Letters from Spain

Cheered up by this humble, yet hearty welcome among our countrymen, we proceeded for two or three days; our feelings of security increasing all the while with the distance from Madrid. It was, however, just in that proportion that we were approaching danger. We had, about nine in the morning, reached the Calzada de Oropesa, on the borders of Estremadura, when we observed, with painful surprise, a crowd of country people, who, collecting hastily round us, began to inquire who we were, accompanying their questions with the fierce and rude tone which forebodes mischief, among the testy inhabitants of our southern provinces. The Alcalde soon presented himself, and, having heard the account we gave of ourselves and our journey, wisely declared to the people that, our language being genuine Spanish, we might be allowed to proceed. He added, however, a word of advice, desiring us to be prepared to meet with people more inquisitive and suspicious than those of Oropesa, who would make us pay dear for any flaw they might discover in our narrative. As if to try our veracity by means of intimidation, he acquainted us with the insurrections which had taken place in every town and village, and the victims which had scarcely failed in any instance, to fall under the knives of the peasantry.

The truth and accuracy of this warning became more and more evident as we advanced through Estremadura. The notice we attracted at the approach of every village, the threats of the labourers whom we met near the road, and the accounts we heard at every inn, fully convinced us that we could not reach our journey’s end without considerable danger. The unfortunate propensity to shed blood, which tarnishes many a noble quality in the southern Spaniards, had been indulged in most towns of any note, under the cloak of patriotism. Frenchmen, of course, though long established in Spain, were pointed objects of the popular fury; but most of the murders which we heard of, were committed on Spaniards who, probably, owed their fate to private pique and revenge, and not to political opinions. We found the Alcaldes and Corregidores, to whom we applied for protection, perfectly intimidated, and fearing the consequences of any attempt to check the blind fury of the people under them. But no description of mine can give so clear a view of the state of the country, as the simple narrative of the popular rising at Almaraz, the little town which gives its name to a well-known bridge on the Tagus, as it was delivered to us by the Alcalde, a rich farmer of that place. The people of his district, upon hearing the accounts from Madrid, and the insurrections of the chief towns of their province, flocked, on a certain day, before the Alcalde’s house, armed with whatever weapons they had been able to collect, including sickles, pick-axes, and similar implements of husbandry. Most happily for the worthy magistrate, the insurgents had no complaint against him: and on the approach of the rustic mob, he confidently came out to meet them. Having with no small difficulty obtained a hearing, the Alcalde desired to be informed of their designs and wishes. The answer appears to me unparalleled in the history of mobs. “We wish, Sir, to kill somebody,” said the spokesman of the insurgents. “Some one has been killed at Truxillo; one or two others at Badajoz, another at Merida, and we will not be behind our neighbours. Sir, we will kill a traitor.” As this commodity could not be procured in the village, it was fortunate for us that we did not make our appearance at a time when the good people of Almaraz might have made us a substitute, on whom to display their loyalty. The fact, however, of their having no animosities to indulge under the mask of patriotism, is a creditable circumstance in their character. A meeting which we had, soon after leaving the village, with an armed party of these patriots, confirmed our opinion that they were among the least savage of their province.

The bridge of Almaraz stands at the distance of between three and four miles from the village. It was built in the time of Charles the fifth, by the town of Plasencia; but it would not have disgraced an ancient Roman architect. The Tagus, carrying, even at this season, a prodigious quantity of water, passes under the greater of the two arches, which support the bridge. Though the height and span of these arches give to the whole an air of boldness which borders upon grandeur, the want of symmetry in their size and shape, and the narrow, though very deep, channel to which the rocky banks confine the river, abate considerably the effect it might have been made to produce. Yet there is something impressive in a bold work of art standing single in a wild tract of country, where neither great towns, nor a numerous and well distributed population, with all the attending marks of industry, luxury, and refinement, have prepared the imagination to expect it. As soon, therefore, as the bridge was seen at a distance, we left the waggons, and allowing them to proceed before us, lingered to enjoy the view.

Just as we stood admiring the solidity and magnitude of the structure, casting by chance our eyes towards the mountain which rises on the opposite side, and confines the road to a narrow space on the precipitous bank of the river, we saw a band of from fifteen to twenty men, armed with guns, leaving the wood where they had been concealed, and coming down towards the waggons. The character of the place, combined with the dresses, arms, and movements of the men, convinced us at once that we had fallen into the hands of banditti. But as they could take very little from us, we thought we should meet with milder treatment if we approached them without any signs of fear. On our coming up to the place, we observed some of the party searching the waggons; but seeing the rest talking quietly with the carriers, our suspicions of robbery were at an end. The whole band, we found, consisted of peasants, who, upon an absurd report that the French intended to send arms and ammunition to the frontiers of Portugal, had been stationed on that spot to examine every cart and waggon, and stop all suspicious persons. Had these people been less good-natured and civil, we could not have escaped being sent, in that dangerous character, to some of the Juntas which had been established in Spain. But being told by my friend that he was a clergyman, and hearing us curse the French in a true patriotic style; they wished us a happy journey, and allowed us to proceed unmolested.

