WE

VE have seen, that, in the preceding year, Spain directed her efforts towards the equipment of a powerful expedition intended for America; and that her plans were, for a time, disconcerted by the military conspiracy, which the energy of count Abisbal suppressed. After that event, new levies were made, and the preparations were urged on with fresh eagerness; when a pestilence, breaking out in Cadiz and the isle of Leon, and spreading thence over a great part of the kingdom, forced her again to suspend the efforts, which she was about to make for the recovery of her transatlantic possessions. It was the beginning of December, before the ravages of the contagious distemper ceased. The preparations for the intended expedition were then renewed, and upwards of sixteen thousand troops were assembled in the neighbourhood of Cadiz.

The transactions of the preceding June had proved amply, that the officers were generally illaffected to the government of

Ferdinand. That government held out to them no peculiar advantages. On the contrary, several popular military leaders had suffered all that the headstrong vengeance of the tyrant could inflict, and monks had more credit with him than soldiers. In the wars of the peninsula, liberal, if not democratic, notions of government had been imbibed, which were not yet forgotten, and which must have inspired feelings of hatred and contempt for the despicable tyranny under which their country groaned. The peculiar service to which the army was then devoted, could not fail to give new vigour to these elements of discontent. The expedition to America, far from flattering the imaginations of the officers with visions of promotion, wealth, conquest, and glory, promised them only defeat, poverty, captivity, and disease. Was it not, then, better to promote at once their private and the public interest, by overthrowing the despotism of Ferdinand, than to be doomed to death in a distant

region, for the sake of vainly endeavouring to extend his sway?

Of the success of a bold effort there could scarcely be any doubt. The discontent was known to be general among the officers, and the army at large participated in the same sentiments. Indeed, the private soldiers, with the same general motives as their superiors to wish for a change, had still stronger reason to be disgusted with the service on which they were to be sent, as holding out to them less chance of gain, and a certainty of having more than their equal share of privation and suffering. The former conspiracy, it was true, had failed; but the discontent was then neither so strong nor so general. The very troops, too, who suppressed it, had shown their insubordination, by having yielded only to the promise that they should be exempted from serving in America; and the very general, who arrested its progress, was himself suspected of being an accomplice, and was deemed so little worthy of the royal confidence, that the command of the army had been withdrawn from him.

The general diffusion of these views and sentiments led, in the month of December, to the formation of a plan for an insurrection among the troops, who were collected in the neighbourhood of Cadiz. Colonel Riego and lieutenant-colonel Quiroga, were the two persons, who were to take the most active part in the conspiracy. The latter, who, since the discovery of the plot of the preceding year, had remained under arrest in a neighbouring convent, was to make his escape, and, joining two battalions quartered at Alcala los Gazules, was, on the

1st of January, to march with them upon Cadiz. On the same day, Riego, who was stationed with the second battalion of the regiment of the Asturias at Los Cabezas, was to proceed to the head quarters at Arcos, and there arrest the commander-in-chief, count de Calderon, and such of the superior officers as could not be trusted.

These arrangements were carried suc essfully into effect. On the 1st of January, Riego having proclaimed, amid the acclamations of his troops, the constitution adopted by the Cortes in 1812, reached Arcos early on the morning of the second, and surprised the commander-in-chief with his whole staff. Being joined by the garrison of that town, and the second battalion of the regiment of Seville from Villa Martin, he entered Bornos on the following day, and was there joined by a battalion of the regiment of Arragon. He acquired additional strength at Xeres and Port St. Mary. Thus reinforced, he proceeded to join Quiroga, who, after having effected his escape, had been retarded by the sudden swelling of the rivers and the badness of the roads, so that he did not arrive in the isle of Leon, till the magistrates of Cadiz had had time to man the lines, called the Cortadura, and so arrest his immediate progress. The insurgent army (it assumed the name of National), assembled before these lines, amounted, after the junction, to seven battalions. Quiroga was the first in command, Riego, the second. Within a few days they were still further strengthened by the arrival of a detachment, composed ofinfantry, cavalry, and a brigade of artillery,

who had been sent by the royal commander to occupy Port St. Mary.

On the night of the 12th, they succeeded in making themselves masters of the arsenal of the Caraccas. Two successive attacks were then made on the Cortadura; the first, by the insurgent troops from without; the second, on the 24th of January, by their partisans in the city. In both they were baffled.

In the mean time, Don Manuel Freyre, who had been declared captain general of Andalusia, had been employed in meeting the proclamations of the insurgents by counter-proclamations, in throwing some succours into Cadiz, and in assembling at Seville such troops as he thought were most to be depended upon. Gradually he approached nearer to the scene of hostilities, and on the 27th of January established his head-quarters at Port St. Mary.

On the same day, the insurgents, having been baffled in all their attempts upon Cadiz, in order to elevate the spirits of their troops by variety of enterprise, and in the hopes of exciting the province, which had hitherto taken no active part in favour of either side, to declare for them, detached a body of about 1,500 men, under the command of Riego. He entered Algesiras on the 1st of February. Shouts and expressions of good-will, with some scanty supplies of food and clothing, were the only aid which he found the inhabitants willing to afford him. Neither there, nor in the district which he had traversed, did he meet with many who would consent to march in his ranks. In obedience, there

fore, to orders which he had received, he sought to rejoin Quiroga. This was now impossible; for Don Joseph O'Donnel, the brother of count Abisbal, had been sent by Freyre with a strong body of horse in pursuit of him, and had completely intercepted all communication between Algesiras and the isle of Leon. After some deliberation, he resolved to march into Granada. On the 18th of February he arrived at Malaga, closely pursued by O'Donnel. The garrison withdrew at his approach. On the following day, he succeeded in repelling a very keen assault, which was made upon him by O'Donnel : but, meeting with no aid from the inhabitants, he did not choose to wait the event of another attack, but left the town during the night, and directed his course northwards among the mountains. He crossed the Guadalquivir at Cordova on the 8th of March, having been hotly pursued and constantly harassed by the enemy; and on his arrival at Bienvenida on the 11th, he found that his troops did not muster more than 300 strong. Too weak to act as an army, they now disbanded themselves at the foot of the mountains of Ronda, in order that each individual might seek safety in flight or concealment.

