"Senor, I am proud as a hidalgo this day. You know Frascuelo?"
"Si, si."
"I have seen him; I have heard him speak."
"Dios mio! If it be not a poor jest on thy part, thou"rt a happy man."
"No jest, senor; and hearken!" approaching and lowering his voice: "he sat at the same table with me, and," this impressively and confidentially, "he shook hands with me as we parted!"
"Caramba! Let me shake that hand."
Laugh at this anecdote, but did not a New York hack-driver make a small fortune by letting out for osculatory purposes the hand that helped Jenny Lind from her carriage? Have not strawberries touched by the lips of Lydia Thompson fetched a guinea each at a dramatic _fete_, and photographs of Sara Bernhardt, signed with her sign-manual, run up to an alarming figure at the Albert Hall? Have I not myself been privy to the offer by a British matron of sums incredible for the straw through which the Prince of Wales had sucked a sherry-cobbler at the Paris Exhibition of 1867?
"Ster-oh!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed the negro waiter with open mouth. "Why, bress you, dat"s no use, we trowed it away; but, as yer a nice ole lady, heah"s a dozen for nuffin!"
The spectacle in the Plaza de Toros, the s.p.a.cious unroofed area surrounded by stone benches rising one above another, away to the sheltered balconies up high at the back, is one of the most enlivening that imagination can conceive on the afternoon of a corrida, when male and female humanity, all jubilant bustle and expectancy, make a prismatic girdle around. Fans move with an incessant tremulous flutter; there is a continuous susurrus of voices, broken by occasional hoa.r.s.e bursts of laughter at some mishap, or hoa.r.s.e roars of welcome as some favourite enters; the regal sun discharges his fierce messages of light from his throne of blue, and the costumes of every colour, wavering with the pulsations of the throng, are an active kaleidoscope, most vivid and variegated. We are in our places. We have stepped up the Alcala at the heels of the picquet of armed militia charged with the maintenance of order. We have threaded our way through the rough maze of pa.s.sages to our palco, peeping at the stable where the sorry horses are kept, at the room where the toreadores dress themselves, and at the little oratory where the matador prays before he stalks into the palestra. We are in our places, and everybody is in his place; the Governor of the city in his box of state yonder. While the music races over the a.s.semblage in glad alternation of rush and ripple, let us look below. There is a strong wooden barrier some six feet high around the arena, and at knee-height, on the inner side of this barrier, there is a berme to help the pursued chulo to a footing as he vaults over into the surrounding lane formed by this interior and an exterior barrier. This lane is guarded by policemen, and is so narrow that a bull has not room to turn in it; for bulls sometimes bound over the inner barrier. When that occurs, and I have seen it occur not seldom, they are driven round until they reach one of the gates opening into the ring. The trumpets and tymbals speak warning; a profound silence falls upon the crowd for an instant, and then from a side pa.s.sage enters the cavalcade we have awaited--enters to a stately martial march. First, the mounted alguazil in his ancient garb, plumed, cloaked, funereal; then the chulos, lithe, young, graceful; then the picadores on their garrons, Mexican-looking in their saddles, with tall pummel and crupper and shovel-shaped stirrups, wide-leafed sombreros, their short jackets tagged all over, their yellow breeches and their high boots lead-lined; then the banderilleros, and then the matador, the chieftain of the troop. The alguazil beseeches the key of the toril from the Governor, receives it, turns it in the lock; and as the bull with dazed vision enters into the sunshine at one gate, he disappears at an amble through another.
The bull! What a n.o.ble specimen of his race!--broad-browed, clean-horned, and clean-limbed; high courage in his bloodshot orbs, his dilated nostril, and his lashing tail! On the right and left the quadrille arrange themselves, the picadores, each with a spike at the end of his long shaft, and a kerchief bandaging one eye of his horse; the chulos, pretty fellows in turban, loose embroidered jackets, ruffled shirts, kneebreeches of coquettish hue and texture, silken hose and buckled shoes, standing, with their cloaks, nearer to the centre of the ring. All these toreadores are men of symmetry and power, all wear chignons in nets, and are close-shaven, except as to side-whiskers of the brief "mutton-chop" order, and all bear themselves as if they were proud of their vocation. The bull waits. The chulos give challenge. They rush upon him, shaking their gaudy little cloaks, and as he charges they scamper to the sides, while one takes up the running from another. In short, they tease him as much for the sake of tiring him out as of testing his disposition. But by-and-by one chulo ingeniously leads the charging bull towards a horse. Toro rushes head-foremost. The picador is unequal to keep him off with his spike; the horse is gored in the belly and overthrown, the rider falling under. The chulos cl.u.s.ter to the rescue, with their fluttering cloaks, and draw the bull away confused.
