Gatherings From Spain

TRAVELLING ESCORTS

It may be remarked that Spanish robbers are very shy in attacking armed English travellers, and particularly if they appear on their guard. The robbers dislike fighting, and the more as they do so at a disadvantage, from having a halter round their necks, and they hate danger, from knowing what it is; they have no chivalrous courage, nor any more abstract notions of fair play than a Turk or a tiger, who are too uncivilized to throw away a chance; accordingly, they seldom join issue where the defendants seem pugnacious, which is likely to be the case with Englishmen. They also peculiarly dislike English guns and gunpowder, which, in fact, both as arms and ammunition, are infinitely superior to those of Spain. Though three or four Englishmen had nothing to fear, yet where there were ladies it was better to be provided with an escort of Miguelites. These men have a keen and accurate eye, and were always on the look-out for prints of horses and other signs, which, escaping the notice of superficial observers, indicated to their practised observations the presence of danger. They were indefatigable, keeping up with a carriage day and night, braving heat and cold, hunger and thirst. As they were maintained at the expense of the government, they were not, strictly speaking, entitled to any remuneration from those travellers whom they were directed to escort; it was, however, usual to give to each man a couple of pesetas a-day, and a dollar to their leader. The trifling addition of a few cigars, a “bota” or two of wine, some rice and dried cod-fish for their evening meal, was well bestowed; exercise sharpened their appetites; and they were always proud to drink to their master’s long life and purse, and protect both.

Those, whether natives or foreigners, who could not obtain or afford the expense of an escort to themselves, availed themselves of the opportunity of joining company with some party who had one. It is wonderful how soon the fact of an escort being granted was known, and how the number of travellers increased, who were anxious to take advantage of the convoy. As all go armed, the united allied forces became more formidable as the number increased, and the danger became less. If no one happened to be travelling with an escort, then travellers waited for the passage of troops, for the government’s sending money, tobacco, or anything else which required protection. If none of these opportunities offered, all who were about to travel joined company. This habit of forming caravans is very Oriental, and has become quite national in Spain, insomuch that it is almost impossible to travel alone, as others will join; weaker and smaller parties will unite with all stronger and larger companies whom they meet going the same road, whether the latter like it or not. The muleteers are most social and gregarious amongst each other, and will often endeavour to derange their employer’s line of route, in order to fall in with that of their chance-met comrades. The caravan, like a snow-ball, increases in bulk as it rolls on; it is often pretty considerable at the very outset, for, even before starting, the muleteers and proprietors of carriages, being well known to each other, communicate mutually the number of travellers which each has got.

ESCOPETEROS

Travelling in out-of-the-way districts in a “coche de colleras,” and especially if accompanied with a baggage-waggon, exposes the party to be robbed. When the caravan arrives in the small villages it attracts immediate notice, and if it gets wind that the travellers are foreigners, they are supposed to be laden with gold and booty. Such an arrival is a rare event; the news spreads like wildfire, and collects all the “mala gente,” the bad set of idlers and loiterers, who act as spies, and convey intelligence to their confederates; again, the bulk of the equipage, the noise and clatter of men and mules, is seen and heard from afar, by robbers if there be any, who lurk in hiding-places or eminences, and are well provided with telescopes, besides with longer and sharper noses, which, as Gil Blas says, smell coin in travellers’ pockets, while the slow pace and impossibility of flight renders such a party an easy prey to well-mounted horsemen.

