In the same uniform as the small Communicants of Segovia Cathedral, other embryo artillery officers fill the city. At our hotel was a table where a number of the older students dined each day. They were well-bred lads with inborn sedateness, never boorish nor loud-voiced; noblesse oblige still is a reality in spite of the dissipated, smart set in Madrid by which we too often generalize. I shall not soon forget the look of pained displeasure with which they watched the over familiar treatment of the waiter by a foreign lady.
It does not seem to me too harsh a statement to make that Spain's neighbor across the Pyrenees, has little of this chivalrous idealism among her boys. There are exceptions of course; the manly carriage of the brancardiers of Lourdes, those bands of young men who voluntarily serve as bearers of the crippled and stricken, show that a remnant still exists of the race of the Rochejacqueleins, of the Montalemberts, of those who can serve, unpaid, an ideal. Frenchmen themselves will not maintain that such are the average. Whereas the average Spanish, like the average English lad, has a strong dash of the Quixote and is capable of disinterested enthusiasm. Proof of this radical difference is that first important step in manhood, marriage. In Spain there is not the pernicious system of dowries; as a rule it is personal attraction that wins a husband. French people will assure you, that though one may be hump-backed and villainously ill-tempered, if there is a dot one is married; one may be grace and intelligence incarnate, without the dot one goes unwedded to the grave; the shrewd, interested love of money is in young as well as old. Spanish young people are romantic. Midnight serenades and evening hours of chatting by the reja are signs that hint marriage here is more than material settlement, love more than an impulse of nature; Spain's novels tell of this idealism. In many vital points the Spanish people are more akin to the English than to their Latin brothers.
The Sunday morning that we took the diligence for our country excursion started cloudless. La Granja lies seven miles outside Segovia, on the Guadarrama Mountains, and is the residence of the Court for part of each summer. The diligence rattled down the precipitous streets of Segovia, passed under the towering aqueduct, "the devil's bridge" the peasantry call it, then mounted the swelling hills to the palace at San Ildefonso. It had formerly been a farm belonging to the monks of La Parral; Philip V turned it into an artificial French pleasure ground, and built a formal chateau, a Bourbon creation that is strangely out of place on the rugged hills. The park is well-wooded but all rural charm is spoiled by the neo-classic fountains, some of them like monstrous dreams. Before we reached the leafy avenues of San Ildefonso, the sky became overcast and a heavy rain began. Five minutes after leaving the diligence we were so drenched that it seemed as sensible to explore the palace grounds as to pause chilled and wet in a miserable hotel. Then when we found the diligence did not return to Segovia till the evening and that no carriage would start in the storm, in an ill moment we decided to walk back to the city. A wind that cut like a knife made it a feat beyond our strength, and some miles along that bleak way, when a cart passed, we abjectly begged a passage. Yet, standing patiently under the drenching rain, oblivous to the tearing wind, the contented young shepherd girls watched their flocks.
If this poor imitation of Versailles has little in itself to charm the tourist, La Granja has been the scene of so many striking events in modern Spanish history that it merits a visit. It was there that Godoy, favorite of Charles IV's wife, signed away Spain to Napoleon, the criminal act that led to such glorious consequences. For then Spain, the country which had lain downtrodden under three centuries of misrule, shedding her blood in wars for her wretched kings' personal ambitions and giving her treasure for their extravagance, awoke suddenly to life when she found the king had outraged her. Two young heroes, Daoiz and Velarde, artillery officers, turned the cannon on the French invaders in Madrid, that memorable Dos de Mayo, 1808, and the War of Independence began, the starting point of regeneration, the second Cavadonga.
That outburst of national vigor has never had justice done it. We know the Peninsula War from the English point of view, a ceaseless disparagement of Spain's part in it.[16] It is true that without the English armies the war would have dragged on in disorderly, guerrilla fashion, for misrule had robbed the people of skill in self-government and organization. But remember the glorious year 1808, whose centenary all Spain was celebrating during the months of our visit, was before the arrival of Wellington's troops. The Dos de Mayo, the Battle of Bailén, where a Spanish general with Spanish troops brought about the surrender of twenty thousand of Napoleon's trained soldiers, and the sieges of Saragossa and Gerona, unmatched in all modern history for heroism, were in 1808-1809. It is just to remember that when Germany, Austria, Italy, and Russia yielded in part to the invader, Spain stood firm against him, and the nation that Europe thought unnerved and debased "presented a fulcrum upon which a lever was rested that moved the civilized world."