The picador is extricated; the horse is taken out, and in a few moments after re-enters, his entrails packed inside and stomach sewn up, and is once more offered to the maddened brute, always on his blind side. We shall hurry over this episode of the tournament; I do not like it, nor do you. But here is something really fine. The banderilleros enter, with barbed shafts decked with ribbons, poised in each hand, and make a feinting advance on the bull, and as he runs to meet them they deftly hurl their shafts and elude him by a demi-volte. The act of doing this well is to plant one banderilla on each side of the bull"s neck, close by the streaming favours that mark the herd from which he is furnished--the colours of his stable, so to speak--to plant them evenly and at equal distances from his crest, and when this is skilfully accomplished there are frantic yells of praise, and caps and cigars are showered into the arena. When the banderillero is awkward, they rain on him with potatoes. These banderilleros incur hazard. I have seen one so keenly chased by the bull that he was pinned against the barriers by the bull"s horns as he was in the act of vaulting over. Pinned, but not in the flesh; the branching horns stuck in the wood at either side, just above the calf of one leg, and imprisoned him until he had to be sawed out.
This is but the prologue; now for the play. Toro by this time is in a white rage; there is foam at his chaps, his steaming sides are laced with blood. Cucharra of Puerto Santa Maria is the matador. Majestically he strides towards the Governor"s box, stoops in obeisance, and in a loud voice makes proclamation: "Brindo por Puerto Santa Maria, por toda su compania, por el vulgo de Madrid; voy a matar ese bicho o el bicho me mata a mi;" an address which may thus be freely rendered: "I pledge myself to Puerto Santa Maria and all its society, and to the people of Madrid; and now I am ready to kill this animal, if the animal cannot kill me." He removes his turban, and, with a graceful jerk with his right hand from behind his back over his left shoulder, flings it into the Governor"s box, as a gage of his boasted prowess. He takes his straight keen-tempered sword and his cloak of offensive scarlet, and advances towards the bull. Now is the supreme trial, now is the time when men let their lighted cigarettes drop from their mouths and clench their teeth; now is the time when women close their fans and draw long breaths. Cucharra faces Toro at a yard"s distance. They regard each other. Cucharra hides his sword under his cloak, and presents it to the bull. Toro lowers his head, shuts his eyes, and charges, but the toreador gracefully slips aside and saves his life by a turn of the heel. Three times he repeats the feat of this risksome pirouette; but woe to him if he is an instant too late in his movements, or if the soil is treacherous. The fourth time, as the bull lowers his head, Cucharra lifts himself on his toes, and with one sure swift blow plunges the blade, almost to the hilt, into the spine of his antagonist. The bull stands; there is a shout of "Bravo!" the bull still stands, ten seconds, twenty, thirty; there is a howl of disappointment; but Cucharra gazes contemptuously around; he knows he has done his work well, and, my faith, he has. Toro quivers and drops, and Cucharra plants a foot on the neck of his prostrate enemy. The bull has died of internal haemorrhage; not a drop of blood has distilled from his mouth. Bravo, Cucharra!
This death at the first thrust--death without drip of the crimson fluid from the mouth--is the artistic death. When the sword pierces at the wrong spot, is displaced by the shaking of the bull, and sent flying, gore-wet, through the air, it is awkward workmanship.
But Toro showed "mucho fuego" before he was so neatly pierced in the medulla. Bravo, Toro! And now the cachetero stoops over him, and, with one dig of his sharp knife in the neck, makes a.s.surance doubly sure. The team of mules trot in, and trot out again with the dead champion at their heels; and the urchins outside are dancing on his carcase as the drums and tymbals give prelude to the entrance of a second champion into the enthusiastic circle.
The slimy pools in the arena are promptly strewn with sand, and the fresh bull is ushered into the lists, either against the same quadrille, or against another espada with his special troop of a.s.sistants. Some of the brutes are self-possessed, as that "proud and stately steer" Harpado of Xarama, who was matched with Ganzul the Moor.
