Chapter III: Front Matter (3)

Unconscious boyhood! Oh! the perils near
Of luring Pleasures! In the evening shade,
Drowsy reclining, in my dream I saw
A comely youth, with wanton flowing curls,
Chase down the sunlit vale a glittering flight
Of winged creatures, some like birds, and some
Like butterflies, and moths of marvellous size
And beauty, purple-ruffed, and spotted rich
With velvet tippets, and their wings like flame--
Onward they drew him to a coming cloud,
With skirts of vapoury gold, but steaming dense
And dark behind, close gathering from the ground:
And on and in he went, in heedless chase.
And straight those skirts curled inward, and became
Part of the gloom: Compacted, solid, black,
It has him in, and it will keep him there.
The cloud stood still a space, as if to give
Time for the acting of some doom within,
Ominous, silent, grim. It moved again,
Tumultuous stirred, and broke in seams and flaws,
And gave me glimpses of its inner womb:
Outdarting forkèd tongues, and brazen fins,
Blue web-winged vampire-bats, and harpy faces,
And dragon crests, and vulture heads obscene,
I there beheld: Fierce were their levelled looks,
As if inflicted on some victim. Who
That victim was, I saw not. But are these
The painted Pleasures which that youth pursued
Adown the vale? How cruel changed! But where,
And what is he? Is he their victim there?
Heavy the cloud went passing by. From out
Its further end I saw that young man come,
Worn and dejected; specks and spots of dirt
Were on his face, and round his sunken eyes;
Hollow his cheeks, lean were his bony brows;
And lank and clammy were the locks that once
Played curling round his neck: The Passions there
Have done their work on him. With trembling limbs,
And stumbling as he went, he sate him down,
With folded arms, upon a sombre hill,
Apart from men, and from his father’s house,
That wept from him; and, sitting there, he looked
With heavy-laden eyes down on the ground.
But the night fell, and hid him from my view.

In yonder sheltered nook of nibbled sward,
Beside the wood, a gipsy band are camped;
And there they’ll sleep the summer night away.
By stealthy holes, their ragged tawny brood
Creep through the hedges, in their pilfering quest
Of sticks and pales, to make their evening fire.
Untutored things, scarce brought beneath the laws
And meek provisions of this ancient State!
Yet, is it wise, with wealth and power like hers,
And such resources of good government,
To let so many of her sons grow up
In untaught darkness and consecutive vice?
True, we are jealous free, and hate constraint,
And every cognisance o’er private life;
Yet, not to name a higher principle,
’Twere but an institution of police,
Due to society, preventative
Of crime, the cheapest and the best support
Of order, right, and law, that not one child,
In all this realm of ours, should be allowed
To grow up uninstructed for this life,
And for the next. Were every child State-claimed,
Laid hold of thus, and thus prepared to be
A proper member of society,
What founts of vice, with all their issuing streams,
Might thus be closed for ever, and at once!
Good propagating good, so far as man
Can work with God. Oh! this is the great work
To change our moral world, and people Heaven.

Would we had Christian statesmen to devise,
And shape, and work it out! Our liberties
Have limits and abatements manifold;
And soon the national will, which makes restraint
Part of its freedom, oft the soundest part,
Would recognise the wisdom of the plan,
Arming the state with full authority
For such an institute of renovation.
This work achieved at home, with what a large
Consistent exercise of power, and right
To hope the blessing, should we then go forth,
Pushing into the dark of Heathen worlds
The crystal frontiers of the invading Light,
The Gospel Light! The glad submitting Earth
Would cry, Behold, their own land is a land
Of perfect living light--how beautiful
Upon the mountains are their blessed feet!

Through yonder meadow comes the milk-maid’s song,
Clear, but not blithe, a melancholy chaunt,
With dying falls monotonous; for youth
Affects the dark and sad: Her ditty tells
Of captive lorn, or broken-hearted maid,
Left of her lover, but in dream thrice dreamt
Warned of his fate, when, with his fellow-crew
Of ghastly sailors on benighted seas
He clings to some black, wet, and slippery rock,
Soon to be washed away; what time their ship,
Driven on the whirlpool’s wheel, is sent below,
And ground upon the millstones of the sea.
The song has ceased. Up the dim elmy lane
The damsel comes. But at its leafy mouth
The one dear lad has watched her entering in,
And with her now comes softly side by side.
But oft he plucks a leaf from off the hedge,
For lack of words, in bashful love sincere;
Till, in his innocent freedom bolder grown,
He crops a dewy gowan from the path,
And greatly daring flings it at her cheek.
Close o’er the pair, along the green arcade,
Now hid, now seen against the evening sky,
The wavering, circling, sudden-wheeling bat
Plays little Cupid, blind enough for that,
And fitly fickle in his flights to be
The very Boy-god’s self. Where’er may lie
The power of arrows with the golden tips,
That silent lad is smit, nor less that girl
Is cleft of heart: Be this the token true:--
Next Sabbath morn, when o’er the pasture hills
Barefoot she comes to church, with Bible wrapped
In clean white napkin, and the sprig of mint
And southernwood laid duly in the leaves,
And down she sits beside the burn to wash
Her feet, and don her stockings and her shoes,
Before she come unto the House of Prayer,
With all her reverence of the Day, she’ll cast
(Forgive the simple thing!) her eye askance
Into the mirror of the glassy pool,
And give her ringlets the last taking touch,
For him who flung the gowan at her cheek
In that soft twilight of the elmy lane.

