Spanish Life in Town and Country. L. Higgin
siege, without pause or rest the troops, half dead with heat and thirst, pressed on to Tunis to liberate twenty thousand Christian captives. It was a splendid achievement, for the campaign was fought in the fierce heat of an African summer. Every barrel of biscuit, every butt of water, had to be brought by sea from Sicily, and as there were no draught animals, the soldiers themselves dragged their guns and all their provisions. It is, as we well know, no light task to find six weeks' supply for thirty thousand men with all our modern advantages; but these Spaniards did it when already exhausted, half fed, burnt up by the fierce African sun, and in face of an enemy well supplied with artillery and ammunition.
In the miserable time of Philip II., a garrison of two hundred men held out for months against a Turkish army of twenty thousand men at Mers-el-Keber; and the same heroic story is repeated at Malta, when the enemy, after firing sixteen thousand cannon shots in one month against the Christian forts, abandoned the siege in despair. Meanwhile the unspeakable bigot, Philip, was wasting his time in processions, rogations, and fasts, for the relief of the town, while he stirred no finger to help it in any effective manner.
These are stories by no means few and far between; the whole history of the race is full of such. We read of one town and garrison of eight thousand souls, abandoned by their king, starved, and without clothes or ammunition. Reduced at last to two thousand naked men, they stood in the breach to be slain to a man by the conquering Turk. Conqueror only in name, after all; for he who conquers is he who lives in history for a great action, and whose undaunted courage fires other souls long after he is at rest.
"But all this is very ancient history, of the days of Spain's greatness; now she is a decadent nation," says the superficial observer. The column of the Dos de Mayo on the Prado of Madrid, with its yearly memorial mass, shows whether that spirit is dead, or in danger of dying. The second of May is well called the "Day of Independence"; it was, in fact, the inauguration of the War of Independence, in which Spain gained enough honour to satisfy the proudest of her sons. The French had entered Madrid under pretence of being Spain's allies against Portugal, and Murat, once settled there to his own perfect satisfaction, made no secret of his master's intention to annex the whole peninsula. The imbecile King, Charles IV., had abdicated; his son, Ferdinand VII., was practically a captive in France. The country had, in fact, been sold to Napoleon, neither more nor less, by the infamous Godoy, favourite of the late King.
A riot broke out among the people on discovering that the French were about to carry off the Spanish Infantes. The blood of some comparatively innocent Frenchmen was shed, and the base governor and magistrates of Madrid allowed Murat to make his own terms, which were nothing less, in fact, than the dispersion of the troops, who were ordered to clear out of their barracks, and hand them over to the French. The two artillery officers, Daoiz and Valarde, with one infantry officer named Ruiz, and a few of the populace, refused, and, all unaided, attempted to hold the barracks of Monteleon against the French army of invasion! The end was certain; but little recked these Spaniards of the old type. Daoiz and Valarde were killed, the former murdered by French bayonets after being wounded, on the cannon by which they had stood alone against the whole power of the French troops; Ruiz also was shot. On the following day, Murat led out some scores of the patriots who had dared to oppose him, and shot them on the spot of the Prado now sacred to their memory. Thus was the torch of the Peninsular War lighted. As one man the nation rose; the labourer armed himself with his agricultural implements, the workman with his tools; without leaders, nay, in defiance of those who should have led them, the people sprang to action, and, with England's help, the usurper was driven from the throne of France, and finally caged in St. Helena. But it is never forgotten that Spain—these two or three sons of hers preferring honour to life—has the glory of having been the first to oppose and check the man and the nation that aspired to tyrannise over Europe.
It is not too much to say that the conduct of every individual in Cervera's fleet at Santiago de Cuba showed that the Spaniard's magnificent courage, his absolute devotion to duty, and his disregard of death are no whit less to-day than when those two thousand naked men stood in the breach to be slain in the name of their country's honour. The Oquendo, already a wreck, coming quietly out of her safe moorings in obedience to the insane orders of the Government in Madrid, steering her way with absolute coolness so as to clear the sunken Diamante, to face certain and hideous death, is a picture which can never fade from memory. It was said at the time by their enemies that there was not a man in the Spanish fleet that did not deserve the Victoria Cross; and this was all the more true because there was not even a forlorn hope: it was obedience to orders in the absolute certainty of death, and, what was harder still, with full knowledge of the utter uselessness of the sacrifice.
It is difficult to imagine that anyone can read the record of this heroic passage in the history of the Spain of to-day without a throb of admiration and pity. No wonder that the generous enemy went out of their way to do honour to the melancholy remnant of heroes as they mounted the sides of the American ironclads, prisoners of war.
Cervantes gave to the world a new adjective when he wrote his romance of The Ingenious Gentleman of La Mancha—a world in which the filibusters are those of commerce, the pirates those of trade. When we English call an action "quixotic," we do not exactly mean disapproval, but neither, certainly, do we intend admiration; unless it be that of other-worldliness which it is well to affect, however far we may be from practising it ourselves. It is, at best, something quite unnecessary, if acknowledged to be admirable in the abstract. The quixotic are rarely successful, and success is the measure by which everything is judged to-day. Be that as it may, the more intimately one knows Spain, the more one becomes aware that what is with us an amiable quality of somewhat dubious value, is one of those which go to make up the Spaniard in every rank of life. His chivalry, his fine sense of honour, are nothing if not quixotic, as we understand the word; and just as in Scotland alone does one appreciate the characters in Sir Walter Scott's novels, so in Spain does one feel that, with due allowance for a spirit of kindly caricature, Don Quijote de la Mancha is not only possible, but it is a type of character as living to-day as it was when the genius of Cervantes distilled and preserved for all time that most quaint, lovable, inconsequent, and chivalrous combination of qualities which constitute a Spanish gentleman. Among her writers, her thinkers, her workers—nay, even now and then among her politicians—we come upon traits which remind us vividly of the ingenious gentleman and perfect knight of romance.
But this estimate of the Spanish character differs a good deal from the pictures drawn of it by the casual tourist; and it is scarcely surprising that it should be so. It has been well said that "the contrast between the ideal of honour and the practice of pecuniary corruption has always been a peculiar feature of Spain and her settlements." If we hear one thing oftener than another said of Spain, it is fault-finding with her public men; the evils of bribery, corruption, and self-seeking amongst what should be her statesmen, and, above all, her Government employees, are pointed out, and by none more than by Spaniards themselves. There is a good deal of truth at the bottom of these charges; they are the melancholy legacy of the years of misrule and of the darkness through which the country has struggled on her difficult way. No one looks for the highest type of character in any country among its party politicians. The creed that good becomes evil if it is carried out under one régime, and evil good under another, is not calculated to raise the moral perception; and it is only when a politician has convictions and principles which are superior to any office-holding, and will break with his party a hundred times sooner than stultify his own conscience, that he earns the respect of onlookers. There are, and have been, many such men among the politicians of Spain whose names remain as watchwords with her people; but they have too often stood alone, and were not strong enough to leaven the mass and raise the whole standard of political integrity. Some of the highest and best men, moreover, have thrown down their tools and withdrawn from contact with a life which seemed to them tainted. But because Spain has done much in overthrowing her evil rulers and is struggling upwards towards the light, we expect wonders, and will not give time for what must always be a slow and difficult progress.
In Spain, everyone is a politician. The schoolboy, who with us would be thinking of nothing more serious than football, aspires to sum up the situation and give his opinion of the public men as if he were an ex-prime minister at least. These orators of the cafés and the street corners