"Dark is his hide on either side, but the blood within doth boil, And the dun hide glows, as if on fire, as he paws to the turmoil, His eyes are jet, and they are set in crystal rings of snow; But now they stare with one red glare of bra.s.s upon the foe."
All in vain, Toro. Thy fate is sealed. Useless to prance round with defiance, to bellow with unsatisfied wrath, to churn the sand with furious hoof and flash hither and thither the flaming arrows of thy glance. Thou art foredoomed, and wilt fall as surely after brave struggle as thy mate, less eager for the strife, who has to be p.r.i.c.ked up to anger, and drops at last bewildered amid the derision of the crowd. That is where I find fault with the sport. Toro who shows good fight should get his respite, like the Roman gladiator who pleased the mult.i.tude.
Still, is his fate to be deplored? Confess, is it not rather to be envied? He gives up his vital principle in the rapture of battle; he feels no wound but the grievous one to the combatant that he can beat down no more foes; he yields breath with a bold front; there is threat in his agony as he sinks, still with challenge in his port, amid the applause of admiring thousands. There is something of martyr-heroism in this ending. It is grander, n.o.bler, happier than to fall by the butcher"s plebeian mallet in the slaughter-house, or to succ.u.mb to the slow miseries of rinderpest. Whoso denies it will downface me next that it is fitter for the warrior to die of podagra in a four-post bed than to perish on the field with harness on his back--that dropsy at St.
Helena was more to be coveted than a bullet at Waterloo!
Tauromachy, I repeat, will last as long as Spain lasts. It will have its school and its dialect, its canons of skill expatiated upon in elaborate treatises; its honoured exponents; its impa.s.sioned amateurs and its munificent patrons; its historiographers and poets. In my devotedness to it I have sacrificed the favour of a comely English maiden, for Emmeline, who has seen through my hypocrisy in the hall, averts the light of her countenance as we sit down to dinner. I am sorry for it, for I had inclinings towards that lady, she was so attentive to her father, and she had confided to me with such a pretty frankness that she sighed for the days when Mohammad-al-Hamar was throned in Granada.
NOTE BY THE WRITER"S DAUGHTER.--The conceit of you. Emmeline, I think, was quite right to cut you, after your brutishness. No doubt you think the glorification of bull-butchery a piece of fine writing, and so original, you know. I"m up to the games of you authors; but if I were the printers I would not print one single line of it. I should just like to put a pen in the bull"s hand and read _his_ description of the fight.
CHAPTER XI.
The Shamrock of Erin and Olive of Spain--Hispano-Hibernian Regiments--The Spanish Soldier--An Unpopular Hidalgo--Flaw in the Harness--The Organization of the Army--The Guardia Civil--The Cavalry, Engineers, and Infantry--General Cordova--The Disorganization of the Army--Mutiny in Pampeluna--Officers Out of Work--Turbulent Barcelona--Irresolute Contreras--Pistolet Discharges Himself--The Madrid Garrison.
In Moore"s "Melodies" crops up a martial lyric, in which there is a jingling reference at the end of every verse to the shamrock of Erin and olive of Spain. Here is about the pith of its sentiment:
"May his tomb want a tear and a name, Who would ask for a n.o.bler, a holier death, Than to turn his last sigh into victory"s breath, For the Shamrock of Erin and Olive of Spain!"
The Blakes and O"Donnells are apostrophized; but as well as I can make out what the bard is driving at, he had Wellington and his companions in his mind"s eye.
There had been closer and earlier and longer ties than those of the campaigns against the French between Spain and Ireland. According to the annals of the Four Masters (translated by the father of the late Edmond O"Donovan), the Clanna-Milidh set sail from Galicia and invaded the Emerald Isle in the year 1698 before the Christian era. They established the Milesian dynasty, which lasted two thousand eight hundred and seventy years--rather a better record than we meet in Bulgaria, modern Greece, and sometimes even in Spain itself. Galway, _teste_ Kohl, carries the imagination to Granada and Valencia. At the beginning of the eighteenth century there were six Irish regiments at least in the Spanish service, namely, those of Hibernia, Irlanda, Limerick, Ultonia, and Waterford (all infantry), and the Dragoons of Dublin. There was also an infantry regiment called Conacia, or Wauchop, after its commander, one of a fighting family well known in the Lothians. There were officers of my name in the Limerick and Ultonia corps, as there are in the Spanish army still.[B] Most of these Irish organizations were disbanded at the close of the last century, and all had lost their purely Irish character, although the t.i.tles, Hibernia, Ultonia, and Irlanda, were retained on the list till 1833.