Pensive the setting Day, whether, as now
Cloudless it fades away, or far is seen,
In long and level parallels of light,
Purple and liquid yellow, barred with clouds,
Far in the twilight West, seen through some deep
Embrowned grove of venerable trees,
Whose pillared stems, apart, but regular,
Stand off against the sky: In such a grove,
At such an hour, permitted eyes might see
Angels, majestic Shapes, walking the earth,
Holding mild converse for the good of man.

Day melts into the West, another flake
Of sweet blue Time into the Eternal Past!

DUMFRIES, _May 18, 1846_.

CABRERA.

[_Historia de la Guerra Ultima en Aragon y Valencia, escrita par_ D. F. CABELLO, D. F. SANTA CRUZ, y D. R. M. TEMPRADO. Madrid: 1846.]

On the twenty-seventh day of December 1806, at the collegiate town of Tortosa in Catalonia, Maria Griño, the wife of José Cabrera, an industrious and respectable mariner, gave birth to a son. Destined to the church, this child, from his earliest boyhood, was the petted favourite of his family. His parents looked to him as a staff and support for their declining years, his sisters as a protector; and none ventured to thwart his whims, or correct the failings of the young student. Thus abandoned to the dictates of a disposition naturally perverse, Ramon Cabrera led the life of a vagabond, rather than that of a scholar and of one destined to holy orders. Avoided by the more respectable of his classmates and townsmen, he fell amongst evil associates, and soon became notorious for precocity of vice. The reprimands of his superiors, the entreaties of his relatives, even punishment and seclusion, were inefficacious to reclaim him. Disliking books, the sole use he made of opportunities of study, was to imbibe the abominable and sanguinary maxims of the Inquisition. The taint of Carlism, widely spread amongst the clergy of the diocese of Tortosa, whose bishop, Saenz, was an influential and devoted member of the apostolical party, was speedily contracted by Cabrera. By character and propensities better fitted for an unscrupulous military partisan than for a minister of the gospel, for a devouring wolf than for a meek and humble shepherd of God’s flock, no sooner was the cry of insurrection raised in the kingdom of Arragon than he hastened to swell it with his voice. On the 15th of November 1833 he joined Colonel Carnicer, who had already planted on the ramparts of Morella the standard of Charles the Fifth.

Six years have elapsed since the termination of the civil war in Arragon and Valencia, and we should scarcely hope to interest English readers by raking up its details. In taking the volumes named at foot for the subject of an article, our intention is rather to give a correct notion of the character of a man who by one party has been extolled as a hero, by another stigmatized as a savage. A brief sketch of his career, and a few personal anecdotes, will afford the best means of deciding which of these epithets he may with most justice claim.

For the first sixteen months of the war, Cabrera acted as subordinate to Carnicer, chief of the Arragonese Carlists; and during that time he in no way distinguished himself, save by occasional acts of cruelty. His presumption and want of military knowledge caused the loss of more than one action--especially that of Mayals in Catalonia, in which, as it was then thought, the Arragonese faction received its death-blow. This unlucky encounter was followed by various lesser ones, equally disastrous; and at the commencement of 1835, the Carlist chiefs in the eastern provinces of the Peninsula were reduced to wander in the mountains at the head of scanty and disheartened bands, seeking shelter from the Queen’s troops, against whom they were totally unable to make a stand. Furious at this state of things, and still more so at the conduct of Carnicer, to whose lenity with the prisoners and population he attributed their reverses, discontented also with his obscure and subaltern position, Cabrera, who represented in Arragon the apostolical or ultra-absolutist party, and who on that account had influential supporters at the court of Charles the Fifth, resolved upon a bold attempt to get rid of his chief and command in his stead. Abandoning his post, he set out for Navarre, in company with a clever and resolute female of considerable personal attractions, intended as a propitiatory offering to the royal widower whose favour he was about to solicit. On his arrival he obtained a private audience of Don Carlos, to whom he represented himself as capable of commanding in Arragon, and of achieving the triumph of the King’s cause. He exposed his plan of campaign, accused Carnicer of weakness and mistaken humanity, and urged the necessity of severe and sanguinary measures. The result of his representations, and of the pleadings of his friends, some of whom were the Pretender’s most esteemed counsellors, was his return to Arragon, bearing a despatch by which Carnicer was ordered to make over his command to Cabrera, and to present himself at headquarters in Navarre. On the ninth of March 1835, Cabrera assumed the supreme command, and Carnicer, in obedience to his instructions, set out for the Basque country. On his road he fell into the hands of the Christinos, and was shot at Miranda del Ebro.

Public opinion amongst the Carlists unhesitatingly attributed to Cabrera the death of his former superior. Under pretence of their serving him as guides, he had prevailed upon Carnicer to take with him two officers whom he pointed out. These were also made prisoners; but although the Eliot convention was not yet in existence, and quarter was rarely given, both of them were exchanged after a very short delay. The information received by the Christino authorities, of the route that Carnicer was to follow, was sent from the village of Palomar on a day when Cabrera was quartered there. Other circumstances confirmed the suspicion of foul play, and that Carnicer had been betrayed by his own party; and so generally was the treachery imputed to Cabrera, that he at last took notice of the charge, and used every means to check its discussion. So long as a year afterwards, he shot at Camarillas the brother of one of the two officers who had accompanied Carnicer, for having been so imprudent as to say that the latter had been sold by Cabrera.[B] Such severity produced, of course, a directly opposite effect to that desired by its author; for although Cabrera pretexted other motives, its real ones were evident, and all men remained convinced of his guilt. Subsequently the Carlist general Cabañero threw the alleged calumny in his face in presence of several persons, and instead of repelling it with his sword, Cabrera submitted patiently to the imputation.

