CEUTA.
Oct. 10th.
I considered it quite a feat to get at this Spanish key to the Straits,
having been foiled in two attempts, the one by land, the other by sea:
once the Spaniards stopped me, once the Moors. Like its _vis-à-vis_, to
which it stands at right angles, it is a rocky tongue, joined to the
main by a low and narrow neck, and pointing down the Mediterranean. It
is all rounded and smooth: in its figure it presents nothing salient,
and in its defences displays nothing formidable. The place derives its
character not from the fortifications, but from the gardens, and each
serves the purpose of the other. The public works are all laid out as
pleasure-grounds, and the cactus orchards are disposed in alleys on
every rising ground, so as to form stockades.
The tongue is formed of a chain of six dunes, or hillocks, with
a seventh considerably larger at the eastern point, on which is
seated a small fortress. These are the seven brothers whence the
name is supposed to be derived.[47] The fortifications, like those
of Gibraltar, are directed, not to command the sea, but to defend
it against the land. It has no level ground in front, swept by its
galleries and batteries; but, instead, a hill approaches nearly to the
glacis, and looks into the works. The landscape beyond stretches away,
wooded and picturesque, to the foot of the chain or block of mountains
which fill up this angle of Africa, overshadowing Tetuan on the one
side, Tangier on the other, and ranging along the Straits. The only
sign of human habitation is a small enclosure of white walls, with a
tower perched on the green mountain side, like a city on old tapestry
in some Arcadian scene. All was silent in that landscape, and it might
have been taken for a panorama, but for the Roman _vexillum_[48]
fluttering from the tower, which showed that a Saracen eye watched the
keep of the Goth.
Two thousand years before Gibraltar was heard of, Ceuta was an
important place. It is enumerated as one of the three earliest of
cities. Since the discovery of Gibraltar their fortunes have been
strangely similar. Each has been wrested from the land to which it
belonged. Each is held by a foreign Power to which it is useless.
Neither has been won in honourable war: the one usurped, the other
pilfered--the wrongful possession of each is the tenure by which the
other is held. Spain retained Ceuta when she abandoned Oran as a
set-off to Gibraltar, and England, who abandoned Tangier, must have
lost Gibraltar but for the help of the Moors, which was rendered
because Spain occupied Ceuta; so that, if Ceuta were not Spanish,
Gibraltar would not be English; and if Gibraltar were not English,
Ceuta would not be Spanish. The Spaniards lose their own door-post
of the Straits, and seize the post of their neighbours; the English
abandon Tangier (alone of the Portuguese possessions diverted from
Spain), and seize that of the Spaniards. In the history of sieges,
they both present the most remarkable incidents, from the unparalleled
amount of power directed against the one, and the length of time
expended in attempts to reduce the other. Both have at various times
exhausted the countries to which they belonged, and the nations by
which they have been held. Ceuta brought on the fall of Gothic Spain.
Gibraltar was the immediate cause of the war of the Spanish Succession;
and finally the smuggling trade of Gibraltar furnishes the school for
the proficients for whom Ceuta is the prison.
During the war the Spanish Government placed Ceuta, to defend it from
France, in the possession of England. Several English establishments
were formed, and considerable sums expended, in the belief that England
would never give it up; but the immorality of the Government had not
then overtaken the baseness of the people. The Moorish Government,
however, thought this an opportunity of recovering its own, and having
furnished supplies to Gibraltar, and to our fleet, and corn for our
army in Spain, conceiving itself entitled to some favour, claimed the
restitution of the place. The appeal proved ineffectual, although it
was backed by the offer of a million of dollars. The English Government
could not, as may be supposed, well urge on the Spanish Government the
claims of its Moorish ally. Muley Suleyman expressed the anguish of his
spirit in a distich which might have suggested Moore’s celebrated lines
on Poland:--
“There is no faith in our foe,
There is no comfort in our friend.”
