No. 567.
Mr. Cushing to Mr. Fish.
Madrid, July 31, 1874. (Received August 24.)
Sir: Many indications exist of purpose, either formed or contemplated, on the part of some of the principal European powers, to intervene in the affairs of Spain.
Suggestions on this point arise out of the progress and incidents of the war raging in the northern and northeastern provinces.
It has come to be generally believed that this war is clerical in its causes and ultramontane in its tendencies. The success of Don Carlos, it is assumed, would in the first place be the re-establishment in Spain of the old authority of the Catholic clergy and the Roman See; it would promote the success of the same influences in France; it would tend to the political dissolution of Italy, and the restoration of the temporal power of the Pope in Rome and in the Legations; it would counteract and tend to defeat the measures of religious liberty initiated by the German Empire. Indeed, all these things are so closely connected in their essence, as to afford just cause of umbrage not only to Germany and to Italy, but also to Great Britain.
Much is said in this relation of the facilities and advantages which the Carlists enjoy in the south of France, owing to the prevalence of ultramontane and legitimist influences there, and also of the supposed biases in the same direction which prevail in the present government of France, either by reason of personal convictions on the part of the Marshal-President and members of his cabinet or because of their solicitude to keep on good terms with the legitimist members of the Assembly.
Certain it is that Carlist officers and men, including the titular king and queen, come and go on both sides of the Pyrenees as they please, and maintain their principal seat of council or conspiracy at Bayonne in France.
It is understood that the present Spanish government has addressed to that of France the most earnest remonstrances on this subject, presenting, at the same time, a demand for large indemnities on account of imputed violation of neutrality committed or permitted by the local French authorities, and the consequent augmentation of the military resources of the Carlists and the prolongation of the war in all the region of country from Biscay to Valencia. At the same time, the principal newspapers of Spain, Italy, Germany, England, and many of those of the highest estimation in France, concur in loudly reprobating the policy pursued in this respect by the French government.
On the other hand, the French government, while contradicting the charges against it, pretends that it has on various occasions done acts of amity and good-will to the Spanish government, as, for instance, in the seizure of arms and munitions of war intended for the Carlists, in the restoration of the man-of-war Numancia, which escaped from Cartha-gena with the principal Cantonalists on board, taking refuge in Algeria, and in the surrender of these Cantonalists to the Spanish government.
The French also assert that most of the foreign supplies which the Carlists receive are obtained by means of British vessels touching at the small ports on the coast of Biscay. There seems to be some truth in this; several such vessels are known to have aided the Carlists with munitions of war. Whether in these cases the expeditions originated [Page 899] in mere commercial cupidity, or, as many say, in the religious sympathies of ultramontanes in Great Britain, the case of the Deerhound will be remembered in this connection.
I think it is undeniable, however, that the Carlists really do receive countenance, aid, succor, refuge, and supplies in the south of France, in such degree as largely to justify the complaints of the Spanish government. You may have had occasion to notice how positively and with what ample exhibition of details those complaints have been sustained by the “London Times.”
Furthermore, the sanguinary and savage character lately imparted to the war by the Carlists has served to awaken, especially in Germany and Great Britain, decided sympathy for Spain. Thus, for example, one Carlist chief has seized and carried off hundreds of women, to be held as hostages, with expressed intention to shoot them if the Spanish government should undertake naval operations on the coast of the Gulf of Biscay. Another chief, by drum-head court-martial, condemned to be shot a considerable number of prisoners taken at Estella. At Cuenca the most savage barbarities were perpetrated under the immediate eye and direction of Don Alfonso de Este and his wife, Doña Maria de las Meves. Still later, a large number of prisoners of war have been shot at Olot. It is common for Carlist parties, half soldiers and half bandits, to seize on defenseless men and women in all parts of the country contiguous to the seat of war, and subject them to the worst outrages, including death. In general, the Carlists conduct the war as mere savages, destroying bridges, tearing up railways, blowing up railway tunnels, burning public and private edifices, destroying public archives, and, in a word, perpetrating every species of wanton depredation, apparently in the mere semi-insane spirit of devastation, and with no possible strategic or military inducement or object, so as to have well earned the name of latro-facciosos—robber partisans—with which name they are commonly designated at Madrid.
All these incidents are of a nature to have produced impressions in other parts of Europe prejudicial to the Carlists and favorable to the Spanish government; and these impressions seem to have been reduced to more definite shape by the preposterous cruelty of the Carlists toward two newspaper correspondents, one of whom, a German, was shot on the false charge of being a spy, and the other, an Englishman, was half murdered by long imprisonment for the awful offense of having an ounce of laudanum in his possession, which the Carlists in their wisdom assumed must have been intended wherewithal to poison Don Carlos.
A recent debate in the House of Lords testifies to the interest in the general subject entertained in Great Britain.
Confident rumors come from Germany that a German naval force is on the way to the Cantabrian coast of Spain. There will be nothing strange in this, seeing that Germany was far from quiescent during the period of the cantonal insurrection in Murcia.
It is also confidently said that the German government has just addressed a communication to the French government on the subject of its protection or tolerance of the Carlists.
Whether all these circumstances are to end in merely affording moral aid to the Spanish government, by that official recognition of it which has been withheld ever since the proclamation of the Spanish republic, or whether the great powers will go further and interpose in Spain by arms, as they have done twice during the present century, is the question which for the moment preoccupies all thoughts at Madrid.
The government of Spain would gladly, if it could, establish a cordon [Page 900] militaire on the Spanish side of the Pyrenees; but to do this it would require a force of forty or fifty thousand men spread over a line of eighty or ninety leagues, subject, as it would be, to attack at any weak point by the Carlists; and the government has no such spare force at its disposition.
The various rumors of intervention may be resumed in the following forms, namely:
- 1.
- German ships to operate on the coast of Biscay and Guipúzcoa against the Carlists in the same manner as they operated a year ago in the waters of Carthagena and Malaga against the Cantonalists.
- 2.
- Intimations directed by Germany to France, suggesting the inconvenience of her leaving her frontiers open to the Carlists and suffering them to convert French territory into an arsenal for the prosecution of war, a place of security in which to concert plans of conspiracy, and a neutral road of communication between different parts of the peninsula, by means of which to change their points of attack or escape encounter with the troops of the government.
- 3.
- Invitation directed by Germany to other European powers, suggesting consideration of collective action in order to put a stop to the violation of the laws of war by the Carlists.
- 4.
- Consultation among the principal powers of Europe to the end of the speedy official recognition of the present Spanish government.
- 5.
- Measures adopted by the Portuguese government to prevent the continuance of Carlist conspiracies within or on the frontiers of Portugal.
- 6.
- Projects of discussion concerning the civil war and political situation of Spain, in the diplomatic congress now sitting at Brussels.
- 7.
- Agitation in France on the immediate question of taking steps for the due observance, at least, of neutrality between the Carlists and the Spanish government, and on the general subject of the relations, actual and contingent, between Germany and Spain.
I will not venture to add any speculations on these points, contenting myself with calling your attention to the important bearing which the whole subject has on the future relations of Germany and France.
I have, &c,