The most striking events of a twelvemonth's Campaign with Zumalacarregui, in Navarre and the Basque Provinces

Front matter

3e&em£ clapies nature par. C. E H swung ■ officier Ae M-ca-raleneetdc eon etal-inajoj -*■ J - U '/ ■' 'I iroa.3 '-A }:'.'(■ THE MOST STRIKING EVENTS OF A TWELVEMONTH'S CAMPAIGN WITH ZUMALACARREGUI, IN NAVARRE AND THE BASQUE PROVINCES. By C. F. HENNINGSEN, CAPTAIN OF T.ANCEItS IN THE SERVICE OF )>ON CARLOS. IN TWO VOLS. VOLUME THE FIRST. LONDON: JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE-STREET. MDCCCXXXVI. LONDON : Printed by W. Clowes and Sons, Stamford Street. DEDICATION. TO LORD ELIOT. My Lord, Your permission to inscribe to you these volumes affords me the highest gratification, as in the rough chapters they contain I have endea voured to give a faithful description of some scenes of a civil war, in alleviating the horrors of which your Lordship played so conspicuous a part, — and some passages from the life of an extraordinary man, whose character, even during the short inter course that took place between you, your Lordship learned so justly to appreciate, and regard with the interest his genius and enthusiastic spirit were calculated to inspire.

These chapters I cannot more appropriately dedicate than to an Englishman, — one of the very few who have in any way interfered in the civil strife now desolating Spain, whose name will not be a curse to her people, but on whose head the a DEDICATION. blessings of all ranks of Spaniards will be showered. I beg your Lordship to accept the tribute of my private feelings, and my public expression of them, in thus assuring you of the deep sense I entertain of the manner in which you discharged one of the noblest offices of humanity, and of its effect in saving the lives of thousands. I have the honour to be, My Lord, Most sincerely, Your Lordship's obedient Servant, Charles Frederick Hennikgsen London, 21th Feb., 1836.

Preface

. It is now two years since the insurrection of the Basque Provinces commenced, and the remnant of an expiring faction, as it was termed, hunted like a band of robbers amongst the mountains, repenting that it had ever embraced the cause of an outlawed Prince, has already swelled, as all sides admit, into an imposing party. The partisans of Don Carlos were represented as only the blind and bigoted few, or an assemblage of those lawless characters who are wont (like the sea bird which takes advantage of a wreck or havock, to appear on a clouded horizon) to profit, for pur poses of plunder, or ambition, by the moment of incertitude which always follows the change of any ancient and established mode of government, marked and branded by public opinion, without friends or partisans. It was asserted that, aware how desperate was the cause they had embraced, they were rather endeavouring to escape from punishment than struggling with any hope of success. VI

PREFACE.

. Day aster day it was announced, both in the French and English journals, that the last bands of Carlists had been dispersed, and that their leaders were about to cross the frontier. The French telegraph and the Queen's bulletins were their oracles, and the Morning Herald, whose correspondent gave all along consistent intelligence, was not for a long time credited by any party, and is not generally so to this day, on the affairs of the peninsula *. At last, however, they have been forced to admit, that whether the name and success of Don Carlos was a means or an end — -his succession a pretext or an object — without foreign intervention it was im possible to quell the insurrection of the Basque Provinces ; and this after announcing, for more than a year and a half, the successes of the Queen's troops during a war against a "faction," which, from its commencement had been announced as •" at its last gasp," for the thousandth time. * It is to the correspondent of the Morning Herald, a Mr. Mitchel, that the public is indebted for the most im partial and correct narration of all that occurred during the civil war in the northern provinces of Spain, since the beginning of the contest.

He spent some months in the Christino camp, and was afterwards repeatedly in our own. I do not mean to say that he has been always right ; but on looking through the columns of the Morning Herald of the last year, I have been surprised at his general accu racy.

PREFACE.

