Such were the pastimes of Cabrera, such was the faith he kept with those who confided in his word. The barbarous execution detailed above was one of many that occurred in the first year of his command. Up to the month of February 1836, the number of his victims, slain after the battle, in cold blood, often in defiance of capitulation, sometimes on mere suspition of liberalism, amounted to one hundred and eighty-one. This does not include murders committed on the highways and in the mountains, but those only of which there were abundant witnesses, and that are proved by dates and documents. Amongst the slaughtered, were children and old men. Two lads of sixteen and seventeen years of age were shot at Codoñera in presence of their mother. When she implored Cabrera’s mercy, he told her that her sons should be spared if her husband would give himself up and take their place. On hearing this reply, worthy of a Caligula or a Nero, the unhappy woman swooned away, and the infant at her breast fell dead from her arms as if struck by lightning. The shock to the mother had killed the child. All these atrocities were committed whilst Cabrera’s mother yet lived unmolested in Tortosa.
Meanwhile the Christino general Nogueras, busied in the pursuit of the rebels, passed his whole time in the mountains, often not entering a town for a month together, except to get pay or shoes for his troops. Wherever he went, he was assailed by the tears and lamentations of bereaved wives and mothers. If he paused at Calatayud, they told him of the death of nine national guards shot at Castejoncillo; at Caspe, the weeping widows and orphans of five others presented themselves before him; at Teruel he was horrified by the narrative of the massacre of the Dehesa; when he traversed the plains of Alpuente, the Carrascal of Yesa, where forty prisoners had been bayoneted, was pointed out to his notice; in the Maestrazgo he found universal mourning for sixty-one nationals, pitilessly butchered at Alcanar; in each hamlet where he halted for the night, the authorities complained to him of the most barbarous ill-treatment at the hands of Cabrera. Not a village did he pass through, whose alcalde had not been brutally bastinadoed. From his companions, his visitors, his guides, he heard continually of Cabrera’s cruelties. In the whole district nothing, else was talked of. The sole thought of the liberal party was how to put a period to them, and to be avenged upon their perpetrator. The most humane and peaceable men urged a system of reprisals, as both legitimate and likely to be efficacious. Such a system, Nogueras, yielding to the public voice, and enraged at the murder of two alcaldes, whom Cabrera had causelessly shot, at last resolved to adopt. He demanded the execution of Cabrera’s mother, in the vain hope that it would strike terror into the rebel chief, and check his excesses. Most unhappy was the impulse to which he yielded. The act itself was cruel and hasty; its consequences were terrible. But such was the state of feeling in Arragon at that time, that, until those consequences were felt, many approved the deed. The captain-general of Arragon, Don Francisco Serrano, a man noted for humanity and mildness, deemed the measure advisable, and even announced it with satisfaction in a proclamation, by which he declared a similar fate to be in reserve for Cabrera’s sisters, and for the relatives of the other rebel chiefs, if the Carlists persisted in their atrocities. Hitherto the whole odium of the fate of a forlorn old woman, who perhaps deplored as much as any one the enormities committed by her son, has rested upon Nogueras. This is hardly fair. Ill-advised, and in a moment of just irritation, he urged a request, too hastily complied with, speedily repented, and which, according to the conviction of Señor Cabello, he would himself have retracted had he not been absent from Tortosa when its accomplishment took place. A more unfortunate act, to whomsoever it may chiefly be imputed, could not have been devised. It was at once repudiated by the Spanish government, by the Cortes and the nation. In the eyes of Europe, it went far to convert Cabrera from a pitiless butcher into an injured victim. At a distance from the theatre of war, the nine score unfortunates whom he had massacred in cold blood were forgotten or overlooked. Pity for the mother’s fate procured oblivion for the previous crimes of the son. Filial affection and regret, working upon an impassioned nature, were urged in extenuation of his subsequent excesses. His massacres became holocausts, offered by a pious child to the manes of a murdered parent.
