[1814-1824 A.D.]
A famous society, that of the Exterminating Angel, had extended its roots over the whole country under the direction of a former regent, the bishop of Osma, and was moving all the apostolics of the peninsula as by a single mind. It had relations with the principal bishops to whom several owed their offices; its ramifications crept into all the monasteries, and much more violent than its French chapter it preached the extermination of all the liberals.
The military commissions set to work with a new activity aided by a mass of regulations whose laconism and hypocrisy were only equalled by their vigour and violence. They had the power of condemning to death all who were guilty of lèse-majesté, that is to say all who declared themselves opposed to the rights of the king or in favour of the constitution. With the help of this ambiguous phrase, any writer who put into print any words in which the rights of Ferdinand were doubted, anyone who in any manner whatever had co-operated in the revolution of 1820-1823; anyone who kept in his house a copy of the constitution, a portrait of Riego, any souvenir whatsoever of the illustrious exiles living in a foreign country, anyone who by a shout or word, spoken even in drunkenness, showed hatred of tyranny—any of these could be found guilty of lèse-majesté. A decree bearing the date of October 9th, 1824, which through some expiring sentiment of modesty was not inserted in the official gazette, but nevertheless was applied with care, suppressed all of the laws and delivered the lives of all citizens over to these tribunals. A premium was put upon information and a secret police penetrated into every household in order to divine the secret of consciences and to purge Spain of all the liberal element. Not age, sex, virtue, or poverty were protection against these terrible commissions; wealth alone sometimes saved from death. He who had some fortune bought his life with the greatest part of his property.
The commission of Madrid, presided over by a fierce brute named Chaperon, who acquired the melancholy honour of giving his name to the whole epoch, surpassed all its rivals in the number of condemnations and severity of sentences. It sent to the scaffold all those in whose homes portraits of Riego were discovered, and to the galleys the women and children who committed the crime of not denouncing their husbands or fathers. More than one well-born woman thrown into infamous prisons with the most odious criminals died of despair in the midst of the unjust abjection to which she saw herself reduced. Chaperon, like all the judges who consented to make themselves the devoted instruments of social hatred, rejoiced in the midst of the terror which his name inspired, and under the general torpor that it created. He assisted at executions in full uniform; they were fête days for him, and on one occasion, anxious to hasten the execution of one of his condemned (it was a national militiaman who had taken part in the defence of Madrid, the 7th of July, against the revolted guards), he pulled, himself, the legs of the poor victim already hanging from the fatal gibbet, and this exploit finished, retired, proud to have exercised the functions of executioner and judge.[b]
THE TYRANNIES OF FERDINAND “THE DESIRED”
[1814 A.D.]
The places left in the power of the French were evacuated one by one, and finally, on the 20th of July, Spain gave its assent to the treaty of peace and friendship which the allies had concluded with France on the 30th of the preceding May. In the beginning of May the king had found a ministry which he modified before the end of the month, but at the head of it each time he placed the duke of San Carlos. The system of persecution continued and everything which seemed to favour innovations was vigorously opposed. Ferdinand regained his power, the cortes had disappeared, the constitution of Cadiz existed only in people’s memories. The Spain of 1814 became again the Spain of 1807; as before, she was subject to the joint domination of prince and clergy. The legislative bodies which constituted the government and the chief judicial magistracy of 1808 were abolished in 1814.
Among the reforms introduced by Joseph’s government and by that of the cortes after him, there were some which were unjust, extortionate, contrary to the re-established order; but there were others which should have been retained or modified with reservations. The king had no thought of making a choice. He considered, not the nature of the acts, but their origin; the good and the bad, salutary reform and disastrous measure, all were included in a general proscription. The state, impoverished by a long war, had at hand timely assistance in the estates of the religious communities, without being obliged to impose heavy burdens on the people; never had there been such a favourable opportunity for limiting and regulating these exaggerated possessions which had fallen into mortmain. A measure calling for investigation and reform which had been authorised by a papal bull under Charles IV might now have been carried into effect. But no attention was paid to anything of the kind. All their goods of which the cortes had disposed were returned to the convents, and at the same time a royal order re-established the holy office of the Inquisition on the ground that the government of usurpation and the pretended cortes had regarded the suppression of this tribunal as a very efficacious method of furthering their perverse schemes. The Jesuits were recalled, receiving again the goods which had belonged to them in the preceding century.
The administration of the realm was with great pains thrown again into the secular confusion out of which so many ministers had laboured to disentangle it. Instead of the happy division of territory decreed by the cortes, there reappeared the spectacle of provinces governed by captains-general, who added to their plenitude of military and administrative authority certain judicial attributes. Lastly the councils of Castile, of the Indies, of the orders, of finance, marine and war, authorities independent of the ministry, whose traditions made them hostile to any reform undertaken in the interests of the reigning power or of the people, began again to operate.
Around Ferdinand was formed that too famous camarilla[126] controlled by the Russian minister, which, wholly lacking in a broad outlook, seemed to have no object but destruction and vengeance. At the same time that it overturned all which the revolution had done for the unity of Spain, it struck at all those men who had incurred its hatred. Ten thousand Spaniards had had the misfortune to attach themselves to the French cause; they were banished and their goods confiscated. The members of the regency, those of the cortes, all the ministers, all the individuals who had taken part in framing the constitution or had been zealous partisans of it, were brought before commissioners to be tried with no legal formality. The number of the condemned was considerable: presides, imprisonment in the citadels, exile—such were the penalties inflicted; the king made no use of his right of pardon and these acts continued with cold perseverance. Two years after the king had regained his full power, the prisons were still full, and long proscription lists still appeared at intervals.