On the Wing--Ordered to the Carlist Headquarters--Another _Petit
Paris_--Carlists from Cork--How Leader was Wounded--Beating-up for
an Anglo-Irish Legion--Pontifical Zouaves--A Bad Lot--Oddities of
Carlism--Santa Cruz Again--Running a Cargo--On Board a Carlist
Privateer--A Descendant of Kings--"Oh, for an Armstrong Twenty-Four
Pounder!"--Crossing the Border--A Remarkable Guide--Mountain
Scenery--In Navarre--Challenged at Vera--Our Billet with the Parish
Priest--The Sad Story of an Irish Volunteer--Dialogue with Don
Carlos--The Happy Valley--Bugle-Blasts--The Writer in a
Quandary--The Fifth Battalion of Navarre--The Distribution of
Arms--The Bleeding Heart--Enthusiasm of the Chicos.
AFTER a short stay in London I was despatched to Stockholm, to attend
the coronation of Oscar II of Sweden and his spouse, which took place in
the Storkyrkan, on the 12th of May. At the Hotel Rydberg I met my Madrid
acquaintance, Mr. Russell Young, who was a bird of passage like myself,
and had just arrived from Vienna, where he had been detailing the
ceremonial at the opening of the International Exhibition in the Prater.
While enjoying myself at a ball at the Norwegian Minister's, I received
a telegraphic message, ordering me at once to the Austrian capital. I
was very sorry to leave, for I was delighted with peaceful airy
Stockholm and the free-hearted Swedes--it was such a change after Spain;
but I had neither license nor leisure to grumble, and flitted to Vienna
as fast as steam could carry me. The Weltausstellung did not prove to be
a lodestone, although in justice it must be admitted it was one of the
finest shows ever planned, and was fixed in one of the most agreeable of
sites. It was too far away, however, to attract the British public, and
there were rumours of cholera lurking in the Kaiserstadt; so I was
recalled, but to be sent to Spain once more. My mission was to
penetrate, if possible, to the headquarters of the Carlists, with the
view of giving a fair and full report of the strength, peculiarities,
and prospects of their movement.
At the London office of the sympathizers with the cause I was furnished
with the address of certain Carlists in confidential positions in
France, and letters were sent on in advance, so as to secure me a
favourable reception. Armed with a sheet of flimsy stamped in blue with
the escutcheon of Charles VII., and the legend "Secretaria Militar de
Londres," and with, what was more potent, a big credit on a
banking-house, I started afresh on the now familiar route.
Before undertaking the journey into the territory in revolt I halted at
Bayonne to procure the necessary passes. These were obtained with ease
from the Junta sitting in the Rue des Ecoles, the members of which
professed that they desired nothing so much as the presence of the
representatives of impartial foreign journals, so that the truth about
the struggle should be made known to the rest of Europe. From Bayonne I
proceeded to Biarritz, where I had a conference with the Duke de La
Union de Cuba, a warm Carlist partisan, to whom I had an introduction,
and thence I went to St. Jean de Luz, a drowsy, quaint, world-forgotten
nook. A _petit Paris_ it was called in a vaunting quatrain by some
minstrel of yore. But Brussels may be comforted. It is nothing of the
kind, but something infinitely better. The breezes from the main and the
mountains, from the Bay of Biscay and the Pyrenees, conspire to supply
it with ozone. There is music in the boom of the surf as it pulsates
regularly on the velvet sands of a semicircular inlet, where dogs frisk
and youngsters gambol in the sunshine.
In a hotel on the edge of that inlet, the Fonda de la Playa, where I put
up, a young Irish gentleman named Leader was recuperating from a severe
wound in the leg. He had received it in the service of Don Carlos, in a
skirmish near Azpeitia, where he was the only man hit. He was out with a
party of the guerrilleros, and came across a company of the Madrid
troops. To encourage his own people, or rather the people with whom he
had cast in his fortunes, he went well to the front, and mounting on a
bank of earth, hurled defiance at the enemy. He was picked down by a
stray shot, and if he had been taken prisoner it is probable that he
would have paid for his temerity with his life. The Spaniards were not
clement towards foreigners who interposed in their domestic quarrel.
