CHAPTER VI

General Riégo--His attempted insurrection--His escape and flight--He is betrayed by the brothers Lara--His trial--His execution

We have mentioned that the _École des Vieillards_ ought to have come after _Pierre de Portugal_, but between the comedy and tragedy two terrible dramas took place in Madrid and Paris. In Madrid they made a martyr; in Paris they executed a criminal. The martyr's name was Riégo: the guilty criminal's Castaing.

Riégo was born, in 1783, in the Asturias, so he would be about forty: he was of a noble but poor family and, since the invasion of 1808, he had enlisted as a volunteer. He became an officer in the same regiment in which he had enlisted; he was taken prisoner and led away to France. Sent back to Spain, when peace was declared, he attained the rank of lieutenant-colonel in the same regiment, and, leading this regiment into insurrection, seduced by him, it proclaimed the constitution of 1812 at las Cabesas-de-San-Juan. It will be seen later that it was desired that his head should be exposed, in order that his mute lips and the eyes closed by death might bear witness to the fact that royalty can be cruel for more than a day's span, and common people ungrateful. On 27 September he was arrested at Cadiz. Let us say a few words concerning his arrest and death,--the latter especially, for, alas I it belongs almost to French history. After his last defeat, General Riégo wandered in the mountains with a score of his comrades, all of whom belonged, like himself, to the Liberal party. Fifteen of these fugitives were officers. They were all exhausted by fatigue and hunger, and did not know either where to look for shelter or from whom to beg food, when they caught sight of two men. They made straight for them. These two men were the hermit of the district of Pédrogil and a native of Valez named Lopez Lara. The general took them aside.

"My friends," he said to them, "you have a chance to win a fortune for yourselves and your families."

"What must we do to gain it?" the two men asked.

"Conduct me safe and sound to Carolina, to Carboneras and to Novas de Tolosa."

"And there...?"

"There I shall find friends who will take me on to Estremadura, where I have business to transact."

Whether the journey appeared to them too long, or whether they fancied they had to deal with outlaws, the hermit and his companion declined. So Riégo arrested them, put them on a couple of mules, and told them that, whether willingly or under compulsion, they would have to act as guides to his band. The party waited until nightfall and then set forth.

During the march in the darkness, Riégo talked with his comrades concerning various events that had recently occurred, from which the hermit and Lopez Lara soon guessed that they were in the company of the notorious Riégo. From that moment Lopez Lara's whole thoughts were filled with the idea of handing Riégo over to the Royalist authorities. When daytime came, they had to stop. They were near the farm of Baquevisones: Riégo announced that he meant to ask for shelter there, so he ordered Lara to knock at the door. Lara obeyed. By chance, his own brother Matéo opened it. Lara perceived that chance had brought him the assistance he needed. Riégo, realising that too large an escort might betray him, would only allow three of his comrades to go in with him. One of these companions was an Englishman, even more daring than Riégo. He at once locked the door of the farm behind him and put the key in his pocket. When they had given the horses fodder, they rested in the stable, each with his naked sword by his side. Three slept, while the fourth mounted guard. When Riégo awaked, he discovered that his horse was unshod. He ordered Lopez Lara to shoe the horse immediately.

"All right," replied he; "but I must take him to Arguillos to get him shod."

"No," returned Riégo; "you shall stay here and Matéo shall have him shod. But the farrier shall come here; the horse shall not go to him."

Lopez appeared to conform with indifference to this order; but, as he transmitted it to his brother, he managed to say--

"The man who owns the horse is General Riégo."

"So ho!" said Matéo; "arrange for him to be at breakfast by the time I return; do not leave the place where they are or let them out of your sight."

Matéo returned, and made a sign to his brother that the commission was executed. Then to Riégo he said--

"Señor, as the farrier will be here in five minutes, you had better breakfast, if you wish to proceed on your journey directly your horse is shod."

Riégo went to breakfast without making any objection. But not so the Englishman.

The Englishman searched the high road with his field-glasses from a window as far as he could see. Suddenly a score of armed men came into sight, headed by an _alcade_ (magistrate).

"General," he exclaimed, "we have been betrayed! There are soldiers coming."

"To arms!" cried Riégo, rising. He had time to utter this cry, but not to accomplish its fulfilment. Lopez and Matéo seized their guns and covered the outlaws with them.

"The first man who moves is dead!" cried Lopez.

"All right," said Riégo, "I surrender; but warn the soldiers who are coming not to harm us, since we are your prisoners."

The soldiers entered, led by the alcade.

"Shake hands, brother, and do us no harm," said Riégo to the alcade.

After some objection, the alcade greeted Riégo. But, in spite of this, he told him he must bind his hands. Whereupon, Riégo took out of his pocket all the money he had with him and distributed it among the soldiers, asking them to treat him mercifully. The alcade, however, forbade the soldiers to accept anything. A quarter of an hour later, the civil commandant arrived from Arguillos with a guard, and they took the prisoners to Andujar.

