Part 9

Meanwhile, the capital anxiously awaited news from the provinces, where insurrections were expected to occur. Madrid itself continued perfectly tranquil, although occasional rumours of an intended popular rising alarmed the government. The excitement of the first three days subsided into a strong interest. There was great eagerness for news from the insurgents, and much difficulty in learning anything authentic, especially when once they had left Aranjuez. Save the government and its hangers-on and personal adherents, all Madrid was for the insurrection, and heartily wished it well. The recent compulsory advance of half a year’s taxes, extorted from the people by a notoriously corrupt and grasping government, had greatly incensed the Madrileños, who did not scruple openly to express their good wishes for Generals O’Donnell and Dulce, the most prominent personages of the day and of the movement. Although the insurrection deprived Madrid of two things which it can ill do without, bull-fights and strawberries, not a murmur was heard on this account. Aranjuez is the strawberry garden of Madrid, and from it daily comes an abundant supply of that fruit, particularly grateful in this hot climate. I suppose that the insurgents, who had been for three days roasting in the shadeless desert that surrounds this capital, needed refreshment, and eat up all the strawberries, or else that the want of a railway—that to Aranjuez being partly in the hands of the government, and partly in those of O’Donnell, and cut in the middle—precluded their being sent. As for bull-fights, it was no time for them when man-fights were going on; and moreover, the gates of Madrid were for several days shut—besides which, some of the bull-fighters are said to have joined the insurgents. The dramatic season being at an end, and all the theatres closed, Madrid has now for sole amusement the insurrection, which every day seems taking farther from its walls, but which not impossibly may break out again within them. If a decided advantage were gained by O’Donnell’s division, or if news came that Saragossa or some other large town had pronounced against the government, there would very likely be a rising in this capital. I am assured that attempts are now making to work upon the troops of the garrison, and if only a few companies could be won over and relied upon, the government might speedily be upset. There are in Madrid plenty of ex-national guards, and of men who have served in the army, who would quickly produce their hidden arms and rush out into the streets, with cries of “Down with the ministry.” It is matter of considerable doubt whether these would be coupled with _vivas_ for the Queen. As for the Queen-mother, I am convinced that her life would be in danger in the event of such an outbreak. She is deeply detested here; the more so as she is known to support the present government with all the influence she possesses over her daughter. A Madrid revolutionary mob is dangerous, vindictive, and bloody-minded. In proof of this many incidents recur to my memory, and doubtless will to yours—amongst others, the fate of Quesada, whose son is now military governor here, and who was almost torn to pieces at the country house in the environs, whither he had fled for shelter. His murderers returned to Madrid, singing the dreaded _Tragala!_ and drank in the public cafés bowls of coffee stirred with his severed fingers. The revolutionary spirit is calmer now, but it may again revive upon occasion. No person in Spain, not even Sartorius himself, who certainly is sufficiently hated, is so much under public ban as Maria Christina. She doubtless knows it: her conscience can hardly be easy, and her fears are probably roused; for her approaching departure for France is much spoken of, and likely to take place.

Since O’Donnell’s division left the neighbourhood of Madrid, we have heard comparatively little concerning him. We know his route; also that his strength has somewhat increased, that his troops are well-disciplined and confident of success, and that he is at this date in Andalusia. Where he may be, and what may have occurred by the time you receive this letter, it is of course impossible to foretell; but, although ministerial bulletins daily scatter his men to the winds, representing them as deserting, weary, exterminated, and, if possible, even in worse plight, the truth is that they are in as good order, and as ready for service, as if they held themselves subject to the government of the Queen. Every possible means have been taken by the authorities to throw discredit upon the insurgents and upon their leaders, by representing them as robbers and oppressors, paying for nothing, ill-treating the people, and exacting forced contributions at the bayonet’s point. “To lie like a bulletin,” is an old saying, but it would be at least as apt to say—“like the _Madrid Gazette_ or the _Heraldo_ newspaper.” I can well imagine how difficult it must be in other countries to get at the truth about Spanish affairs, when I see the systematic efforts made to suppress it here. Letters are seized by wholesale in their passage through the post-office, some newspapers are suppressed, and others are permitted to publish no news but those they copy from the government journals, which are for the most part ingeniously embellished to suit the purpose of the ministers; whilst sometimes they are pure fabrications. One of the great occupations of the official papers, for the first few days after the insurrection broke out, was to blacken the character of its leaders. Dulce, especially—who, in common with the other generals engaged in the outbreak, had been stripped by royal decree of all rank, titles, and honours—was the object of abuse which bordered upon billingsgate.

