The greatest Carlist weakness was the defensive strategy they now adopted. On the face of it, a defensive strategy might have great appeal in the short term if it could force the government to attack the insurgents on ground favorable to themselves. However, as a long-term strategy, it was a formula for defeat. Zumalacárregui had realized that an aggressive strategy capitalized on the superior mobility of his forces to keep the government off balance with surprise attacks. It also allowed the Carlists to keep the military initiative, giving the impression of progress, which further tarnished the image of the government beyond the rebellious provinces. As Zumalacárregui might have been able to predict, the morale of Carlist soldiers began to erode once they were set defending fixed positions. And although Carlist columns twice broke out south of the Ebro, once marching to the very walls of Madrid itself, without the impression of the backing of a dynamic mass movement, shadowed by government forces who could not crush them but who could keep control around the fringes, local populations were dissuaded from offering active support. The Carlists were forced back, their tails between their legs, into their northern bastion. Denied any prospect of ultimate success, the Carlists fell to quarreling among themselves, and by 1840 the movement had collapsed from its own internal divisions.24
In other words, time was on the government's side. The death of Zumalacárregui, the Carlist defeat of July 1835 at Mendigorría and their failure to spread the rebellion into Catalonia had stretched them to the limit. All the government need now do was follow a strategy of patient containment, taking care not to forfeit a victory that could come to them only in the fullness of time. Deprived of hope, the Carlist cause would grow increasingly anemic, weaken and die. Nor was the government in a position to pursue a more aggressive military strategy. Simmering discontentment in other parts of Spain, as well as the unstable political situation in Portugal, forced Madrid to spread its troops thinly throughout the country. The forces it could spare for the Basque provinces were not substantially greater than those commanded by the Carlists, a vital consideration, as substantial numerical superiority would be required to crack Carlist control of the highlands. And many of these government forces would be tied down defending towns, and therefore unavailable for offensive operations.
Nor was the quality of Isabel's army above suspicion. Most Spanish officers were more expert at pronunciamentos than in leading frontal assaults on enemy positions, and factionalism within the army was to produce several important mutinies. French Major Renaud de Vilback reported to his superiors in France that “The (Spanish) army has neither magazines, nor money, nor resources of any sort, and even when it would have defeated, destroyed the Carlists, it will find itself even weaker when confronted by a new enemy of the Queen which is already at work.”25 Desertion to the Carlists was commonplace, especially among the Queen's elite Royal Guards, which had supplied the insurgents with much-needed military skills. Those who remained were demoralized and terrified by the horrible retribution handed out by the ferocious Basques to wounded and captured government soldiers. They, in turn, took out their fears and frustrations upon the population, which drove even more people into the Carlist camp.26
It was precisely this situation that the intervention of the Quadruple Alliance was meant to repair. Alas for Isabel, support from her allies proved a disappointment. The British Legion had been raised in indecent haste and thrown untrained into Spain, a collection of “six or eight thousand ragamuffins” according to one British observer, whose lack of discipline and military skill would not weigh heavily in the military balance. Because the arch-Tory Duke of Wellington opposed the Whig policy of intervention, officers of the regular British army boycotted Evans, forcing him to recruit four hundred officers from among a rabble of mercenaries and men who had seen no service whatsoever. Nor did Evans, a man whose bravery as a subaltern was beyond question, demonstrate obvious qualities of leadership. Thin, with a full head of unruly hair, deep-set eyes and a furrowed face, he was celebrated for his volcanic temper. He had left the army after Waterloo and owed his command to his radical political views and his reputation as an outspoken opponent of Wellington's military policies, rather than to any demonstrated talent for command. Spanish Prime Minister Mendizabal called Evans “a man of mighty intentions and small performance,” although it probably would have taken a magician rather than a general to transmogrify the British Legion into something resembling a military force, even without the added difficulties of Spanish incompetence and ill will.
