CHAPTER VII

THE REVIVAL OF CARLISM

For a long time past it has been assumed abroad that Carlism is dead in Spain, and probably few even among diplomatists in other countries could say off-book what the proscribed branch of the Spanish Bourbons now consists of, where the different members of the family live, and what relations they maintain with each other and with the country from which they have been exiled since 1876. Even so careful an observer as Major Martin Hume wrote in 1899 that Carlism as a political system was dead in Spain, and the absolutism upon which that party pin their faith, past revival.[12]

It is, therefore, hardly surprising that the Carlists have been left out of account by those who observe Spanish political troubles from outside. Indeed, the very existence of the old Pretender seemed to have been forgotten by the generation which has grown up in England in the thirty-four years which have elapsed since the close of the last civil war. But the Spanish working classes have not forgotten Don Carlos, nor have they for a moment lost sight of the continued existence of this party in their own country.

The root of their long memory lies in their antipathy to the Religious Orders. To the people the Carlists are indissolubly associated with the Ultramontanes, and who says Jesuit says Carlist in their vocabulary of distrust. And that the people have reason on their side has been proved by the words and actions of the Ultramontanes themselves since the events that took place in the summer of 1909.

The Catalonian question has been discussed at such length and with so much confidence by writers living in other countries that I may be forgiven if I add to their pronouncements on the causes and effects of the “Red Week” certain information which is not common knowledge beyond the Pyrenees, unless possibly at the Castle of Frohsdorf or in the palaces of the proscribed branch in Venice or Trieste. The censorship exercised over the press, and over telegrams and even letters addressed to newspaper offices, was so severe while the country was under martial law, and, indeed, right up to the fall of the Maura Cabinet in October, 1909, that representatives of foreign journals who tried to put the facts before their leaders found it impossible to do so. Any man who had once tried--and failed--to get off even the most cryptic telegram relating to the part played by the Ultramontanes in the riots, was thenceforth marked by the Intelligence Department of the Society of Jesus, and if he continued his efforts to communicate what he knew, he not only found his telegrams suppressed after they had been accepted and paid for, but stood a good chance of having his personal liberty interfered with. There was plenty of excitement about the work of a foreign correspondent in Spain in the summer of 1909, wherever he happened to be stationed. But it was not precisely the form of danger suggested by the reports of revolution and anarchy which were supplied to the foreign Press. Notices of that class could be procured and sent through without the slightest difficulty. The newspaper correspondent who was in danger was the man who crossed the frontier to telegraph the facts as he saw them, and who was not unlikely to meet with an “accident” as he made his way back to the scene of his labours.

The result of this regime of espionage was that all Europe was hoodwinked as to the real crisis in Spain, for naturally as soon as affairs in Cataluña ceased to be sensational, the foreign Press relapsed into its usual indifference to what was going on in the Peninsula.

Foreign residents, living as quietly and comfortably as usual, were considerably astonished when their home newspapers reached them, packed with sensational tales of revolution, incendiarism, military sedition, and wholesale executions, and asked what on earth the Spanish Government was about that it allowed these slanders to be propagated all over the world? Who was responsible for these perversions of the truth? What advantage was hoped for by those who fostered so colossal a misrepresentation of the conduct of the inarticulate proletariat of Spain?[13]

The Censor handled the national Press even more sternly than the foreign, for the suspension of the Constitution gave the Government a perfectly free hand, and although the Constitutional rights were nominally restored everywhere except in Cataluña a few weeks after the rising, the Press was in reality gagged as long as Señor Maura remained in office. The Opposition indeed was placed on the horns of an impossible dilemma. So long as the party kept silence as to what they knew, Spain would continue to be held up to foreign contumely for a condition of affairs which did not exist. Yet if any Liberal dared to criticise the Government, he was clapped into prison until such time as it might suit the Government to release him.

The position was recognised by Señor Moret, the veteran Liberal-Monarchist leader. He possesses the invaluable quality of knowing when to speak and when to keep silence. And throughout the time when the fair fame of his nation was being dragged in the dust, he urged patience and submission upon his followers, pointing out that when the time came to call the Ultramontanes to account for their conduct of the Government, the strong men of his party must not be found in prison, for it would be their business to speak: and the Liberal-Monarchist statesmen, without exception, supported their leader in his patriotic policy.

