chiefs-no Cameron of Lochiel, no Cluny. Indeed the aristocracy may be left out of the account in Spanish politics, whether peaceful or pugnacious. "We grandees of Spain," said the Duke of Wellington, "are very well-bred, agreeable people, but also very childish, fit only to hold offices about the Court." None of the notable Carlist leaders of the first war - neither Tomas Zumalacárregui, the most considerable man of action Spain has produced since her great days, nor Ramon Cabrera, nor any other came of aristocratic houses. Army officers of clerical opinions, or merely of adventurous ambition, priests, and "cabecillas," have been the real chiefs of the cause of " God, King, and Country." The first need not detain us, being very intelligible. They were more conspicuous in the first war than they have been since, for obvious reasons. The priest again explains himself. Nothing is more easy to understand than that he should have been to the front in a cause which was first and foremost clerical, and which supported the claim of one branch of the royal family because it could be trusted to repay the Church by absolute obedience. But the Cabecilla is very much a cosa de España. The word is a diminutive of cabo, a chief; but that is no explanation. As for what constitutes any given man a "cabecilla," it is difficult to say. He is the fighting equivalent of the "cacique," the local bigwig, jobber, and wire-puller of Spanish parliamentary poli tics; and he is, by the way, often called a "caudillo." We must be content to know that throughout the Carlist country, and on the outskirts of it, there are men, often the sons of leaders in the first war, the grandsons of guerrilleros of the Napoleonic days, who are marked out as leaders. The continued existence of these stocks of potential insurrectionary chiefs may be accounted for by the fact that none of the Carlist wars has ended in clear victory for the Government. They have been closed by compromises in which the caracterizados, the marked men, have been bought off, and bribed to keep quiet, by pensions, half pays, and small places. These sources of income, together with the help afforded by the sentimental Carlists, and the patronage of the clergy, have kept them alive. There are differences among them. Some have always been the handy men of the dethroned Bourbons everywhere. Others have served the established Government, with a mental reservation of their right to take to the hills for Don Carlos as occasion offered. One specimen of each kind may be quoted by way of example. Tristany (a name which no Englishman can pronounce till a Catalan teaches him, and often not even then, so hard is it to master the peculiar liquid "ny") is a type of the handy man. To be quite candid, the difference between him and a bravo, or brigand, was great. Tristany having, we believe, served under Ramon Cabrera between 1833 and 1840, not continued afterwards to be at the service of the exiled pretender. Whenever a coup de main was required, there was he, and he served the House elsewhere than in Spain. He was one of the brigands (for that is the proper name) who were let loose in Naples after 1860. As he was not caught and shot by the Bersaglieri, he escaped to do a great deal of the same kind of work in the hills of Catalonia between 1872 and 1876. The man was only a guerrillero, and his chief merit is fairly enough shown by his favourite boast. He was wont to say that if Catalonia were occupied by sixty thousand soldiers, he would undertake to carry two thousand men from one end of the Principality to the other without allowing the regulars a chance of stopping him. In other words, he knew every inch of the hills, every hiding-place, every mountain path, and every spring. With that knowledge he could wear the troops down and keep up a partisan war till the exhaustion of his party compelled peace. Then he could save himself by some goat's path across the Pyrenees. The most effectual answer to Tristany was the formation of contra- guerillas, irregular corps such as we have used in India. One body of that kind was formed during the last war, under the command of an officer named Camprodon, who picked likely men out of the regular army, and with them made a band which beat the Carlists at their own game. Another and more honourable type of chief was the Dorregaray, who commanded for Don Carlos in Biscay after 1873. He had fought as a lad in the first war, and was included in the convention of Vergara, which gave him a right to a small pension. Dorregaray retired to his native village in Navarre. But a life of idleness was not to his taste, and he soon found an opportunity for activity. The war had left behind it a class of broken men who took to living by brigandage. Now Spaniards of the north and the centre have never been tolerant of the brigand from the moment he extends his operations beyond Government couriers and the tax collector. When, then, a band of this kind began to infest Dorregaray's country, he made an offer to the Government to destroy it, provided a sum of money were given him and he was put on the active list of the army as officer. The Civil Guard not having been organised as yet, the authorities were glad to make the bargain. Dorregaray raised а small corps of men like-minded with himself, and mostly old soldiers of Don Carlos. As they knew the country just as well as the brigands, were hardy fellows, and good shots, it was not long before the last of the bandoleros had his deserts. Then Dorregaray passed into the army, and was a colonel when the Republic was proclaimed. Being a strong Monarchist, he thereupon went back to his old master. His fellow - general, Lizarraga, was much of the same stamp. These, it will be seen, were more serious persons than Tris tany; and it was natural that they should, since the three Basque provinces of Viscaya (pronounced Biscaya, with slight v sound in the b), Guipuzcoa, and Alava, together with the kindred country of Navarre, form the main strength of the Carlist cause. So long as they do not move, the Alta Aragon, the Catalonian, and Valencian hills will hardly do more than contribute "quadrillas," wandering gangs of partisans. It is when Biscay is up in arms, and troops have to be concentrated to subdue it, that Things move even in Spain, a Carlist rising becomes danger- and neither the Carlist resourous elsewhere. For this there ces nor the Carlist cause are are two reasons. The first is, what they were in 1833-1840. that the Basques and Navarrese Then the Serviles, Apostólicos, are, take them for all in all, the Agraviados of Ferdinand's reign best fighting men in Spain by were relatively more numerous, land or sea. The second is, and were unbroken. Therefore that under their ancient fueros they were able to make head the Basque provinces enjoyed against a Government which almost absolute self-govern- had no other enemy, and could ment. They formed rather a use the services of some eighty protected state than a province. or ninety thousand well - apTherefore when they rose they pointed troops. The second could form a government able Carlist rising, in the middle of to levy taxes and organise a Queen Isabel's reign, was a regular commissariat. Speak- much smaller business, and ending generally, it may be said ed in complete surrender. It is that the Carlist cause has been chiefly worth noting because supported in the north by an the uncle of the present Don army, and elsewhere only by Carlos, who was taken prisoner, more or less numerous and well- saved himself from the fate of led guerrillero bands. The privi- his generals, who were shot, by leges of the Basques have been renouncing his rights. Once lost, till they retain much of safe on the other side of the the machinery of local govern- frontier, he renounced his rement, and all the spirit. One nunciation, on the ground that example will show how this it had been extorted from him works. Before the last war by fear which was true, but Provincias Vascongadas ignominious. The most notable which they raised themselves, in time of war. Now they are supposed to pay the "blooda tax "like others. As a matter of fact, what happens is that the "depucationes," or local councils, pay the exemption for all who are drawn, and the provinces therefore escape military service. It is necessary to note, by the way, that the Basque country contains one enclave of strong "liberalism," and that is the town of Bilbao, which has twice stood a long siege by the Carlists with success. were exempt from the conscription, and were only bound to supply the king with a corps, VOL. CLXV.-NO. DCCCCXCIX. fact about the third war was that it did not become formidable till the Government had H been utterly disorganised by the resignation of Don Amadeo in 1873, and the establishment of the anarchical Republic. It is well to keep this truth in mind when we hear that the Don Carlos of to-day is issuing manifestoes, and that preparations for a rising are being made. Talk to this effect is exceedingly easy; but what prospect is there of another civil war on a serious scale, after twenty years of peace, if the last failed? The history of that venture of itself is sufficient answer. Queen Isabel was driven out by a military revolt in September 1868, and the Carlist did not move. While Prim lived they were hardly ever heard of. A few sporadic outbreaks took place in Catalonia, and were instantly suppressed. After his murder, and during the brief socalled reign of Amadeo of Savoy, there was a movement in Biscay, and therefore in other regions. The intrusive king belonged to a family odious to the Papacy and to the Church; so clerical influence was on the Carlist side, or was, at any rate, nowhere vigorously used against their word, disbanded, and went home. Then came the "cantonalist outbreak-which was a mere explosion of anarchy by agitators who took the communards of Paris for their model. During this interval of confusion, and of the paralysis of Government, the Carlist army in Biscay was regularly organised by Dorregaray and Lizarraga; while the guerrillero bands of the Alta Aragon, Catalonia, and Valencia gained in numbers and solidity. They were in their height during the protectorate of Serrano, which lasted from the suppression of the Republic by Pavia in the beginning of 1874 to the restoration of Don Alfonso XII. by the pronunciamiento of Murviedro in December. Yet even during this period they never succeeded in occupying any considerable town, and were forced to raise the siege of Bilbao. From the day of the restoration of Doña Isabel's son their cause steadily declined. They were first swept out of Valencia and Catalonia, and then broken up in Biscay. Disgusted as the vast majority of Spaniards were with the follies of the Republic and the incompetence of Ferrano, it was never to the Carlists that they looked for a remedy, but to the restoration of the family of Doña Isabel. The explanation of the Carlist failure to profit by the apparently magnificent opportunity offered them is not very far to seek. They were strong enough to take advantage of the collapse of Government, and were strong for defence. They could worry regular troops when invaded in their hills, or even fight respectable pitched battles in Biscay, but they were not strong enough to overrun the rest of Spain. They were affected, too, by various causes of weakness. One of these lay in the change which had come over the spirit of the Church. Queen Isabel, whatever her other faults may have been, was in a way pious, and had done much to propitiate the clergy. Therefore they were bound to her son, who was also, by the way, godson of Pio Nono. With his restoration, the chief reason they had for favouring the Carlist cause disappeared. Another reason was that, after all, the Spain of 1873 was not the Spain of 1833. It was far more populous, and better supplied with means of communication, which brought with them internal trade. It was no longer possible for Spaniards to live in the old barbarous isolation. Both these influences, the clerical and the commercial, tell more strongly against the Carlists to-day than they did twenty-four years ago. The upper clergy are nominated by the Government, and therefore cannot well be hostile to it. The Pope is known not to be favourable to the Carlists. Even among the lower clergy the feeling is not what it was. The Queen Regent is a good churchwoman, though nowise clerical in the bad political sense of the word; and it is tolerably certain that the priests will not act against her. Besides, they have done very well for the last twenty years, and are, partly on their own account, partly on behalf of parishioners, large holders of Government stock. The commercial influence against Carlists is even more formidable than the clerical. The Spain of 1833-1840 was a country of provinces living apart from one another on their own resources, with a total population of some twelve millions. This state of things was modified largely by 1873. Within the last twentyfour years it has changed altogether. The population of Spain cannot now be much, if at all, under twenty millions. Hundreds of miles of railway have been made, and not less than thousands of highroad. There goes on an intercourse between the provinces which was impossible in former times. To take a single example, a gardener of Barcelona can now drive a flourishing trade by sending cut flowers to Madrid by the night-mail. The market of the capital and the other considerable towns is now valuable to the fishermen of the Basque coast and the Mediterranean, to the market-gardener of Valencia, to the corn-grower of the Tierra de Campos in Leon, to the wine-grower of the Rioja and La Mancha. In Biscay itself the immense development of the mining industry, and the establishment of iron foundries, has wrought a great change. The country can no longer afford to give itself to civil war as it once could. What was possible when Spain still deserved Adam Smith's description of the most beggarly country in Europe is |