Romantic Spain Volume II Part 5

For reply, the driver pointed with his whip to a wall, under the lee of which a party of at least fifty armed men, portion of the main body from which the outpost of three had been detached, were smoking, chatting, or sleeping. The commercial traveller relapsed into silence. We met with no further adventure in our ride to the frontier, but experienced much fatigue.

CHAPTER VIII.

On the Wing--Ordered to the Carlist Headquarters--Another _Pet.i.t Paris_--Carlists from Cork--How Leader was Wounded--Beating-up for an Anglo-Irish Legion--Pontifical Zouaves--A Bad Lot--Oddities of Carlism--Santa Cruz Again--Running a Cargo--On Board a Carlist Privateer--A Descendant of Kings--"Oh, for an Armstrong Twenty-Four Pounder!"--Crossing the Border--A Remarkable Guide--Mountain Scenery--In Navarre--Challenged at Vera--Our Billet with the Parish Priest--The Sad Story of an Irish Volunteer--Dialogue with Don Carlos--The Happy Valley--Bugle-Blasts--The Writer in a Quandary--The Fifth Battalion of Navarre--The Distribution of Arms--The Bleeding Heart--Enthusiasm of the Chicos.

AFTER a short stay in London I was despatched to Stockholm, to attend the coronation of Oscar II of Sweden and his spouse, which took place in the Storkyrkan, on the 12th of May. At the Hotel Rydberg I met my Madrid acquaintance, Mr. Russell Young, who was a bird of pa.s.sage like myself, and had just arrived from Vienna, where he had been detailing the ceremonial at the opening of the International Exhibition in the Prater.

While enjoying myself at a ball at the Norwegian Minister's, I received a telegraphic message, ordering me at once to the Austrian capital. I was very sorry to leave, for I was delighted with peaceful airy Stockholm and the free-hearted Swedes--it was such a change after Spain; but I had neither license nor leisure to grumble, and flitted to Vienna as fast as steam could carry me. The Weltausstellung did not prove to be a lodestone, although in justice it must be admitted it was one of the finest shows ever planned, and was fixed in one of the most agreeable of sites. It was too far away, however, to attract the British public, and there were rumours of cholera lurking in the Kaiserstadt; so I was recalled, but to be sent to Spain once more. My mission was to penetrate, if possible, to the headquarters of the Carlists, with the view of giving a fair and full report of the strength, peculiarities, and prospects of their movement.

At the London office of the sympathizers with the cause I was furnished with the address of certain Carlists in confidential positions in France, and letters were sent on in advance, so as to secure me a favourable reception. Armed with a sheet of flimsy stamped in blue with the escutcheon of Charles VII., and the legend "Secretaria Militar de Londres," and with, what was more potent, a big credit on a banking-house, I started afresh on the now familiar route.

Before undertaking the journey into the territory in revolt I halted at Bayonne to procure the necessary pa.s.ses. These were obtained with ease from the Junta sitting in the Rue des Ecoles, the members of which professed that they desired nothing so much as the presence of the representatives of impartial foreign journals, so that the truth about the struggle should be made known to the rest of Europe. From Bayonne I proceeded to Biarritz, where I had a conference with the Duke de La Union de Cuba, a warm Carlist partisan, to whom I had an introduction, and thence I went to St. Jean de Luz, a drowsy, quaint, world-forgotten nook. A _pet.i.t Paris_ it was called in a vaunting quatrain by some minstrel of yore. But Brussels may be comforted. It is nothing of the kind, but something infinitely better. The breezes from the main and the mountains, from the Bay of Biscay and the Pyrenees, conspire to supply it with ozone. There is music in the boom of the surf as it pulsates regularly on the velvet sands of a semicircular inlet, where dogs frisk and youngsters gambol in the sunshine.

In a hotel on the edge of that inlet, the Fonda de la Playa, where I put up, a young Irish gentleman named Leader was recuperating from a severe wound in the leg. He had received it in the service of Don Carlos, in a skirmish near Azpeitia, where he was the only man hit. He was out with a party of the guerrilleros, and came across a company of the Madrid troops. To encourage his own people, or rather the people with whom he had cast in his fortunes, he went well to the front, and mounting on a bank of earth, hurled defiance at the enemy. He was picked down by a stray shot, and if he had been taken prisoner it is probable that he would have paid for his temerity with his life. The Spaniards were not clement towards foreigners who interposed in their domestic quarrel.