But while Evans's biographer gives him fairly high marks for transforming the British Legion into an effective fighting force, this was not achieved overnight. On the contrary, the thrashing handed to Evans's forces at Oriamendi just south of San Sebastian, where the panic of the 1st Battalion of the British Legion sparked off an ignominious rout, did much to revive flagging Carlist fortunes in the early months of 1837. The British Legion redeemed its military reputation somewhat in May 1837 by the capture of Irun on the French frontier. But while Evans insisted that he had “struck a mortal blow to the Carlist cause,” the fact remained that the town was lightly defended, making it rather easy pickings for Evans's ten thousand men supported by Royal Marines and British naval artillery. The victory was also tarnished by the fact that, once through the breech, the British Legion threw themselves into an orgy of rape and pillage that was contained only with difficulty. When Evans attempted to turn his victory to political advantage in the parliamentary elections of 1837, his Tory opponents nicknamed him “Count I-run.”27 The British Legion never played anything more than a marginal role in the Carlist War, and though allowed to waste away through disease, desertion and neglect, given its composition it is unlikely that it could ever have had a decisive impact on the campaign.
This left the French Foreign Legion. It had at least two advantages over its British counterpart. First, it was a force in being, rather than one recruited in haste on the streets of London. Second, it had effective leadership, officers who, despite their diverse origins, were experienced commanders, and none more so than the commander, Joseph Bernelle. Like Evans, Bernelle was a veteran of the Napoleonic Wars. However, unlike his highly politicized British counterpart, Bernelle was a soldier and no more. Enlisting in 1801 at the age of sixteen and leaving the army only briefly during the Bourbon Restoration, the fifty-year-old colonel already counted thirty-two years of service by 1835, when the Legion disembarked in Spain. He had served with Napoleon's armies in Italy, Illyria, Dalmatia, Germany and France, remained in service under the Restoration and, in 1833, had become colonel of the Legion. Bernelle was perhaps the ideal Legion commander, especially in this troubled early period of its history. A well-proportioned man with dark, slightly receding hair, Bernelle's arched eyebrows, mustache and goatee and well-drawn jaw suggested a character of great resolution. This was no illusion. He was a strict disciplinarian, too strict for the liking of many legionnaires who preferred his less austere, German-speaking subordinate, Lieutenant Colonel Joseph Conrad. In fact, one of Bernelle's first acts upon arriving in Spain was to introduce caning into the disciplinary code under the pretext that it was permitted in the Spanish army. Nor did he hesitate to order up firing squads for offenses which, in peacetime, were considered relatively minor ones. Officers usually escaped with sentences of fortress arrest, but enough of them were punished to stir up resentment over Bernelle's Bligh-like tendencies.28
Despite his lack of popularity, the Legion greatly benefited from Bernelle's leadership. His firm hand and his policy of nationally mixed battalions went a long way toward settling down a corps that had experienced serious discipline problems in North Africa. He also saw immediately that the Legion's effectiveness would be increased, and its dependence upon the elusive Spanish somewhat lessened, by the addition of an under-strength regiment of Polish lancers (which he persuaded the Spanish minister in Paris to pay for), a battery of artillery and an ambulance section, thereby making it a relatively complete division.29 But Bernelle had hi
s faults, ones that deepened the gulf which, from the beginning, divided him from his command. In the first place, he loved ostentation, brilliant uniforms and an entourage of chattering staff officers, some of whom were members of his close family. And while some of this may have been necessary to maintain the dignity of his position in Spanish eyes, to the rough-hewn men of the Legion, such displays made Bernelle appear arrogant and artificial. In fact, it was Bernelle's tendency to carry the family atmosphere of the Legion too far that really annoyed his officers and caused comment among the men. The inclusion of cousins and nephews on his staff was one thing. But when he allowed his wife to follow him on campaign, that was going too far. The rather dour Madame Tharsile Bernelle was frequently to be seen sitting on horseback, the scarf of an aide-de-camp around her waist, imperiously giving orders to everyone in sight. The legionnaires called her Isabel III, and worse, and saw her as her husband's éminence grise, the source of every arbitrary promotion or punishment.30
But for the moment, the Legion's problems remained beneath the surface, too unimportant to influence performance in the early months of 1836. The Legion was undoubtedly the most disciplined and efficient force on either side of this sad war. However, it was too small to sway the balance in what had become a military stalemate. The government's approach was generally sound, maintaining a line of small garrisons running from north of Pamplona to Vitoria designed to prevent a Carlist breakout. However, from time to time, strategic requirements or government pressure on its generals for a more aggressive military posture caused the constitutionalist forces to come out of their lines, usually without result. Such was the case in January 1836 when General Cordova launched an offensive into the Arlaban Mountains, which controlled communications between Vitoria and Bilbao on the northern coast. The Legion participated in this expedition, which saw the government troops advance up the valley only to withdraw when cold, fatigue and hunger forced them on January 18,1836, to relinquish the heights they had conquered on the previous two days. Carlist pressure in Navarre combined with Bernelle's desire to unite his scattered battalions caused the Legion to be transferred to Pamplona in February.
