The man who addressed this language to his countrymen had hitherto endeavoured to frustrate the purposes of those better spirits whom the danger had awakened; and by his means this blow against the French had been delayed as long as possible, in the hope and expectation that a French force might arrive in time to prevent it, and secure Cadiz for the Intrusive King. For in this part of Spain alone, the intention of opposing Buonaparte had been conceived as soon as his designs were discovered, and measures had been taken for obtaining assistance from the English. The Spanish Commander at Algeziras, and the British Governor of Gibraltar, had always been accustomed in time of war to maintain that sort of humane and courteous intercourse which the laws of honour allow, and by which the evils of hostility may be mitigated. The opportunity thus afforded had not been overlooked by those Spaniards who were resolved to act for the deliverance of their country; and if Ferdinand, instead of overthrowing the favourite, had found it necessary to fly, it was intended that he should have taken refuge at Gibraltar, and from thence have embarked for the colonies, trusting to British honour. As early as the beginning of April, General Castaños had communicated with Sir Hew Dalrymple upon the state of affairs, and the measures which it might be necessary to adopt. After the elder branches of the Royal Family had been decoyed away, a hope of saving D. Francisco, the youngest of the Infantes, was cherished, and of conveying him to America, to secure that portion of the Spanish dominions: but in case the whole of the Bourbons should be destroyed, or carried into hopeless captivity, the Archduke Charles was regarded as the fittest person to whom the throne, thus rendered vacant, could be offered; and a request was made to Sir Hew that a frigate might be held in readiness to sail for Trieste, and bring him over. Sir Hew Dalrymple saw the whole importance of the crisis; and by the generosity with which he took upon himself the responsibility of acting in affairs of such moment, the Spanish General was induced to place just confidence in British frankness and good faith. Toward the latter end of May two French officers, one of whom was an aide-de-camp of Murat’s, came to Algeziras. Castaños supposed their errand was to arrest him, and in that case had determined upon killing them, and retiring by sea to Gibraltar. He found, however, that they spake to him with apparent confidence respecting the Viceroyalty of Mexico, which had been promised him by the old government, and was now held out as a lure to him, as it also was to General Cuesta. The aide-de-camp assured him that the removal of the Bourbons from Spain had for three years been the chief object of Buonaparte’s policy; and this having now been happily effected, the house of Austria was next to be removed ... an operation which could not require more than four months; ... so easy at that time did any ambitious enterprise appear to the soldiers of Buonaparte! But Castaños was neither deterred by the power of this formidable tyrant, nor seduced by any prospect of personal aggrandizement. He continued his communications with Gibraltar, and his plan was to begin by seizing the French fleet; this he thought would be the best mode of commencing hostilities, and such a stroke at the outset would give a character of decision and vigour to the Spanish counsels. Morla had influence enough to frustrate it then; but no evil arose from the delay; rather it proved advantageous, by allowing time for that simultaneous manifestation of feeling which so decidedly proved the spirit of the people. Meantime, in full reliance upon England, Castaños obeyed the first summons from the Junta of Seville, and prepared to resist the French when they should enter Andalusia.
♦Massacre at Valencia.♦
While Asturias, Galicia, and Andalusia, had thus with one impulse taken arms against the usurpation, and opened an intercourse with England, of whose willing and efficient assistance no doubt was entertained, the city of Valencia, where the same spirit manifested itself at the same time, became the scene of a most horrible and disgraceful tragedy. There also, in the first movements of the people, the governor, D. Miguel de Saavedra, fell a victim to popular fury; he was brought back from Requeña, whither he had retired for safety, and murdered near the palace of the Conde de Cervellon, who had decidedly engaged in the national cause, and yet with all his efforts was unable to save him. His head was carried about the streets on a pike, and then exposed upon a pillar in the Plaza de S. Domingo. A Junta was chosen, and order would soon have been re-established, if at this time there had not arrived from Madrid one of those monsters whose actions, we might wish, for the sake of human nature, to account for by the supposition of demoniacal possession. P. Baltasar Calvo, such was his name, was a Canon of the church of S. Isidro, in the metropolis; it was afterwards reported that he had been deputed by Murat to secure Valencia for the intrusive government, by secretly treating with the members of the Junta; and that finding this impracticable, he determined to make himself master of the city by terror. But that he should have acted as he did with any ultimate view of delivering up the city to the French is utterly impossible; nor indeed is it likely that he had any other purpose than that of glutting at the head of a mob a devilish disposition, which, if he had lived a century earlier, would have found appropriate employment and full gratification in the service of the Holy Office.