We landed within a mole or jetty which corresponds with the Ragged
Staff at Gibraltar, thence ascended by a stair to the gate, crossed a
bridge, and found ourselves on a lively esplanade. An alley of trees
opened upwards through the straggling town, and a terrace along the
sea-wall stretched eastward to the extremity of the promontory. The
buildings were in the Moresco style with the columned court. The arms
of Spain are to be seen at Gibraltar beside those of England--here the
arms of Portugal are beside those of Spain. To the whitewash of the
Spaniards and the Moors, was here added the yellow of the Portuguese,
running two or three feet as a skirting round the court-yards, and
along the streets: everything was dazzlingly bright, exquisitely
clean, and elaborately ornamented.[49]
The streets are one continuation of tesselated pavement, green, white,
and red. The white is marble, the black a very dark serpentine, and
the red ancient tiles, which are used as outlines for the figures:
the gutter is in the centre, the pattern running on each side with a
border joining in the middle. The running pattern is a device, such as
a sprig in a Tuscan border; but here and there, you find more ambitious
conceptions--a snake, a stag, a ship, a coat-of-arms, a dog attacking a
bull, and, in one place, the figure of a man. I have seen something of
the kind in the garden of the fortress at Lisbon. There were also the
hollow bricks along the tops of walls for flowers, and the demi-flower
pots, which they nail against the walls and houses, converting them
into perpendicular parterres. They have also adopted the Moorish
tesselated pavements for the garden walks, and yet they have neglected
to copy that garden architecture which I observed at Kitan--halls and
alleys constructed of a lacework of reeds, than which there is nothing
more beautiful; and as to its uses, what can be so well adapted to the
training of foliage and flowers, so fitted to ensure the luxuries of
the clime--that is, shade and air--and to afford protection against its
inclemency--the sun with his heat and light?
But the Spaniards here are as little in Africa, as if they were in
garrison at St. Juan d’Ulloa. There is not a man who knows the language
of the country. They live like cattle in a pen, and spend their lives
here without ever having been without the walls. They are under strict
blockade--a vidette on the hill, a picket at the gate. Should a Moor
bring in eggs, he has to steal out of sight of his own sentries; and
to furnish an ox, is to commit a capital offence. When the Christians
venture within reach of the Moors, they are shot like dogs: they meet
only after despatching a flag of truce. What a ludicrous disproportion
between this array of towers, battlements, materials, troops, and
discipline, and the half dozen wild mountaineers in a reed hut on
the other side. It was said of the Arabs by a French general, “Among
them, peace cannot be purchased by victory.” Defeat does not bring
submission, nor hopelessness despair, because the brain has not robbed
the heart, nor the tongue the brain. They cannot comprehend the wisdom,
that a fact which is wrong should be submitted to because it is
accomplished, and called a fact.
As I was, some time before, sailing by Ceuta in a bullock-boat,
from Tetuan, a Spanish sailor called the attention of a young and
delicate-looking Moor, who had embarked with us on his way to Mecca,
to the Spanish flag flying on the fortress. The young man, who had
scarcely spoken before, seemed absorbed in grief; started to his feet,
his eyes glowing and his fists clenched, and roared out: “That no
Christian, that Moor land.”
The Government of Algiers recently projected sending steamers to touch
regularly at the Spanish Presidios to _gain intelligence of what was
going on in the interior_. They were then to present themselves in the
Bay of Tangier, communicate with the French Consul, visit Gibraltar,
and return to Algiers--a nicely-devised scheme to convince the Moor
that a conspiracy against them was on foot, common to France, England,
and Spain. But the French Government not having altogether resigned
itself into the hands of its “Algerines,” thought proper to appoint a
superior officer of another service to go this round and report upon
it. The first place he called at was Melilla; he inquired, “What news
from Morocco?” The governor told him that he would be able to satisfy
his curiosity on the day following, as they expected the _Madrid
papers_. The French Admiral dined with the governor, took a siesta,
Spanish fashion, and had, on awaking, an opportunity of judging of the
intercourse with the interior. Two or three Moors got into an out-post
unobserved, and had escaped in like manner, leaving behind the bodies
of six Spaniards, but carrying off the heads.
The next morning I started early to visit the works on the lines,
accompanied by a merchant of the place whom the governor sent to me,
as the person best qualified to act as cicerone. Issuing from the
first gate, we came on a drawbridge: below ran the sea over yellow
sand, there being a clear passage by the ditch from one side to the
other. Fishing-boats were splashing round the sharp angles. The old
lofty Portuguese battlements rose above us; these masses of building
are enormous, though the space of ground covered is small. The body
of the place from which we had emerged, consists of a curtain and two
bastions, three hundred yards in length, ninety feet in height; the
bastion to the south carrying a second, is twenty feet higher. As we
proceeded, ditch succeeded to ditch, and battery to battery. There
are three lines and three ditches, with corresponding demi-lunes; in
all six tiers of guns. The basis from sea to sea does not exceed four
hundred yards, and the radius may be equal: I give the dimensions
from memory. There are few guns mounted; I counted about one hundred
and fifty embrasures for guns, and twenty beds for mortars. The inner
curtain is completely pitted with shot and grape. The upper works and
merlons are refaced.
