Poachers turned gamekeepers: A study of the guerrilla phenomenon in Spain, 1808–1840

Abstract

This article modifies the associations made by historians and political scientists of Spanish guerrilla warfare with revolutionary insurgency. First, it explains how the guerrilla phenomenon moved from a Leftist to a reactionary symbol. Second, it compares the insurgency and counter-insurgency features of the Carlist War (1833–1840) with those of the better-known Peninsular War (1808–1814). Third, it shows how erstwhile guerrilla leaders during the Carlist War made their expertise available to the counter-insurgency, in a socio-economic as well as military setting. This article revises the social banditry paradigm in nineteenth-century Spain in the under-researched context of Europe bloodiest nineteenth-century civil war.

Keywords::

• Spain
• patriots
• liberals
• Carlists
• guerrillas
• counter-insurgency
• militia, rural
• Basques
• nation-building

Notes

^1. Borkenau, Spanish Cockpit, 1–20; Roura i Aulinas, ‘Jacobinos y jacobinismo.

^2. I discuss this politicised historiography further in Lawrence, ‘Peninsularity and Patriotism’.

^3. Artola-Gallego, Los orígenes de la España contemporánea; La burguesía revolucionaria.

^4. Artola-Gallego, ‘La guerra de guerrillas’.

^5. Fraser, Napoleon's Cursed War, 366.

^6. Hobsbawm, The Age of Revolution, 146–8.

^7. Sant Cassia, ‘Banditry, Myth and Terror’.

^8. Pérez Garzón, Milicia nacional, 10–89, 217, 260; Aróstegui et al., Las guerras carlistas, 150–1.

^9. In fact, Peninsular War scholarship since the end of the Cold War has strongly revised the ‘people's war’ paradigm, above all thanks to the works of John Lawrence Tone and Charles Esdaile, but the persistence of the national liberation theme may be shown not just in the popular imagination but also in such general surveys of guerrilla warfare as Boot, Invisible Armies, 80–92.

^10. Cepeda Gómez, El Ejército Español, 137–8; Diego García, ‘Balance de un conflicto’, 32.

^11. Romero Alpuente, El grito, 19.

^12. Semanario Político, No. 36, 843–50 in Saurin de la Iglesia, Manuel Pardo, 843–50.

^13. Romero Alpuente, Wellington en Cádiz.

^14. Esdaile, ‘War and Politics in Spain’. The administrative apparatus of Bourbon Spain underwent militarisation during the eighteenth century, whereby offices of secretaries of state were increasingly filled by military men and the powers exercised by captains-general in provincial administration came to eclipse the respective authority theoretically held by government ministers. Cepeda Gómez, El Ejército Español, 144–5.

^15. Iribarren, Espoz y Mina, 179–82.

^16. Fraser, Napoleon's Cursed War, 420–1.

^17. Artola-Gallego, Memorias, 2: 223–34; Melgar, Pequeña historia, 86–92; Pirala y Criado, Guerra civil, 1: 209–15.

^18. Pirala, Guerra civil, 2: 327–9; Oyarzun, Historia del carlismo, 148.

^19. Pirala, Guerra civil, 1: 341–6.

^20. Santirso, Joseph Tański, 166; Córdova y Valcarcel, Memorias, 1: 242.

^21. Risco, Zumalacárregui, 153.

^22. Aróstegui, ‘La aparición del carlismo’, 106.

^23. Remírez de Esparza, El carlismo aragonés, 32–6.

^24. Pirala, Guerra civil, 2: 260–5; Santirso, Joseph Tański, 61.

^25. Pirala, Guerra civil, 2: 69–71; Oyarzun. Historia del carlismo, 151.

^26. Comellas García-Llera, El trienio, 312.

^27. Eco del Comercio, 24 May 1834.

^28. Artola, Revolución burguesa, 90–112.

^29. Bellver Amaré, Zumalacárregui, 20–31, 51, 131–42, 181–201.

^30. Córdova, Memorias, 1: 197.

^31. Bellver, Zumalacárregui, 249; Gaceta Oficial, 5 July 1836.

^32. Biblioteca Universitaria Zaragozana (B.U.Z.), Faustino Casamayor, Años políticos e históricos de las cosas más particulares ocurridas en la Imperial Augusta y siempre heróica Ciudad de Zaragoza, XXX, 1813: 27 September 1813 diary entry.

^33. Eco del Comercio, 12 October 1836; Pirala, Guerra civil, 3: 242–7.

^34. Esdaile, Fighting Napoleon.

^35. Pirala, Guerra civil, 1: 249–51, 274–88; Cabello et al., Guerra última.

^36. Lawrence, ‘Peninsularity and Patriotism’, 453–68; Artola-Gallego, Los afrancesados.

^37. Pirala, Guerra civil, 3: 172–9.

^38. Ibid., 1: 341–6; Eco del Comercio, 10 July 1835.

^39. Fraser, Napoleon's Cursed War, 335–45.

^40. Risco, Zumalacárregui, 74; Alexander, Rod of Iron.

^41. Santirso, Joseph Tański, 100.

^42. Córdova, Memorias, 2: 134–42.

^43. Pirala, Guerra civil, 3: 46–9.

^44. Coverdale, Basque Phase, 173–5, 294–308.

^45. Artola-Gallego, Espoz y Mina, 2: 324.

^46. Revista Española, 18 October 1833.

^47. Pirala, Guerra civil, 2: 300–3; Artola-Gallego, Espoz y Mina, 2: 334–5.

^48. Burgo, La primera guerra carlista, 41; Pirala, Guerra civil, 1: 298–309; Artola-Gallego, Espoz y Mina, 2: 224.

^49. Eco del Comercio, 2 January 1836; Artola-Gallego, Espoz y Mina, 2: 296–7.

^50. Córdova, Memorias, 1: 201–2; Pirala, Guerra civil, 2: 109–14; Lawrence, ‘Las viudas de Comares’.

^51. Pirala, Guerra civil, 2: 335–8; Gaceta Oficial, 5 April 1836.

^52. Pirala, Guerra civil, 3: 172–9. The Carlist press often referred to all Cristino soldiers as ‘peseteros’, presumably in order to imply their moral and financial misery.

^53. Ibid., 2: 256–60.

^54. Ibid., 4: 623–5.

^55. Ibid., 5: 391–2, 4: 32–44.

^56. Oyarzun, Carlismo, 133–5.

^57. Eco del Comercio, 16 October 1838; Pirala, Guerra civil, 4: 565–73.

^58. Pirala, Guerra civil, 5: 182–6.

^59. Ibid., 5: 186–91.