At three one morning he opened fire on the guard-house occupied by the Carabineros, at the bridge over the Bidassoa, between Vera and Irun. A white flag was hoisted on the guard-house. He ordered the fire to cease, and advanced to negotiate the conditions of surrender. The enemy, who had invited him to approach, by the white flag, fired and wounded one of his men. He issued directions to take the place, and spare nobody. The place was taken, and nobody was spared. Twenty-seven dead bodies littered the Vera road that morning.
"Is it true that you pardoned two?" I asked the priest.
"No, ninguno! Porqué?" he answered with astonishment. "Not one. Why should I?"
The reason I had asked was that I had been told that a couple of the Carabineros had plunged into the Bidassoa and tried to swim to the other side; but the Cura, on his own avowal, with Rhadamanthine justice had commanded them to be shot as they breasted the current, and they were shot. He was no believer in half-measures.
A lady partisan of his, who had dined with him the day before, told me he never breathed a syllable of the attack he meditated, to her or any of his band. An English gentleman, who visited the ground while the corpses were still upon it, assured me that the sight was horrifying, and, such was the panic in Irun, that he verily believed Santa Cruz might have taken the town the same afternoon, had he appeared before it with four men.
To pursue the story of the redoubtable Cura. The bruit of his exploits had gone abroad, and among certain Carlists it seemed to be the opinion, as one of them remarked to me, that "Il a fait de grandes choses, mais de grandes bêtises aussi." He was making war altogether too seriously for their tastes. Antonio Lizarraga was appointed Commandant-General of Guipúzcoa about that period, and ordered Santa Cruz to report to him. Santa Cruz, who was in the field before him, and had five times as many men under his control, paid no heed to his orders. Lizarraga then sent him a death-warrant, which is so curious a document that I make no apology for appending it in full:
Translation.
(A seal on which is inscribed "Royal Army of the North, General Command of Guipúzcoa.")
"The sixteenth day of the present month, I gave orders to all the forces under my command, that they should proceed to capture you, and that immediately after you had received the benefit of clergy they should execute you.
"This sentence I pronounced on account of your insubordination towards me, you having disobeyed me several times, and having taken no notice of the repeated commands I sent you to present yourself before me to declare what you had to say in your own defence in the inquiry instituted against you by my directions.