Even in a disturbed region it is needful to have a change of linen, so we got back next morning to St. Jean de Luz, where I had left my baggage. There I met M. Thieblin, a colleague, whom I had seen last at Metz, previous to the siege of that fortress in the Franco-German war. He was now representing the New York Herald, and had just returned from Estella, at the taking of which place, the most important the Carlists had yet seized, he had the luck to be present. He assured me that it was utter fatuity to dream of following the Carlists, except I had at least one horse—but that it would be sensible to take two if I could manage to procure them. It was more than an ordinary man was qualified to cope with, to make his observations, write his letters, and look after their transmission, without having to attend to his nag, and do an odd turn of cooking at a pinch. The riddle was how to get the horse—a sound hardy animal that would not call for elaborate grooming, or refuse a feed of barley. Horse-flesh was at a premium, but he thought I might be able to have what I wanted at Bayonne, on payment of an extravagant price. A requisition for forage and corn could be had through the Junta; and I should have no trouble in getting an orderly on applying with my credentials to the chief of staff of any of the Carlist columns to which I might attach myself. We had a long conversation, and Thieblin frankly informed me that in his opinion the Carlists had not the ghost of a chance outside their own territory. There they were cocks of the walk. What the end might be he could not pretend to vaticinate, but "El Pretendiente" would never reign in Madrid. The conflict might last for months—might last for years; but the Carlists owed the vitality they had as much to the divisions and inefficiency of their adversaries as to their own strength. There would be no important engagements—to dignify them by the epithet—until the organization of the insurrectionary forces was regularized, and they had a stronger artillery and an adequate cavalry. M. Thieblin did not stray far from the bull's-eye in his prophecy.
I went to bed in the mood of Crookback on Bosworth Field, and felt that my dream-talk would shape itself into the cry, "A horse! a horse!"
Until that coveted steed had been lassoed, stolen, or bought, I must only endeavour to justify my existence—that is to say, render value for the money expended on me by picking up "copy" anywhere and everywhere.
I was advised to go to Bilbao by sea, but the advice came too late. The last steamer from Bayonne had ventured there four-and-twenty hours before I sought my passage, and even on that last steamer the few voyagers were unable to insure their lives with the Accidental Company, although they consented to promise that they would descend into the hold the instant they heard a shot. It was almost as full of jeopardy to travel to Bilbao by sea as to sail down the Mississippi with a racing captain and a lading of rye-whisky on board. One Monsieur Gueno, master of the barque Numa, of Vannes, made moan that he was seriously knocked about while he lay in the Nervion, off the Luchana bridge, during a skirmish between the Carlists and the troops. They both fought vigorously, but they gave him most of the blows. One of his crew, in a punt behind, was killed, and twenty-five bullets were embedded in a single mast. He had the tricolour flying all the time. A fellow-countryman of his, Monsieur Jarmet, of the ship Pierre-Alcide, of Nantes, sent in a claim for an indemnity of £160 for damages sustained by his vessel much in the like manner. A Spanish war-craft, moored behind him, began pelting the Carlists with shot; the Carlists replied, and the Pierre-Alcide came in for the bulk of the favours distributed. Three bullets penetrated the captain's cabin, and four rent holes in the French flag. Neither pilots nor tugs were for hire at Bilbao, and captains of sailing vessels had only to whistle for a favouring wind and rely on their own good fortune and skill. Bilbao had to be dismissed on the merits.
