The weather is delicious, fine clear sky, 66 and 67 in the sun, open windows and doors, and plenty of dry crackling olive-wood (cheap) for the mornings and evenings.
Don Julian [Williams] in great force, in a consular coat with G.R. buttons, which would shame an ambassador. We are going to Cadiz (Don Julian and I) on a visit to a still greater man, Don Brackʸ., to taste sherry at Xeres, and look after a few pictures. The Alhambra we left in a cruel state of repair, the Patio de Leones and Sala de los Abencerrages one mass of ruin, rubbish, and dirt. They are re-tiling the whole of it, and the ladders of the presidarios [convicts] are every day knocking off part of the delicate stucco work. The Governor is going to repair the wall, and remove the garden from the Patio. They say the powder will be removed from the Palace of Carlos V. As the Spaniards do not work with the rapidity of lightning, I take it a stray Rayo may get the start of them, and send old Frascita and Dolorosita to the devil.
Once more political troubles disturbed Ford’s peace. So long as General Torrijos remained safe in his refuge at Gibraltar, he was a source of uneasiness to the Government. A trap was set to lure him to Spanish soil. A former friend, General Vicente Gonsalez Moreno, Captain-General of Malaga, opened a correspondence with him, professing Liberal sympathies, and promising the support of the troops. With about fifty companions, among whom was a young Irishman named Robert Boyd, Torrijos landed near Malaga, December 4th, 1831. Moreno was prepared for their arrival. The farmhouse in which the party sheltered for the night was surrounded by soldiers. Resistance was useless, and Torrijos and his friends surrendered the following morning. Six days later, Sunday, December 11th, all the prisoners were drawn up on the beach below the Carmen Convent at Malaga, and shot. Moreno was rewarded by being made Captain-General of Granada. Disgraced by Queen Christina, he subsequently joined the Carlists, and was murdered at Urdax, September 6th, 1839, by some Navarrese soldiers, in the act of escaping to France. It is said that he begged for a confessor and a brief respite. The only answer to his prayer was that he should have such mercy as he had himself shown to Torrijos, and he was instantly bayoneted and shot.
Every reasonable effort was made by Mark, Addington, and Lord Palmerston, to save Robert Boyd. But it was in vain. Boyd was the first person buried in the Protestant cemetery outside Malaga, to the east of the town. Up to this time Protestants who died at Malaga were buried on the sea-shore beyond low-water mark. The new burial ground, laid out by Mark, the British Consul, was the first spot in Spain which the authorities allowed to be enclosed for the interment of heretics.
The death of Torrijos relieved the Government from one danger. But another cause of anxiety arose. Spain threatened to intervene in the affairs of Portugal. In April 1831 Dom Pedro resigned the throne of Brazil, and returned to Europe to vindicate the Constitutional Charter, and restore to his daughter, Maria da Gloria, the crown which the Regent, her uncle, Dom Miguel, had seized. In July 1832 Pedro occupied Oporto, and held it for a year against all the attacks of Dom Miguel, both by land and sea. Spain at first favoured the cause of Miguel and the Absolutists. Her army of observation was assembling on the frontier; armed intervention seemed imminent. But the health of Ferdinand VII. was failing fast. At his death, it was plain that the crown would be claimed by Don Carlos, who was in avowed sympathy with Miguel. Christina saw that she must rally to her daughter’s support the Spanish Moderates, and she was disinclined to aid the Portuguese Government to crush the party on which she herself was relying in Spain. Thus the danger of war was averted.
Janʸ. 11, 1832, Sevilla.
I have had a magnificent, grandis Epistola from Mark, who is gone wild about the Malaga events, and the execution of Mr. Boyd. In his heart, I believe he was as glad as a young surgeon to get a subject for his new churchyard. He certainly has a hankering after my wife’s body, not her live body, but, hearing of her ill health, tried all in his power to get me to Malaga to have a pretty female specimen in his sepulchral museum. I must try and get you a copy of a letter, which is circulating here, from one of the monks of the convent, where the victims were taken, to a friend here. Mark is mentioned as coming in a coche in uniform to take Mr. Boyd’s body, over which he read prayers. Mark’s Epistle concludes with crumbs of comfort for you. “No man of honour can be otherwise than disgusted in serving near such men as are seen in command here, and I shall use all possible means in my power to quit the country as soon as it can be done.” Feliz viage y vaya v. con Dios. Meantime he threatens me with a visit, cum duodecim Marcis, pretty dears, who will certainly convey their sweet persons to the Fonda, as I can’t take in woman-kind.
The weather is most delicious here, sunny and balmy, and winter is gone. I am meditating a shooting excursion with Martin and Eden, not having the fear of José Maria in my eyes. I understand the officers kidnapped near Gibraltar have paid the fine; they had much better cross over to Africa, where both travelling and shooting, and indeed all the comforts of civilised life, are much more easily obtained than in Spain.
José Maria has sent to Quesada, offering to give up business on being secured a pardon; I suspect he has sold the goodwill of his vocation to his second in command, one Juan Cavallero. Quesada told me this, and that he took no notice of the application. Everybody here outrageous at Don Moreno and the Deshonra on Spanish buena fé!! The English papers you are so beneficent as to send me, as usual, are gone stark staring crazy about Don Boyd. Certainly, if anybody of the party deserved shooting, it is a meddling Foreigner, who must have known the existence of the decree under which all rebels, taken in flagrante delicto, were liable to summary punishment.
I have taken no steps about your wine yet, as the dealer has shown somewhat of the Moreno, a little mala fé, in some transactions I have had with him. I hope soon to go to Xeres, and will then taste all the wines in all the cellars, till I am carried off dead drunk.