PASSES AND PROTECTIONS

This condition of affairs, these dangers real or imaginary, and these precautions, existed principally in journeys by cross roads, or through provinces rarely visited, and unprovided with public carriages; if, however, such districts were reputed the worst, they often had the advantage of being freer from regular bands, for where there are few passengers, why should there be robbers, who like spiders place their nets where the supply of flies is sure? – and little do the humbler masses of Spain care either for robbers or revolutionists; they have nothing to lose, and are beneath the notice of pickpockets or pseudo-patriots. Their rags are their safeguard, a fine climate clothes them, a fertile soil feeds them; they doze away in the happy want and poverty, ever the best protections in Spain, or strum their guitars and sing staves in praise of empty purses. The better provided have to look out for themselves; indeed, whenever the law is insufficient men take it into their own hands, either to protect themselves or their property, or to administer wild justice, and obtain satisfaction for wrongs, which in plain Spanish is called revenge. An Irish landlord arms his servants and raises walls round his “demesne” – an English squire employs watchers and keepers to preserve his pheasants – so in suspected localities a Spanish hidalgo protects his person by hiring armed peasants; they are called “escopeteros,” people with guns – a definition which is applicable to most Spaniards. When out of town this custom of going armed, and early acquaintance with the use of the gun, is the principal reason why, on the shortest notice, bodies of men, whom the Spaniards call soldiers, are got together; every field furnishes the raw material – a man with a musket. Baggage, commissariat, pay, rations, uniform, and discipline, which are European rather than Oriental, are more likely to be found in most other armies than in those of Spain. These things account for the facility with which the Spanish nation flies so magnanimously to arms, and after bush-fighting and buccaneering expeditions, disappears at once after a reverse; “every man to his own home,” as of old in the East, and that, with or without proclamation. These “escopeteros,” occasionally robbers themselves, live either by robbery or by the prevention of it; for there is some honour among thieves; “entre lobos no se come,” “wolves don’t eat each other” unless very hard up indeed. These fellows naturally endeavour to alarm travellers with over-exaggerated accounts of danger, ogres and antres vast, in order that their services may be engaged; their inventions are often believed by swallowers of camels, who note down as facts, these tricks upon travellers got up for the occasion, by people who are making long noses at them, behind their backs; but these longer lies are among the accidents of long journeys, “en luengas vias, luengas mentiras.”

TALISMANIC DEFENCES

As we are now writing history, it may be added that great men like Jose Maria often granted passports. This true trooper of the Deloraine breed was untrammelled with the fetters of spelling. Although he could barely write his name, he could rubricate9 as well as any other Spaniard in command, or Ferdinand VII. himself. “His mark” was a protection to all who would pay him black mail. It was authenticated with such a portentous griffonage as would have done credit to Ali Pacha. An intimate friend of ours, a merry gastronomic dignitary of Seville, who was going to the baths of Caratraca, to recover from over-indulgence in rich ollas and valdepeñas, and had no wish, like the gouty abbot of Boccaccio, to be put on robber regimen, procured a pass from Jose Maria, and took one of his gang as a travelling escort, who sat on the coach-box, and whom he described to us as his “santito,” his little guardian angel.

TALISMANIC DEFENCES

While on the subject of this spiritual and supernatural protection, it may be added that firm faith was placed in the wearing a relic, a medal of the Virgin, her rosary or scapulary. Thus the Duchess of Abrantes this very autumn hung the Virgen del Pilar round the neck of her favourite bull-fighter, who escaped in consequence. Few Spanish soldiers go into battle without such a preservative in their petos, or stuffed waddings, which is supposed to turn bullets, and to divert fire, like a lightning conductor, which probably it does, as so few are ever killed. In the more romantic days of Spain no duel or tournament could be fought without a declaration from the combatants, that they had no relic, no engaño or cheat, about their persons. Our friend Jose Maria attributed his constant escapes to an image of the Virgin of Grief of Cordova, which never quitted his shaggy breast. Indeed, the native districts of the lower classes in Spain may be generally known by their religious ornaments. These talismanic amulets are selected from the saint or relic most honoured, and esteemed most efficacious, in their immediate vicinity. Thus the “Santo Rostro,” or Holy Countenance of Jaen, is worn all over the kingdom of Granada, as the Cross of Caravaca is over Murcia; the rosary of the Virgin is common to all Spain. The following miraculous proof of its saving virtues was frequently painted in the convents: – A robber was shot by a traveller and buried; his comrades, some time afterwards passing by, heard his voice, – “this fellow in the cellarage;” – they opened the grave and found him alive and unhurt, for when he was killed, he had happened to have a rosary round his neck, and Saint Dominick (its inventor) was enabled to intercede with the Virgin in his behalf. This reliance on the Virgin is by no means confined to Spain, since the Italian banditti always wear a small silver heart of the Madonna, and this mixture of ferocity and superstition is one of the most terrific features of their character. Saint Nicholas, however, the English “Old Nick,” is in all countries the patron of schoolboys, thieves, or, as Shakspere calls them, “Saint Nicholas’s clerks.” “Keep thy neck for the hangman, for I know thou worshippest St. Nicholas as a man of falsehood may;” and like him, Santu Diavolu, Santu Diavoluni, Holy Devil, is the appropriate saint of the Sicilian bandit.