La Granja has witnessed later historic scenes. When Charles IV betrayed his people, the nation chose as their king his son, the miserable Ferdinand VII, who ungratefully repaid their loyalty. Poor Spain, she has had kings who would have wrecked a less vigorous race. At La Granja, in 1832, Ferdinand VII changed his will and made his infant daughter, Isabel II, his heir, instead of his brother, Don Carlos, whom he had previously acknowledged, thus leaving behind him an inheritance of civil war. From the days of Urraca and Isabella the Catholic, women could inherit the throne in Spain, just as they can in England. But in the 18th century under the Bourbon kings, who loved all things French, the Salic Law was introduced and continued in force till Ferdinand VII changed it at La Granja. The king had a full right to revert to the earlier custom, as the Salic Law was an innovation in Spain, and the grandson of Ferdinand's daughter, Isabel II, the present young Alfonso XIII, is in truth the legitimate king of the Spains. Don Carlos, on Ferdinand's death, rose in rebellion, and for seven years a frightful, fraticidal struggle ravaged the country. This civil war, stamped out in 1840, again burst into flames during the disorders of 1872. To-day, however, the Carlist faction claims but scattered adherents, chiefly in the northern provinces. The peaceful termination of these troubles has been solidified by that noble and truly wise woman, the present queen dowager, María Cristina, whose strength of character and sincerity of aim may be said to have safeguarded her son's inheritance during his long minority.
Another scene took place at La Granja in the early years of Isabel II' reign, while her mother was regent, a far different regent from the later Cristina. Though the Constitutional factions had rallied round Isabel, as the Absolutists had gathered about Don Carlos, it was only through force, inch by inch, that the Spanish Crown yielded to the people's demand for a constitutional monarchy. Thus, at La Granja in 1836, the queen mother was intimidated by the army into affirming again the Constitution of 1812.
This last century in Spain has been a period of such ceaseless insurrection, such rapid, ill-considered changes of ministries, that it seems, on hasty survey, to be a hundred years of political chaos. Perhaps a slight sketch of the events may help to a better understanding, for running through the century, a thread to the labyrinth, is the nation's slow, stumbling, but ever forward advance to constitutional rule. With each disorderly, seemingly unconnected insurrection, a step ahead was taken, so that to-day an absolute monarchy is an impossibility in Spain. She may have taken longer than many European powers to shake off the incubus of the divine right of kings, but on the other hand, she has achieved her comparative independence without a king's execution or a terrible, bloody cataclysm. There has never been in Spain the bitter separation of nobles and people; together they both worked for their freedom, keeping a fraternal relationship that is uncommon in history. The Spanish temperament, like the English, has an intense loyalty and love of tradition; it finds its happiest condition under a monarchy, but the history of the 19th century shows it must be a constitutional monarchy; a modern king rules for the good of the people since he rules by will of the people.
To give a hasty sketch of political progress. Godoy, Charles IV's unscrupulous minister, brought Napoleon's armies into Spain under the pretext that they were on their way to conquer Portugal. When some seventy thousand French troops were on Spanish soil and the people found their king a slave to the so-called visitors, they suddenly awoke to the truth, the tocsin of alarm sounded in Madrid, and from one end of the land to the other they took up arms. Then followed the Guerra de la Independenzia, 1808 to 1814, that proved to Europe Spain was alive and vigorous, again in the arena of the world's struggle. During the war a representative body met at Cadiz, thus renewing the Cortes that had flourished before the Hapsburg dynasty stamped it out. At Cadiz, in an outburst of patriotism, the Constitution of 1812 was drawn up: for the invader, war to the knife; Ferdinand VII to be their lawful king; abuses such as the Inquisition abolished; the sovereignty of the people upheld; "religión y rey, patria é independencia," truly Spanish watchwords.
When in 1814 Napoleon was forced to accept Ferdinand VII as King of Spain, that ungrateful king came back to his loyal people, and his first act was to restore the absolute monarchy of his ancestors, to declare the Constitution of 1812 null and void, to try to galvanize the Inquisition into life. It was not long before the disorders of his government led some of the colonies in America to declare their independence, and finally Spain too uprose. The Riego insurrection of 1820, proclaiming again the Constitution of 1812, was the first of the frequent pronunciamientos (the uprising of the army against absolute monarchy) that continued down to 1870. Louis Philippe declared this insubordination of the army a menace to other thrones of Europe, and took this pretext to send French troops into Spain to uphold Ferdinand's absolutism: the Trocadero defense was during this second invasion of the French.