Emerging from the fortification, we began to ascend the hill: the face
of it was cut into by level spaces, the earth banked up by stone walls,
lining which, infantry could level their pieces up the hill. The whole
ground is mined and traversed by passages, the roofs of which project
above the soil with loop-holes. The vidette on the hill pointed out to
us on a brow opposite, at a short distance--but divided by a chasm--the
Moorish post, a low shed of reeds: we saw no one. Some fig-trees in
the gulley between, we were forbidden to pass; and he warned us to
keep always in his sight. I came suddenly on a mass of ruins clustering
round eminences, or running in long straight lines, castellated and
turreted: the angles were fresh and sharp. The holes left in the walls
by the fastenings of the planks, into which the compost is beaten, gave
them the appearance of enormous pigeon-houses. There were no Roman
blocks; yet the style was Roman. There was none of the massiveness
of the Moorish, but their materials. There was more of the palm-like
lightness of Fars than of the troglodyte of ancient or modern Africa.
I hoped that these might belong to some remnants of the earlier and
untraced races; but a nearer inspection soon decided that question. A
gate on the western face is still almost perfect, and is Moorish; yet
who can find the date of that style which may have belonged to the days
of Juba, as well as to those of Almanzor and Abderahman.
My companion was excessively alarmed when I proposed to visit the
ruins, as they are beyond the neutral ground. I endeavoured to relieve
him, by making a forward cast through the brushwood. He followed,
detailing how those savages would lie for hours in wait for a shot,
and how a few days before a man had been wounded at the same place.
Presently he exclaimed, “A Moor! a Moor!” I had, however, for some time
seen the figure in a clear space on the opposite brow, wrapped in its
haik, and motionless.
How pleasing would it not be to find the original of some
dubiously-figured chimera! What then to discover a living
representative of a race that has left behind it an undying name and
immortal ruins? Such was to me that solitary figure. The Assyrian bowed
his back to the burthen and his neck to the yoke, and the first of
conquerors became the meanest of slaves. The Mede served in his turn,
and so the Persian. The Egyptian, the first and greatest, became the
outcast of nations. The Macedonian and Attic conquerors of the East
were bondsmen at Rome. The Roman was a hewer of wood and a drawer of
water, at the door of the Gothic hut and the Vandal tent. In all times,
in all climes, the conquered have dwelt as Helot bondsman or slave
with the conqueror. This wild man, this Moor, alone has followed no
conqueror’s car, and served no master’s bidding. Vanquished, he has
departed--disappearing from the land which ceased to own him lord.
He has not by familiarity worn out the terrors of his name, nor the
indignation of his heart; and there he stands to-day, not yielding to
facts his reason, nor to fortune his fate.
But to compare the old Moor of Spain with the African Moor of to-day,
might appear like comparing the British of to-day with their (assumed)
naked ancestors. It, however, seems to me doubtful whether the old
light be all extinct. Look at the Moor! Is there not dignity in his
deportment--grandeur in his costume? The produce of the looms of
Morocco to-day equals in beauty and taste, if it does not surpass,
that of any country. At Tetuan the Mosaics are now made which adorn the
Alhambra. Science has departed, but is that an essential of greatness?
When a nation sinks to the barbarism that follows light, it is
indifferent to honour: it hates itself more than its foe or conqueror.
The Moor is not such.
The Moors at home are more wedded than any Mussulman people to their
usages; more fanatic, more abhorrent of all intercourse with strangers.
When they come to Europe they make themselves at home. They are seen
at Gibraltar, in the streets, on the battlements, sauntering in the
public walks, as if they entirely belonged to us. The civil magistrate
represents them as orderly and peaceable: the police-court may be said
to ignore their existence: legal practitioners declare that the cases
of litigation chiefly arise from their being overreached. They are
an example of sobriety, industry, and integrity. Their community at
Gibraltar is neither small nor select, nor composed solely of those in
easy circumstances: they come and go, and many are flying destitute
from war and persecution. No one has heard of a Moor being a drunkard,
or a swindler: no one doubts a Moor’s word: no one fears either his
vengeance or his ferocity.
But may it not be that these men are here influenced by European
manners? May they not, like the civilized and instructed classes of
the Spaniards, be assimilated to Europe? _There_ precisely is the
difference. A Moor, after spending twenty years in Europe, goes back
and demeans himself as if he had never left home. They carry their
habits with them, and at Gibraltar live much in the same way as to the
south of the Straits. As a people, they avoid us more than any other,
excepting, perhaps, the Japanese: yet, individually they have greater
intercourse with us, and in a more familiar manner; because from the
distance and the difficulties of the land journey, the pilgrims almost
always go and return from Egypt in European vessels.
