IN SEARCH OF RICHARDSON'S SPAIN
In 1837, Major John Richardson, Canada's first and most colourful novelist, published in
England
Movements of the British Legion, a revision of his Journal published the previous year andcritical of its commanding officer. Its reception was sensational because the Tories used it in
Parliament to condemn the Whig government for sending British troops to help the Spanish
Queen subdue the rebelling Basques under the pretender Don Carlos. Scribbling in the minutes
spared from his demanding work with the Commissariat of the Legion, Richardson described a
unique historical experience—the long circuitous march in 1835 that eleven British regiments of
over forty thousand men took through the Cantabrica Mountains from Bilbao south along the
Atlantic coast then directly inland over the mountains to the plains south of Vitoria to rendezvous
with the Spanish army. Critical of the Lieutenant-General Evans for planning this evasive
and costly maneuver, Richardson, nevertheless, praised it as, "one of the best conducted of any
yet undertaken by men wearing the British uniform, and as such, deserves a page in future
history." Fearing an ambush by Carlist guerrillas, several battalions of Chappelgorries or Red
Hats—Basques, loyal to the Spanish government—led the way over the unfamiliar countryside.
What took the Legion five weeks on foot, I could accomplish in a couple of days by car.
Passing through the large industrial city of Bilbao, I spent my first night in the Basque town
of Liquietio on the Atlantic coast, which, being the size of Bilbao in Richardson's day, would
serve as a model of the city that introduced Richardson to Spanish ways. "The men are indolent
to a proverb," Richardson wrote, "and spend their nights and days (those hours only which are
devoted to meals excepted) in the cafes, where smoking, chattering (that is the word), cards,
billiards, and dominoes, form their invariable and eternal pastime. As for the women, their only
care, after marriage, seems to be to 'suckle fools and chronicle sour wine'.” I noticed no greater
fools than there are in other parts of the world, no suckling of them in public, and no sour wine,
but I agreed with Richardson's observation on the male population, particularly with
"chattering." From five in the afternoon to dinner at ten, the townspeople strolled along the
quay, sat in the cafes, and stood at the windows of their homes "chattering." The sound
reminded me of birds gathering in the hundreds in trees before sundown. Men broke into
militant Basque songs. At dinnertime, the noise increased from the restaurants in the open air
and continued until one in the morning.
Richardson, descrying the dominance of the Church, was pleased to see the people turning
Churches into armories, although the black-robed priest, usually of sombre mien, was
conspicuous. I rose before the hotel door was open and went to the quay. The town slumbered,
save for a handful of fishermen loading a boat, a young man sketching the coastline, two girls
and an old man with a cane wading in bare feet along the beach, and a priest who paced the
quay, Bible in hand and deep in thought. The stone walls of the quay carried the black painted
accusations of Basque militants: “Police—Assassins.”
Driving along the banks of the Marbionne River, bringing sea traffic to Bilbao, I recalled
Richardson's description: "commanding the most lovely view." Richardson would see today
rows of workers' housing in grimy narrow streets, the cluttering of the river with freighters,
heaps of slag and coal, factories, cranes, gas fires, billowing black smoke. Depressed by the
contrast, I stopped to watch the citizens of Portugalete, swarming the streets to celebrate the
anniversary of the Angel's announcement to Mary that she was to give birth, a small band
marching and tootling, and a conveyance suspended by wires from steel beams carrying people
across the river.
Richardson wrote: “It was truly a picturesque sight to behold the long line of troops,
English and Spanish, as they wound, accompanied by a host of baggage mules and horses,
along the banks of the river to Soroza....” Today the route runs on the sides of the gentle slopes
of dark green hills interspersed with large drums of petroleum owned by Shell refining.
As I turned apprehensively inland to meet the national highway to Castro Urdiales on the
Atlantic Ocean, the hills became higher, the valleys deeper, and the copses and woods more
sylvan. Richardson described the fatigued soldier's wife with swollen feet marching bravely in
pain, the frequent upsetting of baggage, and the squabbling muleteers. Banditti wounded two
legionnaires, attacked an advance party of rifles, and kidnapped children lagging behind.
