through the opposing Indians. But at this critical moment the young
Comanche was beforehand with him. With a bound he interposed himself
between the chief's armed hand and intended victim, tore Rosa from the
grasp of Tokeah, and hurled him back against the door with such force
that it flew into fragments.
"Tokeah is indeed a wild cat!" cried he with indignant disgust. "He
forgets that he is a chief amongst his people, and brings shame upon
the name of the Red men. El Sol is ashamed of such a father."
These words, spoken in the Pawnee dialect, had an indescribable effect
upon the old savage. He had partly raised himself after his fall, but
now again sank down as if lifeless. Just then several file of militia
entered the room with bayonets fixed.
"Shall we take the Indian to prison?" said Lieutenant Parker.
The major stood speechless, both his arms clasped round Rosa.
"Lieutenant Parker," said he, "support Rosa for a moment: the Almighty
himself has protected her, and it beseems not us to take vengeance."
He approached the old Indian, who still lay upon the floor, lifted him
up, and placed him against the wall. "Tokeah," he said, "according to
our laws your life is forfeited, and the halter the least you deserve;
nevertheless, begone, and that instantly. You will find your
punishment without receiving it at our hands."
"He was my father, my unhappy father!" exclaimed Rosa, and tottering
to the Indian, she threw her arms around him. "Father of my Canondah,"
cried she, "Rosa would never leave you, but the voice of her own
father calls. Forgive her who has been a daughter to you!"
The Indian remained mute. She gazed at him for a while with tearful
eyes; then turned to El Sol, and bowing her head modestly and
respectfully, took leave of him, and left the house with her
companions.
The young chief of the Comanches remained as in a dream, till the
major, with Rosa and the militia, were already far from the estaminet.
Suddenly he came bounding after them, and placing himself before Rosa,
took her hands, pressed them to his breast, and bowed his head so
mournfully, that the witnesses of the scene stood silent, sympathizing
with his evident affliction.
"El Sol," whispered he, in a scarcely audible tone, "has seen Rosa: he
will never forget her."
And without raising his eyes to her face, he turned away.
"As I live," exclaimed the squire, with some emotion, "the noble
savage weeps!"
* * * * *
An hour subsequently to this scene, the party of Indians left the
bayou in a canoe, and ascended the Mississippi. Upon reaching the
mouth of the Red River, they turned into it, and continued their route
up-stream. On the tenth day from that of their departure, they found
themselves upon the elevated plain where the western district of
Arkansas and Louisiana joins the Mexican territory. To their front
were the snowy summits of the Ozark range, beyond which are immense
steppes extending towards the Rocky Mountains. The sun sank behind the
snow-capped peaks, as the Indians landed at the western extremity of
the long table-rock, which there stretches like a wall along the left
bank of the Red River. Leaving their canoe, they approached a hill, or
rather a mass of rock, that rises not far from the shore in the barren
salt steppe, and in whose side exists a cave or grotto, resembling, by
its regularity of form, an artificial archway. Here, upon the
imaginary boundary line separating the hunting grounds of the Pawnees
of the Toyask tribe from those of the Cousas and Osages, they took up
their quarters for the night. El Sol ordered a fire to be made; for
Tokeah, who had just left the warm climate of Louisiana, shivered with
cold. Their frugal meal dispatched, the Miko and his Oconees stretched
themselves upon the ground and slept. El Sol still listened to a
legend related by one of the Comanches, when he was startled by a
distant noise. In an instant the three warriors were upon their feet,
their heads stretched out in the direction of the breeze which had
conveyed the sound to their ears.
"The dogs!" murmured the young Comanche; "they bay after a foe in
whose power it once was to crush them."