Leader was carried off by his companions and secreted in a peasant's hut. The troops, swearing vengeance, searched the hut next to it, but, by some accident, failed to continue the quest to the refuge of the wounded man. He bled profusely, but the haemorrhage was finally arrested by some rude bandaging, and at night he was helped astride a donkey, and conveyed across the frontier into France. He told me he had suffered excruciating torments at every jolt of the jog-trotting animal on that mountain journey. Had the bullet struck him an inch higher he would have had to suffer amputation; but his luck stood to him, and at the time we met he was getting on fairly towards recovery, thanks to youth, a good const.i.tution, and the healthy air of St. Jean de Luz. I could not understand the ardour of Leader's partisanship for the Carlists. He spoke the merest smattering of Spanish, and had no profound intimacy with the vexed question of Spanish politics or the rights of the rival Spanish houses. The ill-natured whispered that he was crying "Viva la Republica" when he was knocked over. It is possible, for he had fought for the French Republic with Bourbaki's army, and may, in his excitement, have forgotten under what flag he was serving. I take it he was a soldier by instinct, and ranged himself on the side of Don Carlos more from the love of adventure than from any other motive. He was a fine athletic young fellow, with a handsome determined cast of features.

He had been an ensign in the 30th Foot, and had resigned his commission to enjoy a spell of active service when the Franco-German war was proclaimed. That he had behaved bravely in the campaign which led to internment in Switzerland was evidenced by the ribbon of the Legion of Honour which he wore. Leader was very anxious that an Anglo-Irish legion in aid of Don Carlos should be organized. I felt it my duty to warn those to whom he appealed to think twice before they embarked on such a crusade. He was very wroth with me for having thrown cold water on the project, but that did not affect me. I had more experience of such follies than he, and my conscience approved me. A man may be justified in playing with his own life, but he should be slow in playing with the lives of others. He prepares a vexing responsibility for himself if he is sensitive.

In the next room to Leader was a fellow-enthusiast, Mr. Smith Sheehan, an ex-officer of Pontifical Zouaves, and son of a popular and eccentric town-councillor of Cork. He was an agile stripling, skilled in all gymnastic exercises. He had also done some fighting with the Carlists, and was in France on furlough, which the soldiers in the Royalist force appeared to have no insuperable difficulty in getting. He told me there was a large infusion of his old regiment amongst the guerrilleros, and that they helped to bind the partisan levies in the withes of discipline. Most of them had smelt gunpowder at Mentana and Patay. The famous cabecilla, Sab.a.l.l.s, had been a captain at Rome, and Captain Wills, a Dutchman, who had been killed in a brush at Igualada, had been sergeant-major in Sheehan's company.

There was another ex-British officer of short service, who had a remarkably imposing and well-cultivated growth of moustache. He was a violent doctrinaire Carlist, but suffered from a chronic malady which prevented him from taking the field; still there was none who could plot with a more tremendous air of mystery. He was a Carlist because it was "the correct thing" to be one in the fashionable ring at St. Jean de Luz, where he had settled, and because he inherited a name a.s.sociated with chivalric insurrection. For the sake of his family I shall call him Barbarossa. He was no honour to his house, for he was an inveterate gambler, and was not careful in discharging the obligations he wantonly contracted. He is dead. His death was no loss to society. In fact, if the whole host of gamblers, lock, stock and barrel, were swept by a fairy-blast to the regions of thick-ribbed ice, the world would be the gainer.

When I left Spain, Carlism was to be put down in a fortnight--in Madrid.

Now it threatened to last as long as a Chinese play. The Royalists--I suppose they had earned the t.i.tle to be so named by their perseverance--had achieved numerous small successes which had raised their _morale_, and they were being supplied with arms of precision from abroad, and trained to their use. They had even taken some mountain-guns from their enemy. Leader made me laugh with his accounts of Lizarraga shouting "Artilleria al frente!" and a couple of mules, with one wretched little piece, moving forward; and of the intimidating clatter made by three shrunk cavaliers in cuira.s.ses a world too wide for them, and alpargatas, trotting up a village street. The alpargata is the mountain-shoe of canvas, with a hempen sole, worn by the Basque peasants. The a.s.sociation of surcoats of mail and rope slippers is incongruous; but what does that reck? Those cuira.s.ses were _spolia opima_.

