Napier tells how “the axmen of the light division, compassing the fort like prowling wolves,” discovered the gate at the rear, and so broke into the fort. The engineer officer who led the attack declares that “the place would never have been taken had it not been for the coolness of these men” in absolutely walking round the fort to its rear, discovering the gate, and hewing it down under a tempest of bullets. The assault lasted an hour, and in that period, out of the five hundred men who attacked, no less than three hundred, with nineteen officers, were killed or wounded! Three men out of everyfive in the attacking force, that is, were disabled, and yet they won!
There followed twelve days of furious industry, of trenches pushed tirelessly forward through mud and wet, and of cannonading that only ceased when the guns grew too hot to be used. Captain MacCarthy, of the Fiftieth Regiment, has left a curious little monograph on the siege, full of incidents, half tragic and half amusing, but which show the temper of Wellington’s troops. Thus he tells how an engineer officer, when marking out the ground for a breaching-battery very near the wall, which was always lined with French soldiers in eager search of human targets, “used to challenge them to prove the perfection of their shooting by lifting up the skirts of his coat in defiance several times in the course of his survey; driving in his stakes and measuring his distances with great deliberation, and concluding by an extra shake of his coat-tails and an ironical bow before he stepped under shelter!”
On the night of April 6, Wellington determined to assault. No less than seven attacks were to be delivered. Two of them—on the bridge-head across the Guadiana and on the Pardaleras—were mere feints. But on the extreme right Picton with the third division was to cross the Rivillas and escalade the castle, whose walls rose, time-stained and grim, from eighteen to twenty-four feet high. Leith with the fifth division was to attack the opposite or western extremity of the town, the bastion of San Vincente, where the glacis was mined, the ditch deep, and the scarp thirty feet high. Against the actual breaches Colville and Andrew Barnard were to lead the light divisionand the fourth division, the former attacking the bastion of Santa Maria and the latter the Trinidad. The hour was fixed for ten o’clock, and the story of that night attack, as told in Napier’s immortal prose, is one of the great battle-pictures of literature; and any one who tries to tell the tale will find himself slipping insensibly into Napier’s cadences.
The night was black; a strange silence lay on rampart and trench, broken from time to time by the deep voices of the sentinels that proclaimed all was well in Badajos. “Sentinelle garde à vous,” the cry of the sentinels, was translated by the British private as “All’s well in Badahoo!” A lighted carcass thrown from the castle discovered Picton’s men standing in ordered array, and compelled them to attack at once. MacCarthy, who acted as guide across the tangle of wet trenches and the narrow bridge that spanned the Rivillas, has left an amusing account of the scene. At one time Picton declared MacCarthy was leading them wrong, and, drawing his sword, swore he would cut him down. The column reached the trench, however, at the foot of the castle walls, and was instantly overwhelmed with the fire of the besieged. MacCarthy says we can only picture the scene by “supposing that all the stars, planets, and meteors of the firmament, with innumerable moons emitting smaller ones in their course, were descending on the heads of the besiegers.” MacCarthy himself, a typical and gallant Irishman, addressed his general with the exultant remark, “’Tis a glorious night, sir—a glorious night!” and, rushing forward to the head of the stormers, shouted, “Up with the ladders!” The five ladders were raised, the troops swarmedup, an officer leading, but the first files were at once crushed by cannon fire, and the ladders slipped into the angle of the abutments. “Dreadful their fall,” records MacCarthy of the slaughtered stormers, “and appalling their appearance at daylight.” One ladder remained, and, a private soldier leading, the eager red-coated crowd swarmed up it. The brave fellow leading was shot as soon as his head appeared above the parapet; but the next man to him—again a private—leaped over the parapet, and was followed quickly by others, and this thin stream of desperate men climbed singly, and in the teeth of the flashing musketry, up that solitary ladder, and carried the castle.
In the meanwhile the fourth and light divisions had flung themselves with cool and silent speed on the breaches. The storming party of each division leaped into the ditch. It was mined, the fuse was kindled, and the ditch, crowded with eager soldiery, became in a moment a sort of flaming crater, and the storming parties, five hundred strong, were in one fierce explosion dashed to pieces. In the light of that dreadful flame the whole scene became visible—the black ramparts, crowded with dark figures and glittering arms, on the one side; on the other, the red columns of the British, broad and deep, moving steadily forward like a stream of human lava. The light division stood at the brink of the smoking ditch for an instant, amazed at the sight. “Then,” says Napier, “with a shout that matched even the sound of the explosion,” they leaped into it and swarmed up to the breach. The fourth division came running up and descended with equal fury but the ditch opposite the Trinidad was filled withwater; the head of the division leaped into it, and, as Napier puts it, “about one hundred of the fusiliers, the men of Albuera, perished there.” The breaches were impassable. Across the top of the great slope of broken wall glittered a fringe of sword-blades, sharp-pointed, keen-edged on both sides, fixed in ponderous beams chained together and set deep in the ruins. For ten feet in front the ascent was covered with loose planks, studded with sharp iron points. Behind the glittering edge of sword-blades stood the solid ranks of the French, each man supplied with three muskets, and their fire scourged the British ranks like a tempest.
Hundreds had fallen, hundreds were still falling; but the British clung doggedly to the lower slopes, and every few minutes an officer would leap forward with a shout, a swarm of men would instantly follow him, and, like leaves blown by a whirlwind, they swept up the ascent. But under the incessant fire of the French, the assailants melted away. One private reached the sword-blades, and actually thrust his head beneath them till his brains were beaten out, so desperate was his resolve to get into Badajos. The breach, as Napier describes it, “yawning and glittering with steel, resembled the mouth of a huge dragon belching forth smoke and flame.” But for two hours, and until two thousand men had fallen, the stubborn British persisted in their attacks. Currie, of the 52d, a cool and most daring soldier, found a narrow ramp beyond the Santa Maria breach only half-ruined; he forced his way back through the tumult and carnage to where Wellington stood watching the scene, obtained an unbroken battalion from the reserve, and led it towardthe broken ramp. But his men were caught in the whirling madness of the ditch and swallowed up in the tumult. Nicholas, of the engineers, and Shaw of the 43d, with some fifty soldiers, actually climbed into the Santa Maria bastion, and from thence tried to force their way into the breach. Every man was shot down except Shaw, who stood alone on the bastion. “With inexpressible coolness he looked at his watch, said it was too late to carry the breaches,” and then leaped down! The British could not penetrate the breach; but they would not retreat. They could only die where they stood. The buglers of the reserve were sent to the crest of the glacis to sound the retreat; the troops in the ditch would not believe the signal to be genuine, and struck their own buglers who attempted to repeat it. “Gathering in dark groups, and leaning on their muskets,” says Napier, “they looked up in sullen desperation at Trinidad, while the enemy, stepping out on the ramparts, and aiming their shots by the light of fire-balls, which they threw over, asked as their victims fell, ‘Why they did not come into Badajos.’”
