The Sun.
London, England, 1866-01-13 00:00:00

The Military Revolt in Spain.

(From the Correspondent of the Times.)
MADRID, Jan. 9.
The following has been handed to me as General
Prim's Proclamation. It circulates secretly about
Madrid, but I have no means of ascertaining its
authenticity :
" Spaniards !—We have arrived at the terrible
moment in which revolution is the only resource of
the nation and the main duty of honourable men.
I am at the head of considerable military forces, and
a great number of armed countrymen hasten on all
sides to fight under my orders for the cause of free-
dom and our fatherland.
"My banner is the last manifesto of the Pro-
gressists Central Committee ' • with it in my hand I
will fight with my wonted valour against the Go-
vernment which dishonours us abroad and ruins us
at home, to the point of making us a laughing-stock
among foreign nations, and bringing us to the verge
of a shameful bankruptcy.
" Soldiers,—who have already fought under my
orders,—you are aware that I have never forsaken
you ; and that if you stand by me in this enterprise
I shall know how to lead you, first showing you the
path of victory, and next remunerating your en-
deavours.
" Fellow citizens, men of honour ! aid me, you
too, to bring to a happy end a political revolution,
which may do away with the necessity of that social
revolution with which we are threatened.
" Spaniards! Hurrah for liberty, for the pro-
gramme of the Central Progressists Committee, for
the constituent Cortes ! " JUAN Plum."
For his part, Field-Marshal Concha, Marques del
Duero, has addressed the following " energetic pro-
clamation" to the "handful of men" at whose head
he has set out in pursuit of the " rebel general" :
" Soldiers ! Two cavalry regiments, forsaking
their chiefs, and seduced by a general who is as
great a traitor as he is a coward, have gone in quest
of no less mad than criminal adventures, giving the
example of insubordination, and raising a confla-
gration in the country, which, however, only looks
upon this act as a mere outbreak of wanton ambi-

tion. We are only few in number, but our loyalty
is sufficient to crush and humble the enemies where-
ever we may meet them, for we march under the in-
fluence of the magic cry —' Hurrah for Isabella ll.' "
So far as it is possible to follow the movements
of the hostile parties, out of garbled and conflicting
accounts, it seems that General Prim, after follow-
ing the course of the Guadiana from Daimiel down
to the immediate neighbourhood of Ciudad Real,
the capital of La Mancha, turned up again towards
the Sierra de Toledo, and was on Sunday night at
Malagon, to the south, and yesterday, Monday, at
Urda, to the north of those mountains. He is evi-
dently " dodging" his enemies, and is likely enough
to give them a good long run. When in the neigh-
bourhood of Ciudad Real Prim was said to have
3,000 men, divided in two columns, one of which
marched under his immediate orders ; the other was
led by his lieutenant, Brigadier Milans del Bosch.
The volunteers, or guerrilleros, are not easily num-
bered, as they spread far and wide over the country,
but Prim can evidently be at no loss for partisans
in a part of the country so devotedly ad-
dicted to his cause. A "foreign engineer" is said to
be with him, and it was he, it appears, who se
skill sunk the suspension bridge at Fuenti duenas
on the 4th. One of General Prim's volunteers,
named Leon Merino, a guerrillero of well-known
determination, is said to be in possession of the
narrow gorge of Despenaparos, the important
pass across the Sierra Morena, that long and
dreary ridge which separates the arid desert of
La Mancha from the paradise of Andalusia. If
this be so, the communication between those
southern kingdoms and the capital is at the mercy
of these bold adventurers.