Leader was carried off by his companions and secreted in a peasant's
hut. The troops, swearing vengeance, searched the hut next to it, but,
by some accident, failed to continue the quest to the refuge of the
wounded man. He bled profusely, but the haemorrhage was finally arrested
by some rude bandaging, and at night he was helped astride a donkey, and
conveyed across the frontier into France. He told me he had suffered
excruciating torments at every jolt of the jog-trotting animal on that
mountain journey. Had the bullet struck him an inch higher he would have
had to suffer amputation; but his luck stood to him, and at the time we
met he was getting on fairly towards recovery, thanks to youth, a good
constitution, and the healthy air of St. Jean de Luz. I could not
understand the ardour of Leader's partisanship for the Carlists. He
spoke the merest smattering of Spanish, and had no profound intimacy
with the vexed question of Spanish politics or the rights of the rival
Spanish houses. The ill-natured whispered that he was crying "Viva la
Republica" when he was knocked over. It is possible, for he had fought
for the French Republic with Bourbaki's army, and may, in his
excitement, have forgotten under what flag he was serving. I take it he
was a soldier by instinct, and ranged himself on the side of Don Carlos
more from the love of adventure than from any other motive. He was a
fine athletic young fellow, with a handsome determined cast of features.
He had been an ensign in the 30th Foot, and had resigned his commission
to enjoy a spell of active service when the Franco-German war was
proclaimed. That he had behaved bravely in the campaign which led to
internment in Switzerland was evidenced by the ribbon of the Legion of
Honour which he wore. Leader was very anxious that an Anglo-Irish legion
in aid of Don Carlos should be organized. I felt it my duty to warn
those to whom he appealed to think twice before they embarked on such a
crusade. He was very wroth with me for having thrown cold water on the
project, but that did not affect me. I had more experience of such
follies than he, and my conscience approved me. A man may be justified
in playing with his own life, but he should be slow in playing with the
lives of others. He prepares a vexing responsibility for himself if he
is sensitive.
In the next room to Leader was a fellow-enthusiast, Mr. Smith Sheehan,
an ex-officer of Pontifical Zouaves, and son of a popular and eccentric
town-councillor of Cork. He was an agile stripling, skilled in all
gymnastic exercises. He had also done some fighting with the Carlists,
and was in France on furlough, which the soldiers in the Royalist force
appeared to have no insuperable difficulty in getting. He told me there
was a large infusion of his old regiment amongst the guerrilleros, and
that they helped to bind the partisan levies in the withes of
discipline. Most of them had smelt gunpowder at Mentana and Patay. The
famous cabecilla, Saballs, had been a captain at Rome, and Captain
Wills, a Dutchman, who had been killed in a brush at Igualada, had been
sergeant-major in Sheehan's company.
There was another ex-British officer of short service, who had a
remarkably imposing and well-cultivated growth of moustache. He was a
violent doctrinaire Carlist, but suffered from a chronic malady which
prevented him from taking the field; still there was none who could plot
with a more tremendous air of mystery. He was a Carlist because it was
"the correct thing" to be one in the fashionable ring at St. Jean de
Luz, where he had settled, and because he inherited a name associated
with chivalric insurrection. For the sake of his family I shall call him
Barbarossa. He was no honour to his house, for he was an inveterate
gambler, and was not careful in discharging the obligations he wantonly
contracted. He is dead. His death was no loss to society. In fact, if
the whole host of gamblers, lock, stock and barrel, were swept by a
fairy-blast to the regions of thick-ribbed ice, the world would be the
gainer.
When I left Spain, Carlism was to be put down in a fortnight--in Madrid.
Now it threatened to last as long as a Chinese play. The Royalists--I
suppose they had earned the title to be so named by their
perseverance--had achieved numerous small successes which had raised
their _morale_, and they were being supplied with arms of precision from
abroad, and trained to their use. They had even taken some mountain-guns
from their enemy. Leader made me laugh with his accounts of Lizarraga
shouting "Artilleria al frente!" and a couple of mules, with one
wretched little piece, moving forward; and of the intimidating clatter
made by three shrunk cavaliers in cuirasses a world too wide for them,
and alpargatas, trotting up a village street. The alpargata is the
mountain-shoe of canvas, with a hempen sole, worn by the Basque
peasants. The association of surcoats of mail and rope slippers is
incongruous; but what does that reck? Those cuirasses were _spolia
opima_.