Naturally, and because of profession and certain a.s.sociations, I took an interest in soldiers, and, at the risk of offending the lady-reader who is waiting for the romantic part of this book, I intend to devote a chapter to the Spanish army. Such judgment as I have to offer is formed not alone upon what I saw at Madrid, but afterwards, when I had opportunity of watching the troops at work. Before going any further, I may unreservedly confess that I hold a high opinion of the Spanish soldier. He is sober, enduring, brave, and an indefatigable marcher.
Better raw material for warfare, I am sure, could not readily be come at, and I am equally sure that if more attention were paid to drill, and if the curse of morbid aspirations for promotion amongst the lower grades were more rigidly repressed, the Spanish army would regain its ancient renown. This restless and diseased ambition is not to be traced to the rank and file, but to those immediately above them, the men with a puffed-up idea of themselves, and a smattering of education, and is often developed by the connivance of their immediate superiors. Let us take an example. In 1866 there was an uprising in favour of Prim, headed by the sergeants of artillery at the San Gil barracks, in Madrid.
Captain Hidalgo was privy to the plot, which eventuated in a fiasco, but not before sundry officers of the regiment had lost their lives. A large number of the sergeants were summarily shot a few days afterwards.
Hidalgo escaped. In the November of 1872, Hidalgo, then a General, was appointed Master-General of the Ordnance by Amadeus. Amongst the artillery there is a strong _esprit de corps_, and the officers in a body declared they would resign unless the appointment were cancelled.
They did not object to Hidalgo on account of his implication in mutiny, which is a recognised inst.i.tution in the Spanish army, but because they believed he had previous knowledge that some of his brother-officers would be sacrificed, and never gave them a word of warning or raised a plea in their behalf. The want of comradeship was his crime, and the resignations of those who protested against it were accepted in a bulk.
At the time I was in Madrid the artillery was in a state of demoralisation. The captains of the scientific force were all promoted sergeants, and the old officers were idly parading the streets in plain clothes. Amadeus had certainly committed a foolish act, although he may have justified himself to himself by the reflection that in approving an appointment made by his Ministers he was behaving loyally, and that by a wholesale rejection of the demand of the discontented officers he would set up an iron precedent against insubordination. He never paused to think that he was stripping Spain of a vital portion of its harness. A sergeant may be an excellent practical gunner, and be able to lay a piece accurately; but that does not qualify him to command a battery.
Scientific acquirements and training are necessary, a mastery of technique and tactics, quickness of resource, and the habit of authority. The promoted sergeants were wanting in these essentials, and the Carlists soon found out the weak spot in the armour.
The strength of the permanent army is fixed annually by the Cortes, and every Spaniard above the age of twenty is liable to be drawn, and has to serve four years under the flag. The nation is divided for military purposes into five captain-generalcies, the commandant of each of which holds a rank corresponding to a British field-marshal. The nominal strength of the infantry in round numbers is about 60,000; artillery, 9,500; engineers, 2,300; and cavalry, 11,500. Then there are the provincial militia, some 44,000 strong; the carabineros, or revenue police, 12,000; and the Guardia Civil, 10,000. These Civil Guards are picked men, robust, strapping, seasoned fellows, and are distributed over the country like the French gendarmery, to whose duties theirs are similar. They form a _corps d"elite_, and are the very mainstay of order. In fact, without them life and property during times of political commotion would very often be at the mercy of any horde of ragam.u.f.fins with weapons in their hands and the courage to use them. They are handsomely uniformed, wearing c.o.c.ked-hats of the pattern of those to be seen in the prints of the First Napoleon, fine cloth tunics of dark blue, with epaulettes of white cord, and yellow side and cross-belts, and present a manful, soldierly appearance. From their valour and topographical knowledge they have been very serviceable in carrying on the guerrilla warfare with the Carlists, and are the terror of brigands and evil-doers. If all the troops were as orderly and well disciplined as these, Government would be easy, and those at its head might afford to be firm, regardless of mob clamour. In short, these magnificent Civil Guards are the best military force the country possesses. Some of them are mounted (and capitally mounted too), and all have an elevated notion of duty. A mutiny is never inaugurated by the Civil Guards. They stick to each other like wax, and are faithful to the powers that be, regardless of their political colour, so long as those powers are accepted by the nation. Dynasties may change and depart, as Ministries do; but the Guardia Civil is an organization immutable and goes on for ever. The one charge made against them has its warrant in necessity.
