When Isabella, the Catholic, ascended the throne of Castile, she was called upon to govern a country profoundly demoralised, infested with evil doers and dominated by a turbulent and vicious nobility. The throne was an object of contempt, the treasury empty, the people poverty stricken, and the princes of the Church rebellious and rejoicing in large revenues. A lawless aristocracy hungry for independent authority were fighting for their own lands or conspiring secretly to overawe the Crown. Titled alcaldes, traitors and rebels, openly raised brigandage into a system, exacted tribute by blackmail from the lower classes, and made unceasing war upon the higher. Within the kingdom a rival pretender aimed at the Crown. One near neighbour, Alfonso V of Portugal, menaced the peace of the country and kept an army on the frontier; another, Louis XI of France, crafty and unscrupulous, constantly threatened war and held his army in Guipuscoa.
In a few short years the whole aspect of the country was changed. Isabella brought her rebellious nobles to their knees, all of them asking pardon and promising allegiance; the French army withdrew hastily to France; the Portuguese was defeated and expelled; the claimant to the throne was imprisoned and numbers of high-born criminals suffered on the scaffold. The great ecclesiastics disgorged much of their wealth to buy forgiveness, the robber haunts were attacked and destroyed, the high-roads became perfectly safe, thieves and highwaymen took to honest labour. Now the revenue was largely improved, the law was respected, crime was actively pursued and rigorously punished. But for the terrors and cruelties practised by the Inquisition, Spain would have enjoyed unbroken domestic peace and all the benefits accruing from general good government. These satisfactory results were largely achieved by the excellent police organised by Isabella and her husband, Ferdinand. The revival and consolidation of the "Santa Hermandad" or Holy Brotherhood which had always existed in the country districts to secure peace and tranquillity, but heretofore wielding smaller powers, worked wonders. A comprehensive system was now introduced by which all parts were patrolled by well-armed guardians of the law, mounted and on foot, who checked, prevented or punished misdeeds. In every collection of thirty houses or more two officials were appointed to deal with all offenders according to a strict code. Every thief when taken was punished with fine, flogging and exile, in penalties proportioned to the amount stolen. For more heinous offences his ears were cut off and he got a hundred lashes, or yet again one of his feet was amputated and he was peremptorily forbidden to ride on a horse or mule at peril of his life. A sentence of death was carried out by shooting with arrows.
This ancient Hermandad was at one time revived in the Migueletes, a body of men organised early in the nineteenth century to act as escorts to private travellers, as the regular mails and diligences were under the protection of troops provided by the Government. The Migueletes were a semi-military force composed of picked youths of courageous conduct, wearing uniform and armed with a short gun, with a sword, a single pistol and carrying a cord by which to secure their prisoners. The Migueletes took their name from one Miguel de Pratz, who had been a lieutenant of Caesar Borgia. They were often recruited from the robbers who were offered service as a condition of pardon when captured, and afterwards behaved admirably. No one with an escort of ten or twelve Migueletes need fear attack.
The mail coach was sometimes attacked, and on one occasion was stopped at Almuwadiel outside Madrid. It carried several passengers, among others an Englishman, a German artist and a Spaniard. At the first appearance of the brigands, the guard threw himself on the ground with his face in the mud and the postillions did the same. When summoned to deliver up their possessions, the Englishman gave up his well filled purse and was warmly thanked; the German artist would have been ill-treated as a punishment for his empty pockets, but was spared when his poverty was explained; the Spaniard was caught attempting to conceal his valuables in the carriage lining and narrowly escaped a beating. The coach was at last permitted to proceed and at parting the leader of the band shook hands with the Englishman and said he was a real gentleman, the German was ignored and the Spaniard was sharply taken to task for his attempted "fraud."
To this period (1825-35) belongs the famous brigand, José Maria, the Spanish Fra Diavolo, whose name is still remembered in the "Serrania" or mountain country of Ronda and throughout Southern Andalusia, for his daring robberies and continual defiance of the authorities. A "pass" or safe conduct granted by him was a better protection than any official escort. So great was his power that he was known by the proud title of "El Señor del Campo" (the lord of the country), and he ruled more absolutely in Andalusia than King Ferdinand in Spain. Travellers paid him a head tax, blackmail was levied on all public conveyances and, as has been said, he issued passports at a price to all who chose to pay for his protection. Strong bodies of troops were sent against him, but he managed always to elude or oppose them successfully.