The virtuous _Heraldo_ daily came out with fierce philippics upon the “rebel and traitor,” who had deserted his Queen because he deemed that she had deserted the country and broken her oath, and who, by so doing, had exchanged large emoluments, high rank, and one of the best positions his profession affords in Spain, for the uncertain fate of an insurgent leader—perhaps, in the end, for a short shrift and a firing party. The men of the _Heraldo_ could not understand this; they felt that _they_ were incapable of such conduct; in their heart of hearts they must have thought Dulce more remarkable as a fool than as a rebel, but in their paper they contented themselves with abusing him as the latter. Inexpert with the pen, Dulce nevertheless took it up to reply. On the 1st of July, the day after the drawn fight of Vicálvaro, and in a village close to the scene of action, he wrote a letter, whose faulty style and soldierly abruptness are the best evidence of its being his own unassisted production. As a characteristic production, and in justice to its writer, who will doubtless be blamed by many in foreign countries, where the facts of the case and the extent of the sacrifices he has made are imperfectly known and appreciated, I give you a translation of the letter. It is addressed to the editors of the _Heraldo_, and runs as follows:—

“Since you have allowed the publication in your periodical of an article referring to me personally, and to my conduct, and as I consider that an insult is not a reason, I trust you will be pleased to publish my protest against the whole of your accusation, by doing which you will fulfil your duty as public writers.

“I do not wish to prejudge the issue of our enterprise; whatever that may be it will not surprise me, or make me repent what I have done. That I may not be disappointed, the worst that I expect is to die in the field of battle or in the _Campo de Guardias_ (the place of military executions at Madrid). Whatever occurs, I shall have acted according to my conscience.

“I seek neither places nor honours, for I have them in abundance. No desire of revenge of any kind has moved me, for I cherish neither dislike nor resentment against the persons composing the present government, and much less against the Queen. The cause of my insurrection is entirely the memory that I have of the oath taken by the King of Castile when he ascends the throne. He swears upon the Holy Scriptures to observe and enforce the law of the State—‘_and if I should not do so, I desire not to be obeyed_.’

“My conviction is, that the Queen has violated her oath, and, in this case, I prefer being guilty of _leze-majesty_ to being guilty of _leze-nation_.

“I well know that the sentiments I have expressed will not convince you, because they must be felt and not explained. For my justification I appeal to the inexorable tribunal of posterity, and to the secret police of the consciences of yourselves in the first place, of the Queen herself, and of this unhappy country.

“A copy of this document is already on the road, and will be published, as you will see, in foreign countries. I also send it to other Madrid newspapers, although I believe that a miserable fear will prevent their publishing it.

“That you may never be able to deny that I have sent you this letter, I have had formal registry made of it, and it perhaps will one day be published. I trust then that you will be sufficiently generous and gentlemanly[29] to insert it in your periodical, by doing which you will highly oblige me. (Signed) EL GENERAL DULCE.

“Vallecas, 1st July 1854.

“The original is to be found duly stamped in the register of this corporation, where it has been inserted against the will of the individuals composing it, who are exempt from all blame.”

I need hardly say that the _Heraldo_ has not published this letter, of which numerous copies have been distributed in Madrid by friends of its writer, and by persons who believe that, as he himself says, he has “acted according to his conscience (_dado una satisfaccion à mi conciencia_), and who admire his disinterestedness—the rarest quality amongst public men in Spain.

It is not easy to foretell the result of this insurrection, which has now lasted for fifteen days without any decisive or even important event. The country, taken by surprise, and ignorant of the objects of the outbreak—which it suspected to have been made merely to bring about a change of men, but not of system—looked on at first with apathy. O’Donnell’s greatest error was the first proclamation he issued, which, in many words, said nothing and held out no prospect of advantage to the people. Another has just appeared, short, pithy, explicit, and calculated to satisfy the liberal party. It promises the Spanish nation the benefits of the representative system, for which it has shed so much of its blood and made so many sacrifices, as yet without result.

