The Sun.
London, England, 1866-01-17 00:00:00

dering that immediately upon the expected infant
coming into the world there should be ringing of
bells, salvoes of artillery, &c., and dir.(., ing her
" much beloved and august consort" (E' Re mi au-
gusto, nti mug (mad() oposo) to pre.3!nt the new-
born to the foreign Diplomatic Core :.; and to all the
assembled company.

By a more recent decree, her Majesty authorises
the same " much beloved and august Consort" to
confer, after baptism, on the new-born child, if it
be an Infante,•the Order of the Golden Fleece and
the Grand Crosses of Charles 111., of Isabel La
Catolica, and of St. John of Jerusalem, and if it
be an infanta the Band of the Noble Ladies of the
Queen Maria Luisa.

JANUARY 13.

"The insurrection," as we are assured by the of-
ficial organs, " may be looked upon as thoroughly
at an end." They add that "the rebels who were
led by Prim have continued their disastrous march
as far as Valdelusillos, where they slept the night
of the 11th." Valdelusillos is a small place about 13
leagues from Toledo. " They have, therefore,"
say the same papers, "abandoned the road of El
Horcajo, which is extremely difficult, and are ad-
vancing with forced marches upon Trujillo, appa-
rently with a view to cross the frontier as soon as
they can."
You will observe that the bulletin talks of the
"insurgents who were led by Prim," insinuating
that Prim is no longer at their head, either because
he is ill or because he has forsaken his followers.
The report of Prim's illness did, in fact, circulate
about town yesterday.
More recent intelligence has been published to the
effect that the rebels passed yesterday through
Aldeanueva, at 16 kilometres' distance from Puente
del Arzobispo. Unable to reach the Tagus, it is
added, it is likely that they will make for Puerto de
San Vincente and Sierra de Guadalupe, to enter the
valley of the Guadiana. In this case the Zabala
division would be advantageously situated to close
the way against them, while that of Gen. Echague
would be close on the track of them. From all this
rigmarole it may be inferred that the movements of
the insurgents have as completely bewildered their
pursuers as their reports strive to hoodwink and
mystify the readers.
A gentleman who has grown old in Spain, and
has acquired a surprising experience of the affairs
of this singular country, warned me on my first
arrival against the imprudence not only of believing
what I was told, but even of trusting the evidence
of my own senses, for " things are not what they
seem in Spain. All that you are witnessing here,"
my friend continued, " is but a vast play of thimble-
rig. The cups are raised before you openly enough.
Aye ! but where is the pea ?"
Well, I owe the gentleman this justice—that his
shrewdness has seldom, if ever, been at fault. From
the beginning he expressed his suspicions about
some collusion between Prim and the Government.
Of course, I laughed at this, and asked if Prim would
carry the joke so far as to allow himself to be taken
and shot; but my friend stoutly contended that
there would be no taking and no shooting, and,
what was more, no fighting in the affair.
There is not a little, certainly, in the movements
and conduct of both parties that admits of no easy
explanation. The slowness of Zabala's march, the
evident unwillingness of Prim himself to attack
either Zabala at Tembleque, or Concha at Daimiel,
the zealous hurry of this latter in volunteering his
services, his offensive bravado, and the sudden dis-
appearance, not only of himself, but of his column
from the scene of action, his lame and contradictory
disavowal of his blundering proclamation, and the
enormous praises bestowed by the Government on
his barren achievements, may well induce the least
suspicious to suspect foul play in the whole trans-
action.

The conjectures ventured upon by thinking men
are endless. Those who incline to believe in a secret
understanding between Prim and O'Donnell imagine
that the object of the latter was, and is, to frighten
the Queen and to lead her to that abdication'which
he was charged with attempting to force upon her
at La Granja. Their strongest arguments in this
surmise rest upon the facts that an encounter has
been carefully avoided by both parties, that the
blundering Concha, who was probably in earnest
and not in the secret, has been brusquely recalled,
and then patted on the back to soothe his wounded
amour propre ; and, finally, that the sergeants ar-
rested at the Pueblo's office and threatened to be shot
have been, like most other prisoners in this affair,
suffered to break from prison. There is no lack of
men of this way of thinking who stoutly tell yeu
that Prim and 'cabala, with the officers of their re-
spective staffs, have had a friendly dinner together
when about to meet at Madridejos.

