Chapter XIV: The Restoration of the Bourbons (3)

And the situation kept on getting worse and worse. Señor Zorilla’s downfall deeply incensed that statesman. In place of carrying on an honest opposition to Señor Sagasta, Zorilla, who had once promised Victor Emmanuel to be “the most faithful of servants,” hastened as soon as he was no longer minister to ally himself with the monarchy’s worst enemies, made common cause with the most violent anarchists in order to undermine not only the cabinet, but the throne he had helped to establish. King Amadeo’s position was becoming more and more critical. Placed between the republicans and Alfonsists, who fought him both in and out of parliament, and the Carlists who, less attached to constitutional forms and the manners of modern nations, openly declared war, raising the standard of war under the very eyes of his generals and officials, the king could not even count on the co-operation of his partisans, whose differences were now entirely incurable. Prime minister Sagasta was retired at the end of two months’ sterile work and troubled existence. What could all this statesman’s abilities do towards consolidating a monarchy deprived of a nation’s support and condemned in public opinion?

The second Serrano ministry, of which Señor Sagasta was also a member, began its labours May 26th, 1872; but the king’s hopes were again deceived. Serrano and his colleagues, judging the situation too critical to be remedied by ordinary measures, submitted a decree for the king’s approbation which arbitrarily suspended several privileges guaranteed by the constitution, at the same time inviting his majesty to take in person the chief command of the army against the Carlists. Amadeo returned an energetic refusal to Marshal Serrano’s requests. It was asked that he take part in civil war, and he could not stoop to this exigency. Ready to shed his blood for Spain the day on which his adopted country should be threatened from abroad, it was absolutely repugnant to him to direct a campaign in which his subjects would simply cut one another’s throats. If he had not abdicated before, it was only to let his people and the whole of Europe see that he knew how to face danger, and that he had no intention of shirking his duties the moment they became most serious and pressing--a noble line of conduct, which even those who never approved of Amadeo’s taking the Spanish throne must highly and unreservedly praise.

Marshal Serrano was incensed by the king’s attitude and sent in his resignation. The monarch now thought for a moment of throwing aside the crown, which weighed more heavily on his brow than the leaden capes on the shoulders of the damned in Dante’s _Inferno_. But to avoid the appearance of fleeing before the Carlists, he decided to postpone the execution of his resolve. He resigned himself to trying one last experiment with the radicals, by calling the famous Zorilla once more to the head of affairs, June 13th, 1872.

Zorilla’s return to power immeasurably increased the audacity and violence of the sectarians. Sure henceforth of impunity, and impatient to attain their proposed end, they did not shrink from crime. On July 18th, 1872, towards evening, as Amadeo was preparing to visit a circus, a warning was hastily brought him that his life was to be attempted and that the police were on the track of a plot. In vain did the queen, his ministers, and household officials implore him to renounce his visit. The king, scorning their advice and taking no notice of the threatening danger, would not consent to stay in the palace. He wished his people to know that he feared not in the least to brave the assassins who were preparing an ambush in which he was to suffer the sad fate of Marshal Prim. Maria Victoria and the marquis Dragonetti, in despair of convincing the king, determined to accompany him in his drive across the capital.

[Sidenote: [1872-1873 A.D.]]

When the royal carriage reached the Calle del Arenal, at precisely the spot indicated by the police as the place where the attack would be attempted, a discharge of firearms suddenly came from a side street and wounded one of the horses without touching the king or queen, who owed their lives to their coachman’s cool-headedness. As for the assassins, they easily made off under cover of the night, protected by their accomplices. Maria Victoria returned almost fainting to the royal palace. Amadeo, on the contrary, as intrepid before murderers’ bullets as he had been on the field of Custozza, never lost for a moment that impassible calm, witness both of his contempt for danger and strength of soul. He himself announced the attempt to his father in the following telegram:

“I advise your majesty that this evening we have been object
attack. Thanks to God, all safe.--AMADEO.”