And Santa Cruz?
The honest gentleman had retired into private life. His excesses had
raised such a storm of opprobrium against the Carlists that they had to
request him to desist. Lizarraga summoned him to render himself up a
prisoner. "Come and take me," replied Santa Cruz. Santa Cruz had near
two thousand followers; Lizarraga a few hundred. Lizarraga declined the
invitation. But the priest caused seven-and-twenty Carabineros, taken
prisoners at the bridge of Endarlasa, near Irun, to be shot, and this
filled the cup to overflowing. The Carlists averred they would slay him;
the Republicans vowed they would garrote him for a Madrid holiday; the
French Government declared its intention of putting him under lock and
key if it caught him within its jurisdiction. His band was disarmed "by
order of the King," and dispersed, and the Cura himself nebulously
vanished--whither we may see anon.
There was a large accretion to the population of St. Jean de Luz in
Iberian refugees, and as they sat and conversed under the foliage of the
public promenade, frequent sighs might be overheard, and remarks that if
this sort of thing were to go on, "Spain would soon be in as bad a
condition as France." At all hours there came to the beach poor exiles
of Spain, who turned their eyes sadly to the line where sky met ocean.
Of what were their thoughts--of home and friends, of the flutters of
the casino or the ecstasies of the bull-ring? If they were looking for
the Spanish fleet they did not see it, for a reason as old as the
"Critic." It was not in sight. They came down in numbers in front of my
hotel at nine o'clock on the morning of Monday, July 28th, a few days
after my arrival, when a strange yellow funnel turned the point, and a
long low Red-Roverish three-masted schooner-yacht steamed into Socoa,
the roadstead of St. Jean de Luz. If the exiles were correctly informed,
that was the Spanish fleet in a sense--the notorious Carlist privateer,
the _San Margarita_, which had recently landed arms and ammunition for
the Royalists at Lequeieto and elsewhere. She had been doing a stroke of
business in the same line that morning. In the grey dawn she had dropped
into the embouchure of the Bidassoa, at a few hundred yards from the
town of Fontarabia. The work was well and quickly done. Boats
requisitioned by friends on land put off to her, and returned laden with
bales of merchandise. These artless bales were packages of
breechloaders, with bayonets to match, wrapped in sail-cloth. As soon
as they were received on shore they were distributed amongst some
thousands of Carlists in waiting, who at once proceeded to fix bayonets,
fall into ranks, and with shouts of exultation march off in good order.
Meanwhile, the "volunteers of liberty," as the Basque Republicans called
themselves, ensconced their persons out of range in a sort of castle
beside the church of Fontarabia's "wooded height," and amused themselves
taking pot-shots at the rising sun. But they did not venture from their
shelter; they knew a large body of armed Royalists were watching their
movements from the summit of Cape Higuer, and only awaited the provoke
to pounce down upon and swallow them. A detachment of Frenchmen from the
frontier hamlet of Hendaye quietly took up ground on the strand to see
that there was no breach of neutrality, and had an uninterrupted view of
the whole operation. As soon as the daring little privateer had done her
work she innocently steamed to Socoa; the Carlists on the hills waved
adieu and disappeared; the French soldiers returned to their quarters;
and the Fontarabian "volunteers of liberty "--well, most probably they
swore terribly, and effected a masterly retrograde movement on the
nearest posada.
I had a call to board the _San Margarita_. Not a boat could be had in
St. Jean de Luz for love or money; the passage from the sea into the
harbour is narrow, and the fishermen, though hardy navigators, are shy
of facing the current when the sea is rough. Leader and myself walked by
the goat-path on the crags leading to the southern side of the harbour
so as to avoid the bar, and succeeded in chartering a skiff at Socoa. A
quarter of an hour's pull brought us alongside the yacht, and on sending
up our cards we were at once invited on board by the owner. To my
surprise I discovered that the entire crew was British, as reckless a
set of dare-devils as ever cut out a craft from under an enemy's guns.
