New-York Daily Tribune. Nr. 5813, 9. Dezember 1859

The Latin Confederation.

From an Occasional Correspondent. Paris, Nov. 24, 1859.

It is well known that one of the "Napoleonic ideas" which is now struggling to become realized by hook or by crook is the alliance of the various nations of the Latin tongue under the protectorate of France. Whether the sudden alliance between Spain and France, and their simultaneous, though apparently disconnected warlike operations against Morocco, have their sole origin in this Napoleonic idea, or whether there is something deeper than this at the bottom, remains to be seen. The circumstances are certainly curious while the French press, by command of the Government, again raised the old outcry against "perfidious Albion"—the Spaniards all of a sudden begin to declare that the presence of the English at Gibraltar is a blot upon their national honor. France organizes an expeditionary army to invade Morocco without a declaration of war, under the pretext of chastising some Kabyle tribes for their inroads upon Algerian territory, and Spain on pretext, more or less futile, declares war against Morocco, and fits out an expedition against the Moors at Algesiras; and to make the imbroglio complete, Palmerston sets little John Russell to work to demand explanations from Spain as to the meaning of all this, and to order the Spaniards not to make conquests in Africa, by which the free navigation of the Straits of Gibraltar might be endangered. If anything points to some deeper scheme in all this than is yet clearly distinguishable, it is this ridiculous interference of the Palmerston Cabinet in the matter. Figure to yourselves Spain endangering the free navigation of the Straits while England holds Gibraltar, and is the first naval power of the world! But the phrase is quite sufficient to gall the British public, and John Bull, who as we all know swallows his camels by the score like so many oysters, will not allow the poor Spaniard the least tiny little gnat on the southern side of the Mediterranean. Whatever the intrigue may be, of which this war is the prologue, it appears we are to have, in Spain and Morocco, the amusing spectacle of a "holy war." The Moors are, of course, the hereditary enemies of the Spaniards. Once in possession of the

whole of the Iberian peninsula, with the exception of those few Asturian and Galician valleys, from which Pelago commenced the construction of the Spanish monarchy, the Moors were but gradually driven back, and it took nearly eight centuries to expel them completely from the country. They retired again into Africa, but up to the present day many of them preserve the keys of the houses once owned in Spain by their ancestors, and with these keys they preserve their claim to them and the land on which they were built. No wonder that the hatred of the Spaniards against them has never gone to sleep. During the times of her greatness, Spain sent many expeditions into Africa, and held numerous points on the Moorish coast; and now, no sooner does Spain begin to recover, in some degree, from the degradation and decay of the last centuries, than she is, without any exertion or pretext, lashed into a perfect frenzy of enthusiasm for the invasion of Africa. Grandees raise battalions of volunteers at their own expense, Municipalities subscribe funds, the Queen sends sacred banners to her troops and decorates her generals with amulets and relics, and even

the holy bishops offer money for the holy war. The glorious times of the Cid Campea- 15

dor seem to have revived, and Roland's horn, which he blew till it cracked at Roncesvalles, is to resound in the ears of the monkeys of the "Apes' hill," opposite Gibraltar. It will be war to the knife evidently, as far as the Spaniards are concerned.

On the other hand, the Moors are no less bent upon their holy war. Every Moor in Morocco believes in the old prophesy of the holy Marabuts, that one day the Christians will come in great numbers across the water and fight for the conquest of Moghrebi, the land of the West. Then will be fighting such as never was seen before, the Wadi-Sebu will be red with blood, and the course of the Muluyah will be stopped by dams of corpses. When that grim day will come, and who will be the victor nobody knows; but it is the duty of every true believer to be prepared for the struggle, and thus it happens that every Moor has in his house a long gun and a small barrel of powder. But while the Moors of the towns are in dread of that fearful day, the Kabyles of the hills and the Bedouins of the plains are looking forward to it with rejoicing for then the rich towns of the sea shore and of the interior will be theirs, and the riches of the Jews and the Franks will be given up to them for plunder. And when they fight against the Giaours there is no fear of their giving any quarter. In fact, wherever Spaniards and Moors meet even now, in the midst of peace, they are at once at war. When Gen. Alava, as a young Lieutenant, was commanded to do duty in the garrison of Ceuta, the largest of the Spanish stations or presidios on the coast of Morocco, he began climbing up to the top of the rampart in order to survey the surrounding country; an old officer pulled him down, put his hat on the top of his sword and held it above the parapet, when at once two or three shots fell from the thicket outside, and the bullets whistled close by. "Remember always," said the old man to Alava, "that wherever here one Spaniard shows himself, there are always two or three Moors ready to fire at him."