All this while, curiously enough, Picton was actually in Badajos, and held the castle securely, but made no attempt to clear the breach. On the extreme west of the town, however, at the bastion of San Vincente, the fifth division made an attack as desperate as that which was failing at the breaches. When the stormers actually reached the bastion, the Portuguese battalions, who formed part of the attack, dismayed by the tremendous fire which broke out on them, flung down their ladders and fled. The British, however, snatched the ladders up,forced the barrier, jumped into the ditch, and tried to climb the walls. These were thirty feet high, and the ladders were too short. A mine was sprung in the ditch under the soldiers’ feet; beams of wood, stones, broken wagons, and live shells were poured upon their heads from above. Showers of grape from the flank swept the ditch.
The stubborn soldiers, however, discovered a low spot in the rampart, placed three ladders against it, and climbed with reckless valor. The first man was pushed up by his comrades; he, in turn, dragged others up, and the unconquerable British at length broke through and swept the bastion. The tumult still stormed and raged at the eastern breaches, where the men of the light and fourth division were dying sullenly, and the men of the fifth division marched at speed across the town to take the great eastern breach in the rear. The streets were empty, but the silent houses were bright with lamps. The men of the fifth pressed on; they captured mules carrying ammunition to the breaches, and the French, startled by the tramp of the fast-approaching column, and finding themselves taken in the rear, fled. The light and fourth divisions broke through the gap hitherto barred by flame and steel, and Badajos was won!
In that dreadful night assault the English lost three thousand five hundred men. “Let it be considered,” says Napier, “that this frightful carnage took place in the space of less than a hundred yards square—that the slain died not all suddenly, nor by one manner of death—that some perished by steel, some by shot, some by water; that some were crushed and mangled by heavy weights,some trampled upon, some dashed to atoms by the fiery explosions—that for hours this destruction was endured without shrinking, and the town was won at last. Let these things be considered, and it must be admitted a British army bears with it an awful power. And false would it be to say the French were feeble men. The garrison stood and fought manfully and with good discipline, behaving worthily. Shame there was none on any side. Yet who shall do justice to the bravery of the British soldiers or the noble emulation of the officers?... No age, no nation, ever sent forth braver troops to battle than those who stormed Badajos.”
In addition to Badajos, the siege of Ciudad Rodrigo and of San Sebastian deserve mention. The annals of strife nowhere record assaults more daring than those which raged in turn around these three great fortresses. Of them all that of Badajos was the most picturesque and bloody; that of San Sebastian the most sullen and exasperating; that of Ciudad Rodrigo the swiftest and most brilliant. A great siege tests the fighting quality of an army as nothing else can test it. In the night watches in the trenches, in the dogged toil of the batteries, and the crowded perils of the breach, all the frippery and much of the real discipline of an army dissolves. The soldiers fall back upon what may be called the primitive fighting qualities—the hardihood of the individual soldier, the daring with which the officers will lead, the dogged loyalty with which the men will follow. As an illustration of the warlike qualities in a race by which empire has been achieved, nothing better can be desired than the story of how the breaches were won at Ciudad Rodrigo.
At the end of 1811 the English and the French were watching each other jealously across the Spanish border. The armies of Marmont and of Soult, sixty-seven thousand strong, lay within touch of each other, barring Wellington’s entrance into Spain. Wellington, with thirty-five thousand men, of whom not more than ten thousand men were British, lay within sight of the Spanish frontier. It was the winter time. Wellington’s army was wasted by sickness, his horses were dying of mere starvation, his men had received no pay for three months, and his muleteers none for eight months. He had no siege train, his regiments were ragged and hungry, and the French generals confidently reckoned the British army as, for the moment at least, une quantite negligeable.
And yet at that precise moment, Wellington, subtle and daring, was meditating a leap upon the great frontier fortress of Ciudad Rodrigo, in the Spanish province of Salamanca. Its capture would give him a safe base of operations against Spain; it was the great frontier place d’armes for the French; the whole siege equipage and stores of the army of Portugal were contained in it. The problem of how, in the depth of winter, without materials for a siege, to snatch a place so strong from under the very eyes of two armies, each stronger than his own, was a problem which might have taxed the warlike genius of a Cæsar. But Wellington accomplished it with a combination of subtlety and audacity simply marvelous.
He kept the secret of his design so perfectly that his own engineers never suspected it, and his adjutant-general, Murray, went home on leave without dreaming anything was going to happen. Wellington collected artilleryostensibly for the purpose of arming Almeida, but the guns were transshipped at sea and brought secretly to the mouth of the Douro. No less than eight hundred mule-carts were constructed without anybody guessing their purpose. Wellington, while these preparations were on foot, was keenly watching Marmont and Soult, till he saw that they were lulled into a state of mere yawning security, and then, in Napier’s expressive phrase, he “instantly jumped with both feet upon Ciudad Rodrigo.”
This famous fortress, in shape, roughly resembles a triangle with the angles truncated. The base, looking to the south, is covered by the Agueda, a river given to sudden inundations; the fortifications were strong and formidably armed; as outworks it had to the east the great fortified Convent of San Francisco, to the west a similar building called Santa Cruz; while almost parallel with the northern face rose two rocky ridges called the Great and Small Teson, the nearest within six hundred yards of the city ramparts, and crowned by a formidable redoubt called Francisco. The siege began on January 8. The soil was rocky and covered with snow, the nights were black, the weather bitter. The men lacked intrenching tools. They had to encamp on the side of the Agueda furthest from the city, and ford that river every time the trenches were relieved. The 1st, 3d, and light divisions formed the attacking force; each division held the trenches in turn for twenty-four hours. Let the reader imagine what degree of hardihood it took to wade in the gray and bitter winter dawn through a half-frozen river, and, without fire or warm food, and under a ceaseless rain of shells from the enemy’s guns, to toil in the frozen trenches, or to keepwatch, while the icicles hung from eyebrow and beard, over the edge of the battery for twenty-four hours in succession.
Nothing in this great siege is more wonderful than the fierce speed with which Wellington urged his operations. Massena, who had besieged and captured the city the year before in the height of summer, spent a month in bombarding it before he ventured to assault. Wellington broke ground on January 8, under a tempest of mingled hail and rain; he stormed it on the night of the 19th.
He began operations by leaping on the strong work that crowned the Great Teson the very night the siege began. Two companies from each regiment of the light division were detailed by the officer of the day, Colonel Colborne, for the assault. Colborne (afterward Lord Seaton), a cool and gallant soldier, called his officers together in a group and explained with great minuteness how they were to attack. He then lanched his men against the redoubt with a vehemence so swift that, to those who watched the scene under the light of a wintry moon, the column of redcoats, like the thrust of a crimson sword-blade, spanned the ditch, shot up the glacis, and broke through the parapet with a single movement. The accidental explosion of a French shell burst the gate open, and the remainder of the attacking party instantly swept through it. There was fierce musketry fire and a tumult of shouting for a moment or two, but in twenty minutes from Colborne’s lanching his attack every Frenchman in the redoubt was killed, wounded, or a prisoner.
The fashion in which the gate was blown open was verycurious. A French sergeant was in the act of throwing a live shell upon the storming party in the ditch, when he was struck by an English bullet. The lighted shell fell from his hands within the parapet, was kicked away by the nearest French in mere self-preservation; it rolled toward the gate, exploded, burst it open, and instantly the British broke in.
