the revolution of 1868, the Constituent Córtes, after a
vigorous debate, affirmed, May 8, 1869, the principle of religious
liberty by the decisive vote of 163 to 40. In the new Constitution,
proclaimed June 6th, the free exercise, public and private, of faiths
other than Catholicism was guaranteed both to foreigners and
Spaniards.[1035] Under this the _Código penal reformado_, which is still
in force, provides penalties of fine and imprisonment for any
interference with religious belief, whether by constraint to acts of
worship or impeding those of the individual's chosen faith.[1036]
Finally, in 1876, still another Constitution, which has endured to the
present time, after declaring Roman Catholicism to be the religion of
the State, prohibits the molestation of any one for religious opinion or
for the exercise of his cult, in so far as Christian morals are
respected, but it does not permit public ceremonies other than those of
the State religion.[1037]
[Sidenote: _VICISSITUDES OF TOLERATION_]
This summary of the vicissitudes in the progress of toleration, since
the suppression of the Inquisition, is not foreign to our subject, for
it teaches two lessons. One is that the main assaults on the
ecclesiastical system of Spain, its members and its temporalities, were
committed before toleration was extended to the heretic, for the
secularization of church property, the abrogation of tithes and first
fruits and the suppression of the regular Orders were chiefly effected
by measures adopted between 1835 and 1855. The other is that the slender
results of Protestant propagandism, from the days of George Borrow to
those of Pastor Fliedner, show how little Catholicism has to fear from
such efforts among a people who, if they abandon the faith of their
fathers, are much more apt to seek refuge in negation of religion than
in heresy. Together they demonstrate that the terrors of the Inquisition
were superfluous, and that the injuries which it inflicted on Spain were
not compensated by any corresponding benefits, even from the stand-point
of the Church.
CHAPTER II.
RETROSPECT.
[Sidenote: _PRESENT CONDITION_]
No modern European nation has endured such vicissitudes of good and evil
fortune as the Spanish. From the virtual anarchy of the Castilian
kingdoms under Juan II and Enrique IV, the resolute wills of Ferdinand
and Isabella evoked order and, by the union with Aragon, the conquest of
Granada, Naples and Navarre and the acquisition of the New World, they
left Spain in a most commanding position. When, under Charles V, to this
were added the Netherlands, the Austrian possessions, Milan and the
headship of the Holy Roman Empire, the hegemony of Europe was secured,
and the prospect of attaining the universal monarchy seemed sufficiently
possible to arouse the fears of Europe. The loss of the Empire and of
Austria, awarded to the younger branch of the Hapsburgs, strengthened
rather than weakened the inheritance of Philip II, by rendering it less
cumbrous and unwieldy, while the acquisition of Portugal unified the
Peninsula and the increasing wealth of the Indies promised almost
unlimited resources for the extension of his power. Yet this power, so
colossal in outward seeming, was already becoming a mere shell, covering
emptiness and poverty, for its rulers had exhausted the nation in
enterprises beyond its strength and foreign to its interests. Throughout
the seventeenth century its downward progress was rapid until, at the
death of Carlos II, in 1700, it had reached a depth of misery and
helplessness in which it might almost despair of recuperation. Yet its
efforts, in the War of Succession, showed that it still possessed a
virile nationality; its decadence was arrested, and a slow upward
progress was begun, accelerated under the enlightened rule of Carlos
III, until, at his death in 1788, it had so far regained its position
that, if not yet a power of the first rank, it might not unhopefully
look forward to attaining that position. Then followed the weak and
disastrous reign of Carlos IV, under the guidance of Godoy, when
impotence invited the intrusion of Napoleon, resulting in the
manifestation of national energy, which surprised the world in the
heroic War of Liberation. After the Restoration in 1814, the land was,
for more than half a century the scene of almost unintermittent conflict
between antagonistic forces, resulting in the apathy of exhaustion after
attaining the form of democratic constitutional monarchy. Yet we are
told that absolute monarchy has merely been replaced by absolute
_Caciquismo_ or, in American parlance, the rule of the political
"boss."[1038] Government, it seems, is exploited purely for the private
interest of the office-holding class and the strength of the nation has
been wasted, its development has been neglected, until the unexpected
feebleness revealed in the war of 1898 led earnest patriots to declare
that, if the existing maladministration were to continue, it would be
better to seek shelter under England or France, and to put an end to the
history of Spain as an independent nation.[1039] This shock to the
national consciousness, and the skilful and vigorous agitation to which
it gave birth, bear promise of results in the political as well as in
the material and industrial development of the land, and we may
reasonably hope that a nation, which has suffered so much with
fortitude, is entering upon a new career that may make amends for the
miseries of the past.