The skipper, Mr. Travers, was a Cork man, an ex-officer of the Indian
Navy, who had lost a finger during the Mutiny; but the life and soul of
the enterprise was an ex-officer of the Austrian and Mexican armies,
Charles-Edward Stuart, Count d'Albanie, great-grandson of "the Young
Pretender." His uncle, John Sobieski Stuart, had resigned his claim to
the throne of England on his behalf,[C] so that I actually shook the
hand of the man who under other circumstances might be wielding the
sceptre of that empire on which the sun never sets. Instead of a crown
he wore the genuine old Highland bonnet--not that modern innovation, the
military feather-bonnet. In face this descendant of royalty was an
unmistakable Stuart, with the characteristic aquiline nose, and a proud
dignity of expression. He might have sat for the portrait of Charles the
Martyr-King, by Vandyck, in Windsor. He was a convinced and earnest
supporter of the claims of Carlos Septimo, whom he regarded as a cousin,
and a sort of modern counterpart of the young Chevalier, the "darling
Charlie" of Jacobite minstrelsy. He received us with the hospitality of
his nation, and we had a long chat as we paced the deck briskly, the
Count discussing the prospects of the rising, and then verging off into
gay anecdotes of his military career in Austria, and inquiries after
mutual acquaintances in London. By-and-by Captain Travers made his
appearance, a tall weather-beaten navigator in orthodox naval dress,
with a glass in his eye. He bowed severely to the Stuart, who as coldly
returned his salute. It was easy to perceive that there was a restraint
in the demeanour of the men on both sides; but there was a tacit
armistice for the occasion. I heard afterwards that they did not talk to
each other, except on strict matters of duty, and when taking their
short walks on deck, one confined himself religiously to the larboard,
the other to the starboard. Travers took me in tow, while the alert
Count with his quick manner strode to and fro with Leader, and kept up a
jerky fire of conversation nearly all to himself, occasionally twirling
his peaked beard. Travers and I lolled over the bulwarks, and laughed
and sampled the contents of an aqua-vitae bottle, "Special Jury" whisky
from Ireland, and I learned that this ill-assorted pair had been
sharing some close hazards on their audacious cruiser.
A few days previously they had been chased by _El Aspirante_, a Spanish
gun-boat, which gave them eight shots. One caught them on the port
quarter, and shivered some timbers, but effected no more serious damage.
"I wish we had only an Armstrong twenty-four pounder close handy," said
the mate, "and we'd have saved them 'ere dons the price of a coffin, I'd
take my davy!"
From what I saw of the seamen, I think this was no empty boast. Some of
them had served with one Captain Semmes on a certain craft called the
_Alabama_, and had been picked up after the fight with the _Keasarge_,
off Cherbourg, by Mr. John Lancaster's yacht, the _Deerhound_. There is
no need for concealment now, so that I may freely admit that the
_Deerhound_ and the _San Margarita_ were one and the same. Travers, who
was in love with the yacht, told me if he had another blade to the screw
he could give leg-bail to the fastest ship in the Spanish navy. At
leaving, I was asked to take a trip with them; they were about to visit
their floating arsenal in the Bay of Biscay, load, and try to run
another cargo. I respectfully declined--fortunately for myself; my
orders were to get to the Carlist headquarters, not to go playing Paul
Jones.
Leader and Smith Sheehan were about to cross the border, and readily
acceded to my request to form one of the party. We rose at daybreak next
morning and looked out of window for the _San Margarita_. The roadstead
of Socoa was a blank. She had steamed away during the night. After the
customary chocolate we started blithely, in a light basket-carriage with
a pair of fast-trotting ponies, that whisked us in less than two hours
to the foot of the Pyrenees. Here we had to alight, the road up the
mountain being impracticable for vehicles. A boy guide was in waiting to
show us over the border by the smuggler's path--a wild short-cut through
a labyrinth of brushwood. The guide was a remarkable youth in his way;
he understood not a syllable of French or Spanish, and spoke only Basque
which none of us comprehended, so that our parley with him was somewhat
uninteresting. Yet I was anxious to elicit the opinions of that guide. A
lad who could strike the path up the mountain with such truth might, by
some instinct, have seen his way through Spanish politics. Our walk was
a trial of endurance. I had traversed the Pyrenees in snow, and that was
fatiguing enough in all conscience; but now the sun was beating cruelly
on the parched herbage, and plodding up the ascent was like treading
burning marl. I had to cry halt half-a-dozen times before we reached the
summit; and yet that marvellous guide, with the baggage of all three on
his head, kept on with a springy step and serene smile, like the youth
in "Excelsior." It was an alternation of wheezing and stumbling with me,
with a continuous ooze of perspiration, till I arrived heaving and
panting on the crown of the ridge, and flung myself on the turf beside a
pile of planking fresh from the woodcutter's axe. There was no further
need to be wary, for this was Spain. We were over the border, and now my
companions could breathe freely in every sense. Before they had passed
the imaginary line they were liable to be arrested by the gendarmes,
conducted back and interned, for they had that about their persons which
betrayed that they were no innocent travellers. At every noise ahead, a
scud was made to the cover of the tall ferns and brambles by the
wayside, and an advance party of one was thrown out to reconnoitre. The
precautions were superfluous, if we knew but all. From the 15th of July,
the French patrols had got the hint to be blind. So lax was the cordon
on the day we crossed, that a brigade of Carlists, each man with a
repeating rifle on his shoulder and two revolvers in his belt, might
have gone into Spain and never have had their sight offended by a
solitary French uniform.