And Santa Cruz?

The honest gentleman had retired into private life. His excesses had raised such a storm of opprobrium against the Carlists that they had to request him to desist. Lizarraga summoned him to render himself up a prisoner. "Come and take me," replied Santa Cruz. Santa Cruz had near two thousand followers; Lizarraga a few hundred. Lizarraga declined the invitation. But the priest caused seven-and-twenty Carabineros, taken prisoners at the bridge of Endarlasa, near Irun, to be shot, and this filled the cup to overflowing. The Carlists averred they would slay him; the Republicans vowed they would garrote him for a Madrid holiday; the French Government declared its intention of putting him under lock and key if it caught him within its jurisdiction. His band was disarmed "by order of the King," and dispersed, and the Cura himself nebulously vanished--whither we may see anon.

There was a large accretion to the population of St. Jean de Luz in Iberian refugees, and as they sat and conversed under the foliage of the public promenade, frequent sighs might be overheard, and remarks that if this sort of thing were to go on, "Spain would soon be in as bad a condition as France." At all hours there came to the beach poor exiles of Spain, who turned their eyes sadly to the line where sky met ocean.

Of what were their thoughts--of home and friends, of the flutters of the casino or the ecstasies of the bull-ring? If they were looking for the Spanish fleet they did not see it, for a reason as old as the "Critic." It was not in sight. They came down in numbers in front of my hotel at nine o'clock on the morning of Monday, July 28th, a few days after my arrival, when a strange yellow funnel turned the point, and a long low Red-Roverish three-masted schooner-yacht steamed into Socoa, the roadstead of St. Jean de Luz. If the exiles were correctly informed, that was the Spanish fleet in a sense--the notorious Carlist privateer, the _San Margarita_, which had recently landed arms and ammunition for the Royalists at Lequeieto and elsewhere. She had been doing a stroke of business in the same line that morning. In the grey dawn she had dropped into the embouchure of the Bida.s.soa, at a few hundred yards from the town of Fontarabia. The work was well and quickly done. Boats requisitioned by friends on land put off to her, and returned laden with bales of merchandise. These artless bales were packages of breechloaders, with bayonets to match, wrapped in sail-cloth. As soon as they were received on sh.o.r.e they were distributed amongst some thousands of Carlists in waiting, who at once proceeded to fix bayonets, fall into ranks, and with shouts of exultation march off in good order.

Meanwhile, the "volunteers of liberty," as the Basque Republicans called themselves, ensconced their persons out of range in a sort of castle beside the church of Fontarabia's "wooded height," and amused themselves taking pot-shots at the rising sun. But they did not venture from their shelter; they knew a large body of armed Royalists were watching their movements from the summit of Cape Higuer, and only awaited the provoke to pounce down upon and swallow them. A detachment of Frenchmen from the frontier hamlet of Hendaye quietly took up ground on the strand to see that there was no breach of neutrality, and had an uninterrupted view of the whole operation. As soon as the daring little privateer had done her work she innocently steamed to Socoa; the Carlists on the hills waved adieu and disappeared; the French soldiers returned to their quarters; and the Fontarabian "volunteers of liberty "--well, most probably they swore terribly, and effected a masterly retrograde movement on the nearest posada.

I had a call to board the _San Margarita_. Not a boat could be had in St. Jean de Luz for love or money; the pa.s.sage from the sea into the harbour is narrow, and the fishermen, though hardy navigators, are shy of facing the current when the sea is rough. Leader and myself walked by the goat-path on the crags leading to the southern side of the harbour so as to avoid the bar, and succeeded in chartering a skiff at Socoa. A quarter of an hour's pull brought us alongside the yacht, and on sending up our cards we were at once invited on board by the owner. To my surprise I discovered that the entire crew was British, as reckless a set of dare-devils as ever cut out a craft from under an enemy's guns.