. VII It is true that the game began against fearful odds, affording an addition to those examples which history reproduces at intervals under a varied form, of what the determined spirit of a people, and the talent of a leader, can effect — a people without arms, without money, without any succours from abroad, boldly proclaiming the cause of a favourite Prince, in the face of large and disciplined armies, and of the treaties of two powerful nations, even when they had reason to believe that that Prince had abandoned his own cause. Rodil, in his famous proclamation on passing the Ebro, seemed not to draw an overcharged picture, when he de scribed them as without means to resist *, fortresses to screen, ally to lend them succour, or friend or arbiter to intercede for them. Now that Zumalacarregui's memory must de scend, whatever be the issue of the contest, as an heir-loom to all classes of his countrymen, as long as the Spanish language endures, and that his name must be mingled in the songs of the peasantry with that of the Cid, it would be superfluous to say that he was no ordinary man; but, although on the roll of those who have acquired a title to immortality, by the immense share he had in * Proclamation of Rodil at Mendavia on crossing the Ebro, July, 1834.

PREFACE.

. the early successes of the Royalist army, justice is scarcely done him. There is no doubt but that it required the iron frame and indomitable spirit of the mountaineers he commanded, to battle so long against man, want, and the elements. But now that it is an established fact, that he has left be hind him a disciplined and warlike army, and has awakened such a spirit in the north of Spain, that the cause of King Charles would be difficult to lose, it would be gross ingratitude to deny that nothing less than his extraordinary genius could have overcome the apparently insurmount able difficulties which encompassed the Royalist party. When he placed himself at the head of the par tisans of the exiled Prince, they had been defeated, dispersed, or disarmed in all the provinces. All that Zumalacarregui could then rally of his discou raged followers scarcely exceeded 800 undisciplined and badly-armed men ; and with this force he bade defiance to the usurping government, which had then on foot in the Peninsula above 120,000 men, including the veteran army of the constitutional war.

For months, reinforcement succeeded reinforcement, and one general followed another, even to the redoubted Mina, each with new plans and great projects, till their renown shrunk successively

PREFACE.

. IX away before that of the Carlist leader, like waves that shiver against a rock. After destroying upwards of 50,000 men, and a number of officers, which it is fearful to think of, — after nearly clearing Navarre and the provinces, — and taking or causing the enemy to evacuate sixteen fortified places, — he died in the hour when his for tune was taking those wide and rapid leaps, which we so often see in the career of a great character. He found, as I have said, 800 badly-armed peasants and fourteen horses, and he lest to the sovereign he had served so well, on the day of his death, 28,000 men * of well-organized and disciplined infantry, and 800 horse well mounted and appointed, 28 pieces of artillery, and 12,000 spare muskets, — all won by his own good sword; for although the country offered him willing hands to wield them, it had been so completely disarmed, that every weapon he gave them he was obliged to take from a living foe, and his arsenal, as he ex pressed it, "was in the ranks of the enemy."

From * Thirty-nine battalions : thirteen of Navarre, six of Alava, six of Guipuscoa, eight of Biscay, and six of Cas tille ; one regiment of four squadrons of Navarrese lancers ; one squadron of lancers of Alava ; one squadron of lancers of Biscay ; one squadron of Castille ; besides five hundred horse and a thousand foot between Merino and Villalobos, in Old and New Castille. X

PREFACE.

. thence almost all the Carlist equipments- — muskets, horses, and cannon, with the exception of 1500 muskets (all that he ever received from abroad), and 200 horses, which would about supply the place of those lost in the campaign — had been taken. Whole battalions are armed with new muskets having the Tower proof on them, or the marks of the French manufactories, supplied to the Queen in virtue of the quadruple alliance, by the ministers of France and England, who little imagined they were sending them eventually to arm the partisans of Don Carlos. As the man whose genius mainly contributed to produce such a result, and the people who maintained what every body must admit to have been an extraordinary struggle, may not be entirely uninteresting ; and as at a distance of 800 miles, and more than that, behind the barrier which the French government had hitherto established, it is difficult for people here to gather any information, except from sources whose intelligence, in a case of such party interest, is at least to be suspected, and who, like the two knights, always see the different faces of the black and white statue, — I have drawn a few sketches from which the reader may form an incomplete, but, as far as it goes, a correct idea of this desolating civil war. I have

PREFACE.