Vicissitudes such as these have their causes, and we cannot conclude
this long history of the Inquisition without inquiring what share it and
the spirit, which at once created and was stimulated by it, contributed
to the misfortunes endured, with few intermissions, by the Spanish
people since its organization. These causes are numerous, many of them
not directly connected with our subject, but yet to be enumerated in
order that undue importance may not be ascribed to the influence of the
Inquisition.
* * * * *
To begin with, the Spanish monarchy developed into a pure despotism,
based on the maxim of the Institutes--_quod principi placuit legis habet
vigorem_--the prince's pleasure has the force of law. All legislative
and executive functions were concentrated in the crown; the king issued
laws, levied taxes, raised troops, declared war, made peace at his will,
and the execution of the Justicia Lanuza, in 1591, without a trial,
shows that the lives of his subjects were at his disposal. It was the
same with their liberties, as illustrated by the imprisonment, without a
hearing, of ministers like Cabarrús, Floridablanca, Jovellanos and
Urquijo. For awhile the ancient fueros of the kingdoms of the crown of
Aragon served as some restraint in those territories, but Philip V, in
1707 and 1714, took advantage of the War of Succession to declare them
forfeited. Under such concentration of authority, the fate of the nation
depended on the character and capacity of the monarch. Charles V had
unquestioned ability, but his ambitious enterprises, while flattering to
the national vanity, not only exhausted the resources of Spain, in
quarrels foreign to its interests, but crippled its prosperity by the
reckless devices employed to supply his needs. Philip II was a man of
very moderate talents, irresolute and procrastinating to that degree
that the Venetian envoy Vendramino, in 1595, declared that what would
cost another prince ten ducats cost him a hundred, in consequence of his
dilatoriness.[1040] His enormous and disjointed empire was too much for
his narrow intelligence, and his vast expenditures in defence of Latin
Christianity consumed all his resources and kept him in perpetual
financial straits. At his death, in 1598, he had nothing to show for the
ruin of his country but the gloomy pile of the Escorial and the
acquisition of Portugal. Holland was hopelessly lost; his rival, Henry
IV, was firmly seated on the throne of a reunited France, and the papacy
was alienated. The internal condition of the land is depicted in the
despairing complaints of the Córtes of 1594--"The truth, which cannot be
questioned, is that the kingdom is totally exhausted. Scarce any man has
money or credit, and those who have it do not employ it in trade or for
profit, but hoard it to live as sparingly as possible, in hope that it
may last them to the end. Thus comes the universal poverty of all
classes.... There is not a city or a town but has lost largely in
population, as is seen by the multitude of closed and empty houses, and
the fall in the rents of the few that are inhabited."[1041]
[Sidenote: _GOVERNMENT BY FAVORITES_]
With Philip III we commence the long line of favorites who dominated
Spain during the seventeenth century. Well meaning, but weak and
incapable, he left everything to the Duke of Lerma, under whose guidance
a reckless course of prodigality was followed as though the only trouble
was to get rid of surplus revenues. Charles V had cast aside the severe
simplicity of the old Castilian court for the stately magnificence of
the Burgundian household; his successors followed his example, in spite
of the remonstrances of the Córtes, but where Philip II spent on it four
hundred thousand ducats a year, Philip III lavished a million and three
hundred thousand, while he was begging money of his nobles and prelates
and seeking to seize all the plate in the kingdom in order to coin it.
He was not alone in this, for the nobility and gentry were consumed with
usury and overwhelmed with debt, owing to their extravagance. The
Venetian envoy Contarini, in 1605 describes the land as overspread with
poverty and general discontent and all the evils attendant upon a
corrupt and vicious government, under an indolent king and a rapacious
and incapable minister. The worst war, he concludes, that could be made
on Spain was to allow it to consume itself in peace under misgovernment,
while to attack it would be to arouse the dogged determination of the
people. The reports of the Lucchese envoys tell the same story.[1042]
Such was the condition when the expulsion of the Moriscos robbed the
land of its most productive class.
Matters grew worse when Philip IV ascended the throne, in 1621.