For ten days a desperate artillery duel raged between the besiegers and the besieged. The parallels were resolutely pushed on in spite of rocky soil, broken tools, bitter weather, and the incessant pelting of the French guns. The temper of the British troops is illustrated by an incident which George Napier—the youngest of the three Napiers—relates. The three brothers were gallant and remarkable soldiers. Charles Napier in India and elsewhere made history; William, in his wonderful tale of the Peninsular War, wrote history; and George, if he had not the literary genius of the one nor the strategic skill of the other, was a most gallant soldier. “I was a field-officer of the trenches,” he says, “when a 13-inch shell from the town fell in the midst of us. I called to the men to lie down flat, and they instantly obeyed orders, except one of them, an Irishman and an old marine, but a most worthless drunken dog, who trotted up to the shell, the fuse of which was still burning, and striking it with his spade, knocked the fuse out; then taking the immense shell in his hands, brought it to me, saying, ‘There she is for you, now, yer ’anner. I’ve knocked the life out of the crater.’”
The besieged brought fifty heavy guns to reply to the thirty light pieces by which they were assailed, and dayand night the bellow of eighty pieces boomed sullenly over the doomed city and echoed faintly back from the nearer hills, while the walls crashed to the stroke of the bullet. The English fire made up by fierceness and accuracy for what it lacked in weight; but the sap made no progress, the guns showed signs of being worn out, and, although two apparent breaches had been made, the counterscarp was not destroyed. Yet Wellington determined to attack, and, in his characteristic fashion, to attack by night. The siege had lasted ten days, and Marmont, with an army stronger than his own, was lying within four marches. That he had not appeared already on the scene was wonderful.
In a general order issued on the evening of the 19th Wellington wrote, “Ciudad Rodrigo must be stormed this evening.” The great breach was a sloping gap in the wall at its northern angle, about a hundred feet wide. The French had crowned it with two guns loaded with grape, the slope was strewn with bombs, hand-grenades and bags of powder; a great mine pierced it beneath; a deep ditch had been cut between the breach and the adjoining ramparts, and these were crowded with riflemen. The third division, under General Mackinnon, was to attack the breach, its forlorn hope being led by Ensign Mackie, its storming party by General Mackinnon himself. The lesser breach was a tiny gap, scarcely twenty feet wide, to the left of the great breach; this was to be attacked by the light division, under Craufurd, its forlorn hope of twenty-five men being led by Gurwood, and its storming party by George Napier. General Pack, with a Portuguese brigade, was to make a sham attackon the eastern face, while a fourth attack was to be made on the southern front by a company of the 83d and some Portuguese troops. In the storming party of the 83d were the Earl of March, afterward Duke of Richmond; Lord Fitzroy Somerset, afterward Lord Raglan; and the Prince of Orange—all volunteers without Wellington’s knowledge!
At seven o’clock a curious silence fell suddenly on the battered city and the engirdling trenches. Not a light gleamed from the frowning parapets, not a murmur arose from the blackened trenches. Suddenly a shout broke out on the right of the English attack; it ran, a wave of stormy sound, along the line of the trenches. The men who were to attack the great breach leaped into the open. In a moment the space between the hostile lines was covered with the stormers, and the gloomy, half-seen face of the great fortress broke into a tempest of fire.
Nothing could be finer than the vehement courage of the assault, unless it were the cool and steady fortitude of the defense. Swift as was the upward rush of the stormers, the race of the 5th, 77th, and 94th regiments was almost swifter. Scorning to wait for the ladders, they leaped into the great ditch, outpaced even the forlorn hope, and pushed vehemently up the great breach, while their red ranks were torn by shell and shot. The fire, too, ran through the tangle of broken stones over which they climbed; the hand-grenades and powder-bags by which it was strewn exploded. The men were walking on fire! Yet the attack could not be denied. The Frenchmen—shooting, stabbing, yelling—were driven behind their intrenchments. There the fire of the houses commanding the breach came to their help, and they made a gallant stand. “None would go back on either side, and yet the British could not get forward, and men and officers falling in heaps choked up the passage, which from minute to minute was raked with grape from two guns flanking the top of the breach at the distance of a few yards. Thus striving, and trampling alike upon the dead and the wounded, these brave men maintained the combat.”
It was the attack on the smaller breach which really carried Ciudad Rodrigo; and George Napier, who led it, has left a graphic narrative of the exciting experiences of that dreadful night. The light division was to attack, and Craufurd, with whom Napier was a favorite, gave him command of the storming party. He was to ask for one hundred volunteers from each of the three British regiments—the 43d, 52d, and the rifle corps—in the division. Napier halted these regiments just as they had forded the bitterly cold river on their way to the trenches. “Soldiers,” he said, “I want one hundred men from each regiment to form the storming party which is to lead the light division to-night. Those who will go with me come forward!”
Instantly there was a rush forward of the whole division, and Napier had to take his three hundred men out of a tumult of nearly one thousand five hundred candidates. He formed them into three companies, under Captains Ferguson, Jones, and Mitchell. Gurwood, of the 52d, led the forlorn hope, consisting of twenty-five men and two sergeants. Wellington himself came to thetrench and showed Napier and Colborne, through the gloom of the early night, the exact position of the breach. A staff-officer, looking on, said, “Your men are not loaded. Why don’t you make them load?” Napier replied, “If we don’t do the business with the bayonet we shall not do it at all. I shall not load.”—“Let him alone,” said Wellington; “let him go his own way.” Picton had adopted the same grim policy with the third division. As each regiment passed him, filing into the trenches, his injunction was, “No powder! We’ll do the thing with thecouldiron.”
A party of Portuguese carrying bags filled with grass were to run with the storming party and throw the bags into the ditch, as the leap was too deep for the men. But the Portuguese hesitated, the tumult of the attack on the great breach suddenly broke on the night, and the forlorn hope went running up, leaped into the ditch, a depth of eleven feet, and clambered up the steep slope beyond, while Napier with his stormers came with a run behind them. In the dark for a moment the breach was lost, but found again, and up the steep quarry of broken stone the attack swept.
About two-thirds of the way up, Napier’s arm was smashed by a grape-shot, and he fell. His men, checked for a moment, lifted their muskets to the gap above them, whence the French were firing vehemently, and forgetting their pieces were unloaded, snapped them. “Push on with the bayonet, men!” shouted Napier, as he lay bleeding. The officers leaped to the front, the men with a stern shout followed; they were crushed to a front of not more than three or four. They had toclimb without firing a shot in reply up to the muzzles of the French muskets.
But nothing could stop the men of the light division. A 24-pounder was placed across the narrow gap in the ramparts; the stormers leaped over it, and the 43d and 52d, coming up in sections abreast, followed. The 43d wheeled to the right toward the great breach, the 52d to the left, sweeping the ramparts as they went.
