The Sun.
London, England, 1862-06-05 00:00:00

DEATH OF GENRRALSAN MIGUEL.

The Madrid papers of the 30th of May announce
the death of General Evaristo San Miguel. Of
such men as San Miguel Spain may well be proud,
' for he was a gallant gentleman worthy of her best
days. San Miguel was a native of Asturia. He
was born in 1780. He entered the army as a
volunteer in 1808, when, on the signal given on the
2d of May in Madrid, the Spanish people fie to
arms, and soon proved to Europe that the Bayonne
Junta, who basely sold their country to Napoleon,
did not represent the Spanish nation. In a few
years he rose to the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel;
joined the army of Cadiz in 1812 ; and was elected
member of the Cortes of that city for his native
province. He was placed on the retired list of the
army after the restoration of Ferdinand VII., who
repnid with the blackest ingratitude the services of
those who had bled in his cause. He founded the
Espectaclor newspaper a few years after, and was
one of its ablest and, for those times, most coura-
geous writers. When the tyranny of Ferdinand
destroyed all hope of liberty in Spain, he joined the
expedition of the unfortunate Riego in 1820. He
was one of the first victims of the reaction that
soon followed, and was exiled to Zamora in 1821.
Ferdinand was unable to stem the tide of public
opinion; he tried what dissimulation, in which he
was an accomplished adept, could de. He affected
to yiAd to what he could not control, and accepted
a Liberal Ministry. San Miguel was recalled from
his banishment, and offered the post of Minister of
Foreign Affairs, which he accepted.

In accordance with the secret treaty of the Con-
gress of Verona, which declared the hostility of th.a
great Powers—Austria, France, Prussia, and
Russia—to
atnhe,
above
establishmentbvneata t
the
eo of
liberty constitutional
a f
th a
press, go
vernment, d
as incompatible with the principle of monarchy,
France was charged with putting down at all cost
the Liberal movement in Spain. Each of these Go.
vernments addressed a note to the Madrid Cabinet
in which these opinions were expressed, and sum.
moned it to return to the old system; and their
ambassadors resident in Madrid were ordered to
demand their passports in case of refusal. San
Miguel, as Minister of Foreign Affairs, replied to
those notes. He declared that the Spanish nation,
12
was governed by a constitution formally recognised
thnaant
constitution,
which wEhmapienr Emperor
of
Russia
in
promulgated 81
that ;
bnyiar th
ds e
which had been put down by violence in 1814, were
not perjurers as they were called, but the organs of
the nation's will ; that the constitutional Sovereign
of Spain was in the full enjoyment of the preroga.
tives granted to him by the constitution, and those
who maintained the contrary were enemies of their
country and calumniators; that the Spanish nation
had never interfered in the domestic concerns of
any other country ; that the evils of which the
great Powers complained were not caused by the
constitution but by its enemies; that the Spa-
nish people never would admit the right of any
foreign Power to intermeddle in their internal
affairs ; and that his Majesty's Government
would not deviate -from the line which national
honour and its unvarying adhesion to the constitu-
tion of 1812, and which it had sworn to observe, had
traced out for it. These notes and the answer to
them were submitted. The Cortes, "faithful to
their oath, and worthy of the people they repre-
sented, would not allow the constitution to be altered
or modified but by the will of the nation, avid in the
manner and form prescribed by it." The Ambas-
sadors demanded their passports ; they were handed
to them the following day, the 11th of January,
1823, by San Miguel.
The French Government lost no time in entering
on the honourable office of executioner allotted to it
by the Holy Alliance. Eighty thousand troops,
under the command of the Duke d'Angouleme,
crossed the Bidassoa, and opened the campaign
which closed with the capture of Cadiz. San
Miguel quitted Madrid when he could no longer
be useful, and joined the bands of Mitaa in Cata-
lonia. In the warfare of the mountain be greatly
distinguished himself. He was wounded in almost
every affair with the French, and in an engagement
with the enemy's cavalry in 1826 he received a
sabre cut in the head so deep that it astonished
those who saw it many years afterwards how any
one could have survived it. He was taken pri-
soner, and soon after released, on condition of
quitting Spain. The home that the gallant exile
sought was England ; and in England, where he
maintained himself by his daily toil, he resided
until 1834, when the amnesty promulgated by the
Queen Regent, Maria Christina, who required the
support of the Liberals for her daughter's throne
against the assaults of the Carlists, enabled him
and others in the same circumstances to return
to their native country.