Good-natured, affable, indolent and pleasure-loving, his thirty-one
unacknowledged natural children, besides the acknowledged one--the
second Don John of Austria--serve to explain why he abandoned the cares
of state to his favorite, the Count-Duke Olivares, after whose fall in
1643 his nephew, Don Luis de Haro, succeeded to the post. The official
historiographer describes Spain, at his accession, as being in
extremity, and the people crushed under their burdens; everything was in
disorder, and the condition of the nation so weakened that it could only
be deplored and not amended. Yet Philip's first act was to break the
truce with Holland and, from that time to the end of his long reign, he
was involved in almost continual war. He called together the Córtes and
asked for supplies to which they replied by petitioning him to try to
stop the general depopulation and find occupation for the people, who
were wandering with their families over the country in vain search for
work.[1043] Yet Philip, engrossed with his plebeian amours and the
pleasures of his court, continued his wars and his extravagance, without
giving thought to the misery of his people whom he was crushing with
ever new exactions. The courtly festivities were conducted with a
magnificence till then unexampled; the carnival festival of 1637 was
officially admitted to cost three hundred thousand ducats and was
popularly estimated at half a million.[1044] In 1658 the Venetian envoy
reports his giving to the son of Don Luis de Haro fifty thousand pesos
for skilfully arranging a ballet for the ladies of the court. Every
bull-fight cost him sixty thousand reales, and the celebration at the
birth of Prince Prosper (who speedily died) involved an expenditure of
eight hundred thousand pesos. All this, as the envoy remarks, was
extracted from the blood of the miserable people, who were poorer in
Spain than anywhere else. The immense resources of the kingdom were
absorbed by the rapacity of the ministers or were dissipated by the
profuseness of the king.[1045]
[Sidenote: _RESOURCES AND POSSIBILITIES_]
In 1665, Carlos II, then but four years of age, succeeded to his father,
under the regency of the Queen-dowager Maria Ana of Austria. We have
seen how she abandoned affairs to her confessor, the Jesuit Nithard, and
when he was dismissed by the efforts of Don John of Austria, in 1669,
she replaced him with the worthless favorite Fernando de Valenzuela.
Again Don John was called in; Valenzuela was exiled to the Philippines
and Don John assumed the reins of government. His limited abilities were
unequal to the task; he was driven from power and died soon afterwards
in 1679. Carlos had been declared of age in 1675; he was utterly
incapable and, though he can scarce be said to have had favorites, under
such ministers as the Duke of Medinaceli and the Count of Oropesa, Spain
sank deeper in misery and degradation until his death in 1700. The
kingdom was reduced to the last extremity, without money, without
industry, without means of defence to resist the aggressive wars of
Louis XIV, or to defend the colonies from the ravages of buccaneers. The
population is said to have shrunk to 5,000,000; in 1586 it had been
estimated at 8,000,000 by the Venetian envoy Gradenigo.[1046] Such was
the result of two centuries of absolute government, under monarchs not
wilfully evil, who merely reigned according to the light vouchsafed
them.
Yet it was not so much the extravagance of the court, or the perpetual
wars of the Hapsburgs, or the emigration to the colonies, that reduced
the population and the power of Spain. The land could have endured all
these if its rich resources and vast opportunities had been wisely
developed. Lying between two seas and holding Sicily and Naples, it
commanded the Atlantic and the Mediterranean; with its wealthy colonies,
the source of the precious metals which revolutionized the finances of
Europe and furnished the basis for the most profitable commerce that the
world had seen, it was invited to become the greatest of maritime
states, with a navy and a mercantile marine beyond rivalry, dominating
the seas as the Catalans had dominated the Mediterranean in the
thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. It was largely secured from hostile
aggression by the Pyrenees, and could work out its destinies with little
to fear from external enemies. It is true that much of its surface is
mountainous, and that large districts suffer from insufficient
precipitation, but the Moors had shown what wonders could be wrought by
irrigation, and how, by patient labor, even mountain sides could be made
to yield their increase. No land could boast a greater variety of
agricultural products, including those of semi-tropical and temperate
zones which, combined with mineral wealth, should have rendered it
self-supporting. All that was needed was steady and intelligent
industry, fostered by wise legislation, encouraging production and
commerce, and enabling every man to work out his own career with as few
artificial impediments as possible, and Spain might be today what she
was in the sixteenth century, the leader among civilized nations.
This was not to be. The fatal gift of the Burgundian inheritance
distracted the attention of her rulers from the true arena of her
expansion in Africa and on the ocean, to distant enterprises wholly
foreign to her true interests, while the undeviating determination to
enforce unity of faith at home, and to combat heresy elsewhere, led her
to drive out her most useful population, and involved her in ruinous
expenditures abroad. To extort the means for the furtherance of this
policy, industry was strangled with the most burdensome and complicated
system of taxation that human folly could devise, the weight of which
fell almost exclusively on the oppressed producing classes, who were
least able to endure it, while the nobles and gentry and clergy, who
held by far the larger portion of Spanish wealth, were exempt.[1047] As
taxation was virtually at the discretion of the monarch, imposts were
added as the exigencies of extravagance demanded, usually with little
thought as to their consequences, until the taxpayer was entangled in a
network which crippled him at every step. This moreover was accompanied
with regulations to prevent evasions, and to protect the consumer at the
expense of the producer, which greatly enhanced the deadly influence of
the anomalous and incongruous accumulation of exactions.