. XI interspersed them with some anecdotes of the man who disappeared from the theatre of his glory at the moment when he had attained the greatest eminence. I served a year under his orders, having thrown myself with more enthusiasm than prudence into a party whose existence was then precarious, but which I left when it had grown under his guidance from the dwarf to struggle on full equality of sta ture with its opponent, whose efforts during its early growth his skill enabled it to baffle. The circumstance of my having followed him in every action and skirmish during that period, from the time when he was at the head of 6000 men till he left nearly 30,000, and perished by a distant and random shot from the walls of Bilboa, when the road to Madrid lay open to him, enabled me to see much of the nature of the civil war, and the character of its great leader, which I studied in storm and in sunshine, in hours of peril and dis appointment, as well as of victory and success.

Being, as the reader may naturally suppose, of Carlist opinions, and identified in sentiments with those in whose defence I have been engaged, and whose cause I still regard with attachment, I have, as much as possible, confined myself to the narra-

PREFACE.

. tion of facts, as these reason more powerfully than any arguments. The sketches here offered may be rough and unpolished, as they fell from the pen of a soldier, the greater part written during the moments snatched from the active life of this singular cam paign ; but if the reader should tire by the way, he can but raise the siege and close the unamusing chapter. I have merely drawn a rough sketch with charcoal on a guard-house wall — neither memoir, travels, nor history — but which may have the merit, perhaps only the merit (but that is the province of the reader, not of the writer, to judge) of being a sketch from the life. Page 1 22 38 CONTENTS TO VOLUME I.

Chapter I

State of Society in Spain — The Spanish Peasant — Parties — The Clergy — Monastic Orders — Royalist feelings of the Peasant — The Prince's chances of success ......

Chapter II

Events previous to Ferdinand's Death— Don Carlos in Portugal — Sarsfield and Rodil — Don Carlos and Don Miguel .....

Chapter III

Early Efforts of the Royalists — Zavala and his Daughters — Eraso — Description of Navarre — The Rivera — Habits of the Navarrese— Basques — Their Language — Nobility of Navarre and the Provinces — Fueros and Privileges — Guipuscoa and Biscay — National Costume

Chapter IV

General Santos Ladron proclaims Don Carlos in Navarre — Taken by Lorenzo — Suspicion of Treachery CONTENTS. Page 74 93 124 — Example of Ingratitude — Santos Ladron shot at Pampeluna — Desperate Condition of the Carlists — First Appearance of Colonel Zumalacarregui — ■ Arrests Ituralde — Portrait of Zumalacarregui.

Chapter V

Zumalacarregui — His Disinterestedness and Poverty — Anecdote — His Surname — Difficulties he had to contend with — Force with which he began the War — His Partisans — Their Equipment — Carlist Messengers and Spies — Blockade of the Fortified Towns and Partidas — Carabineros and Peseteros — Bayonets made to give incurable Wounds — Chapelgories of Biscay and Guipuscoa — Attack of Vittoria by Zumalacarregui . . .'

Chapter VI

Departure from Bayonne— Crossing the Pyrenees — Basque Cottage — Smugglers — Vigilance of the French — Crossing the Nivelle — Frontier — Urdax — A Spanish Posada— Valley of Bastan— San Esteban — Carlists and Christinos — Levying Rations — Segastibelza — Carlist Troops — Elisondo — Cholera — Skirmish with Lorenzo . .

Chapter VII

Quesada first attacked and beaten by Zumalacarregui at Alsassua — O'Donnel, Count de Labispal, taken Prisoner — Shot by way of Reprisal— Death of his Father, on hearing the intelligence — Brief Account of his Political Career— Attack of Goulinas or Las CONTENTS. XV Page dos Hermanas — Anecdote of a Soldier — Zumalacar regui's System in the early part of the Campaign — His Prudence— Why he did not quit the Provinces 150

Chapter VIII

The Curate Merino — Merino and Zumalacarregui — The old Castilians — Rodil — His Proclamation to the Insurgents on crossing the Ebro— Anecdote of Rodil during his defence of the Castle of Callao — His pursuit of the King— Straits to which he was reduced — Fatigues the Carlists had to undergo — Party-spirit of the Women and Children — A Village on the passage of the Carlist Army — On that of the Queen's Troops — The Spanish Barber — The Carlist Brigadier-General Armencha taken prisoner and shot at Bilboa — Description of his death by a French Veteran .' ' 171

