The Cura of Vera--Fueros of the Basques--Carlist Discipline--Fate
of the _San Margarita_--The Squadron of Vigilance--How a Capture
was Effected--The Sea-Rovers in the Dungeon--Visit to the
Prisoners--San Sebastian--A Dead Season--The Defences of a
Threatened City--Souvenirs of War--The Miqueletes--In a Fix--A
German Doctor's Warning.
THESE horrible and bloodthirsty Carlists turned out to be amiable
individuals on acquaintance. I suppose they could put on a frown for
their enemies, but for my companions and myself they had nothing but
open smiles and hearty hand-grips. One great recommendation was our
being billeted on the parish priest. His reverence had none of the Santa
Cruz in him; he was a gentle, zealous, studious clergyman, yet was
filled with the purest enthusiasm for the cause of what he regarded as
legitimacy. The Don Carlos who raised the standard in 1833, he
maintained, was the rightful heir to the throne of Spain. The law by
which the succession had been changed was an _ex post facto_ law, passed
after his birth, and not promulgated until Ferdinand VII. had a female
child. In May, 1845, that Don Carlos, really Charles V., resigned in
favour of his son, Charles VI., and in September, 1868, he, in his turn,
relinquished his rights to the present claimant to the throne, Charles
VII., whom might God preserve.
The Cura was unusually civil towards us because we were Irish, and as
Irish were presumably of clean lineage--that is to say, free from
kinship with Jews or infidels. As reputed descendants of settlers from
Bilbao, we were entitled to a full share in all the privileges of the
province of Biscay. This was as well to know. It was a consolation to us
to learn that it was an advantage to be Irish somewhere under the sun.
The King of Spain is but Lord of Biscay, and has to swear under the
oak-tree of Guernica to respect the fueros or customs of the province.
Don Carlos had so done; he was in Spain, it was true, but where he was
at the moment the Cura was unable to say; his court was perambulatory.
The fueros were abolished by the Cortes in 1841 and but partially
restored in 1844, so that in inscribing them as one of the watchwords on
their banner, the Basques were fighting for something more solid than
glory. They cling to their rights as Britons do to Magna Charta, only
with this difference--they have a clearer conception of what they are. I
had been trying to arrive at some knowledge of the fueros, and obtained
much information from a volume by the late Earl of Carnarvon.[D]
Guipuzcoa, Alava, and Biscay, though an integral part of the Spanish
monarchy, for ages enjoyed their own laws, and a recapitulation of some
which were in force in Biscay will be a fair sample of all. Biscay was
governed by its own national assemblies, arranged its own taxation,
yielded contributions to the Sovereign as a free gift, had no militia
laws, was exempt from naval impressment, provided for its own police in
peace and its own defence in war. No monopoly, public or private, could
be established there. Only Biscayans by birth could be nominated to
ecclesiastical appointments; every Biscayan was noble, and his house was
inviolable; there was perfect equality of civil rights. In short, those
Basques flourished under the amplest measure of Home Rule, and had all
the benefits of the Habeas Corpus Act under another name long before
that Bill was legalized by the Parliament of Charles II. The
liberty-loving Basques were tolerant as well as independent. The
Inquisition was never vouchsafed breathing-room in their midst. When
Protestants escaped from France after the massacre of St. Bartholomew,
they were treated to asylum amongst them.[E]
We moved about among the guerrilleros. They were mostly light-limbed and
stalwart men, and were none the worse for the sprinkling of seniors of
sixty and lads of sixteen. Many had the bow-legs of the mountaineer,
built like the hinder pair of artillery-horses--the legs that tell of
muscularity and lasting stamina. Their drill was very loose, and skill
in musketry left much to be desired. They had no perception of
distance-judging, and some were so grossly ignorant of the mechanism of
their weapons that they knocked off the back-sights of their rifles,
alleging that they hindered them from taking correct aim. The Marquis de
la Hormazas--a meagre, tall, elderly man--was commandant of the
battalion, and was stern in the exaction of discipline. During the stay
of the Navarrese at Vera, a captain was degraded to the ranks for having
entered the lists of illicit love. The Frenchwoman who was the partner
of his amour was politely shown over the mountain and warned not to
return.