We expected to arrive at Merida on a Saturday evening, and to have left it early on Sunday after the first mass, which, for the benefit of travellers and labourers, is performed before dawn. But the axletree of one of our waggons breaking down, we were obliged to sleep that night at a Venta, and to spend the next day in the above-mentioned city. The remarkable ruins which still shew the ancient splendour of the Roman Emerita Augusta would, in more tranquil times, have afforded us a pleasant walk round the town, and more than repaid us for the delay. Fatigue, however, induced us to confine ourselves to the inn, where we expected, by the repose of one day, to recruit our strength for the rest of our journey. Having taken a luncheon, we retired to our beds for a long siesta, when the noise of a mob rushing down the street and gathering in front of the inn, drew us, nearly undressed, to the window. As far as the eye could reach, nothing was to be seen but a compact crowd of peasants, most of them with clasp knives in their hands. At the sight of us, such as were near began to brandish their weapons, threatening they would make mince-meat of every Frenchman in the inn. Unable to comprehend the cause of this tumult, and fearing the consequences of the blind fury which prevailed in the country, we hurried on our clothes, and ran down to the front hall of the inn. There we found twelve dragoons standing in two lines on the inside of the gate, holding their carbines ready to fire, as the officer who commanded them warned the people that were blockading the gate they should do upon the first who ventured into the house. The innkeeper walked up and down the empty hall, bewailing the fate of his house, which he assured us would soon be set on fire by the mob. We now gathered from him the cause of this turmoil and confusion. A young Frenchman had been taken on the road to Portugal, with letters to Junot, and on this ground was forwarded under an escort of soldiers to the Captain-general of the Province at Badajoz. The crowd in the street consisted of about two thousand peasants, who having volunteered their services, were under training at the expense of the city. The poor prisoner had been imprudently brought into the town when the recruits were in the principal square indulging in the idleness of a Sunday. On hearing that he was a Frenchman, they drew their knives and would have cut him to pieces, but for the haste which the soldiers made with him towards the inn.

The crowd, by this time, was so fierce and vociferous, that we could not doubt they would break in without delay. My companion, being fully aware of our dangerous position, urged me to follow him to the gate, in order to obtain a hearing, while the people still hesitated to make their way between the two lines of soldiers. We approached the impenetrable mass; but before coming within the reach of the knives, my friend called loudly to the foremost to abstain from doing us any injury; for though without any marks of his profession about him, he was a priest, who, with a brother, (pointing to me,) had made his escape from Madrid to join his countrymen. I verily believe, that as fear is said sometimes to lend wings, it did on this occasion prompt my dear friend with words; for a more fluent and animated speech than his has seldom been delivered in Spanish. The effects of this unusual eloquence were soon visible among those of the rioters that stood nearest; and one of the ringleaders assured the orator, that no harm was meant against us. On our requesting to leave the house, we were allowed to proceed into the great square.

My friend there inquired the name of the Bishop’s substitute, or Vicar General; and, with an agreeable surprise, we learnt that it was Señor Valenzuela. We instantly recognised one of our fellow students at the University of Seville. He had been elected a Member of the Revolutionary Junta of Merida, and though not more confident of his influence over the populace than the rest of his colleagues, whom the present mob had reduced to a state of visible consternation, he instantly offered us his house as an asylum for the night, and engaged to obtain for us a passport for the remainder of the journey. In the mean time, the military commander of the place, attended by some of the magistrates, had promised the crowd to throw the young Frenchman into a dungeon, as he had done a few nights before with his own adjutant, against whom these very same recruits had risen on the parade, with so murderous a spirit, that though protected by a few regulars, they wounded him severely, and would have taken his life but for the interference of the Vicar, who, bearing the consecrated host in his hands, placed the officer under the protection of that powerful charm. The Frenchman was, accordingly, conducted to prison; but neither the soldiers nor the magistrates, who surrounded him, could fully protect him from the savage fierceness of the peasants, who crowding upon him, as half dead with terror, he was slowly dragged to the town gaol, stuck the points of their knives into several parts of his body. Whether he finally was sacrificed to the popular fury, or, by some happy chance, escaped with life, I have not been able to learn.