[Sidenote: _OPPRESSIVE TAXATION_]
All this fell with peculiar weight on agriculture and on the
_labradores_ or peasants, on whom ultimately the support and prosperity
of the nation depended. When, in 1619, the Royal Council, in obedience
to the commands of Philip III, presented an elaborate consulta on the
causes of depopulation, it commenced by ascribing this to the grinding
and insupportable taxation of the producing taxables, and the exemption
of the consuming classes--the mules and cart of the peasant were seized
for taxes, he was driven from the land and hid himself in the large
cities, or sought a livelihood abroad.[1048] The warning was unheeded
and, ten years later, Fray Benito de Peñalosa y Mondragon, while
enthusiastically extolling the power and wealth of Spain, describes the
condition of the labradores as the poorest, most completely miserable
and depressed of all, as though all the other classes had combined and
conspired to ruin and destroy them. Their cabins and huts of mud walls
are decaying and crumbling, they possess some badly cultivated lands and
lean cattle, always hungry for lack of the common pasture, and they are
burdened with tributes, mortgages, taxes, censos and many impositions,
demands and almsgivings that cannot be escaped. In place of wondering at
the depopulation of villages and farms, the wonder is that any remain.
Probably most of those who go to the Colonies are labradores and they
also flock to the cities, engaging in all kinds of service.[1049]
The process went on without interruption. A century later an experienced
financial official tells the same story, in a report to Philip V. The
burden of taxation fell upon the poor; all that was unpaid was added to
the levy of the succeeding year; a horde of blood-suckers lived by
selling out delinquents, when the costs amounted to more than the taxes.
Consequently the poor were obliged to sell their property to meet the
demands of the tax-gatherer, or to let it be seized and sold, thus
becoming beggars and tramps, and every year saw their numbers increase.
The peasant, moreover, was subject to special and ruinous restrictions.
The tassa or price of his grain was officially determined every year, at
a maximum above which he was forbidden to sell it; moreover it could not
be exported, nor could it be transported by sea from one province to
another to prevent infractions of the prohibition. The result of this
was that if the harvest was deficient, grain was secreted and held at
exorbitant prices and this infraction of the law was winked at under
necessity. The sufferer was the peasant, who had not the means of
storing his grain but had to sell it to the wealthy who could withhold
it, and thus, whether the harvests were abundant or scanty he fared ill.
Thus production was discouraged and diminishing; the producer realized
little, while the consumer paid extravagantly, checking both production
and consumption. Lands were left uncultivated and labor was unemployed;
everything moved in a vicious circle, and the evil was constantly
growing. Trade was similarly strangled. The alcavala of 10 per cent. and
the cientos of 4 per cent. were levied on every transaction, no matter
how often an article changed hands. Manufactures, under this system, had
almost disappeared. Spaniards were forced to sell their raw products to
foreigners at low prices, for there were no other buyers, and to
purchase them back in their finished state at the sellers' prices. The
heavy tariff increased the cost to the consumer, while innumerable
smugglers enabled the importers to realize the benefit of the duties.
