The British Auxiliary Legion in the First Carlist War

Exactly one hundred years before the British battalion of the famous International Brigades set out to fight Franco in February 1937, another force of British volunteers was fighting in another Spanish civil war. This time, however, the conflict—the First Carlist War of 1833–9—was to be much less well known, while the men concerned were a very different force. At the same time, unlike the volunteers of 1937, the troops of 1837 were in Spain with the blessing and, indeed, tacit support, of the British government. Yet there were also similarities; for the British Auxiliary Legion, as the force was called, was fighting for a cause associated with political progress, while their opponents, the red-bereted Carlists, were also in the opposing lines in 1937. Thus far the story of the British Auxiliary Legion (to give the force its proper title) has essentially gone untold in the modern historiography: there are a few tantalising references here and there, but that is all. This oversight, however, has now been admirably remedied by Edward Brett in a concise monograph that is packed with detail. It is unfortunate that the author—an amateur historian—has made no use of Spanish sources, for his reliance on memoir material has at the very least given his work a somewhat uncritical air, while it is much to be regretted that he has not provided us with the scholarly apparatus that might have been expected. Yet, whatever its defects, his work remains a useful and interesting addition to the literature. Why, though, were there British volunteers in Spain in 1837? When the Carlist War broke out in 1833, Britain was soon drawn in, in support of the legitimist forces known as the cristinos. Initially, her involvement was purely diplomatic, but in the summer of 1835 the Spanish ambassador to London requested that his government might be allowed to recruit a force of British volunteers for service against the Carlists. Eager to be of assistance, the British prime minister, Lord Palmerston, replied in positive fashion, and the next few months saw feverish attempts to recruit the 10,000 men that the plan required. Officers were easy enough—there were plenty of lieutenants and captains on half-pay who were eager to seize the chance for employment, advancement and glory, not to mention plenty of adventurers and plain soldiers of fortune—but the rank and file had to be drummed up from the slums of London and other cities, and the desperate rural poverty of Ireland. Except in the cases of a few officers, most notably the Legion's commander, Sir George de Lacy Evans, political commitment was noticeably absent: many of the common soldiers, in particular, clearly had no idea of the cause in which they had enlisted. Arriving in Spain in the autumn of 1835, the force was soon in action, first of all at Bilbao and then at Vitoria. Decimated by typhus, it was transferred to the blockaded town of San Sebastián in the spring of 1836, and there served out the rest of its short life. Success was mixed—in March 1837, for example, the Legion was caught up in a major cristino defeat at Oriamendi—but after over a year the Carlists were finally driven off by an offensive which culminated in the capture of Irun. In this episode the Legion played an honourable part, but its history was marred by mutiny and indiscipline, and it is in the end hard to believe that it contributed anything very notable to the cristino cause. That said, its soldiers had endured terrible privations and suffered heavy casualties, while those taken prisoner were usually put to death by the Carlists and sometime tortured to boot. It is, then, sad to read that on their return to Britain the rank and file were turned adrift with no means of support, let alone recognition, this being something that makes Brett's evident sympathy for his subject very understandable. As for the neglect and vandalism that the ‘English cemetery’ on the slopes of the citadel of San Sebastián has suffered at the hands of the local authorities on the one hand and supporters of ETA on the other, it is a story that tells its own tale

Amateur · Blessing · Historiography · Memoir · Political science · Politics · Spanish Civil War · Classics · Hispanic-African Historical Relations · History · Law · Spanish History and Politics · Spanish Literature and Culture Studies

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