Public opinion amongst the Carlists unhesitatingly attributed to Cabrera the death of his former superior. Under pretence of their serving him as guides, he had prevailed upon Carnicer to take with him two officers whom he pointed out. These were also made prisoners; but although the Eliot convention was not yet in existence, and quarter was rarely given, both of them were exchanged after a very short delay. The information received by the Christino authorities, of the route that Carnicer was to follow, was sent from the village of Palomar on a day when Cabrera was quartered there. Other circumstances confirmed the suspicion of foul play, and that Carnicer had been betrayed by his own party; and so generally was the treachery imputed to Cabrera, that he at last took notice of the charge, and used every means to check its discussion. So long as a year afterwards, he shot at Camarillas the brother of one of the two officers who had accompanied Carnicer, for having been so imprudent as to say that the latter had been sold by Cabrera.[B] Such severity produced, of course, a directly opposite effect to that desired by its author; for although Cabrera pretexted other motives, its real ones were evident, and all men remained convinced of his guilt. Subsequently the Carlist general Cabañero threw the alleged calumny in his face in presence of several persons, and instead of repelling it with his sword, Cabrera submitted patiently to the imputation.

[B] By a remarkable coincidence, this execution occurred on the 16th of February 1836, on the same day and at the very same hour that Cabrera’s mother was shot at Tortosa. To this latter unfortunate and cruel act, which has been absurdly urged as a justification of Cabrera’s atrocities, further reference will presently be made.

Justly distrustful of those about him, Carnicer, when passing the night in the mountains, was wont to change his sleeping place after all his companions had retired to rest. On one occasion, in the neighbourhood of Alacon, a soldier who had lain down upon the couch prepared for his general, was assassinated by a pistol-shot. Cabrera was in the encampment, and although the perpetrator of the deed was never positively known, rumour laid the crime at his door. Whether or not the dark suspicion was well founded, the establishment of its justice would scarcely add a shade of blackness to the character of Ramon Cabrera.

Already, during a period of eighteen months, the kingdoms of Arragon and Valencia had groaned beneath the calamities of civil war. Their cattle driven, their granaries plundered, their sons dragged away to become unwilling defenders of Don Carlos, the unfortunate inhabitants could scarcely conceive a worse state than that of continual alarm and insecurity in which they lived. They had yet to learn that what they had hitherto endured was light to bear, compared to the atrocious system introduced by the ruthless successor of Carnicer. From the day that Cabrera assumed the command, the war became a butchery, and its inflictions ceased to be confined to the armed combatants on either side. Thenceforward, the infant in the cradle, the bedridden old man, the pregnant matron, were included amongst its victims. A mere suspicion of liberal opinions, the possession of a national guardsman’s uniform, a glass of water given to a wounded Christino, a distant relationship to a partisan of the Queen, was sentence of death. The rules of civilized warfare were set at nought, and Cabrera, in obedience to his sanguinary instincts, committed his murders not only when they might possibly advance, but even when they must positively injure, the cause of him whom he styled his sovereign. “Those days that I do not shed blood,” said he, in July 1837, when waiting in the ante-chamber of Don Carlos with Villareal, Merino, Cuevillas, and other generals, “I have not a good digestion.” During the five years of his command, his digestion can rarely have been troubled.

The task of recording the exploits and cruelties of Cabrera, and the history of the war in which he took so prominent a part, has been undertaken by three Spaniards of respectability and talent; the principal of whom, Don Francisco Cabello, was formerly political chief of the province of Teruel, in the immediate vicinity of Cabrera’s strongholds. There he had abundant opportunities of gathering information concerning the Carlist leader. In the book before us he does not confine himself to bare assertion, but supplies an ample appendix of justificatory documents, without which, indeed, many of the atrocious facts related would find few believers.

The Carlist troops in Arragon and Valencia were of very different composition from those in Navarre and Biscay. In the latter provinces, an intelligent and industrious peasantry rose to defend certain local rights and immunities, whose preservation, they were taught to believe, was bound up with the success of Don Carlos. In Eastern Spain the mass of the respectable and labouring classes were of liberal opinions, and the ranks of the faction were swelled by the dregs and refuse of the population. Highwaymen and smugglers, escaped criminals, profligate monks, bad characters of every description, banded together under command of chiefs little better than themselves, but who, by greater energy, or from having a smattering of military knowledge, gained an ascendancy over their fellows. In these motley hordes of reprobates, who, after a time, schooled by experience and defeat, were formed into regular battalions, capable of contending, with chances of success, against equal numbers of the Queen’s troops, the clergy played a conspicuous part. Rare were the encounters between Christinos and Carlists, in which some sturdy friar did not lose his life whilst heading and encouraging the latter; after every action cowls and breviaries formed part of the spoil; scarce one of the rebel leaders but had his clerical staff of chaplains, sharing in, often stimulating, his cruelties and excesses. Those monks who did not openly take the field, busied themselves in promoting disaffection amongst the Queen’s partisans. The most subversive sermons were daily preached; the confessional became the vehicle of insidious and treasonable admonitions; the liberal section of the clergy was subjected to cruel molestation and injustice. All these circumstances, added to the scandal and discord that reigned in the convents, loudly called for the suppression of the latter. Not only the government, which saw and suffered from the rebellion so enthusiastically shared in and promoted by the monks, but the very founders of the orders, could they have revisited Spain, would have advised their abolition. The following curious extract from the book now under review gives a striking picture of Spanish monastic doings in the nineteenth century.

