The Basque History of the World - Mark Kurlansky [60]
Needing to strengthen his base, Carlos did what monarchs always did when they wanted Basque support. From this point on, when raising money or recruiting volunteers among rural Basques, the Carlists declared that Carlism stood for the Fueros against María Cristina and the Liberals who wanted to abolish all of the traditional rights. Suddenly the motto of Carlism, Dios, Patria, Rey, God, Country, King, became Dios y Fueros.
But in 1837, a Carlist writer-turned-general, José Antonio Muñagorri, began questioning the value of Basques killing Basques in the name of Carlos. He suggested that the Basques on both sides give up fighting, that the cause of Don Carlos be abandoned in exchange for an agreement from Madrid that the rule of the Fueros would be respected in Basqueland. “Our first objective is the total restoration of the Fueros,” he said. Few listened.
Both armies were brutal. Prisoners were frequently massacred. Espoz y Mina, the constitution-slaying hero of the División de Navarra, in a fury over a defeat, burned down the Navarrese village of Lecároz and executed one in every five of its men. The Carlists, always poorly provisioned because they did not control major ports, captured town officials and tortured them to locate caches of money and supplies. As often happens in war, women were singled out for their collaboration. When Carlists took a town, they would tar-and-feather women who were said to be Liberal sympathizers. Because Carlist general Ramón Cabrera was infamously brutal, Liberal forces in Aragón captured and murdered his mother.
On August 29, 1839, an end to hostilities was signed in Vergara. To prove that hostilities had ended, the two opposing generals embraced, which came to be known as the Abrazo de Vergara, a phrase which in Basqueland became synonymous with sellout. The troops from Alava and Navarra did not even appear for the signing. After their defeat, thousands of Basque peasants immigrated to the Americas. A curious footnote is that Muñagorri, the reluctant general, was assassinated in 1841, not by a Carlist angered by his willingness to give up fighting for Carlos, but by a Liberal.
IT WILL NEVER BE known if a victorious Carlos would have defended Basque independence. But his claim that their enemies were out to destroy it was proven true. The process that began with the century of chipping away at Foral rights continued. Already under Ferdinand, the Navarrese had lost their right to review royal decrees. In 1833, the Ministry of Interior in Madrid had ordered Spain to be divided into forty-nine provinces, meaning that even Navarra, which had still been recognized as a nominal kingdom, was reduced to being just another province. In 1836 the traditional Navarrese ruling body was replaced by a provincial legislature. The following year the same was ordered in the three other Basque provinces.
The Liberals had for a number of years been forcing anticlerical and antiregional measures on a reluctant María Cristina. In 1837 they forced her to reinstate the 1812 constitution. Three years later a more liberal faction came to power, and, unable to accept further demands, María Cristina resigned, leaving Spain and her daughter, now ten-year-old Queen Isabella II. With the victorious Liberal general Baldomero Espartero acting as regent, there was no longer any hope of saving the Fueros. The Navarrese, through compromise, were able to negotiate better terms than the other Basque provinces, but in the law of August 16, 1841, Basque autonomy was largely ended. Customs controls now began at the Pyrenees border and not at the Ebro. Provincial governments retained control only over internal affairs.
As the assassinated and forgotten Carlist general Muñagorri had warned, the war for Carlos had been disastrous for the Basques. But even worse disasters were to come.
The First Carlist War had resolved nothing, merely intensifying society’s divisions. The Liberals, in control, did not try to assuage the Carlists, and with each new Liberal measure restricting regional autonomy