PAMPLONA IS THE first city which, in calmer times, a traveler through the western Pyrenees encounters in Spain. The road from southern France climbs gradually through a well-watered land of oak and spruce forests and meadows that in spring and summer are thick with flowers or haystacks in rows as regimented as the slopes allow. As the craggy, snow-covered peaks loom closer, the valleys narrow, the villages of slate-grey houses wedged along the mountain torrents become rare and the trees give over to an abrupt, often fog-shrouded landscape of rock and grass, whose only inhabitants are sheep and smugglers. Even today, one might have to wake up the solitary gendarme whose white stone house and barrier sit small and forlorn at the top of the border pass. The contrast as one descends the Spanish side is stark. The mountains act as a barrier to the rain-laden clouds that blow off the Bay of Biscay, so the southern slopes are drier, less verdant, clothed in scrub rather than in the magnificent forests and rich meadows of the north. Poor houses and small plots of cultivated land crudely carved between a shallow, muddy river and a cliff of bush and boulder fight for space at the bottom of steep valleys. As the land opens out, it becomes more Mediterranean, gradually changing color from green to grey to light brown as the fields become larger, more regular, planted in ripening wheat or vines. Eventually, one descends into a broad and fertile valley, in the middle of which appears astride a circular hill the ashen citadel of Pamplona.
After the rather Spartan regimen of Vitoria and its environs, Pamplona seemed to the legionnaires an oasis of tranquil urbanity, where life carried on almost as normal in the heart of a hostile and war-torn land. Jean-Jacques Azan especially appreciated its civilized atmosphere, its “beautiful main square, the middle of which is ornamented by a fountain which gives abundant water. It possesses magnificent promenades and a superb church with a modern entrance,” and compared it to a stage set for an opera with a medieval theme.31 But the Legion was to have little time to savor Pamplona, for it was dispatched up the valley of the Arga, which flows south out of the Pyrenees to occupy the garrisons of Larrasoaña and Zubiri. This was difficult and dangerous duty. To remain within the small posts and blockhouses that studded the valley was to yield the countryside to the insurgents. However, to venture into a countryside teeming with rebels was to risk ambush by an enemy superior in number and local knowledge. This hard lesson was learned on March 6, when a company of the Legion deployed at the village of Leranoz near Zubiri in a fairly routine operation to provide protection for fifteen Spanish soldiers sent to cut hay. When Leranoz proved to be occupied by the Carlists, the Legion moved in to clean them out. Suddenly they found themselves surrounded with what Bernelle claimed to be four companies of enemy soldiers. One of the elite companies was sent to rescue their comrades and cut their way into Leranoz with a bayonet charge, only to find themselves entrapped in turn. The two companies organized a defensive position and fought off attacks for three hours until nightfall, when the Carlists lifted their siege. The Legion lost one sergeant and eight troops in the skirmish, two of whom had been captured and shot outright. Bernelle placed Carlist losses at twenty.32
Leranoz proved to be only an hors d'oeuvre for a more substantial combat that occurred almost three weeks later. At five o'clock on the morning of March 24, the 4th Battalion of the Legion marched out to occupy the heights overlooking Zubiri to provide security for troop movements in the valley between Zubiri and Larrasoaña. The weather was dreadful, and the legionnaires of the avant-garde, blinded by hail and snow, climbed the slopes with difficulty. Suddenly the trailing battalion heard the ragged detonation of an ambush. As the isolated point company tried to regain their composure, they were assailed by a troop of Carlist cavalry. Ex-Swiss Guard Sergeant Samuel-Benoît Berset rallied his section despite receiving at least twenty wounds and fought off the attackers while Bernelle sent the 5th Battalion at the run to turn the Carlists on the left. Afterwards, Bernelle complained bitterly that the failure of the Spanish to move around to the right as ordered to encircle completely the insurgents, together with the absence of the Spanish division that was supposed to be in reserve, cheated him of a more complete victory. But as it was, the Legion had a profitable morning. The appearance of the 5th Battalion created a panic among the attackers. Thirty surrendered outright, while the rest fled down a narrow ravine “in such disorder that it suggests the most complete defeat and demoralization,” Bernelle wrote. One hundred thirty Carlist bodies, including several officers, were left behind, and Bernelle estimated the total Carlist casualties at two hundred. For its part, the Legion lost forty killed and thirty-two wounded.33