Richardson, in the rear of the last brigade entering Castro, rode alone at sunset on a ridge of
rock "that reverberated my horse's footfall in a most alarming manner, while my figure was
thrown into bold relief against the sea that murmured in the distance, so that any one, hostilely
disposed, might have picked me off from the dark rocks on my left, with perfect ease and
without hazard."
Richardson found Castro Urdiales "a small, seaport town, remarkable only for the imposing
appearance of its sea-girt, rock-based castle." The port is large now, stretching far along its
beach. Below the ruins of the castle are the narrow streets of the old town. Castro’s ancient air
seemed to inhibit commercial projects from taking hold there as they have done in the next
coastal town of Laredo, to which Richardson was sent by ship for intelligence reasons. From the
ship, Richardson watched the troops, ascending the mountains toward Limpias, reach “the
highest point of elevation, where their forms and glittering arms, thrown into bold relief against
a cloudless sky formed a picture in itself as instinct with interest as with life.” Impatient to leave
these impersonal sea towns with their long stretches of silent apartment blocks, I drove inland
to reach the heights.
The coastal and parallel inland roads, built in the tenth and eleventh centuries, were now Broads,
much improved over their state in 1835. The C-road connecting them, which I took, was
paved but tortuous.
The forest closed tightly overhead on the winding drive through the mountains to Limpias.
I could imagine the legionnaires' fears of ambush by Basque guerrillas. At Liendo, I encountered
Mount Risco, at 4300 metres the highest mountain. High, sharply turning roads with
magnificent views of small villages, trout streams and long sloping hillsides, this terrain on a
sunny day was a delight by automobile. Richardson wrote: "... a district so mountainous that,
perhaps, there is no instance on record of English troops having ever accomplished an equally
arduous march."
The Legion rested a day at the village of Limpias. Its stream, flanked by fields of maize, ran
by orchards crammed with luscious fruit and the spacious flower gardens of villas. General
Evans had soldiers flogged for plundering the natives—the first breach of discipline.
I drove past highland farms and towns in the smaller hills and looked, quoting Richardson,
"achingly down upon the pigmy world below" as I climbed "through one of these passes,
bounded on the right by a precipice of many hundred feet of perpendicular descent, and on the
left by a tall crag, nearly musket-shot in height, the bold yet regular sides of which assimilated it
rather to some tower of strength, the work of human hands, than the sport of capricious Nature,
who has scattered her grandeur over these remarkable provinces with so unsparing a hand.
Fifty Carlists, placed upon the summit of that crag, might have annihilated the whole Legion...."
Clambering up the grassy knoll above the highway at the summit of Los Tornos, I happily
found the cut of the old road through the cliff overgrown and forgotten. "Here, indeed, was a
concentration of the sublime and beautiful," commented Richardson, who had taken an hour on
horseback to ascend Los Tornos and surveyed far below the “alternate cornfield and pasture…
like a carpet of many colours.” The road plunged into a long valley, over Rio Carneja and
through Agnera and Quintavella, flourishing with cattle and sheep, as Richardson described,
before reaching Villesante, where the Legion camped that night. I visualized Richardson’s
journal entry for that day: "Two brigades are bivouacked in the open air, and their appearance is
truly picturesque, the light of their cheerful fires casting that of a very brilliant full moon,
completely into the shade. "
After Medina del Pomar, which Richardson described as "a rude old Moorish town," now
an uninteresting combination of old and new buildings, I passed through a number of villages
—Bastillo, Moneo, Pradolamatar, Nofuentes—poor and dry-looking. The hills, majestic and
wild, began again at Tresperaderne. Crossing the small bridge over the River Ebro, I stopped to
reflect at the “lonely” spot where Richardson pondered upon its association with many events
in military history. Its solemnity inspired awe in him: “the hollow echo of [the river’s] fall… was
full of gloom, and came rather as the disturbed spirit of the wild….” It still captured that
haunting, romantic aspect and brought me closer to understanding Richardson’s soul, which,
fashioned by the harsh realities of the Canadian wilderness, sought the refining interpretations
of European thought.
Ona, a village in a rocky pass over the Ebro, remained vividly in my mind from my reading
of the
Movements. Here was the great monastery, "that might form a palace for an easternemperor," whose vast, interminable cells, corridors and courts could accommodate the whole
Legion, and whose subterranean passages recalled to mind "Mrs. Ratcliffe's well-known
Mysteries of Udolpho.
