And the lightning-conductor alone produced the cable which brings both worlds into constant communication, the thread which annihilates distances and transmits thoughts and events. Politics is indeed a science, and if nothing is impossible to science, shall anything be impossible to politics?
This work of social reconstruction advances slowly, all collecting materials and contributing their ideas to its perfectionment; the work will be completed; it is but a question of time, and what appears long in the life of the individual is very short in the life of nations. Liberty and civilisation being inseparably welded, where civilisation is least, liberty finds most obstacles, and the task must be more difficult and laborious.
In the meanwhile Spain was going through a troubled period, and it was said in the press and in the cortes that a heavy responsibility lay upon those who had taken part in a political movement the issue of which was so unfortunate, and cut off the country from the civilising progress of the century and the social importance to which it had so many claims; that the triumphant liberal spirit was suffocating for want of guidance, and could not succeed in laying definitive institutions upon a solid basis; that the perils surrounding the revolution were increasing; that all was unstable and that “a mild anarchy” reigned everywhere, as was said by the minister of government himself, who was yet so dilatory in framing fundamental laws.
There followed the famous session of March 19th, 1870, when the forced harmony exploded between unionists, progressists, and democrats, placing regency, government, and country in a terrible position. Thus it was published by a deputy of recognised ability, who had good reason to be well acquainted with the internal workings of the camara, that “it would be difficult to conceive worse confusion than that to which it was a prey. Without true unity in the ministry, without true unity in the majority, without unity even in the midst of the oppositions, every individual, whether minister or deputy, radical or conservative, republican or traditionalist, in the questions natural or incident to the debate expressed his own opinion without thought for the general interests of any party; the result of which was that every one of the three hundred representatives who had their seat upon the benches of the congress spoke a different language, and if such a state of moral anarchy continued, the assembly would before long be converted into a regular tower of Babel.”l
There are in every country men who accomplish their ends by romantic adventures, and this is more common in Spain than anywhere else. There it is an ancestral or fictitious adventurer, who has really no other god but his own interests, but succeeds by his audacities and a kind of native generosity in giving an air of grandeur to his exploits, a varnish of glory and poetry to his cupidity. So the favourite Spanish hero, the famous Cid Campeador, appears to us when criticism has rolled away the luminous clouds with which pure legend has surrounded him. The Rodrigo whom Corneille celebrated was only the vision of a poet; the true Cid of history was a man of prey, not troubled with scruples, ready to espouse all causes, bearing into every camp the restlessness of his moods and courage, fighting alternately for or against his prince, serving Christ or Mohammed, and, if one can believe the Arabic chroniclers, preferring a bushel of gold to a smile from Ximena. His mighty sword thrusts, his haughty bearing, his natural grandiloquence, redeemed everything; he had received from heaven the art of persuasive speech, and posterity remembers words more than intentions. The romancero relates that, being in a hurry to set out on an expedition, and having need of money, he borrowed a very large sum from a Jew, giving him as guarantee a coffer full of jewels, which coffer being opened after his departure, was found to contain only sand. On his return, the Jew reproached him with deception. “Yes, it was sand,” he answered loftily, “but this sand contained the gold of my given word.” The idea was good, albeit a trifle extravagant.
It is not with any evil intention to the memory of General Prim, to suggest that he also was a hero with too easy a conscience. Is one bound to have more convictions, more principles than the Cid? “Do you know,” said Castelarm when orator of the opposition, “who is General Prim’s god? It is Chance. Would you know his religion? It is Fatalism. And his ideal? The dream of always keeping power in his own hands. To that everything is brought to bear and to that everything is sacrificed. Institutions matter nothing to him; he bends them to his convenience. Laws count even less for him. They are mere spider webs, to be brushed aside by the swords of his captain-generals. Parties are as nothing, he dissolves them. Engagements have never hampered him, for he forgets them. The most inconceivable alliances are not repugnant, provided he and his are advantaged thereby.”
General Prim
But it is just to add that General Prim, when he came into power, astonished his enemies as much as his friends by the continued wisdom of his conduct. The most redoubtable trial of an adventurer is success. His ideas must grow with his fortune; having gained the coveted rank, he must break with his past, his habits and memories, so as to transform himself into a statesman. Only those who have good stuff in them lend themselves to such changes, and Don Juan Prim soon proved that the Aranjuez conspirator possessed the qualities of a politician, a quick sense of justice, a power of realising situations, skilful management of men and interests, and tact sufficient to use his authority without doing anything irregular. He could use strategy in councils, employing a sober yet nervous eloquence which went straight to the point, and possessed above the art of speaking the more useful one of being silent. A Portuguese has remarked that this last talent, strongly admired among a talkative people, made a man resemble a Gothic cathedral, and gave him the prestige of obscurity and mystery.