[B] By a remarkable coincidence, this execution occurred on the
16th of February 1836, on the same day and at the very same
hour that Cabrera’s mother was shot at Tortosa. To this
latter unfortunate and cruel act, which has been absurdly
urged as a justification of Cabrera’s atrocities, further
reference will presently be made.

Justly distrustful of those about him, Carnicer, when passing the night in the mountains, was wont to change his sleeping place after all his companions had retired to rest. On one occasion, in the neighbourhood of Alacon, a soldier who had lain down upon the couch prepared for his general, was assassinated by a pistol-shot. Cabrera was in the encampment, and although the perpetrator of the deed was never positively known, rumour laid the crime at his door. Whether or not the dark suspicion was well founded, the establishment of its justice would scarcely add a shade of blackness to the character of Ramon Cabrera.

Already, during a period of eighteen months, the kingdoms of Arragon and Valencia had groaned beneath the calamities of civil war. Their cattle driven, their granaries plundered, their sons dragged away to become unwilling defenders of Don Carlos, the unfortunate inhabitants could scarcely conceive a worse state than that of continual alarm and insecurity in which they lived. They had yet to learn that what they had hitherto endured was light to bear, compared to the atrocious system introduced by the ruthless successor of Carnicer. From the day that Cabrera assumed the command, the war became a butchery, and its inflictions ceased to be confined to the armed combatants on either side. Thenceforward, the infant in the cradle, the bedridden old man, the pregnant matron, were included amongst its victims. A mere suspicion of liberal opinions, the possession of a national guardsman’s uniform, a glass of water given to a wounded Christino, a distant relationship to a partisan of the Queen, was sentence of death. The rules of civilized warfare were set at nought, and Cabrera, in obedience to his sanguinary instincts, committed his murders not only when they might possibly advance, but even when they must positively injure, the cause of him whom he styled his sovereign. “Those days that I do not shed blood,” said he, in July 1837, when waiting in the ante-chamber of Don Carlos with Villareal, Merino, Cuevillas, and other generals, “I have not a good digestion.” During the five years of his command, his digestion can rarely have been troubled.

The task of recording the exploits and cruelties of Cabrera, and the history of the war in which he took so prominent a part, has been undertaken by three Spaniards of respectability and talent; the principal of whom, Don Francisco Cabello, was formerly political chief of the province of Teruel, in the immediate vicinity of Cabrera’s strongholds. There he had abundant opportunities of gathering information concerning the Carlist leader. In the book before us he does not confine himself to bare assertion, but supplies an ample appendix of justificatory documents, without which, indeed, many of the atrocious facts related would find few believers.

The Carlist troops in Arragon and Valencia were of very different composition from those in Navarre and Biscay. In the latter provinces, an intelligent and industrious peasantry rose to defend certain local rights and immunities, whose preservation, they were taught to believe, was bound up with the success of Don Carlos. In Eastern Spain the mass of the respectable and labouring classes were of liberal opinions, and the ranks of the faction were swelled by the dregs and refuse of the population. Highwaymen and smugglers, escaped criminals, profligate monks, bad characters of every description, banded together under command of chiefs little better than themselves, but who, by greater energy, or from having a smattering of military knowledge, gained an ascendancy over their fellows. In these motley hordes of reprobates, who, after a time, schooled by experience and defeat, were formed into regular battalions, capable of contending, with chances of success, against equal numbers of the Queen’s troops, the clergy played a conspicuous part. Rare were the encounters between Christinos and Carlists, in which some sturdy friar did not lose his life whilst heading and encouraging the latter; after every action cowls and breviaries formed part of the spoil; scarce one of the rebel leaders but had his clerical staff of chaplains, sharing in, often stimulating, his cruelties and excesses. Those monks who did not openly take the field, busied themselves in promoting disaffection amongst the Queen’s partisans. The most subversive sermons were daily preached; the confessional became the vehicle of insidious and treasonable admonitions; the liberal section of the clergy was subjected to cruel molestation and injustice. All these circumstances, added to the scandal and discord that reigned in the convents, loudly called for the suppression of the latter. Not only the government, which saw and suffered from the rebellion so enthusiastically shared in and promoted by the monks, but the very founders of the orders, could they have revisited Spain, would have advised their abolition. The following curious extract from the book now under review gives a striking picture of Spanish monastic doings in the nineteenth century.

