The Sun.
London, England, 1866-05-11 00:00:00

General Prim and Marshal O'Donnell.

Under date " Florence, May 3," General Prim,
the chief of the late Spanish insurrection, has ad-
dressed a characteristic letter to Marshal O'Donnell,
his former comrade in the field, the present Prime
Minister of Spain. It appears that on the 13th of
April, in the Senate at Madrid, O'Donnell declared
that " General Prim had not had the courage to
show a front ; all he achieved was a cowardly flight ;"
and added that " when a man engages in such enter-
prises he ought to know how to die, which Prim did
not do, since he fled like a coward." These abusive
expressions, unworthy of one holding O'Donnell's
high position, could not be more unjustly applied.
Prim's cool and daring courage is proverbial in the
Spanish army, and among all who ever saw him in
action. He is not only a good general, but a bril-
liant man-at-arms, ever seeking opportunities of
personal distinction.

" Quien es el gran Paladin ?"

sang the soldiers in Morocco, one of a series of
doggerels which some military poet had made upon
the generals of the army; and the answer was
"Prim." More than once has O'Donnell himself
been saved from disaster by Prim's personal valour
and self-devotion, and by his remarkable qualities
as a leader. This was especially the case on the Ist
of January, 1860, in the fight near Ceuta, from
which Prim takes his title of Marquis of Castillejos.
On that day, as all who were present kliow, he
did all the fighting, led his repulsed soldieri again
and again to the charge, and saved O'Donnell from
defeat. In short, to accuse Prim of want of courage,
whether moral or physical courage be meant, is
simply to attack him on his strongest point. As
an exile, however, and perhaps in consideration of
the proverb that les absens ont toujours to t, Prim
has thought it worth while to repel the charge
brought against him by O'Donnell, inconsiderately
and in a moment of passionate excitement, amid the
indignant murmurs of the Senators, and his letter
includes a curious account of his proceedings from
the time he rose in insurrection, at the head of 684
dragoons and a group of officers, down to the date
of his entering Portugal at Barrancos on the 20th
of January. He shows that his march of 17 days'
duration, far from being a cowardly flight, was a de-
liberate and well-executed operation ; that for the
greater part of thatperiod he was marching and coun-
termarching in order to give time for the insurrection
to spread and for others to join him who had pledged
themselves to do so, but who failedwhen the decisive
hour struck. A week after the commencement of
the movement he was at Urda, only one day's march
from his point of departure. On the tenth day he
was only two days' march from Madrid. He was
pursued by three columns, those of Zabala, Echague,
and Serrano, to which was soon afterwards added
a fourth, that of General Arizcum. He repeatedly
halted and passed the night within 10 or 12 miles
of his pursuers, especially at Zabala, well known for
his unreadiness in the Morocco campaign, and who
followed him with three battalions of infantry, six
squadrons, and eight guns, but seems to have taken
particular care never to overtake him. On the 6th
January, at daybreak, the little group of insurgent
cavalry passed within half musket shot of Daimiel,
where one of the pursuing columns had passed the
night. Within sight of the town a baggage cart
was overturned. They halted and formed up while
it was set right again. The Government troops
either did not see them or preferred not risking an
encounter.

Finding the insurrection hopeless, owing to the
defection of the greater part of those who should
have joined it, Prim made for Portugal. Many
horses had broken down, and 60 dismounted men
accompanied him on foot. Six, who lingered at
Logrosan to get their horses shod, were cut off.
Those six were all he lost. The day after he entered
Portugal he sent back horses, equipments, and arms
to Spain. The following extract from the letter to
O'Donnell is curious, as a summary of the expedi-
tion, written by its leader