The Oconees were roused from their slumber, and the party hurried to
the place where they had left the canoe. The Miko and his warriors got
in and descended the stream; whilst El Sol and the two Comanches crept
noiselessly along the water's edge in the same direction. After
proceeding for about half a mile, the canoe stopped, and the young
chief and his followers entered it, previously breaking the bushes
growing upon the shore, so as to leave unmistakable marks of their
passage. They continued their progress down the river to the end of
the table-rock, and then, leaving the old man in the boat, El Sol and
the four warriors again landed, and glided away in the direction of
their recently abandoned bivouac. In its vicinity were stationed a
troop of twenty horses. Of the Indians to whom these belonged, ten
remained mounted, whilst the remainder searched the cave, and followed
the trail left by its late occupants. Crouching and crawling upon the
ground, the better to distinguish the footmarks dimly visible in the
moonlight, it might almost have been doubted whether their dark forms
were those of men, or of some strange amphibious animals who had
stolen out of the depths of the river for a midnight prowl upon the
shore.
His ear against the rock, and motionless as a statue, El Sol observed
each movement of the foe. Suddenly, when the Indians who followed the
trail were at some distance from the cave, he made a sign to his
companions, and, with a noiseless swiftness that defied detection, the
five warriors approached the horses. A slight undulation of the plain
was all that now separated them from their enemy. El Sol listened,
gazed upwards at the moon's silver disk, just then emerging from
behind a snow-charged cloud, raised himself upon his knee, and taking
a long and steady aim, nodded to his warriors. The next instant five
savages, pierced by as many bullets, fell from their horses to the
ground; a terrible yell shattered the stillness of the night; and with
lightning swiftness El Sol sprang upon the terrified survivors, who,
answering his war-whoop by cries of terror, fled in confusion from the
place. It needed all the surprising rapidity and dexterity of the
young chief and his followers to secure six of the half-wild horses,
whose bridles, so swift and well-calculated had been the movements of
the Comanches, might be said to fall from the hands of their slain
riders into those of the assailants. The remaining steeds reared in
extreme terror, and then, with neigh and snort, dashed madly across
the wide waste of the steppe.
Springing upon the backs of the captured animals, the Comanches
galloped to the shore. Scarcely had they entered the canoe, astern of
which the horses were made to swim, when the bullets and arrows of the
pursuing foe whistled around them.
"Will my son promise the Miko to be a good father to the Oconees?"
said the old chief in a hollow voice, as they pulled out of range of
the fire.
"A father and a brother," answered the Comanche. "But why does my
father ask? He will dwell long and happily with his children."
"Will El Sol swear it by the Great Spirit?" repeated the old man,
earnestly, but in a fainter voice.
"He will," replied the young chief.
"Will he swear to bury Tokeah and his father's bones in the grave of
the warriors of the Comanches?"
"He will," said El Sol.
"So shall the white men not scoff at his ashes nor at those of his
father," groaned the Miko. "But it is the will of the Great Spirit
that Tokeah should not see the hunting-grounds of the Comanches; he is
doomed to die in the land of the palefaces."
A rattling in his throat interrupted the old man; he murmured a few
broken words in the ears of his Oconees, who broke out into a wild
howl of lamentation. Still clasping to his breast the coffin
containing his father's bones, he sank back in the boat in the agonies
of death. El Sol raised him in his arms, but life had already fled. A
bullet had struck him between the shoulders, and inflicted a mortal
wound. In silent grief the young chief threw himself upon the corpse,
and long after the boat had reached the opposite shore, he lay there,
unmindful of all but his sorrow. Roused at length by the whispers of
his companions, to a sense of the danger of longer delay, he laid the
body across a horse, and himself mounting the same animal, took the
road to the village of the Pawnees. There, upon the following day, to
the wild and mournful music of the death-song, the little party made
its sorrowful entrance.
At this point the narrative ceases. We turn the page, expecting at
least another chapter, or some notice of Rosa's restoration to her
father, and subsequent marriage with Hodges, which the previous
portion of the novel certainly led us to anticipate. But our author,
with his usual eccentric disregard of the established routine of
romance writers, contents himself with a postscript, consisting of an
advertisement extracted from the Opelousas county paper, and dated
March 1816, announcing the marriage of the amiable and accomplished
Miss Mary Copeland, daughter of the Honourable John Copeland, of James
county, to Mr James Hodges, formerly of H.B.M. Navy, and now of
Hodges' Seat in the same state. The reader is left to complete the
denouement for himself, if he so pleases, and to conjecture that
Rosa's father, a Mexican grandee, takes back his daughter to her
native country, and that the incipient attachment between her and the
young Englishman is mutually forgotten.
