Cabrera

“ The task of recording the exploits and cruelties of Cabrera, and the history of the war in which he took so prominent a part, has been undertaken by three Spaniards of respectability and talent; the principal of whom, Don Francisco Cabello, was formerly political chief of the province of Teruel, in the immediate vicinity of Cabrera’s strongholds. There he had abundant opportunities of gathering information concerning the Carlist leader. ”

“ The horseman rode me down—me, Juan Cabrera—and stretched me senseless on the road before I had a thought of his intention, and when I came to, the thing had happened. How many men there were with him, I know not—Garcia, who came running up at the close, swears that there was never more than one—but it can't be true. If ever we meet—and I should know him again in twenty thousand men—and there is an ounce of strength left in my arm, I'll use it to plunge a knife into the heart of the man who dealt that blow at me and Spain."
"Good. You were ever a man prompt to action, Cabrera ”

“ For one half-hour it may have been that Hernando Cortes trembled, and that his friends feared for him, and for themselves.
"But after all," said Juan de Cabrera, recovering his usual off-hand carelessness, "one can but die once, and though, as you yourself said, Captain, one would rather die at the hands of others than one's own friends, or one's own countrymen, still, when the breath is once fairly out of the body, I scarcely suppose one will care much what hand drove it forth." ”

“ There was a few minutes' pause. Some would not unwillingly have heard the word of command for a retreat, while there was yet time. But that word did not come. As Cabrera had once said so Cortes always thought: "We must all die, and we can die but once." ”

“ I will do no less, Sarita. Cabrera and Garcia have gone to the town in the desperate hope of getting together a sufficient number of comrades to return and make a last stand here for your cause. I urged them against the attempt; but I am glad of it now. It will give me the chance I need; and, my word on it, they shall not find me less staunch than the rest of you. God knows your cause never stood in direr need of recruits than now; and I'll be one. ”

“ Here reigns supreme Estrada Cabrera; exactly where very few know, for so great is his dislike to assassination that he jumps about incessantly from one of his one-story residences to another, perhaps, as his people assert, by underground passages, for he is seldom indeed seen in the flesh by his fond subjects. In less material manifestations he is omnipresent and few are the men who have long outlived his serious displeasure. ”

“ Juan de Cabrera laughed.
"Thanks for the compliment, my friend. I would a hundred-fold rather be found guilty of too much impetuosity, than of a calm, cold-blooded calculation."
The smile died out of Montoro's face as he now exclaimed hotly—
"It is easy at all times for men to sneer at right and justice, and to clothe evil with grand words. In Spain our impetuosity has been a sword in the hand of honour; why is it here a weapon that would be disdained even by the paid tool of an assassin? ”

“ On arriving at Banada they found that Cabrera had ridden on half an hour before to Villar de Navado. This place they reached at eleven o'clock. The place was full of Carlists. Arthur alighted in front of the principal house. He was looked at scowlingly by the men thronging the streets, but nothing was said to him.
"I wish to see General Cabrera," he said. "Will you say that I am one of the British commissioners?"
After being kept waiting for two or three minutes he was asked in. Cabrera was a powerful man with a face full of strength and energy. ”

“ Holding mild converse for the good of man.
Day melts into the West, another flake
Of sweet blue Time into the Eternal Past!
Dumfries, May 18, 1846.
293
CABRERA. [Historia de la Guerra Ultima en Aragon y Valencia, escrita par D. F. Cabello, D. F. Santa Cruz, y D. R. M. Temprado. Madrid: 1846.]
On the twenty-seventh day of December 1806, at the collegiate town of Tortosa in Catalonia, Maria Griño, the wife of José Cabrera, an industrious and respectable mariner, gave birth to a son. Destined to the church, this child, from his earliest boyhood, was the petted favourite of his family. ”