The skipper, Mr. Travers, was a Cork man, an ex-officer of the Indian Navy, who had lost a finger during the Mutiny; but the life and soul of the enterprise was an ex-officer of the Austrian and Mexican armies, Charles-Edward Stuart, Count d'Albanie, great-grandson of "the Young Pretender." His uncle, John Sobieski Stuart, had resigned his claim to the throne of England on his behalf,[C] so that I actually shook the hand of the man who under other circ.u.mstances might be wielding the sceptre of that empire on which the sun never sets. Instead of a crown he wore the genuine old Highland bonnet--not that modern innovation, the military feather-bonnet. In face this descendant of royalty was an unmistakable Stuart, with the characteristic aquiline nose, and a proud dignity of expression. He might have sat for the portrait of Charles the Martyr-King, by Vandyck, in Windsor. He was a convinced and earnest supporter of the claims of Carlos Septimo, whom he regarded as a cousin, and a sort of modern counterpart of the young Chevalier, the "darling Charlie" of Jacobite minstrelsy. He received us with the hospitality of his nation, and we had a long chat as we paced the deck briskly, the Count discussing the prospects of the rising, and then verging off into gay anecdotes of his military career in Austria, and inquiries after mutual acquaintances in London. By-and-by Captain Travers made his appearance, a tall weather-beaten navigator in orthodox naval dress, with a gla.s.s in his eye. He bowed severely to the Stuart, who as coldly returned his salute. It was easy to perceive that there was a restraint in the demeanour of the men on both sides; but there was a tacit armistice for the occasion. I heard afterwards that they did not talk to each other, except on strict matters of duty, and when taking their short walks on deck, one confined himself religiously to the larboard, the other to the starboard. Travers took me in tow, while the alert Count with his quick manner strode to and fro with Leader, and kept up a jerky fire of conversation nearly all to himself, occasionally twirling his peaked beard. Travers and I lolled over the bulwarks, and laughed and sampled the contents of an aqua-vitae bottle, "Special Jury" whisky from Ireland, and I learned that this ill-a.s.sorted pair had been sharing some close hazards on their audacious cruiser.

A few days previously they had been chased by _El Aspirante_, a Spanish gun-boat, which gave them eight shots. One caught them on the port quarter, and shivered some timbers, but effected no more serious damage.

"I wish we had only an Armstrong twenty-four pounder close handy," said the mate, "and we'd have saved them 'ere dons the price of a coffin, I'd take my davy!"

From what I saw of the seamen, I think this was no empty boast. Some of them had served with one Captain Semmes on a certain craft called the _Alabama_, and had been picked up after the fight with the _Keasarge_, off Cherbourg, by Mr. John Lancaster's yacht, the _Deerhound_. There is no need for concealment now, so that I may freely admit that the _Deerhound_ and the _San Margarita_ were one and the same. Travers, who was in love with the yacht, told me if he had another blade to the screw he could give leg-bail to the fastest ship in the Spanish navy. At leaving, I was asked to take a trip with them; they were about to visit their floating a.r.s.enal in the Bay of Biscay, load, and try to run another cargo. I respectfully declined--fortunately for myself; my orders were to get to the Carlist headquarters, not to go playing Paul Jones.

Leader and Smith Sheehan were about to cross the border, and readily acceded to my request to form one of the party. We rose at daybreak next morning and looked out of window for the _San Margarita_. The roadstead of Socoa was a blank. She had steamed away during the night. After the customary chocolate we started blithely, in a light basket-carriage with a pair of fast-trotting ponies, that whisked us in less than two hours to the foot of the Pyrenees. Here we had to alight, the road up the mountain being impracticable for vehicles. A boy guide was in waiting to show us over the border by the smuggler's path--a wild short-cut through a labyrinth of brushwood. The guide was a remarkable youth in his way; he understood not a syllable of French or Spanish, and spoke only Basque which none of us comprehended, so that our parley with him was somewhat uninteresting. Yet I was anxious to elicit the opinions of that guide. A lad who could strike the path up the mountain with such truth might, by some instinct, have seen his way through Spanish politics. Our walk was a trial of endurance. I had traversed the Pyrenees in snow, and that was fatiguing enough in all conscience; but now the sun was beating cruelly on the parched herbage, and plodding up the ascent was like treading burning marl. I had to cry halt half-a-dozen times before we reached the summit; and yet that marvellous guide, with the baggage of all three on his head, kept on with a springy step and serene smile, like the youth in "Excelsior." It was an alternation of wheezing and stumbling with me, with a continuous ooze of perspiration, till I arrived heaving and panting on the crown of the ridge, and flung myself on the turf beside a pile of planking fresh from the woodcutter's axe. There was no further need to be wary, for this was Spain. We were over the border, and now my companions could breathe freely in every sense. Before they had pa.s.sed the imaginary line they were liable to be arrested by the gendarmes, conducted back and interned, for they had that about their persons which betrayed that they were no innocent travellers. At every noise ahead, a scud was made to the cover of the tall ferns and brambles by the wayside, and an advance party of one was thrown out to reconnoitre. The precautions were superfluous, if we knew but all. From the 15th of July, the French patrols had got the hint to be blind. So lax was the cordon on the day we crossed, that a brigade of Carlists, each man with a repeating rifle on his shoulder and two revolvers in his belt, might have gone into Spain and never have had their sight offended by a solitary French uniform.