The view from the comb of the hills, as grasped on a sunny day, repays
all the toil and trouble of the ascent; and looking round, one begins to
realize the fascination of mountain-climbing. On one side extend the
plains of France, washed by the greenish-blue waves of the Bay of
Biscay, and studded as with pearls by the coast-towns of Fontarabia,
St. Jean de Luz, Biarritz, Bayonne, and so on northwards till the vision
fails. On the other side rise in convoluting swells the mountains of
Navarre and Guipuzcoa, their slopes dyed in every shade of green from
grass and lichen, shrub and tree, except where the naked rocks, bursting
with ore, expose themselves. Iron, lead, silver, are all to be found in
the bosom of the earth in this richest and most beautiful of lands.
Nature has been lavish beyond measure, and man, instead of using her
gifts, has ungratefully diverted them for generations to the purposes of
guerrilla warfare and cheating the Custom-House officers. But this high
moral tone hardly sits well on a man who was aiding and abetting the
entry of a couple of foreign free-lances, on homicidal thoughts intent,
and perhaps doing a stroke of contraband on his own account. We suffered
no molestation; but others might not have escaped unpleasantness. The
agent of a Hatton Garden jeweller might have had to pay toll, if the
story were true that a few of the dispersed "Black Legion" had got off
with their rifles and started a joint-stock company in the
bush-whacking line, and were doing a pretty fair business.
The descent on the Spanish side was almost precipitous, and had to be
effected with exceeding care. At times we ran down the track, rugged
with sharp crags, almost head foremost, and only saved ourselves from
falling by clinging to the nearest sapling. But there is an end to
everything, and at last we came on the road that dips into the village
of Echalar, in the district of Pampeluna, province of Navarre. Here we
dismissed our guide, and here I encountered, for the first time, a
regularly organized Carlist company, detached from the fifth battalion
of Navarre, which was in garrison at Vera, some eight miles distant; but
as I shall have opportunity to speak of the entire battalion soon, I
defer comment on its appearance.
My companions were desirous of pushing forward, and the provisional
alcalde of the village gave us a trap to take us on. There is an
excellent road by the mountain-side, until a tunnel to the right is
reached, when we entered a most picturesque, well-wooded defile, through
which the Bidassoa pours its waters. We dashed along gaily until we
came in sight of the steeple of the church of Vera at twilight.
A cry of "Who goes there?" from the gloom arrested us at the entrance of
the town.
Leader sung out, "Espana."
Again came the sentinel's cry, "What people?" and cheerily ran the
answer, "Voluntarios de Carlos Septimo!"
"Pass," was the reply; and we took the street at a trot, and pulled up
at the door of the parish priest's dwelling, where the Irish soldiers of
fortune promised me a billet for the night. The kindly pastor was equal
to expectations; we had a cordial welcome, a good dinner, and beds with
clean sheets.
Sad tidings met my companions--those of the death of a young friend, Mr.
John Scannel Taylor, a native of Cork, in the service of Don Carlos. A
few months previously he had been a promising law student in the Queen's
University of Ireland, with every prospect of a bright career before
him. He arrived from England in the middle of June, and attached
Himself to the partida of General Lizarraga in order to be near his
fellow-countryman, Smith Sheehan. Previous to Mr. Sheehan's returning to
Bayonne with despatches, he tossed up a coin to decide whether he or
Taylor should have the choice of the duty. Poor Taylor won, and elected
to remain with Lizarraga, as there was likelihood of fighting at hand.