The foreigner, moreover, secured all the precious metals of the Indies,
for all exports thither were of foreign goods, with which Spaniards
could not compete, owing to the excessive imposts and tributes, which
doubled the price of everything to the consumer. Yet of the product of
these crushing burdens but little reached the treasury, owing to the
system of collection, smuggling, and frauds.[1050]
[Sidenote: _THE MESTA--FORESTRY LAWS_]
The disabilities thus imposed on agriculture, industry, and trade were
greatly aggravated by the absence of means of intercommunication, and it
is symptomatic of Spanish policy that the energies of the rulers were
concentrated on the suppression of heresy, foreign wars and court
festivities to the exclusion of care for internal development. It is
true that, under Charles V and Philip II, considerable effort was spent
on the water-ways; the Canal Imperial de Aragon was built along the
Ebro, as well as the smaller canals of Jarama and Manzanares, and there
were improvements in the navigation of the Tagus and Guadalquivir, but
these ceased and no attention was paid to the roads which, for the most
part were mere _caminos de herradura_, or mule-tracks. Even as late as
1795, Jovellanos tells us that there was no communication by wagon
between the contiguous provinces of Leon and Asturias, so that the wines
and wheat of Castile could not bear the expense of mule carriage to the
seaboard. In 1761 Carlos III undertook to construct highways from Madrid
to Andalusia, Valencia, Catalonia, Galicia, Old Castile, Asturias,
Murcia and Extremadura, but in 1795 none of them had reached half-way,
and no attention was paid to interprovincial wagon-roads, to enable the
miserable peasant to get from village to village, or from market to
market, save at the cost of exhausting his cattle and at the risk of
losing everything in a mudhole.[1051]
Another intolerable burden on agriculture was the _Mesta_, or
combination of owners of the immense flocks of sheep, which wintered in
the lowlands and summered in the mountains. Through privileges dating
from the fourteenth century and gradually increased, the provinces,
through which the trashumantes or migratory flocks passed, were
subjected to serious disabilities. Pasturage could not be broken up for
cultivation, its rental was fixed by an unalterable _tassa_, and a
_mesteño_ tenant could not be evicted. All enclosures were forbidden in
order that the flocks when migrating might feed without payment on the
stubble in the autumn and on the fallow land in the spring, although
this privilege was somewhat curtailed in 1788 by permitting the
enclosure of orchards, vineyards and plantations. Thus the husbandman
was deprived of control over his property and the raising of horses and
of stationary herds of cattle and sheep--vastly more important than the
_trashumantes_--was effectually discouraged within the range of the
Mesta. Equally short-sighted were the forestry laws, designed to foster
the production of lumber, which was greatly needed both for building and
shipping. The owner was obliged to get and pay for a permit before he
could fell a tree, to obey fixed rules as to pruning, to sell against
his will and at a fixed price, to admit inspections and official visits,
and to answer for the condition and number of his trees--thus opening
the door to unlimited extortion. In short, the freedom of action through
which men seek their interests, and thus contribute to the general
welfare, was destroyed by the paternalism of an absolute government,
which blindly hampered all improvement and checked all individual
initiative and ambition.[1052]
This explains the _despoblados_ and _baldíos_--the depopulated villages
and uncultivated lands--which were the despair of the statesmen who
discussed the possible regeneration of Spain. According to Zavala, in
the circumscription of Badajoz alone, the _baldíos_ amounted to over
three hundred square leagues, mostly good farm land, in which the
remains of buildings could be traced, but then grown up in copses and
thickets, affording refuge to wolves, smugglers and robbers. In
Andalusia, Jovellanos tells us that these baldíos were immense; they
were less in Extremadura, La Mancha and the two Castiles, while, in the
northern provinces, from the Pyrenees to Portugal, the population was
denser and the baldíos less frequent and of inferior quality.[1053] We
have seen the attempt made by Carlos III to reclaim these districts with
the _nuevas poblaciones_, and how the promising experiment was checked
by the Inquisition.
[Sidenote: _INDOLENCE_]
As though these blind and irrational policies were insufficient to
destroy prosperity, an equally efficient factor was devised in tampering
with the coinage. This began tentatively in 1566 by Philip II, in
diminishing the alloy of silver in the vellon or copper coinage. In
1602, Philip III, in his financial distress, was bolder and resolutely
issued a pure copper coinage with a fictitious value of seven to two,
calling forth the protest of Padre Mariana which cost him his
prosecution by the Inquisition. In 1605 the Lucchese envoy informs us
that the treasury had already reaped a profit of 25,000,000 ducats by
this fiat money, of which the marc cost 80 maravedís and had a forced
circulation of 280. This was the first of a long series of violent
measures continued throughout the seventeenth century, of alternate
expansion and contraction. Thus, in 1642 the fictitious legal-tender
value was suddenly reduced to one-sixth, followed in 1643 by raising it
fourfold, and in 1651 by increasing it still further. In 1652 an attempt
was made to demonetize the vellon, June 25th, which was abandoned
November 14th. In 1659 the _vellon grueso_ was reduced in value one-half
and, in 1660 it was trebled. Attempts were made to regulate prices by
decrees of _maxima_ and to prevent or define the inevitable premium on
gold and silver, but the unwritten laws of trade were imperative, until
at last, in 1718, the _real de plata_ was admitted to be worth twice the
_real de vellon_, a ratio which remained nearly permanent. The largest
vellon coin was the _cuartillo_, or fourth of a real, equivalent to
about three cents of American money, which became the standard of value
in Spanish trade; the coins were tied in bags of definite amount and
these passed from hand to hand, for the precious metals necessarily
disappeared, and were rarely seen except in Seville, in spite of the
most savage decrees against their exportation.[1054] It would be
impossible to exaggerate the disastrous influence on industry and
commerce of these perpetual fluctuations of the circulating medium. The
relations between debtor and creditor, between producer and consumer,
were ever at the mercy of some new decree that might upset all
calculations. All transactions, from the purchase of a day's supply of
bread to a contract for a cargo of merchandise were mere gambling
speculations.
