Were it his only crime, Cabrera’s treatment of his prisoners in the dungeons of Morella, Benifasa, and other places, would suffice to brand him with eternal infamy. From the commencement of the war till he was driven out of the country, twelve thousand soldiers and two thousand national guards fell into his hands. Half of the first named, and two-thirds of the latter, died of hunger, ill treatment, and of the diseases produced by the stifling atmosphere of their prisons, by the bad quality of their food, and the state of general destitution in which they were left. Those who bore up against their manifold sufferings only regained their liberty to enter an hospital, incapacitated for further military service. It took months to rid them of the dingy, copper-coloured complexion acquired in their damp and filthy prisons, and some of them never lost it. When the prisoners taken in the action of Herrera arrived at Cantavieja, they were barefooted, and for sole raiment many had but a fragment of matting, wherewith to cover their nakedness, and defend themselves from the weather. They were thrust into a convent, and no one was allowed to communicate with them: even mothers, who anxiously strove to convey a morsel of bread to their starving sons, were pitilessly driven away. Sick and squalid, they were marched off to Beceite, and on the road more than two hundred were murdered. Those who paused or sat down, overcome by fatigue, were disposed of with the bayonet; some fainted from exhaustion, and had their heads crushed with large stones, heaped upon them by their guards. The muleteers, who compassionately lent their beasts to the wounded or dying, were unmercifully beaten. On reaching Beceite, the daily ration of each prisoner was two ounces of raw potatoes. After repeated entreaties of the inhabitants they were at last allowed to leave their prison by detachments, in order to clean the streets; and by this means they were enabled to receive the assistance which the very poorest of the people stinted themselves and their children to afford them. In spite of the prohibitions of the Carlist authorities, bread, potatoes, and maize ears were thrown into the streets for their relief. But even of these trifling supplies they were presently deprived, for an epidemic broke out amongst them, and they were forbidden to leave their prison lest they should communicate it to the troops. Will it be believed that in a Christian country, and within the last ten years, men were reduced to such extremities as to devour the dead bodies of their companions? Such was the case. It has been printed fifty times, and hundreds of living witnesses are ready to attest it. When the Carlist colonel Pellicer, the savage under whose eyes these atrocities occurred, discovered the horrible means by which his wretched captives assuaged the pangs of hunger, he became furious, caused the prisoners to be searched, and shot and bayoneted those who had preserved fragments of their frightful meal. The poor creatures thus condemned marched to death with joy and self-gratulation; those who remained accused themselves of a similar crime, and entreated that they also might be shot. Twelve hundred entered the prison; two hundred left it; and of these, thirty were massacred upon the road because they were too weak to march. In the appendix to his book, Señor Cabello gives the diary of a survivor, an officer of the regiment of Cordova. The cruelties narrated in it exceed belief. They are nevertheless confirmed by unimpeachable evidence. The following extract is from a document dated the 20th of March 1844, and signed by fifteen respectable inhabitants of Beceite.
“During the abode of the said prisoners in this town, each day twelve or fourteen of them died from hunger and misery. It was frequently observed, when they were conveyed from the prison to the cemetery, that some of them still moved, and made signs with their hands not to bury them; some even uttered words, but all in vain—dead or alive, those who once left the prison were buried, and only one instance was known of the contrary occurring. The chaplain of a Carlist battalion had gone to the burying-ground to see if the graves were deep enough, and whilst standing there, one of a pile of corpses pulled him by the coat. This attracted his attention, and he had the man carried to the hospital. * * * There would be no end to our narrative if we were to give a detailed account of the sufferings of these prisoners; so great were they, as at last to shock even the commandant of the depot, Don Juan Pellicer, who was heard to exclaim more than once that he wished somebody would blow out his brains, for he was sick of beholding so much misery and suffering. The few inhabitants who remained in the town behaved well, and notwithstanding that the Carlists robbed them of all they had, and that it was made a crime to help the prisoners, they managed in secret to give them some relief, especially to the officers. The facts here set down are true and certain, and of them more than a hundred eyewitnesses still exist.”
When the war in Biscay and Navarre was happily concluded by the convention of Vergara, the Duke de la Victoria invited Cabrera to follow the example of the other Carlist generals, offering to him and to the rebel troops under his command the same terms that had been conceded to those in the Basque provinces. But the offer, generous though it was, and undeserved by men who had made war like savages rather than as Christians, was contemptuously spurned. Those best acquainted with the character of Cabrera, were by no means surprised at the refusal. They foresaw that he would redouble his atrocities, and only yield to brute force. These anticipations were in most respects realised.
In the months of October 1839, Espartero, with the whole army of the North, consisting of forty thousand infantry, three thousand cavalry, and the corresponding artillery, entered lower Arragon. Anxious to economise the blood of his countrymen, trusting that Cabrera would open his eyes to the inutility of further resistance, confiding also, in some degree, in the promises of certain Carlist chiefs included in the treaty of Vergara, and who expected by their influence to bring over large bodies of the rebels, the Duke de la Victoria remained inactive during the winter, merely blockading the Carlists within their lines. Meanwhile Cabrera, debilitated by six years of anxiety and agitation, and by the dissolute life he had led from a very early age, and preyed upon by vexation and rage occasioned him by the convention of Vergara, fell seriously ill, and for some time his life was in peril. Contrary to expectation, he recovered; but sickness or reflection had unmanned him, and it is certain that in his last campaign he displayed little talent and less courage. Not so his subordinates. The Arragonese Carlists fought like lions, and the final triumph of the Queen’s army and of their distinguished leader was not achieved without a desperate struggle.
