Carlist Wars: Part II the ‘Carlist State’
THE ‘CARLIST STATE’
Spain’s third civil war of the 19th century threatened to break the country apart
Manuel Martorell concludes his mini series with the third great Carlist insurrection (1872-1876), which challenged the monarchical and republican governments of Spain and created an authentic state in the Basque-navarre region
The Convention of Vergara agreed by generals Rafael Maroto (Carlist) and Baldomero Espartero (Liberal) on 31 August 1839 put an end to armed conflict in the Basquenavarre region. However it failed to solve the problems that had caused the war. Espartero had promised to respect the region’s fueros – which made them subordinate to the Constitution. For most Carlists this confirmed Maroto’s betrayal but the lingering problem was that the Liberal model of government was never consolidated under the reign of Isabel
II. Opposing Liberal groups fought for power, relying on the support of military commanders who defended their ideas. Between 1836 and 1868, the year that Isabel II was dethroned in the September Revolution, Spain saw 57 governments and 16 military uprisings.
In this climate, Carlos VI, son of Carlos
María Isidro – Carlos V, who had started the First Carlist War – made two unsuccessful attempts to oust Isabel II. The first came with the uprising of the matiners (‘early risers’ in Catalan) or Second Carlist War. In 1860 he disembarked with troops at San Carlos de la Rapita (Tarragona). Generals Juan Prim, Juan Bautista Topete and Francisco Serrano took the lead in Cádiz with the ‘Glorious Revolution’ of September of 1868, which aimed to dethrone Isabel II. This was when the Carlists seized the moment to organise another major insurrection. At that time the pretender was Carlos María de Borbón, whose father Juan, brother of
Carlos VI, had abdicated under pressure by the leaders of the legitimist movement.
Power vacuum and revolution
The threat of a new revolution, the anticlerical line of General Prim and the total collapse of the Isabel system caused many non-carlist monarchists, along with other sectors frightened by the threat of revolution, to support Carlos
VII. The pretender tried to put the Catalan
Carlist General Ramón Cabrera in charge of the uprising. Cabrera had married the English aristocrat Marianne Richards, with whom he lived in Wentworth Palace in Surrey. Cabrera’s political views had mellowed by this time and he declined the offer from the latest Carlist
“BETWEEN 1836 AND 1868 SPAIN SAW 57 GOVERNMENTS AND 16 MILITARY UPRISINGS”
pretender. Carlos VII himself moved to the south of France to lead the rebel groups. On 2 May 1872 he crossed the French border into Vera de Bidasoa, a village that welcomed him with garlanded balconies, the ringing of the church bells and 1,500 armed volunteers. After attending mass along with his staff in a convent, he marched to the village of Oroquieta, the mustering spot for various rebel groups, many of them weaponless, of Navarre and Guipúzcoa.
On 4 May General Domingo Moriones, military governor of Navarre, learnt from some shepherds where the Carlists were concentrated and that same afternoon he took them completely by surprise in a secluded corner of the Ulzama Valley, some 20 miles north of Pamplona. Those who had weapons tried to protect their comrades and prevent Carlos VII from falling into enemy hands. After a short and unequal skirmish, the Carlists’ defeat was total and humiliating – the Liberals’ casualties amounted to seven dead and 20 wounded, while the Carlists lost 38 men and 749 as prisoners, who were deported to the Canary Islands and Cuba. The battle went down in the history of Carlism with the name of ‘the Disaster of Oroquieta’.
One year later, on 5 May 1873, following the proclamation of the First Spanish Republic, the troops of General Antonio Dorregaray dispersed the column of Colonel Navarro at the village of Eraul. The Carlists later scored several victories, most significantly the conquest of Estella, the town where Carlos VII was to set up an administration that already included large areas of Álava, Biscay, Guipúzcoa and Navarre.
Estella became the main objective of a Republican army, which at the same time suffered constant defections by monarchist officers. After several unsuccessful forays at the beginning of November, General Domingo Moriones advanced from Logroño to the
‘Carlist capital’ with two infantry divisions, an avant-garde brigade, 18 cavalry squadrons (1,500 horsemen) and 24 pieces of artillery. A total of 16,000 soldiers to confront some 9,000 volunteers entrenched in the villages of Monjardin, Urbiola, Arroniz, Luquin and Barbarin. The army’s columns stretched to the Carlists’ sacred mountain of Montejurra, which dominates the Logroño-estella-pamplona route along a three-mile front.
