SPANIARDS CONFEDERATES

In May 1849, the Carlist army in Spain was overthrown by the Liberalists, and at least 8,000 Spanish Carlist soldiers, many of them accompanied by their wives and children, were exiled to France, a country along with England which was friendly towards the Carlists.

A few years later, the American Civil War began, with France and England helping in the South, those exiled soldiers embarked on a new fight for their ideals in a foreign country, travelling with English and French to America to fight for General Lee.

It is impossible to discover the names of these soldiers, as the victors burned all the files, and in French files there is no record of the names of these soldiers, just a generic reference such as Spanish war refugees.

These Spanish soldiers travelled with the English and French to the Confederacy, but history has them catalogued as anonymous, and this is the reason why we speak of “Hispanic Confederates” and not “Spaniards Confederates”.

It is ironic, to think that the “War Cry” of these soldiers was: “BEFORE GOD, YOU WILL NEVER BE AN ANONYMOUS HERO”.

Never let me hear the blood of the brave has been shed in vain. NO, I'sends a cry down trough all time

David Odalric Caixal i Mata gives us a neat account of military uniforms and actions, but the most unexpected information in his article is that many Spanish Carlists fought with French volunteers, spiritual sons of Vendeano soldiers, who emigrated to America due to the official, anti-catholic politics of the revolutionary and liberal III Republic. This is reminiscent of the heroic deed of that other transatlantic Spaniard, the illustrious and very catholic Santiago de Liniers, of Vendean blood, facing the liberal rabble of Ribadavia and Sarmiento in Argentina. Like the intimate union between France and Castile in the Middle Ages, against the secular Muslim enemy. This shows that France is a formidable ally of Spain when the common ethos is inspired by the Holy and True Catholic Religion. And a declared enemy when considering the national-Galicanism and pro-Muslim projects the most important of its politics. Furthermore, many Carlists were politically active with the arch-famous “Louisiana Tigers”, the most decorated, brave and valiant division of the Yankee War of Aggression, formed mostly by Irish volunteers. Of these, on the day of his surrender in front of his own North Virginian army, General Robert E. Lee with tears in his eyes said, that if all his soldiers had been like them, then victory would have fallen to the Confederates a long time before. This is not strange, Celtic Spanish heritage is often refused, and it is known that Irish, Scottish, French from the west and towns on the Celtic-Iberian Peninsula are among the fiercest warriors in the world, at least historically (I do not know if this dictum is now applicable). In the same way, discipline and the power to cope with suffering of Germanic soldiers makes theirs excellent troops.

“The heroic participation of Spanish Carlists with Confederate troops in the American Civil War, made Jefferson Davis award them North American citizenship and give direct command to Echegaray.”

The Spanish General Echegaray, commanded a body of Carlist troops: the confederated squads of the Tennessee Second Division. Echegaray made a heroic victory over the federals in West Woods, to go on and die in different campaign action, where they gallantly faced armies ten times bigger in size, which is recorded in southern military history annals.

It is worth commenting on the impression left by Carlist volunteers who joined the Northern Virginia Army. Many of these were soldiers in the legendary Zumalacárregui Brigade, and when on the verge of bringing down the liberal anti.-Catholic government in Madrid, the confederate General, Ambrose P. Hill, said: “My rough, tattered and brave lions of Providence…” It seems that these old, veteran soldiers from the Spanish mountains fought on American land, with their red berets, side by side with confederate soldiers. These heirs of the Zumalacárregui Brigade were the ones who achieved the epic seizure of Malvern Hill, after this, Carlists were always given special treatment in the Confederacy Army, and were always under the command of a Spaniard, never again a foreign officer.

Another Carlist episode on American ground was defending and slowing down of the Second Federal Division, the 89^th Regiments from Illinois and the 32^nd and 39^th from Indiana, under the command of General August Willich (a revolutionary criminal who we will speak about one day), in Harpers Ferry. The 35^th Regiment from the Tennessee Carlist militia – which had already been re-christened with the imperial name of “New Spain Regiment”, as the Viceroyalty to which these territories belonged to originally – stopped federal troops advancing, allowing the march of the 19^th Arkansas, which allowed General Lee, who also commanded Carlist militia troops, to inflict a severe defeat on General McLellan. Casualties from traditionalist Spanish troops, especially fusiliers from Navarra (the 41^st from Tennessee), were really high.