Meanwhile the other two attacks had broken into the town; but at the great breach the dreadful fight still raged, until the 43d, coming swiftly along the ramparts, and brushing all opposition aside, took the defense in the rear. The British there had, as a matter of fact, at that exact moment pierced the French defense. The two guns that scourged the breach had wrought deadly havoc among the stormers, and a sergeant and two privates of the 88th—Irishmen all, and whose names deserve to be preserved—Brazel, Kelly, and Swan—laid down their firelocks that they might climb more lightly, and, armed only with their bayonets, forced themselves through the embrasure among the French gunners. They were furiously attacked, and Swan’s arm was hewed off by a saber stroke; but they stopped the service of the gun, slew five or six of the French gunners, and held the post until the men of the 5th, climbing behind them, broke into the battery.
So Ciudad Rodrigo was won, and its governor surrendered his sword to the youthful lieutenant leading the forlorn hope of the light division, who, with smoke-blackened face, torn uniform, and staggering from a dreadful wound, still kept at the head of his men.
In the eleven days of the siege Wellington lost one thousand three hundred men and officers, out of whom six hundred and fifty men and sixty officers were struck down on the slopes of the breaches. Two notable soldiers died in the attack—Craufurd, the famous leader of the light division, as he brought his men up to the lesser breach; and Mackinnon, who commanded a brigade of the third division, at the great breach. Mackinnon was a gallant Highlander, a soldier of great promise, beloved by his men. His “children,” as he called them, followed him up the great breach till the bursting of a French mine destroyed all the leading files, including their general. Craufurd was buried in the lesser breach itself, and Mackinnon in the great breach—fitting graves for soldiers so gallant.
Alison says that with the rush of the English stormers up the breaches of Ciudad Rodrigo “began the fall of the French empire.” That siege, so fierce and brilliant, was, as a matter of fact, the first of that swift-following succession of strokes which drove the French in ruin out of Spain, and it coincided in point of time with the turn of the tide against Napoleon in Russia.
But, as already noted, the climax of the war occurred at Vittoria. Wellington, overtaking the French at that place, inflicted on them a defeat which drove in utter rout one hundred and twenty thousand veteran troops from Spain. There is no more brilliant chapter in military history; and, at its close, to quote Napier’s clarion-like sentences, “the English general, emerging from the chaos of the Peninsular struggle, stood on the summit of the Pyrenees a recognized conqueror. From those loftypinnacles the clangor of his trumpets pealed clear and loud, and the splendor of his genius appeared as a flaming beacon to warring nations.”
The victory not only freed Spain from its invaders; it restored the spirit of the allies. The close of the armistice was followed by a union of Austria with the forces of Prussia and the Czar; and in October a final overthrow of Napoleon at Leipzig forced the French army to fall back in rout across the Rhine. The war now hurried to its close. Though held at bay for a while by the sieges of San Sebastian and Pampeluna, as well as by an obstinate defense of the Pyrenees, Wellington succeeded in the very month of the triumph at Leipzig in winning a victory on the Bidassoa which enabled him to enter France. He was soon followed by the allies. On the last day of 1813 their forces crossed the Rhine; and a third of France passed, without opposition, into their hands. For two months more Napoleon maintained a wonderful struggle with a handful of raw conscripts against their overwhelming numbers; while in the south, Soult, forced from his intrenched camp near Bayonne and defeated at Orthes, fell back before Wellington on Toulouse. Here their two armies met in April in a stubborn and indecisive engagement. But though neither leader knew it, the war was even then at an end. The struggle of Napoleon himself had ended at the close of March with the surrender of Paris; and the submission of the capital was at once followed by the abdication of the emperor and the return of Ferdinand.
After the convulsions it had endured, Spain required a period of firm but conciliatory government; but the ill-fate of the country gave the throne at this crisis to the worst of her Bourbon kings. Ferdinand VII. had never possessed the good qualities which popular credulity had assigned to him, and he had learned nothing in his four years’ captivity except an aptitude for lying and intrigue. He had no conception of the duties of a ruler; his public conduct was regulated by pride and superstition, and his private life was stained by the grossest sensual indulgence.
But Spain was not allowed to work out its own salvation. Europe was dominated at this time by the Holy Alliance, which disguised a resolution to repress popular liberties and to maintain despotism under a pretended zeal for piety, justice and brotherly love. At the Congress of Verona (October, 1822), France, Austria, Russia and Prussia agreed upon armed intervention in Spain, in spite of the protest of Canning on the part of England. Spain was to be called upon to alter her constitution and to grant greater liberty to the king, and if an unsatisfactory answer were received France was authorized to take active measures. The demand was unhesitatingly refused, and a French army, 100,000 strong, at once entered Spain under the Duke of Angouleme (April, 1823). No effective resistance was made, and Madrid was entered by the invaders (May 23). The Cortes, however, had carried off the king to Seville, whence they again retreated to Cadiz. The bombardment of that city terminated the revolution and Ferdinand was released (October 1). His first act was to revoke everything that had been done since 1819. The Inquisition was not restored, but the secular tribunals took a terrible revenge upon the leaders of the rebellion. The protest of the Duke of Angouleme against these cruelties was unheeded. Even the fear of revolt, the last check upon despotism, was removed by the presence of the French army, which remained in Spain till 1827. But Spain had to pay for the restoration of the royal absolutism, as Canning backed up his protest against the intervention of France by acknowledging the independence of the Spanish colonies.
Ferdinand VII. was enabled to finish his worthless and disastrous reign in comparative peace. In 1829 he married a fourth wife, Maria Christina of Naples, and at the same time he issued a “Pragmatic Sanction” abolishing the Salic law in Spain. No one expected any practical results from this edict, but a formal protest was made against it by the king’s brothers, Carlos and Francisco, and also by the French and Neapolitan Bourbons. In the next year, however, the queen gave birth to a daughter, Isabella, who was proclaimed as queen on her father’s death in 1833, while her mother undertook the office of regent.
Don Carlos at once asserted his intention of maintaining the Salic law, and rallied round him all the supporters of absolutism, especially the inhabitants of the Basque Provinces. Christina was compelled to rely upon the Liberals, and to conciliate them by the grant of a constitution, the estatuto real, which established two chambers chosen by indirect election. But this constitution, drawn up under the influence of Louis Philippe of France, failed to satisfy the advanced Liberals, and the Christinos split into two parties, the Moderados and Progresistas. In 1836 the latter party extorted from the regent the revival of the constitution of 1812. All this time the government was involved in a desperate struggle with the Carlists, who at first gained considerable successes under Zumalacarregui and Cabrera. But the death of Zumalacarregui in 1835 and the support of France and England ultimately gave the regent the upper hand, and in 1839 her general, Espartoro, forced the Basque Provinces to submit to Isabella. Don Carlos renounced his claims in favor of his eldest son, another Carlos, and retired to Trieste, where he died in 1855.
