Written on August 4, 1854.

From the English.

[“New-York Daily Tribune” No. 4161 of August 19, 1854, Lead Article]

It is one of the peculiarities of revolutions that precisely when the people wants to make a great leap forward and begin a new era, it invariably lets itself be dominated by the illusions of the past and delivers all the power and influence it has bought at so dear a price into the hands of men who count, or are thought to count, as the bearers of the popular movement of an earlier period. Espartero is one of these men of tradition, whom the people in times of social crisis hoist upon its shoulders and then finds it just as hard to get rid of him as Sindbad the Sailor did the malicious old blockhead who stubbornly clung with his legs around his neck. Ask a Spaniard of the so-called progressista school what the political significance of Espartero rests on, and he will answer without hesitation:

“Espartero represents the unity of the great liberal party; Espartero is popular because he comes from the people; and his popularity serves exclusively the cause of the progressists.”

It is true that, the son of an artisan, he rose to become Regent of Spain, and that, having entered the army as a common soldier, he left it as Field Marshal. But if he is the symbol of the unity of the great liberal party, that can only be that undifferentiated stage of unity in which all extremes are neutralised. And as for the popularity of the progressists, it is scarcely an exaggeration to say that it was lost from the moment it passed from the whole of that party to this single individual.

Espartero’s greatness is an entirely ambiguous and peculiar one. Proof of this is that, up to now, no one has really known how to explain it. While his friends take refuge in allegorical commonplaces, his enemies assert, alluding to a strange peculiarity of his private life, that he is nothing but a lucky gambler. Friends and enemies are thus equally at a loss to discover a logical connection between the man himself and the fame and the great name of the man.

Espartero’s military merits are just as much disputed as his political deficiencies are undeniable. In a voluminous biography published by Señor de Florez, much is made of the military valour and generalship he displayed in the provinces of Charcas, Le Paz, Arequipa, Potosi and Cochabamba, where he fought under the command of General Morillo, who was to reduce the South American states to the sway of the Spanish Crown. The general impression, however, that his South American feats of arms made upon the excitable temperament of his native country is sufficiently characterised by the derisive nickname earned for him by the unfortunate battle of Ayacucho, in which Spain lost Peru and South America for ever. From then on he was called the leader of Ayacuchismo, and his adherents the Ayacuchos. At any rate, it is very remarkable that this hero received his historical baptism in a defeat and not in a success. In the seven-year war against the Carlists he never distinguished himself by one of those bold coups de main that soon earned his rival Narváez the renown of an iron-nerved soldier. He certainly had the gift of mightily blowing up small successes, and it was pure chance that Maroto betrayed the last forces of the Pretender to him, for Cabrera’s rising in 1840 was no more than an after-the-fact attempt to galvanise the dry bones of Carlism. Even Señor de Marliani, one of Espartero’s admirers and the historian of modern Spain, must admit that this seven-year war can be compared to nothing else than the feuds fought in the tenth century between the petty feudal lords of Gaul, where success was not the result of victory. A second misfortune is that, of all the Spanish deeds of heroism, the one that left the liveliest impression on the public memory was the one which, though not exactly a defeat, was nonetheless a highly curious feat for a hero of liberty. He became famous as the bombarder of two cities – Barcelona and Sevilla. Should the Spaniards, a writer <Hughes> remarks, ever wish to depict him as Mars, the god would have to be represented as a ‘breaker of walls.’

When Christina was forced in 1840 to renounce the regency and flee from Spain, Espartero, against the will of a large part of the progressists, arrogated the supreme power within the limits of the parliamentary government. He surrounded himself with a sort of camarilla and behaved entirely like a military dictator, without in fact rising above the mediocrity of a constitutional king. He bestowed his favour rather on the moderados than on the old progressists, whom, with few exceptions, he excluded from office. Without winning his enemies, he gradually estranged his friends. He did not have the courage to break the fetters of the parliamentary regime, but he understood neither how to apply it, nor how to make use of it, nor how to transform it into an effective instrument. During his three-year dictatorship the revolutionary spirit was broken step by step by endless compromises, and the dissensions within the progressist party were allowed to reach such a pitch that the moderados were able, by a coup de main, to regain exclusive power. Espartero thereby lost all authority to such a degree that his own envoy in Paris conspired with Christina and Narváez against him, and he was so stripped of resources that he found no means of warding off the wretched intrigues and petty tricks of a Louis-Philippe. He judged his own position so poorly that he very ill-advisedly set himself against public opinion at the very moment when it was only seeking a pretext to shatter him.