To be president of the council was no easy task. It was already difficult to govern an assembly composed of two parts; the difficulty was still greater when there were three. Oscillations from the Centre, who formed the necessary support for the majority, gave the minister perpetual anxiety and forced him to see-saw politics. The radicals, or democratic monarchists, led by a highly popular man, Rivero, and a man of great talent, Martos, played a very considerable rôle in the constituent cortes of 1869. They were at one with the liberal unionists in desiring a king, even as they agreed with the republicans to make a democratic constitution with all possible speed. Government could only expect a conditional support from them. It was inconvenient to satisfy them, dangerous to let them be discontented. It was necessary then perpetually to negotiate with these monarchists by circumstance. A single imprudence might have lost all.
Monarchists by conviction were themselves divided into a crowd of small parties, each having its candidate for the throne.
General Juan Prim needed all his attention and skill to maintain some degree of cohesion among so variegated a majority. He had to dominate the unruly, satisfy the ambitious by a portfolio, and the vain by a decoration; to reassure the timorous, calm the impatient, even like a good sheepdog who runs ceaselessly round a flock, heading the foremost, driving in the scattered, hastening the laggards. Each party sought to gain the general for their candidate, for Don Juan, as someone said at the congress, resembled a political zero, which, placed at the right of a figure, increased its value tenfold, and a candidature quoted at nine on the political bourse would be worth ninety when it had gained the approving smile of the president. His reigning principle was to discourage no illusion. “He knows quite well,” said the opposition, “that he cannot maintain his position much longer in this unstable equilibrium, which consists in keeping in with all parties, being against all parties, and above them all. The secret of his politics is to keep everyone hoping. He gives them no promises, for he is circumspect and never commits himself. He never betrays himself by his acts, being very reserved, diplomatic, and making no engagements; but he gives hope by his enigmas, his reticences, his air of mystery.”
Don Juan, however, was not always so reserved. When occasion demanded, he denounced to the majority the dangers which threatened them, adjuring them to seek safety in conciliatory politics, short of which only misery and disaster could be expected. If his advice was ill received, he complained that they made government impossible, and spoke of retiring. This manœuvre, executed with military precision, never failed of its effect. Thanks to his warning, his threats, and his reticences, that same majority, composed of men who never agreed nor loved one another, persisted in remaining united, a rare spectacle in Spain.n
Thus there existed a monarchical constitution with no monarch; and a large number of republicans took pains to make a monarchy impossible by speeches in the cortes and by revolts in the provinces. No one seemed desirous of the crown of a country politically lamed by its party system and financially rotten. The ministerial president and minister of war, Count Prim, made every effort to find a suitable personage, but for a long time in vain. The former regent of Spain, Espartero; the Coburg prince, Don Ferdinand, father of the king of Portugal; King Luiz of Portugal himself; Prince Thomas of Genoa, nephew of the king of Italy—refused in turn. The duke of Montpensier, whose wife was sister to the ex-queen Isabella, was ready to accept it, but on account of this very relationship he had many opponents among the monarchs, who, when it came to selecting a Bourbon, preferred Prince Alfonso, Isabella’s son, to her brother-in-law.