But the countrymen of the Cid Campeador have a great deal of the illustrious Don Quixote about them, and indeed Don Quixotism is already rampant all over Spain. With all their magniloquent talk, acts are ludicrously deficient. The expeditionary army is concentrated at Algesiras; but, unfortunately, although war is declared, no

provision is made to get the 40,000 men and 80 guns across the Straits. Nobody ever 45

thought of transports, and at the last moment attempts are made to charter steamers in London and Liverpool, Havre and Marseilles. The Generals, too, are in a far more forward state than the troops themselves; and while the French have already very nearly conquered the whole country up to the Muluyah—which, being the ,,natural" frontier of Algeria on the West, naturally belongs to them. The new Cid Campeador, Don Leopoldo O'Donnell, stands on the blooming shores of Algesiras Bay, and casts longing looks to the dim Sierra de Bullones opposite, whose entire population of the genus Simia he is to subject to the Christian rule of Spain.

The Spanish army, as to its quality, organization, and equipment, may now rank among the better second-rate armies of Europe. The material of its infantry is undoubtedly good, but it remains to be seen how far this material has been developed. The artillery and engineers are good, especially the latter. Since the accession to power of Narvaez, the army has, in a very great degree, recovered from the neglect under which it had always suffered. The equipments, the arms, the pay, have been more regularly furnished. Still it is difficult to judge in what a state this army will turn out. There is another celebrated Spanish novel, whose hero is not an entire stranger to Spanish national character—Lazarillo de Tormes—and since French civilizing influence has enriched Spain with the enlightened institution of crédits mobiliers, no doubt the propensity for which that merry vagabond was renowned, has been brilliantly developed in more than one gentleman about the Court. How far this may of late have affected the efficiency and readiness for the field of the army remains to be seen. The Spanish sailor is hardy and brave, and the English found him on most occasions a more formidable opponent on the water than his French neighbor. But what can 40,000 Spaniards, be they ever so brave and so well organized,

do in a country like Morocco, when it took the French, with a hundred thousand men,

nearly twenty years to subdue Algeria? The Moors are in a far better trim to resist an invasion than ever Abd-el-Kader was. Beside the Boukharis, or negro guard (16,000 strong), there were 14,000 regular infantry organized upon the European footing; and 15,000 more regular infantry are said to have been recently organized and armed with the long-range rifles in use in European armies. The towns will be defended by the inhabitants and by Kabyles, who certainly will not cede in valor to the Turkish defenders of Kars and Silistria; while innumerable bands of Kabyle irregulars in the mountains, and Bedouins in the plains, will harass to the utmost every column attempting to penetrate into the interior. It will not be very difficult for the Spaniards to bombard and take all the seaport towns from Tetuan to Mogadore, but what then! They will be blocked up in every one of them, just as they are now in the presidios of Ceuta, Velez de Gomera, Alhucema and Melilla; every attempt to establish a land communication between any two of them, win be attended with great loss and have little success ; and although the Spaniards are frugal, yet they must have something to live upon. Every column attempting to penetrate to the interior must carry its own commissariat, for nothing will be found there. But not only the provisions and all other stores have to be provided, but there must also be heavy artillery, to bring against the walls of the towns, which will be found too strong for the 84 12-pounders of the field-batteries. And there are only three towns in the interior worth going to: Morocco, 150 miles at least from Mogadore; Fez, 100 miles from Rabat,

and Mequinez, about 70 miles from Rabat. Of these, Mequinez appears to be the most tempting prize for Cid Campeador O'Donnell, for it is here that the Moorish Sultan keeps his treasury, in which there are said to be hoarded some 50,000,000 sterling.

It is buried under ground, and watched by negro guards, who never are allowed to

see the light of day again when once entered upon their duties in the subterraneous 5 vaults. A threefold rampart forms the citadel in which this precious treasure is hidden,

but that, of course, would soon fall before European engineering and artillery; and then, fancy Don Leopoldo O'Donnell and the host of Don Ramedos de Colibrados

in his army, who have, alas! often known the pangs of hunger when pay-day went

by without a single rial being forthcoming !—fancy this army arrayed before the breach 10 of Mequinez, with visions of 250,000,000 of dollars in hard cash before their eyes!—fancy the speech of Don Leopoldo O'Donnell on that momentous occasion-

ine bravery of the assault—the rush of victory—the whole army rushing to the vaults

of the treasury, and then finding it empty! Truly this would be the most befitting exploit for the new Matamoros, the Killer of the Moors, and let us therefore hope 15 that sometime or other the transports may be got ready to carry our valiant Don Leopoldo and his host of Sefiores Caballeros over to the shores of Mauritania.