“If, in the year 1835, St Bernard could have accompanied us on our visit to the monastery of Beruela in the Moncayo, surely he would have been indignant, and would have chastised the monks; surely he himself would have solicited the extinction of his order. Out of thirty monks, very few confessed, and only two or three knew how to preach; every one breakfasted and said mass just when he thought proper; by nine in the morning they might be seen wandering about the neighbouring country and gardens, or shooting small birds near the gates of the monastery; at eleven, they assembled in a cell to play _monté_ with visitors from the neighbouring towns and villages, winning and losing thousands of reals. During dinner, instead of having some grave and proper book read aloud to them, one of their number related obscene stories for the amusement of his companions; at dessert the finest wines were served, the monks played upon the piano, and sang indecent songs. The _siesta_ passed away the afternoon, until, towards evening, these self-denying anchorites roused themselves from their slumbers, and resumed their favourite amusements of birding and tale-telling. At nightfall the green-cloth was again spread, and the cards were in full activity; sometimes six or eight of the monks got upon their mules, and rode a distance of two or three leagues to a ball, dressed in the height of the fashion. The writer of these pages once asked the prior to let him see the paintings executed by the brotherhood; he was conducted to the apartments of the abbot, and in the most secluded of them was shown a wretched daub, of which the subject was shamefully coarse and disgusting. * * * Many of the women of the neighbouring village of Vera went by the names of the monks; and so great became the scandal, that, on one occasion, when the national guards were sent upon an expedition, the alcalde issued an order prohibiting their wives to walk in the direction of the monastery. One woman, who disobeyed the injunction, was made to pay a fine, and narrowly escaped having her head shaved in the public marketplace.”

The monks prosecuted the alcalde for this abuse of authority; but in the course of the trial so many scandalous revelations were made concerning them, that the over-zealous official got off with a very light punishment. His proclamation, the sentence of the Audiencia of Saragossa, and some other documents confirming the truth of the above allegations against the monastery, are given in the appendix to Señor Cabello’s book. “Certainly,” continues that gentleman, “all monasteries were not like that of Beruela. There were many virtuous, enlightened, and laborious monks; but if these were too numerous to be styled the exceptions, they at any rate composed the minority.”

To return to Cabrera. His first act, upon assuming the supreme command, was to collect the scattered remnant of Carnicer’s faction, which amounted but to three hundred infantry and forty horsemen. With these he commenced operations, limited at first, owing to the scanty numbers of his band, to marauding expeditions amongst the villages, whence he retreated to the mountains on the approach of the Queen’s forces. His cruelties soon made him universally dreaded in the districts he overran. To the militia especially he gave no quarter, slaying them unmercifully, wherever he could lay hands upon them, even when they capitulated on promise of good treatment. He was seconded by Quilez, El Serrador, Llangostera, and other partisans, as desperate, and nearly as bloodthirsty, as himself. With extraordinary and stupid obstinacy, the Madrid government persisted in treating the Arragonese rebellion as unimportant; and instead of at once sending a sufficient force for its suppression, allowed the insurgents to gain ground, recruit their forces, capture fortified places, and ravage the country, setting at defiance the feeble garrisons, and gallant but unavailing efforts of the national guard.

On the 11th of September, at day-break, Cabrera suddenly appeared in the town of Rubielos de Mora. Believing him far away, the garrison were taken entirely by surprise, and after a brief skirmish in the streets, retreated to a fortified convent. Here they made a vigorous defence, and no efforts of the Carlists were sufficient to dislodge them; until at dawn upon the 12th, after a siege of twenty-four hours, the Christinos perceived the points of the assailants’ pickaxes piercing the wall that divided the convent from an adjoining house. They set fire to the house, but unfortunately a high wind fanned the flames, which speedily communicated to the convent. Even then the besieged continued to defend themselves, but at last, overcome by fatigue, hunger, and thirst, scorched, bruised, and exhausted, they accepted the terms offered by the besiegers. Their lives were to be spared, and they were to retain their clothes and whatever property they had about them. Cabrera and Forcadell signed the agreement; and sixty-five national guardsmen and soldiers of the regiment of Ciudad Real marched out of the burning convent, and were escorted by the Carlists in the direction of Nogueruelas. On reaching a plain near that town, known as the Dehesa, or Pasture, Cabrera ordered a halt, that his soldiers might eat their rations. The prisoners also were supplied with food. The meal over, the Carlist chief formed his infantry and cavalry in a circle, made the captives strip off every part of their clothing, and bade them run. No sooner did they obey his order, than they were charged with lance and bayonet, and slaughtered to a man. It was a fine feast of blood for Cabrera and his myrmidons. On the body of one victim twenty-six wounds were afterwards counted. When Cabrera departed, the authorities of the adjacent town buried the bodies; but at the end of the war, in the year 1841, upon the anniversary of the massacre, their remains were disinterred and removed to Rubielos with much pomp and religious ceremony.

Such were the pastimes of Cabrera, such was the faith he kept with those who confided in his word. The barbarous execution detailed above was one of many that occurred in the first year of his command. Up to the month of February 1836, the number of his victims, slain after the battle, in cold blood, often in defiance of capitulation, sometimes on mere suspition of liberalism, amounted to one hundred and eighty-one. This does not include murders committed on the highways and in the mountains, but those only of which there were abundant witnesses, and that are proved by dates and documents. Amongst the slaughtered, were children and old men. Two lads of sixteen and seventeen years of age were shot at Codoñera in presence of their mother. When she implored Cabrera’s mercy, he told her that her sons should be spared if her husband would give himself up and take their place. On hearing this reply, worthy of a Caligula or a Nero, the unhappy woman swooned away, and the infant at her breast fell dead from her arms as if struck by lightning. The shock to the mother had killed the child. All these atrocities were committed whilst Cabrera’s mother yet lived unmolested in Tortosa.

