The Basque History of the World - Mark Kurlansky [59]
THE FIRST CARLIST WAR, from 1833 to 1839, was fought on three separate fronts: Basqueland, Aragón, and Catalonia. But the most concentrated fighting was in Basqueland, the Carlist stronghold. While Carlists went into battle singing songs of Ignatius Loyola, the Liberals burned churches and monasteries. Most of Europe took sides: England and France, for once on the same side, backed the Liberals, and Russia, Prussia, and Austria supported the Carlists. To Europe, it was a war for or against absolute monarchy.
The British and French both sent troops to fight for the Liberal side. The British troops were amazed by the Basque way of fighting, comparing it to the “Indian” tactics of the American colonists in the Revolution, resenting their “un-European” tactic of only firing from under cover.
No longer waiting for the masses to triumphantly carry him in, Carlos slipped into Spain through Basqueland to Elizondo, a valley town in northern Navarra. He found a war under way and an able general with several victories behind him in command.
The general, from Guipúzcoa, was Tomás Zumalacárregui, whose family name of imposing length means “willows on the mountain slope.” Zumalacárregui’s image—the daring young general with the fine long Basque nose, thick mustache, and sideburns framing a strong Basque chin, wearing a large red beret with a tassel draped from the middle—caught the international imagination.
This poster revolutionary, whose portrait helped make berets fashionable, was made a romantic figure by those who wrote of the war. In 1835, Augustin Chaho, one of the great Basque propagandists, wrote a popular account, Journey to Navarra during the Basque Insurrection, in which he quotes Zumalacárregui as saying, “Isn’t this the land of our fathers? What are the Christians to us Basques except thieves who come in the night to attack the innocent man at home with his family?” Despite their attachment to the Church, speaking of the enemy as the Christians, as though the Basques were still animists fighting off the Visigoths, became a fashion of Basque nationalists.
Zumalacárregui was a brilliant tactician who had built a fine defensive military, schooled in hit-and-run guerrilla tactics but capable of major assaults. His army was fiercely committed, loyal, and disciplined. They took town after town: Vergara, Guernica, Tolosa. But they still had no port. In 1835, Carlos ordered them to take Bilbao. Zumalacárregui thought this was a mistake, but he obeyed orders from Carlos. This was the siege that is remembered for pil pil. The attack failed, and, wounded in the fight, Zumalacárregui died eleven days later.
A warring people with more wars to come, the Basques had in Tomás Zumalacárregui their last great military commander. Carlism never recovered from this loss.
THE PROBLEM WITH the army Zumalacárregui had built was that, typically Basque, it was based on the defense of Basqueland against invaders. Except for a brief period under the Kingdom of Navarra, Basques never fought to take new land. But now they were in a war for more than the defense of their own borders. To bring Carlos to power, they needed to seize the offensive. In a surprise attack they almost made it to Madrid and were within striking distance of kidnaping María Cristina. But instead, they retreated back to Basqueland.
Tomás Zumalacárregui, from Don Carlos et ses Défenseurs, by Isidore Maquès, Paris, 1837.
Again they tried and failed to take Bilbao. Another foray into Spain failed. After they crossed the Ebro, progress was slowed by the insistence on saying Mass in every liberated church. They finally got as far as Valencia, took it, started to march toward Madrid, but confronted with a superior force, they reverted to guerrilla tactics,