“It is time,” it continues, “to say what we propose doing on the day of victory. We desire the preservation of the throne, but without the camarilla that dishonours it; the rigorous enforcement of the fundamental laws, improving them, especially those of elections and of the press; a diminution of taxation, founded on strict economy; respect to seniority and merit in the civil and military services. We desire to relieve the towns from the centralising system that consumes them, giving them the local independence necessary to preserve and increase their own interests; and, as a guarantee of all these things, we desire the NATIONAL MILITIA, and will plant it on a solid basis. Such are our intentions, which we frankly express, but without imposing them upon the nation. The juntas of government that are to be constituted in the free provinces, the general Cortes that are soon to be assembled, the nation itself, in short, shall fix the definitive bases of the liberal regeneration to which we aspire. We devote our swords to the national will, and sheathe them only when it is fulfilled.”

This proclamation is dated from Manzanaris, the 7th July, and is signed by O’Donnell. You will observe that no mention is made in it of the Queen. It is monarchical, because it desires to “preserve the throne;” but it by no means pledges those who publish it to retain Isabella II. The promise to arm the national guard is the most important that it contains, since that is the only guarantee the Liberals can have for the fulfilment of the other pledges. It may possibly induce the Progresistas, who hitherto have scarcely stirred in the business, to take active measures. Meanwhile we hear of risings and armed bands in various parts of the country, and persons familiar with Spanish revolutions, and who have witnessed many of them, notice signs of fermentation, which prove the insurrectionary spirit to be spreading—a bubble here and there on water, indicating that it will presently boil. When O’Donnell’s proclamation gets spread abroad, and its purport known, it is quite possible that large towns or districts may declare for the insurgents. In Spain, however, it is most difficult to speculate on coming events, for it is the land of the unforeseen—_le pays de l’imprévu_—and I shall not attempt to play the prophet, for, if I did, perhaps, before my letter reached you, the electric telegraph would have proved me a false one. Moreover, I have no time to add much more, for I well know that you, Ebony, will grumble, if this letter does not reach you somewhere about the twentieth of the month. Moreover, the horses of Maga’s foreign-service messenger neigh with impatience, and the escort which is to accompany him on the first stage of his journey is already formed up. For the roads are far from safe just now, thanks to the concentration of the gendarmes, (who usually keep excellent order upon them), to do duty in the capital, or pursue the insurgents. We hear of various bands appearing—north, south, and east—some calling themselves Carlists, others Republicans, but in either case probably not pleasant to meet on the road; and besides those there are smaller parties who do not aspire to a political character, and are abroad simply for their own behoof and advantage, and, I need not say, for the disadvantage of the travellers they may chance to encounter. As for sending letters of the nature and importance of this one by the ordinary channel of Her Catholic Majesty’s mails, one would do better to abstain from writing them, as the chances would be fifty to one against their ever reaching their destination. One might almost as well throw them into the fire as into the marble lion’s mouth that yawns at the _casa de correos_,—as if to warn people of the dangers their correspondence runs. Were I to consign this epistle to leo’s jaws, I should not expect it ever to go farther than to the Graham-department of the Madrid post-office.

Although you will have gathered from the newspapers the principal events, and some of the minor particulars of the insurrection of 1854—as far as it has as yet gone—this sketch of it, however imperfect, from an eyewitness, will, I trust, interest you. Spanish revolutions and insurrections rarely resemble each other; every successive outbreak has a character of its own, distinct from that of its predecessors. And that of the 28th of last month has peculiar features, which I have endeavoured to portray. If my letter has no other merit, it will, I think, bring its readers, concisely, without much detail, but with perfect truth, up to the present point of Spanish politics. Should aught worth relating occur whilst I am within the boundaries of Queen Isabel’s dominions, rely upon my keeping you duly informed. Meanwhile, may Providence preserve you, in your happy Land of Cakes, alike from military revolts, and from popular _pronunciamientos_. So prays, from his exile _in partibus_, your faithful

VEDETTE.

THE ETHNOLOGY OF EUROPE.

“There were brave men before Agamemnon,”—heroes before there was a Homer to sing them, says that prince of sensible poets, Horace. It is not less true that there were nations before history—communities, races, of which the eye of civilisation never caught a glimpse. In some cases, before the light of history broke in upon their seclusion, these old types of mankind, losing their individuality, had become merged in a succeeding and mightier wave of population; in others they had wholly disappeared,—they had lived and fought and died in perfect isolation from every focus of civilisation, and left not even a floating legend behind them in the world. Man’s mortality—the destiny of the individual to pass away from earth like a vapour, making room for others, heirs of his wisdom and unimbued with his prejudices—is the most familiar of truths; but the mortality of nations, the death of races, is a conception which at first staggers us. That a family should grow into a nation,—that from the loins of one man should descend a seed like unto the sands on the sea-shore for multitude, appears to our everyday senses as a natural consequence; but that nations should dwindle down to families, and families into solitary individuals, until death gets all, and earth has swallowed up a whole phase of humanity, is a thought the grandeur of which is felt to be solemn, if not appalling. The conception, however, need not be a strange one. Facts, which reconcile us to everything, are testifying to its truth even at the present day. It is not long since the Guanches in the Canary Islands, that last specimen of what may once have been a race, and the Guarras in Brazil, dwindled out of existence in their last asylum,—expiring at the feet of the more lordly race which the fulness of time brought to their dwellings.