Christina now tried to sever herself from the Progresistas, and to govern with the help of the moderate party who enjoyed the patronage of Louis Philippe. But England, jealous of French influence at Madrid, threw the weight of her influence on to the side of the Radicals, who found a powerful leader in Espartero. In 1840, Christina had to retire to France, and Espartero was recognized as regent by the Cortes. But his elevation was resented by the other officers, while his subservience to England made him unpopular, and in 1848 he also had to go into exile. Isabella was now declared of age. Christina returned to Madrid, and the Moderados under Narvaez obtained complete control over the government. This was a great victory for France, and Louis Philippe abused his success by negotiating the infamous “Spanish marriages.” A husband was found for Isabella in her cousin, Francis of Assis, whose recommendation in French eyes was the improbability of his begetting children. On the same day the queen’s sister, Maria Louisa, was married to Louis Philippe’s son, the Duke of Montpensier. By this means it was hoped to secure the reversion of theSpanish throne for the House of Orleans. The scheme recoiled on the heads of those who framed it. The alienation of England gave a fatal impulse to the fall of Louis Philippe, while the subsequent birth of children to Isabella deprived the Montpensier marriage of all importance.
Spanish history during the reign of Isabella II. presents a dismal picture of faction and intrigue. The queen herself sought compensation for her unhappy marriage in sensual indulgence, and tried to cover the dissoluteness of her private life by a superstitious devotion to religion and by throwing her influence to the side of the clerical and reactionary party. Every now and then the Progresistas and Moderados forced themselves into office, but their mutual jealousy prevented them from acquiring any permanent hold upon the government. In 1866, Isabella was induced to take vigorous measures against the Liberal opposition. Narvaez was appointed chief minister; and the most prominent Liberals, Serrano, Prim and O’Donnell, had to seek safety in exile. The Cortes were dissolved, and many of the deputies were transported to the Canary Islands. The ascendency of the court party was maintained by a rigorous persecution, which was continued after Narvaez’s death (April, 1868) by Gonzales Bravo.
Common dangers succeeded at last in combining the various sections of the Liberals for mutual defense, and the people, disgusted by the scandals of the court and the contemptible camarilla which surrounded the queen, rallied to their side. In September, 1868, Serrano and Prim returned to Spain, where they raised the standard of revoltand offered the people the bribe of universal suffrage. The revolution was speedily accomplished and Isabella fled to France, but the successful rebels were at once confronted with the difficulty of finding a successor for her. During the interregnum Serrano undertook the regency and the Cortes drew up a now constitution by which a hereditary king was to rule in conjunction with a senate and a popular chamber.
As no one of the Bourbon candidates for the throne was acceptable, it became necessary to look around for some foreign prince. The offer of the crown to Leopold of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen excited the jealousy of France, and gave Napoleon III. the opportunity of picking a quarrel, which proved fatal to himself, with the rising state of Prussia. At last a king was found (1870) in Amadeus of Aosta, the second son of Victor Emmanuel, who made an honest effort to discharge the difficult office of a constitutional king in a country which was hardly fitted for constitutional government. But he found the task too hard and too distasteful, and resigned in 1878.
A provisional republic was now formed, of which Castelar was the guiding spirit. But the Spaniards, trained to regard monarchy with superstitious reverence, had no sympathy with republican institutions. Don Carlos seized the opportunity to revive the claim of inalienable male succession, and raised the standard of revolt in the Basque Provinces, where his name was still a power. The disorders of the democrats and the approach of civil war threw the responsibility of government upon the army. The Cortes were dissolved by a militarycoup d’etat; Castelar threw up his office in disgust; and the administration was undertaken by a committee of officers. Anarchy was suppressed with a strong hand, but it was obvious that order could only be restored by reviving the monarchy. Foreign princes were no longer thought of, and the crown was offered to and accepted by Alfonso XII., the young son of the exiled Isabella (1874).
His first task was to terminate the Carlist war, which still continued in the north, and this was successfully accomplished in 1876. Time was required to restore the prosperity of Spain under a peaceful and orderly government and to consolidate by prescription the authority of the restored dynasty. Unfortunately a premature death carried off Alfonso XII. in 1885, before he could complete the work which circumstances laid upon him. The regency was intrusted to his widow, Christina of Austria, and the birth of a posthumous son (May 17, 1886), who is now the titular king of Spain, has excited a feeling of pitying loyalty which may help to secure the Bourbon dynasty in the last kingdom which is left to it.
COLUMBUS—SIGHTING OF SAN SALVADOR—RETURN OF COLUMBUS—FOUNDING OF AN EMPIRE—MEXICO AND PERU—THE WEST INDIES—GERMS OF REBELLION
InAugust, 1492, Columbus sailed on his voyage of discovery. In September, 1898, his remains were conveyed from the New World to the Old. Between those two dates an empire rose and fell. The causes which led to the one and the effects which precipitated the other may now be conveniently considered.
In earlier years Cadiz was a famous seaport. Her sons were immemorial explorers. The presentiment of a land across the sea was theirs by intuition. Constantly they extended their expeditions, and would have extended them still further had not the Church interfered. The spirit of enterprise, checked as heretical, revived centuries later in a neighboring land. It was Portugal that it inspired. There the work of exploration and discovery was resumed. The island of Madeira was reached in 1420, the Azores annexed in 1431. But it was along the African coast that Portuguese effort was mainly directed. Tradition asserted that the entire continent had been circumnavigated centuries before by voyagers from Phœnicia; but, as no details were recorded, the adventure wasregarded as something more than dubious. However, the west coast began now to be systematically explored. Nuno Tristao entered the Senegal River in 1445; a year later Diniz Dias, a fellow-navigator, sailed as far as Cape Verd. The equator was not crossed until 1471; the Congo was revealed in 1484; and in 1486 the crowning feat of all was accomplished, when Bartholomew Diaz rounded the Stormy Cape, soon to become known as the Cape of Good Hope, and opened up communication with the East by water, instead of overland or by the indirect route of the Red Sea, which necessitated the transshipment of all merchandise conveyed that way.
The expedition to the west which Columbus ultimately directed was conceived by him in 1474, and unfolded to John II., king of Portugal, by whom, however, it was rejected; whereupon Columbus dispatched his brother Bartholomew to enter into negotiations with Henry VII. of England, and after assuring himself that neither Genoa nor Venice was likely to lend him a willing ear, much less ready help, he repaired to the south of Spain in 1485.
Had Bartholomew not fallen into the hands of pirates, and so been prevented from reaching his destination for several years, it is more than probable that the credit as well as the profit of the discovery of America would have fallen at once to England, as Henry had both the means and the inclination to indulge in some such venture, provided it was not too costly, and showed any reasonable prospect of success. As it was, Christopher was left to pursue his pleadings before the Spanish Court.
It was an unfortunate time to put forward any proposals calculated to divert the wealth and strength of thekingdom beyond its own borders; for Ferdinand and Isabella were then in the very midst of the campaign which ended in the final overthrow of the Moorish dominion, in the Peninsula.
Ultimately, however, after the fall of Granada and eighteen years of waiting, his proposals were accepted by Isabella and his hopes realized. A royal edict constituted him perpetual and hereditary admiral and viceroy of any territories discovered, together with a tenth of any profits derived therefrom. With this edict and funds advanced by the receiver of ecclesiastical revenues, Columbus hastened to the port of Palos. There, two brothers by the name of Pinzon aiding, he got together a crew of a hundred and twenty men, a scratch armada of three leaky tubs—the “Santa Maria,” the “Pinta” and the “Nina”—and, on the 3d of August, 1492, weighed anchor for pastures new.