" The column under my command, which set out from
Villarejo on 4th of January, reached Portugal on the 20th,
and reached it, entire, after going over a distance of 742
kilometres, without ever running—always at a walk. It
camped out only two nights, and slept quietly in 16 villages
belonging to the provinces of Madrid, Guided Real, Toledo,
Caceres, and Badajoz, pursued the while by four columns,
each one of them stronger than ours—the four being all
composed of both cavalry and infantry, and commandedby
a Minister of the Crown, by the General of Engineers, by.
the Captain-General of Estremadura, and by a Major-Ge-
neral. In their favour were the military forces of Estre-
madura, which were in my front, and consequently saw
me coming; against me they also had the powerful auxi-
liaries of railways, telegraphs and great rivers,—the Tagus,
which we twice crossed, and the Guadiana, which we had
to ford, to say nothing of the infinity of rivers, ravines, and
rugged defiles we had to get over when crossing the moun-
tains of Toledo and Guadeloupe. More than once we were
fain to make great circuits in order to reach villages in
which we could put up to get rations, and especially to find
or forge horseshoes. And nevertheless everything was
done as if we had been marching under ordinary circum-
stances,without an instance of misbehaviour in the hundred
towns and villages we passed through, the men observing
the strictest discipline and subordination. In spite of the
fatigues consequent on so long a march, pursued on all
sides, and well convinced of the fate that awaited us if we
fell into your (O'Donnell's) hands, there was not a moment
of discouragement ; not a man abandoned his General and
his comrades; there was not a single desertion. In presence
of the facts I have just narrated, and with which you are
well acquainted, how could you beso trivial and discour-
teous as to style my retreat a cowardly flight, regardless
of my absence, of my rank in my army, and of the sen-
tence that impends over me ? In conclusion, I will tellyou
what a cowardly flight is, since you evidently do not know."
Prim then briefly relates the well known incidents
of the Leon and O'Donnell insurrection of 1841,
when the last-named General played anything but
an heroic part. O'Donnell " pronounced," or rose
in insurrection, in Pampeluna, against the Liberal
and Constitutional Government of Espartero, and
although he had at his disposal a stronger force than
the Captain-General of the province, he dared not
meet him, but shut himself up in the citadel, and
bombarded the town, finally retreating to France.
The comparison between the conduct of the present
Duke of Tetuan on that occasion, and that of Don
Juan Prim in the insurrection of 1866, is certainly
not favourable to the man who has shown himself so
unworthily ready to calumniate an old friend and
comrade to whom he is under great obligations.

OUTWARD CAPE MAIL.—The Union Company's
Cape Royal mail steam ship Norseman, Capt. Ladds, left
Plymouth yesterday morning with the outward mails for
Madeira, Ascension, St. Helena, and the Cape of Good
Hope. She takes out also 73 passengers and a full general
cargo. Among her passengers are Commodore Caldwell,
C. 8., the newly-appointed Commodore at the Cape station,
and family. Her mails consist of 19 sacks letters, 90 sacks
papers, and 18 sacks books.

VOICE OF FISHES.—In a paper on this subject,
addressed to the Academy of Sciences, M. Dufosse
lays down the following propositions :—" The muscles of
certain fishes have the power of producing a vibratory
motion by contraction. The motion is the cause of the
sounds which these fishes emit. The noises which lyre),
umbrince, and hippocampi make are voluntary. The
muscular vibrations which are manifested in the two
latter when young and in a perfectly normal state,
abundantly prove that the vibrations observed
on these species when subjected to vivisection,
are moral and physiological, and not owing to
a secondary nervous action. The variations of
the muscles are strengthened by being transmitted
to a pneumatic bladder, which increases their inten-
sity. Nevertheless some of the acoustic phenomena emitted
by hippocampi are the result of vibrations not intensified
by the bladder; so that here there is an instance of mus-
cular motion producing sounds in a vertebrated
animal without the aid of any organic auxiliary.
In the above species both males and females
have the faculty of emitting sound, and this faculty
is most highly developed in the spawning season." By
establishing the fact that the umbrinie consort in shoals and
are possessed of voice, our author claims to have com-
pleted the evidence which Cuvier had collected to prove
that the species umbrina cyrrhosa is the same as that called
by Aristotle Chromis. He also claims being the first to have
discovered the third vesical membrane in the pneumatic
bladder of the umbrina, which membrane he has also dis-
covered in three different species of Scienoids. Of this
genus, the umbra marina is the only one deserving of the
name of living organ, owing to the form and size of its
vocal apparatus, and the intensity of the noise it produces
when a large number of that species are assembled
together at spawning-time.