In 1863, another Regiment, (Los Husares del Maestrazgo, Espada Calavera y Olivo) The Hussars of the Maestrazgo (Skull, Sword and Olive) entered in combat,

they brought with them the distant echo from the Maestrazgo region, where the Carlists had fiercely fought against liberal troops, and had inflicted severe defeats on anti-catholic-masonic-liberal excrement, to the point of generating a parallel, completely autonomous state in these regions, which did not require Madrid liberal (un)government at all.

But, here, at last we stop writing, so as not to be too assiduous. We still have the heroic achievements at Burnside bridge by Carlist captains Urairte, Puig and Alfaro. Like the full honours dispensed to soldiers at the Antietam National Cemetery

Cabrera, Ramón [b. Dec. 27, 1806, Tortosa, Spain; d. May 24, 1877, London] in full RAMON CABRERA Y GRINO, influential Spanish Carlist general and later one of the party's most controversial figures... After the death (1833) of Ferdinand VII, those who supported the claim to the throne of Ferdinand's brother, Don Carlos, against that of Ferdinand's daughter, Queen Isabella II, rose in rebellion; Cabrera became a leading insurgent, soon dominating the Carlist bands in Catalonia and inspiring terror by his relentless cruelty, which rose to a climax after the liberals shot his mother (1836). He gained several notable victories, including that of Morella -Maestrazgo (1838), for which he was created Count de Morella. Cabrera refused to recognize the Convention of Vergara (1839), which ended the war in the Basque provinces, but in 1840 was driven with 10,000 soldiers over the French border.

An article taken from the “Information Now” Carlist magazine (number 66, Nov. to Dec. 2003). The title is “Carlists in the American Civil War”, 1861-1865, signed by the military historian David Odalric.

A profound connection between those who defended traditional order

In this article, a story which is not well-known enough, has been dug out, and to what we already believe, adds: there is a tie between Spanish Carlists, Portuguese Miguelists, Mexican Christians, Italian Southerners, Cavaliers from the English Civil War, North American Confederates and some other group which I will not mention. But lets look at those Carlists, recycled as “Rebels”.

Figures and causes for Carlist support to the Confederacy

Many Carlists, between 4,000 and 7,000 according to records, joined the confederate troops at the beginning of the Yankee War of Aggression. This figure could possibly be higher, given that other contingents joined the conflict in the middle and indeed towards the end of the Yankee War of Aggression.

This affinity was logical: defending traditional, agrarian order, defending the rights of the states, decentralization and subsidiarity, acknowledging intermediary bodies, refusing a universal neognostic experiment which the federals and their wretched sectional party – the republicans – had carried out to the letter, and that Father Castellani did not hesitate in describing as the “Last Empire, that of the Anti-Christ” etc. And, furthermore did not oppose the Catholics, as had happened so many other times in this part of hell, the north-east of the United States.

Add to this, the interest at the time – which was argued about in Confederate Parliament in Richmond, Virginia – proclaiming the Confederacy a Christian Republic, where all the laws would have to be in accordance with God’s commandments.

It was logical then, that exiled Spanish Carlists felt more inclined to embrace this cause.

Slavery as the cause of the Yankee War of Aggression is a fallacy

Spanish Carlists, like the good Catholics they were, felt profound aversion for the institution of slavery, “the institution of dishonour” as Popes had secularly named it.

Feeling the same aversion were General Robert E. Lee, or President Jefferson Davis, who had given their slaves freedom during the years preceding the Yankee War, different from that wicked individual known as Abraham Lincoln, who gave slaves freedom in those territories not controlled by the military, but not in the Yankee area which he presided over. Some were so addicted to slavery “protectors of slaves”, that the alcoholic (later seemingly rehabilitated), war criminal Ulysses Grant, General and later President of the United States, still continued with his private slaves in 1866, when freedom had already been granted to all blacks, not only in the occupied South, but also in the North. He is however, not the only North American President reputed to have problems with alcohol, and was later more infamous as a war criminal.

But, now is not the time to talk about the fallacies of slavery and all its propaganda, especially when almost all slave trading in north America was centralized in the state known as Rhode Island, which as the whole world “knows”, was southern and confederated, and 100% of the ships dedicated to the slave trade were registered in the states of New England, and in the hands of the Yankees.