This infamous deed, far from provoking the fall of the monarchy, retarded it. After this event it would appear that he was laying down the sceptre through fear of assassination. Meanwhile political affairs grew ceaselessly worse. While the Carlist insurrection, in spite of the efforts of General Moriones and the captain-general of Catalonia, assumed more and more disquieting proportions, chaos attained its apogee in governmental spheres, in the street, and in the heart of the cortes. The army now began to make some sign. It could no longer endure the despotism of the discredited advocates who were governing and ruining the country. The treasury was in the most pressing distress, and from all directions the violent tide of general discontent rose towards the throne on which an honourable but powerless king was sitting. Zorilla, not content with the ruin which he had accomplished, tried to overcome the resistance of the army by a vigorous action as inopportune as unjust. He proposed to the king to entrust a man named Hidalgo who was a by-word for treachery in the army with the command of a division in Catalonia. The king implored Zorilla to give this plan up. Zorilla threatened to resign. Finally Amadeo signed a decree as fatal as it was mad, not however without manifesting his anger and disgust. As soon as Hidalgo appeared, the artillery officers resigned _en masse_. The disorganisation of the army had become complete and put the finishing touches to the state of disorder; Zorilla prepared new decrees which, under pretext of mastering the military recalcitrants, would have provoked a general explosion. But this time Amadeo I did not show himself disposed to follow the wishes of the radical leader. He would not consent to accomplish Spain’s ruin and determined to abdicate. In vain did Zorilla and his supporters make an effort to deter the king from a resolution which would shatter their ambitious calculations. Amadeo would not listen to their prayers. He obliged the prime minister to communicate the act of abdication to the cortes, February 8th, 1873.

Amadeo left Spain as soon as possible after his abdication, February 12th. He returned to Italy by way of Lisbon. Every noble heart, even among his enemies, gave impartial homage to his chivalric character and loyalty; but the aversion of the people to a foreign monarchy was such that the king’s departure was one of the saddest ever known. While on the way near Badajoz some cowardly assassins fired upon the train which was bearing the son of Victor Emmanuel and his family back to the Italy they never should have left.

Time has softened the Spaniards’ animosity against the duke of Aosta. To-day they recognise his fine qualities, while they admit, and not without reason, that even apart from his foreign origin he was not made to rule in that country, whose spirit he so little understood and whose pompous and aristocratic customs he never would have been able to assimilate.

The Spaniards have not forgotten the memory of this thoroughly honest king, who, wishing to remain true to his agreements, preferred giving up the throne to violating them, who firmly refused to become the tool of anarchists or to use force against a country which was not his own. They have also retained a touching memory of Queen Maria Victoria and of her piety and boundless charity. The attitude of the Spanish press on the duke of Aosta’s death at Turin, January 18th, 1890, proved that his name is no longer unpopular across the Pyrenees; and in forgetting the mistake he committed in 1871, Spain knows how to give homage to the fine and brilliant qualities of her former king.[o]

REPUBLICAN SPAIN UNDER CASTELAR (1873 A.D.)

[Sidenote: [1873-1874 A.D.]]

The congress declared at once in favour of a republic on February 11th, and on February 12th chose a ministry to take charge of the executive, in which Figueras was president and Castelar was foreign minister. The programme of the new rulers was: “a federative republic for Spain, with self-government for the single states as in Switzerland and the United States; suppression of centralisation; abolition of the standing army; absolute separation of church and state; proclamation of the rights of the individual on the basis of a democratic constitution and under the authority of the law.” If these political fantasies were to be accepted into the constitution, Spain would cease to exist--there would be merely cantons, municipal republics, and communes, in which Parisian conditions repeated themselves. The cortes was dissolved, and on June 1st a new constitutional cortes convened. This declared for the federative republic on June 8th, and drew up a preliminary outline of a constitution in which the above principles were adopted. With this, the so-called _Intransigentes_ were not yet satisfied; they wanted a red republic and a social revolution. Since they could not impose their demands on the cortes, they left it, went into the southern states, and raised the red flag of rebellion. Ministries and presidencies followed each other in quick succession.

On September 7th, Castelar was chosen president of the executive, and at the outset found himself confronted with such chaos that he demanded and obtained unconditional authority for adopting military and political measures, including the declaration of a state of siege; he also postponed the debate on the constitution and adjourned congress from September 18th to January 2nd. Thus the visionary federative republican Castelar, understanding, however, the difference between theory and practice, had a full dictatorship in his hands. He needed such power. In the north, the Carlists were making decided advances, having with them in the field the pretender Don Carlos and his brother Don Alfonso; in the south, communes were being formed in single cities which renounced allegiance to the government; in the army shameless insubordination ran riot, soldiers fired on their officers, generals went over to the rebels. The cities of Alcoy, Seville, Cadiz, Valencia had to be taken by force, others surrendered at the approach of the generals.