tsouplitpheoertlas some time after named by the Quee.r o f Cortes.
liberalf A
no e ragon and
continued
monarchial
t wasoGovernment,
be
ee l
theec te d deputy
warnaenesand
Captain-General t
of the dynasty of Queen Isabella. He was appointed
Captain-General of the Basque Provinces in 1842,
under the regency of Espartero.
After the fall of the Regent in 1843, and the
triumph of the Moderados, he retired into private
took
employed no
ethnesmost
s u r
v survived
v affairs; modest peodp allu
lie
he
l
manner, with no resources beyond what his
life, and resided chiefly in Madrid, unmolested, I
believe, even during the violent reaction which had
set in against the Progresistas ; for San Miguel was
rpaeorsulipi
tteyi ce, tal en de
cvhbe
ayr
nwagl
eol
sn. Be
p ba
yrt
ens vl avo ner ddth hy:ns
m exceptionalahalf-pay as Lieutenant-General supplied him with
hisprominenttimein
writingpatt in public
the " History of
Philip II.," which he published
in 1847, and which,
though not remarkable for any very deep research,
is Still a work of considerable merit.
The revolution of 1854 called
him once more from
his retirement. Whenafter
a fierce struggle for
existence, the Sartorius
Ministry was overthrown,
and Madrid left without a Government, the
Queen, knowing she could confide implicitiy in tll3
honour and loyalty of
the
veteran of liberty, named
San Miguel Ca '
Captain-General of Madrid and Minis-
ter of War, or, more properly speaking, Universal
Minister, until such time as Espartero, who had
Ibeen summoned from Logrono, arrived in the
ca-
pital. San Miguel, on the first breakiug out of
the Vicalvarist movement in July, had been named
President of the Junta that met in Madrid to aid,
and at the same time control O'Donnell, in ease of
success. Himself a soldier, no man was more averse
from military rule than San Miguel, and both
O'Donnell and Espartero were held in check by the
Junta, which was the nucleus of the Union liberal.
On the success of the revolution, San Miguel was
raised to the rank of Field-Marshal, and named In-
spector-General of the National Militia. He was
elected deputy to the Constitutional Cortes, of which
he was for some time President ; and he recorded
his vote for the maintenance of monarchical govern-
ment in Spain. O'Donnell, who had long been
trying to get rid of Espartero and keep the supreme
authority in his own hands, effected his coup d'etat
in 1856 ; and Espartero once wore, and probably
for ever, retired to Logrono. By the previous Go-
vernment San Miguel had been appointed Com-
mandant-General of the flalberdiers, or the House-
hold Guard. By old usage, the post could not be
a grandee of the first class; and San
heldi buelut by
was a plebeian. The Queen did not hesi-
tateM to confer on Lim the indispensable qualifica-
tion. She raised him to the rank of grandee, with
the title of Duke de San Niguel, and maintained
hire in the post. As a grandee and Field Marshal
be sat by right in the Senate, where he supported
Liberal Gover2ments to the last.

Whatever may hive been the faults of the Pro-
gresistas, as a political pally, and their faults were
many, their bitterest enemies never denied them
the merit of probity, and of those who were, most
noted for a virtue so rare in revolutionary periods,
San Niguel stood among the foremost. In private
life he Was one of the most modest
of men, tolerant,
gentle, courteous, and affectionate.

The new volume of " Once a Week" will com-
mence with a new story by Mrs. Henry Wood, the au-
thoress of East Lynne, with illustrations by Charles Keane;
and a new Historette, by Harriet Martineau, is in type, =4
will appear very shortly, illustrated by J, E,