As we returned into town, a stone nearly the size of a man’s head was
shown to us, by which the skull of the Portuguese commander who first
entered the place was, like that of Pyrrhus, broken by a woman from a
tower. A Moorish sovereign, who was so wounded, despatched himself like
Abimelech, with his own sword, to cover the disgrace.
The Romans at one time substituted this place for Tangier, as a
provincial capital; yet it has neither a harbour nor road, being at
the extreme point of the land, and shut out by a range of mountains
from a fertile and peopled country, while Tangier is at the bottom of
a bay, surrounded with rich lands, and is on the highway from Spain to
Mauritania, from the ocean to the interior.
To us a capital is different from what it was to the Romans: we have a
mass of organization and administration, which requires that it should
be placed at the head in respect to the members. We expect to find all
this in vigour under so rigorous a government as that of Rome. But
Rome gave herself no such trouble; introduced neither principles, nor
laws, nor language, nor costume. These spread, because not forced. The
field of administration, down to her latter days, was kept sufficiently
clear for each individual to embrace the whole: the subdivisions of
modern statesmanship and government were unknown.[50]
Her judicatories were solely appellant: the people were everywhere free
to follow their own customs, execute their own laws, select their own
magistrates, impose their own taxes. In fact, the Romans were kings:
they reigned, they did not administer; nor did they scatter their
strength in exciting irritation on every point; but remained with a
force collected to smite resistance whenever it appeared, and which
they were careful never to provoke by systematic interference.
Ceuta might thus, cut off from traffic and population, be a good
provincial capital for those masters in the art of governing men--that
art which, like health in the body and judgment in the mind, depends
not on science and labour, but abstinence and simplicity.
The idea of the Romans in garrison at Ceuta was incessantly returning
on me, and prompting pictures of the consequences. The Romans to-day
at Ceuta would be masters of Africa, from the Atlantic to the Red Sea,
as rapidly as the Saracens were of Spain, after showing themselves at
Gibraltar. When the French first attacked Algiers, the Moors, having
heard that Europe was governed by justice (the justice that every one
understands), were ready to invite them; but the French were soon
found not to be Romans: they had not the bath, not the toga, not the
salutation of the Roman or Eastern; they could in their persons command
no respect. In ablutions, tone of voice, gesture, manner of eating,
disregard of religious observances,[51] they could only excite the
disgust of a Mussulman. Very subordinate matters are principles of
administration, and forms of government, compared to the cleanliness
of the bath, dignity of deportment, ceremony and etiquette. But to the
elegance of costume the Roman did, however, add forms of administration
equally adapted, as his warlike discipline and personal habits, to
enable him to gain and secure ground as a conqueror,--he would have
left the Moor or the Algerine to the jurisdiction of his own code--he
would have left in their hands the administration of their own laws: he
would have given to _their_ senate the power of impeaching a Bugeaud
or a Vallée before the Senate of Rome.
When the Romans possessed that country, it was four or five times as
populous and not less warlike or stubborn in spirit. For four hundred
years their dominion endured with almost unbroken tranquillity.
During that period it was the granary of the world. It replenished,
not exhausted, the Roman treasures--it supplied and did not drain her
armies. During all that, time there was neither parliamentary law, nor
Royal ordinances for its good government; there were no scientific
commissions to inquire into its state; there were no quartos of
statistical information published for the enlightenment of its rulers;
there was no system of colonization, no project of enlightenment,
Christianity, or civilization; there was no _flamen_ of Chalons,[52]
sacrificing to Mars and Bellona for successful raids and butcheries.
Rome held Africa with two legions; France began[53] with a half more
than that number; she has now ten times as many: it costs her as
much in outlay as the Imperial expenses of the whole _empire under
Augustus_; and notwithstanding all the unfortunate French can do, the
people will not be civilized[54]--and run away.[55] In fourteen years
a European government has reduced the population to one-half. With ten
thousand men the Turks managed to hold Algiers, and to govern it in
tranquillity. Instead of the public debt of a “civilized” government,
they left behind a large treasure;[56] yet their troops would have
raised the contempt of any European _officer_, and their government
that of every European _politician_.
I have met some Frenchmen who believed that the French went to put down
piracy: I know no Englishman who doubts it. England attacked Algiers
with the view of putting an end to Christian slavery, and relieving
the smaller powers from the disturbance of their Mediterranean trade,
she having no quarrel of her own with that State. She succeeded,[57]
retired--kept and claimed nothing.