Those, on the contrary, who look upon Prim and
O'Donnell as bona fide enemies suspect that the in-
surrectionary movement was contrived by Queen
Christina, possibly with the connivance of Queen Isa-
bella herself, but certainlywith the knowledge and con-
sent of Espartero, and of all those Progresistas who,
as you may remember, were said to be meditating
some such movement weeks ago, when the Queen-
Mother's journey to Madrid was first announced.
The object of Prim and of this extensive association
would be to emancipate the Queen from the thral-
dom of O'Donnell and inaugurate a Liberal Govern-
ment, of which the clever Queen Christina should
be the soul. That Prim's attempt relies on the sup-
' port of a " vast conspiracy" we have learnt from
the words of O'Donnell and his colleague at the
Home-office. We know, besides, that large funds
said to be from Paris, have been and are supplied
in support of an enterprise which without such aid
would long since have succumbed. I am aware of
officers s ho have been tempted to join the insur-
gents by heavy bribes. The offer of £9OO in cash
was made to one to help him to pay his debts, coupled
with the promise of £9OO to be handed to him on
the enterprise turning out successful. Even private
soldiers, to my knowledge, have been plied with the
promise of £6O at the end of the war, and a remis-
sion of two years of their time of service. Suspi-
cious to that effect are also roused by the fact that
both at Madrid and Barcelona notorious characters
mixed up with all revolutionary schemes, barricade
builders for the Seine, and runaway de'portes from
Cayenne have been and are seen prowling about the
streets. People whose conjectures take that direc-
tionlay great stress upon the fact that Prim, although
now and then visible at the head of his troops, fre-
quently also disappears, and is periodically absent.
There are men in Madrid who stoutly contend that
Prim was here, ai;al had an interview with the Queen
at the Palace on Monday last, the Bth. There are
others who are sure that an incessant correspon-
dence is kept up between the Court and Log-rono ;
between the Queen at Madrid, the Queen at Paris,
and the old Duke de la Victoria. They, at any
rate, insist on the fact that the Queen firmly with-
holds her signature by which O'Donnell would have
her declare Prim as fallen from his rank and honours,
and branded as a traitor.
I have briefly summed up all these strange fancies
with which men's brains are swarming about me, not
because I believe that any importance should be at-
tached to them, not because I do not look upon
them as egregiously absurd, but because the affair
of Prim's insurrection involves not a little mystery,
and there certainly is more in it than meets the eye.
That we have been now ten days in a state of siege
is a fact of which we have ocular evidence, and,
although O'Donnell promised we should be rid of it
at the end of two days, not only does it continue in
all its vigour, but it assumes every day a more
aggravated and threatening character.
On the Gth inst. I met in the Calle del Arsenal a
IZand. state carriage, drawn by six horses highly
yarlaened, and accompanied by a number of run-
ning footmen in gorgeous livery, preceded and fol-
lowed by a glittering escort. That coach conveyed
to the most excellent Dowager Duchess de Hijar,
Mistress of the Itobes of the Most Holy Virgin of
Atocha, the dress which, according to custom, her
Majesty sends as a present to the said Most Holy
Virgin on the occasion of her entrance into the
centninthm gownontohf of
moire
her
antique,pre gn ancy.
roue-coloured wnltfrielmgit imhified-
with magnificent blonde, and tufts of green,
and marabouts. Likewise a green court mantleeorsf
sea-green moire antique, also trimmed with blonde
and tufts of green and rose feathers and marabouts.
While she is so liberal to the miraculous image, the
Queen herself humbly and devoutly puts on Sor
Patrocinio's cast-off chemises.