Opposition lasted longest in the sea fortress of Cartagena, where General Contreras stood at the head of a committee of safety, as president of the republic of Murcia, had diplomatic dealings with foreign consuls, and bombarded and burned the neighbouring ports Almeria and Alicante. From these piratical excursions he came into contact with foreign warships, and the energetic German captain Werner, supported by an English captain, deprived him of two ships. Cartagena was surrounded from the land side and bombarded, but it did not surrender until after a siege of four months, on January 12th, 1874, to the governmental general Lopez Dominguez, after Contreras had left the harbour the day before, accompanied by the revolutionary junta, and after several hundred men had broken through the weak blockade of governmental ships and escaped to Algiers.[e]

THE BASQUES AND CARLISM

Carlism would long since have been reduced to impotency by the opposition it aroused among all classes of Spanish society, if one particular circumstance had not associated with its cause those interests and passions which it had taken under its protection. There are provinces in northeastern Spain which are Spanish only in name and which enjoy a veritable autonomy of which they are both jealous and proud. Furnishing the state neither soldiers nor money, they themselves regulate the use they make of their revenue, the equipment and employment of their militia--in fact all the details of internal administration. Honest, loyal, hardy, maintaining their roads and highways in their own fashion, which indeed left nothing to be desired; cultivating the least accessible of their mountains up to the very edges of the precipices, more industrious than the majority of the Spanish, the Basques of Guipuzcoa, Avala, and Biscay, had governed themselves for centuries, and they constituted a true mountain republic very similar to the primitive cantons of Switzerland. Who has not heard of the famous and everlasting oak of Guernica, under whose shade they held their patriarchal assemblies or _calzaras_ and which in bygone days inspired Rousseau in the _Contrât Social_ to utter these memorable and oft-quoted words: “When we see the happiest people in the world regulating their affairs of state by a body of peasants under an oak, and always conducting themselves wisely, what is to prevent one scorning the refinements of other nations which make themselves famous and miserable with so much art and mystery?”

Like all truly republican peoples the Basques regarded their freedom as a prerogative or a happy accident. They gave no thought to letting their neighbour share it and had never sought to make their happiness a subject of propaganda. Their language--the Eskuara--which has nothing in common with Spain or indeed with any known idiom, was a barrier between them and the rest of the peninsula, and reduced them to a state of isolation in which their freedom rejoiced. As their language possesses no literature, the few general ideas which circulate in their villages and townships come from their priests, who teach them what goes on in the world, what is said and planned at Madrid. Thus, narrow in mind as they are suspicious and defiant, their sole aim is to preserve their _fueros_.

It had been easy to make them understand that the liberal monarchy nourished the dark design of depriving them of these, and that it was disposed to reduce them to the same system of government as the other Spanish provinces. And it was not more difficult for the pretender to persuade them that only an absolute monarchy could guarantee the franchises which were dearer to them than life. Did they not know that their liberty was a privilege, and that privileges have less to fear from a king who can do as he pleases than from a constitutional régime, whether monarchy or republic, where everything is governed by law?

So, with the exception of the village _bourgeoisie_, won over to liberal ideas, these mountaineers belong body and soul to the Carlist cause, and thus we have seen the singular phenomenon of a republican people trying to impose upon others a government they would not have had at any price, and working to set upon the Spanish throne an absolute king who promised to let them remain a republic as a reward. “We hope that before long,” wrote Señor Castelar on the 12th of September, 1873, “these Basque provinces which furnish subsidies and spies to the Carlist and where the army of the republic can nowhere find either protection or assistance, will receive the chastisement their errors deserve, since these the happiest and freest provinces of Spain are fighting not to obtain a king for themselves or to offer him of their sons and the fruits of their economy, but to impose one upon the Spanish nation while continuing to live themselves as a republic. Certainly the government will respect a legislation which is in harmony with its principles and ideas, but I am its spokesman in saying to these people that if anything threatens their future and that tree celebrated by Rousseau as the monument of liberty, it will be due to their blind obstinacy in supporting at the price of their blood, as the Swiss did formerly, the monster of absolutism.”

It was among these sandalled republicans in hides and blue berets, indefatigable walkers and great players of _peloto_, that Carlism recruited its ranks as well as in Navarre and a part of Catalonia. The mountain regions in general were in the hands of the clergy and the pretender. They furnished them brave, sober, robust soldiers, nimble as smugglers, knowing all the secret passes and defiles, skilful at making off after a defeat and dispersing so as to rally elsewhere, possessing in fact all the necessary qualities for this species of tricky and partisan war in which Spain has always excelled. The country also lent itself to it. It was rugged and cut up, well fitted for ambuscades and surprises--full of difficulties for the invader who could not operate in detachments without exposing himself, nor in masses without being uneasy without sustenance.

However, if Carlism had preserved its troops, it was weakened by the loss of some of its most noteworthy chiefs. The spirit of the times is a subtle and penetrating gas, and the élite of the party was unable to resist its malign influence. One of the heroes of the seven years’ war--the illustrious general Cabrera, whose name alone was worth an army to the pretender--had found the latter deaf to his advice and was compelled to refuse him his services.