In May 1843, when his popularity had long since vanished, he still kept Linage, Zurbano and the other members of his military camarilla by him, although their dismissal was loudly demanded. He dismissed the Lopez ministry, which disposed of a large majority in the Chamber of Deputies, and stubbornly refused the banished moderados the amnesty that was then demanded on all sides, by the parliament, the people and even the army. In this demand the general repugnance against his regime openly expressed itself. A hurricane of pronunciamientos against the “tyrant Espartero” suddenly shook the entire Pyrenean Peninsula at that time. The movement, in the rapidity of its spread, can be compared only with that of today. Moderados and progressists united for the common purpose of getting rid of the Regent. The crisis came to him completely unexpected; the fateful hour found him unprepared.

Narváez, accompanied by O’Donnell, Concha and Pezuela, landed at Valencia with a handful of men. On their side there was speed and vigour, premeditated boldness and energetic resolution. On Espartero’s side helpless hesitation, deadly dilatoriness, apathetic indecision and sluggish weakness. While Narváez raised the siege of Teruel and marched into Aragon, Espartero withdrew from Madrid and spent many weeks in irresponsible inactivity at Albacete. After Narváez had won over the corps of Seoane and Zurbano at Torrejon and marched on Madrid, Espartero finally joined Van-Halen for the useless and ignominious bombardment of Sevilla. He then fled from place to place, at each new stage of his flight deserted by parts of his troops, until he finally reached the coast. When he embarked at Cadiz, the last city where he still had adherents, these too said farewell to their hero by declaring against him. An Englishman who lived in Spain during this catastrophe gives us a vivid description of the decline of Espartero’s greatness.

“It was not the frightful collapse of a moment after a hotly contested battle, but the petty, gradual descent, without a preceding struggle, from Madrid to Ciudad Real, from Ciudad Real to Albacete, from Albacete to Cordoba, from Cordoba to Sevilla, from Sevilla to Puerto de Santa Maria and from there out to the open sea. He sank from deification to enthusiasm; from enthusiasm to affection, from affection to respect, from respect to indifference, from indifference to contempt, from contempt to hatred, and hatred at last drove him into the sea.”

How then could Espartero once again become the saviour of the country and the “sword of the revolution”, as he is called? It would be simply incomprehensible had Spain not groaned for ten years under the brutal dictatorship of a Narváez and under the oppressive yoke of the queen’s favourites who followed him. Long-lasting and violent periods of reaction are, however, excellently suited to restoring fallen greats from the time of revolutionary failures to honour. The greater the imagination of a people – and where is it greater than in the south of Europe? – the more irresistible is its urge to confront the personal embodiments of despotism with personal embodiments of revolution. Since these cannot be suddenly improvised, it digs up the dead of past movements. Was not Narváez himself on the verge of becoming popular at the expense of Sartorius? That Espartero who made his triumphant entry into Madrid on July 29 was no real being; he was a spectre, a name, a reminiscence.

Justice requires that it be remembered that Espartero never pretended to be anything other than a constitutional monarchist; and had there ever been any doubt about it, it would have had to vanish in the face of the enthusiastic reception accorded to him during his exile at Windsor Castle and by the ruling classes in England. When he came to London, the entire aristocracy, with the Duke of Wellington and Lord Palmerston at its head, thronged his house. Aberdeen, in his capacity as Foreign Secretary, sent him an invitation to be presented to the Queen. The Lord Mayor and the Common Council offered him gastronomic homage at the Mansion House <official residence of the Lord Mayor of London>. And when it became known that the Spanish Cincinnatus devoted his leisure hours to gardening, there was not a botanical, horticultural or agricultural society that did not vie to offer him membership. He was soon the lion of the capital. At the end of 1847 the Spanish exiles were recalled through an amnesty, and a decree of Queen Isabella named him senator. He was not allowed to leave England, however, until Queen Victoria had invited him and his duchess to dine and had additionally honoured them by inviting them to spend a night at Windsor Castle. However, we believe that the halo woven around his person was due, more or less, to the opinion that he had been, and still was, the representative of British interests in Spain. It is equally true that the demonstration for Espartero amounted to a demonstration against Louis-Philippe. On his return to Spain he received deputation after deputation, congratulation after congratulation, and the city of Barcelona sent a special messenger to apologise for its bad behaviour of the year 1843. But, in the fateful period from January 1848 down to the most recent events, did anyone even hear his name mentioned? In that period, when humiliated Spain was condemned to the deepest debauchery, did he ever raise his voice? Has he even a single act of patriotic resistance to show? He quietly withdrew to his estate in Logroño, raises his vegetables and his flowers there, and bides his time. He did not seek the revolution, either, but waited until the revolution called him. He did more than Mohammed. He expected the mountain to come to him, and the