Only a very strong man could have controlled the rising tide of wrath against the Religious Orders, whom the people hold responsible for everything that goes wrong with the nation. Señor Maura, the leader of the Ultramontane party, is supposed, by those who do not know the facts, to be the only really strong man in Spain, and it appears to be honestly believed abroad that he holds the Conservative party together by sheer force of statesmanship. The truth is that Maura is a weak man who owes his position as the leader of the party he is supposed to control only to the unflagging energy and intrigue of the Ultramontanes--the richest men and the subtlest intellects in the Peninsula; while Moret’s power, on the other hand, is based upon unswerving political rectitude, maintained against the onslaughts of corrupt politicians, and upon his capacity for silence among men who spend half their lives in talking. This is why he has obtained such a hold upon the people that the whole forces of political immorality have laboured to bring about his overthrow each time that he has taken office, lest he end by leading the nation into paths where corruption will have no standing ground. Maura’s policy of repression gave a great impetus to the revolutionary spirit against which it professed to be directed. And yet Moret’s influence was strong enough to keep the nation quiet, because the nation trusts him.

For once the low level of popular education, which Moret and his followers are working hard to raise, was on the side of the Liberal leader. Only some twenty-five per cent. or so of the nation can read, and of that number few indeed know any language but their own. Had the working classes realised that the Army, of which all Spain is so proud, was being traduced by the foreigner, neither Moret nor Maura could have controlled the storm of wrath that would have overwhelmed those held responsible for the lie.

Happily for Spain, the syndicate of newspapers known as the _Sociedad Editorial de España_, which is edited under the direction of the Liberal-Monarchist party in Madrid, and read by thousands, as against hundreds of readers of the journals which support a different policy, never wavered for a day in upholding Moret’s recommendation of patience and submission to the law, and refrained from increasing their sales by pandering to popular excitement with allusions to what was going on outside of Spain, notwithstanding the grossest insults from the Ultramontane press. Those who control the organs of the party knew well enough that if they had raised the cry of “Down with the Jesuits!” they would have called up a tempest not easily or speedily to be allayed. But they knew that their adversaries wished for nothing better, and they kept on their own course and saved Spain from a violent revolution against the Church. The syndicate of Liberal-Monarchist papers is continually accused by the Ultramontane press of being responsible for the attack on the religious houses in Cataluña, and is held up to reprobation for “encouraging the destruction of the country by maintaining the right of the people to have lay schools.” But the truth is, and the Ultramontanes know it, that to the Liberal-Monarchist press is due the present security of innumerable buildings belonging to the Church, which, but for the influence of the Liberal party, would be in smoke-blackened ruins to-day.

Many members of the educated middle classes of Barcelona assert that the disturbances in Cataluña in July, 1909, were deliberately instigated by the Jesuits. The object was, they say, by hook or by crook, to close the lay schools, and that it had long been an open secret that the Ultramontane party were determined to take the first excuse they could find to destroy an educational movement which they find inimical to their interests. And the link connecting the Jesuits of Barcelona with Don Jaime, the son of the recently deceased Pretender, Don Carlos, was provided by an indignant disclaimer of Carlist participation in the affair, published by a Carlist organ edited in Paris, long before any suggestion had been made that such participation was suspected. This was so clearly a case of _qui s’excuse s’accuse_ that no thoughtful observer, unbiassed by political passion, could fail to put two and two together.

The peasants had no doubt whatever as to the origin of the disturbances. One of them gave me his view of the situation, as follows:

“The Carlists and the Jesuits plotted to turn out Isabel II., and now they are trying to overthrow King Alfonso. They ruined Queen Isabel because she loved the people and hated the priests, and now they are trying to do the same with _los Reyes_ because they are popular in the country. But let them try! There are still many of us who remember what we suffered in the last Carlist war, and we do not intend to have another. Let them try to touch _los Reyes_! We will kill every priest in the country before they shall put a hand to that work!”

“Well,” I objected, “this is very fine talk now that Don Carlos is dead and buried, but if you did not want him for your king, why did so many of you fight for him?”

“If you were ordered to fight and knew that you and your children would be put in the street if you refused, would you not fight rather than let your family starve? The men who paid our wages said: ‘You will go with us to fight for Don Carlos or you will never have another day’s work from us.’ What help had we against our masters? Do you think we wished to take arms against Queen Isabel? If the Jesuits had not been in the affair, no one would have taken notice of her little faults. The Jesuits intended her to commit faults when they married her to a man who was no man. If she had not been good to us they would have let her stay.”

The popular songs expressing loyalty to Queen Isabella have not been forgotten in the forty odd years that have elapsed since she was dethroned, for in 1909 they were revived, with such slight alterations as were needed to bring them up to date. Here is a specimen:

“_Si la Reina de España moriera Y Don Carlos quisiera reinar, Los arroyos de sangre correrian Por el campo de la libertad._”

(“If the Queen of Spain were to die and Don Carlos wanted to reign, the streams would run with blood on the field of liberty.”)