While Riego was entangled in this career of misfortunes, the situation of his associate Quiroga was becoming every day more critical. With Cadiz before him, which he was unable to reduce, and the army of Freyre intercepting his communication with the country, he was in fact shut up in the isle of Leon, with his troops reduced to about four thousand, dejected by long inactivity, and

likely soon to suffer from the want of provisions.

Notwithstanding the apathy with which Riego's progress through Andalusia and Granada had been contemplated, and which seemed to intimate a total indifference on the part of the people to the cause of the insurgents, there were other parts of Spain which exhibited a very different temper. The endeavours of the court to prevent any knowledge of the events in the south from being generally diffused, were ineffectual. The intelligence was circulated throughout the kingdom; and the first fruit of it was a commotion in Gallicia, more remarkable even than that of Andalusia, both because the people took a greater share in it, and because it triumphed completely and without difficulty over the existing authorities. Some officers of the garrison of Corunna took the lead, both in planning and executing this revolution. While Venegas, the captain-general of the province, was holding a levee, they raised a shout of "The nation for ever," in the market-place, and hastened with their followers to the governmenthouse. Having disarmed the guards, they made their way into the room where Venegas was receiving his visitors. The officers who were present immediately joined their party, and all with drawn swords declared themselves ready to die for the constitution. Venegas left the room. As he had always been a favourite with the Gallicians, the insurgents were desirous, aud not without hopes, that he would put himself at their head. Their leaders went to make the proposal to him. Upon his refusal to comply with

their wishes, he and his staff were put under arrest; but during their confinement, were treated with the utmost consideration. Colonel Acevedo was, at the recommendation of Don Carlos Espinosa, chosen captain-general of the province; a supreme junta was constituted; and a corps of two thousand militia was raised, to co-operate with the garrison in the defence of the new order of things.

At Ferrol, on the 23rd of February, and about the same time at Vigo and Pentevedra, similar scenes occurred. The count de St. Roman, governor of Santiago, endeavoured to stem the revolutionary current, but was forced, by the approach of Acevedo, to abandon the seat of his government.

He afterwards collected a considerable body of peasants, with whom he, for a time, maintained the cause of Ferdinand; but they gradually dropt away from him, and all Gallicia submitted to the junta of Corunna. At the same time that Acevedo marched against the count St. Roman, Mina appeared in Navarre with some of his partisans, and proclaimed the constitution in that province.

Count Abisbal was not an inactive spectator of these events. He had taken his resolution, and, as he had checked the former insurrection when it was going on in a successful progress, he was determined to have the opposite glory of enabling the present to obtain a complete triumph. Through two of his brothers, who commanded battalions, one at Santa Cruz, the other at Ocana, he had held communications with the officers commanding in La Mancha, and a plan was agreed

upon for proclaiming the constitution, in which his brother Don Joseph O'Donnel, who was at that very moment completing the destruction of Riego, would be able to lend important assistance. Abisbal left Madrid on the 3rd of March. At Aranjuez he was joined by some of the royal bodyguard; and on the next day, supported by his brother's regiment, he arrested the governor of Ocana, and proclaimed the constitution. All the troops of the province immediately declared in his favour; while the people, as in Andalusia, showed no ardour in his cause, and remained passive spectators of transactions which so deeply concerned their own happiness.

Before this last defection, the royal councils had been in extreme perplexity, and endeavours had been made to soothe the public mind by official intimations of a purpose to reform every part of the administration. But from the moment that the desertion of Abisbal was known, Ferdinand had no resource except submission. The power arrayed against him was too great to be resisted his enemies were the choicest of his own troops, commanded by the very individuals, whose talents, reputation, and influence with the army had saved him before, and could alone have saved him again. He resolved, therefore, to swim with the stream, and an official instrument was published, declaring his intention to summon the Cortes immediately, and his readiness to remedy every abuse. This concession was taken for what it really was a public avowal of weakness; and the populace of Madrid, who had been for some time in a state of great secret agitation, VOL. LXII.

produced by the intelligence which poured in upon them from every quarter of the kingdom, broke out into such open violence, and assembled in such multitudes in the neighbourhood of the palace, demanding the constitution with loud cries, that fears began to be entertained for the personal safety of the monarch. Yielding to his own apprehensions, and to those of his counsellors, the tyrant Ferdinand submitted to become the slave of the rabble of Madrid; and on the evening of the very day, on which he had promulgated his purpose of summoning a Cortes, he issued a circular letter to the authorities of the city, declaring, that the will of the people having been pronounced, he had decided to swear to the constitution, sanctioned by the Cortes in the year 1812.

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This declaration was more than a mere ceremony: for they, who had now gotten the reins of power in their hands, immediately took the most decisive measures. Supreme Junta was established, composed of men of known antipathy to the system which had just been overthrown. All persons imprisoned for state offences were liberated: a general amnesty for political crimes was published, the Inquisition was abolished, and complete liberty of the press established. All this was but a part of the work of two days.

The principal proclamations and decrees, relating to these transactions, will be found in the Appendix to the Chronicle, page 787, &c. Many other measures of inferior importance were adopted, all of them tending to subvert every vestige of the ancient despotism. The duke of San Fernando, the [Q]