When the captives entered that town, the people wanted to tear them limb from limb. Riégo was accompanied by a French officer. When he arrived in front of the same balcony from which, a year ago, he had harangued the people, he pointed to the crowd which surrounded him howling and shaking their fists and knives at him, and in a tone of profound sadness he said to the officer, "These people whom you see so relentless towards me, these people who if I had not been under the protection of your escort would have butchered me long since, these people carried me here in triumph only last year; the town was illuminated the whole night through, and the very same individuals whom I recognise surrounding me here, who then deafened me with cries of 'Vive Riégo!' now shout 'Death to Riégo!'"

He was taken to the seminary of nobles; his trial lasted over a month. A decree dated 1 October, the very day on which he was freed from prison and reached the port of Sainte-Marie, degraded the general of all his honours; consequently, he was tried by a civil court. The King of Spain gained a twofold advantage by depriving the general of a military court martial.

First he knew that the civil court would condemn Riégo to death. Second, if the sentence were pronounced by a civil court, the death would be ignominious. Vengeance is such a sweet mouthful that it must not be permitted to lose any of its flavour.

On 4 November they led Riégo from the seminary of nobles to the prison of la Tour. The court had not obtained all it demanded. The attorney-general requisitioned that Riégo should be condemned to the gallows; that his estate should be confiscated and given to the Commune; that his head should be exposed at las Cabesas de San-Juan; that his body should be quartered and one quarter sent to Seville, another to the isle of Leon, the third to Malaga and the fourth exposed in Madrid, in the usual places for such exhibitions,--"these towns being," the attorney-general added, "the principal places where the traitor Riégo scattered the sparks of revolt."

The alcades decided that the mode of death should be by hanging and that the goods should be confiscated; but they refused the request concerning the four quarters.

Once, towards the end of the fifteenth century, the inhabitants of Imola, a small town in the Romagna, found, on waking up, the four quarters of a man hanging each by a hook at the four corners of the square. They recognised the man cut into four quarters for a Florentine, and wrote to the worshipful Republic to advise them of the unforeseen accident that had overtaken one of its citizens. The Republic learnt of this by means of Machiavelli, its ambassador to the Legations. Machiavelli's only reply was as follows: "Noble lords, I have but one thing to say to you apropos of the corpse of Ramiro d'Orco, which was found cut up into four quarters in the square of Imola, and it is this: the illustrious Cæsar Borgia is the prince who best knows how to deal with men according to their deserts."

It riled the King of Spain not to be able to deal with Riégo as Borgia had dealt with Ramiro d'Orco; but he had to content himself with the prisoner being borne to the gibbet on hurdles and with the confiscation of his property. Even that would be quite a pretty spectacle.

On 5 November at noon Riégo's sentence was read to him: he listened to it very calmly. This calmness disturbed the judges for it would set a bad example if Riégo died bravely. They took him to the chapel, and under pretence that fasting induced penitence sooner than anything else, they gave him nothing to eat from that time. Two monks accompanied him to his cell and never left him. At the prison door, in the street, he could see a table with a crucifix thereon, and passers-by placed their alms on the table. These alms were destined to pay the expenses of his mass and funeral.

On the 7th, at nine in the morning, the prison was besieged by over thirty thousand curious spectators; a much greater number than that lined the whole of the route, and formed a double line from the prison square to the square where the execution was to take place.

Riégo had asked that only Spanish troops should be present during his last moments. This favour was granted him, because France did not wish to dip one corner of its white flag in the blood of the unlucky Riégo.

At half-past twelve, after fifty hours of fasting, the general was led forth to the prison door. He was pale and weak. They had stripped him of his uniform and they had clothed him in a dressing-gown with a girdle fastened round his waist; his hands and feet were likewise bound. He was laid on a hurdle, with a pillow under his head. Monks walked on both sides of this hurdle to administer spiritual consolation to him. An ass drew the hurdle, led by the executioner. The victim was preceded and followed by a corps of cavalry.

It was difficult to get a good sight of the general, so great was the curiosity of the crowd: his head fell forward on his breast, and he had only sufficient strength to raise it two or three times to reply to the exhortations of the priests.

The cortège took nearly an hour to get from the prison to the place of execution. When the foot of the gallows was reached, the general was raised from the hurdle, covered with dust, and placed on the first step of the scaffold. There he made his last confession. Then they dragged him up the ladder; for, his feet being bound, he could not mount it himself. All the while a priest kept beseeching God to forgive him his sins, as he forgave those who had trespassed against him. When they had hauled him a certain height, those who raised the condemned man stopped. The act of faith was begun and, at the last word, the general was hurled from the top of the ladder. At the very instant that the priest pronounced the word _Jésus-Christ_, which was the signal, the executioner leapt on the shoulders of the martyr, while two men hung from his legs, completing the hideous group. Twice the shout of "Vive le roi!" went up, first from the rows of spectators near by; the second time from a few individuals alone. Then a man leapt from out the crowd, stepped towards the scaffold, and struck Riégo's body a blow with his stick. That night they carried the corpse into the nearest church, and it was interred in the Campo-Santo by the Brothers of Charity.

Nothing is known of Riégo's last moments, as no one was allowed to come near him; the monks, his bitterest enemies, being desirous of throwing all possible odium on his dying moments.

"The last of the Gracchi," according to Mirabeau, "in the act of death, threw dust steeped in his own blood into the air. Thence was born Marius."

Riégo left a song; from that song was born a revolution, and from that revolution the Republic.