“ Cabrera’s atrocities were viewed and are remembered in Spain with as deep a horror as in England or France. Those who shared in them were a minute fraction of the population, and even of these, many acted on compulsion, and shuddered at the crimes they were obliged to witness and abet. Is the character of a nation to be argued from the excesses of its malefactors, even when, banded together and in military array, they assume the style and title of an army? Assuredly not. The Carlist standard, uplifted in Arragon, became a rallying point for the scum of the whole Spanish people. ”

“ HAVING arranged what he had to take with him, and embarked the men and horses in the galleon, García de Alvarado presently departed and arrived at Santa, and landed. There he received news that Cabrera and some others had come to that valley. The Indians had collected provisions and fodder for the horses. It was true that Cabrera and Barroso, with seven or eight others, had come down to the coast valleys, intending to seek for the Licentiate Vaca de Castro. Alvarado was adroit enough to capture Cabrera, Barroso, Cáceres, and three more. He found from them that there were no others. ”

“ We must wait and hear first, if we can, from Juan how things have gone in Daroca."
"Aye, aye, wait, wait, always wait, till the soldiers have time to get their firing platoons in position, and we can be shot like worn-out mules instead of fighting like men," growled Cabrera, gloomily; and he and Garcia turned to grumble in sympathy, while I rode on.
When we were quite close to Calvarro's—a place that lay indeed most marvellously concealed—and were approaching the farm by a path cunningly masked through a dense olive wood, a lad sprang out of the undergrowth and called to Andreas. ”

“ Bad example, seduction, even force, each contributed its quota to the army of Cabrera. From the commencement, the war was of a very different nature in Navarre and in Arragon. Both chiefs and soldiers were of different origin, and fought for different ends. To Navarre repaired those men of worth and respectability who conscientiously upheld the rights of Don Carlos; the battalions were composed of peasants and artisans. In Arragon and Valencia, a few desperate and dissolute ruffians, such as Cabrera, Llangostera, Quilez, Pellicer, assembled under their orders the refuse of the jails. ”

“ One of these unfortunates, when marching to his doom, was heard to exclaim, “Not to the people of Valencia, but to the infamous Cabrera, do I ascribe my death.” There was a great outcry made at the time, especially by persons who knew nothing of the real facts of the case, concerning these reprisals, which were in fact unavoidable. ”

“ It is significant of the little estimation in which Cabrera was held by the generals of the Navarrese and Biscayan faction, that when Gomez, finding himself hard pressed by the Queen’s troops, sent to Arragon for assistance, he did not address himself to Cabrera, who commanded in chief in that province, but to Quilez and El Serrador, subordinate partisans. Nevertheless Cabrera joined him, not with a body of troops, but accompanied only by his aides-de-camp and staff, and by one of his clerical mentors, the canon Cala y Valcarcel. ”

“ It was about a month after the surprise of Morella, that General Cabañero, encouraged by the recent success of his party, eager for distinction, and perhaps jealous of Cabrera’s reputation, attempted the most daring and dashing enterprise of the whole war. He conceived the hope of capturing in one night, and with three thousand men, a fortress that had defended itself for two months against the best generals of Napoleon, backed by seventy thousand veterans, and a hundred pieces of artillery. ”

“ Cabrera’s atrocities had reached such a pitch, that disaffection was widely spreading in Arragon and Valencia. The people, finding themselves constantly in mourning for the death of some near relative, murdered by his orders, murmured against the government which could not protect them, and accused their rulers of Carlism and treachery, of cowardice and indifference. There was danger, almost a certainty indeed, of an insurrection, in which every Carlist prisoner and a vast number of innocent persons would inevitably have been sacrificed. ”

“ Damian thought it prudent to stop at the little island of Cabrera, destined to become a short time afterwards so sadly celebrated by the sufferings which the soldiers of the army of Dupont experienced after the shameful capitulation of Baylen. There a singular incident was very near compromising all. Cabrera, tolerably near to the southern extremity of Majorca, is often visited by fishermen coming from that part of the island. M. Berthémie feared, justly enough, that the rumour of our escape having spread about, they might dispatch some boats to seize us. ”