The battalion left for the interior of the province. Leader was still
too weak to enter on a campaign; Sheehan had to look after the
belongings of his comrade Taylor, and break the news of his death to his
mother; and I saw plainly that it was out of the question attempting to
catch up the flitting headquarters of Don Carlos without a horse.
Besides, I had to complete arrangements for the transmission of letters
and telegraphic messages when I had any to send, and for the reception
of money; in sum, to open up communication with a base. So we returned
to France as we came.
On arriving at St. Jean de Luz, a startling rumour awaited us. The
steel-built Carlist privateer had been captured at the mouth of the
Adour; she had been taken a prize to San Sebastian; Stuart and Travers
were in close custody; and there were alarmists who whispered that they
would be tried by drum-head as pirates, and hung up in chains in the
cause of humanity. It was well for me I did not accept the invitation to
that water-party. I ran over to Bayonne to ascertain what particulars I
could, saw the Carlist Junta, the British and Spanish Vice-Consuls, and
from their combined and conflicting narratives was able to sift some
grains of the authentic. But the sudden first report was undeniable. The
weasel had been caught asleep.
The _San Margarita_ was a serious loss to the cause. She had cost
L3,500. She was very fast, being capable of a speed of between ten and
eleven knots an hour, and should be equal to fourteen knots if her
lifting screw had another blade. A three-bladed screw had been provided,
and was to have been fitted to her stern on her return from the
ill-fated expedition which put an end to her roving career. It was true
that the descendant of kings was under bolts and bars. The French
journals described him as a "Monsieur Stuart, a Scotch colonel,
entrusted by the English Catholics with collections for the Carlist
cause." They had never heard of his royal lineage, of his connection
with the Austrian cavalry, or of his exploits by the side of the unhappy
Maximilian in Mexico. He assumed the responsibility of ownership of the
vessel. The hue-and-cry description of him was "a man of forty to
forty-five years of age, over middle height, figure spare, features
thin, and resolute in expression."
The burly bronzed Corkonian was also in durance, and with the pair of
officers were a picked crew of thirteen Englishmen, including engineers,
steward, stokers, and able-bodied seamen, and one Spanish cabin-boy. A
Basque pilot, an old smuggler, familiar with every nook and crevice of
the Bay of Biscay, had escaped.
If reports were credible, the _San Margarita_ had already landed two
millions of cartridges, and an immense quantity of arms. Much vexation
was caused to the officers of the Spanish navy in those quarters by the
stories of the daring feats she had achieved, absolutely discharging a
cargo once on the very wharf of Lequeieto, as if she were a peaceful
merchantman, and on another occasion sending off rifles and ammunition
by small boats in the dead of night, a man-of-war lying sleepily
oblivious of what was going on just outside her. It was felt that her
continued impunity was a reproach, and three small vessels of the
Spanish navy were commissioned to cruise between Bilbao and Bayonne on
the look-out for her. This little squadron of vigilance consisted of _El
Aspirante_ and _El Capricho_, gun-boats, and the _Buenaventura_, a
three-gun steam-brig. On Tuesday, August 12th, the _Buenaventura_,
flying a George's Jack at her peak, was off Fontarabia for a portion of
the day, close in shore. At nightfall she disappeared--it is now
supposed into the sheltered and almost invisible inlet of Los Pasages,
between Fontarabia and San Sebastian. Before daybreak on Wednesday, the
Carlists under Dorregaray swarmed down from the hills covering Cape
Higuer. The _San Margarita_ came in sight, and began landing arms in the
same spot where the undisturbed landing of the 28th July had been
effected. Not more than three hundred stand had been put on shore, and
about one hundred thousand cartridges in boxes, labelled in English
"metallic rolled cartridges, centre-primed," when she had to get away,
as the daylight began to play the informer. She dropped down towards
Bayonne, and appears to have reached a point some four miles from the
French shore (the exact distance is a moot question), where she laid to
and allowed her furnaces to cool The men were "dead tired out" after
their night's work, and the captain considered that he was within the
protection of French waters. But there is a very ancient proverb about a
pitcher and a veil, and the period of its realization had been reached
at last Whilst the _San Margarita_ was effecting the landing, a
coastguard's boat had slipped from under the heights of Fontarabia, and
given notice of what was going on to the _Buenaventura_ in Los Pasages,