The first quarrel between France and Algiers was about a debt to a
Jew merchant of Algiers, which France refused to pay. This was an
outstanding balance of eighteen millions of francs, on the accounts
for the supply of France with grain for her necessities. By enormous
bribing of the Chamber of Deputies, the money was repaid: _it went into
French pockets_. In the list of recipients are names which may not
astonish a future age, but which would astonish this.
The last quarrel was about the same Jew and the coral fisheries. The
French consul having, according to instructions, made a quarrel,[58]
and excited the anger of the Pacha, he flung towards him his fan. The
consul was not touched. France got the pretext she wanted for not
paying the money, and pillaged the treasury of Algiers of £5,000,000.
England and Holland, who, at their own cost twenty years before,
had put an end to roving and to Christian slavery, nevertheless
believe that France went to Algiers to put down piracy and to spread
civilization: an instance of the value of the press in enlightened
times.
Rome conquered the warlike west, and the rich east, and possessed
the countries she conquered. The great people, lying in the heart of
Europe, possessed of unparalleled power, in as far as warlike means go,
and unequalled unity, subjugates a little state of pirates--or at least
so called pirates--without numbers, wealth, service, or literature, and
immediately France is subjugated by Algiers. I have heard Hassam Pacha,
the Ex-Dey of Algiers, say, “the barricades of July have avenged me.”
Abd-el-kadir in like manner sees himself avenged by the barricades of
February. Each African treachery is followed by a Parisian revolution.
Had it been Rome, Abd-el-kadir might have become pro-consul, or like
Severus,[59] emperor: pro-consul or emperor, he could have become
Roman. But it is a modern government: it is France which conquers
Algiers; then the Frenchman becomes an Algerine, and order has to be
restored in a constitutional state, by Algerine practices.
France, in putting down the Algiers of Africa, was preparing herself to
become the Algiers of Europe.
With the same certainty that Pyrrhus foretold the destruction of
Carthage or Rome, by the bone of contention which Sicily afforded,
may the destruction of England or France, or both, be prognosticated
from the French occupation of Africa. France by her mismanagement has
only retarded the explosion, and she has not the courage to withdraw.
Her invasion of Africa was as little her own purpose or will, as the
invasion of Spain in 1823. A foreign hand planned and prompted it in
mystery at Versailles, and publicly hailed and encouraged it from
beyond the English Channel,[60] whence alone was to be apprehended
censure or dissatisfaction.
Ceuta is the great Botany Bay of the Spaniards. There were here
recently three thousand five hundred convicts; but two thousand have
been sent off to Castille to work on some canal there; those left
are the worst class, transported for not less than ten years and
“retention,” which means that they may be kept as much longer as the
governor thinks fit. After five years’ residence, they are hired out.
The landlord of the _café_ where I stayed gave them, as a class, an
excellent character. Inquiring the kind of crimes some of them had
committed, he said, “the two young men who attend you are here for
murder.” There is here a greater accumulation of malefactors than on
any other spot of the earth, yet you might lay down gold in the streets
with impunity. There are abundant facilities for escape; the sea is
open, the town accessible at every point; there are boats all round,
and the convicts outnumber the other population. They are not, as in
Gibraltar, driven in gangs, ironed, and with “_Convict_” stamped on
every article of their dress. Here they go about free; the watchmen
in the street at night are themselves convicts. This humanity in the
treatment of convicts extends equally to slaves: the Spaniards extend
to them the protection of the laws, giving up to them the feast days;
allow them progressively to re-purchase their liberty, and when they
have done so, admit them to perfect equality of consideration with the
white men.
The governor was no less interesting than the _Presidio_. He seemed
like an exile of ancient times, and with a melancholy dignity dwelt
on the thought of his country. He had been several years an emigrant
in Europe, without knowing or choosing to know any language save his
own. He laboured to assure me that many things that were done were not
according to the heart of the nation, and repeated several times, “If
I could go with you into the peasants’ huts, and make them speak what
is in their minds, you would have reason to respect Spain.” He had
been forty-four years in the service, and had never known his country,
except suffering from injuries inflicted on her by foreign powers,
while Spain had done nothing against any one. But that was not all.
“It is impossible for a Spaniard not to feel that his country is the
object of--” and here he paused as if to muster courage to utter the
word “_desprecio_.” He was pleased when I said that the real Spaniards
were dumb, and the bastards loquacious, and the stranger who wished not
to mistake Spain must close his ears. He asked the proportions of the
two:--my answer was, as one and a half to ninety-eight and a half.