There were many French residents in Valencia; the abominable conduct of their government toward Spain had made them objects of hatred as well as suspicion; and at the beginning of the disturbances most of them very imprudently took refuge in the citadel. Calvo denounced them to the mob as being in correspondence with Murat and the French troops, for the purpose of betraying the city. The Junta had no military force at their command; and they were too much confused or intimidated to employ that moral force which, with due exertions on the part of the magistracy, may generally be brought into action. The British consul, Mr. Tupper, was one of their number; he went to the citadel, represented to the French the imminent danger to which they were exposed while they remained there collected as it were for slaughter, and intreated them to retire into the different convents, and name such of the inhabitants as they supposed would be willing and able to associate for their protection. But thinking themselves safer where they were, they would not be persuaded. By this time the Canon had collected instruments enough for his bloody purpose; in a large city ruffians will never be wanting, till the police of cities, and the moral condition of the inferior classes, be very different from what they are throughout all Christendom; and that he might have sure subjects at his command, he had opened the prisons and let their inmates loose. On the 5th of June, when the evening was closing, Calvo led his rabble to the citadel, and forced some friars to accompany them. Little resistance was made by the guard; the Frenchmen were led one by one into an apartment, to be confessed by the friars, like condemned criminals, then thrust out by some of these infatuated and infuriated wretches, felled with bludgeons, and dispatched by the knife. When the Junta heard that this horrible massacre was going on, they called out the monks and friars, and sent them to the scene of slaughter, carrying the host uncovered, and with lighted tapers, chanting as they went. At that sight the wretches ceased from their murderous work, and, smeared as they were with blood, knelt by the bodies of their dead and dying victims, in adoration. But Calvo, more obdurate than the very murderers whom he directed, called on them to complete what they had begun; he intimated to the religioners, that if they interposed in behalf of the French, they should be considered as accomplices with them, and partake their fate: and they, intimidated by the threat, and appalled by the dreadful objects before them, withdrew, ... when that spirit of heroic devotion, which looks upon martyrdom without dismay, might surely have prevented farther bloodshed, and redeemed the Valencians from the shame of the foulest excesses by which a cause so righteous in itself was sullied.
The massacre continued all night. A hundred and seventy-one persons were butchered; and when the day broke, it was perceived that some ten or twelve of these victims were still breathing. The effect which this produced upon the murderers shows how certain it is that the religioners would have softened them, had there been one man among them with the spirit of a martyr. Struck with compassion, and without making their intention known to Calvo, as if they knew him to be immitigable, they removed these poor sufferers to the hospital, and assisted in binding up the wounds which they had made. There still remained about an hundred and fifty French in the citadel; the mob, satiated with blood, and now open to feelings of humanity, determined upon sparing them, and removing them to a place of safety. The Canon consented to this, which it might have been dangerous to oppose; but his lust for blood was still unsatiated. He ordered all the French to be confessed before they left the citadel, then fastened them two by two with ropes, and marched them out toward the place appointed. On the way he halted the mob, and holding up a paper, declared that it had been found in the pocket of one of the Frenchmen, and that it contained an engagement on the part of his countrymen in that city, to deliver it up as soon as an army should appear before it. The multitude, with whom bold assertions, if according with their passions or prejudices, always pass for proofs, believed this preposterous charge; and with renewed ferocity falling upon the remnant whom they had resolved to spare, massacred them all. Calvo then led them to the houses of the French, in search of those who had remained at home, when the greater number took shelter in the citadel; these also were dragged from their hiding places, and in the same deliberate manner confessed and butchered. One circumstance alone occurred which may relieve the horror of this dreadful narrative. M. Pierre Bergiere had acquired a large fortune in Valencia, and was remarkable for his singular charity. It was not enough for him to assist the poor and the sick and the prisoner with continual alms, he visited them, and ministered to their wants himself in the sick room and in the dungeon. Yet his well-known virtues did not exempt him from the general proscription of his countrymen, and he too having been confessed and absolved, was thrust out to the murderers. The wretch who was about to strike him was one whom he had frequently relieved in prison, and upon recognizing him withheld his arm; calling however to mind that Bergiere was a Frenchman, he raised it again; but his heart again smote him, and saying, “Art thou a Devil or a Saint, that I cannot kill thee?” he pulled him through the crowd, and made way for his escape.