Chapter IX

Carandolet— Surprise at San Faustus — Count Via Manuel — A Spanish Grandee taken — Shot — Attempt to surprise Echari-Arenas — Failure — Punishment of two Companies for cowardice — Attack on Viana — Interview with Zumalacarregui — Punishment of his Quartermaster — Punishment of a Deserter — Mutiny suppressed — Malcasco disgraced — Curate of Allio . . . .203

Chapter X

Zumalacarregui re-crosses the Ebro — Battle on the Plains of Vittoria, 27th of October, and defeat of CONTENTS. 253 281 Page the Queen's Troops — General O'Doyle taken pri soner and shot — Battle of the 28th, and defeat of Osma ...... 233

Chapter XI

Skirmish at Sesma — Story of a Vendean Officer — Stratagem — Capture of Spies — Ximenes — The Urbanos — Attack on a fortified Church — Conflagration of the Steeple — Surrender of the besieged — Martial Schoolmaster ....

Chapter XII

Ximenes and his Son — Death of the Son — The Hermitage — C. Vicomte de Barrez — Defeat of Mendaca — An Emigrant— Death of Barrez — The Fifer Morriones ...... ERRATUM. Chapter XI., for " The Seine at Nantes" read " Loire." DIRECTIONS FOR PLACING THE PLATES. Portrait of Zumalacarregui to face Title, Vol. I. Map of Navarre to face Chapter I., Vol. I. A TWELVEMONTH'S CAMPAIGN WITH ZUMALACARREGUI, DURING THE WAR IN NAVARRE AND THE BASQUE PROVINCES OF SPAIN.

Chapter I

State of Society in Spain— The Spanish Peasant — Parties — The Clergy — Monastic Orders — Royalist feelings of the Peasant— The Prince's chances of success. Spain, whether on account of the character of its people, its political history, or the nature of the country, is infinitely farther from France than the distance in the post-book, or the Pyrenees that divide the two kingdoms, would seem to indicate. It is inhabited by a race of men, with ideas, feelings, and habits all different from those of their northern neighbours. They are a people apart, and cannot be weighed in the same balance with B VOL. I. their neighbours : it requires a long and familiar knowledge to estimate them justly : they have exalted qualities and great defects ; but to appreciate both, one must have become acquainted with them during those moving scenes which stir up the passions in men's bosoms to the surface.

The stranger who has only viewed the inhabitants in their capital, their large towns, and along the Camino-real while travelling in his carriage, knows nothing of the Spanish nation. Scantily peopled, and little cultivated — having, by the strange vicissi tudes of her political history, retrograded while all the world advanced — Spain is considerably behind the rest of Europe in civilization, and also in its vices as well as in its virtues. This backwardness may be in a great degree the effect of the Ame rican gold which poisoned her energies, and of the desolating wars of latter years ; for war is like the bleeding of a patient, which leaves him either eventually strengthened, or long and fatally debi litated. With her, it is rather the ebb of a former civilization than the remnant of barbarism slowly dwindling away.

STATE OF SOCIETY IN SPAIN. 3 At the present moment, society in Spain may be divided into two classes — the agricultural and that which, in French, is so appropriately termed the " industrielle," which includes all those concerned in the artificial part of a nation's prosperity — those who traffic, who manufacture, and who administer to the luxury of those classes which we are in Eng land accustomed to look upon, /if not as exclusively respectable, at least as the most so in the nation, but which, producing nothing, in reality are living on the sweat, of the labourers brow. These, in stead of being classes of predominant weight, ought rather to be subservient, in every country, but more so in Spain, where, excepting the peasantry, and those who, living in the midst of the peasantry, far from cities, mingle aristocratic blood and preten sions with their simplicity, all orders are totally degenerated and demoralized — selfish, treacherous, and effeminate.