“Whoever says that Spain is poor or weak, lies.--Where do you see
a people that work so little, and possess so much? Where in Europe
is there a government so extravagant, or such a horde of public
functionaries? The ‘administrators’ in Spain would supply France,
Germany, and England put together; and what is all the political
agitation, except a scramble for these posts? We want no new laws or
constitutions; but only to administer those that our fathers have
left us. One man, without genius or originality, but with courage
and honesty, might make Spain the happiest country in Europe. As to
resources, I say they are enormous. If you were to put in one heap
the money that goes into the public treasury, and in the other, that
which is kept back by the public functionaries, the latter would be the
higher of the two. All we want is order. Look at our army. What can
Europe show superior in vigour, endurance, discipline, intelligence, or
docility? Look, too, at its numbers: two hundred thousand!”
I ventured to dissent on this last point, and showed that Spain entered
on her war with France without any army, as on her war with England at
the beginning of the previous century. On both occasions she had no
fleet. Armies were requisite to attack, but incapacitated for defence:
heroic defences were always made by a people, as shown in the contrast
of Algeria with Poland; as shown in the contrast of Spain with Germany
and Italy, which had all bowed before Napoleon: Spain’s strength
appeared after army, king, government, had been swept away; she was the
only country in Europe whose people did not want soldiers to protect
them, &c.
I observed that Spain stood in an anomalous position. Unlike a
secondary state, she had nothing to apprehend on the score of her
independence; unlike a first-rate one, she was engaged in no schemes
against the independence of other people: that an army in Spain was
consequently as needless as it was noxious.
He replied, that what I said did not apply specially to Spain, and
might be predicated of the whole of Europe; to which I readily
assented. His Spanish self-love, for a moment alarmed, was soothed
when I showed him that I was as adverse to standing armies for the
internal interest of the great and preponderating States, as he could
be, because of the facilities which it gave them of interfering with
and oppressing the others. I pointed to this, as the master-disease of
our times, and as signalized as such even in the last century, by some
of the greatest men; that it feeds, as Montesquieu says, upon itself,
growing by competition; and that, independently of their misuse,
standing armies by their pressure must ultimately bring every one of
the existing European States to the ground.
Spain, separated by the Pyrenees from the rest of Europe, as she is
distinct from them in ideas, could easily relieve herself; she had
fewer obstacles to contend with than any other State, except England.
Our whole parliamentary history had been a struggle of patriotic men
against standing armies and funded debt. He himself had admitted, that
one honest man might restore Spain; and how so, unless there were great
abuses in practice which had not degenerated into principle? He had
particularized the armies of functionaries; let him add to these this
horde of two hundred thousand regulars.
“Where is the man,” he said, “to do it?” I observed, that it could only
be by seeing and showing what was wrong, that the man could ever be
made or found to put it right.
This conversation was strikingly recalled to me by a book, entitled
“Political Testament of Cardinal Alberoni,” which, on my return, I
found at a stall. I turned over the pages with extreme curiosity,
to see if it presented any stamp of authenticity. One of the first
sentences I fell upon was the following:
“It is an error of this and the preceding century to think that the
strength of a nation consists in the large number of regular forces
kept on foot. To be convinced of the falsity of this notion, we
have only to cast an eye on the wars of Europe within these four or
five hundred years. As soon as an army is beaten on the frontier,
the prince, whose troops are vanquished, has no other resource left
but to clap up a peace: his country lies open to the enemy, and he
has only cowardly burghers and disheartened peasants to oppose to
veteran soldiers. He loses a whole province as soon as the capital of
it surrenders. He is reduced to bury himself under the ruins of his
throne, or to comply with the conditions prescribed by the conqueror.
“But when princes undertook only to lead their people in defending
their country, they reckoned as many soldiers as subjects: the whole
state was a frontier against the enemy, who were sure to meet with
opposition so long as they fought to conquer. Every inch of ground was
disputed. When a city or town surrendered, after repeated assaults, it
did not capitulate for the other towns within its jurisdiction. Every
borough, every village cost a siege. So long as a prince kept but a
corner of his country, he might hope to drive the enemy from what they
possessed, and to recover all he had lost. The most powerful prince
in Europe was dreaded only as his ambition might give disturbance and
uneasiness to his neighbours. They were sure that time would impair his
strength, like a body worn out by too frequent attrition.