We here finally conclude our extracts from the already published work
of our German American friend--extracts comprising, as we believe, the
cream of the twenty volumes, or thereabouts, which he has given to the
world. The incognito behind which this clever and original writer has
so long shrouded himself, is at length abandoned; and to a new edition
of his works, now in course of publication, stands prefixed the name
of Charles Sealsfield.
THE DEATH OF ZUMALACARREGUI.
BY COLONEL LORD HOWDEN, K.ST.F., K.C.S.
"Ac sane, quod difficilimum, et prælio strenuus erat et bonus
in consilio; quorum alterum ex providentiâ timorem, alterum
ex audaciâ temeritatem, adferre plerumque solet. In Jugurthâ
tantus dolus, tantaque peritia locorum et militiæ erat, ut
absens aut præsens perniciosior esset in incerto
haberetur."--SALLUST.
The siege of Bilbao was undertaken against the will, and strongly
expressed counsel of Zumalacarregui. He was not only aware of the risk
of the enterprise, with the insufficient means at his disposal for
attempting it, but he had other plans. His plans, however, were
undervalued, and his counsels were slighted, at the court of the
Pretender. The little empty politicians there, were dazzled by the
idea of possessing an important town, not deeming it their business to
calculate the means by which it was to be obtained; the incompetent
military advisers who directed from afar, thought that this bold
attempt, proceeding from them, would contrast in bright relief with
the hitherto wary and waiting policy of the commander-in-chief; and
the wish, not an unnatural one, of the wandering prince, to find
himself for once in comfortable quarters, was not the least among the
motives which decided the operation. Though at this moment the
Christino army was in a state of great discouragement from a long
series of advantages that had been gained by the Carlists, the funds
of the latter were entirely exhausted; and the idea of a forced loan
upon the rich inhabitants of Bilbao was too seducing to be coldly
examined by those little acquainted with the real difficulties of the
war. Zumalacarregui wished to attack Victoria, and, profiting by the
prestige of his late successes, to throw himself on the fertile and
virgin ground of the Castiles. This was doubtlessly the right course,
but the project was overruled.
Independently of what thus gave rise to these ambitious aspirations,
there was a personal feeling which had long been busy, either in
attempting new and unexpected combinations on the part of the
Camarilla, or in mutilating or rendering ineffectual those that had
been imagined by Zumalacarregui. There was no passion, bold or mean,
no jealousy, no intrigues, vegetating ever so rankly or rifely in the
oldest and largest court of Europe, which did not flourish in that of
Don Carlos.
There was not a Christino general more disliked by the hangers-on of
Don Carlos than Zumalacarregui. They feared him, they respected him,
but they hated him.
When the Pretender first made his appearance in Navarre,
Zumalacarregui was in his favourite retreat of the Amescuas. He was
far from insensible to the advantage which the presence of the chief
actor in the drama might produce, if his personal bearing should be
such as to create an enthusiasm for his cause, and if those who
accompanied him should bring each his personal contingent of
enlightened advice and honest activity. But with all these hopes,
Zumalacarregui was not without his fears; his sagacity foresaw what
his experience soon confirmed, that the royal chief was worse than a
nullity, and that the royal suite were actively in the way. Lord Bacon
says, "it is the solecism of princes to think to command the end, and
yet not to endure the means." Dr Carlos was always commanding the end,
while his general was left to find the means as best he could. A large
portion of his small army was absorbed in protecting the prince, and
could rarely be counted on in a combined movement; and the
non-combatants, under every denomination of title and rank, drew more
rations for their consumption than would have sufficed for the support
of a large body of soldiers.
Zumalacarregui, personally, was never very enthusiastic in the cause.