During these atrocities the Junta seem to have been panic-stricken, making no effort to exert an authority which never was so much needed. The Canon was not satisfied with this timid and unwilling acquiescence; he wished to involve them in the responsibility for these wholesale murders, or to bring them into discredit and danger by making them act in opposition to the wishes of the multitude whom he guided. With these views he commanded five Frenchmen to be led to the door of the hall wherein they held their sittings, and sent in a messenger to ask in his name for a written order to put them to death. The intention was readily understood, but the moment was not yet come for acting decisively against this merciless demagogue, and the Conde de Cervellon replied, “You have killed many Frenchmen without an order, and none can be wanted now.” Mr. Tupper went out to the assassins, and addressed them on behalf of the prisoners; he was struck at with a knife by one who called him a Frenchman himself; the blow was parried, voices were heard crying that he was an Englishman, and one man declared he would put to death the first person who should offer violence to the English consul. But any interposition for the miserable French was in vain; they were knocked down and stabbed, and their bodies were left upon the steps of the hall. There were still several Frenchmen concealed in the city, who were in danger every moment of being discovered and massacred. Mr. Tupper, when he found that all appeals to the humanity of the mob were unavailing, had recourse to a different method, and proposed to an assembly of ruffians, armed with the knives which they had already used in murder, and were eager to use again in the same service, that the survivors should be given up to him, that he might send them prisoners to England, promising in exchange for them a supply of arms and ammunition from Gibraltar. By this means their lives were preserved.
♦Punishment of the assassins.♦
The canon Calvo was now in that state of insanity which is sometimes produced by the possession of unlimited authority. He declared himself the supreme and only representative of King Ferdinand, and was about to issue orders for dismissing the Conde de Cervellon from his rank as Captain-general, dissolving the Junta, and putting the Archbishop to death. A sense of their own imminent danger then roused the Junta. They invited him to join them, and assist at their deliberations. He came, followed by a crowd of ruffians, who filled the avenues when he entered the hall: he demeaned himself insolently, and threatened the assembly till P. Rico, a Franciscan, one of the most active and intrepid in the national cause, rose and called their attention to a matter upon which the safety of the city depended; and then denounced the Canon as a traitor, and called upon the members immediately to arrest him. Calvo was confounded at this attack; ... when he recovered himself, he proposed to retire while the Junta were investigating his conduct; they well understood his intention, and voted that he should immediately be sent in irons to Majorca; and before the mob, who at his bidding would have massacred the Junta, knew that he had been accused, he was conducted secretly under a strong guard to the mole, put in chains, and embarked for that island. The Junta then acted with vigour and severity: they seized about two hundred of the assassins, had them strangled in prison, and exposed their bodies upon a scaffold. The Canon was afterwards brought back and suffered the same deserved fate. What confession he made was not known; he would not permit ♦Sir J. Carr’s Travels, p. 255–266.♦ the priest to reveal it, farther than an acknowledgement that God and his crimes had brought him to that end.
♦Duhesme fails in attempting to occupy Lerida.♦
The Valencians, as soon as they were delivered from the tyranny of this frantic demagogue, prepared vigorously for defence. They burnt the paper money which had been stamped in Murat’s name, and stopped several chests of specie which were on the way to Madrid. The Catalans were not able to exert themselves with equal effect, because Barcelona, the second city of the kingdom in population, but in commercial and military importance the first, was in the hands of the French; but where the people were not controlled by the immediate presence of the enemy they declared themselves with a spirit worthy of their ancestors. The decrees from Bayonne and the edicts of Murat were publicly burnt at Manresa. The Governor of Tortosa, D. Santiago de Guzman y Villoria, was murdered by the raging populace, and that city declared against the intrusive government. Duhesme thought to secure Lerida by sending the Spanish regiment of Estremadura to occupy the citadel; he expected that, being Spaniards, no objection would be made to admitting them, and an order for relieving them by French troops might afterwards be obtained from the government at Madrid. But the people of Lerida refused to let them enter, in wrongful, though at that time necessary distrust; and the regiment, glad to find itself at liberty, took up its quarters at Tarrega, waiting to see where it might be employed with most advantage in the service of its country. ♦Cabañes. Hist. del Exercito de Cataluña. Part i. p. 23, 24.♦ They were soon invited to Zaragoza. It was for the purpose of keeping open a communication with that city that Duhesme had wished to occupy Lerida; and if both places had been secured, the French would then have had military possession of all the Pyrenean provinces.