“ For the first sixteen months of the war, Cabrera acted as subordinate to Carnicer, chief of the Arragonese Carlists; and during that time he in no way distinguished himself, save by occasional acts of cruelty. His presumption and want of military knowledge caused the loss of more than one action—especially that of Mayals in Catalonia, in which, as it was then thought, the Arragonese faction received its death-blow. ”

“ Cabrera is a brave and skilful commander, but his cruelties are abominable. He was always cruel; but the atrocious action of Nogueras, in causing his mother to be seized and shot, has closed his heart to all feeling of mercy. He shoots women who fall into his hands as well as men; and on one occasion he shot no fewer than eighty-five sergeants in cold blood. I fear greatly that no remonstrances would be of any avail with a man who seems to revel in bloodshed. ”

“ During the war with Portugal the Catholic Sovereigns had entrusted their eldest daughter, the Princess Isabella, to the care of Andrés de Cabrera, the Seneschal 61 of the Castle of Segovia, and his wife, Beatriz de Bobadilla.
Cabrera, a man of stern and rigid equity, had occasion to depose his lieutenant, Alonso Maldonado, from his office, conferring this upon his own brother-in-law, Pedro de Bobadilla. Maldonado conspired to avenge himself. ”

“ I whispered hurriedly to my companions, in a sharp authoritative manner. "He may arrest me. In that case do nothing, but go on to Daroca, and make it your chief charge to find and protect, with your lives if need be, the Senorita Sarita Castelar. I can get out of Ruble's clutches again quite safely."
"They shan't take you," said Cabrera, with grim earnestness.
"You will do nothing to prevent it. I can protect myself," and opening my sample case, I began fingering the samples again while I waited during three minutes of as anxious suspense as I have ever endured. ”

“ Cabrera respects nothing. And if we stand between him and his vengeance we need not flatter ourselves that he will let us go."
"Well, sir, a man can't die better than in trying to save a woman; that is how I look at it."
"Quite right, Roper; it is the death of all others that I would choose. However, I have faith in ourselves, and I fancy that we shall get through somehow, though I am pretty sure that it will be a very close shave. I think we had better lie down till daybreak. You have given the horses a good feed, have you not?"
"Yes, sir; I have put down half a sack of beans between them. ”

“ I asked, sternly. "What sort of courage or wit is that which finds its tongue when the hour to act has passed? If those are your thoughts about the senorita, who has risked her liberty and her life to rush now into the thickest of the danger when peril is at its height, go back and save your skin. There is still time to fly; but don't plague us and pollute the air with your doleful cries."
"Good," cried Garcia, who had listened to us in silence. "That crack on your head, Cabrera, has knocked the wit out of you. What is it but the act of a jackass to bray in the face of danger?" ”

“ Cabrera replied, "and all the enemies of Don Carlos are my enemies. It is well that these young nobles at the court should learn that by supporting the government against the king they are as much our foes as if they were fighting in the field. I make war in toy own way; other generals may do as they like. I refuse to have my hands tied, and I intend to inflict a heavy lesson upon these politicians of Madrid. Against the young woman herself I have no special quarrel, but as a member of a leading Christino family she is an enemy, and as such she will be shot to-morrow morning. ”

“ When the war in Biscay and Navarre was happily concluded by the convention of Vergara, the Duke de la Victoria invited Cabrera to follow the example of the other Carlist generals, offering to him and to the rebel troops under his command the same terms that had been conceded to those in the Basque provinces. But the offer, generous though it was, and undeserved by men who had made war like savages rather than as Christians, was contemptuously spurned. ”

“ When the Carlists occupied Cordova, Cabrera was one of the first men in the town, which he entered with a handful of cavalry, under the command of Villalobos, to whom he had attached himself, and who was killed by a shot fired from a window. If Gomez disliked Cabrera, Cabrera, on his side, heartily despised Gomez. To have captured three thousand national guardsmen in Cordova, and not to have shot at least a couple of thousands of them—to have spared the fifteen hundred men composing the garrison of Almaden, were inexcusable weaknesses in the eyes of the Arragonese leader. ”