Columbus, as admiral of the fleet, commanded the “Santa Maria”; the two Pinzons, Martin Alonzo and Vicente Yanez, the “Pinta” and “Nina” respectively. The expressed object of the voyage was to convert the Grand Khan, supposed to be the great potentate of the Far East, to Christianity; and Columbus never doubted but that in due course he would arrive at Japan, or Zipangu, as it had been named by the Venetian explorer, Marco Polo, who had reached it by an overland route more than a century before, and had described its wonders, together with those of Cathay or China, through which he passed on his way. The one condition imposed was, that the squadron should not touch at any place on the African continent, claimed to be under Portuguesejurisdiction, as that would have led to immediate hostilities between the two countries.
The details of the voyage are sufficiently familiar to dispense with narration here. It will suffice to note that after seventy days the island of San Salvador, as it was then named, hove in sight; that on the 28th of October, sixteen days later, Cuba was discovered, and that on the 6th of December Hayti was reached.
Several circumstances then made it advisable for Columbus to return to Spain without further delay. He had seen enough to be convinced that a much larger force than he had under his command would be necessary to make the subjugation of these newly acquired territories effective; news of the discovery might reach Europe before him, and be taken advantage of by some other sovereign than the one to whom he was devoted; and he had now sufficient treasure of various kinds to convince the most skeptical of the complete success of his enterprise. After constructing a small fort, and leaving a portion of the crew, at their own desire, to garrison it until he should return, he set sail for home with the “Nina” on the 4th of January, 1493.
Reaching Palos on the 13th of March, Columbus was immediately summoned to Barcelona, where Ferdinand and Isabella were then domiciled, made a triumphal entry into the city, and, on his arrival at the royal residence, was welcomed by the king and queen in person, who commanded him to be seated by their side, while he related the account of his adventures.
Meanwhile the report of the discovery had spread. Portugal sought to take advantage of it through thetheory that all heathen countries were in the gift of the Pope, which gift a Bull had already confirmed. But, Spain protesting, a subsequent Bull confirmed the Portuguese in their existing possessions, and granted them all territory that should be discovered east of a line drawn from north to south, one hundred leagues west of the Azores, while the Spaniards were to enjoy exclusive dominion over everything west of it.
This was regarded as so unsatisfactory by Portugal that, at its instigation, negotiations between the two countries were opened, and resulted the following year in the conclusion of the Treaty of Tordesillas, by which it was agreed to move the line three hundred and seventy leagues west of the Azores; a most important change, because by it Portugal subsequently established its claim to the Brazils, a portion of which was found to fall east of the line of demarcation, while it could urge the further plea of having been first in the field, through the accidental deviation of Cabral. At any rate, the whole world outside Europe was leased in perpetuity to Spain and Portugal; and had the pretensions of the Holy See in things temporal as well as spiritual continued to be recognized, neither England, France nor Germany could to-day own a square yard of territory in the three greatest continents of the world.
While the negotiations were in progress, preparations for a second expedition on a vastly greater scale were rapidly pushed forward. The direction of them was intrusted to a cleric named Fonseca, a capable man of business, but who for some reason or other conceived a violent dislike to Columbus, and threw every obstacle in his way. Theeagerness to embark on this second voyage was far more marked than the reluctance exhibited in the first, and the best blood of Spain pressed into the service. The number of adventurers was originally limited to a thousand; but the applications were so numerous, from those who believed that fortunes were waiting to be picked up in the New World, that this was raised to twelve hundred, and fifteen hundred actually sailed in seventeen vessels from the Bay of Cadiz on the 25th of September, 1493. All was keen anticipation during the voyage, the disappointments only commenced at its termination.
“Into these,” says Mr. R. J. Root, whose account we quote, “there is no occasion to enter now. The main point of interest is, that a sufficiently large force of Spaniards had taken part in the enterprise to confirm the possession of the New World to their country, and defeat any attempts that Portugal might be likely to make to filch it away. After establishing a settlement at Isabella on the north of Hayti, or Hispaniola, as it was then named, Columbus was free to prosecute further explorations, the principal one being to sail along the southern shores of Cuba; but, after continuing his voyage to within a few miles of its western extremity, he arrived at the conclusion that it was the mainland, and reported to that effect—nor was it until after his death that it was proved to be an island. Everything was claimed for the Spanish crown; and, as there were absolutely no competitors, it can well be understood how the entire group of islands constituting the West Indies became Spanish colonies.
“Various causes compelled Columbus to relinquish his exploration and return, first to Hispaniola and then toSpain. For one thing, the two vessels with which he set sail were ill-provisioned. With that confidence in his own judgment which was so characteristic of the man, he relied upon encountering at no great distance those civilized or at least semi-civilized, nations of which he had come in search, but instead he met only the fierce tribes of Cuba and Jamaica, who offered resistance, not welcome, and arrows in lieu of food.
“On his return to the colony, affairs were in a most unsatisfactory condition. The last thing most of the colonists dreamed of when they left their native shores was work. They had gone out, as they fondly imagined, to pick up the gold as it lay at their feet, and when they had accumulated sufficient, meant to return and enjoy it. Though Columbus had never promised, nor even suggested anything of the sort, his brilliant descriptions and anticipations were undoubtedly responsible for the ideas so freely indulged, and the indignation against him rose just as rapidly as hopes were blasted. Complaints were finding their way to Spain, and lest he should be prejudiced in the eyes of his sovereigns, he determined to embark thence and render a personal account of his stewardship.
“The voyage home was, if anything, more protracted, and entailed greater hardships, than the previous one. Columbus arrived at Cadiz on the 1st June, 1496, and met with a warmer reception than he had dared to hope for. But intrigue was busy, and his arch-enemy Fonseca, who was by this time in almost undisputed control of colonial affairs, threw numerous and persistent obstacles in the way of his fitting out another expedition. The stories told by returned colonists of the want and suffering theyhad endured were not conducive to others volunteering for the service, and it was only on the 30th May, 1498, that the admiral was again able to set sail from San Lucar with a small fleet of six vessels, manned almost entirely by convicts specially released.
“A more southerly course was taken than on either of the previous occasions, and the first place touched was the island of Trinidad. Sailing round it from the southwest, the ships were suddenly caught and swept along by a mighty current, which Columbus discovered to be of fresh water, and rightly judged to be poured out of some vast river. He had, in fact, reached the coast of South America, and was in the waters of the Orinoco as they rushed to mingle with the ocean. The natives proved of a more friendly disposition as well as of superior type to those encountered in many of the islands; and as they possessed gold, and also something still more precious, pearls, every encouragement was given them to trade. They were just as eager after the trumpery toys of the Old World as the inhabitants of San Salvador had been the first time they were ever exhibited in the New, and we may be sure the bargains made were very profitable to the Spaniards. Still, these were not the people Columbus had come in search of, and his inquiries and labors were diligently directed to the discovery of a passage which should lead him still further west to the dominions of the Grand Khan.