Among Don Carlos’ faithful adherents there were men of heart and intelligence who grumbled under their breath at his mistakes. As for the pretender himself, he was no longer master of his actions. The church was the mouthpiece of his will and it announced to Spain that if Don Carlos wished to mount the throne it was to give the people back their God--him of former days, whose glance rested with delight on the _san-benito_ of a scourged and repentant heretic. They did not take the trouble to conceal from the Spaniards the designs they had upon them. When certain persons spoke to France, they had recourse to the precautions of the oratory, to the subtleties taught by casuistry, to reticences and equivocation, to denials which did not deny, and to promises which did not promise anything. If they did the country of Voltaire and Mirabeau the honour of lying to her, they inflicted on Spain the affront of their outrageous sincerity. They openly declared to her that they intended to bring back the Golden Age when the monk reigned and sent free-thinkers to peaceful sleep. The struggle which was now steeping the Pyrenees and the Cantabrian mountains in blood was a war to the death waged upon the _bourgeoisie_ by fanatical priests, of shepherds upon their lambs; it was the white demagogy, which despairing of triumph had not scrupled to league itself with the pirates of Cartagena for the extermination of liberal ideas.[n]

THE DICTATORSHIP OF SERRANO

Castelar’s former party associates, who had forgotten nothing and learned nothing, could not forgive him for having brought the federative republicans to order with powder and shot; for having appointed conservative generals, and entered into negotiations with the papal see in regard to vacant bishoprics. When the cortes re-assembled on January 2nd, 1874, its president, Salmeron, brought about a vote of lack of confidence in Castelar’s government, whereupon the latter promptly resigned.

Before further action could be taken the cortes was dispersed by Pavia, the captain-general of Madrid, on January 3rd,[134] and a military dictatorship established under Marshal Serrano. Republican revolts which broke out in several cities were quickly suppressed and a large force was sent against the Carlists. The latter kept the important fortress Bilbao closely invested, had captured Portugalete, the port belonging to it, had forced Moriones first to take refuge on a ship, and on February 24th, 1874, when he again advanced from the west, had driven him to retreat, after being defeated at Somorrostro.

Serrano, entitled “president of the executive power of the republic,” now hastened to the scene of action, but in the battles of March 25th and 26th he did not succeed in breaking through the firm position of the Carlists at Somorrostro. He procured reinforcements, however, renewed the attack on April 28th, and compelled the enemy on May 1st to give up its position, abandon the investment of Bilbao, and to evacuate Portugalete. General Concha, appointed commander-in-chief of the northern army, on June 25th attacked the Carlists under Dorregaray, who were firmly entrenched on the heights of Estella, but was repulsed and fell after a battle of three days. The Carlists neglected to take a strategical advantage of their victory and shot down a large number of prisoners. Don Alfonso, the brother of the pretender, did no better in Catalonia, for after conquering the Castilian city Cuenca he delivered it up to plunder, fire, and sword. The Carlist general Mendiri did not succeed in capturing the fortress Irun in the northern field of war: he was compelled to retreat on November 10th from Laserna, but he himself on December 9th forced the advancing general Loma to retreat to San Sebastian. Hereupon Serrano again hastened to the scene with the purpose of making a general attack on the enemy, at the head of four army corps, and forcing it back to the French frontier. He needed time, however, to get the necessary number of troops together.

[Sidenote: [1874-1875 A.D.]]

Serrano had one political success to rejoice over which occurred with no intervention on his own part. On the 30th of June Don Carlos had caused the Prussian ex-captain Albert Schmidt, who was at Concha’s headquarters as correspondent for German papers and had fallen into the hands of the Carlists, to be shot, although he was a non-combatant. This act in defiance of the rights of war, and the barbaric way in which the war was conducted as a whole, led Prince Bismarck to take diplomatic measures against Carlism, which was to a great extent financially supported by the legitimists in France, the feudals in Austria, and by the Jesuits in the Vatican. He thus made it possible for the remaining powers to recognise Serrano’s government officially and exerted an indirect pressure on the French government, which was rendering the Carlists all sorts of assistance on the French frontier, with the object of holding it more closely to its obligations.

All the powers except Russia decided to recognise the Spanish government and sent ambassadors to Madrid. The German ambassador was received with special marks of attention on September 12th. Two German warships were despatched to the bay of Biscay to protect the interests of the Germans living along the coast, and to prevent the smuggling in of materials of war. But Serrano’s small military success against the Carlists brought about a new turn in affairs at the end of the year 1874.

THE BOURBON ALFONSO XII ELECTED (1875 A.D.)

