Historia de Barcelona

Masacre liberal de los prisioneros carlistas sin resistencia por parte de las autoridades

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While the preparations for [the levy of fresh troops] were in progress, the liberals of Barcelona outdid even their former crimes by the perpetration of still more revolting horrors. The details of this insurrection show that it was not a sudden ebullition of popular frenzy, but the work of forethought and previous arrangement.

On the 4th of January 1836, a crowd assembled in the main square, and, with loud imprecations and yells of revenge, demanded the lives of the Carlist prisoners confined in the citadel. Thither they immediately repaired, and, not meeting with the slightest resistance from the garrison, scaled the walls, lowered the drawbridge, and entered the fortress; their leaders holding in their hands lists of those whom they had predetermined to massacre. When the place was completely in their possession, the leaders of the mob began to read over their lists of proscription, and, with as much deliberation as if they had been butchers selecting sheep for the knife, had their miserable victims dragged forward, and shot one after another, in the order of their names. The brave Colonel O’Donnel was the first that perished. His body, and that of another prisoner, were dragged through the streets, with shouts of «Liberty!» The heads and hands were cut off, and the mutilated trunks, after having been exposed to every indignity, were cast upon a burning pile. The head of O’Donnel, after having been kicked about the streets as a foot-ball by wretches who mingled mirth with murder, was at last stuck up in front of a fountain ; and pieces of flesh were cut from his mangled and palpitating body, and eagerly devoured by the vilest and most depraved of women. From the citadel the mob proceeded to the hospital, where three of the inmates were butchered ; and from the hospital to the fort of Atanzares [Atarazanas/Drassanes], where fifteen Carlist peasants shared the same fate. In all, eighty-eight persons perished.

This deliberate massacre of defenceless prisoners, and the worse than fiendish excesses committed on their remains, satisfied the rioters for the first day; but, on the next, they presumed to proclaim that fruitful parent of innumerable murders—the constitution of 1812. This was too much to be borne. Even then, however, two hours elapsed before a dissenting voice was heard; when a note arrived from Captain Hyde Parker, of the Rodney, who not long before, in obedience to the orders of a peaceful administration, had landed fifteen thousand muskets in the city. His offer to support the authorities against the friends of the obnoxious constitution was not without effect. The leaders of the political movement were allowed to embark on board the Rodney, and the tumult subsided, rather from being lulled than suppressed. No punishment whatever was inflicted on the murderers and cannibals of the first day ; their conduct, perhaps, was not considered to deserve any.

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Una respuesta a «Masacre liberal de los prisioneros carlistas sin resistencia por parte de las autoridades»

  1. Avatar de Alberto Pernales
    Alberto Pernales

    [ref717], aquí:

    On the road towards Barcelona, the intelligence met [Honan] of the horrid atrocities which signalized the first insurrection in that city… In Catalonia, he describes the country as all Carlist, and the adherents of the Queen as only to be found in the towns; while the regular army of the Christinos does not exceed 5000, though 40,000 volunteers have been armed, chiefly with muskets sent out since the Quadruple Treaty.

    The whole details of the Barcelona insurrection, and the dreadful murder of O’Donnell and the other prisoners in cold blood, are given upon the authority of eyewitnesses, for whose veracity our author vouches. We are averse to enter into the shocking details; but the outline may be given shortly. Some sudden excitement was occasioned by rumours, probably well founded, of the Carlists having massacred several of the Christinos in a village which they had taken; and a few young men ran about crying out ‘death to the traitors.’ A great mob was soon collected, and the Lieutenant-Governor opposing no resistance whatever, nor any of the authorities interposing at all, the multitude, headed by boys who had been parading in the processions of the season, ran to the citadel, which the troops helped them to scale, and obtained from the officer commanding a list of the names of the prisoners in the three prisons. These wretched victims were then brought out with the greatest regularity, one after another as by a roll-call, according to their rank, and inhumanly put to death. A hundred and seven persons, of whom ten were officers, thus perished. Colonel O’Donnell, whose wife had just obtained his exchange at the Carlist headquarters, but had not arrived with it, was among the number; and the brutal ferocity with which these execrable cannibals treated his mangled remains, as indeed their brethren at Madrid have since done Quesada’s, the Christino General, cannot be recorded to pollute our page. But, one statement of our author must be added, in the hope that it may receive a contradiction; and if not, that the indignation which it is so well calculated to excite may serve to prevent a repetition of such a crime. It is said that when the alarm began, the commander of the English squadron waited on the acting Governor, and offered him the assistance of our marines as a demonstration; and that he refused it through fear of committing himself with the furious mob,—alleging, however, that no mischief was intended.

    If this be true, no error in judgment can excuse it; for the fact is undeniable that the Governor offered no resistance,—possibly with his own forces had not sufficient means of doing so. When indeed the multitude turned from the bloody orgies to proclaim the Constitution, and had actually laid the stone to commemorate its revival, the Governor lost no time in making his stand. He got his troops under arms, harangued the people, and, on pretence that the further mention of the Constitution would divide them as against the common enemy, prevailed with them to remove the stone and drop all such proceedings. Mina soon after arrived, and arrested the ringleaders in the constitutional part of the revolt; among whom an English gentleman, wholly unconcerned in it, was seized ; and they were all sent on board the British squadron, in order, it was said, to save them from the mob; though our author asserts, that the feelings of the mob were quite with them, and therefore treats this as a pretence—inveighing loudly against converting ‘a British man-of-war into a gaol.’ How can he tell what the feelings of the mob were? True, they had been engaged a day or two before in proclaiming the Constitution; but is that the least security against their thirsting for the blood of their ringleaders in four-and-twenty hours after? The refusal, however, of the proffered aid from our squadron, if it be correctly stated, and the non-resistance to the blood-thirsty multitude at the beginning of the insurrection, forms a charge of the gravest kind against the Lieutenant-Governor, and makes him wholly responsible for the atrocious events which followed. We cannot withhold in this case the application of the rule to which we formerly referred in speaking of the massacres committed by the Carlist chiefs, under the alleged pressure of their sanguinary followers. No man in a commanding station, be it military or civil, has a right to expect that he should escape the blame of acts which he lets himself be either frightened, or seduced into doing, by means of others, over whom his duty requires him to exercise a control. Such a defence is an aggravation of the crime; such involuntary conduct is beyond description despicable, without losing one of the bad qualities which would have been confessed to mark the voluntary act. No attempts, Mr Honan asserts, have ever been made to bring the perpetrators of the massacre to justice. From hence he infers that the Queen’s government has made itself responsible for it; and that the other parties to the Quadruple Alliance ape not only justified in withdrawing from it, but bound to do so. But without a knowledge of all that has passed on this subject between the parties, no one can take upon himself to condemn our government and that of France for not having adopted this resolution.

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