Taking it for granted that I had that evasive horse, I reasoned, as I tossed on my bed, to the restless whimper of the Bay of Biscay, over which a storm was brewing, that "el Cuartel Real," the headquarters of the King, was the natural goal. There first information was to be had, and it was felt that it was about the safest place to be; but the King seldom stopped under the same roof two nights successively, and no one could tell where he would be two days beforehand. If he was at Estella when one started, he might be at Vera or Durango, or goodness knows where, when one got to Estella. So far his progress had been a success; he was present at the taking of Estella, and exercised his Royal clemency by releasing the captured prisoners. It would have been more politic to have demanded an exchange, for there were partisans of his own in Republican dungeons (Englishmen amongst them); but then prisoners have to be fed and guarded, so on the whole it was as well they were set free. It was very much the case of the man who won the elephant at a raffle. If the stories, spread assiduously by the Republicans, of the massacre and maltreatment of captives by the Carlists were correct, here was the opportunity for the exercise of wholesale cruelty; but there was not a particle of truth in such charges, which, by the way, one hears in every civil war. Where Don Carlos might advance next, or where severe fighting—not such brushes as that I witnessed at Irun—might take place, was a mystery. The movements of the Republican leaders were inexplicable, and conducted in contravention of all known principles of the art of war. They harassed their men by long and objectless marches. They ordered towns to be put in a state of defence at first, and then withdrew the garrisons. They engaged whole columns in defiles, where a company of invisible guerrilleros could tease them. They acted, in most instances, as if they had no information or wrong information. The latter, I believe, was nearer the truth. Their system of espionage was inefficient, as the information they got was untrustworthy, and always would be, in the northern provinces, for the feeling of the masses of the people was against them. Instead of making headway they were losing ground every day, and would so continue until they received reinforcements with fibre, and were commanded by officers who really meant to win, and had the knowledge or the instinct to conceive a proper plan of campaign. The generals could hardly be censured, for their hands were tied; they were forbidden to be severe; they dared not squelch insubordination. Capital punishment, even in the army, and at such a crisis as this, was abolished. There had been, I heard, something suspiciously resembling a mutiny in the column of Sanchez Bregua. A certain Colonel Castañon was put under arrest on a charge of Alfonsist proclivities; but the Cazadores and Engineers threatened to rebel unless he was liberated; and Sanchez Bregua, instead of decimating the Cazadores and Engineers, as Lord Strathnairn would have done, liberated the Colonel.
But to that question of my route. Peradventure the presence to my dozing vision of the General commanding the Republican troops of the north that had been might help me towards a solution.
"That had been" is written advisedly, for Sanchez Bregua had been recalled to Madrid, not a day too soon. He was one of those generals whose spine had been curved by lengthened bending over a desk. Loma, who was active and dashing, and had the rare gift of confidence in himself, had taken his stand at Tolosa, and was awaiting the advent of Lizarraga. All his men, and every able-bodied male in the town, were diligently excavating ditches and making entrenchments. Until Tolosa was captured by the Carlists, no serious attack on Pampeluna was probable; and that attack was likely to assume the form of an investment. Estella was to the south of Pampeluna, and all the country round, from which provisions could be drawn, was in the occupation of the Carlists. Tolosa was the objective point of the moment, and to Tolosa I determined to go. An attempt on San Sebastian could not enter into the calculations of the Carlist leaders at this stage of their revolt. The stronghold was almost inaccessible on the land side, and men, munitions, and provisions could be easily thrown into it by water. Irun, Fontarabia, and even Renteria (were artillery available) could be seized whenever the comparatively small sacrifice of lives involved would be advisable. But the game was not worth the candle yet. Were Irun or Fontarabia in the hands of the Carlists, there was the always-present danger of shells being pitched into them from a gunboat in the Bidassoa; and Renteria, outside of which the Republican troops only stirred on sufferance, was to all intents as serviceable to the Carlists as if it were tenanted by a Carlist garrison, which would thereby be condemned to idleness.
That whirlwind ride from Renteria to Irun would come before me as the storm battalions mustered outside, and the waves began lashing themselves into violence of temper. What if I had to go to Madrid while such weather as this was brooding? To get to the capital one is obliged to embark at Bayonne for Santander, and proceed thence by rail—so long as no Carlist partidas meddle with the track. Romantic Spain!
But are not those Republicans who affect that they know how to govern a country primarily and principally to blame? Only consider the continued interruption of that short piece of road between San Sebastian and Irun. Is it not disgraceful to them? One of our old Indian officers, I dare venture to believe, with eighteen horsemen and a couple of companies of foot, could hold it open in spite of the Carlists. But such a simple idea as the establishment of cavalry patrols of three, keeping vigil backwards and forwards along the line of eighteen miles, with stout infantry posts always on the alert in blockhouses at intervals, seems never to have entered into the obtuse heads of those officers lately promoted from the ranks. Seeing that the intercourse of different towns with each other and with the coast and abroad has been so long broken up, I cannot fathom the secret of how the population lives. The troops arrive in a village one day and levy contributions, the guerrilleros arrive the next and do the same; the fields must be neglected, trade must droop, yet nobody apparently wants food. True, the land is wonderfully fat; but some day the cry of famine will be heard. No land could bear this perpetual drain on its resources. And then I thought of Carlists whom I met in France, who had given of their goods to support the cause. With them I talked on this very subject. They were respectable and respected men; they prayed for success to Don Carlos with sincere heart; but they had left Spain, and they complained that this condition of disturbance was lasting too long.
"You ask me why I did not remain," said one to me; "wait, and you shall see."