Some Passages in the Life of a Carlist General.

No braver soldier or humbler Christian ever gave his soul to GOD than the Carlist General Lizarraga, who died on the 7th of last December, after a life which reads more like a page of the annals of chivalry than a record of the nineteenth century. Such a combination of ardent piety and dashing, almost reckless gallantry; of childlike faith and manly fortitude, would have been more at home, one thinks, in the ranks of St. Louis or Du Guesclin than in a modern civil war; but "the souls of the just are in the hand of GOD," and He gives them their work in that time and place where their life is most for His glory and its lesson most full of teaching to their fellow-men.

Don Antonio Lizarraga y Esquiroz was born at Pampeluna in 1816, of good Christian parents, who were careful, above all things, of his faith and morals. From his childhood he had a strong devotion to the great Saint of whose conversion his birthplace was the scene; and, like him, he embraced with passionate enthusiasm, when a mere boy, the profession of arms. He entered the Carlist army, and fought with signal bravery under Zumalacarregui. When the cause was betrayed and all hope seemed lost, he retired into France, his rank being that of lieutenant in the Guides of Navarre. After much thought, and taking counsel with his friends, Antonio resolved on entering the army of the Government, which willingly accepted the brilliant young soldier and acknowledged his rank. He went through a martyrdom of persecution at the hands of his commanding officer and his comrades on account of his piety, but his men were devoted to el santo, as they called him. Even

those who laughed at his prayers were forced to own that he was a "very slave of discipline," and that his soldiers were as remarkable for attention to their military duties as for good morals and piety. He was especially successful in curing them of swearing, a good work in which he was helped and encouraged by Mgr. Caixal, the present Bishop of Urgel, who supplied the young officer with tracts for the men. When the Revolution broke out in 1868 Lizarraga saved the life of the Captain-General of Catalonia at the risk of his own; in spite of which he was the subject of a series of misrepresentations and calumnies, which induced him at last to demand his congé; and convinced by experience that the only hope for Spain lay in a return to the legitimate monarchy, and, it may be added, to the faith of her fathers, he offered his services to Don Carlos. From that day he was first in every Carlist movement, and distinguished in all the principal battles of the civil war; and his life henceforth was a succession of events and actions so striking that his enemies were among his admirers. One who knew him well said: "Lizarraga was the very man meant by those words of our Lord, Whosoever shall say to this mountain, Be thou removed, and be cast into the sea, and shall not stagger in his heart, but believe that whatsoever he saith shall be done, it shall be done." In 1872, when once more the Carlist cause seemed crushed, he again made his way into France in a state of literal destitution. Perfectly calm, and full of confidence in the Providence of GOD, he went into the Cathedral of Bayonne, and, kneeling down before our Lady's altar, told his story in all simplicity, like a child to his mother. "She is better than all the banks in the world," he used to say, and indeed, he had no sooner left the Cathedral than he met the Count M-, who, without knowing what a pass the General's affairs had reached, offered him, out of friendship, a sum of money, of which he accepted only as much as he thought absolutely needful.

Early in 1873 another rising seemed possible, and

Lizarraga returned to Spain. He had a narrow escape from the hands of the police, whom he eluded for the second time. Disguised as a bent and infirm old man, wearing green spectacles, and leaning on the arm of a friend, he went to the railway station, passed through gendarmes and custom-house officers who were on the watch for him, and arrived safely at the place of rendezvous where three hundred partisans were to meet him. He found seven! One cannot help thinking of "Teresa and a son are not much; but Teresa, a son, and GOD are everything." So it was with the General and His seven friends. They had but one hundred and twenty-five francs among them, but "the mountain was cast into the sea," and four months later the hero had joined General Ollo, fought a great battle, seized the Liberal column of Navarre, and thereby won the day. It seemed a hopeless struggle: the Carlist soldiers were few and badly mounted, and surrounded by the enemy's cavalry; but Lizarraga inspired them by crying in the strong, thrilling voice which one of his men said "he always had in his ears :" "Now, my lads, our lives for GOD!" and the victory was theirs. Another three months, and he had carried Mondragon by storm, and reduced the province to submission; soldiers crowded into his ranks; he had two immense arsenals, a cannon foundry, and several powder-mills at his disposal; and levied the necessary impost in a way which the Liberals acknowledged to be wise and just. The Liberal General, Loma, who was master of thirty-seven fortified towns at the beginning of the campaign, had lost all but seven. It was said by St. Jerome: "Not Peter, but Peter's faith walked on the waters." Such a faith was Lizarraga's, the quid divinum which makes heroes of simple men.