The intricacies of succession being little understood by the people, this song was modernised by substituting “Victoria” for “de España” and “Don Jaime” for “Don Carlos.” During the suspension of the Constitution the song was not sung aloud: the people said that “Maura had forbidden it.” Directly the Liberals came in it was heard again everywhere.

Here is another:

“_No reinará Don Jaime, No reinará, no, no! Mientras España tenga Bayoneta y cañon._”

(“Don Jaime shall not reign while Spain has a bayonet and a cannon.”)

And another, perhaps in some ways the most interesting of the three:

“_Dicen de Barcelona De un mitin clerical, Que Don Jaime asistió Provisto de un disfraz. Al ver la bronca de palos y morral Creyó que le tiraban bomba encima de nocedal!_”

The literal translation is as follows: “They say from Barcelona, of a clerical meeting, that Don Jaime attended it provided with a disguise. When he saw the row with sticks and a nosebag, he thought they were throwing a bomb on the top of a walnut-copse.” Taken in its literal meaning it is of course nonsense, and the popularity of the song was evidently due to the puns on “_morral_” and “_nocedal_.” By writing these words with capitals we get the names of the man who threw the bomb at the King’s wedding (Morral), and of a well-known Carlist leader (Nocedal). This song was sung in Barcelona when the colonies were lost, with another name in place of Morral’s, and was revived in 1909, brought up to date as above, until with the suspension of the Constitution it was severely repressed. It expresses the popular opinion as to the authorship of the bomb of 1906 and the troubles in Cataluña.

It was curious to observe how constantly the Carlist and Cuban wars seemed to be in the minds of the people during the regime of repression. Frequent comparisons were drawn between the reign of Queen Isabella and the rule of Señor Maura, all highly unfavourable to the latter. It was always Maura and the Jesuits: never was the King blamed in Spain for the sins of his ministers. The Carlist war seemed as fresh in the minds of the unlettered masses as Mellila itself. Tales were raked up of shocking cruelty to the rank and file, and of a callous disregard of their sufferings in Cuba and the Philippines, and it seemed to be believed by many of the speakers that similar abuses were being repeated in Morocco.

A nation which has been prevented from developing its intellectual life is inevitably thrown back upon its recollections, and traditions of class injury cannot fail to be more permanent among a people who have no other occupation for their thoughts.

For nearly forty years the uneducated Spanish peasantry, and the artisan classes, have nursed their wrath against the body whom their parents believed to have dethroned, for their own ends and at the cost of a bloody civil war, a Queen desirous of ameliorating the lot of her people; and for ten years of that time their resentment has been increased by the conviction that the same body plotted to sell the last of the once world-wide Spanish colonies, and strewed the road to that sale with the corpses of Spanish peasants, set to fight, without arms or equipment, against the overwhelming forces of the enemy, while the Jesuits appropriated to their own purposes the money wrung from the nation for the expenses of the war.

How much of the indictment against the Jesuits is justified I do not pretend to decide; but all the world knows that the Spanish Army again and again went into action in Cuba and the Philippines so destitute of munitions as to be practically unarmed, while the tragic loss of the Spanish Navy at Santiago will never be forgotten by those whose friends and relatives were sent to an inevitable death “by order of the Government in Madrid.”

Had the people been allowed to educate themselves during the years that have passed since those fatal adventures, the wound, though it will long remain unhealed, would have been skinned over by consoling comparisons drawn between these and the great disasters of other nations. But the Religious Orders have always opposed the spread of popular education. The people have been driven back upon tradition, old and new, for their mental nourishment, while other nations have been forging ahead. Thus the Religious Orders have sharpened a sword for their own undoing. The longer the Spanish peasant is left to nurse the memory of his grievances, the more bitter grows his resentment against those whom he holds responsible for them.

To the Jesuits the people attribute the downfall of Isabel II. and the years of internecine strife which followed; to the Jesuits they attribute the fiasco of the Spanish-American War, with all the suffering it entailed upon the poor; to the Jesuits they attribute the war in Morocco, with its heavy account of bloodshed, sickness, and money-cost; and to the Jesuits they impute the chronic unrest in Cataluña, which they believe to be fostered in the interests of Don Jaime of Bourbon. They are convinced that all these things were and are engineered by the Carlist party, being well aware that, as the Pretender himself stated, in a published document, the “Monarch” of the Ultramontanes has no hope of entering Spain again, save on the waves of a national revolution, which would bring misery and desolation to thousands of homes.

Let us now see what evidence may be found in incidents that have occurred and statements that have been published since the regime of repression was abolished, to support the popular theory of Jesuit-Carlist intervention in the events of 1909.