The view from the comb of the hills, as grasped on a sunny day, repays all the toil and trouble of the ascent; and looking round, one begins to realize the fascination of mountain-climbing. On one side extend the plains of France, washed by the greenish-blue waves of the Bay of Biscay, and studded as with pearls by the coast-towns of Fontarabia, St. Jean de Luz, Biarritz, Bayonne, and so on northwards till the vision fails. On the other side rise in convoluting swells the mountains of Navarre and Guipuzcoa, their slopes dyed in every shade of green from gra.s.s and lichen, shrub and tree, except where the naked rocks, bursting with ore, expose themselves. Iron, lead, silver, are all to be found in the bosom of the earth in this richest and most beautiful of lands.

Nature has been lavish beyond measure, and man, instead of using her gifts, has ungratefully diverted them for generations to the purposes of guerrilla warfare and cheating the Custom-House officers. But this high moral tone hardly sits well on a man who was aiding and abetting the entry of a couple of foreign free-lances, on homicidal thoughts intent, and perhaps doing a stroke of contraband on his own account. We suffered no molestation; but others might not have escaped unpleasantness. The agent of a Hatton Garden jeweller might have had to pay toll, if the story were true that a few of the dispersed "Black Legion" had got off with their rifles and started a joint-stock company in the bush-whacking line, and were doing a pretty fair business.

The descent on the Spanish side was almost precipitous, and had to be effected with exceeding care. At times we ran down the track, rugged with sharp crags, almost head foremost, and only saved ourselves from falling by clinging to the nearest sapling. But there is an end to everything, and at last we came on the road that dips into the village of Echalar, in the district of Pampeluna, province of Navarre. Here we dismissed our guide, and here I encountered, for the first time, a regularly organized Carlist company, detached from the fifth battalion of Navarre, which was in garrison at Vera, some eight miles distant; but as I shall have opportunity to speak of the entire battalion soon, I defer comment on its appearance.

My companions were desirous of pushing forward, and the provisional alcalde of the village gave us a trap to take us on. There is an excellent road by the mountain-side, until a tunnel to the right is reached, when we entered a most picturesque, well-wooded defile, through which the Bida.s.soa pours its waters. We dashed along gaily until we came in sight of the steeple of the church of Vera at twilight.

A cry of "Who goes there?" from the gloom arrested us at the entrance of the town.

Leader sung out, "Espana."

Again came the sentinel's cry, "What people?" and cheerily ran the answer, "Voluntarios de Carlos Septimo!"

"Pa.s.s," was the reply; and we took the street at a trot, and pulled up at the door of the parish priest's dwelling, where the Irish soldiers of fortune promised me a billet for the night. The kindly pastor was equal to expectations; we had a cordial welcome, a good dinner, and beds with clean sheets.

Sad tidings met my companions--those of the death of a young friend, Mr.

John Scannel Taylor, a native of Cork, in the service of Don Carlos. A few months previously he had been a promising law student in the Queen's University of Ireland, with every prospect of a bright career before him. He arrived from England in the middle of June, and attached Himself to the partida of General Lizarraga in order to be near his fellow-countryman, Smith Sheehan. Previous to Mr. Sheehan's returning to Bayonne with despatches, he tossed up a coin to decide whether he or Taylor should have the choice of the duty. Poor Taylor won, and elected to remain with Lizarraga, as there was likelihood of fighting at hand.