“The difference between the reigns of Charles VI. and Louis XIV., in
France, shows this contrast in its full light. The King of England
was then master of the finest provinces in France, quiet possessor
of its principal cities, and crowned at Paris; while his adversary,
though reduced to the single lordship of Bourges, was able to hold
out against him. Louis XIV. sees a frontier province invaded by two
of the enemy’s generals; he offers, at St. Gertrudenberg, the fruit
of twenty victories, to persuade them to retire. His kingdom is still
untouched: millions of his subjects have not so much as heard the
sound of the enemy’s cannon, and yet he does not think himself able to
make a stand against seventy or eighty thousand men. He has not as yet
lost one battle on his ancient territories; nevertheless, he thinks
that nothing more remains for him than to die gloriously, pushed on
by temerity and despair. The enemy is still two days’ journey from
the frontier, which this kingdom had at the time when Philip Augustus
withstood and triumphed over the joint efforts of all Europe; and Louis
the Great believes it impossible to hinder the enemy from making a
conquest of his kingdom. Though he has a country two hundred leagues
in extent behind him, above a hundred on each side of him, yet he does
not think this sufficient to secure him an honourable retreat. Jandrecy
and Quenoy determine the fate of France. Valenciennes and Dunquerque,
Arras, Amiens, Cambrai, Maubeuge and so many other strong-holds, which
his predecessors either never possessed, or, if they did, afterwards
resigned, without imagining they weakened thereby their throne; all
these places, I say, to him appear as of no sort of use, because he has
no regular troops to defend them.
“If the land forces of Spain had been upon this footing in the
beginning of the present century, the nation would have beheld with
as much security as contempt, the combination of the Courts of Vienna
and London to impose a master upon her, and to divide her possessions.
With the advantages in regard to war, which this kingdom has even from
nature, it might have bidden defiance to France herself conspiring with
the other Powers, to oblige her to submit to the treaty of partition.”
It was quite intelligible to me now, that three great rival nations
should concert to banish Alberoni from the counsels of the grandson
of Louis XIV. He had penetrated to the Gothic foundations of the
society of the peninsula, and had ascended to those Gothic pinnacles,
from which he could survey the littleness of his contemporaries. He
foresaw in the event of a general military despotism, the possibility
of Europe’s being recovered by the latent energy of the Spanish people,
and the ultimate range of his provision and prophecy was Southern and
Western Europe quelled, and its rivalries composed by the intrusion of
the two northern powers, Prussia and Russia.
He was above the arts of government, and knew where the greatness of
his adopted country resided. He scouted acquisitions as a source of
splendour to the state, or patronage as a means of strength to the
government.
The great men of the period attained by peculiar powers the management
of men; but there is not one whose words time has undertaken to
confirm. Where is Richelieu’s management; Colbert’s finance; where are
Fleury’s devices; or Louis le Grand’s victories? They have vanished
with the fortunes they created, and have left us such instruction only
as we may derive from the cell of a culprit, or the fragments of a
column.
Those who have prognosticated one among a thousand events, have been
held wise in their generation. Alberoni has traced out before the event
the salient features of the European system, as if he were describing
it now. He foresaw the failure of all the endeavours of the Bourbon
courts to restore the Pretender. He warned them that their fleets
would fail against England, told them that[61] “cruisers” were the only
effectual arm with which to assail her commercial greatness, laughed
at their projects of a hundred thousand men in arms in the Highlands,
or in Ireland, and recommended as a surer recipe for ruining England,
the securing “_Ten members of the House of Commons, with a few Peers of
note_.” He pointed to the sagacity of William III., who had established
his throne by the then bold but well-considered measure of plunging the
country in war, and loading it with debt.
He furnishes a parallel to Talleyrand, both driven from office by a
combination of foreign powers;[62] but all Europe feared the Cardinal
of Parma, Russia alone feared the ex-bishop of Autun.
Spain, in the selection of public servants, to a certain degree
imitated Rome, and resembled Russia. She did not think, that, to
insure fidelity and authority, it was necessary that they should be
her own nobles and chief men, as in the case of all modern European
governments. Spain owed perhaps to the caprice of her monarchs, a
facility which Rome possessed by the comprehensive nature of her
institutions. Rome, however, so dignified the nations only that she had
already incorporated; Russia, the subjects of the state she purposes to
acquire.
FOOTNOTES:
[47] Septem.
[48] This flag is small and square, and hangs from a rod which is
hoisted to an iron crane, to give it play and spread it out in calm
weather, like the _vexillum_. I do not suppose it to be a relic of
the Romans, but rather, that when the Romans landed, it had already
fluttered for a thousand years on the leafy sides of Atlas. It is
called _Alem_, and is hoisted at the hours of prayer. On Friday it is
white, on other days blue.
[49] I am told that where there are in Barbary Christian houses, they
are coloured yellow by means of copperas water over the lime.