and the brig steamed out, still with the British colours at her peak
Whilst the Carlist privateer was motionless in fancied security--there
was some want of prudence or vigilance there, surely--the gun-brig crept
down and overhauled her before alarm could be given, and the rakish
schooner-yacht, the skimmer of the seas, had the humiliation of falling
a prey to a wretched slow boat that she could laugh at with steam up in
the open sea. The arrest was made in the usual manner, and the captors
behaved with the customary naval courtesy. They were over-joyed at their
good fortune, and gave their prisoners to eat and to drink--champagne to
the officers and chacoli to the men. They towed their prize into the bay
of St. Sebastian, and there was triumph. The yellow and scarlet flag of
Spain was over the wee _San Margarita_ as she entered, and Colonel
Stuart and Captain Travers and their companions must have felt sore,
for all the good cheer and generous wine. Still there was quite a
courtly scene on board--hand-shakings and reciprocal compliments--as
they were marched off to the dungeon of the Castillo de la Mota on a
hill in the city, where they were incarcerated. There they did not fall
on such pleasant lines as afloat. The Republicans lost no time in
unloading the vessel. They took off her, with a hurry that betrayed
apprehension, 1,545 carbines and six Berdan breech-loaders, with a
number of armourer's tools. It was remarked that the rifles supplied to
the regular troops from Madrid were sighted to eight hundred metres, but
that the range of those seized from the Carlists did not exceed five
hundred.
I went over to San Sebastian by tug from Socoa on the 16th of August,
and sent up my card to M. de Brunet, the British Vice-Consul. He said he
had called on the prisoners, and that the sailors murmured at their
treatment. If I went to the citadel, after three--as it was Saturday
afternoon, and visiting hours commenced then--I could see them without
difficulty. I did clamber up the hill, and found this was not the case.
On owning that I had no pass from the military governor, I was denied
admittance. Happening to meet the commandant, I represented what I
wanted, and he very civilly granted me leave to visit the prisoners
"para un momento." As the gates were thrown open Stuart advanced and met
me, grasping my hand cordially, and slipping a letter up the sleeve of
my coat. He had caught sight of me labouring up the hill, and had
immediately hastened to scribble a few lines which he trusted to my
sympathy with misfortune to smuggle to their destination for him. He was
not mistaken, and in so doing I had no qualm of conscience. I
accompanied him to his cell, and he told me the story of the capture of
the _San Margarita_. It was substantially as I have related; they
thought they were in a _mare clausum_, at all events they had drifted
out of it on the tide of fate; but there was a nice question of
international law. The _ruse_ of hoisting the British flag was
legitimate if the _Buenaventura_ substituted her own flag before
proceeding to board them. The _San Margarita_ had the flags of more
than one nation in her lockers; but the gun-brig had no power to act the
policeman in neutral waters. There was the point. Travers was in a
separate lodging; they had been accommodated at first in the one cell,
but they could not agree--ashore as afloat the old feud existed.
However, both assented to a truce in order to have a talk with me. They
were cheerful, had cigars _ad libitum_ (at their own expense, of
course), and were permitted to get their rations from the Hotel de
Londres in the city. The cells they occupied were bare, white-washed,
low-ceiled rooms, some eight paces by six. They were not so clean or
well-ventilated as Newgate cells, and the beds were spread on the floor.
The captives had access to newspapers and writing materials, and it is
but the due of the officers in charge to testify that they were
extremely affable and disposed to make their prisoners as comfortable as
possible. Still, in the close, stifling weather, to be locked up within
the narrow circuit of a dungeon was limbo. The pair wore their own
clothes, Travers still retaining a navy-jacket with brass buttons
engraved with the initials of some yacht club, and did not complain of
having been subjected to indignities. While I was with them the shadow
of a face darkened the window; it was a Carlist prisoner who had hoisted
himself up on the shoulders of a comrade from a yard below; he had a
letter in his mouth. I took it, and slipped him a bundle of cigars for
distribution among his fellow cage-birds. From this it may be deduced
that the gaol regulations were not very stringent. The Carlists were
treated as forfeit of war, not felons, and had no honest chance of
illuminating their brows with the martyr halo of Baron von Trenck or
Silvio Pellico.