San Dimas, the “good thief,” is a great saint in Andalucia, where his disciples are said to be numerous. A celebrated carving by Montañes, in Seville, is called ‘El Cristo, del buen ladron,’ – “the Christ, of the good thief;” thus making the Saviour a subordinate person. Spanish robbers have always been remarkably good Roman Catholics. In the Rinconete y Cortadillo, the Lurker and Cutpurse of Cervantes, whose Monipodio must have furnished Fagin to Boz, a box is placed before the Virgin, to which each robber contributes, and one remarks that he “robs for the service of God, and for all honest fellows.” Their mountain confessors of the Friar Tuck order, animated by a pious love for dollars when expended in expiatory masses, consider the payment to them of good doubloons such a laudable restitution, such a sincere repentance, as to entitle the contrite culprit to ample absolution, plenary indulgence, and full benefit of clergy. Notwithstanding this, these ungrateful “good thieves” have been known to rob their spiritual pastors and masters, when they catch them on the high road.

To return to the saving merit of these talismans. We ourselves suspended to our sheepskin jacket one of the silver medals of Santiago, which are sold to pilgrims at Compostella, and arrived back again to Seville from the long excursion, safe and sound and unpillaged except by venteros and our faithful squire – an auspicious event, which was entirely attributed by the aforesaid dignitary to the intervention vouchsafed by the patron of the Spains to all who wore his order, which thus protects the bearer as a badge does a Thames waterman from a press-gang.

EXECUTION OF A ROBBER

An account of the judicial death of one of the gang of Jose Maria, which we witnessed, will be an appropriate conclusion to these remarks, and an act of justice towards our fair readers for this detail of breaches of the peace, and the bad company into which they have been introduced. Jose de Roxas, commonly called (for they generally have some nickname) El Veneno, “Poison,” from his viper-like qualities, was surprised by some troops: he made a desperate resistance, and when brought to the ground by a ball in his leg, killed the soldier who rushed forward to secure him. He proposed when in prison to deliver up his comrades if his own life were guaranteed to him. The offer was accepted, and he was sent out with a sufficient force; and such was the terror of his name, that they surrendered themselves, not however to him, and were pardoned. Veneno was then tried for his previous offences, found guilty, and condemned: he pleaded that he had indirectly accomplished the object for which his life was promised him, but in vain; for such trials in Spain are a mere form, to give an air of legality to a predetermined sentence: – the authorities adhered to the killing letter of their agreement, and

“Kept the word of promise to the ear,But broke it to the hope.”

As Veneno was without friends or money, wherewith Gines Passamonte anointed the palm of justice and got free, the sentence was of course ordered to be carried into effect. The courts of law and the prisons of Seville are situated near the Plaça San Francisco, which has always been the site of public executions. On the day previous nothing indicates the scene which will take place on the following morning; everything connected with this ceremony of death is viewed with horror by Spaniards, not from that abstract abhorrence of shedding blood which among other nations induces the lower orders to detest the completer of judicial sentences, as the smaller feathered tribes do the larger birds of prey, but from ancient Oriental prejudices of pollution, and because all actually employed in the operation are accounted infamous, and lose their caste, and purity of blood. Even the gloomy scaffolding is erected in the night by unseen, unknown hands, and rises from the earth like a fungus work of darkness, to make the day hideous and shock the awakening eye of Seville. When the criminal is of noble blood the platform, which in ordinary cases is composed of mere carpenter’s work, is covered with black baize. The operation of hanging, among so unmechanical a people, with no improved patent invisible drop, used to be conducted in a cruel and clumsy manner. The wretched culprits were dragged up the steps of the ladder by the executioner, who then mounted on their shoulders and threw himself off with his victims, and, while both swung backwards and forwards in the air, was busied, with spider-like fingers, in fumbling about the neck of the sufferers, until being satisfied that life was extinct he let himself down to the ground by the bodies. Execution by hanging was, however, graciously abolished by Ferdinand VII., the beloved; this father of his people determined that the future death for civil offences should be strangulation, – a mode of removing to a better world those of his children who deserved it, which is certainly more in accordance with the Oriental bow-string.