[Sidenote: [1875-1883 A.D.]]

General Martínez Campos, who, like most of the officers, was an adherent of the overturned Bourbon dynasty, on December 29th, at Murviedro, proclaimed the son of the ex-queen Isabella as King Alfonso XII of Spain. The army generally declared in favour of Alfonso, Sagasta’s ministry resigned, Serrano laid down the chief command and the presidency, a ministerial regency was formed on the 31st under Cánovas del Castillo, which informed Isabella, then living at Paris, of the elevation of her son to the throne. The latter left Paris on January 6th, 1875, landed in Barcelona, arrived at Madrid the 14th, and although he was not yet eighteen, took over the reins of government.

The inexperienced king was in a difficult position. The state treasury was almost empty; the war with the Carlists consumed enormous sums and brought few results; the close relations of the king to his godfather Pope Pius demanded especial considerations; the papal nuncio required the most extensive concessions in return for his supporting the king; he wanted to bring back the old intolerance and priesthood, and if possible to return to the Inquisition; the ex-queen Isabella, who had lost all title to respect, impatiently awaited her return to Madrid. In every direction, nothing could be seen but dangerous reefs which confronted the government.[e]

That Cánovas del Castillo should undertake the leadership of the new government was quite as much a matter of course as that the first and most imperative duty of the government should be to overthrow the Carlist rebellion. At first, it was put down in Catalonia and Aragon where its chief seat, Seo de Urgel, fell on August 26th, 1875. Thereupon all forces were directed towards the north against the Basque territories, the old citadel of Carlism. The closely besieged Pamplona was relieved on November 24th, and, when Quesada advanced with one hundred thousand men, Estella also fell on February 19th, 1876. On February 28th, the king himself entered Pamplona; on the same day Don Carlos retreated over the border to France. The victors conducted themselves humanely on the whole, although ten thousand persons were exiled, as many more lost their property, and a limitation of the old _fueros_ of the Basque lands was planned. It was not until 1878, however, that Martínez Campos succeeded in quelling the rebellion in Cuba after important economical concessions, when the rights of a Spanish province were granted to the Cubans. [For fuller details see the history of Spanish America in a later volume.]

In the meanwhile on May 24th the newly elected cortes, which the king had opened on February 15th, 1876, had adopted the new constitution (proclaimed June 30th). This provided for a senate and house of representatives controlled by general and direct election, established freedom of the press, of religion, and of unions, but abolished trial by jury, civil marriage, and freedom of teaching, in order to win over the radicals and the clergy. Rome at first protested against the freedom of religion but gave up this point, as the Protestants were actually so limited and oppressed in the exercise of their rights that all the firm fervour of belief of men like Pastor Fliedner in Madrid was needed to endure it all and actually to establish an evangelical church in the Spanish capital where now Luther’s hymn of victory, “A firm foundation is our God,” resounds also in Spanish (“_Castillo fier es nuestro Dios!_”).

The republican attempts on the king’s life on October 25th, 1878, and December 30th, 1879, were only after-effects of the long period of unrest; on the whole the pacification of the country made unmistakable progress. The government exercised the utmost watchfulness against Carlist plots and even effected a papal prohibition against Spanish bishops. The opposition of Catalan manufacturers to the commercial treaty with France was summarily suppressed by the proclamation of a state of siege; a republican revolt on the part of the soldiers in Badajoz on August 5th, 1883, was energetically put down and severely punished by the king, who, wholly on his own responsibility, attempted to put a stop to the old mischief of having officers take part in political party intrigues and boldly ordered the dismissal of a large number of unsubmissive and irresponsible elements. The social democratic associations of the _mano nero_ (the black hand) seemed very dangerous for a time. These were favoured by the severe economical decay of the last years, and grew rapidly until, divided into about three thousand groups and controlled by a central organisation at Xeres, they covered the south like a net. Since they distinguished themselves by deeds of violence of all kinds, the government at last took decisive measures, overpowered their ringleaders and caused seven of them to be executed.

ALFONSO XII AND THE EUROPEAN POWERS

[Sidenote: [1879-1886 A.D.]]