Not to mention the Miaou-tse in China, and other relics of Asiatic races, the same phenomenon is more impressively presented to us among the Red Men of America, where the old race is seen dying out beneath our very eyes. Year by year they are melting away. Of the millions which once peopled the vast regions on this side of the Mississippi River, all have vanished, but a few scattered families; and it is as clear as the sun at noonday, that in a few generations more, the last of the Red Men will be numbered with the dead. Why, is it asked, are they thus doomed? In the suburbs of Mobile, or wandering through its streets, you will see the remnant of the Choctaw tribe, covered with nothing but blankets, and living in bark tents, scarcely a degree advanced above the beasts of the field. No philanthropy can civilise them,—no ingenuity can induce them to do an honest day’s work. The life of the woods is struck from them,—the white man has taken their hunting-grounds; and they live on helpless as in a dream, quietly abiding their time. They are stationary, they will not advance; and, like everything stationary, the world is sweeping away. They sufficed for the first phase of humanity in the New World. As long as there was only need for man to be lord of the woods and of the animal creation, the Red Man did well; but no sooner did the call come for him to perfect himself, and change the primeval forest into gardens, than the Red Man knew, by mysterious instinct, that his mission was over,—and either allowed himself, in sheer apathy, to sink out of existence among the pitiless feet of the new-comers, or died fighting fiercely with the apostle of a civilisation which he hated but could not comprehend.

Far back in the history of Europe and of our own country—or rather, we should say, in periods entirely pre-historic—it is now known that a similar disappearance of a human race has taken place. Celt and Teuton, we fancy, were the first occupiers of Europe,—but the case is not so. A wave or waves of population had preceded even them; and as we dig down into the soil beneath us, ever and anon we come upon strange and startling traces of those primeval occupants of the land. In those natural museums of the past, the caves and peat-bogs of Europe, the keen-witted archæologists of present times are finding abundant relics of a race dissimilar from all the human varieties of which written history takes cognisance. The researches of Wilson among the peat-bogs of the British Isles have brought to light traces of no less than two distinct pre-Celtic races inhabiting the land,—one of which had the skull of a singularly broad and short, square and compact form, while the head of the other race was long and very narrow, or “boat-shaped.” The exhumations of Retzius show that precisely similar races once inhabited Scandinavia. The caves and ossuaries of Franconia and Upper Saxony prove that in Central Europe, also, there were races before the advent of the Celts; and the researches of Boucher de Perthes, amid the alluvial stratifications of the river Somme, indicate a not less ancient epoch for the cinerary urns, bones, and instruments of a primordial people in France.

“Here,” says M. de Perthes, “we naturally inquire, who were these mysterious primitive inhabitants of Gaul? We are told that this part of Europe is of modern origin, or at least of recent population. Its annals scarcely reach to twenty centuries, and even its traditions do not exceed two thousand five hundred years. The various people who are known to history as having occupied it—the Gauls, the Celts, the Veneti, Ligurians, Iberians, Cimbrians, and Scythians have left no vestiges to which we can assign that date. The traces of those [originally] nomadic tribes who ravaged Gaul scarcely precede the Christian era by a few centuries. Was Gaul, then, a desert, a solitude, before this period? Was its sun less genial, or its soil less fertile? Were not its hills as pleasant, and its plains and valleys as ready for the harvest? Or, if men had not yet learned to plough and sow, were not its rivers filled with fish, and its forests with game? And, if the land abounded with everything calculated to attract and support a population, why should it not have been inhabited? The absence of great ruins, indeed, indicates that Gaul at this period, and even much later, had not attained a great degree of civilisation, nor been the seat of powerful kingdoms; but why should it not have had its towns and villages?—or rather, why should it not, like the steppes of Russia, the prairies and virgin forests of America, and the fertile plains of Africa, have been overrun from time immemorial by tribes of men—savages, perhaps, but nevertheless united in families if not in nations?”