The very next day Yvero, where the Republicans held a strongly-intrenched position, was attacked, and the young Irish volunteer made himself conspicuous in the onset. While advancing in the open, setting a pattern of bravery to all by the steady way he delivered his fire, the gallant fellow was struck by a bullet in the leg. He kept on limping until he was touched a second time in the arm, but still he persevered with a dogged courage, when a third bullet struck him in the forehead, and he dropped with outspread arms, raising a little cloud of dust. He must have been stone-dead before he reached the ground. His conduct was "muy valiente," so said his Spanish comrades. He was picked up after the affair, and decently interred side by side with two officers who met their deaths in his company. This was the first time he was under fire, as it was the last; but there is a fatality in those things.

This young Irishman, Taylor, was luckier than some of his fellows in one respect. Short as he had been in the service, he had attracted the notice of Don Carlos. His comrade Sheehan and he were pointed out to "the King" by Lizarraga as two modest deserving young soldiers who had offered to fight in the ranks--a trait of unselfishness that must have astonished the Carlist leaders, as most of the volunteers they had from France came out with the full intention of commanding brigades, when divisions were not to be had.

"I wish I had a thousand like them," said Lizarraga, who was a genuine soldier, and one of the few Spaniards not unjust to foreigners.

Don Carlos shook hands with Mr. Taylor and thanked him. His Majesty spoke some few minutes in French with Mr. Sheehan, and, as the conversation gives some insight into Carlism, I may venture to repeat it.

Don Carlos.--"You have served before?"

Irish Soldier.--"Yes, sire, in the Pontifical Zouaves."

Don Carlos.--"Ha! good. In the same company with my brother, perhaps?"

Irish Soldier.--"No; but I had the privilege of knowing Don Alfonso."

Don Carlos.--"He is in Catalonia now, and has many of your old companions in arms with him. You are serving the same cause here as in Rome--the cause of religion and of order and of legitimate right."

Irish Soldier (bowing).--"I should not be here if I did not feel that, your Majesty."

Don Carlos (smiling).--"I thank you sincerely. General Lizarraga tells me you are Irish."

Irish Soldier.--"I come from the south of Ireland, sire."

Don Carlos.--"A country I feel much sympathy for. She has been very unhappy, has she not? Are things better now?"

Irish Soldier.--"For some years Ireland has been, improving, sire."

Don Carlos.--"That is well. She deserves better fortune, for she has a n.o.ble, faithful people."

Don Carlos drew back a pace and made a stiff military nod; the Irishman brought his rifle to the "present arms," turned on his heel, and marched back to the ranks, and thus the interview terminated.

The valley in which the little town of Vera nestles might have been that where Ra.s.selas was brought up, so secluded, smiling, and peaceful it looks. The Bida.s.soa, famous in tales of the Peninsular War, flows through it, no doubt; but the Bida.s.soa here is a trout stream winding through meadows and fields of maize, and thoughts of bloodshed are the last that would occur to anyone contemplating its mild current. The mountains walling in the vale are lined with growths of heather, fern, and blossoming furze to their very crests, and the verdurous picture they hem is one of poetic calm and plenty. Labourers are digging away in the fields below, the tinkle of cow-bells is heard from the pastures, and anon blends with their Arcadian music the soft chiming of church-bells summoning to prayer; there is a mill with its clacking wheel, and a foundry with a tuft of smoke curling from its chimney; orchards and vineyards lie side by side with patches of corn, and along the high-road peasants pa.s.s and repa.s.s, shortening their way with song and laughter, and strings of mules or droves of swine scamper by.

Another Sweet Auburn of Goldsmith, in another Happy Valley of Johnson, this cosy Vera with its river and trees would seem to any English tourist ignorant of its history; but how the English tourist would be misled! Though the peasants laugh and sing, and the labourers dig, and there are outer tokens of peace, there is no peace in the valley or town; there are sights and sounds there of war, and that of the worst kind--civil war. The mill is grinding corn for the commissariat stores, the foundry turns out shot instead of ploughshares, the boxes on the mules' backs are packed with ammunition. If you listen, you will hear the roll of drums and the shrill blowing of bugles more often than the soothing bells; if you watch, you will notice that not one man in ten is unprovided with a firearm, for this quiet-looking place is the very hotbed of Carlism; the insurrectionary headquarters for the province of Navarre; the a.r.s.enal and recruiting depot for all the provinces in revolt. The disciples of the rod have fled from it, and those of the musket have come in their stead.