The intervention of Angouleme followed in 1823. The Army was
composed of liberal officers, but it contained no troops, so that all
they ever did was to retire before the enemy, as he was more numerous
and more powerful.
The Spanish cause in America was hopeless before the fighting began. The
land was enormous, troops were few, and in large measure composed of
Indians. What the English were never able to do in the fulness of their
power, was not to be accomplished by Spaniards in their decadence. Our
First Civil War, which was fierce, terrible, and waged without quarter,
called into being a valorous liberal army, and soldiers sprang up of the
calibre of Espartero, Zurbano and Narvaez, but simultaneously a powerful
Carlist army was organized under leaders of military genius, such as
Zumalacarregui and Cabrera. Victory for either side was impossible, and
the war ended in compromise.
The Second Civil War also resulted in a system of pacts and compromises
far more secret than the Convention of Vergara. The Cuban war and the
war in the Philippines, as afterwards the war with the United States,
were calamitous, while the present campaign in Morocco has not one
redeeming feature.
From the War of the French Revolution to this very day, the African War
has been the only one in which our forces have met with the slightest
success.
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