The belief, industriously promulgated in Spain and abroad, that Ferrer engineered and conducted the July outbreak, fell flat, generally speaking, among the Spanish working people; always excepting, of course, the more educated elements in the larger industrial cities.

“They are saying that this Ferrer, whoever he may be, paid Morral to throw the bomb at the King and Queen. If that is true he deserved to be shot. But others say that the Jesuits themselves paid Morral, and others again say that Don Carlos employed him.[14] What do _I_ know about it? The only thing certain is that the Jesuits had a hand in this Barcelona business, for they have a hand in everything that is bad for the country. Where the Jesuits are, there are the Carlists also. As for this Ferrer, who is he? We never heard of him till Maura shot him.”

This commentary on “the execution of an anarchist” or “the martyrdom of an enthusiast” is, of course, that of the peasantry alone, not that of the Republicans and Socialists, to whom he was well known long before the Barcelona riots took place. But let it be remembered that the unlettered peasant forms the great majority of the working classes in Spain.

The calm with which the mass of the nation regarded the affair was, however, shaken when a report got about that Ferrer was denounced by or at the instigation of a Dominican monk--even a name being given--who, having quarrelled with him some years before, had determined to contrive his destruction. I do not say that there was any foundation for this vague story. But its ready acceptance as exculpating

Ferrer, by those who had previously been indifferent or hostile to him, shows how the people twist everything to the prejudice of the Religious Orders, and believe all evil possible to them. Had the Liberal papers lent themselves to agitation then, the result might have been serious. No better incitement to riot could have been found than the story of the Dominican. The death of Ferrer in itself left the mass of the people unmoved, but the ease with which churches and monasteries were destroyed in Barcelona had already set many aggrieved people thinking how easy it would be to follow Barcelona’s example in other towns where the Jesuits are numerous, and only a leader and a party-cry were needed to raise the working classes against the Religious Orders.

The whole of the Opposition Press, however, in spite of great provocation, as usual stuck to its guns and steadily, continued to condemn violence and to point out that the duty of the nation, unjustly deprived of its constitutional rights, was to prove by its self-restraint and moderation how entirely it was worthy to be trusted.

“If we could only kill Maura without hurting the King,” a working man said to me, “he would have been dead long ago, for he is the cause of all our troubles. But the Jesuits would make out that any act of violence on our part was directed, not against Maura himself, but against the party which is supposed to support the King; they would never admit that it was only their friend Maura whom we were attacking, and it would be made to appear that we were trying to overthrow the Monarchy. That is why Maura is still alive.” The conviction, and the rancour expressed in these words, cannot be rendered in print.

The speaker could not read or write. He and some ten or twelve of his friends were in the habit of meeting quietly together after nightfall, when no priest or Jesuit was likely to see them. One of the better instructed, generally a reservist who had “got education while serving the King,” would read aloud to the rest, and all would discuss the pronouncements of their chosen newspaper and form a collective opinion on them. I have sat with many such groups, in small towns and country villages, and have taken care to notice what newspaper they read. It was invariably the _Libéral_. It often struck me, during the three months of “repression,” that Señor Maura literally owed his life to the organs of the so-called “Trust,” which he and his party accuse of working hand in hand with the anarchists; for the sentiment recorded above was expressed in my presence many times by members of the working classes in connection with Barcelona, the war, the want of education, and all their other grievances. Maura, the Jesuits, and the Carlists, are regarded as one by the mass of the nation, and the three-fold hostility is concentrated on each member of the trinity in turn.

When you have some twelve or thirteen million people brooding over their grievances, and cherishing the conviction that a certain party in the State refuses to recognise or redress those grievances because by preserving the _status quo_ they put money in their own pockets, the situation becomes serious for the party to which such action, or inaction, is attributed. And it must be remembered that though the Spanish peasant can read but little of the literature disseminated by revolutionaries--anarchists and such-like--across the Pyrenees, an echo of their campaign can hardly fail to reach him sooner or later.

Several little incidents occurred about this time which, though trivial in themselves, lend support to the popular view that the Carlists were at the bottom of the trouble.

Thus we have the disclaimer of participation in the outbreak, by the _Correo Catalan_, the official organ of the party, synchronising with the publication of extracts from a “forthcoming” manifesto of Don Jaime, suggesting the possible expulsion of the King by a revolution, to which I have already alluded; while early in August the Ultramontane journals said that a quantity of weapons, which they allege to have been taken from the hands of the mob, were stored in the Carlist club in Barcelona. Don Jaime’s full manifesto was not published till November, when the equivocal passage did not appear. But it is worth observing that some time before the expected death of the old Pretender his supporters in the Press had been hinting that those who believed Carlism to be dead in Spain “would presently see things that would surprise them.”