Meanwhile the Christino general Nogueras, busied in the pursuit of the rebels, passed his whole time in the mountains, often not entering a town for a month together, except to get pay or shoes for his troops. Wherever he went, he was assailed by the tears and lamentations of bereaved wives and mothers. If he paused at Calatayud, they told him of the death of nine national guards shot at Castejoncillo; at Caspe, the weeping widows and orphans of five others presented themselves before him; at Teruel he was horrified by the narrative of the massacre of the Dehesa; when he traversed the plains of Alpuente, the Carrascal of Yesa, where forty prisoners had been bayoneted, was pointed out to his notice; in the Maestrazgo he found universal mourning for sixty-one nationals, pitilessly butchered at Alcanar; in each hamlet where he halted for the night, the authorities complained to him of the most barbarous ill-treatment at the hands of Cabrera. Not a village did he pass through, whose alcalde had not been brutally bastinadoed. From his companions, his visitors, his guides, he heard continually of Cabrera’s cruelties. In the whole district nothing, else was talked of. The sole thought of the liberal party was how to put a period to them, and to be avenged upon their perpetrator. The most humane and peaceable men urged a system of reprisals, as both legitimate and likely to be efficacious. Such a system, Nogueras, yielding to the public voice, and enraged at the murder of two alcaldes, whom Cabrera had causelessly shot, at last resolved to adopt. He demanded the execution of Cabrera’s mother, in the vain hope that it would strike terror into the rebel chief, and check his excesses. Most unhappy was the impulse to which he yielded. The act itself was cruel and hasty; its consequences were terrible. But such was the state of feeling in Arragon at that time, that, until those consequences were felt, many approved the deed. The captain-general of Arragon, Don Francisco Serrano, a man noted for humanity and mildness, deemed the measure advisable, and even announced it with satisfaction in a proclamation, by which he declared a similar fate to be in reserve for Cabrera’s sisters, and for the relatives of the other rebel chiefs, if the Carlists persisted in their atrocities. Hitherto the whole odium of the fate of a forlorn old woman, who perhaps deplored as much as any one the enormities committed by her son, has rested upon Nogueras. This is hardly fair. Ill-advised, and in a moment of just irritation, he urged a request, too hastily complied with, speedily repented, and which, according to the conviction of Señor Cabello, he would himself have retracted had he not been absent from Tortosa when its accomplishment took place. A more unfortunate act, to whomsoever it may chiefly be imputed, could not have been devised. It was at once repudiated by the Spanish government, by the Cortes and the nation. In the eyes of Europe, it went far to convert Cabrera from a pitiless butcher into an injured victim. At a distance from the theatre of war, the nine score unfortunates whom he had massacred in cold blood were forgotten or overlooked. Pity for the mother’s fate procured oblivion for the previous crimes of the son. Filial affection and regret, working upon an impassioned nature, were urged in extenuation of his subsequent excesses. His massacres became holocausts, offered by a pious child to the manes of a murdered parent.

In Valderobles, on the 20th of February, Cabrera received intelligence of his mother’s death. Its first result was a ferocious proclamation, by an article of which he decreed the death of four women, one of them the lady of a Christino colonel, then in his power. Had he shot them at once, in the first heat of anger and heaviness of grief, the act, however barbarous and severe, would have been palliated by circumstances; but for seven days he dragged those unfortunate women with him on all his marches, compelling them to wander barefoot over the rugged Mountains of Arragon. So great were the sufferings of these poor creatures, that even Cabrera’s aides-de-camp, albeit not very tender-hearted, interceded for them with their chief. At last, on the 27th February, having returned to Valderobles, three of the women were released from their misery by a violent death. This execution was followed by many others. Seven and twenty national guards, taken prisoners at Liria, were kept alive for two or three days, and then massacred at Chiva. On the 17th of April, the ferryman of Olva, who acted as spy to Cabrera, and who was shot after the war, in the year 1841, brought information to the Carlist camp that two companies of Christino soldiers, quartered in the hamlet of Alcotas, kept but a careless watch, and might easily be surprised. Cabrera immediately set out, the ferryman acting as guide, and fell upon the Christinos before they were aware of his approach. They defended themselves bravely; but their ammunition being expended, and themselves surrounded, they capitulated on promise of quarter. Cabrera’s chaplain, Father Escorihuela, was the person who prevailed on them to surrender, solemnly assuring them that their lives should be spared. A few hours later, this same priest heard the confession of the officers previously to their execution. To the soldiers, even the last consolations of religion were refused. Unshriven, they were shot to the last man.

But enough of such sanguinary details. Notwithstanding a severe defeat sustained a short time previously at Molina, Cabrera, in the spring of 1836, found himself at the head of four thousand infantry and three hundred dragoons. He displayed extraordinary activity; improved the organisation of his forces, and put them upon the footing of a regular army. Owing to these ameliorations, and to the culpable negligence of the Spanish government, who left the Army of the Centre unprovided with the commonest necessaries for campaigning, he was now able to abandon his former haunts in the mountains of Beceite, and to advance into the open country. Seeing the necessity of a stronghold for his stores and hospitals, and as a place of refuge in case of a reverse, he fixed upon the town of Cantavieja, which, from its size, the strength of its walls, its central position in the territory of his operations, and especially from the difficulty of bringing artillery over the steep and bad roads leading to it, was peculiarly suited to his purpose. He set to work to fortify it; and in spite of the representations made to the Madrid government by the inhabitants of the province, who foresaw the evils that would accrue to them from its fortification, he was allowed, without interruption or molestation, to put it in a state of defence. The energy and skill exhibited by him at this period were wonderfully great, and would have done honour to an older soldier. He formed capacious hospitals, and vast depots for food and other stores; established powder manufactories, and workshops for armourers and tailors; and leaving a strong garrison in the place, again took the field.