When a prisoner is sent to gaol in some remote town under escort of the Civil Guards, he often makes an attempt to run away, and is invariably shot between the shoulders. No strict inquiry into the circ.u.mstances is made--it is an understood practice--a rascal is got rid of, to the relief of the community, by a quick and economic method, which is a desirable improvement on the laggard processes of law.
The cavalry is controlled by a director-general, who has a respectable staff of subordinates at his disposal. There are only two regiments of cuira.s.siers--the 1st, or King"s; and the 2nd, or Queen"s. There are two regiments of carabineers known as Calatrava and Bailen. There are eight regiments of lancers, viz., Farnesio, Villaviciosa, Espana, Sagunto, Santiago, Montesa, Numancia, and Lusitania. The hussar regiments are but two, Pavia and the Princess"s. Prim"s son, a boy of fifteen, was captain in the former, and the veteran Espartero honorary colonel of the latter.
The name of a former colonel, Don Pedro Elio, "who died gloriously on the field of honour," like Latour d"Auvergne, first grenadier of France, is also borne on the rolls of the Princess"s. There are six regiments of mounted cha.s.seurs--namely, Almansa, Alcantara, Talavera, Albuera, Tetuan, and Castillejos, and two squadrons of Galicia and Mallorca respectively. These men, as far as I have seen, are well horsed, Andalusia furnishing some capital chargers, well-made and well-paced, and up to decent weights. There is nothing peculiar in the cavalry uniform, which is formed upon the French model. In fact, it would be difficult to distinguish the dragoons from the French dragoons, but that they have a seat and know how to keep it, and that their helmets are of a round Roman style, with a rising sun in a circuit of rays right in front.
The remount depots are at Granada and Cordoba, and there are four establishments where sires for cavalry purposes are maintained at the expense of the State--namely, Cordoba, Baeza, Llerena, and Alcala de Henares (the latter exclusively for the use of the mounted artillery).
There is also a military school for the cavalry, maintained on the same system as that of the French at Saumur.
The Engineers are quite as tall but not so st.u.r.dy as our Grenadiers, and look up to their work. This was the favourite force of Prim, and it is only second to the Guardia Civil in its obedience to const.i.tuted authorities. From what I hear the men are carefully trained in sapping and mining, though of them, as of Spanish soldiers universally, one is compelled to say that they have too much leisure, and when soldiers have too much leisure the Devil invariably finds them occupation. The value of the artillery, which had been one of the best organizations of its cla.s.s in Europe, as I have already said, at that precise epoch ranked at _nil_. Reports were circulated every day that the difficulties in this branch of the service had been arranged, but the wheels want such a dose of oil in Spain that one can never be certain that the machine is in order till it moves. The artillery is denuded of officers, and the infantry and cavalry have officers too often that are valueless; and in that lies the secret of the deterioration of an army which was once, and still might be made, capable of great things.
There are forty regiments of infantry, numbered as ours were, but known also by distinctive names, generally those of the locality in which each was originally raised. Thus the 1st Regiment is Rey, or the King"s; the 2nd, Reina, or the Queen"s; the 3rd, the Prince"s; the 4th, the Princess"s; the 5th, the Infante"s; the 6th, the Regiment of Saboya; the 7th, of Africa; and then come those with territorial t.i.tles--the Regiments of Zamora, Soria, Cordoba, San Fernando, and so on, until we reach the 40th, which is called the Regiment of Malaga. The 14th, 29th, and 30th are respectively known as the Regiments of America, of the Const.i.tucion, and of Iberia.
Each regiment consists of three battalions, except the 20th (the Guadalajara) and the 34th (the Granada), which have but two; and in each battalion there are six companies. Nominally, each company numbers about 80 rank and file, but he would be a wise man who could say how many answer to the roll-call in the existing state of disorganization.