“If, in the year 1835, St Bernard could have accompanied us on our visit to the monastery of Beruela in the Moncayo, surely he would have been indignant, and would have chastised the monks; surely he himself would have solicited the extinction of his order. Out of thirty monks, very few confessed, and only two or three knew how to preach; every one breakfasted and said mass just when he thought proper; by nine in the morning they might be seen wandering about the neighbouring country and gardens, or shooting small birds near the gates of the monastery; at eleven, they assembled in a cell to play monté with visitors from the neighbouring towns and villages, winning and losing thousands of reals. During dinner, instead of having some grave and proper book read aloud to them, one of their number related obscene stories for the amusement of his companions; at dessert the finest wines were served, the monks played upon the piano, and sang indecent songs. The siesta passed away the afternoon, until, towards evening, these self-denying anchorites roused themselves from their slumbers, and resumed their favourite amusements of birding and tale-telling. At nightfall the green-cloth was again spread, and the cards were in full activity; sometimes six or eight of the monks got upon their mules, and rode a distance of two or three leagues to a ball, dressed in the height of the fashion. The writer of these pages once asked the prior to let him see the paintings executed by the brotherhood; he was conducted to the apartments of the abbot, and in the most secluded of them was shown a wretched daub, of which the subject was shamefully coarse and disgusting. * * * Many of the women of the neighbouring village of Vera went by the names of the monks; and so great became the scandal, that, on one occasion, when the national guards were sent upon an expedition, the alcalde issued an order prohibiting their wives to walk in the direction of the monastery. One woman, who disobeyed the injunction, was made to pay a fine, and narrowly escaped having her head shaved in the public marketplace.”

The monks prosecuted the alcalde for this abuse of authority; but in the course of the trial so many scandalous revelations were made concerning them, that the over-zealous official got off with a very light punishment. His proclamation, the sentence of the Audiencia of Saragossa, and some other documents confirming the truth of the above allegations against the monastery, are given in the appendix to Señor Cabello’s book. “Certainly,” continues that gentleman, “all monasteries were not like that of Beruela. There were many virtuous, enlightened, and laborious monks; but if these were too numerous to be styled the exceptions, they at any rate composed the minority.”

To return to Cabrera. His first act, upon assuming the supreme command, was to collect the scattered remnant of Carnicer’s faction, which amounted but to three hundred infantry and forty horsemen. With these he commenced operations, limited at first, owing to the scanty numbers of his band, to marauding expeditions amongst the villages, whence he retreated to the mountains on the approach of the Queen’s forces. His cruelties soon made him universally dreaded in the districts he overran. To the militia especially he gave no quarter, slaying them unmercifully, wherever he could lay hands upon them, even when they capitulated on promise of good treatment. He was seconded by Quilez, El Serrador, Llangostera, and other partisans, as desperate, and nearly as bloodthirsty, as himself. With extraordinary and stupid obstinacy, the Madrid government persisted in treating the Arragonese rebellion as unimportant; and instead of at once sending a sufficient force for its suppression, allowed the insurgents to gain ground, recruit their forces, capture fortified places, and ravage the country, setting at defiance the feeble garrisons, and gallant but unavailing efforts of the national guard.

On the 11th of September, at day-break, Cabrera suddenly appeared in the town of Rubielos de Mora. Believing him far away, the garrison were taken entirely by surprise, and after a brief skirmish in the streets, retreated to a fortified convent. Here they made a vigorous defence, and no efforts of the Carlists were sufficient to dislodge them; until at dawn upon the 12th, after a siege of twenty-four hours, the Christinos perceived the points of the assailants’ pickaxes piercing the wall that divided the convent from an adjoining house. They set fire to the house, but unfortunately a high wind fanned the flames, which speedily communicated to the convent. Even then the besieged continued to defend themselves, but at last, overcome by fatigue, hunger, and thirst, scorched, bruised, and exhausted, they accepted the terms offered by the besiegers. Their lives were to be spared, and they were to retain their clothes and whatever property they had about them. Cabrera and Forcadell signed the agreement; and sixty-five national guardsmen and soldiers of the regiment of Ciudad Real marched out of the burning convent, and were escorted by the Carlists in the direction of Nogueruelas. On reaching a plain near that town, known as the Dehesa, or Pasture, Cabrera ordered a halt, that his soldiers might eat their rations. The prisoners also were supplied with food. The meal over, the Carlist chief formed his infantry and cavalry in a circle, made the captives strip off every part of their clothing, and bade them run. No sooner did they obey his order, than they were charged with lance and bayonet, and slaughtered to a man. It was a fine feast of blood for Cabrera and his myrmidons. On the body of one victim twenty-six wounds were afterwards counted. When Cabrera departed, the authorities of the adjacent town buried the bodies; but at the end of the war, in the year 1841, upon the anniversary of the massacre, their remains were disinterred and removed to Rubielos with much pomp and religious ceremony.