Some sharp fighting now occurred, and the Christinos had the worst of it in several encounters; until at last the minister of war, roused from his apathy, sent strong reinforcements to Arragon and Valencia. Amongst others, General Narvaez, at the head of a brilliant brigade, was detached from the army of the north, and after a rapid march of nine days, during which he crossed nearly the whole north-eastern corner of Spain from the Bay of Biscay to the Mediterranean, arrived at Teruel, and commenced operations with an activity that inspired the Arragonese with fresh hopes of a prompt termination of the war. He was in the field, and hard upon the heels of a Carlist corps commanded by a chief known as the Organist, when an orderly, bearing despatches from Madrid, came up at speed. “Yonder rebels,” said Narvaez, after reading his letters, and pointing to the enemy, “may truly say that they exist by royal order.” The despatches directed him instantly to quit Arragon, and pursue Gomez, who had left Biscay on his celebrated expedition to the southern provinces of Spain.

It is significant of the little estimation in which Cabrera was held by the generals of the Navarrese and Biscayan faction, that when Gomez, finding himself hard pressed by the Queen’s troops, sent to Arragon for assistance, he did not address himself to Cabrera, who commanded in chief in that province, but to Quilez and El Serrador, subordinate partisans. Nevertheless Cabrera joined him, not with a body of troops, but accompanied only by his aides-de-camp and staff, and by one of his clerical mentors, the canon Cala y Valcarcel. Gomez treated him with great contempt, and would give him no command in his division; but he still continued with him, and was present at the defeat of Villarrobledo, where Diego Leon with his hussars routed Gomez, taking the whole of his baggage, twelve hundred prisoners, and two thousand muskets. When the Carlists occupied Cordova, Cabrera was one of the first men in the town, which he entered with a handful of cavalry, under the command of Villalobos, to whom he had attached himself, and who was killed by a shot fired from a window. If Gomez disliked Cabrera, Cabrera, on his side, heartily despised Gomez. To have captured three thousand national guardsmen in Cordova, and not to have shot at least a couple of thousands of them--to have spared the fifteen hundred men composing the garrison of Almaden, were inexcusable weaknesses in the eyes of the Arragonese leader. Moreover, his name was omitted in the despatches and proclamations announcing the triumphs of the division; and at this he was indignant, viewing it as a stain upon his reputation, and a dishonour to his rank. At last, so troublesome did he become, constantly murmuring at whatever was done, and even conspiring to promote mutiny amongst the men, that Gomez, in order not to shoot him, which he otherwise would have been compelled to do, insisted upon their parting company. On the 3d of November, Cabrera, with his staff, orderlies, and a small escort, set out for the mountains of Toledo. His numbers increased by the accession of some parties of Carlist cavalry, picked up on the road, he passed through La Mancha, and made for the Ebro, intending to visit Don Carlos at Oñate. But whilst seeking a ford, he was surprised by the cavalry of Irribarren. The lances of Leon and the sabres of Buenvenga made short work of it with the astonished rebels. Cabrera and a handful of men escaped, and only paused at midnight, when exhausted by their long flight, in the village of Arévalo. Scarcely had they taken up their quarters, when a column of Christino infantry dashed into the place, bayoneting all before them. Unacquainted with the localities, Cabrera wandered about the streets, seeking an exit; and finally, favoured by the darkness, and after receiving a stab from a knife, and another from a bayonet, he succeeded in escaping to the neighbouring forest. Here he was found by one of his officers, who conveyed him to the house of a village priest, named Moron, where he was concealed and taken care of till his wounds were healed. At the commencement of 1837 he found himself well enough to travel, and started for Arragon, escorted by a squadron of cavalry and a few light infantry, whom he had sent for from the Maestrazgo. But he had been tracked by Christino spies, and Señor Cabello, then political chief of Teruel, had information of his route. This he communicated to the military governor, an old and dilatory officer, who moved out with a small body of troops, intending to surprise Cabrera at Camañas, one of his halting places, and hoping to gain in the field the promotion which he would have done better to have awaited within the walls of his citadel. At a village, four hours’ march from Camañas, he paused, and wasted a day in sending out spies to ascertain the movements of the enemy. His emissaries at last returned; but only to tell him that Cabrera had rested at Camañas from ten in the morning till one in the afternoon, and had then continued his journey, travelling in a wretched carriage, and escorted by a hundred sleepy infantry, and as many horsemen, whose beasts were unshod, and half dead with fatigue. It was too late to pursue; and thus, owing to the sluggishness and incapacity of this officer, Cabrera escaped, probably without knowing it, from one of the greatest risks he had yet run.