Several years passed thus before the king could venture to enter into any personal relations with the most powerful foreign rulers. Not until September, 1883, did he proceed to Austria and Germany, accompanied by several of his ministers, when on the occasion of the grand manœuvres at Frankfort on the Main, Emperor William gave him the honorary command of the 15th regiment of Ulans. Alfonso XII visited this regiment in its quarters at Strasburg, on his return journey to France and for this reason on his entry into Paris, on September 29th, the chauvinistic mob hailed him as the _roi-ulan_ and insulted the laws of hospitality with hoots and howls. The king in knightly fashion repaid their treatment by giving 10,000 francs for the poor of Paris. Emperor William, in order to show his warm sympathy for the king, sent the crown-prince to Spain. The latter set sail with a German fleet and landed in Valencia November 22nd after a stormy passage. Although the Spaniards were at first cool and reserved, after a few weeks spent in Madrid and the most important cities of the south, the prince completely won them over by his imposing and kindly personality and by the regard shown to the king in such demonstrative fashion contributed his share towards firmly establishing the Spanish throne. The friendly relations thus introduced did not indeed hinder the outbreak of popular hatred against Germany in 1885 in connection with the dispute over the Carolines; only the statesmanlike firmness of the king and the moderation of Germany hindered serious troubles and assured the continuance of the Bourbon throne which had only just been re-established.

But the days of the young monarch were already numbered, November 25th, 1885, he died of consumption in the Pardo palace. He left two daughters by his second marriage with the archduchess Maria Christina of Austria (November 29th, 1879), Mercedes and Maria Theresa; not until several months after his death, on May 17th, 1886, was the heir to the throne, Alfonso XIII, born. He was proclaimed king on the same day, under the regency of his mother. The latter recalled to the mind of the Spanish that other queen of German blood, Elizabeth Christina of Brunswick, the wife of Charles VI.[p]

THE REGENCY OF MARIA CHRISTINA (1886-1902 A.D.)

[Sidenote: [1886-1897 A.D.]]

The widow of Alfonso XII quietly assumed that there was no debate as to her right to be regent of Spain, which found itself facing an addition to its astonishingly long list of minorities. And the new minor was not yet born. The situation was serious. The latest policy of the cabinet had not been popular in its reaction from liberalism, and even Cánovas del Castillo advised the queen-regent to begin her administration by concessions. He recommended his ancient rival Sagasta, who was called to the Pardo, and by the pact since called after the place, agreed to use his influence to uphold the regency while frankly stating his intention to make gradual reforms in the direction of restoring the constitutional liberties of 1868.

In Paris Ruiz Zorilla was agitating for a revolution and restoration of the republic, while the Carlists were trying to stir Don Carlos to leave his retreat in Venice and invade Spain. The pope, however, felt that the interests of the church would be better subserved by peace, especially as he found Maria Christina an ardent and generous Catholic, who encouraged the Jesuits to unsurpassed power over education. But Sagasta’s influence kept the country from any entanglements in European alliances, re-established trial by jury, which Alfonso XII had abolished, and universal suffrage which Alfonso had vetoed; enlarged the liberties of speech and press, and modified the tariff beneficially. A few military conspiracies were frustrated and mildly punished. A strong aid to Sagasta was Emilio Castelar, who saw the gradual return of his republican ideals.

But by 1890, Maria Christina, who was even more dictatorial than her late husband, asked his resignation and called in Cánovas, whose conservative and high-tariff policy brought a marked diminution of foreign trade. Cánovas’ chief trouble came from his own party. After two and a half years, he resigned and again advised the calling of Sagasta, who sent an expedition of twenty-five thousand soldiers under Campos to Morocco and forced the sultan to pay an indemnity of £800,000 for attacks on the Spanish outposts at Melilla in Morocco. He was not so happy with the Cuban question.

Cuba had long been rather the victim and prey of the mother-country than a colony, and the efforts for relief by the few friends in Spain had received practically no attention. The growth of the sentiment of revolt, the failure of the milder policies of men like Martínez Campos, and the equal fiasco of the mediævally relentless policy of General Weyler, who won the name of “butcher,” are detailed in the later volume devoted to Spanish America. It must suffice here to say that Cánovas was assassinated by an anarchist, August 9th, 1897, while pressing a bill for more liberal home rule in Cuba. He was succeeded by the former war minister General Azcarraga.

Meanwhile the people of the United States had been so deeply stirred by the decades of torture inflicted on their island neighbours in Cuba that General Weyler was recalled through pressure brought to bear by American diplomacy. The conservative cabinet gave way to Sagasta, Marshal Blanco replaced Weyler and tried a gentler policy. But the ruination of Cuba could not be checked by any mild and negative treatment. The people of the United States had been wrought to a pitch of horror by the tales of the starvation of Cuban men, women, and children by the thousand, and when the United States cruiser _Maine_, while visiting the port of Havana, was blown up with great loss of life, it needed only the declaration of a commission of inquiry that she had been sunk by a submarine mine, to bring the United States to demand the evacuation of Cuba by Spain. There was no implication that the destruction of the _Maine_ had official sanction, but it was given as a final proof of the intolerable state of affairs in Cuba.