mountain did come. A difference must be noted, however: when the February Revolution <1848 in France> broke out, followed by the general European earthquake, he had a little brochure published by Señor de Principe and some other friends, entitled “Espartero, his Past, Present and Future”, to remind Spain that it still harboured the man of the past, present and future on its soil. When the revolutionary movement in France soon afterwards subsided, the man of the past, present and future sank back again into the past.

Espartero was born at Granatula in La Mancha, and, like his famous countryman <Don Quixote>, he too has his fixed idea – the constitution, and his Dulcinea of Toboso – Queen Isabella. On 8 January 1848, on his return from English exile to Madrid, he was received by the Queen and took his leave of her with the following words:

“I beg Your Majesty to call upon me whenever you require an arm to defend you, and a heart that loves you.”

Her Majesty has now called, and the knight-errant appears, smooths the waves of the revolution, unnerves the masses by deceptive pacifications, allows Christina, San Luis and the rest to hide themselves in the palace, and loudly professes his unshakeable faith in the word of the innocent Isabella.

It is known that this trustworthy queen, whose features from year to year are said to assume a more striking resemblance to those of Ferdinand VII of disgraceful memory, was declared of age on 15 November 1843. On 21 November of the same year she was only just 13 years old. Olozaga, whom Lopez had appointed for three months as her tutor, formed a ministry that was odious to the camarilla and to the Cortes, which had been newly elected under the impression of Narváez’s first success. He wished to dissolve the Cortes and obtained a decree signed by the Queen authorising him to do so, in which, however, the date of its publication had been left blank. On the evening of 28 November Olozaga received the decree from the hands of the Queen. On the evening of the 29th he had another meeting with her; but he had scarcely left her when an under-secretary of state called on him at his house, brought him the news of his dismissal and demanded back the decree, to the signing of which he had compelled the Queen. Olozaga, a lawyer by profession, gave back the document only on the following day, after

he had shown it to at least a hundred deputies, in order to prove that the Queen’s signature was in her usual, regular handwriting. On 13 December Gonzalez Bravo, who had been appointed prime minister, summoned the presidents of the chambers, the most prominent notables of Madrid, Narváez, the Marquis de la Santa Cruz and others to the Queen, so that she might give them an explanation of what had passed between her and Olozaga on the evening of 28 November. The innocent young queen led them into the room where she had received Olozaga, and performed for their information, in a very lively but slightly exaggerated manner, a little drama. Thus, Olozaga had bolted the door; thus, he had seized her by the gown; thus, he had forced her to sit down; thus, he had guided her hand; thus, he had forced her signature to the decree; and thus, in a word, he had violated her royal dignity. During this scene Gonzalez Bravo committed these declarations to paper, and the persons present examined the decree in question, which appeared to have been signed in a blurred, trembling hand. And thus, upon the solemn declaration of the Queen, Olozaga was to be condemned for the crime of laesa majestas <lèse-majesté>, to be torn in pieces by four horses or, at best, banished for life to the Philippines. However, as we have already seen, he had taken his precautions. There followed a seventeen-day debate in the Cortes, which created a greater sensation than even the celebrated trial of Queen Caroline of England in its day. Olozaga’s speech for the defence in the Cortes contained, among other things, this passage:

“If we are told that we must believe the word of the Queen without contradiction, then I say no! Either there is a charge or there is none. If there is, then her word is a statement of evidence like any other, and to this statement I oppose my own.”

In the deliberations of the Cortes, Olozaga’s word was found weightier than that of the Queen. Afterwards he fled to Portugal to escape the assassins who were sent after him. That was Isabella’s first entrechat <leap> on the political stage of Spain and the first proof of her honourability. And this is the same little queen whose words the people are now supposed to believe at Espartero’s exhortation, and to whom, after eleven years of scandalous doings, the “arm of defence” and the “loving heart” of the “sword of the revolution” are offered.