The attempt to regenerate the national army by the infusion of a body of educated officers, whose advancement should depend entirely upon their own conduct and acquirements, was a praiseworthy effort to break through the barriers of presumption, ignorance, and vice, with which the pampered nobles of Spain had, until then, closed the door of promotion against every kind of merit; reserving for themselves all the most influential and lucrative posts, and placing in the inferior, the illegitimate branches of their houses, their numerous hangers-on and menials, and, even yet worse, the debased panders to their vices.
But venality is so strictly entailed upon all public departments in Spain, that the same gross corruption and glaring favouritism continued, as before, to regulate the distribution of favour and promotion. The patronage had passed into other hands, but the new hands were not more delicate than the old; “aunque vistan à la mona de seda, mona se queda.”[152] Legitimists and liberals were both equally corrupt; their object was the same, namely, to fill their pockets from the public purse. The difference between them consisted merely in the means by which they effected their purpose. The intrigues that had formerly been employed to manage the court were now directed to influence the political clubs, and, under their dictation, the constitutional ministers (to retain their places) were obliged to nominate the noisiest braggarts to the command of their armies, and select for all the minor posts such as were most vociferous in their cries of “constitution or death.” These, as might naturally have been expected, were, for the most part, lawyers’ clerks, tavern waiters, and barbers’ apprentices—self-imagined Gracchi and Bruti, who thought they would be doing a great public good by bettering their own particular condition. The youths, who, under the new system, crowded the military schools, were all chosen under the same influence, and mostly from the same class. But whatever germs of future Cids and Gonzalvos these seminaries may have cherished, not any were destined to reach maturity, for, Santiago not being so quick in his operations as San Anton, the French army cut up the tree of liberty, root and branch, ere these seeds of military greatness had even sprung up.
The extraordinary deterioration that has taken place in the Spanish army, since the days of Philip II., is only to be accounted for by the demoralized state of the upper ranks of society, and the consequent corruption that pervades every department of the state. The soldiers, who now run away, are chosen from the same race of men, that fought so gallantly under the Dukes of Alba and Parma; the religion they profess is the same that it was then, nay is stript in some slight degree of its bigotry and superstition. The last king to whom they swore obedience, was not a whit more despotic than any of his predecessors; so that it is futile to say, that tyranny or liberty had any weight in the matter. Could any sway be more absolute than that of the Spanish sovereigns of the House of Hapsburg? and yet under them the Spaniards behaved most nobly. Would it be possible to frame a more liberal constitution than that of 1820? and yet no troops ever conducted themselves more shamefully than those ranged under its standard.
Nor can this marked change be attributed to any inferiority of theoretical military knowledge on the part of the Spanish nation; for their schools of artillery and engineers are indisputably good, and their military writers by no means behind the age. Indeed, the “reflexiones militares” of the Marques de Santa Cruz may be traced throughout the scientific pages of Jomini and Dumas, and are, in fact, the groundwork of some tactical compilations of recent date in our own language.
The experience of the War of Independence proved, however, that very few officers of superior rank in the Spanish army were qualified to command;[153] and, at the same time, one cannot but be struck at the very small number amongst the inferior grades, who rose to distinction during the long period of its continuance.
The civil war that followed brought forward no new men of military talent; and the invasion of the French, in 1823, proved the utter incapacity of all the leaders who had been transformed into generals under the constitutional government.
The bombast of these latter worthies rendered their imbecility the more ridiculous. I heard one say to the late Sir George Don, just before the entry of the Duc d’Angoulême into Spain, “If we Spaniards drove the French across the Pyrenees, like a flock of sheep (!) when commanded by Napoleon’s best generals, with how much greater ease shall we now do so, being led only by a despotic Bourbon!”
Not very long after, I witnessed an act of imbecility yet more laughable. In ascending the staircase of the government house at Gibraltar one morning, I saw, on the landing place, a Spanish general officer (then, as at this moment, holding a most important command) explaining to an officer of the governor’s staff how, by “una grande combinacion,” he, Riego, and other “inclitos heroes,” proposed cutting off Marshal Molitor’s division of the French army, then marching on Granada. As the success of their combined operations depended entirely upon the secrecy and celerity with which they were to be conducted, it could not but be extremely amusing to hear the gallant general explain the “whole progress” of the affair, before a host of orderly serjeants, messengers, and servants; who, attracted to the spot by his loquacity and gesticulations, were listening with open-mouthed astonishment, to the elucidation of his cunningly devised plan. Ere I passed on, I too was fortunate enough to witness the hypothetical termination of “his marchings and counter-marchings,” in the most complete success; as, suiting the action to the word, he described a wide circle with his outstretched arms and gold-headed cane, and enclosed the outmanœuvered French marshal and his entire corps d’armée.
The result of this “grande combinacion” turned out, however, to be that the Marshal effected the passage of the mountains between Guadiz and Granada, ere the Spanish captain general had yet fully explained the impossibility of his escaping from the strategical toils about to be spread for him.
Return we now to Granada—from which city, having announced at Madame Martinez’ tertulia that it was our intention to depart on the following morning, taking the road to Cordoba, certain symptoms of uneasy curiosity were manifested, attended with sundry mysterious hints, that led us to fancy some extraordinary perils were to be encountered on that particular road. Less communicative than the Spanish captain general, however, the utmost we could elicit from our various acquaintances was, that the country round about the city whither we were about to proceed, was in a very volcanic state, and that a political explosion might be daily expected.