[Sidenote: [1897-1898 A.D.]]

The demand was naturally more than Spanish pride would bear and the American minister was given his passports. The European powers refused to intervene, though the press was almost unanimously for Spain, except in England. It was notorious that Spanish resources were hopelessly inadequate to a protracted war with the infinite riches of the United States, but the American navy was small and according to European experts decidedly inferior in discipline, morale, and efficiency to the Spanish navy. This theory was exploded by the swift and utter destruction of two Spanish fleets, that of Admiral Montojo by Admiral Dewey in Manila Bay, May 1st, 1898, and that of Admiral Cervera by the fleet under Admiral Sampson in Santiago de Cuba, July 3rd. Land-forces in Cuba, the Philippines, and Porto Rico won those islands with comparatively little struggle, as is described in the second volume of our history of the United States.

Late in July, Spanish pride saw nothing left but surrender of practically all her colonies. A treaty of peace was signed at Paris, December 12th, 1898, after a protocol had put an end to hostilities for some months. The Caroline Islands which remained to Spain in the Pacific, and over which there had almost been a war with Germany in 1885, were sold to Germany in 1899 for £800,000; and in 1900 the United States bought two small islands that had been overlooked in the earlier treaty, paying $100,000 (£20,000) for them.

Spain came out of the war in a sad financial state. Besides the practical annihilation of her navy and the great loss of her army’s prestige, her national debt of £259,116,500 had been increased by £60,000,000 for war expenses (borrowed at very high interest); and the United States had forced her to assume the Cuban and Philippine debts of £46,210,000. The mountain of debt that confronted her was thus £365,326,500; or more than $1,826,600,000.

The liberals, who had been compelled to take the government at the outbreak of war, had faced inevitable defeat, but there were so many details of maladministration, of neglect and ignorance in war preparations that the blame of the disaster fell on them as if they had been its origin. Sagasta gave way to the conservative Silvela. He feared to support the radical measures which Villaverde, the minister of finance, felt necessary for the reduction of expense and the increase of revenue, and which provoked violent and organised resistance from tax-payers. Villaverde in consequence was sacrificed, though he had attacked his problem with sanity and courage. The resistance of the National Tax-payers’ Union did not cease, however, and Silvela was driven to rigorous measures of repression.

[Sidenote: [1898-1902 A.D.]]

In spite of the severe up-hill struggle that is before Spain, it is everywhere believed that the loss of her colonies is the greatest blessing that could have befallen her. So great a drain were they upon the industries, the morals, and the population of the home-country, and so corrupt had their administration become that their removal resembled the amputation of a limb given over to gangrene. Already signs of healthier conditions are numerous, and, as industry, like charity, should begin at home, the outlook of the new attention to the great natural resources of the peninsula is most alluring.

Not the least sign of promise is the growing popular feeling against the vampire of priestcraft. Early in her history Spain developed the most advanced and organised liberties of all European governments. Then she came under the sway of the church, and it became for centuries her boast that she was the most faithful and meekest of disciples. At the same time she became and continued the most ignorant, the most depraved and superstitious, the most blood-thirsty, of all European nations. Her loyal subjects were proud of their chains; haughty in the obstinate ignorance of her Jesuitical schools and the fiery intolerance of their rulers and people. Her non-orthodox were broken on the rack, tormented and burned at the stake after suffering all the diabolic ingenuities of the Inquisition. Her provinces, as the Netherlands, were kept in ceaseless and odious war. Her colonies were steeped for centuries in oppressions resulting in the absolute obliteration of whole races, and the lasting savagery of others. And these horrors were, practically without exception, done in the name of the church and with its official approval. It is clear to the outside world that Spain must shake loose the affectation of religion from the education of the masses, from the intrigues of the court, and from the politics and everyday life of the people, before this brave and brilliant race can take its place in line with the rest of Europe on the march of civilisation and the betterment of mankind.

In 1902, the regency of Maria Christina came to an end: her son was declared of age and crowned as Alfonso XIII.[a]

FOOTNOTES

[124] [Hume[c] vividly describes this royal progress: “Through the stark and ruined country he went; the emaciated and famished inhabitants, hardly one of whom but had some dear one killed in the war, filled to overflowing with love and hope of better times under the sway of their new king. They had suffered so much for him; he was young and had suffered too, they said, in his exile: surely he would be good to them, make bread cheap, and heal their bleeding wounds. Most of the towns on the way had changed the name of their great square from Plaza Mayor to ‘Plaza de la Constitucion’; and the marble slabs bearing the latter inscription were now torn down and splintered, and the thoughtless mob, little knowing or caring what it all meant, shouted themselves hoarse with cries of ‘Death to liberty and the Constitution!’ and ‘Long live Ferdinand.’”[c] The amazing cry of “Hurrah for chains!” was also heard.]