Isabella made her plan with this end in view. Acting on the advice of her friend the empress Eugénie she signed her resignation on June 25th, 1870, and made over all her political rights to her son Alfonso. First, however, there was question of another prince. Among those who in 1869 had returned a negative answer was Prince Leopold of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen, who, as a Catholic, as husband of a Portuguese princess, as a relative of the Napoleonic house, and as belonging to the reigning house of Prussia, seemed a very suitable person in the eyes of the government. The latter returned to this choice in 1870 and in June sent a deputation to him. This time the prince accepted. The deputation returned to Madrid, a ministerial council was held, and on June 2nd it was decided to offer the crown of Spain to Prince Leopold of Hohenzollern officially and to proclaim this candidacy publicly. The news was brought to all the capitals of Europe on July 3rd, by telegraph. The country stood at a new crisis of affairs.e
Napoleon III of France opposed the giving of the crown of Spain to a Prussian prince, and secured his resignation. This success led him to further demands, which he pressed so outrageously that Prussia, long ready to avenge its old disgraces before French armies, returned answers that led Napoleon to declare war. The Franco-Prussian War of 1870-1871 was the result. Prussia took a new place in the world and in Germany, the French armies were surrendered in droves by their king and his general officers, and France was rid both of her Napoleon III and of her military reputation. And all this as the result of the Spanish advertisement for a king. The prince Hohenzollern, who had refused the bauble once, and had had it taken away when he reached out to accept it, was dropped from the eligible list.a
Marshal Prim had persuaded the second son of the king of Italy, Prince Amadeo, duke of Aosta,[133] to accept the candidacy. The cortes elected him king of Spain on November 16th, 1870, with a vote of 191 to 98. He arrived in Madrid on January 2nd, 1871, and took oath to support the constitution a few days after Prim had fallen a victim to a murderous assault. The government of the new king, who had made Marshal Serrano first ministerial president, was a continual fight for the ministry between the monarchic factions, while the republicans and Carlists organised revolts in the south and north.e
Serrano was a soldier risen to the highest ranks through the favour of Queen Isabella, whom he had not hesitated to betray the moment he believed that others would be put over him in the highest offices of politics and the army. His real ability as a general was more than mediocre. Allied with Prim in the insurrectional movement and the pronunciamiento of 1868 he was able to overthrow his benefactress’ throne; but the day after the 29th of September he saw himself transformed by his colleague into a puppet king. Prim, who was his superior in a hundred ways, especially in ability and energy, henceforth ruled over him. Not daring to revolt against his comrade, he submitted tranquilly, contenting himself with the pomp of the regency which he had received in exchange for his submission to the imperious will of the minister of war.
After the assassination of the marshal, Serrano found himself again in the highest place and obliged by his position to direct the beginnings of a young king, lacking in great political qualifications and the indispensable knowledge of Spain’s needs and aspirations as well as being very unpopular on account of his foreign origin. To succeed in such a task a man of exceptional ability was required and Serrano’s talents were but mediocre. Under the marshal’s feeble hand, passions far from being calmed flared up much fiercer than ever and discord penetrated every element of official life.
Marshal Serrano and his colleagues having given in their resignations, Amadeo determined to try the experiment of a radical régime. But Señor Zorilla was incapable of rising above the violent and mean passions of the party to which he belonged. Amadeo was compelled to dismiss him in less than three months. Admiral Malcampo was invested with the power on October 6th; six weeks later he too was compelled to hand in his resignation.
Amadeo now confided the power to Señor Sagasta, December 20th, 1871. The situation, however, became more critical day by day. The king was absolutely isolated in the midst of his people. The educated and especially the aristocratic classes, justly wounded at seeing a foreign prince seated without any right whatever on the throne, held aloof from the court. The clergy could scarcely be expected to sympathise with a régime that exhibited decided Voltairian tendencies.
The people had never sanctioned the arbitrary choice and protested against the accomplished act sometimes by noisy demonstrations, more often by a still more dangerous attitude of cold and irreducible hostility. The republicans benefited largely by the situation. Amadeo was daily covered with mud and the ministry found it impossible to make the royal dignity and person respected. In order to quell so formidable a storm, the genius of a Napoleon I, the skill of a Cavour would have been required, and even then it is more than doubtful that with the prestige which genius gives and the resources which the most perfect art of governing men can provide, Amadeo would have settled his dynasty firmly in Spain. In truth the greatest fault found was with his foreign origin, and this intrinsic defect could not be overcome by personal merit.
How often, turning his thoughts towards his absent country, towards that city of Turin where he was the idol of its citizens, must Amadeo have regretted not having resisted more vigorously the demands of his father and the Italian ministers, as they prayed him to accept that crown of Spain for which he had so little vocation.
His tastes were simple and his habits modest—altogether too modest for Spain. He was affable, received everyone, and forced himself to appear as amiable with the common people as with the politicians and the few great nobles who had not deserted the court. He understood the low condition of the treasury and did not take a penny of the civil list which the constitution allowed him. He lived upon his own personal income, spending freely, and always tried to make use of Spanish articles and purveyors. The queen on her part zealously occupied herself with good works. Yet when Amadeo passed through the Madrid streets those who did not salute him were assuredly in greater number than those who through politeness took off their hats as he went by. The reception was no better in the provinces whenever the king and queen visited them.
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.
Sagasta
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.
King Amadeo
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
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.
Emilio Castelar
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
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
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.
Marshal Serrano
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.
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.
Don Carlos de Bourbon
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.