Indeed, the weakness of the defence of Morella showed that the spirit of the Carlists was already broken. Had Cabrera remained among them to cheer and encourage them, the defence would have been much more desperate, though it could not have been very much more prolonged, for another day or two would have seen the defences so destroyed that the place would have been untenable; but the fact that Cabrera was away wounded and sick took all the spirit out of the defence. The first offer of the governor to surrender if the garrison were allowed to march out and cross a foreign frontier, was no doubt the result of an order that Cabrera had given him before he left, when he found that he was no longer able to defend the place, and probably foreshadowed the plan that Cabrera himself thought it likely he would be compelled to adopt.
Espartero's triumph had been complete. He had, indeed, proved the saviour of Spain. When he began--one among half a dozen generals--he found jealousy and jobbery everywhere rampant. Most of the generals thought only of avoiding defeat, and not of gaining victory. So long as the Carlists left them alone they were well content to allow them to march almost at will through the country. The army, which was ill-clothed and ill-fed, was wholly deficient in artillery, and had but a very small body of cavalry. Worst of all, the government was rotten to the core. Corruption prevailed in every office, and positions were only secured through favouritism, merit counting not at all. Little by little Espartero changed all this. His honesty, his talent, and dogged perseverance triumphed over his adversaries. The people at large came to regard him as their one hope, and answered his appeal to them by overthrowing the government that had thwarted him, and making him towards the end of the war practically Dictator of Spain.
He had all along distinguished himself by the courtesy with which he had treated the British commissioners. He had relied a great deal upon the advice of Colonel Wylde, who was senior of that body, and had himself set, as a rule, an example of clemency to the captives except when he was driven by the massacre of prisoners taken by the Carlists to carry out striking reprisals. Many of the other generals, on the other hand, kept the commissioners at arm's-length, and would not only give them no information themselves, but ordered their officers not to do so. It is not difficult to understand the feeling that actuated them. These officers were unwelcome at their head-quarters not because they were there to plead the cause of humanity, but because they furnished the British government with accurate reports of the movements and conduct of the army, and thus exposed the falsity of their own bombastic reports of their doings.
"For my part, I am heartily glad it is over," Arthur said. "I certainly do not mean to remain to witness the expulsion of Cabrera and the stamping out of the last embers of disaffection. I have had six years of it, and I intend to send in my resignation as soon as I arrive at Madrid. When I came out it was with the intention of serving merely for the term of my enlistment, a couple of years; then I had the good fortune to be transferred to the army when the Legion was broken up, though I still thought that it was but for another year or so. However, I have no reason to regret that I have seen it through. I have been fortunate in all respects--very fortunate in serving under so kind and good a chief as Colonel Wylde."
"What are you thinking of doing if you leave the army?"
"I have a small estate waiting for me at home, which has been little by little piling up capital for me during my absence. I shall be a good deal more fit to take charge of it now, and to settle down, than I should have been if I had never come out here."
"It seems a pity, too," Colonel Lacy said. "You have done very good service, and Colonel Wylde has always reported well of you. You have been a captain now for four years, and you will be sure to get your majority as a reward for your work here."
"Yes, sir; if I had entered the army for the purpose of staying in it, I should have every reason for congratulating myself on my good fortune; but as I did not, I should not value the majority, for which indeed I feel myself much too young. Besides, I should be altogether unfit for it. I learned the work of a subaltern for a year in a hard, rough school, where there was no occasion to know more than the simplest movements. For the past four years I have not commanded a corporal's guard, and I could no more drill a battalion of British troops on a parade-ground than fly, so I have quite made up my mind to leave, and have indeed only held on for the past two years in the belief that the war would speedily come to an end."
"Well, Hallett, of course you know your own business best; and I am quite sure that if I had a nice little estate waiting for me in England, I should take the same course as you are going to do."
CHAPTER XXI