Though not far from our journey’s end, we were by no means relieved from our fears and misgivings. Often were we surrounded by bands of reapers, who, armed with their sickles, made us go through the ordeal of a minute interrogatory. But what cast the thickest gloom on our minds was, the detailed account we received from an Alcalde, of the events which had taken place at Seville. A revolution, however laudable its object, is seldom without some features which nothing but distance of time or place, can soften into tolerable regularity. We were too well acquainted with the inefficiency of most of the men who had suddenly been raised into power, not to feel a strong reluctance to place ourselves under their government and protection. The only man of talents in the Junta of Seville was Saavedra, the ex-minister.54 Dull ignorance, mixed with a small portion of inactive honesty, was the general character of that body. But a man of blood had found a place in it, and we could not but fear the repetition of the horrid scene with which he opened the revolution that was to give him a share in the supreme government of the province.

The Count Tilly, a titled Andalusian gentleman, of some talents, unbounded ambition, and no principle, had, on the first appearance of a general disposition to resist the French, employed himself in the organization of the intended revolt. His principal agents were men of low rank, highly endowed with the characteristic shrewdness, quickness, and loquacity of that class of Andalusians, and thereby admirably fitted to appear at the head of the populace. Tilly, however, either from the maxim that a successful revolution must be cemented with blood—a notion which the French Jacobins have too widely spread among us—or, what is more probable, from private motives of revenge, had made the death of the Count del Aguila an essential part of his plan.

That unfortunate man was a member of the town corporation of Seville, and as such he joined the established authorities in their endeavours to stop the popular ferment. But no sooner had the insurrection burst out, than both he and his colleagues made the most absolute surrender of themselves and their power into the hands of the people. This, however, was not enough to save the victim whom Tilly had doomed to fall. One of the inferior leaders of the populace, one Luque, an usher at a grammar-school, had engaged to procure the death of the Count del Aguila. Assisted by his armed associates, he dragged the unhappy man to the prison-room for noblemen, or Hidalgos, which stands over one of the gates of the town; and, deaf to his intreaties, the vile assassin had him shot on the spot. The corpse, bound to the arm chair, in which the Count expired, was exposed for that and the next day to the public. The ruffian who performed the atrocious deed, was instantly raised to the rank of lieutenant in the army. Tilly himself is one of the Junta; and so selfish and narrow are the views which prevail in that body, that, if the concentration of the now disjointed power of the provinces should happen, the members, it is said, will rid themselves of his presence, by sending a man they fear and detest, to take a share in the supreme authority of the kingdom.55

The effects of the revolutionary success on a people at large, like those of slight intoxication on the individual, call forth every good and bad quality in a state of exaggeration. To an acute but indifferent observer, Seville, as we found it on our return, would have been a most interesting study. He could not but admire the patriotic energy of the inhabitants, their unbounded devotion to the cause of their country, and the wonderful effort by which, in spite of their passive habits of submission, they had ventured to dare both the authority of their rulers, and the approaching bayonets of the French. He must, however, have looked with pity on the multiplied instances of ignorance and superstition which the extraordinary circumstances of the country had produced.

To my friend and companion, whose anti-catholic prejudices are the main source of his mental sufferings, the religious character which the revolution has assumed, is like a dense mist concealing or disfiguring every object which otherwise would gratify his mind. He can see no prospect of liberty behind the cloud of priests who every where stand foremost to take the lead of our patriots. It is in vain to remind him that many among those priests, whose professional creed he detests, are far from being sincere; that if, by the powerful assistance of England, we succeed in driving the French out of the country, the moral and political state of the nation must benefit by the exertion. The absence of the King, also, is a fair opening for the restoration of our ancient liberties; and the actual existence of popular Juntas, must eventually lead to the re-establishment of the Cortes. To this he answers that he cannot look for any direct advantage from the feeling which prompts the present resistance to the ambition of Napoleon, as it chiefly arises from an inveterate attachment to the religious system whence our present degradation takes source. That if the course of events should enable those who have secretly cast off the yoke of superstition, to attempt a political reform, it will be by grafting the feeble shoots of Liberty upon the stock of Catholicism; an experiment which has hitherto, and must ever prove abortive. That from the partial and imperfect knowledge of politics and government which the state of the nation permits, no less than from the feelings produced by the monstrous abuse of power under which Spain has groaned for ages, too much will be attempted against the crown; which, thus weakened in a nation whose habits, forms, and manners, are moulded and shaped to despotism, will leave it for a time a prey either to an active or an indolent anarchy, and finally resume its ancient influence.

Partial as I must own myself to every thing that falls from my friend, I will not deny that these views are too general, and that, though the principles on which he grounds them are sound, the inferences are drawn much too independently of future events and circumstances. Yet the dim coloured medium through which he sees the state of a country, whence he derives a constant feeling of unhappiness, will make him, I fear, but little fit to assist with his talents the work of Spanish reform, so long, at least, as he shall feel the iron yoke which Spain has laid on his neck. I have, therefore, formed a plan for his removal to England, whenever the progress of the French arms, which our present advantages cannot permanently check, shall enable him to take his departure, so as to shew that if his own country oppresses him, he will not seek relief among her enemies.