In Valderobles, on the 20th of February, Cabrera received intelligence of his mother’s death. Its first result was a ferocious proclamation, by an article of which he decreed the death of four women, one of them the lady of a Christino colonel, then in his power. Had he shot them at once, in the first heat of anger and heaviness of grief, the act, however barbarous and severe, would have been palliated by circumstances; but for seven days he dragged those unfortunate women with him on all his marches, compelling them to wander barefoot over the rugged Mountains of Arragon. So great were the sufferings of these poor creatures, that even Cabrera’s aides-de-camp, albeit not very tender-hearted, interceded for them with their chief. At last, on the 27th February, having returned to Valderobles, three of the women were released from their misery by a violent death. This execution was followed by many others. Seven and twenty national guards, taken prisoners at Liria, were kept alive for two or three days, and then massacred at Chiva. On the 17th of April, the ferryman of Olva, who acted as spy to Cabrera, and who was shot after the war, in the year 1841, brought information to the Carlist camp that two companies of Christino soldiers, quartered in the hamlet of Alcotas, kept but a careless watch, and might easily be surprised. Cabrera immediately set out, the ferryman acting as guide, and fell upon the Christinos before they were aware of his approach. They defended themselves bravely; but their ammunition being expended, and themselves surrounded, they capitulated on promise of quarter. Cabrera’s chaplain, Father Escorihuela, was the person who prevailed on them to surrender, solemnly assuring them that their lives should be spared. A few hours later, this same priest heard the confession of the officers previously to their execution. To the soldiers, even the last consolations of religion were refused. Unshriven, they were shot to the last man.
But enough of such sanguinary details. Notwithstanding a severe defeat sustained a short time previously at Molina, Cabrera, in the spring of 1836, found himself at the head of four thousand infantry and three hundred dragoons. He displayed extraordinary activity; improved the organisation of his forces, and put them upon the footing of a regular army. Owing to these ameliorations, and to the culpable negligence of the Spanish government, who left the Army of the Centre unprovided with the commonest necessaries for campaigning, he was now able to abandon his former haunts in the mountains of Beceite, and to advance into the open country. Seeing the necessity of a stronghold for his stores and hospitals, and as a place of refuge in case of a reverse, he fixed upon the town of Cantavieja, which, from its size, the strength of its walls, its central position in the territory of his operations, and especially from the difficulty of bringing artillery over the steep and bad roads leading to it, was peculiarly suited to his purpose. He set to work to fortify it; and in spite of the representations made to the Madrid government by the inhabitants of the province, who foresaw the evils that would accrue to them from its fortification, he was allowed, without interruption or molestation, to put it in a state of defence. The energy and skill exhibited by him at this period were wonderfully great, and would have done honour to an older soldier. He formed capacious hospitals, and vast depots for food and other stores; established powder manufactories, and workshops for armourers and tailors; and leaving a strong garrison in the place, again took the field.
Some sharp fighting now occurred, and the Christinos had the worst of it in several encounters; until at last the minister of war, roused from his apathy, sent strong reinforcements to Arragon and Valencia. Amongst others, General Narvaez, at the head of a brilliant brigade, was detached from the army of the north, and after a rapid march of nine days, during which he crossed nearly the whole north-eastern corner of Spain from the Bay of Biscay to the Mediterranean, arrived at Teruel, and commenced operations with an activity that inspired the Arragonese with fresh hopes of a prompt termination of the war. He was in the field, and hard upon the heels of a Carlist corps commanded by a chief known as the Organist, when an orderly, bearing despatches from Madrid, came up at speed. “Yonder rebels,” said Narvaez, after reading his letters, and pointing to the enemy, “may truly say that they exist by royal order.” The despatches directed him instantly to quit Arragon, and pursue Gomez, who had left Biscay on his celebrated expedition to the southern provinces of Spain.
It is significant of the little estimation in which Cabrera was held by the generals of the Navarrese and Biscayan faction, that when Gomez, finding himself hard pressed by the Queen’s troops, sent to Arragon for assistance, he did not address himself to Cabrera, who commanded in chief in that province, but to Quilez and El Serrador, subordinate partisans. Nevertheless Cabrera joined him, not with a body of troops, but accompanied only by his aides-de-camp and staff, and by one of his clerical mentors, the canon Cala y Valcarcel. Gomez treated him with great contempt, and would give him no command in his division; but he still continued with him, and was present at the defeat of Villarrobledo, where Diego Leon with his hussars routed Gomez, taking the whole of his baggage, twelve hundred prisoners, and two thousand muskets. When the Carlists occupied Cordova, Cabrera was one of the first men in the town, which he entered with a handful of cavalry, under the command of Villalobos, to whom he had attached himself, and who was killed by a shot fired from a window. If Gomez disliked