" Richardson dined in its refectory, condemned the courses —"dried, insipidfish eaten with very bad oil"—but praised the quality of the bread. None of the monks appeared
in the refectory, and the lay brethren served the legionnaires with indifferent good will.
Richardson spent the night "on the naked floor of one of the principal rooms." Did it still exist?
Driving with great anticipation from the road along the river's edge into the village, which
no longer fitted Richardson's description: "nowhere to be surpassed in meanness and poverty," I
saw the monastery. It was now a huge hospital. I did not enter it; simply looking at its grandeur
from the outside was sufficient. The chapel and sacristy joined it from the left side. "The former,"
wrote Richardson, "is of a gorgeousness commensurate with the vast extent and general
richness of the whole building." That, indeed, was true. "The latter, handsomely decorated, is
filled with scriptural subjects and portraits by the best masters." Probably still true as well. I
peeked through iron bars set up to prevent the visitor from penetrating and noticed a priest
escorting privileged visitors about the interior.
From the Ebro, narrow and aquamarine at this point, I climbed out of the pass into pretty
hills through Pino de Bureba where the land became flat with many pine trees. Driving through
Los Barrios at Rio Oca, I stopped at Aguilar de Bureba, a smelly, dirty village, where I
photographed the twelfth century Romanesque Church ruin on the small hill overlooking the
plain that Richardson would have seen. The country, commented Richardson, "was so level—
not a mountain to be seen above the horizon in front—so unlike that to which we had latterly
been accustomed, that we could scarcely persuade ourselves we were in the same region."
On reaching Brivieska, I understood that the fundamental character of a place never
changes when I read Richardson's description: "one of the most wretched places under the
sun.... The people are miserable... there is an apathy of manner about them, in the midst of all
their filth and meanness, which provokes and vexes even more than their poverty." Unlike
Richardson, who was obliged to spend three weeks there, I merely stopped to take a drink at the
cafe (dirty) in the town's main square and confirm his verdict.
The high road leading to Vitoria—which Richardson declared "remarkably good, scarcely to
be surpassed in any part of England"—cuts on the side of a mountain just above the roof-tops of
the village of Pancorbo, tunnels for a short distance through the rock and swoops down to the
plain. Richardson slept at Pancorbo, "singular and romantic-looking … situated in the very
heart of a pass, formed by immense masses of bold rock, literally overhanging the place." He
took a side trip east on military business to Santo Domingo, where he saw “beautiful milk-white
goats… browsing on the leaves of the brown-nut tree.” I, however, followed the route of the
Legion through the wide valley to Miranda de Ebro—with some regret as I wondered if the
goats still existed.
Miranda's old town of narrow streets on the south bank is connected by a couple of bridges
to the newer town on the north bank. Richardson remarked on the great confusion in Miranda
as the masses of the Legion clogged the narrow streets for hours and waited to be quartered. I,
in turn, from my hotel balcony, observed confusion in the hours before dinner when Spaniards,
walking and talking, milled in crowds, and the cycles and autos streamed over the bridges and
into the narrow streets on either side of the river.
The drive to Vitoria was short and straight. The old city of magnificent squares and long
avenues had changed little from 1835, but, in the western section, modern boulevards,
apartment blocks, hotels, and shops expanded it. When the Legion marched into the city behind
its drummers and buglers, Richardson wrote: "A few 'vivas los Inglesas' burst from the crowd,
but they were neither so universal nor so enthusiastic as we had been prepared to expect.
Indeed, from what little I have been enabled to remark since our arrival, the inhabitants of
Vitoria are infinitely more Carlists than Queenites." I saw no signs calling for an independent
Basque state, but I pondered, like Richardson, on the secret sentiments of the citizens.
Vitoria was the Legion's nemesis. Typhus killed many of the troops under the most
appalling conditions. Richardson almost died. From that point, his fortunes with the Legion
declined. He fought in the battle of San Sebastian in 1836, but it is safe to say that the most
remarkable experience of the legionnaires was this long, arduous, circuitous march from Bilbao
to Vitoria. The motorcar made the journey enjoyable and allowed me to connect in spirit to the
man whose sense for adventure and extraordinary creativity gave birth to Canadian literature.