But this was not the last word on this skirmish near Zubiri, known as the Battle of Inigo or Fernandorena. The high number of legionnaires killed was the direct result of the Carlist practice of shooting enemy wounded. Bernelle also discovered the charred bodies of five Legion captives among the carnage, so he ordered the immediate execution of his thirty Carlist prisoners. This was to cause ructions in France when it was learned that Bernelle was offering no quarter. But Paris failed to understand that this war in Spain had more in common with the sort of conflict being fought in North Africa than with a European conflagration in which the laws of humanity were usually respected. The Legion had rapidly been introduced to the dark side of warfare south of the Pyrenees. Atrocities in the early phases of the war had provoked the disgust of Europe, so that British Viscount Eliot, Wellington's emissary to Spain, had managed to arbitrate a treaty between the two sides that prohibited the murder of prisoners and created a framework for their periodic exchange. However, the Carlists claimed that the Legion as a foreign corps was not covered by the Eliot Treaty and proceeded to treat legionnaires who fell into their hands with great savagery.
One such distasteful incident occurred in April 1836, when Bernelle dispatched Corsican legionnaire Simonetti, “an astute and clever man
,” across Carlist lines to pose as a deserter. After eight days in the hills, Simonetti returned to identify the location of the Carlist camp. A punitive force of sixty legionnaires supported by three companies fell upon the unsuspecting Carlists, capturing Jules Gamier, a Frenchman in Carlist service, a sergeant and three soldiers, and killing a Legion deserter. This skirmish proved a bitter one for the Legion. “Several riflemen who wandered away from the line and having been wounded out of view of their comrades, remained on the battlefield at the mercy of the enemy,” read Bernelle's April report. “[They] were treated in such a way that the very memory makes me tremble in horror. Two of these brave men were found at the end of the action and taken to the ambulance. They had their lips cut, their cheeks slashed with a sword or a knife, the skin of the forehead peeled off and their eyelids ripped off. However, they were still alive!”34 Jules Gamier was more fortunate. So impressed was Bernelle by his contrition that he not only pardoned him, but also asked that he be allowed to join the Legion.35 Under pressure from France, Bernelle ceased to execute prisoners. But his gesture was not reciprocated by the Carlists, so in a short time the butchery began anew.
Eighteen thirty-six was to be a busy year for the Legion. The Carlists continued to pressure the government all along the line from Zubiri to Larrasoaña. On April 25, Bernelle sent out a company to cut down a small pine forest infested by snipers who kept up a constant harassing fire on an outlying blockhouse. Attacked, the legionnaires withdrew, but the next morning dawn revealed the heights of Tirapegui, which dominated Larrasoaña, crowned by what was estimated to be three thousand five hundred Carlist soldiers. Bernelle set out a screen of three Legion companies with strict orders not to attack. They disobeyed him, and soon Bernelle was forced to come to their rescue with five hundred men and four cannon. The fight lasted six hours: “The enemy with his numerous forces, five times greater than our own, wanted to overwhelm our position,” Bernelle reported. “Three times we fought them off with our bayonets. Our soldiers, mixed up with theirs, showed . . . great courage. The ravine from which the rebels emerged was covered with their dead. Their losses must have been considerable.” Isolated legionnaires were surrounded and massacred, and even Bernelle was slightly wounded on the arm. At seven o'clock, the Legion withdrew by echelons into Larrasoaña with twenty dead and seventy wounded. Carlist losses were reckoned to be three times greater, around eighty dead and two hundred wounded.
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