It is true that his feelings had always had a tendency to absolutism,
or rather he entertained the conviction that a strong government was
necessary to the happiness of Spain, and that the greater the unity of
that government, the greater was its chance of stability, and its
power of favourable action; but when he left Pamplona to put himself
at the head of the insurgent Navarrese, he was influenced far more by
pique against the existing state of things, than by enthusiasm for
the new one which he sought to establish. He had been treated both
brutally and unjustly by Quesada, at that time inspector of infantry;
and, with his active spirit, a condemnation to inactivity was the
severest sentence that could be passed upon him. Rest to his unquiet
bosom was a hell from which he was determined to emerge; and,
confident in his powers, he seized the first opportunity which enabled
him to bring them into action.
The meeting between Zumalacarregui and the prince was respectful, but
not warm; the first was unaccustomed to have any feelings, the second
was unaccustomed to conceal those he had. The new importation had
brought no new ideas, no plans, no accession of science; above all,
_no money_; at least no more than was to be applied to its own wants.
Don Carlos was evidently under the constraint that a strong mind
imposes on a weak one. He saw that the servant was the master, as much
in commanding intellect as in actual power. They were both
uncomfortable; Zumalacarregui neither flattered the prince, nor his
chances of success; he laid before him his difficulties, almost
insuperable in his own opinion--for let it be known as a fact, _that
he always in his heart despaired of the ultimate upshot of the war_.
In conversational phrase, he had made himself thoroughly disagreeable;
for he had spoken calmly, coldly, truly--and the hopes of an immediate
march to Madrid had been rudely shaken. Zumalacarregui left the
prince's headquarters with a discouragement and a contempt which he
was at no pains to conceal. From that moment he was an object, often
of admiration, but never of affection; and it was evident that the
effort to esteem him was too painful to ensure a continuance of
confidence.
Among those who consider Zumalacarregui solely as the able chief of a
devoted army, putting aside all the circumstances of political
partisanship, there can be little difference of opinion, if that
opinion be fairly formed and honestly given. By those who remark upon
the comparatively small number of his troops, and the relatively
confined scale of his operations, and who therefore refuse him the
name of a great general, it must be remembered, that if this principle
of applying reputation be pushed further in its expression--if
military praise and appreciation are to be awarded strictly according
to the size of the theatre and the magnitude of the numbers, and not
according to the spirit which moves over the one, and directs the
others--by such geometrical logic, our own great hero would be deemed
immeasurably inferior to the French emperor.
Zumalacarregui possessed great courage, but he made no show of it. It
would have been more brilliant if he had had more vanity; and the
exposure of his person was always subservient to some object of
utility. He had a comprehensive view of military movements, but he
never forgot the peculiar nature of his warfare; and he never
ambitiously allowed himself to be carried away by plans or manoeuvres
beyond the exigencies of his position. As an administrator in forming
reserves, in procuring supplies, in discovering resources, in bringing
raw battalions to a state of rough efficiency in the shortest possible
time, he was unrivalled; yet his mind was not cramped by detail, and
when he descended to minute matters, it was because they were really
important. He was severe and inflexible, even taciturn and morose; yet
he was extremely loved by his troops. At the time that he was
commander-in-chief, commissary-general and treasurer, and that all the
sums of money, raised or sent, passed through his hands without a
check or a receipt, there never was a breath raised against the purity
of his moral character. These certainly are the elements out of which
great generals are made; and it is not irrational to think that, under
other circumstances, the same man, this Navarrese Guerrillero, far
superior as such to the brave but improvident Mina, or the active but
dull Jauregui, might have expanded into a European hero, and have left
a less perishable name.
When the siege of Bilbao was decided on, Zumalacarregui threw his
objections to the winds, and set about it with his constitutional
ardour. He arrived before it with fourteen battalions, and a miserable
battering-train, composed of two twelve-pounders, one six-pounder, two
brass four-pounders, two howitzers and a mortar, and with a great
penury of corresponding ammunition. The town was garrisoned by a force
of four thousand men, well armed, without counting the national guard,
and was protected by forty pieces of artillery, mostly of large
calibre, mounted on different forts thrown up in favourable positions.
But what was of chief advantage to the besieged, and what almost
rendered success hopeless, was the free communication from without
kept up by French and English vessels of war stationed in the Nervion,
a river that runs alongside the town, and joins the sea at some seven
or eight miles' distance.