There are twenty-four battalions of handy light troops, who are equal to almost anything human in the way of marching. Agile and untiring, sound in wind and limb, they can get over an extraordinary length of ground with a speed that would not discredit professional walkers in England.
The French foot-cha.s.seur, who can put on an astonishing spurt now and again, is no rival to the Spanish cazador.
The infantry uniform is almost exactly that of the French--long grey capote, blue tunic with the number of the regiment on the collar, and red trousers. Instead of a shako the head is protected by a projecting cap of cloth and glaze, something like a stiffened Glengarry without ribbons. Those absurd white gaiters which gather dirt so quickly when it is wet under foot, and give the French soldier incessant bother to look after their pipe-claying, are replaced in the Spanish service by calfskin buskins and black cloth spatterdashes. Few more sensible uniforms are to be met with in Europe. Properly officered, there is nothing to prevent the Spanish infantry from regaining the prestige it once held. The men have the right stuff in them, are temperate and frugal, cheerful under privation, and hardy as wild ducks. They do not want pluck either; they have the reputation of showing a good deal of dash in their pursuit of the Carlists; but that is no fair criterion of what they could do when pitted against the troops of some great Power in ordered line of battle. Good lungs are indispensable in Carlist warfare, as an officer who was hunting them for six weeks in Catalonia, and never caught one, begged me to recollect. "You want men who can breast hills,"
he said. But good lungs are valuable in a campaign anywhere, and looking at these lively, well-set Spaniards as they trot along under their packs, I must say they favourably compare with those weakly men of the French line I saw staggering to the Eastern Railway Terminus at Paris, on their way to Metz, in 1870, or with some of the lank striplings I saw defiling before Victor Emmanuel at Somma in the autumn of 1872.
The Minister of War (Cordova) and the Minister of Marine (Beranger) are good. The general and the admiral had really no politics; but they knew their respective departments better than any men in Spain. Cordova comes of a fighting family, and "ran the army," to use an expressive Americanism, under Isabella, under the Serrano-Prim Administration, under Amadeus, and would, I dare say, under Don Carlos, if he came to-morrow. In fact, the general is a military Vicar of Bray, but for the less egotistical motive that he loves his profession, and does not care to see it and Spain go to the bad, which Spain would if the army did.
But he is not a Republican, neither is Beranger; and the sovereign people will only be governed by Republicans. They will not permit men of another party even to do them a service. Therefore the general and the admiral, and their colleagues of the Finance, Public Works, and the Colonies, have patriotically made up their minds to retire. Thus, for the moment, stands Spain, ruled by an a.s.sembly divided against itself and an Executive in a state of dissolution.
Meanwhile the army is hurrying to the devil at the double-quick. The troops which fell back on Pampeluna, after the affair at Monreal, broke into open mutiny a few days afterwards. Some of them raised cries in favour of Don Carlos, others in favour of Don Alfonso; and the majority threw up their caps and shouted enthusiastically for the Republic, meaning always that Federal Republic which they did not understand, and which had not yet been created. The latter demonstration was quite as much a breach of discipline in its way as the others. It was stated that agents of the Carlist party, which was strong in Pampeluna, provoked these disturbances in the first instance, plying the men with liquor, and supplying them with money. At all events, that is how the Government accounts for the outbreak. In their turn the Republicans got excited, and instigated the soldiers to demand that the thirteen Carlist prisoners they had taken should be shot without trial or benefit of clergy, in defiance of the laws of honourable warfare. These Republicans are not scrupulous. They talked of ma.s.sacring all the Carlist sympathizers in Pampeluna--in short, of commencing a sort of Sicilian Vespers on a smaller scale; and so threatening did their att.i.tude become at one period, that the priests in the town had to disguise themselves as peasants and fly to the mountains, and the laymen who were suspected of a love for Royalty had to block up their doors and windows. This was what one of the few trustworthy journals of Madrid, _El Imparcial_, related, and may account for the inactivity of the gallant General Nouvilas quite as much as that sore throat which confined him to his room.
