The Surging Carlists

The Carlist leader, master of the open country up to the borders of Castile, prepared to cross the Ebro and to march upon Madrid.

Continuing First Carlist Revolt,
our selection from History of Modern Europe by Charles A. Fyffe published in 1890. The selection is presented in three easy 5 minute installments. For works benefiting from the latest research see the “More information” section at the bottom of these pages.

Previously in First Carlist Revolt.

Time: 1833

Owing to their position [the Basque region] on the French frontier, the Spanish monarchy, while destroying all local independence in the interior of Spain, had uniformly treated the Basques with the same indulgence which the Government of Great Britain has shown to the Channel Islands, and which the French monarchy, though in a less degree, showed to the frontier Province of Alsace in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The customs-frontier of the north of Spain was drawn to the south of these districts. The inhabitants imported what they pleased from France without paying any duties; while the heavy import-dues levied at the border of the neighboring Spanish Provinces gave them the opportunity of carrying on an easy and lucrative system of smuggling. The local administration remained to a great extent in the hands of the people themselves; each village preserved its active corporate life; and the effect of this survival of a vigorous local freedom was seen in the remarkable contrast described by travelers between the aspect of the Basque districts and that of Spain at large. The Fueros (or local rights, as the Basques considered them) were in reality, when viewed as part of the order of the Spanish State, a series of exceptional privileges; and it was inevitable that the framers of the Constitution of 1812, in their attempt to create a modern administrative and political system doing justice to the whole of the nation, should sweep away the distinctions which had hitherto marked off one group of Provinces from the rest of the community.

The continuance of war until the return of Ferdinand, and the overthrow of the constitution, prevented the plans of the Cortes from being at that time carried into effect; but the Revolution of 1820 brought them into actual operation, and the Basques found themselves, as a result of the victory of Liberal principles, compelled to pay duties on their imports, robbed of the profits of their smuggling, and supplanted in the management of their local affairs by an army of officials from Madrid. They had gained by the constitution little that they had not possessed before, and their losses were immediate, tangible, and substantial. The resuit was that, although the larger towns, like Bilbao, remained true to modern ideas, the country districts took up arms on behalf of the absolute monarchy, assisted the French in the restoration of despotism in 1823, and remained the permanent enemies of the constitutional cause. On the death of Ferdinand they declared at once for Don Carlos, and rose in rebellion against the Government of Queen Christina, by which they considered the privileges of the Basque Provinces and the interests of Catholic orthodoxy to be alike threatened.

There was little in the character of Don Carlos to stimulate the loyalty even of his most benighted partisans. Of military and political capacity he was totally destitute, and his continued absence in Portugal when the conflict had actually begun proved him to be wanting in the natural impulses of a brave man. It was, however, his fortune to be served by a soldier of extraordinary energy and skill. The first reverses of the Carlists were speedily repaired, and a system of warfare organized which made an end of the hopes of easy conquest with which the Government of Christina had met the insurrection. Fighting in a worthless cause, and commanding resources scarcely superior to those of a brigand chief, the Carlist leader, Zumalacarregui, inflicted defeat after defeat upon the generals who were sent to destroy him. The mountainous character of the country and the universal hostility of the inhabitants made the exertions of a regular soldiery useless against the alternate flights and surprises of men who knew every mountain track and who gained information of the enemy’s movements from every cottager.

Terror was added by Zumalacarregui to all his other methods for demoralizing his adversary. In the exercise of reprisals he repeatedly murdered all his prisoners in cold blood, and gave to the war so savage a character that foreign governments at last felt compelled to urge upon the belligerents some regard for the usages of the civilized world. The appearance of Don Carlos himself in the summer of 1834 raised still higher the confidence already inspired by the victories of his general. It was in vain that the old constitutionalist soldier, Mina, who had won so great a name in these Provinces in 1823, returned after long exile to the scene of his exploits. Enfeebled and suffering, he was no longer able to place himself at the head of his troops, and he soon sought to be relieved from a hopeless task. His successor, the War Minister, Valdes, took the field announcing his determination to act upon a new system, and to operate with his troops in mass instead of pursuing the enemy’s bands with detachments. The result of this change of tactics was a defeat more ruinous and complete than had befallen any of Valdes’s predecessors. He with difficulty withdrew the remainder of his army from the insurgent provinces; and the Carlist leader, master of the open country up to the borders of Castile, prepared to cross the Ebro and to march upon Madrid.

The ministers of Queen Christina, who till this time had professed themselves confident in their power to deal with the insurrection, could now no longer conceal the real state of affairs. Valdes himself declared that the rebellion could not be subdued without foreign aid; and after prolonged discussion in the Cabinet it was determined to appeal to France for armed assistance. The flight of Don Carlos from England had already caused an additional article to be added to the Treaty of the Quadruple Alliance, in which France undertook so to watch the frontier of the Pyrenees that no reinforcements or munition of war should reach the Carlists from that side, while England promised to supply the troops of Queen Christina with arms and stores, and, if necessary, to render assistance with a naval force (August 18, 1834).

The foreign supplies sent to the Carlists had thus been cut off both by land and sea; but more active assistance seemed indispensable if Madrid was to be saved from falling into the enemy’s hands. The request was made to Louis Philippe’s Government to occupy the Basque Provinces with a corps of twelve thousand men. Reasons of weight might be addressed to the French court in favor of direct intervention. The victory of Don Carlos would place upon the throne of Spain a representative of all those reactionary influences throughout Europe which were in secret or in open hostility to the house of Orleans, and definitely mark the failure of that policy which had led France to combine with England in expelling Dom Miguel from Portugal.

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