* * * * *
These causes of decadence were accentuated by an aversion and contempt
for labor, which was recognized as a Spanish characteristic,
attributable perhaps to the long war of the Reconquest and the endless
civil broils which rendered arms the only fitting career for a Spaniard,
and accustomed him to see all useful work performed by those whom he
regarded as belonging to inferior races--Jews and Mudéjares. Their
expulsion was destructive to all industrial pursuits, but the Old
Christian still looked down on the descendants of the Conversos who were
to a large extent debarred, by the statutes of Limpieza, from the
Spanish resource of living without labor by entering the Church or
holding office. The evil effects of this were intensified by
constitutional indolence. The Spanish Conquistadores gave memorable
examples of indefatigable energy and hardihood, sparing no toil when
their imaginations were inflamed with the lust of conquest or the hopes
of gold, but they would not work as colonists. One of them, Bernardo de
Vargas Machuca, who for thirty years was Governor of Margarita, defends
the enslavement of the Indians by candidly saying that Spaniards would
not settle on unoccupied land, no matter how healthy or how rich in gold
and silver, but would go where there were Indians, even if the land were
sterile and unhealthy for, if they had not Indians to work for them,
they could not enjoy its products, and its possession would be no
benefit.[1055] Nor were the Spaniards of whom he speaks gentlemen
adventurers, but were mostly drawn from the humbler classes. It was the
same at home. Already, in 1512, Guicciardini, who spent two years in
Spain as envoy from Florence, describes Spain as a land rich in natural
resources, but sparsely populated and largely undeveloped. The people,
he says, are warlike and skilled in arms, but they look upon industry
and trade with disdain; artisans and husbandmen will work only under
pressure of necessity and then rest in idleness until their earnings are
spent.[1056] The Córtes of Valladolid, in 1548, complain that
agricultural laborers and mechanics would not come to work before 10 or
11 o'clock, and would break off an hour or two before sunset. A century
later, Dormer, the historiographer of Aragon, reproves the indolence of
the people, except in Catalonia, for they would not work as was
customary in other lands, but only a few hours a day, with perhaps
frequent intermissions, and they expected this to provide for them as
fully as the incessant labor of other lands.[1057]
[Sidenote: _EDUCATED IDLENESS_]
Spanish indolence was a frequent theme with the Venetian envoys who
describe Spain as abounding in resources, and able to supply all its
needs, but dependent upon foreign nations in consequence of the rooted
dislike for labor. As Gianfrancesco Morosini writes, in 1581, the people
have little aptitude for any of the mechanic arts, and are most
negligent in agriculture, while in manual labor they are so slow and
lazy that what anywhere else would be done in a month, here takes
four.[1058] The Lucchese envoys, in the next century, tell the same
story. There are few Spaniards, they say, except office-holders, who
will work; the greater part of the workmen are foreigners, who have made
a new Spain, to the great detriment of the old kingdoms. This explains
why Spain is only a port through which the precious metals pass; the
Spaniards consume only foreign merchandise imported by foreign
merchants; among the contractors there is not a single Castilian, and
there are more pieces of eight in China than in Spain.[1059] So, in
1687, Luis de Salazar y Castro attributes the decline of the monarchy to
its substance flowing out through every pore, and the ultimate cause of
this is the lack of energy. "I say it is our indolence, ignorance and
want of application ... we attribute to deficient population what is
laziness and sloth. Could our torpidity go further than our requiring
Frenchmen to makes tiles, to grind knives, to carry water and to knead
bread?"[1060] A moralist of the period is excessively severe upon this
indolence coupled with reckless extravagance, which he compares with the
tireless industry and thrift of the Frenchman.[1061] To this he
attributes the poverty of Spain, as we have seen (Vol. III, p. 390) had
been done, in 1594, by Francisco de Idiaquez, the secretary of Philip
II.
