Determined that his last act should be worthy of his whole career, Cabrera, now upon his road to France, precipitated into the Ebro a number of national guards, whom he carried with him as captives. Others were shot, and some few were actually dragged across the frontier, bound hand and foot, and only liberated by the French authorities. Such wanton cruelty is the best refutation of the arguments of certain writers, who have maintained that Cabrera was severe upon principle, with the sole objects of intimidating the enemy, and of furthering the cause of his king. On the eve of his departure from Spain, himself a fugitive, the self-styled sovereign a captive in a foreign land, what end, save the gratification of his insatiable thirst of blood, could be attained by the massacre of prisoners? At last, on the sixth of July 1840, he delivered his country from the presence of the most execrable monster that has disgraced her modern annals. On that day, at the head of twenty battalions and two hundred cavalry, Cabrera entered France.
By superficial persons, unacquainted with facts, attempts have been made to cast upon the whole Spanish nation the odium incurred by a small section of it. The cruelties of Cabrera and his likes, have been taken as an index to the Spanish character, wherein ferocity has been asserted to be the most conspicuous quality. Nothing can be more unjust and fallacious than such a theory. Cabrera’s atrocities were viewed and are remembered in Spain with as deep a horror as in England or France. Those who shared in them were a minute fraction of the population, and even of these, many acted on compulsion, and shuddered at the crimes they were obliged to witness and abet. Is the character of a nation to be argued from the excesses of its malefactors, even when, banded together and in military array, they assume the style and title of an army? Assuredly not. The Carlist standard, uplifted in Arragon, became a rallying point for the scum of the whole Spanish people. Under Cabrera’s banner, murder was applauded, plunder tolerated, vice of every description freely practised. And accordingly, escaped galley slaves, ruined profligates, the worthless and abandoned, flocked to its shelter. To these may be added the destitute, stimulated by their necessities; the ignorant and fanatical, led away by crafty priests; the unreflecting and unscrupulous, seeking military distinction where infamy alone was to be reaped. Bad example, seduction, even force, each contributed its quota to the army of Cabrera. From the commencement, the war was of a very different nature in Navarre and in Arragon. Both chiefs and soldiers were of different origin, and fought for different ends. To Navarre repaired those men of worth and respectability who conscientiously upheld the rights of Don Carlos; the battalions were composed of peasants and artisans. In Arragon and Valencia, a few desperate and dissolute ruffians, such as Cabrera, Llangostera, Quilez, Pellicer, assembled under their orders the refuse of the jails.