[125] The name Persians was given to the _servile_ deputies who had signed the memorial in which the period from 1608 to 1814 was compared to the old Persian saturnalia of crime which accompanied a change of rulers.

[126] [Spanish kings had been ruled by favourites before; but Lerma and Olivares, even Valenzuela and Godoy, were men of education and breeding, whilst the secret advisers of Ferdinand were, many of them, coarse, ignorant buffoons. Meeting at night with noisy mirth they settled over the heads of the ministers questions of national policy, and even made and unmade ministers in mere caprice. Ministers were appointed or dismissed arbitrarily by Ferdinand for the most puerile reasons, and were sent into prison or exile at the idle fancy of the king. The members of the _camarilla_ were treated in the same way, being one day in high favour and the next in jail. There were over thirty ministers in the six years from 1814 to 1820, an average of two months’ duration for each. The most prominent member of the _camarilla_ was a low buffoon called “Chamorro,” who had been a water-carrier, another, Ugarte, was a second-hand broker; Tattischeff, the Russian minister, was also a member.[c]]

[127] The blood-thirsty Elio tortured to death a woman who had just given birth to a child.

[128] That is, “Swallow it,” meaning the constitution, a popular street song of Cadiz, which may be compared with the “_Ça ira!_” of the French Revolution.

[129] [He was dragged through the streets in a basket drawn at the tail of an ass; he was then hanged and quartered as if he were a felon.]

[130] [The minister Calomarde was one of the most violent of the absolutists. Born in 1773 he had worked his way upward gradually till in 1823 be entered the cabinet. For ten years he was the most influential of the ministers and deserves much of the discredit due to all who managed the realm. It is unnecessary to dispute over the exact share of each. There was odium enough for all. In 1833 Calomarde sided with Don Carlos and was banished, dying in Toulouse in 1842.]

[131] [Burgos[h] thus sums up Don Carlos: “The heart of this prince was as incapable of elevated sentiments as his head was of political combinations. His profound ignorance made him regard the enthusiasm displayed by the passionate and disheartened crowds as general and unanimous, and the delight of the populace he regarded as a sign of approbation of the system of intolerance with which he was credited. In the unarrested march of his force to Madrid in 1837 the delighted pretendant saw the hand of providence raising him to the throne of his ancestors, and his apathy prevented his taking the means which his fatalism moreover considered unnecessary. His courtiers, puffed up with passing advantages, thought that by dint of them and the stolid impassivity of their sovereign they could give the rein to their resentments.”]

[132] [In 1852 a priest named Merino stabbed her, but her life was saved by the whalebone of her corsets. The priest was garrotted, his body burned.]

[133] [“Young, valiant, having bled for the country whose dominions his father had extended, crowned with glory, beloved by his fellow citizens, educated in the liberal spirit and holding an enviable position, he neither coveted the throne of Spain, his aspirations being ever modest, nor refused any sacrifice to win success for the nation which had won his sympathy from the first. The liberals could not deny that Amadeo belonged to a family which represented the liberal spirit, more than any other in Europe, and which had seconded the aspirations of lovers of liberty. The fact of the duke of Aosta’s being educated in the latter school, was a guarantee not to one party, but to all liberals; and if he obtained the votes of the constituents, sacrificing his most dear affections to the love of the country, there should be but one rule for all liberal monarchists--king and liberty. This rule had inspired great men in England to found the monarchy of 1688 and this is what Spanish patriotism advised.”--PIRALA.[l]]

[134] [At the head of the Madrid garrison, the captain-general of the capital turned the members of the cortes into the streets, dismissed the government, including the war minister, and dissolved parliament. He then profoundly surprised his fellow countrymen by declining to use his dictatorship as a stepping-stone to power. For the first time in Spain, the victorious leader of a _pronunciamiento_ invited the leaders of all parties to form a government to restore and maintain peace. Castelar naturally declined. Cánovas del Castillo, the chief agent of the Alfonsist propaganda, held aloof, because he saw that events were playing into his hands. Marshal Serrano, with Sagasta and Martos, consented to form a nameless provisional government, which attempted for eleven months to reorganise Spain, first crushing the republican risings in the south, and then vigorously attacking the Carlists in northern and central Spain.[k]]

BRIEF REFERENCE-LIST OF AUTHORITIES BY CHAPTERS

[The letter [a] is reserved for Editorial Matter.]