The ministry of Count Toreno had lasted only from June to September (1835), when Mendizabal assumed the chief direction of affairs; and it was just two months later (November, 1835) that George Borrow first set foot on the soil of the Peninsula.
Mendizabal continued to be Prime Minister until May, 1836, when he was succeeded by a coalition ministry of Isturitz, Galiano and the Duke of Rivas (see text, p. 181), under whose administration took place the military riots at Madrid (August 11, 12), which were most bravely repressed by General Quesada, the commandant of the city, as so graphically recorded by Borrow (pp. 202–205). Yet Quesada’s valour was of no avail. The decree of La Granja, of August 13 and 14, extorted from the fears of the queen regent by actual threats of military violence, was followed by the precipitate flight of Isturitz and Galiano to France, and of the Duke of Rivas to Gibraltar, and the assumption of power by Señor Calatrava, with Mendizabal as Minister of Finance. Quesada was murdered, as is said and sung on p. 206 of the text.
If the Cristino cause had made but little progress in 1836, there was even less encouragement to be found in the result of the military operations in the earlier part of 1837. General Evans was defeated at Hernani, near San Sebastian, in March, and although Lord John Hay with his English mariners took Irun, Don Carlos was allowed to march almost unopposed upon the capital. On September 12, he found himself within four leagues of Madrid, and had it not been for his own poltroonery and the jealousy and incompetence of those by whom he was surrounded, he might have ridden into the Puerta del Sol on the next day as King of Spain. But, dis aliter visum and all undefeated, he turned his back upon La Corte, and marched northwards with no apparent reason or policy, closely pressed by the new commander-in-chief of the Cristino forces, a man whose name is distinguished above that of any of his fellows in the contemporary history of his country.
Baldomero Espartero, the son of a village wheelwright in La Mancha, was born in 1792. Destined, like Cabrera, for the priesthood, he took up arms on the French invasion in 1808, and at the conclusion of the War of Independence in 1814 obtained a military position in Peru, in which he had an opportunity of distinguishing himself. After the capitulation of Ayacucho, when the independence of Peru was finally recognized, Espartero returned to Spain, and after some ten years of uneventful but honoured service in the home army he found himself, in 1833, entrusted with an important command in the queen’s army. Indolent and yet ambitious, dilatory and yet vigorous when opportunity offered, loyal and yet politically untrustworthy, Espartero flourished in the troublous times in which he found himself, and made a name for himself both in camp and court; and having, as we have seen, been created Count of Luchana on the relief of Bilbao, he had taken the place of Señor Calatrava as Prime Minister in August, 1837, and was succeeded in the following October by Don José Maria Perez, who in turn gave place to Ofalia on November 30 (see text, vol. ii. pp. 100, 121), when Espartero returned to Madrid as Minister of War.
Cabrera meanwhile was ravaging Aragon and Valencia, and continued not only absolutely to disregard the Eliot Convention, and to massacre all the military prisoners that surrendered to him, but to put to death the women and even the children that fell into his hands.
But with the war in Aragon and Catalonia, the readers of Borrow’s Bible in Spain have happily no need further to concern themselves.
The British legion, which, after two years’ evil fortune was at length becoming a force of some military value, was broken up and sent back to London at the expense of the British treasury, though a remnant elected to remain in the Peninsula, which did good service until the close of the year as the “British Auxiliary Brigade.”
In the spring of 1838 Espartero once more assumed the command of the queen’s army with the title of captain-general, and gained an indecisive victory over the Carlists at Peñacerrada, between Logroño and Vitoria, in June, 1838; while Cabrera was able to repulse the queen’s forces who sought to drive him from the strong position he had taken up at Aragon.
The ministry resigned in August, and the Duke of Frias presided over a short-lived cabinet, for in December, 1838, a new ministry was formed under Señor Perez de Castro; and Espartero, at length assuming the offensive with some vigour, was enabled, by the treachery of the Carlist general Maroto, to march unopposed into Orduña, the ancient capital of Biscay, in May, 1839.
After this practical victory Espartero was hailed as the saviour of his country, and received the title of Duque de la Victoria. Dissension soon completed what treachery had so well begun.