The very next day Yvero, where the Republicans held a
strongly-intrenched position, was attacked, and the young Irish
volunteer made himself conspicuous in the onset. While advancing in the
open, setting a pattern of bravery to all by the steady way he delivered
his fire, the gallant fellow was struck by a bullet in the leg. He kept
on limping until he was touched a second time in the arm, but still he
persevered with a dogged courage, when a third bullet struck him in the
forehead, and he dropped with outspread arms, raising a little cloud of
dust. He must have been stone-dead before he reached the ground. His
conduct was "muy valiente," so said his Spanish comrades. He was picked
up after the affair, and decently interred side by side with two
officers who met their deaths in his company. This was the first time he
was under fire, as it was the last; but there is a fatality in those
things.
This young Irishman, Taylor, was luckier than some of his fellows in one
respect. Short as he had been in the service, he had attracted the
notice of Don Carlos. His comrade Sheehan and he were pointed out to
"the King" by Lizarraga as two modest deserving young soldiers who had
offered to fight in the ranks--a trait of unselfishness that must have
astonished the Carlist leaders, as most of the volunteers they had from
France came out with the full intention of commanding brigades, when
divisions were not to be had.
"I wish I had a thousand like them," said Lizarraga, who was a genuine
soldier, and one of the few Spaniards not unjust to foreigners.
Don Carlos shook hands with Mr. Taylor and thanked him. His Majesty
spoke some few minutes in French with Mr. Sheehan, and, as the
conversation gives some insight into Carlism, I may venture to repeat
it.
Don Carlos.--"You have served before?"
Irish Soldier.--"Yes, sire, in the Pontifical Zouaves."
Don Carlos.--"Ha! good. In the same company with my brother, perhaps?"
Irish Soldier.--"No; but I had the privilege of knowing Don Alfonso."
Don Carlos.--"He is in Catalonia now, and has many of your old
companions in arms with him. You are serving the same cause here as in
Rome--the cause of religion and of order and of legitimate right."
Irish Soldier (bowing).--"I should not be here if I did not feel that,
your Majesty."
Don Carlos (smiling).--"I thank you sincerely. General Lizarraga tells
me you are Irish."
Irish Soldier.--"I come from the south of Ireland, sire."
Don Carlos.--"A country I feel much sympathy for. She has been very
unhappy, has she not? Are things better now?"
Irish Soldier.--"For some years Ireland has been, improving, sire."
Don Carlos.--"That is well. She deserves better fortune, for she has a
noble, faithful people."
Don Carlos drew back a pace and made a stiff military nod; the Irishman
brought his rifle to the "present arms," turned on his heel, and marched
back to the ranks, and thus the interview terminated.
The valley in which the little town of Vera nestles might have been that
where Rasselas was brought up, so secluded, smiling, and peaceful it
looks. The Bidassoa, famous in tales of the Peninsular War, flows
through it, no doubt; but the Bidassoa here is a trout stream winding
through meadows and fields of maize, and thoughts of bloodshed are the
last that would occur to anyone contemplating its mild current. The
mountains walling in the vale are lined with growths of heather, fern,
and blossoming furze to their very crests, and the verdurous picture
they hem is one of poetic calm and plenty. Labourers are digging away in
the fields below, the tinkle of cow-bells is heard from the pastures,
and anon blends with their Arcadian music the soft chiming of
church-bells summoning to prayer; there is a mill with its clacking
wheel, and a foundry with a tuft of smoke curling from its chimney;
orchards and vineyards lie side by side with patches of corn, and along
the high-road peasants pass and repass, shortening their way with song
and laughter, and strings of mules or droves of swine scamper by.
Another Sweet Auburn of Goldsmith, in another Happy Valley of Johnson,
this cosy Vera with its river and trees would seem to any English
tourist ignorant of its history; but how the English tourist would be
misled! Though the peasants laugh and sing, and the labourers dig, and
there are outer tokens of peace, there is no peace in the valley or
town; there are sights and sounds there of war, and that of the worst
kind--civil war. The mill is grinding corn for the commissariat stores,
the foundry turns out shot instead of ploughshares, the boxes on the
mules' backs are packed with ammunition. If you listen, you will hear
the roll of drums and the shrill blowing of bugles more often than the
soothing bells; if you watch, you will notice that not one man in ten is
unprovided with a firearm, for this quiet-looking place is the very
hotbed of Carlism; the insurrectionary headquarters for the province of
Navarre; the arsenal and recruiting depot for all the provinces in
revolt. The disciples of the rod have fled from it, and those of the
musket have come in their stead.