Zumalacarregui fixed his headquarters at a spot called Puente Nuevo,
in a small straggling village, just at this side of the town of
Bilbao, and under one of its most fashionable and frequented walks.
Eraso had begun the investiture of the place a few days previously,
and both these chiefs lodged in a small inn named the Three Sisters.
Puente Nuevo was completely commanded by an eminence called the Morro,
just outside the gates of Bilbao; but the garrison, either from
motives of prudence or others, gave the Carlists no inconvenience from
that point.
At a short distance to the right of the Durango road, and on a height
immediately over the town of Bilbao, is a church, called Our Lady of
Begoña; and not far from it is a house, which, from its comparative
size and solidity, and from its commanding view of the country around,
goes by the name of the Palace. On the second day of the siege, two
serious misfortunes befell the besiegers: eighty of the best muskets
they possessed were piled in the portico of the church of Begoña, and
were all entirely destroyed by a grenade that took them horizontally,
killing the two sentinels that were mounting guard over them. The same
evening the two largest of the guns, already half-worn out, burst from
continued firing, just as something like an impression appeared on the
spot it was proposed to breach.
Don Carlos, during this time, was at Durango, a distance of five or
six hours. Zumalacarregui, seeing the hopelessness of the operation,
and, above all, the discouragement of the men, sent an express to the
prince to say, "that he would be obliged infallibly to raise the siege
and retire, unless some means were immediately taken to raise the
drooping spirits of his army; that they were without clothes, without
food, and almost without ammunition; that it was absolutely necessary
that a sum of money should be procured and sent to him, which would
enable him to pay the troops a part of what was due to them; and that
then, as the means of prolonging a siege was out of the question, he
would endeavour to carry out his majesty's wishes, and try to take the
place by assault."
Cruz-Mayor, the lead of the Camarilla, loved to humiliate
Zumalacarregui, and no answer was returned to this letter; but
Zumalacarregui was not idle, nor did he allow inaction to dispirit
still more the minds of his men. He even attempted an assault, which
failed, with the loss of all those who were ordered on this service.
Unfortunately for the attacking column, lots were drawn for the troops
that were to compose it; and they fell upon a regiment of Navarrese,
entirely ignorant of the localities, who, getting confused in
cross-paths and lanes at the foot of the walls, were cut off to a man.
It was thought that the result of this attack might have been
otherwise had it been undertaken by the Biscayan companies, who knew
every inch of the ground. The hour, too, was ill judged, for it was at
the beginning of nightfall, when it was just dark enough to embarrass
those who were attempting the assault, without being sufficiently so
to induce the inhabitants and national guards to retire from the
walls.
On the 15th June 1835, Zumalacarregui proceeded to the palace of
Begoña, not far from the church of the same name, as the best spot for
observing the repairs made, and the additional means of defence raised
by the enemy during the night. He passed through the middle room on
the first story, and, throwing open the window, went out on the iron
balcony overlooking the town. The balls were flying so thick and fast
that he desired all those who accompanied him to remain within; but,
notwithstanding their supplications, he himself remained leaning on
the railing of the balcony, his knees nearly touching the ground. The
telescope which he used, showing the marksmen in the enemy's works
that he was probably a personage of importance, occasioned a general
discharge from the nearest battery. It was now exactly eight o'clock
in the morning, and a ball from this discharge struck Zumalacarregui
in the upper and anterior part of the right leg, on the inner side,
about two inches below the knee. From the position in which he was
struck, the ball took a downwards direction, and, as no part of the
intricate machinery of the knee was injured, there was every reason to
suppose that no serious consequences could ensue.
Either from the extreme pain of the wound, or the shock given to the
nervous system, Zumalacarregui fainted. His secretary, Zaratiegui, and
the rest of his staff, picked him up in a state of insensibility, and
placed him on a chair. The surgeon, Grediaga, a man of considerable
acquirements, who was then practising in the sacristy of the church of
Begoña, which had been converted into an hospital, was immediately
sent for, as well as a young English surgeon of the name of Burgess,
belonging to a small body of cavalry called the "Holy Squadron," or
the "Squadron of Legitimacy."