EXECUTION OF A ROBBER

Veneno was placed, as is usual, the day before his execution, “en capilla” in a chapel or cell set apart for the condemned, where the last comforts of religion are administered. This was a small room in the prison, and the most melancholy in that dwelling of woe, for such indeed, as Cervantes from sad experience knew, and described a Spanish prison to be, it still is. An iron grating formed the partition of the corridor, which led to the chamber. This passage was crowded with members of a charitable brotherhood, who were collecting alms from the visitors, to be expended in masses for the eternal repose of the soul of the criminal. There were groups of officers, and of portly Franciscan friars smoking their cigars and looking carefully from time to time into the amount of the contributions, which were to benefit their bodies, quite as much as the soul of the condemned. The levity of those assembled without formed, meantime, a heartless contrast with the gloom and horror of the melancholy interior. A small door opened into the cell, over which might well be inscribed the awful words of Dante —

“Lasciate ogni speranza, voi ch’entrate!”

EXECUTION OF A ROBBER

At the head of this room was placed a table, with a crucifix, an image of the Virgin, and two wax tapers, near which stood a silent sentinel with a drawn sword; another soldier was stationed at the door, with a fixed bayonet. In a corner of this darkened apartment was the pallet of Veneno; he was lying curled up like a snake, with a striped coverlet (the Spanish manta) drawn closely over his mouth, leaving visible only a head of matted locks, a glistening dark eye, rolling restlessly out of the white socket. On being approached he sprung up and seated himself on a stool: he was almost naked; a chaplet of beads hung across his exposed breast, and contrasted with the iron chains around his limbs: – Superstition had riveted her fetters at his birth, and the Law her manacles at his death. The expression of his face, though low and vulgar, was one which once seen is not easily forgotten, – a slouching look of more than ordinary guilt: his sallow complexion appeared more cadaverous in the uncertain light, and was heightened by a black, unshorn beard, growing vigorously on a half-dead countenance. He appeared to be reconciled to his fate, and repeated a few sentences, the teaching of the monks, as by rote: his situation was probably more painful to the spectator than to himself – an indifference to death, arising rather from an ignorance of its dreadful import, than from high moral courage: he was the Bernardine of Shakspere, “a man that apprehends death no more dreadfully than a drunken sleep, careless, reckless, and fearless of what’s past, present, and to come, insensible of mortality, and desperately mortal.”

EXECUTION OF A ROBBER

Next morning the triple tiers of the old balconies, roofs, and whole area of the Moorish and most picturesque square were crowded by the lower orders; the men wrapped up in their cloaks – (it was a December morning) – the women in their mantillas, many with young children in their arms, brought in the beginning of life to witness its conclusion. The better classes not only absent themselves from these executions, but avoid any allusion to the subject as derogatory to European civilization; the humbler ranks, who hold the conventions of society very cheap, give loose to their morbid curiosity to behold scenes of terror, which operates powerfully on the women, who seem impelled irresistibly to witness sights the most repugnant to their nature, and to behold sufferings which they would most dread to undergo; they, like children, are the great lovers of the horrible, whether in a tale or in dreadful reality; to the men it was as a tragedy, where the last scene is death – death which rivets the attention of all, who sooner or later must enact the same sad part.10 They desire to see how the criminal will conduct himself; they sympathise with him if he displays coolness and courage, and despise him on the least symptom of unmanliness. An open square was then formed about the scaffold by lines of soldiers drawn up, into which the officers and clergy were admitted. As the fatal hour drew nigh, the increasing impatience of the multitude began to vent itself in complaints of how slowly the time passed – that time of no value to them, but of such precious import to him, whose very moments were numbered.