Cabrera, Cabrera, on his side, heartily despised Gomez. To have captured three thousand national guardsmen in Cordova, and not to have shot at least a couple of thousands of them—to have spared the fifteen hundred men composing the garrison of Almaden, were inexcusable weaknesses in the eyes of the Arragonese leader. Moreover, his name was omitted in the despatches and proclamations announcing the triumphs of the division; and at this he was indignant, viewing it as a stain upon his reputation, and a dishonour to his rank. At last, so troublesome did he become, constantly murmuring at whatever was done, and even conspiring to promote mutiny amongst the men, that Gomez, in order not to shoot him, which he otherwise would have been compelled to do, insisted upon their parting company. On the 3d of November, Cabrera, with his staff, orderlies, and a small escort, set out for the mountains of Toledo. His numbers increased by the accession of some parties of Carlist cavalry, picked up on the road, he passed through La Mancha, and made for the Ebro, intending to visit Don Carlos at Oñate. But whilst seeking a ford, he was surprised by the cavalry of Irribarren. The lances of Leon and the sabres of Buenvenga made short work of it with the astonished rebels. Cabrera and a handful of men escaped, and only paused at midnight, when exhausted by their long flight, in the village of Arévalo. Scarcely had they taken up their quarters, when a column of Christino infantry dashed into the place, bayoneting all before them. Unacquainted with the localities, Cabrera wandered about the streets, seeking an exit; and finally, favoured by the darkness, and after receiving a stab from a knife, and another from a bayonet, he succeeded in escaping to the neighbouring forest. Here he was found by one of his officers, who conveyed him to the house of a village priest, named Moron, where he was concealed and taken care of till his wounds were healed. At the commencement of 1837 he found himself well enough to travel, and started for Arragon, escorted by a squadron of cavalry and a few light infantry, whom he had sent for from the Maestrazgo. But he had been tracked by Christino spies, and Señor Cabello, then political chief of Teruel, had information of his route. This he communicated to the military governor, an old and dilatory officer, who moved out with a small body of troops, intending to surprise Cabrera at Camañas, one of his halting places, and hoping to gain in the field the promotion which he would have done better to have awaited within the walls of his citadel. At a village, four hours’ march from Camañas, he paused, and wasted a day in sending out spies to ascertain the movements of the enemy. His emissaries at last returned; but only to tell him that Cabrera had rested at Camañas from ten in the morning till one in the afternoon, and had then continued his journey, travelling in a wretched carriage, and escorted by a hundred sleepy infantry, and as many horsemen, whose beasts were unshod, and half dead with fatigue. It was too late to pursue; and thus, owing to the sluggishness and incapacity of this officer, Cabrera escaped, probably without knowing it, from one of the greatest risks he had yet run.
The disastrous result of the various expeditions which, under Gomez, Garcia, and others, had left the Basque provinces for the interior of Spain, had not yet convinced Don Carlos that his cause was unpopular. Deceived by his flatterers, who assured him that his appearance would every where be the signal for a general uprising in his favour, he crossed the Ebro in the month of May with sixteen battalions and nine squadrons. Victorious at Huesca, at Gra, in Catalonia, his army was utterly routed by the Baron de Meer and Diego Leon; and his sole thought then became how to recross the Ebro, and take refuge at Cantavieja, under the wing of his faithful Cabrera. Orders were sent to the latter chief to come and meet his sovereign. He obeyed, and by his assistance the passage of the river was accomplished. It was shortly before this time that Cabrera, whilst witnessing the conflagration of a village set on fire by his command, was struck by lightning, which killed one of his aides-de-camp, and threw him senseless from his horse. At first it was thought that he also was dead; but bleeding restored him, and the next day he was again in the saddle, burning, plundering, and shooting. His atrocities at this period surpass belief, and are too horrible to recapitulate. The curious in such matters may find them set down in all their hideous details, in the pages of Señor Cabello. Whether on account of his cruelties, or of his other bad qualities, most of the Carlist generals in Arragon about this time refused to act with him, and even loaded him with abuse. Cabañero actually challenged him to fight—a challenge which he did not think proper to accept. The same chief repeatedly told Don Carlos that he would rather serve as a private soldier in the army of Navarre than as a general under the orders of Cabrera. Quilez, who hated Cabrera as the assassin of his friend and countryman Carnicer, published an address to the Arragonese troops, calling upon them to leave the standard of the vile, dissolute, and cowardly Catalonian who disgraced them by his cruelties. He invited their attention to the ruined and miserable condition of their province since Cabrera had commanded there, and urged them to petition Don Carlos to give them a general more worthy of defending his rights and leading them to victory. So high did the quarrel run, and so widely did it spread, that the Arragonese and Catalonian battalions were near coming to blows. Don Carlos supported Cabrera, and Quilez and Cabañero, with their divisions, separated themselves from the army, and went to make war elsewhere.