The first appearance of spring was the signal of action for the Christinos. Even before the inclement season had entirely passed away, in the latter days of February 1840, Espartero attacked Segura. One day’s well-directed cannonade knocked the fort about the ears of the garrison, and in spite of the proverb, Segura serà segura, ó de Ramon Cabrera sepultura, the place capitulated. The defence of Castellote was longer, and extraordinarily obstinate. Pelted with shot and shell, the walls mined and blown up and reduced to ruins, its garrison, with a courage worthy of a better cause, still refused to surrender, hoisted a black banner in sign of no quarter, and received a flag of truce with a volley. The position of the castle, on the summit of a steep and rugged rock, rendered it almost impossible to form a column of attack and take it by assault. At last, however, this was attempted, and after a desperate combat of an hour’s duration, and great loss on the part of the assailants, the latter established themselves in a detached building at the eastern extremity of the fortress. The besieged still defended themselves, hurling down hand-grenades and masses of stone, until at last, exhausted and overcome, they hung out a white flag. By their obstinate defence of an untenable post, when they had no hope of relief, they had forfeited their lives. Fortunately their conqueror was no Cabrera.
“They were Spaniards,” said Espartero in his despatch to Madrid, “blinded and deluded men who had fought with the utmost valour, and I could not do less than view them with compassion.” Their lives were spared, and the wounded were carried to the hospital in the arms of their recent opponents.
Cabrera had sworn to die before giving up Morella, but when the time came his heart failed him. He visited the town, harangued the garrison and inhabitants from the balcony of his quarters, and told them that he had come to share their fate. A day or two later he marched away, taking with him all his particular friends and favourites, and left Morella to take care of itself. It was the last place attacked by Espartero. The siege lasted eleven days, but Cabrera did not come to its relief; dissension arose amongst the garrison, and surrender ensued. Three thousand prisoners, including a number of Carlist civil functionaries, a quantity of artillery, ammunition, and other stores, fell into the hands of the victors. Morella taken, the war in Arragon was at an end.
Determined that his last act should be worthy of his whole career, Cabrera, now upon his road to France, precipitated into the Ebro a number of national guards, whom he carried with him as captives. Others were shot, and some few were actually dragged across the frontier, bound hand and foot, and only liberated by the French authorities. Such wanton cruelty is the best refutation of the arguments of certain writers, who have maintained that Cabrera was severe upon principle, with the sole objects of intimidating the enemy, and of furthering the cause of his king. On the eve of his departure from Spain, himself a fugitive, the self-styled sovereign a captive in a foreign land, what end, save the gratification of his insatiable thirst of blood, could be attained by the massacre of prisoners? At last, on the sixth of July 1840, he delivered his country from the presence of the most execrable monster that has disgraced her modern annals. On that day, at the head of twenty battalions and two hundred cavalry, Cabrera entered France.
By superficial persons, unacquainted with facts, attempts have been made to cast upon the whole Spanish nation the odium incurred by a small section of it. The cruelties of Cabrera and his likes, have been taken as an index to the Spanish character, wherein ferocity has been asserted to be the most conspicuous quality. Nothing can be more unjust and fallacious than such a theory. Cabrera’s atrocities were viewed and are remembered in Spain with as deep a horror as in England or France. Those who shared in them were a minute fraction of the population, and even of these, many acted on compulsion, and shuddered at the crimes they were obliged to witness and abet. Is the character of a nation to be argued from the excesses of its malefactors, even when, banded together and in military array, they assume the style and title of an army? Assuredly not. The Carlist standard, uplifted in Arragon, became a rallying point for the scum of the whole Spanish people. Under Cabrera’s banner, murder was applauded, plunder tolerated, vice of every description freely practised. And accordingly, escaped galley slaves, ruined profligates, the worthless and abandoned, flocked to its shelter. To these may be added the destitute, stimulated by their necessities; the ignorant and fanatical, led away by crafty priests; the unreflecting and unscrupulous, seeking military distinction where infamy alone was to be reaped. Bad example, seduction, even force, each contributed its quota to the army of Cabrera. From the commencement, the war was of a very different nature in Navarre and in Arragon. Both chiefs and soldiers were of different origin, and fought for different ends. To Navarre repaired those men of worth and respectability who conscientiously upheld the rights of Don Carlos; the battalions were composed of peasants and artisans. In Arragon and Valencia, a few desperate and dissolute ruffians, such as Cabrera, Llangostera, Quilez, Pellicer, assembled under their orders the refuse of the jails.
“The Navarrese recruit,” says Señor Cabello, “when he set out to join the Carlists, took leave of his friends and relatives, and even of the alcalde of his village; the volunteer into the faction of Arragon, departed by stealth after murdering and robbing some private enemy or wealthy neighbour. The Biscayan Carlist, going on leave to visit his mistress, took her at most a flower gathered in the gardens of Bilboa, when a soldier of Cabrera revisited his home, he carried with him the spoils of some slaughtered family or plundered dwelling. All Spain knew Colonel Zumalacarregui; but only the lay brothers of St Domingo de Tortosa, or the gendarmes of Villafranca, could give an account of Cabrera or the Serrador. To treat with the former was to treat with one who, a short time previously, had commanded with distinction the first light infantry regiment of the Spanish army. To negotiate with the latter was to condescend to an equality with the Barbudo or José Maria.”[C]