A Moorish ferocity is all that remains of their former high spirit and courage — the national love of honour is dwindled to a selfsufficient vanity, and the national avarice now pierces through, without those redeeming traits of b magnificence and generosity which were percep tible in the old Spanish character. Licentious in manners and in morals, — cold-hearted, sordid, and dastardly, they have not the vices or the virtues of barbarians: universal corruption has destroyed their civilization. This seems a melancholy pic ture ; but those who have mingled with their titled nobles, their statesmen, their higher orders of clergy, their commercial classes, their citizens generally, their military, and their rabble, will, I fear, not find it overcharged. Sweeping as this judgment may seem, it is not, however, the character I must give to the Spanish nation in general, but to a portion of the com munity which, happily, only forms about one-tenth part of it, although including all that we are wont to term the " respectability," and possessing the wealth, the commerce, and the government of the state.

By this fraction, as it comes immediately under the eye of the traveller, he is too apt to judge of all Spaniards. But there is a wide and striking difference between the classes I have men tioned and the immense majority of those who THE SPANISH PEASANT. 5 cultivate, on a larger or a lesser scale, the soil, consisting chiefly of a peasantry simple and un tainted by the corruption which for the last century has enervated the inhabitants of her cities. Inde pendent and high-spirited, the Spanish peasant, isolated from those congregated masses amongst which all revolutions of manners and ideas for the better or the worse so speedily take place, has remained the same, or but little changed from what he was centuries ago. He has many defects, chiefly arising from his southern sky and his southern origin : he is indolent and cruel, but his faults are redeemed by many noble traits ; and, on the whole, I have found in his character more to admire than to blame.

These observations are, from all I have heard, applicable also to Portugal, and readily explain why, during the war, both in that country and in Spain, the effeminacy and cowardice of the officers offered so remarkable a contrast to the behaviour of the men ; why, in Spain, all those whom we are accustomed to see leading in a nation were the first to bow to the French, while the peasant untiringly resisted his oppressors ; and why, although no country offers so many examples of self-devotion and heroism, none presents so many of treachery and pusillanimity — the latter, I fear, all to be found in the classes 1 have first described. The nobility of Spain, once the most warlike in Europe, has sunk into the most complete insigni ficance, as is always the case with an aristocracy when the sword has become too heavy for its grasp.

The industrielles, who have already long thrown off the yoke of the clergy, seek to appropriate to themselves the power which has passed away from the nobles, and to rule with their gold the agriculturist, depriving the clergy of the authority the latter still retain over him. The former, as I have said, possess in their ranks the wealth of the kingdom, and the majority of the officers of the army ; they also possess all the strong places and materiel of the country, which alone have enabled and enable them to sustain themselves as a party. They have adopted the cause of the usurping government from personal interest, some with a view of forwarding their own designs, others to PARTIES IN SPAIN. 7 retain their situations, or from fear of losing their property— none, I may safely say, from attach ment.

A large portion are exaltados, ultras in liberal opinions, who aim either at anarchy or a republic. At the same time, there is a striking difference between republicanism in France and England, and republicanism in Spain. In the latter country, perhaps, it would be the bitterest enemy to anything like Agrarian laws, democratic sentiments being chiefly confined to the rich (who wish for as perfect an independence as possible for their own cities, where they could establish an aristocracy of wealth) and a small portion of the lower classes in the large towns, who look forward eagerly towards times of anarchy and confusion, not only as a stepping-stone to their ambition, but to satisfy their brutal passions. To these are opposed the peasantry, who are all Carlists, and form the great mass of the population, who alone have retained the original stamp of the Spanish character, and who, when roused, still exhibit flashes of its former independence and energy.

Proud, indolent, and attached to their ancient usages, they are all royalists and legitimatists. Accustomed, from their ancient mode of govern ment, to a great degree of personal liberty under a despotic form, they look with suspicion on the modern innovations which the liberals, in their march of new ideas, wish to introduce. Experience has perhaps given them an exaggerated horror of that revolutionary fever which has for the last half century agitated Europe, and of which designing men have taken advantage to disturb nations, that, ever and anon returning to the same point, find they have only gone round a circle, and that the charlatans, who led the movement, alone rise uppermost by the changing of the wheel. The peasant, or rather the agriculturist, particularly in the northern provinces — and of these prin cipally I speak — is not only devoted to his ancient mode of government and line of monarchs, in consequence of his jealousy of all that comes from abroad, but also from his habits, feelings, and tra ditions.

