No. 577.
Mr. Cushing to Mr. Fish.
Madrid, August 27, 1874. (Received September 16.)
Sir: The recent conscription in Spain is now substantially completed, and, according to current calculations, will yield an additional force of at [Page 911] least 60,000 men for the army. It will also yield to the treasury at least 300,000,000 of reals ($15,000,000) on amounts paid for exemption. Contrary to expectation, the levy was effected in Madrid without the least violation of public order. Occasional disturbances occurred in some of the provincial cities and country populations, bat mostly of a very trifling-character, and none of very serious nature, except at Granada, where the Internationalists seized on the occasion to make a transient manifestation.
The Carlists exerted themselves to interrupt the conscription in districts of the country open to their incursions, but without producing any serious effect.
Since my last reference to this subject the only very important military occurrence has been the capture by the Carlists of the town and fortress of Seo de Urgel, on the Catalonian frontier of France. By this capture the Carlists will have obtained possession of a considerable amount of guns, munitions of war, and other military supplies; and also of a very advantageous military position in Upper Catalonia.
In Valencia, Aragon, and Catalonia, as well as in Navarre, the Carlists continue to range the country at will in all directions, attacking occasionally some of the secondary cities, which, with all the large ones, maintain adhesion to the government. Of such attacks the most serious is that now being made for the second time on Puigcerdá.
Similar attacks on other places have been repelled by the inhabitants and the forces of the government.
In most cases where the Carlists make such incursions or attacks they do not act for the purpose of retaining possession of the places assailed; but, in the first instance, in order to make forcible levies of provisions and money, and, in the second place, to burn, waste, and destroy.
In all quarters, wherever they have opportunity, they take special pains to burn and destroy the civil registers and archives of the little villages and hamlets subject to their inroads.
From an early period in the civil war they have exhibited a singular hatred of railroads, which, at the outset, they destroyed without any strategic purpose, and in the mere spirit of devastation. Thus it was that, at an early day, they blew up the bridges and tunnels on that portion of the Northern Railway, so called, which extends from Miranda de Ebro, by Vitoria, Alsásna, Toloso, and San Sebastian, to Irún; that is to say, lying almost entirely in their own country of Alava and Guipizeoa.
At that period, also, they interrupted, from time to time, but capriciously and without system, the railroads in Catalonia and Valencia.
Thus it was that at the time of my coming to Spain traveling by railroad from Irún to Miranda de Ebro was impossible; and it was subject to frequent interruption in Catalonia, Navarre, and Valencia.
But the Carlists have recently entered more systematically upon the enterprise of destroying railroads, in the purpose of cutting off communication between Madrid and all the great northern, northeastern, and eastern provinces of Spain.
Thus, at the present time, the railroad from Miranda de Ebro to Irún no longer exists; that from Tafalla to Pamplona, and from Pamplona to Alsásna, has ceased to be practicable. The same may be said of the railways from Valencia to Tarragona, from Lérida to Barcelona, from Barcelona to Zaragoza, and from Barcelona to France.
And the same, also, of the road from Valencia to Jativa, and even beyond that in the direction of Madrid; for, by means of their strength in the Maestrazgo the Carlists are able to cut this road when they please [Page 912] at its junction with the road from Alicante to Madrid. Thus it happens that the governor of Barcelona, having occasion just now to come to Madrid, was constrained to proceed by water to Alicante, and then was stopped by the blowing up of a bridge at La Encina, on the road to Madrid. Books from Washington for this legation now have to go by rail from Paris to Marseilles and thence by water to Alicante.
Recently many miles of the railroad connecting Madrid with Zaro-goza, namely, the space between Arcos and Medinaceli, has been broken up by the Carlists, and they have made more than one movement against that portion of the Northern Railroad which leads from Madrid to Santander, and constitutes the only means of approximate communication with France.
Meanwhile the bulk of the army, under command of General Zavala, continues to be passive, no important movement in that direction having occurred since the engagement between General Moriones and the Carlists, at Oteiza, and the victualing of Vitoria by General Zavala. And, at the same time, detachments of Carlists seem to cross the Ebro when they please, to make incursions into Old Castile, for the purpose of ravage and plunder, as in the case of a recent attack on the considerable town of Calahorra.
It may be that General Zavala is preparing for some great military movement, and it is suggested that he, is awaiting the advance of General Pavia through Aragon. However this may be, certain it is that the contrast between the universal activity of the Carlists and the apparent inaction of the forces of the government tends to diffuse a general feeling of discouragement, not in Madrid only, but in other parts of Spain.
I have, &c,