The Government organs are very eloquent in their
description of the distress and exhaustion under
which the rebel bands are labouring. They say that
Prim's horses are unshod, that their waggons are
left behind on the road, that the soldiers have no
rifle balls, &c. They add that, wherever they ap-
pear, they help themselves to such money, horses,
provisions, &c., as they can lay hands on.
On the other hand, travellers who are daily com-
ing in from the districts which have become the
theatre of, this singularly uneventful and bloodless
war, assure us that it is the loyal, and not the rebel,
army that exhibits symptoms of weakness and fa-
tigue. Some of the few men whom Concha had
hastily gathered together at Manzanares are said to
have deserted him. and gone over to Prim. The
progress of Zabala, the first who left Madrid at the
head of a large column on Wednesday last in pur-
suit of the insurgents, has been throughout deplo-
rably slow. Baffled by Prim at Fuenti Buenas,
where the sunken bridge prevented his crossing the
Tagus, Zabala had to toil a whole day from that
place to Aranjeuz, where he lost 21 hours in the
conveyance of his forces by rail to Tembleque---lost
21 hours, that is to say, in getting over a distance
of six leagues. Ilad Prim had the least suspicion
of this unsoldierlike movement he could either
have taken prisoners or cut to pieces the loyal
detachments as they came up this line, at two
hours interval one after another, 800 or 900 men at
a time, packed up in a van like herrings, unable
even to alight without the help of somebody that
would open the doors to let them out. Prim had
been at Tembleque only a few hours before the first
detachment came in, in high spirits, as I am told,
taking possession of the station, allowing a goods
train to go past unmolested, bidding the telegraph
clerk to cut the wires, and, upon the latter showing
some hesitation, snatching up a hatchet, and hack-
ing away at the telegraph box and table, as well as
the wires, always as merrily as if he were about
some good piece of fun, and telling the clerk how
desirous he was of exonerating him from any re-
sponsibility of the deed. From Tembleque Zabala,.
after getting all his troops, horse and artillery, from
the trains, advanced upon Madridejos, where he was
still on the 7th, in the morning. At the same hour
of the same day Concha had reached Daimiel, pre-
cisely as Prim was marching out of it. Since then
we have been left in the dark as to the movements
of the loyal forces, though, as I told you, the Go-
vernment papers take the trouble to inform us that
the rebels were at Magalon on Sunday, and at Urda
yesterday. There were rumours afloat yesterday
that " Concha had been taken and shot by Prim,"
and, again, that " the brave Catalan guerrilla chief
Noy de las Barraquetas (or Noy of the Barricades)
had been mortally wounded ; but I could up to late
in the evening trace such reports to no plausible
source, and there seemed really as yet to have been
no encounter whatever between the contending
parties ; not a drop of blo3d shed as yet in this
mock civil war.

Last night, finally, Zabala telegraphed that he
had fallen back to Puerto Lapiche, and that Ser-
rano was in command of Concha's column. What
had become of Concha does not appear. Zabala,
to expedite his movements, had parted with his ar-
tillery. His intention was to pursue the insurgents
along the chain of the Toledo mountains, while
Serrano, who, besides Concha's column, bad cannon
and engineers with him, was to operate on the plain
following the course of the Guadiana.
There is no doubt in the meanwhile that the pro-
mise held Out by
O'Donnell in the Senate that " all
would be quiet within 48 hours, and he would be in
position to raise the state of siege," has not yet
been, and is not likely 80011 to be fulfilled. The poor
clubmen of the Cassino del Principe, in the Carrera
de San Geronimo, have sent up a deputation to the
Prime Minister, pleading the inoffensiveness of their
institution, and praying for the repeal of the decree
that shut it up,
but their entreaties have been un-
availing. There they were to be seen yet on Sun-
clay afternoon crowding the hall of the establish-
ment that was a home to them, and the narrow
street before it, down
cast and disconsolate, like so
many Penis at the gate of Paradise, wondering
what is to become of them, what is to open those
gates, and where they are to run in for shelter
should rain or frost render the open air unbearable.
The prolongation of the present state of suspense
and uncertainty.can hardly fail to be prejudicial to
the Government, and Prim is likely enough to carry
his point if he can only gain time. His wife hereind
Madrid talks of his chances with great glee, an
says that " her Juanito can go wherever he pleases
and achieve whatever he undertakes."
All day yesterday we had reports of ferment in
Saragossa and Barcelona. From the former place
Zapatero, the general in command, is soliciting re-
inforcements at every hour.
From Barcelona we
have this morning official tidings to the effect that

in consequence of an aggressive demonstration
which took place in the night the authorities had
ordered the troops to fire on the people. Several
of these were killed or wounded, and complete
tranquillity has been restored."
Last evening, at 11 o'clock, at the Teatro Real,
where I happened to be, a great commotion was
seen in some of the stalls, whence several officers
hurried away, as if summoned in great haste. The
ladies in the boxes soon followed, evidently terrified
by some alarming report. On leaving the house I
was told that one of the regiments quartered near
the Montana del Principe Pio had mutinied. This
morning I learn that they have been overpowered,
and order reigns in the barracks.

The Government, however, does not easily allow
the secrets of those huge buildings to transpire among
the public. Forty of the fugitives belonging to the
columns of three companies of the Almanza Regi-
ment, which had mutinied at Avila, under the orders
of Majors Campos and Gonzalez have surrenderedat
Alganices, near the Portuguese frontier of Braganza.
The others are said to have crossed the line and to
have been disarmed by the Portuguese authorities.