It was at the beginning of this brilliant campaign that Lizarraga had forced an entrance into the city of Elgoibar, and levied contributions in the name of Don Carlos the Seventh. The papers were full of the exploits of the famous Carlist general, who had only been four-and-twenty

days back in Spain, who had penetrated into Guipuzcoa, at what point no one knew, raised the country and found arms no one could guess where, and appeared—how was a mystery at the head of a battalion in the town of Elgoibar, at the distance of but two kilometres from Eibar, which was garrisoned by a thousand men. And a week later he had joined General Ollo with his Navarrese, attacked the town of Azpeitia, and carried off arms and ammunition in plenty. And now the feast of the Purification was come, and the hero was lying struck down by fever in the hospital of Elgoibar; the Carlists were in consternation, the Liberals triumphant; their plan was arranged, and after High Mass Lizarraga was to be arrested. He had fallen sick directly after the affair of Azpeitia, and Ollo was obliged to leave him, in the hands too of a Liberal doctor. It was not always easy to find one of reactionary principles. Many were the prayers at Mass that day for the gallant soldier, whose life was doubly threatened, and every Carlist heart sank when it became known that the police had found out his hiding-place. The national guards entered the hospital, searched it from garret to basement, opened all the doors, examined all the beds, but without success. Yet the general was there all the time. The good Sisters of Charity had hit upon a plan for saving the life of the Christian hero in their charge. They hastily moved the general into a small room opening out of one of the wards, lighted candles, put a crucifix into his hand and a book of devotion into those of his aides-decamp Najera and Ponce de Leon, who occupied two other beds in the same room, and waited the event. "Whom have you got here?" said the head of the detachment of police. "You can come in and see if you like," was the quiet answer; "the poor man is in his agony." "Let him die in peace then ;" and they passed on. Perhaps the Sisters were not far wrong in thinking that there was something more than natural in the affair, for it certainly seems wonderful that their simple ruse was so entirely

successful. As the police left the room, one of the party, thinking a little looting by the way allowable, was carrying off some of the general's linen, which would have told everything, but one of the persons present, a servant of the hospital, had the presence of mind to claim it as his own. Means were found to transport the general to a fresh hiding-place, and a month later he was in the field, and the national guards were listening with the best grace they could assume to the story of the coup manqué which the Carlists of Elgoibar were willing enough to tell. At the end of this annus mirabilis Lizarraga was at the head of eight battalions, with their due quota of cavalry and artillery, all well trained and perfectly equipped. His soldiers said their rosary every day, and afterwards sang the popular hymn of St. Ignatius in the Basque language. He himself heard Mass daily. Of course his enemies sneer at this "exaggerated piety," but they are forced to own that he was a worthy officer of the famous Zumalacarregui, and that there was no greater enthusiast in his profession than the dévot they laughed at-behind his back.

His activity was prodigious; in everything he was first, and everything in turn claimed his attention. It was he who organized the party which received the King at Zugaramundi; it was he who literally made the artillery corps, who cast the cannon with the royal cipher, who set on foot the ambulance service, the telegraph service, the system of military signals, the postal service, the factories of arms and ammunition, and a hundred other things, either rendered necessary by the state of affairs in Spain, or desirable for the moral and material good of the people. And all this foresight, prudence, and administrative talent were in the man who was so in love with danger and adventure that his bravery might have been recklessness had he been a less perfect Christian.

His humility was as great as his courage and his faith. The necessities of the times did not allow Carlos to leave him long in the province of Guipuzcoa, which he had won