[50] “Aristote en donnant des éloges à ce gouvernement lui fait des
reproches qui paraissent mal fondés. Le premier porte sur la cumulation
des emplois. Il est certain qui cette coutume forma de grands hommes
dans la Grèce, à Carthage, et à Rome, en obligeant les citoyens à
étudier également l’art de la guerre, la science de l’administration
et celle des lois, parties differentes mais qui se touchent plus qu’on
ne pense. Leur séparation dans les temps modernes a fait naitre de
dangereux esprits de corps et de funestes rivalités.”--SEGUR, _Hist.
Univ. Carthage_, p. 83.
[51] Marshal Bugeaud published an order on attendance at
worship--alleging as a reason that it was requisite to secure the
respect of the Arabs.
[52] See circular of the Bishop of Chalons, in 1843, for prayers of
thanksgiving.
[53] “A great fact is written at full length at p. 9 of the
report:--‘In 1831, the effective of the French troops amounted to
18,000 men of all arms; in 1834, to 30,000; in 1838, to 48,000; in
1841, to 70,000; in 1843, to 76,000; in 1845, to 83,000; in 1846, to
101,000.’ Is it not the contrary which would appear simple? We could
understand having commenced with 101,000 men in Africa, and now having
only 18,000; but that we should have commenced with 18,000 men, to
arrive after fifteen years, at 101,000--is not this the most severe
condemnation that could be pronounced against the absurd and false
system which has been followed?”--_La Presse._
[54] “De tous les fléaux que la France doit combattre en Algérie,
l’ignorance est sans contredit le plus terrible. Vis-à-vis d’un peuple
éclairé, un raisonnement juste et droit produit toujours un résultat
avantageux, mais vis-à-vis d’une nation barbare, les paroles sont
vaines et les leçons stériles. Nous sommes obligés de recourir sans
cesse à la force pour contraindre les indigènes à suivre nos avis et
se pénetrer du bien que nous voulons leur faire.”--_Les Khouan Ordres
Religieux chez les Musulmans de l’Algérie_, p. 109.
[55] “This great movement of emigration, 5,000 cavalry, 30,000 foot,
and more than 30,000 tents, changes the character of the struggle.
Abd-el-Kader carries off the population that we have been unable to
organize, administer, or govern.”--_L’Algérie._
[56] Taking the average according to the population for England to be
financially in as flourishing a condition as Algiers at the time of its
capture, the Treasury (_not_ the Bank) should contain £50,000,000.
[57] “L’Angleterre n’avait elle pas _échoué_ devant Alger peu d’années
avant notre succès.”--_La France en Afrique_--Published under the
auspices of M. Guizot.
[58] Avowed by the Duc de Rovigo, at once Minister of War and Commander
of the expedition, in the letter he published after the fall of Charles
X.
[59] His sister could not speak Latin, and he was ashamed of her
_Breber_ tongue.
[60] “Some of our contemporaries have described in vivid language, the
danger to the balance of power, of the French possessions extended
along the northern coast of Africa in such a manner as to give France
the command of that important part of the shores of the Mediterranean;
but we hope that the alarm which exists on this subject will not cause
the advantages which the civilized world might reap from the Algerine
expedition to be altogether abandoned. It will be a common disgrace to
Christendom, if the splendid expedition which has now sailed for Africa
is obliged, after giving a temporary check to the insolence of the
pirates, to leave that quarter of the world to barbarism, because the
powers of Europe are all envious of the prosperity of one another. * *
* If the French expedition succeeds, the formation of establishments on
the coast of Africa under the guarantee of the great Powers, to which
all Europeans should have a right to resort, but with such privileges
secured to France as would repay her the expense of the conquest, might
not be impossible. At any rate, we are convinced that the present
French government, whatever its defects may be, is not grasping
or dishonest, and that a just arrangement for securing to Europe
collectively the benefit of the civilization of the north of Africa, if
not rendered impracticable by the jealousies of other governments, will
not be obstructed by the ambition of France.
“We confess that, considering the length of time, &c., we had rather
see such a colony established in Africa, without any precaution on
the part of the other European Powers, than to see Algiers, if once
conquered, again abandoned to its barbarous rulers.”--_Globe_, May
20th, 1830.
[61] This idea has presented itself within the last few years, and
prompted our present precautionary measures.
[62] The Allies remitted to France 100,000,000 as the price of the
removal of Talleyrand from the Foreign Office, he having been the
originator of the Quadruple Treaty, secret but defensive, of England,
France, Austria, and Sweden, against the two aggressive and military
governments of the North. Napoleon, on his return from Elba, found the
treaty and sent it to St. Petersburg. Genz subsequently published it.
It is the epitome of Europe in the 19th century.