In the month of July there were forty thousand infantry and four thousand cavalry in the province of Teruel; for nearly four years the district had been devastated and plundered by the Carlists, and the harvest was not yet ripe. Under these circumstances the troops were half-starved. The Carlist soldiers received no bread and only half rations of meat. Even in the towns, and for ready money, provisions were unobtainable. The Conde de Luchana, who then commanded the Christinos, did all that general could do, more than could be expected of any commander—all, in short, that he was wont to do, when the opportunity offered, for the cause of liberty and of his Queen. Thinking that the surrounding country would not supply rations because the impoverished government could not pay cash for them, he drew upon his private funds, and sent a commissioner with large sums of money to Teruel, to purchase all the corn that could be obtained. This was so little that it did not yield two days’ rations to each soldier. At last Espartero and his division were summoned to the defence of Madrid, then menaced by Zaratiegui. During his absence occurred the action of Herrera, in which General Buerens, greatly outnumbered, was defeated with considerable loss. But this reverse was soon revenged. Encouraged by their recent success, Don Carlos and Cabrera approached Madrid by forced marches. Their movements had been so eccentric and rapid that they had thrown most of the Christino generals off the scent. Espartero was an exception. After driving away Zaratiegui, he had returned to Arragon. He now hurried back to Madrid, and entered its gates a few hours after the arrival of the Pretender within sight of that city, amidst the acclamations of the national guards, who, until then, formed the sole garrison of the capital. Don Carlos retired, Espartero followed, came up with him on the 19th of September, and so mauled his army that he entirely gave up his mad project of establishing himself in Madrid, sent Cabrera back to Arragon, and scampered off in the direction of the Basque provinces. He was followed up by Espartero and Lorenzo, overtaken and beaten at Covarubbias and at Huerta del Rey, and finally entered Biscay in lamentable plight, his illusions dissipated, his hopes of one day sitting upon the throne of his ancestors entirely destroyed. Five months had elapsed since he left Navarre, and strange had been their vicissitudes. Surrounded in Sanguesa by bishops, ministers, generals, and courtiers, in Espejo a handful of Chapel-churris were his sole defenders. Enthroned and almost worshipped at Huesca in the mountains of Bronchales he had been glad to accept the support and guidance of a shepherd. One day holding a levee, the next he was unable to write a letter in safety. At Barbastro he bestowed places and honours upon his adherents; at El Pobo he had not wherewith to reward the servants who waited on him. Strange transitions, bitterly felt! By the failure of the expedition all his prospects were blighted. A loan, and his recognition by the Northern powers, both promised him contingently on his entering Madrid, were now more remote than ever. That nothing might be wanting to the discomfiture of this ill-starred prince, even the hypocrisy of his character was discovered and exposed. Several of his letters to the Princess of Beira were intercepted by General Oraa, and published in the Spanish newspapers. Although written by one professedly so devout and austere, their contents were both trivial and licentious.
The year 1838 opened disastrously for the Christinos. The strong town and fort of Morella fell into the hands of Cabrera. Situated on a hill in the valley formed by the highest sierras of the Maestrazgo, and at the point of junction of Arragon, Catalonia, and Valencia, difficult of approach, and protected by defiles and rivers, chief town of a corregimiento or department, and possessing considerable wealth both agricultural and manufacturing, it was, of all others, the place most coveted by the Carlists. For a long time previously to its capture, an officer of the faction, Paul Alio by name, had been entrusted with its blockade. His orders were to employ every possible means to win over the garrison or accomplish a coup de main. Various attempts had proved unsuccessful, when, at the moment that he least expected it, he was suddenly enabled to accomplish his objects. An artilleryman, a deserter from the castle, offered to scale the walls with twenty men, to surprise the sentinel upon the platform, and subsequently the whole guard. The idea was caught at; ladders were made according to the measure which the traitor had brought of the exact height of the walls, and on the dark and rainy night of the 25th January a party of Carlists crept up the hill, planted and climbed the ladders, stabbed the sentry, who was asleep in his box, overcame the guard, and fired upon the town. In vain did the unfortunate governor, Don Bruno Portillo, endeavour to make his way into the fort; he was repulsed and wounded, and before morning he and the remains of the garrison were compelled to abandon Morella. Although an old and respected officer, he was accused of treachery, or at least of want of vigilance. The latter might perhaps be imputed to him, but there appear to have been no sufficient grounds for the former charge. Eager to wash out the stain upon his reputation, he returned to Morella, when General Oraa made his unsuccessful attack upon it a few months later, and died leading the forlorn-hope, the first man upon the breach.
The capture of Morella was a great triumph for Cabrera, whose chief stronghold it became. It assured him the dominion of a large and fertile tract of country. From its towers, lofty though they were, the banner of Isabella the Second could nowhere be descried, save on the coasts of the Mediterranean and the distant banks of the Ebro. The termination of the war seemed less likely than ever.