One development of this indisposition to labor is touched upon by the
consulta of the Royal Council in 1619, when it alludes to the
multiplication of grammar-schools, to which the peasants send their
children for a smattering of education, and thus withdraw them from
productive industry.[1062] The Córtes of the same year asked for
restrictions on this and Navarrete, in his commentary on the consulta,
dwells at some length on the evils thence arising, for the sons of
peasants flock thither, to gain the exemptions of the learned classes;
an infinite number of them fail to reach the priesthood, becoming
beggars and vagrants and criminals, while many of those who enter orders
are forced to dishonorable practices, the public suffering in
consequence from the lack of laborers and artisans.[1063] Protests were
in vain and, in 1753, Gregorio Mayans y Siscar still called attention to
the crowds of half-educated students who sponged on the
community--drones who sucked the honey while they might be of service in
driving a plough or handling a musket--a complaint echoed with still
greater vigor by Jovellanos in 1795.[1064]
To this tendency may be attributed the frenzied rush for office, to
which the suggestive name of _empleomanía_ has been given, burdening the
State with a vast superfluity of employees and depriving it of their
services in useful production. In 1674 the Lucchese envoy wonders at
the revenues, estimated at seventy-five millions, without apparent
result, which he ascribes partly to the waste in collecting, the
collectors employed numbering two hundred thousand--a manifest
exaggeration, but yet suggestive.[1065] About 1740, Macanaz ranks this
as the first in his enumeration of the causes of Spain's condition;
there are, he says, a thousand employees where forty would suffice, if
they were kept at work, and the rest could be set at some useful
labor.[1066] The evil still continues, if we may believe modern writers
who regard it as one of the serious impediments to prosperity.[1067]
* * * * *
[Sidenote: _IMPROVEMENT_]
From the depth of poverty, disorder and humiliation to which Spain had
fallen, the process of recuperation under the Bourbons was slow and at
first vacillating. Something was accomplished by Philip V, in spite of
his continual wars and his melancholy madness, when he had rid himself
of such adventurers as Alberoni and Ripperda and gave scope to the
practical genius of Patiño.[1068] The upward impulse continued under
Fernando VII, while, under Carlos III and his enlightened ministers the
progress was rapid. A memorial addressed by Floridablanca to the king,
towards the close of his reign, enumerates the reforms and works of
utility undertaken during his ministry. There were canals, both for
navigation and irrigation, the drainage of marsh lands, the
establishment of the nuevas _poblaciones_, the improvement of roads. The
trade to the colonies was thrown open to all the ports instead of being
restricted to Seville, with the result that the exports quickly trebled
and the customs revenue doubled. The Banco Nacional was founded and the
public credit, which had fallen very low, was speedily restored.
Insurance companies were established and other trading associations,
which gave life to industry and commerce. The tariff on imports was
rendered uniform at all the ports, and its schedules were arranged so as
to foster internal development, being light on machinery and raw
materials and heavy on articles produced in Spain, not only stimulating
industry to the great prosperity of the land, but increasing the
customs revenue to a hundred and thirty millions when it had previously
never exceeded thirty millions in the most prosperous years. The
complicated and burdensome Rentas _Provinciales_ were regulated so as to
fall equally on the various provinces and to be easily borne; the
_Millones_ were reduced one-half; the formalities of the alcavala were
simplified and its percentage greatly reduced, so as to bear lightly on
industry, and with the expectation of its abrogation. The numbers of the
exempts were diminished. All the mechanic arts were "habilitated," so
that nobles engaging in them should not forfeit their nobility, thus
taking away the excuse for idleness and vice of those who called
themselves noble and refused to work, however poor they might be.
Through this policy during the reign of Carlos III, the population of
Peninsular Spain increased by a million and a half and, under his
guidance it emerged from the Middle Ages and began to take position with
modern nations.[1069]
Much as had thus been accomplished, much remained to do, as set forth,
in 1795, by Jovellanos in his celebrated "Informe." Unfortunately
progress was arrested by the indolent Carlos IV and his favorite Godoy.
Then came the Napoleonic wars, and the course of events, as traced in
the preceding chapter, was not conducive to improvement. Yet, in all the
vicissitudes which Spain has endured since then, if we may trust the
growth of population as an index of advancement, the substitution of
liberal institutions for absolutism has proved a success and, however
real may be the abuses of which the reforming element complains, the
present situation is vastly better than the past. The census of 1768
showed a total of 9,309,804; that of 1787, 10,409,879; that of 1799,
something over 12,000,000. Then there was a falling off and, in 1822, it
was 11,661,980. Yet, in spite of Carlist wars and political troubles, in
1885, it had risen to 17,228,776, and it is now reckoned at 19,000,000
or about double that of the period of Spanish greatness. The fair
inference from this is that Spain has a future; that, while much remains
to do, much has been accomplished, and that there is progress which, if
continued, will restore in great measure her ancient strength, although
the enormous growth of modern nations precludes the expectation that she
can resume her commanding position.