The disastrous result of the various expeditions which, under Gomez, Garcia, and others, had left the Basque provinces for the interior of Spain, had not yet convinced Don Carlos that his cause was unpopular. Deceived by his flatterers, who assured him that his appearance would every where be the signal for a general uprising in his favour, he crossed the Ebro in the month of May with sixteen battalions and nine squadrons. Victorious at Huesca, at Gra, in Catalonia, his army was utterly routed by the Baron de Meer and Diego Leon; and his sole thought then became how to recross the Ebro, and take refuge at Cantavieja, under the wing of his faithful Cabrera. Orders were sent to the latter chief to come and meet his sovereign. He obeyed, and by his assistance the passage of the river was accomplished. It was shortly before this time that Cabrera, whilst witnessing the conflagration of a village set on fire by his command, was struck by lightning, which killed one of his aides-de-camp, and threw him senseless from his horse. At first it was thought that he also was dead; but bleeding restored him, and the next day he was again in the saddle, burning, plundering, and shooting. His atrocities at this period surpass belief, and are too horrible to recapitulate. The curious in such matters may find them set down in all their hideous details, in the pages of Señor Cabello. Whether on account of his cruelties, or of his other bad qualities, most of the Carlist generals in Arragon about this time refused to act with him, and even loaded him with abuse. Cabañero actually challenged him to fight--a challenge which he did not think proper to accept. The same chief repeatedly told Don Carlos that he would rather serve as a private soldier in the army of Navarre than as a general under the orders of Cabrera. Quilez, who hated Cabrera as the assassin of his friend and countryman Carnicer, published an address to the Arragonese troops, calling upon them to leave the standard of the vile, dissolute, and cowardly Catalonian who disgraced them by his cruelties. He invited their attention to the ruined and miserable condition of their province since Cabrera had commanded there, and urged them to petition Don Carlos to give them a general more worthy of defending his rights and leading them to victory. So high did the quarrel run, and so widely did it spread, that the Arragonese and Catalonian battalions were near coming to blows. Don Carlos supported Cabrera, and Quilez and Cabañero, with their divisions, separated themselves from the army, and went to make war elsewhere.

In the month of July there were forty thousand infantry and four thousand cavalry in the province of Teruel; for nearly four years the district had been devastated and plundered by the Carlists, and the harvest was not yet ripe. Under these circumstances the troops were half-starved. The Carlist soldiers received no bread and only half rations of meat. Even in the towns, and for ready money, provisions were unobtainable. The Conde de Luchana, who then commanded the Christinos, did all that general could do, more than could be expected of any commander--all, in short, that he was wont to do, when the opportunity offered, for the cause of liberty and of his Queen. Thinking that the surrounding country would not supply rations because the impoverished government could not pay cash for them, he drew upon his private funds, and sent a commissioner with large sums of money to Teruel, to purchase all the corn that could be obtained. This was so little that it did not yield two days’ rations to each soldier. At last Espartero and his division were summoned to the defence of Madrid, then menaced by Zaratiegui. During his absence occurred the action of Herrera, in which General Buerens, greatly outnumbered, was defeated with considerable loss. But this reverse was soon revenged. Encouraged by their recent success, Don Carlos and Cabrera approached Madrid by forced marches. Their movements had been so eccentric and rapid that they had thrown most of the Christino generals off the scent. Espartero was an exception. After driving away Zaratiegui, he had returned to Arragon. He now hurried back to Madrid, and entered its gates a few hours after the arrival of the Pretender within sight of that city, amidst the acclamations of the national guards, who, until then, formed the sole garrison of the capital. Don Carlos retired, Espartero followed, came up with him on the 19th of September, and so mauled his army that he entirely gave up his mad project of establishing himself in Madrid, sent Cabrera back to Arragon, and scampered off in the direction of the Basque provinces. He was followed up by Espartero and Lorenzo, overtaken and beaten at Covarubbias and at Huerta del Rey, and finally entered Biscay in lamentable plight, his illusions dissipated, his hopes of one day sitting upon the throne of his ancestors entirely destroyed. Five months had elapsed since he left Navarre, and strange had been their vicissitudes. Surrounded in Sanguesa by bishops, ministers, generals, and courtiers, in Espejo a handful of _Chapel-churris_ were his sole defenders. Enthroned and almost worshipped at Huesca in the mountains of Bronchales he had been glad to accept the support and guidance of a shepherd. One day holding a levee, the next he was unable to write a letter in safety. At Barbastro he bestowed places and honours upon his adherents; at El Pobo he had not wherewith to reward the servants who waited on him. Strange transitions, bitterly felt! By the failure of the expedition all his prospects were blighted. A loan, and his recognition by the Northern powers, both promised him contingently on his entering Madrid, were now more remote than ever. That nothing might be wanting to the discomfiture of this ill-starred prince, even the hypocrisy of his character was discovered and exposed. Several of his letters to the Princess of Beira were intercepted by General Oraa, and published in the Spanish newspapers. Although written by one professedly so devout and austere, their contents were both trivial and licentious.

The year 1838 opened disastrously for the Christinos. The strong town and fort of Morella fell into the hands of Cabrera. Situated on a hill in the valley formed by the highest sierras of the Maestrazgo, and at the point of junction of Arragon, Catalonia, and Valencia, difficult of approach, and protected by defiles and rivers, chief town of a corregimiento or department, and possessing considerable wealth both agricultural and manufacturing, it was, of all others, the place most coveted by the Carlists. For a long time previously to its capture, an officer of the faction, Paul Alio by name, had been entrusted with its blockade. His orders were to employ every possible means to win over the garrison or accomplish a _coup de main_. Various attempts had proved unsuccessful, when, at the moment that he least expected it, he was suddenly enabled to accomplish his objects. An artilleryman, a deserter from the castle, offered to scale the walls with twenty men, to surprise the sentinel upon the platform, and subsequently the whole guard. The idea was caught at; ladders were made according to the measure which the traitor had brought of the exact height of the walls, and on the dark and rainy night of the 25th January a party of Carlists crept up the hill, planted and climbed the ladders, stabbed the sentry, who was asleep in his box, overcame the guard, and fired upon the town. In vain did the unfortunate governor, Don Bruno Portillo, endeavour to make his way into the fort; he was repulsed and wounded, and before morning he and the remains of the garrison were compelled to abandon Morella. Although an old and respected officer, he was accused of treachery, or at least of want of vigilance. The latter might perhaps be imputed to him, but there appear to have been no sufficient grounds for the former charge. Eager to wash out the stain upon his reputation, he returned to Morella, when General Oraa made his unsuccessful attack upon it a few months later, and died leading the forlorn-hope, the first man upon the breach.

