Against this terrible stronghold of the revolution, General Martinez Campos advanced with an army from Madrid with orders to reduce the place with the utmost despatch. This was easier said than done. Supplies were lacking; the advantage in artillery lay entirely with the besieged. The Carlists effected diversions in favour of the Intransigentes—an odd coalition. Meantime, three of the revolutionary vessels were seized by the Prussian squadron as pirates—an utterly unjustifiable interference with the domestic affairs of another State. We might as reasonably have seized the vessels of the Confederate States in 1864. The Prussians and Italians exacted, moreover, a war indemnity of 50,000 pesetas from the Cantonal Junta, which body became a prey to internal dissensions. One of its members was assassinated. Taking advantage of these embarrassments of the besieged, the republican troops redoubled their efforts. Señor Castelar came down from Madrid to assume the supreme command, and Martinez Campos was superseded by General Lopéz Dominguez. An incessant bombardment was kept up, the besieged responding shell by shell. In January the frigate Tetuan was burnt to the water's edge, and a day or two later the explosion of the gun park destroyed hundreds of the garrison. The end was near. The city had for half a year defied almost the whole kingdom, and withstood the covert attacks of foreign Powers. Among the revolutionaries were men who burned to emulate the Numantians, and to make of themselves, the whole population, and the city, one vast blazing hecatomb. Before this desperate resolution could be executed, the Government troops forced their way into wretched, blood-drenched Cartagena. Gálvez, Contreras, and the leaders of the cantonal movement escaped by sea in the ironclad Numancia, which far exceeded the Government vessels in speed, and took refuge in Algeria. Thus collapsed a movement which was, after the Commune of Paris, the most determined organized attempt ever made to subvert the existing constitution of European society.
I have given at some length this chapter in the history of Cartagena, partly because the town has little interest in itself, and partly because these events, though so recent and so significant, are never so much as alluded to by most writers of travel books. Out of so much evil good came at last, for these wellnigh fatal disorders opened the eyes of the Spaniards to the instability of the Madrid Government, and formed the prelude to the reign of peace inaugurated by the accession to the throne of King Alfonso XII.
Apart from its historical associations, Murcia repays the attention of the traveller less than any other province of Spain. Fortunately, almost the only places of interest it contains—the ones I have mentioned—lie on or close to the direct route from Granada into the old kingdom of Valencia.
CHAPTER VIII
IN THE OLD KINGDOM OF VALENCIA
THE southernmost position of the ancient kingdom of Valencia belongs geographically and historically to Murcia. The huerta in which Orihuela stands is a continuation of the huerta of Murcia, and in the town itself we recognize the Aurariola which was the capital of the latter kingdom. I did not stop at Orihuela, but I understand that it remains distinct from all other towns in Valencia, in that its people speak pure Castilian. For that variety of the Romance tongue which I may denominate Catalan is spoken with local modifications all along the eastern coast of Spain, from the mouth of the Segura to the frontier of Rousillon. It is not, of course, a mere dialect of Castilian. It is a distinct language, believed by most authorities to have been the language of those Romanized Spaniards who were driven north of the Pyrenees by the Arabic invasion, and who reintroduced it on their reconquest of this portion of their old territory. Before Valencia was recovered by James I. of Aragon—Jaime lo Conqueridor—the Christians of the province probably spoke Castilian or a tongue akin to it. Catalan was simply the language of the new rulers, which the people soon acquired. In the province of Aragon itself Catalan, or Limousin as some call it, was never spoken. This circumstance no doubt powerfully contributed to the adoption of Castilian, in preference to the sister tongue, upon the unification of the two kingdoms. But for some reason unknown to us—unless it was merely the proximity of Murcia—Orihuela resisted the Catalanizing influence of its conqueror.