At half-past four on the morning after our arrival in the mountains, I
was roused from a profound sleep by the sound of the bugle. A solitary
performer was blowing spiritedly into his instrument; what piece of
music he was trying to execute I could not make out, but that his
primary object was to "murder sleep" was evident, and he succeeded.
Losing all note of time and place, I thought for a moment I was in
London, and that this was a visit from the Christmas waits. But there
was a liveliness in the tones incompatible with the season when the
clarionet, trombone, and cornet-a-piston form a syndicate of noise, and
parade the streets for halfpence. The bugle was in a jocular mood. Judge
of my astonishment when I learned that this merry melody was the
Carlist's reveille! The insurgents had got so far with their military
organization that they had actually buglers and bugle-calls. Nay, more,
they had drummers and a brass band!
Now I think of it, there is an inadvisability in my calling them
insurgents while in their power; but what phrase am I to employ? In the
pass in my pocket I am recommended to "the Chiefs of the Royal Army of
his Catholic Majesty Charles VII.," as an inoffensive "corresponsal
particular," to whom aid and protection may be safely extended. But then
there are the Republicans, and if they catch me giving premature
recognition in pen-and-ink to the Royalist cause, they may rightly
complain that a British subject is flying in the face of the great
British policy of non-intervention. I think I have discovered an escape
from the dilemma. The Carlists speak of themselves as the Chicos, "the
bhoys," so Chicos let them be for the future, and their opponents the
troops--not that it is by any means intended to be conveyed that the
troops so called are much more martial than the Chicos.
Well, the boys have got buglers who bugle with a will. They blow a blast
to rouse us, another for distribution of rations; they have the
assembly, the retreat, the "lights out," and all the rest, as regular as
the Diddlesex Militia. I got up in the Cora's house, looked at the
Cura's pictures--which were more meritorious as works of piety than as
works of art--and hastened to the Plaza, where I was told there was
about to be a muster of the Chicos, and I would have a leisurely
opportunity of passing them under inspection. The Plaza is a flagged
space enclosed on two sides by houses, some of which are over a couple
of centuries old, with armorial bearings sculptured over the doors; on
the third by the Municipality; and on the fourth by a grey church, lofty
and large, seated on an eminence and approached by a flight of stone
steps. The Municipality is a massive building, level with the street,
with a colonnaded portico, and a front over which some artist in
distemper had passed his brush. This facade is eloquent with mural
painting, if one could only understand it all. There are symbolic
figures of heroic size, coveys of cherubs, hatchments, masonic-looking
emblems, and inscriptions. A Carlist sentry, dandling a naked bayonet in
the hollow of his arm, was pacing to and fro in the portico, and the
remaining warriors of the post were lounging about, cigarette in mouth,
much as our own fellows do outside the guard-house on Commercial Square,
at Gibraltar. I was curious to see the Carlist uniform. Assuredly the
uniform does not make the soldier, but it goes a great way towards it.
Uniformity was the least striking feature in the dress of the men before
me. They were clad in the ordinary garb of the mountain-peasants. Short
coarse jackets and loose trousers, confined at the waist by a faja, or
girdle of bright-coloured woollen stuff, were worn by some; blouses of
serge, knee-breeches, and stockings or gaiters, by others; but all,
without exception, had the boina, or pancake-shaped woollen cap of the
Basque provinces, and the alpargatas, or flat-soled canvas shoes.