San Sebastian is the most modern town in the Peninsula, having been
re-built in 1816, three years after its destruction by the incensed
allied troops. It is a great summer resort of wealthy Spanish idlers--a
sort of Madrid-super-Mare. The attractions of the capital are to be had
there, with the supplementary advantages of pure air, mountain scenery,
and luxurious sea-bathing on a level sandy beach. There is a public
casino, and a score of clandestine hells where a fortune can be lost in
a night at monte--in short, every infernal facility for Satanic
gambling. Cigarettes are cheap, and so are knives. There is an Alameda,
where the band plays, and a passable imitation, of the Puerta del Sol,
less the fountain, in the broad arcaded Plaza de la Constitution. There
is a small theatre, a spacious bull-ring, and several commodious
churches, where Pepita can talk the language of fans to her heart's
content. Every attraction of Madrid which could reasonably be expected
is to be had, I repeat, and hidalgos and sloe-eyed senoras speckle the
promenades in the gloaming, and impart a mingled aroma of garlic and
gentility, pomade and pretentiousness, to the chief town of Guipuzcoa.
San Sebastian would be for Madrilenos what Paris is for Bostonians, if a
few of the attractions of the "only court," which could not reasonably
be expected, were not lacking--say an occasional walk round of the
Intransigentes, to show their political muscles; a grandiloquent, frothy
word-tempest in the Congress, and the Sunday cock-fight. I am speaking,
be it understood, of San Sebastian in ordinary summers. A short
twelvemonth before my visit, a pair of pouting English lips told me it
was "awfully jolly."
At the date with which I am concerned, it was anything but "awfully
jolly." The fifteen thousand rich visitors who were wont to flock into
the city during the season had gone elsewhere to recruit their health on
the sands and lose their money at the gaming-tables. They had been
frightened to the coasts of France by the apparition of Carlism, and San
Sebastian was plaintive. Her streets and her coffers were empty. The
campamento of bathing-huts was ranged as usual on the velvet rim of the
ear-like bay, but no bathers were there. There were more domestics than
guests in the hotels; and at the _table d'hote_ three sat down in a
saloon designed for a hundred to breakfast in; and we had no butter. The
peasants in the country round were afraid to bring in the produce of
their dairies and barn-yards. The bull-ring was to let; conscientious
barbers shaved each other or dressed the hair on the wax busts in their
windows, in order to keep alive the traditions of their craft; the
fiddlers in the concert-room of the casino scraped lamentations to
imaginary listeners. A Sahara of dust had settled on the curtain of the
theatre, and fleet-footed spiders made forages athwart it from one
cobwebby stronghold to another. The once festive resort had lost its
spirits completely, and all on account of this civil war. It was summer,
but the city was in a state of hibernation. No business was done in the
shops, the cafes were empty, most of the resident population who could
afford it had emigrated, and the public squares were as vacant as if
there were a perpetual siesta. There was no sign of animation, as we
understand it in England. There were but three vessels in the west
bay--the _Buenaventura_, a merchant steamer, and the _San Margarita_,
pinioned at last, her yellow funnel cold. Sojourn in the place was
insupportable. I knew not how to kill the tedious hours. I climbed again
to the Castle of the Mota, inspected some English tombs on the slope of
the acclivity, and noticed that if the citadel is still a position of
strength, nature deserves much of the credit. The defences recently
thrown up had been devised and executed carefully, and if the defenders
were only true to themselves, the Carlists, with no better artillery
than they possessed, might as well think of taking the moon as of
entering San Sebastian. They would have a formidable fire from
well-planted cannon to face; stockades, and strong earthworks, and more
than one blockhouse cunningly pierced with loopholes, to carry. Even if
San Sebastian was entered, the configuration of the streets was such as
to give every aid to disciplined men as opposed to mere guerrilleros.