“After some time vainly spent in exploring the coast with this object, an affection of the eyes compelled him to desist and make once more for Hispaniola, where he had left his brother Bartholomew as governor during his absence. A strange welcome awaited him, however. Inresponse to the continued complaints of the colonists, a commissioner had been dispatched from Spain to inquire into their grievances, and certain powers were intrusted to him to assume authority in the island in case of necessity. Deeply impressed with a sense of his own importance, Francisco Bobadilla, the officer appointed, immediately on his arrival began to act in the most reckless and arbitrary manner; and the discoverer of the New World, without any warning, found himself arrested, loaded with chains, thrown into prison, and finally sent home to Spain in this ignominious fashion.
“Great was the public, still greater the royal indignation, when he arrived in this sorry plight; every effort was made to soothe the feelings so deeply wounded by this dire insult, and Bobadilla would have paid dearly for his temerity had he survived to answer for his misdeeds. But news had reached Spain of the wonderful riches of the Gulf of Paria some time before the arrival of Columbus, and the malignant and untiring Fonseca, in direct contravention of the charter conveying the rights to the admiral, stimulated private enterprise to follow in the track, taking the utmost possible advantage of whatever information he had gained in his official capacity, and imparting it to others. An expedition was fitted out under Alonzo de Ojeda, one of the most dare-devil adventurers who ever quitted the shores of his own or any other country, and whose marvelous exploits in Hispaniola had already excited the wonder and admiration of men long accustomed to feats of skill and courage. Accompanying him was Amerigo Vespucci, a Venetian navigator, who strangely enough was destined to give his name to the whole of thevast continent which he was about to visit for the first time, though he never accomplished anything of practical importance in it. Several other ships were fitted out, including a caravel of fifty tons’ burden by Pedro Alonzo Nino, which performed the most lucrative voyage of any vessel or squadron equipped up to that time, and returned home well freighted with pearls and other costly treasure. This was quite sufficient to stimulate ambition as well as greed, and when Columbus arrived he had the mortification of learning that others were actively exploiting his preserves.
“While these events were happening, another enterprise was undertaken quite beyond the cognizance of the Spanish authorities. Bartholomew Columbus, it will be remembered, had proceeded on a mission to Henry VII. some years previous; and when the English monarch learned that the most sanguine anticipations had been realized, he was anxious to share in the results. As early as 1495 he endeavored to equip and dispatch a squadron of his own, but it was not until two years later that Sebastian Cabot, despite the existence of the Papal Bull, set sail from Bristol. Steering a direct westerly course, he struck the coast of Newfoundland, and leisurely sailed south almost to the extreme point of Florida, ere he resumed his homeward journey. The Spanish government naturally protested against this infringement of its rights, and Henry found it politic to listen, as he was then in close alliance, and engaged in negotiating the marriage between his son and Katharine of Aragon, which subsequently proved so pregnant to the religious and ecclesiastical destinies of England. It was at a laterperiod, and under totally different circumstances, that the Anglo-Saxon race was to occupy and overrun the northern continent.
“Columbus himself was spared to undertake one more voyage, and this time it was to be confined exclusively to the continent, he being absolutely forbidden to land at Hispaniola, where Nicolas Ovando, with a force of all sorts and conditions of men, numbering two thousand five hundred, had been installed as governor; and so jealous was he of any interference with his prerogatives that, when the admiral was driven by stress of weather to take shelter in the harbor of San Domingo, he was ordered to quit instantly.
“This proved the most disastrous of all his voyages. After exploring the coasts of Honduras and Central America generally, in search of the non-existent channel, until the provisions were in such a state that they could only be eaten in the dark, it was decided to land, despite the fierce opposition of the natives, and plant a permanent settlement under Bartholomew, who accompanied his brother. This, however, had to be abandoned; and on the way back the only remaining vessel ran aground in Dry Harbor in Jamaica, and became a total wreck, the most incredible suffering, aggravated by constant mutiny, being experienced, until the remnant of the crew was eventually relieved.
“Columbus having shown the way to the mainland, as well as the islands, it was left to others to reveal the vast extent and natural wealth of what he had discovered, and he died on the 20th May, 1506, in complete ignorance of many of the most important facts which hisgenius and tenacity permitted to be made known for the first time to the civilized world.
“Columbus and his immediate followers hit upon the most unpromising part of the American Continent, where the damp, hot atmosphere, with its resulting rank and profuse vegetation, makes human existence intolerable if not wellnigh impossible. As the land was known to contain gold, however, the most persistent efforts were made to settle in it, and two regular governments were established under Alonzo de Ojeda and Diego de Nicuessa respectively. Nothing but disaster resulted for many a long year, and the greatest difficulties were experienced in extending or enlarging them in any direction but coastwise.
“Narrow as the isthmus is in the part selected, it appeared impenetrable, until eventually the magic word gold encouraged a few bold spirits to overcome every obstacle. Wherever the adventurers went inland they heard of a great sea and vast abundance of the precious metal in an unknown land beyond. After incredible hardships, Vasco Nunez de Balboa and a handful of followers forced their way through the thickets and swamps, scaled the mountain range which runs like a backbone along the isthmus, and were rewarded for their pains when they reached the summit by the sight of the great southern sea lying at their feet. This occurred on the 26th September, 1513, and on the following day the party descended the western slopes; Vasco Nunez, as its leader and commander, taking possession of the Pacific Ocean on behalf of the King of Spain, with all the ceremonies and formalities customary on those occasions.
“How to take advantage of it was the question. Farsouth, beyond where vision could reach, lay the golden land. They were without ships or means of conveyance of any sort, and the shore upon which they were now stranded was dangerous as well as inhospitable. The observant and ingenious mind of Nunez, inferior only to that of Columbus, evolved the idea of transporting material across the isthmus for the construction of a fleet to undertake the subjugation of all countries bordering on the Southern Sea; and such was the work eventually accomplished, though not by Nunez, who fell a victim to the jealousy and treachery of Pedrarias Davila, a new governor dispatched from Spain. It was left to one of his lieutenants, Francisco Pizarro, to set forth on a definite expedition more than ten years later; and it was not until nearly twenty years had elapsed that Peru was discovered, and the rich kingdom of the Incas added to the spoils of the Castilian monarch.
“Meanwhile, exploration had been busy on the eastern side of the continent. Cuba, realized at length to be an island, was regularly colonized in 1511, and the governor, Diego Velasquez, being an enterprising and ambitious man, dispatched an expedition westward. The great peninsula of Yucatan was reached, and the officers of the little squadron were struck by the much higher state of civilization exhibited by the natives than by any others hitherto met with either in the islands or on the mainland. The news of this led to the subsequent expedition of Cortes, the story of whose conquest of Mexico reads more like a fairy tale than the narrative of actual events and hard realities.