Then we have the inexplicable favours accorded by the Government to Señor Llorens, a Carlist Deputy to Cortes and one of the most prominent of the “Court” of Don Jaime. This gentleman paid more than one visit to the Army at Melilla, and was allowed privileges at the front which were granted to no other civilian. The favours shown to him and his own proceedings were so marked as to call forth outspoken comment from the _Ejército Español_, a military paper professedly without political bias, which, after recalling the fact that he is a well-known supporter of the anti-dynastic party, and had

taken part in the last Carlist war, plainly warned him that any attempt to tamper with the loyalty of the Army would be in vain, and asked what was the meaning of the exceptional privileges he enjoyed.

On July 24th a great meeting of the Carlists was held at Trieste on the occasion of the funeral of Don Carlos, the most noteworthy feature of which was that on the evening of the same day Don Jaime left his followers to be entertained by his mother and sisters, and went himself, it was said, to Frohsdorf. Why did he, on the very day of his father’s funeral, abandon the delegates of his party when they travelled long distances to see him and discuss the situation? The rioting at Barcelona was just then at its height, having begun, it was said, some days sooner than was intended.

About this time all sorts of reports were spread, calculated to alarm the country and prejudice it against the Monarchy. The story of the mutiny and execution of soldiers on their arrival at the front I have already mentioned. The details of this varied with each telling: sometimes two men were shot, sometimes nine, often a whole battalion, once several of them. The immediate preparation of accommodation was called for for the thousands of sick and wounded, who could not be received in the already overflowing hospitals. Real sacrifices were made by the poor to help in these preparations, for every one wished to do his share for the sufferers; and when at length it became clear that no wounded were coming, at any rate at that time, and that the demands made on the public sympathy--for the moment at least--were a sham, much indignation was naturally aroused. These alarmist reports circulated with great rapidity, even in remote villages where no one received newspapers. The people had no hesitation in attributing them to the parish priests, “who have their own ways of spreading what Jesuits wish them to make known,” and tales of all sorts of horrors for which they had been held responsible in the past began to be raked up and repeated as happenings of the moment. One such tale was of a walled-up nun found in a convent in Barcelona during the July riots. I took some trouble to track this story, and finally convinced myself that it was merely an echo from the past--a tale of the Inquisition or of some monastic crime. But it formed another instance of the hold that tradition has on the Spanish peasant, and of the way in which it is combined with the events of the day to pile up the indictment against the Religious Orders.

I asked some of my middle-class acquaintances on one occasion where was to be found the “army” of Don Jaime, which I had seen mentioned in the report of a Carlist meeting. One of them laughed and said it existed only in the region of comic opera, but another proceeded to explain with conviction that the Pretender had a strong following in Cataluña and the Basque Provinces and a good many adherents in Andalusia, and expatiated at length on the benefits the nation would derive from the autocracy and the abolition of popular rights, which he seemed to think would bring about a social millennium.

And while he was speaking I mentally recalled the commentary of one of the people, to whom I had read aloud Don Jaime’s manifesto, asking whether he would welcome the advent of the “Legitimist Monarch” in Spain.

“Don Jaime? I? I would like to burn him and then blow his ashes to the winds, and so would all my friends, both men and women. What dealings do we desire with the seed of Don Carlos? There is no poor man in Spain who liked Don Carlos or wishes ever to see his son.”

A Basque friend of mine, a highly educated man, whose position as a large employer of labour enables him to judge fairly of the political leanings of the people, made the following remark to me one day:

“The Carlists,” he said, “may think they have the Basque Provinces with them, but they are completely mistaken. The working classes of my country have no more desire for civil war than those of any other part of Spain.”

This gentleman is not a man who would use illicit means to influence the votes of his dependants, and his opinion may be taken as representing the true state of public opinion in his district. On the other hand, he said that among his wealthy clients there was no attempt to disguise the desire for a dynastic change: the portrait of Don Jaime hangs in a place of honour in many of the great houses which he visits in the course of his business, and the general devotion of this class to Carlism is open and avowed.

“But,” he said, “what can be done by a party which is all head and no body? The army of Don Jaime may be well supplied with would-be officers and with all the munitions of war, but they have no troops behind them, in the Basque Provinces or anywhere else.”

His description of the Carlist “army” reminded me of the famous raid of the Fhairshon:

“For he did resolve to extirpate the vipers With four and twenty men and five and thirty pipers.”

THE CHURCH MILITANT