Having never suffered from the abuse of royalty, and, however it fared with the courtier and the citizen, having always enjoyed a great PARTIES. degree of personal independence in the most arbitrary times, — he supports the rights of his sovereign with the same tenacity with which he would defend his own privileges if they were attacked. The sufferings of his country — and Spain, in the remembrance of the present generation, has been afflicted by many — are all associated with his recollection of the invasion of the French, who, although then slaves in fact, as undergoing the transition from a republic to despotism, came with the words of liberty and equality in their mouths. Is it then altogether so strange and unaccountable, that a peopile should be so deluded and priest-ridden as not to see the advantages of pro gressing from a tyranny under which they are free, to a freedom rife with massacre and oppression?

Are we to wonder if they remember that, under their kings and the ancient, laws of Spain, they were prosperous and happy ; that their fleets swept the ocean, and gold flowed in from the conquered Indies; that Austria, Belgium and Italy were under their dominion; that, since the march of B liberal ideas, Spain has been a bankrupt in the scale of power, the jest of the stranger, overrun by his armies, ground down by his avarice, and deeply wounded in her national and proverbial pride ? Besides these evils, and the experience they have had of the dominion of their patriots under the government of the Cortes, the people are well aware that by the laws of Spain no female can wield the sceptre; and they feel it to be an insult to Spanish dignity to be governed by a woman. The Queen Christina so well knew how unpopular it would be to set aside the succession of the infant, Don Carlos, that when it was found that Ferdi nand VII. was to have no male issue, she was obliged to throw herself unreservedly into the arms of the liberal party.

That party had indeed brought about her marriage, in the hope of legally excluding Don Carlos from the throne, whom, on account of his uncompromising character, they had every reason to fear. The army, which was in favour of the Infant, was officered anew, and placed entirely under the command either of the THE CLERGY. 11 officers of the constitutional army, who had re belled against him, or of men of known liberal opinions. The country was then divided into two parties, and so continues to this day. The majority of the inhabitants of the large towns, less than one-tenth of the population of Spain, are in favour of the Queen, either as a preliminary step towards a republic, or from interested motives. Wielding all the artificial resources of the country against the other nine-tenths, they have for a moment manacled the latter, who had no resource but the country, the mountains, their numbers, and their energetic and indomitable spirit.

To these advantages were added, although not their main inducement, feelings of religious enthusiasm. The persecution of their monks and clergy, whom the liberals, still rankling with hatred at having been obliged to disgorge the church-lands bought in the time of the Constitution, had not only avowed their intention of attacking, but already proceeded to strip, produced an impression highly favourable to the cause of the Infant. The period thus chosen for assailing the Spanish clergy was the worst that could have been selected. The many and terrible abuses which had crept, as is so often the case, into an unpersecuted church, where ambitious men make a stepping-stone to their evil purposes of the sacerdotal character, had dis appeared and be'come things of the past. The abolition of the Inquisition, which Don Carlos is falsely charged with wishing to re-establish, and the difference the peasant found between the in sensible rule of his clergy and that of his patriots in 1820, has confirmed him in his attachment not only to his curates and secular clergy, but also to the monastic orders, which it thus became highly impolitic openly to attack.

The wealth of the con vents and monasteries, when the peasant sees the life of mortification which is led within, (particularly in the north of Spain, where the orders are mostly very rigid,) does not excite his cupidity: the poor have a right to profit by their endowments, and if he chooses to-morrow to abandon the world and enter their walls for shelter, it is at his option to share the cowl and cell, and the riches of the re ligious community. Tne people of Spain, although ROYALISM OF THE PEASANT. 13 not more sanctified than those in most other parts of the world, have a sincere faith in their religion, and a deep and superstitious reverence both for its forms and its ministers ; and when they witnessed the unprovoked ill treatment of men who usually led quiet and peaceful lives, it was not difficult to interest them in their behalf, and make them believe that the subversion of their religion itself was aimed at.