In addition to these secular causes of Spanish decadence, there remains
to be considered another class of no less importance--those arising from
clericalism, or the relations of the Church to the State, and its
influence on the popular character and tendencies.
The accumulation of lands and wealth by the Church, and especially by
the religious Orders, was, from an early time, a source of concern to
statesmen and of complaint by the people, for the exemption from the
royal jurisdiction, from military service and from taxation, claimed as
imprescriptible rights by the Church, weakened the power of the State
and threw increased burdens upon the population. Almost all the European
nations endeavored to curb this acquisitiveness by laws of which the
English Statutes of Mortmain and the French _droits d'amortissement_ may
be taken as examples. These acquisitions came from two sources, each
abundantly productive--gifts or bequests and purchase. The sinner,
unable to redeem in money the canonical penance for his sins impossible
to perform, would make over a piece of land and obtain absolution or, if
on his death-bed, would bequeath a portion of his estate to be expended
in masses for his soul--perhaps founding a _capellanía_ for that
purpose, or as provision for a son who would serve as chaplain. So
audacious became the demands of the Church on the estates of the dying
that, in 1348, the Córtes of Alcalá complained that all the Orders
obtained from the royal chancery letters empowering them to examine all
testaments, whereupon they claimed all bequests made to uncertain places
or persons; also, if there was not a bequest for each Order, those
omitted demanded one equal to the largest in the will and they further
claimed the whole estates of those who died intestate. If these demands
were contested, they wearied the heirs with litigation into a
compromise. Alfonso promised to revoke all such letters but the Black
Death, which speedily followed, brought an immense accretion of lands
for the foundation of anniversaries and chaplaincies, which led to
lively reclamations by the Córtes of Valladolid, in 1351.[1070]
[Sidenote: _THE BURDEN OF THE CHURCH_]
With wealth thus constantly accumulating, the church or monastery would
purchase lands from the laity, and as these became exempt from taxation
it could afford to pay more than a secular purchaser. Whatever thus
passed into ecclesiastical possession was never alienated; it remained
in the grip of the Dead Hand which, by constant accretions, came to
hold a large portion of the most desirable lands and thus of the wealth
of the kingdom.
It would be tedious to recapitulate the complaints of the Córtes and the
devices attempted by legislation from the eleventh century onward to
check this growth, which was regarded as threatening the most serious
evils to the nation.[1071] Laws were adopted only to be evaded or
forgotten, and the process went on. A new element, however, was injected
into the struggle when, in 1438, the Córtes of Madrigal made a vigorous
representation to Juan II that, if no remedy were applied, all the best
lands in the kingdom would belong to the Church, resulting in manifold
injury to the people and the crown, to which the feeble king evasively
replied that he would apply to the pope.[1072] Hitherto Spanish
independence of the papacy had regarded all such questions as subject to
national regulation, but this utterance indicated that papal
confirmation was beginning to be recognized as necessary in everything
that affected the Church. This was not at once admitted, for Juan, in
1447, in response to the Córtes of Valladolid, and by a decree of 1452,
imposed a tax of twenty per cent, on all purchases, bequests and
donations,[1073] but it gradually established itself and furnished a
ready answer to the vigorous representations which, with growing
insistence, the Córtes of the sixteenth century made in 1515, 1518,
1523, 1528, 1532, 1534, 1537, 1538, 1542, 1544, 1551 and 1573.[1074]
This put all remedy out of the question, for no pope could be expected
to set limits to ecclesiastical wealth and influence, from which the
curia derived its revenues; and the petitions of the Córtes served only
to emphasize the magnitude of the evil and its universal recognition by
the people.
It was not only the progressive absorption of wealth and land that was
detrimental but the corresponding increase in the numbers of the clergy,
regular and secular, who were released from all the duties of the
citizen, and whose vows of celibacy aided in accelerating the diminution
of the population. The process continued with added vigor, especially
after the commencement of the seventeenth century, owing partly to a
wave of religious fervor which led to the founding of chapels and
convents on a greater scale than ever, and partly to the growing
destitution forcing men to seek conventual refuge, where they might at
least escape starvation, and inducing parents to give their sons such
smattering of education as might enable them to take orders and have at
least a chance to secure a livelihood free from the crushing burdens of
taxation. The result of this is seen in Fray Bleda's boast, in 1618,
that one-fourth of the Christians of Spain were priests, frailes or
nuns, and, even though this is obviously an over-estimate, it indicates
how great was the task imposed on the producing classes to support in
idleness so large a portion of the population.[1075] The increase was
largely in the Mendicant Orders, whose systematic begging, that no one
dared refuse, was a grievous addition to the tithes and first fruits.