The city is built in blocks, on the American system; the wide
thoroughfares cross each other at right-angles, and all of them could be
swept as with a besom by a few guns _en barbette_ behind a breastwork at
either end. In this sort of work, accuracy of aim is not called for, as
in that warfare up in the mountains. If it were, not much reliance could
be placed on the Republican artillery. General Hidalgo had well-nigh
nullified that arm of the service. A Carlist leader, in whose
information and whose word confidence could be reposed, assured me that
not a single Carlist had yet been killed or wounded by the Republican
gunners. The estimated lists of the enemy's casualties given by both
parties during the struggle, I may remark _en passant_, were grossly
exaggerated. The butcher's bill was very small in proportion to the
expenditure of gunpowder. Returning to the question of the defence of
San Sebastian--even on the supposition that the main works and town were
to fall into the hands of the Carlists, the citadel still remained,
where a determined leader could hold out till relief came, as long as
his provisions lasted. This lofty citadel is almost impregnable. It was
hither the French retired in 1813, and it took General Graham all that
he knew to dislodge them. If I were asked what were the prospects of the
Carlists getting into the place, I should say there was but one--by
crossing over a golden bridge. But that implied the possession of money,
and money was precisely what the Carlists declared they needed most.
There was always the remote hazard of a Carlist rising in San Sebastian,
for there were in the city the children of settlers from the rural
districts who bit their thumbs at the sight of the muzzled _San
Margarita_, and prayed that Charles VII. might have "his ain again." But
they were in the minority. The Miqueletes, a soldierly body of men in
scarlet Basque scones very like to the Carlist head-gear, and a blue
capote with cape attached, garrisoned the citadel. They were brave and
loyal to the Republic, and the object of deep grudge to the Chicos, for
they were Basques of the towns. Many of these provincial militiamen had
come in from the small pueblos in the neighbourhood, where they ran the
risk of being eaten up by "the bhoys;" and this was the only accession
to the population which redeemed the dismal, tradeless port from the
appearance of having been stricken by plague and abandoned, and lent it
at intervals an artificial bustle.
I sickened of San Sebastian, with its angular propriety; its high,
haughty houses, holding up their heads in architectural primness; its
wide geometrical streets, where there is no shade in the sun, no shelter
in the wind. I began to hate it for its rectilinearity, and dub it a
priggish, stuck-up, arrogant upstart among cities. What business had it
to be so straight and clean and airy? Fain would I shake the dust off my
feet in testimony against it; but here was the trouble. How to get
away--that was a knotty problem. The railway had been torn up for
months, and the armour-vested locomotives were rusting on the sidings at
Hendaye. The dirty hot little tug, the _Alcorta_, that plies between the
quay and Socoa, had left; and I grieved not, for the thought of a
passage by her was nausea. Three more torturing hours never dragged
their slow length along for me than those I spent on board her coming
over. Try and call up to yourself three hours in a low-class cook-shop,
coated an inch thick with filth, and fitted over the boiler of a penny
steamer dancing a marine break-down on the Thames, opposite the outlet
of the main-drainage pipes. That, intensified by strange oaths and
slop-basins, was the passage by the _Alcorta_. But dreary, lonely San
Sebastian was not to be endured. Those poor fellows above, accustomed to
the wild freshness and freedom of the sea, how they must mourn and
repine! By some means or other I must get back to the world that is not
petrified. No diligences dare to affront the dangers of the short
journey to the Irun railway-station, since three were stopped some days
before, the traces cut, the horses stolen, the windows shattered, the
woodwork burned, and the charred wreck left on the roadside, a terror to
those who neglect to obey the commands of the Royalist leaders.
"Royalist prigants, serr!" shouted a corpulent German doctor, connected
with mines in the neighbourhood, who retained fierce recollections of
having been robbed of a "boney, capitalest of boneys for crossing a
mountain."
I told the doctor I was about to trust to luck, and set out on foot if I
could persuade nobody to provide me with a vehicle.
"Serr, you air mad, foolish mad," said the doctor. "Those horrid
beebles, I tell you, are worse than prigants; if you hayff money, they
will dake it; if you hayff not money, they will stroke your pack fifty
times, pecause you hayff it not. They will cut your ears off; they will
cut your nose off; they are plack tevils!"
I determined to trust to luck all the same. The black devils might not
be all out so black as they were painted.