No. 574.
Mr. Cushing to Mr. Fish.
Madrid, August 25, 1874. (Received September 16.)
Sir: Authentic intelligence begins to arrive of the extraordinary incident of the massacre by the Carlists of one hundred and ninety-three prisoners on the 17th of July last, at or near Olot, in Catalonia. These prisoners consisted of eighty-four carabineros, that is, customhouse guards, temporarily employed in military service, and one hundred and thirteen officers and soldiers of regular troop. They were a portion of the prisoners belonging to the column of Nouvilas, defeated some time ago by the Carlists, and who since that time had remained in depot at Olot.
Intending to attack the town of Puigcerdā, it seems to have been thought convenient by the Carlists to murder these prisoners, in order to save the trouble of guarding them.
In the first place, the prisoners were conducted to a village called Valfogona, where it was determined to shoot all the carabineros, without exception, and a fifth part of the residue of the prisoners. After that, on arriving at the cemetery of Llayers, the carabineros were tied in couples back to back, and then marched into the cemetery, and there shot, and buried indiscriminately in a trench dug for that purpose.
The soldiers were then marched in the direction of the town of San Juan de las Abadesas, and, being in like manner tied in couples back to back, were marched into the cemetery, there shot, and buried in a common trench.
The most naked possible statement of the facts exhibits an act of atrocity unparalleled in modern warfare, and many circumstances are narrated which add to the horror of the incidents.
The Carlist officer by whose order the massacre was committed bears the name of Saballs, and the officers under whose immediate superintendence the massacres were committed bear the names of Federico [Page 909] Brú and Bosch de Llers; and names, which might otherwise pass unnoticed, deserve to be remembered as objects of infamy.
It is one of the singular incidents of this horrible transaction that thus far no official report on the subject has been made public by the government.
I have, &c.,