Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 355, May 1845Various
Philosophy
Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 355, May 1845
Various
England -- Periodicals; Scotland -- Periodicals
As a politician, Narvaez is unquestionably an obstinate and unscrupulous
dunce, who feels his incompetency to rule by any means but the sword, and
has substituted a tyrannical dictatorship supported by bayonets, for the
legal and constitutional government of Spain. In a military point of view
he is more respectable, although even as a general his exploits have been
few and little heard of. In his brief campaign against the Esparterists,
he had no opportunity of showing more than activity and daring; since at
the very moment when he was on the point of measuring strength and
generalship with Seoane and Zurbano at Torrejon de Ardos, the troops under
those two leaders came over to him. During the War of Succession, he gave
proof of some skill as an organizer of armies of reserve, and even fought
a gallant and successful battle with Gomez at Majaceite in Andalusia, in
which, if one might believe the lying Spanish bulletins, he nearly swept
the Carlists from the face of the earth. There is no doubt he mauled them
a little; but neither that nor the various other decisive overthrows
recorded by gazettes, prevented Gomez from returning to the Basque
provinces with a considerable force at his back, and an immense amount of
booty.
It will be contrary to all precedent in modern Spanish history, if
Narvaez's career terminates otherwise than by a violent death, met, in all
probability, at the hands of the populace, or at those of some disgusted
adherents of his own. The deaths of Carlos de Espana, slain by his own
escort on his way to the French frontier; of Moreno--the butcher of
Torrijos, Lopez Pinto, Florez Calderon, and fifty other martyrs--himself
murdered in the wood of Vera by the bandit followers of the savage priest
Echeverria; these, and fifty similar instances, are events but of
yesterday. It is still fresh in the memory of the Madrilenos how they
pursued the stern Quesada to his place of refuge--Quesada who, alone and
by his single energy, had cleared the streets of an excited populace, and
stopped a revolution for one whole day; how they dragged him forth,
piecemeal it may almost be said, and with his severed fingers stirred the
bowl in which they toasted the downfall of tyrants. Between Quesada and
Narvaez there is more than one point of resemblance. Their deaths, also,
may be alike.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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