By-and-by was heard a bugle-blast and the quick, regular tread of
marching men, and the head of a company came in sight. In perfect time
the company paced, four deep, into the Plaza, halted, and fell into line
in two ranks. Thus, in succession, seven other companies arrived,
forming the fifth, battalion of Navarre, a vigorous, wiry set of men,
impressing the experienced eye as excellent raw material for soldiers,
albeit got up in costume very much resembling that of brigands of the
Comic Opera. Physically, the natives of the hilly northern provinces are
the pick of Spain. The battalion had its flag, white between two stripes
of scarlet, on which was inscribed the name of the corps, and the
legend, "The country for ever, but always in honour." This was, of
course, written in Basque, of which my rendering is rather free, but it
gives exactly the sense of the sentiment. It was soon palpable to
anybody, who knows anything of such matters, that the Chicos were weak
in officers of the proper stamp, and still more so in under-officers.
Smoking was common in the ranks, and when the men stood at ease, they
stood very much at ease indeed. The officers, in some cases, were
distinguished in dress from the privates solely by gold or silver
tassels dependent from their boinas, and their boinas were of blue,
white, brown, or even Republican red, according to the fancy of the
wearer. All the officers had revolvers and swords. The men were armed
somewhat indiscriminately, one company with Chassepots, another with
Remingtons; there were carbines, and percussion rifles, and
smooth-bores, and even a few flint-locks; but I failed to discern a
single specimen of the trabuco, the bell-mouthed blunderbuss we are
accustomed to associate with the Spanish knight of the road. Ammunition
was carried in a waist-belt, with a surrounding row of leather tubes
lined with tin, each of which held a cartridge--in fact, the Circassian
cartouch-case. There were many grizzled weather-stained veterans in the
ranks who had fought with Zumalacarregui and Mina in the Seven Years'
War; but as a rule the Chicos were literally boys in age, and here and
there a child of twelve or fourteen might be seen measuring himself
beside a patriotic musket. In relief to the peasant dresses were to be
noticed frequent attempts at more soldierly costume in the shape of worn
tunics of the French National Guards or Moblots, and some half-dozen
uniforms of the Spanish Line, with the glazed kepi exchanged for the
boina. On the top of many of the boinas, fastening the tassel, was a
huge brass button, with the monogram of the "King," and the inscription,
"Voluntarios, Dios, Patria, y Rey." Another sign particular of this
irregular force that impressed me much was a bleeding heart embroidered
on a small scrap of cloth, and sewn on the left breasts of nearly all on
the ground. This appeared to be worn as a charm against bullets; and
with a strong notion that it would protect them in the hour of danger, I
am convinced nine out of ten of those peasants carried it. It may be as
well to add that inside that embroidered patch were written, in Spanish,
the words, "Stop; the heart of Jesus is here; defend me, Jesus." Many
others of the Carlists carried scapulars, rosary beads, and blessed
medals as pious reminders. The habit of wearing this representation of
the heart of the Saviour over the region of the human heart dates so far
back as the Vendean War, and had been introduced in the present instance
by M. Cathelineau, grandson of the celebrated French Royalist loader.
The battalion had assembled on the Plaza to give up their old arms, and
to receive a portion of those which had been landed from the _San
Margarita_. They deposited those they had with them by sections in the
Municipality, and emerged with the others, bright, brand-new Berdan
breechloaders. They seemed proud of their weapons; some went so far as
to kiss them; and, if looks were any criterion of feelings, their
glowing faces said, as emphatically as it could be said, "Now that we
have good tools, we shall show what good work we can do." Boxes of
metallic ball-cartridges, centre-primed, were piled on the Plaza, and
were quickly and quietly opened and distributed. Not an accident
occurred in the process. Many a less wonderful phenomenon has been
advertised as a miracle. I fully expected to have my coat spattered with
some warrior's brains every other moment, with such a reckless rashness
were the rifle-muzzles poked about. One shot did go off, while a high
private was trying if his cartridge fitted to the chamber; the charge
singed the hair of a captain, and the bullet lodged in the middle of the
word "Prudencia" on the facade of the Municipality. The captain would
have it that he was killed, spun round on his own centre like a
humming-top, and finally, coming to himself, shook out his clothes in
search of the lead. There was a roar of laughter, and the careless
soldier who had endangered the life of his officer was allowed to pass
without rebuke. That was the worst point in Carlist discipline I had
seen yet. There was too much familiarity towards superiors; the rank and
file lacked that fear and respect for the officers which are the
strongest cement of the military fabric. This was to be explained partly
because the officers were not above the men in social position, and
partly because any enterprising gentleman who bought gold braid and
tassels, sported a sword, and appraised himself an officer, was accepted
at his own valuation.