José Maria started in life as a small cultivator in a village near Antequera, but, unable to earn a decent living, he took to the more profitable business of smuggling, a profession greatly honoured and esteemed in Spain. In one of his operations he was drawn into an affray with the soldiers and unfortunately shot and killed one of them. He at once fled to the mountains, where he was soon surrounded by other no less reckless companions, all of them outlaws like himself, and became the chief and centre of the band which soon spread terror throughout Southern Spain. His headquarters were in the rugged and lofty mountain district of Ronda near the little town of Grazalema, but he was ubiquitous in his rapid movements and traversed the whole of Andalusia. A story is preserved of an English nobleman who travelled to Spain for the express purpose of making his acquaintance but long sought him in vain in his favourite haunts and much disappointed retraced his steps to Madrid. But on the road between Carmona and Ecija[23] he had the questionable good fortune to meet José Maria in person, who thanked him courteously for the compliment he had paid him in seeking an interview, in return for which he proceeded to relieve his lordship of his valuables and his baggage so that he might continue his journey without encumbrance. He had many ways of levying contributions. One was to send a messenger to some landed proprietor, demanding a large sum of money, and declaring that if it was not paid he would swoop down to lay waste his lands and burn his house over his head. Another plan was to take post with his gang, all of them well mounted and fully armed, on the highroad just outside some populous city, and "hold up" every one who passed in or out, seizing all ready money and carrying off to some secret fastness all persons known to possess means.
English officers, part of the garrison of the Rock of Gibraltar, did not escape the exactions of José Maria. Once a shooting party in the woods near Gibraltar was suddenly attacked and captured, but after the first surprise they showed fight and a brigand was wounded. The lives of all of them were in danger but were saved on the persuasion of José Maria that they would be more valuable as prisoners for whom a large ransom would be obtained than as corpses. One of the party was accordingly sent to the Rock to procure the money while the rest were detained as hostages for his return at a certain hour the next day. The messenger was warned that if a rescue was attempted, the whole of the prisoners would be instantly massacred. He reached the Rock after gunfire, but the gates were presently especially opened to admit him, the money was collected, not without difficulty, and was conveyed to the brigands in sufficient time to secure the release of the captives. For some time later English officers were forbidden to go into Spain except in sufficient numbers to set the brigands at defiance. In quite recent years (1871) two gentlemen, natives of the Rock, were carried off and detained until a large ransom was paid.
José Maria dominated the country for nearly ten years. The secret of his long continued impunity may be traced to the fact that many of the local authorities, influenced either by fear or interest, were in collusion with him, and that the peasantry all wished him success; for, as he never oppressed them, but assisted and protected their smuggling transactions in which they are nearly all, in one way or other, engaged by opposing the regular troops, he was greatly beloved and venerated. He was in fact regarded as a hero; for such a life, wild and adventurous, where there is plenty of plunder and no laborious duty, has wondrous charms in the eyes of the lower Andalusians, by whom the laws of meum and tuum have never been well understood. How long José might have continued in power it is impossible to say, but like some other great personages he chose to abdicate. In 1833, he made his own terms with the Queen's government, agreeing to break up his band on condition of receiving an indulto, or pardon for all past offences, and a salaried appointment as an officer of Migueletes, or "police." He did not long exercise this honest calling, for soon after, when attempting to secure some of his former comrades who had taken refuge in a farmhouse, he was shot dead as he burst open the door.
With all his bad qualities, José had some of a redeeming character. Among these were his kindness to his female prisoners, his generosity to the poor, and his forbearance, for he frequently restrained his troop from acts of violence, and displayed on occasions a certain chivalrous nobility of character, hardly to be expected from a robber. In person he was very small, scarcely more than five feet in height, with bowed legs; but he was stout, strong and active and made amends in boldness, determination and talent for his physical deficiencies. His success and the long continued control which he exercised over the lawless fellows who composed his band proved that he possessed the difficult art of command. His courage indeed was proverbial. As an instance of it, it is reported that he once ventured into the presence of the Prime Minister at Madrid and dared to beard him in his own house.
Brigandage has not wholly disappeared in Spain although it no longer exists on the grand scale of former days when the mountain passes and lesser highways were infested by robber bands led by daring and unscrupulous chiefs who stopped travellers, blackmailed landed proprietors and carried off country folk whom they held to ransom often for considerable sums. To-day, if the knights of the road are still to be met with occasionally, they are for the most part paltry pilferers bent on stealing small sums from the poorer folk returning from market, or in rare cases holding up some solitary vehicle and its defenceless passengers. These are of the type of the old fashioned salteadores or "jumpers," so named because they jumped out from behind a rock and dropped suddenly on their prey with the old peremptory summons of "Boca abajo!" "Boca à tierra!" "Faces down! Mouth to the ground!" The cry may still be heard, and it means mischief when backed as of old by the muzzle of a gun protruding from the bushes in some narrow pass or defile. They are courageous too, these Spanish road agents, ready to fight at need as well as to rob, to overbear resistance and to meet the officers of the law with their own weapons. A story is told of one daring ruffian, Rullo de Zancayro, who, in 1859, murdered the alcalde of his village and was followed by two guardias civiles. At the end of a long chase they went too near some brushwood, when one was shot dead and the fugitive made good his escape.