The capture of Morella was a great triumph for Cabrera, whose chief stronghold it became. It assured him the dominion of a large and fertile tract of country. From its towers, lofty though they were, the banner of Isabella the Second could nowhere be descried, save on the coasts of the Mediterranean and the distant banks of the Ebro. The termination of the war seemed less likely than ever.

It was about a month after the surprise of Morella, that General Cabañero, encouraged by the recent success of his party, eager for distinction, and perhaps jealous of Cabrera’s reputation, attempted the most daring and dashing enterprise of the whole war. He conceived the hope of capturing in one night, and with three thousand men, a fortress that had defended itself for two months against the best generals of Napoleon, backed by seventy thousand veterans, and a hundred pieces of artillery. The capital of Arragon, the heroic city of Saragossa, was the high game at which Cabañero ventured to fly. Had he succeeded, he would have commanded the Ebro and the communication between Navarre and Catalonia, and might have installed Don Carlos in the palace of Alonzo the Fifth, and of Ferdinand the Catholic. Making one march from Alloza, a distance of four-and-twenty hours, he arrived late at night in the environs of Saragossa. Provided with ladders by the owner of a neighbouring country-house, who was in his confidence, he caused a few soldiers to scale the wall, and open the gate of the Virgin de la Carmen, through which he marched. Some _vivas_ given for Cabañero and Carlos Quinto roused the nearest inhabitants, and preserved the main guard from a surprise. Shots were fired, and the alarm spread. By this time Cabañero was far into the town, posting his battalions in the squares and open places. In every street the Carlist drums were beating, and several houses were broken open and entered. It was a terrible moment for the inhabitants of Saragossa. Startled from their sleep, without chiefs to direct or previous plan to guide them, none knew what measures to adopt. Some few ran to the public squares, and were taken prisoners; but the majority, recovering from their first panic, adopted the best and surest means of ridding the city of the unexpected foe. In an instant every window was thrown open, and bristled with the muskets of the national guards. They could not be confident of victory, for they were totally ignorant of the number of their enemies; but if the triumph was to be for the latter, the Sargossans were determined that it should cost them dear. When the much-wished-for daylight appeared, the battle ceased to be from the balconies; the nationals, and about two hundred soldiers of various regiments who happened to be in the town, descended to the streets, and after a sharp but short struggle, drove out the daring intruders. The loss of the Carlists was a thousand men, inclusive of seven hundred prisoners; that of the Saragossans amounted to about one hundred and twenty.

Various strange incidents occurred during this night-attack. A French writer who visited Arragon during the civil war, relates an anecdote of two drummers who came up with each other at midnight in the streets of Saragossa, both plying their sticks with extraordinary vigour, but to very different tunes.

“Why do you beat the chamade?” demanded one.

“Why do you beat to arms?” retorted the other.

“I obey my orders.”

“And I mine.”

At that moment a passing lantern lit up the Carlist boina of the one, and the blue national guard’s uniform of the other. The drummers stared at each other for a moment, and then, instead of drawing their swords and setting to, which one would have thought the most natural course to adopt, they continued their march side by side, each indulging in his own particular rub-a-dub. The rights of the sheepskin were mutually respected.

The results of Cabañero’s attack were a cross of honour conferred upon the national guards, who had made so gallant a defence, and the death of the governor, Esteller, who was assassinated by the populace two days afterwards. His conduct during the fight had been marked by extreme weakness, and even cowardice. He entirely lost his presence of mind, could give no orders, and remained shut up in his house in spite of all the efforts of his aides-de-camp and secretaries to get him out into the street. He would not even allow his servants and orderlies to fire from the balconies, and his windows were the only ones in Saragossa that continued closed during that eventful night. The next day he was imprisoned, and it was intended to bring him to trial; but on the following morning a mob composed of the lowest of the people repaired to his place of confinement, brought him out into the streets and there murdered him. At the time the delinquents remained unpunished, but seven years later, in 1845, the sons of Esteller revived the affair, and procured the condemnation to ten years’ galleys of one Chorizo, the leader of the _marranos_, or lazzaroni of Saragossa. Chorizo, literally Sausage, whose real name was Melchior Luna, was a butcher by trade, and a sort of popular demagogue amongst the lower orders of his fellow citizens. But according to Señor Cabello, his condemnation was unjust; and instead of sharing in the murder of Esteller, he had done his utmost to protect him, even risking his own life to save that of the unfortunate governor. After a lapse of seven years it was difficult to get at the real facts of the case; and the chief effect of the trial has been to publish the pusillanimity of General Esteller, concerning which the people of Saragossa had previously observed a generous silence.