“The years 1519, 1520 and 1521 were occupied by this,the greatest of all the enterprises undertaken by Spain in the New World. Nor was there any lack of activity in other directions. Juan Ponce sailed from Porto Rico, in 1512, in search of a spring whose waters insured perennial youth to whoever drank of them, and found and annexed Florida instead. More than one navigator cruised southward as far as the Rio de la Plata, and in 1520 Magellan reached the extremity of the southern continent, and passed through the straits which bear his name. Nor was Cortes idle after he had accomplished his great work. North and south he sought to add to the territory of New Spain, until all the countries of Central America on one side, and the peninsula of California on the other, were brought under its sway. In less than half a century from the day Columbus first set foot on San Salvador, the entire continent, from Labrador to Patagonia, had been visited, and by far the greater part of it annexed to, and nominally ruled by, the Castilian crown.
“To return, however, to Hispaniola. The rapid exhaustion which mismanagement produced there, joined to the absence of gold, led to the creation of other colonies. The discovery of the fisheries, first at Paria, and then in the islands of the Pacific, opened up an unexpected source of wealth; but it was not until Montezuma offered his munificent gifts to Cortes, to induce the latter to quit the shores of Mexico, that the first great reservoir of the precious metals was tapped. Still, it must be remembered that the great stores of gold discovered, first in Mexico, and subsequently in Peru, did not in themselves imply that these countries were capable of continuing to produce unlimited quantities. They were the accumulations ofmany years, possibly of many centuries; for, as there was no foreign trade, everything produced which could not be consumed had necessarily to be preserved or destroyed.
“It may be wondered what value gold possessed in the ideas of these people. That it was held in nothing like the same esteem as by Europeans is certain; but in Peru, at any rate, its production and preservation were assured, from the fact that it was regarded as tears wept by the sun, which was the god of the people, whose Incas, or rulers, were called the Children of the Sun. In neither case, then, is it surprising that the treasure was not clung to with more tenacity. Both Montezuma and Atahualpa set a higher value upon many other things; and the quantities seized by Cortes and Pizarro and their respective followers, vast though it appeared in their eyes, and as it really was in those days, was parted with, with scarcely a pang of regret. That secured by Pizarro was by far the greater spoil, and was supposed to be the price of the freedom of the Inca himself, who offered to fill a room 85 feet by 17, and as high as a man could reach, with gold plate in exchange for it. He did not quite succeed, because Pizarro treacherously put him to death before the task was completed, yet the amount realized for distribution was equivalent to something like three and a half millions sterling ($17,500,000) of the money of to-day, and enriched the commonest foot-soldier beyond the dreams of avarice.
“It was silver, not gold, moreover, which eventually made both countries at once the wonder and the envy of the civilized world. The richest mines were unknown tothe Indians, having only been discovered after the Spanish conquest. Those of Zacotecas in Mexico were first worked in 1532, while the more famous Potosi lode in Peru was laid bare in 1545, by a native scrambling up the side of a mountain in pursuit of some llamas which had strayed from his flock, and uprooting the shrubs to which he clung for support.
“In the West Indies, meanwhile, the larger islands, like Porto Rico, Cuba and Jamaica, were gradually colonized, but the smaller ones were left alone; it can well be understood that in the absence of any proved deposits of gold they were scarcely worth attention, and it was sufficient to keep a watch over them to defend them from the incursions of other nations. With the conquest of Mexico, however, the center of gravity was moved further west, and still more so when followed by that of Peru, because the only known route from the latter was by Panama and across the isthmus.
“These territories were altogether too great for efficient oversight; that of Mexico stretching from California in the north to Venezuela in the south, and including not only the West Indies, but the far removed Philippines, while that of Lima embraced the whole of South America both east and west of the Andes. The great territories included in the present Republics of Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay were looked upon as of little value, as they contained neither gold nor silver; and as every attempt made to settle them only seemed to end in failure, little attention was given to their affairs. They became, indeed, a distinct source of loss to Spain, as they were found useful for purposes of contraband trade; and eventually the gold andsilver, which could not be safely smuggled through the ordinary ports of shipment, were conveyed across the Andes and down the rivers to places of embarkation on the Amazon or Rio do la Plata, where foreign ships awaited the spoil and were ready to barter the coveted produce and manufactures of Europe in exchange. When these two viceroyalties were eventually subdivided, it was not into east and west, but north and south, and New Granada became the center of one; while the territories now included in the United States were separated from Mexico, and constituted the other.
“In Spain everybody, from the king in his palace to the peasant in his hut, regarded the colonies simply as a source of revenue and profit to himself, and when they ceased to be this, they would be useless. The most stringent regulations were adopted, therefore, against trading or even communicating among themselves, or of engaging in any industry, manufacturing or agricultural, which was not indigenous to the country; indeed, Spain insisted upon supplying everything it could grow or make which would stand the sea voyage, at its own price. The cultivation of neither the olive nor the vine was permitted in the New World, and severe penalties were inflicted upon any one who had the temerity to disobey. Peru and Chili, however, were specially exempted, owing to their immense distance, and the damaged condition in which liquids generally arrived there, but they were not allowed to export the produce to any neighboring country, and must consume it themselves. The duties of the colonists were, in fact, strictly limited to obtaining as much gold and silver as they could, while the Spaniards at home were to takecare that they retained as little of it as possible. For all that, many fortunes were realized, principally by bullion being smuggled out of the country; and had there not been some such inducement, few men would have cared to expatriate themselves, and live amid such uncomfortable surroundings.
“Precisely similar principles were observed in all matters relating to government. Every office of profit under the crown, almost every emolument, however trivial, was reserved for persons of pure Spanish birth. As a consequence, the official class was migratory, and remained in the colonies no longer than was necessary to accumulate a fortune or a competence, according to the taste of each individual member of it. Though there were honest and honorable men to be found among them, notably those filling the most exalted positions, that did not prevent the vast majority from preying on the colonists, many of whom, by virtue of the grants of territory they had received, attained to great influence and wealth. Their descendants were, nevertheless, debarred from all participation in either the legislative or executive functions of government, though they might have nothing but the purest Spanish blood flowing in their veins. Nor could they become dignitaries of the Church without much difficulty. In the days when the Holy See found it politic to be on good terms with the Spanish sovereign, the whole ecclesiastical patronage of the New World was vested in him and his successors; and though many Popes endeavored to get this privilege back into their own hands, they always failed, and were compelled to confirm the nominations of the secular ruler. Both Mexico and Peru wererapidly overrun with clergy, secular as well as regular, and monastic establishments sprang up everywhere like mushrooms, yet preferment was always reserved for their brethren in Spain; and out of nearly four hundred bishops and archbishops consecrated up to the middle of the seventeenth century, scarce a dozen were taken from the Spanish-American community known as Creoles.
“A system so rigid is bound to break. Federation is all very well and may accomplish much that is beneficial to all concerned. But its first condition is elasticity, so that every section within its embrace may enjoy full freedom of expansion. There must be no jealousies, no recriminations, and, above everything, no attempts to get all and give nothing. These conditions are possible under an arrangement entered into freely by all parties; they are unattainable when imposed by the strong upon the weak. That is why Spain never won the gratitude of its colonies, why each and every one eagerly seized the opportunity of throwing off the yoke, and fought desperately for independence, and why, to-day, her colonial power is ended.”