The Battle of Montejurra took place between 7 and 9 November. On the first day alone, the attackers fired 600 cannon shots and the Republican vanguard managed to break the defensive line at Urbiola, clearing the way for an advance on the Carlist defenders. Moriones proclaimed the fall of Estella and, therefore, the end of the ‘Carlist State’. At that critical moment, Carlos VII ordered an attack by the 1st and 4th Navarre battalions, who launched a bayonet charge in an attempt to close the breach.
The attack met with success, forcing the Liberals to retreat. Moriones gave the order for an orderly withdrawal, but a Carlist counterattack turned the retreat into a precipitous flight. By the end of 1873 the Carlist domain extended throughout the Basque Country and most of Navarre, leaving the cities of San Sebastián, Vitoria, Pamplona and Bilbao in the hands of the central government. The latter withstood a relentless siege until the third battle of Somorrostro in May 1874, when the entrenched Carlists where forced to abandon the city.
A state within a state
The ‘Carlist State’ had a government with secretaries of state, (ministries) of war, justice, treasury, foreign affairs and communications, four deputations (provincial governments) that were governed, like the city councils, by the old provincial system. There was also a Carlist university in Oñate, a mint, a postal and telegraph system, railways, military academies for infantry, cavalry, artillery and an organisation similar to the Red Cross (La Caridad) with 27 hospitals, the main in Irache.
All of this was under Carlist administration. On the other hand the Catalonian Carlists tried to restore, at the town of Olot, a Catalan government, the Generalitat, and the fueros that had been suppressed in 1714 by Felipe V after the War of Succession against the Catalans, Aragonese and Valencians. Although a smaller organisation, the Carlist administration of Catalonia included the whole of the province of Lleida, the western half of Gerona and Barcelona and most of Tarragona, along with major important cities like Berga and Seo de Urgell.
The Republican government collapsed and the Cortes were dissolved after General Manuel Pavía’s coup in January 1874, spearheaded by
“THE CARLISTS SCORED A NUMBER OF MAJOR VICTORIES, NOTABLY AT THE BATTLE OF LÁCAR, NEAR ESTELLA, WHEN THEY ROUTED THE MONARCHIST ARMY & CAME CLOSE TO KIDNAPPING KING ALFONSO XII”
the Guardia Civil. Meanwhile Carlism was at the peak of its power. In December of that year, another military putschist, General Arsenio Martínez Campos, proclaimed the restoration of the monarchy and placed on the throne Isabel’s son, Alfonso XII.
The newly-reorganised army now faced not only the Carlist challenge but also the federalist movement that had spread across the Mediterranean coast. In 1875 the Carlists scored a number of major victories, notably at the battle of Lácar, near Estella, when they routed the monarchist army and came close to kidnapping King Alfonso XII.
On July 3 the Carlist pretender Carlos VII solemnly swore the Basque fueros in the shadow of the ‘sacred’ Árbol de Gernika
(Tree of Guernica). However with the Republic no longer in existence and under a new and better-disciplined army, the Liberal government managed to control the situation in Catalonia and concentrate all its war potential on the northern front. At the beginning of 1876, a corps of 50,000 soldiers advanced on Navarre, led by General Martínez Campos. Another force of more than 100,000 troops marched east towards the heart of the Basque Country, disarticulating the core of the Carlist army in Elgueta in February 1876.
A week later the capital of the ‘Carlist State’, Estella, fell into Liberal hands. On the 28 February, Carlos VII himself was forced once again and now definitively to cross the French border at Valcarlos, where with his generals were acclaimed by thousands of supporters. The Third Carlist War had ended. It is said that just past the bridge of Arneguy, which marks the dividing line between France and Spain,
Carlos VII turned his face to Spain and exclaimed, “¡Volveré!” (“I shall return!”) That remains the war cry in the collective imagination of Carlists today.
On 21 July the Cortes of Madrid definitively suppressed the Basque fueros. Formally the new law did not ‘suppress’ but ‘modified’ this legal code. It did not expressly eliminate local government, boards or municipal councils. In practice, however, it emptied them of content and autonomy. The regional institutions were integrated into a single constitutional political system. Only one power remained in their hands – provincial councils could periodically negotiate economic agreements with the central government.
This third defeat of Carlism on the battlefield, along with the frustration felt by its supporters, opened a broad political gap soon to be occupied by new forces, such as the Basque Nationalist Party in the Basquenavarre region and the Regionalist League in the inland regions of Catalonia. It is not surprising that many Carlists, disillusioned by the failure of their cause, gave their support to these two new movements from which, in turn, would arise the secessionist movements that are today Spain’s main political challenges.