In Catalonia the disorganization was worse. The battalion of Cha.s.seurs of Manila separated into several parties, which were wandering over the province, spreading terror wherever they went. The patriotism of the volunteers of the Republic had been invoked to try and bring them back to discipline. Such an attempt might lead to combats that would have the result of embittering still more the spirit of the freebooters, which those soldiers were in the fullest sense of the word. Persuasion by gunpowder, when employed by irregulars, seldom pacifies regulars. Either of two events was possible--those soldiers would get the better of the volunteers, or might turn over to the side of Don Carlos. Meantime the Carlist bands in the province are increasing, and have the field pretty much to themselves. Four hundred officers of the army came to Madrid the other day, and are now walking about the capital _en pekin_. Like the frozen-out gardeners who parade London suburbs in the depth of a hard winter, they"ve "got no work to do," but, unlike those impostors, they are really anxious for a job. I have chatted with some of those officers, and I know several of them would not be averse to flashing a sword for the son of their former Queen. They had to leave their regiments because they could no longer command them. The bonds of discipline were completely smashed. The men were unmanageable. In some barracks Phrygian caps were as common as the regulation head-gear. The sergeants of the line, jealous of the promotion of the sergeants of the artillery, thought they should have their turn; and the privates did not see the justice of volunteers being offered two pesetas, or about 1s.
7d. a day, while they, who did more and better work, encountered more risks, and suffered more hardships, received but a miserable pittance of a few pence. The general in command was recalled, and Contreras sent down in his place. He has a reputation as an unimpeachable Republican, one of old standing, and not "for this occasion only;" and much faith was reposed in the influence of his name. But Contreras failed to charm; and, indeed, he appears to have gone the wrong way about his business.
An officer whom he put under reprimand went to two barracks and tried to rouse the men to mutiny. He failed; but the men were so little careful of discipline that they let him depart in peace. At last two adjutants on the personal staff of Contreras arrested him and brought him before the General. What course did the General, whose authority had been thus grossly set at defiance, adopt? Order the offender to be shot? No. That would be the mode in a serious army. But Contreras is not Suwarrow. He dismissed the mutineer in epaulettes with a fatherly admonition--appealed to his better feelings. In all likelihood, General Contreras felt that he could not afford to be justly severe. The army was too restive.
Private letters from Barcelona do not mince the matter. The few columns which went out against the Carlists refused to march unless they were headed by detachments of Republican volunteers. The officers ran serious personal risks in their quarters. One of them was condemned to death by a mock court-martial of his own men, and was actually put on his knees preliminary to being shot, when a sergeant interposed, and harangued his comrades into moderation. But all the sergeants have not the good sense and courage of that worthy fellow. Some privates in Barcelona have been trying to have their own profit out of the Republic, by discharging themselves from further service without as much as asking leave; they have sold their uniforms to the dealers in old clo", and are going about the streets in peasant dress, making no secret of their intention to give up the trade of fighting. The great anxiety of the Republican man-at-arms in Spain is to turn his sword-bayonet into a sickle, and his rifle into a mattock. That is what he pretends; I hope he has not a sly hope of vegetating for the rest of his days in lazy vagabondage, with occasional spasms of brigandage just to keep his hand in at shooting. A training in the Spanish army is not exactly the thing to fit for the peaceful and toilsome monotony of industrial occupations.
The battalions of cazadores of Merida and Barcelona, in garrison at Valencia, exhibited symptoms of discontent; but the officers were on the alert, and checked them on the spot. That is the only plan--nip the evil in the bud. It is the custom in Spain to confine troops to barracks during times of popular commotion. The artillery quartered at Valladolid caught the contagion of mutiny, and would have broken their bounds but for the prompt arrival of the captain-general and military governor, who succeeded with some trouble in pacifying them. These unpleasant tokens are not confined to the land forces; they are said to have spread to the sailors and marines. A steamer was under orders to leave the port of Barcelona the other night, but the crew emphatically refused to go; they argued that they were ent.i.tled to be paid off, and enjoy liberty on sh.o.r.e, under the benign regulations of the Republic. To be brutally candid, the army has taken the bit between its teeth and bolted. I fear I am repeating a twice-told tale, but it is well that it should be impressed on the reader, that he may know what the cuckoo-cry of "No army" signifies. One of the leading points of the programme of the Spanish Republicans out of office was that a soldier was a machine, and that no soldier should exist in a free nation. Now that the Republicans are in office the soldiers take them at their word, and claim their discharges. The machinery is out of gear. The Republicans never contemplated that they would require soldiers to put down a civil war.