EXECUTION OF A ROBBER

When at length the cathedral clock tolled out the fatal hour, a universal stir of tiptoe expectation took place, a pushing forward to get the best situations. Still ten minutes had to elapse, for the clock of the tribunal is purposely set so much later than that of the cathedral, in order to afford the utmost possible chance of a reprieve. When that clock too had rung out its knell, all eyes were turned to the prison-door, from whence the miserable man came forth, attended by some Franciscans. He had chosen that order to assist at his dying moments, a privilege always left to the criminal. He was clad in a coarse yellow baize gown, the colour which denotes the crime of murder, and is appropriated always to Judas Iscariot in Spanish paintings. He walked slowly on his last journey, half supported by those around him, and stopping often, ostensibly to kiss the crucifix held before him by a friar, but rather to prolong existence – sweet life! – even yet a moment. When he arrived reluctantly at the scaffold, he knelt down on the steps, the threshold of death; – the reverend attendants covered him over with their blue robes – his dying confession was listened to unseen. He then mounted the platform attended by a single friar; addressed the crowd in broken sentences, with a gasping breath – told them that he died repentant, that he was justly punished, and that he forgave his executioner. “Mi delito me mata, y no ese hombre,” – my offence puts me to death, and not this fellow; as “Ese hombre” is a contemptuous expression, and implies insult, the ruling feeling of the Spaniard was displayed in death against the degraded functionary. The criminal then exclaimed, “Viva la fé! viva la religion! viva el rey! viva el nombre de Jesus!” All of which met no echo from those who heard him. His dying cry was “Viva la Virgen Santisima!” at these words the devotion to the goddess of Spain burst forth in one general acclamation, “Viva la Santisima!” So strong is their feeling towards the Virgin, and so lukewarm their comparative indifference towards their king, their faith, and their Saviour! Meanwhile the executioner, a young man dressed in black, was busied in the preparations for death. The fatal instrument is simple: the culprit is placed on a rude seat; his back leans against a strong upright post, to which an iron collar is attached, enclosing his neck, and so contrived as to be drawn home to the post by turning a powerful screw. The executioner bound so tightly the naked legs and arms of Veneno, that they swelled and became black – a precaution not unwise, as the father of this functionary had been killed in the act of executing a struggling criminal. The priest who attended Veneno was a bloated, corpulent man, more occupied in shading the sun from his own face, than in his ghostly office; the robber sat with a writhing look of agony, grinding his clenched teeth. When all was ready, the executioner took the lever of the screw in both hands, gathered himself up for a strong muscular effort, and, at the moment of a preconcerted signal, drew the iron collar tight, while an attendant flung a black handkerchief over the face – a convulsive pressure of the hands and a heaving of the chest were the only visible signs of the passing of the robber’s spirit. After a pause of a few moments, the executioner cautiously peeped under the handkerchief, and after having given another turn to the screw, lifted it off, folded it up, carefully put it into his pocket, and then proceeded to light a cigar

– “with that air of satisfactionWhich good men wear who’ve done a virtuous action.”EXECUTION OF A ROBBER

The face of the dead man was slightly convulsed, the mouth open, the eye-balls turned into their sockets from the wrench. A black bier, with two lanterns fixed on staves, and a crucifix, was now set down before the scaffold – also a small table and a dish, into which alms were again collected, to be paid to the priests who sang masses for his soul. The mob having discussed his crimes, abused the authorities and judges, and criticised the manner of the new executioner (it was his maiden effort), began slowly to disperse, to the great content of the neighbouring silversmiths, who ventured to open their closed shutters, having hitherto placed more confidence in bolts and bars, than in the moral example presented to the spectators. The body remained on the scaffold till the afternoon; it was then thrown into a scavenger’s cart, and led by the “pregonero,” the common crier, beyond the jurisdiction of the city, to a square platform called “La mesa del Rey,” the king’s table, where the bodies of the executed are quartered and cut up – “a pretty dish to set before a king.” Here the carcase was hewed and hacked into pieces by the bungling executioner and his attendants, with that inimitable defiance of anatomy for which they and Spanish surgeons are equally renowned —