The Confederated ethos was too close to the Carlist ethos, too close to resist the call to defend it:

“The virtues more praised (in the Confederacy) were not those of the world of commerce but those of the landed gentry of the Old World and the vanished age of chivalry – not efficiency, shrewdness and aggressiveness but honour, generosity and good manners. By and large, the leading Southerners found their models in the past, while the Northerners looked forward to a new age of business and boundless progress.” (Dumas Malone & Basil Rauch, Crisis of the Union).

And if Carlism had pointed out with the strength of Saint Tomas de Aquino that passive virtues were superior to active ones, and that contemplation was the highest form of human activity, the Confederates would have discovered something similar via natural rights. Both preconceived a way of life where the basis is not fighting tooth and nail to make a profit: “The life of the South was leisurely and unhurried for the planter, the yeoman, or the landless tenant. It was a way of life, not a routine of planting and reaping merely for gain.” (Frank L. Owsley & John C. Ransom, The Ideal of an Agrarian Society)

Both Carlism and the Confederacy were fed up, distant from this corruption for and of usury, which had permeated Yankee puritans so much, and ended up infecting the whole world, thanks to North American amplifying machinery. In the purest, most platonic Aristotelian style, both conceptions gave great importance to their wise men and warriors, who they considered to be intrinsically superior to producers, just like in every healthy society:

“Southern aristocrats inherited an appreciation for the military spirit and a sense of chivalry from the authentic European nobility. Jaher writes: ‘Southern patricians shared with the European gentry and nobility an inclination for military training, a legacy of the age of chivalry notably absent in northern and western urban commercial elites… In accord with the European aristocratic tradition, southerners constituted a majority of the cavalry officers.’” (Nobility and Analogous Traditional Elites)

Those Carlists, persecuted in their Spanish birthplace to the point of exile, never wavered in their generous endeavour for a just cause. And when the Confederacy, after more than 25 years, or maybe even almost a century of fighting to stop oppression, pillaging and usury of the centralist, Jacobin, liberal and tyrannical North from every political happening, as reflected by authors such as Patrick Henry, John Randolph of Ronoake or Calhouin, among others, taking up in arms as a last resort for survival, the Carlists joined Confederated forces.

In that wretched five year period between 1858 – 1863, Spain fell to the Liberals, whose inclination towards declared secret enemy societies of the Catholic Church and pillaging, were extremely well-known, and history shows how Confiscation or the killing of Priests was carried out in Madrid in 1830. For many Spanish Carlists, especially those from the Basque country and Catalonia, who had fought in the Second Carlist War, known as the “War of Matiners” in the Principality of Catalonia, the situation became untenable.

The Carlist contingency who emigrated to the Confederation were mostly Catalonian, Valencian, from Navarre and Basque, Hispanic regions where the war was particularly violent. Entire Spanish families, including women, children and the elderly, set foot on the very territory, which once belonged to the Spanish Empire, Texas, Louisiana, Florida and other southern states. These were territories and people who had already been bought by blood for our Holy Religion and the Church, like Father Juan Padilla at the beginning of the XVI century and tortured in what is nowadays the state of Kansas.

A foretaste for our readers who have already downloaded material recently to make a new entry for A Casa de Sarto, on the Confederacy and the Catholic Church. The present situation, which shows unequivocal loyalty by the Carlists to the South, and the other one which is warped, both show that catholic orthodoxy was much closer to the Confederacy than the filthy, disgusting Yankees.

Not in vain, did the Holy Father, Pio IX, a profound expert on the tragedy which adheres to humanity, describe in private correspondence to Lincoln of “tyrants and usurpers”, as he wrote to New York and New Orleans Cardinals.

During Confederate President Jefferson Davis’ imprisonment following the defeat of the Confederacy, Pope Pius IX sent a picture of himself to Davis with the hand-written inscription: “Come unto me, all ye who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” Along with this picture, the pope sent a crown of thorns which he had woven with his own hands. Such a gift, said a great niece, was "never before conferred on any but crowned heads." Robert E. Lee, pointing to his own portrait of Pius IX, told a visitor that he was "the only sovereign…in Europe who recognized our poor Confederacy."

The Carlist Wars in Spain were the last major European civil wars in which pretenders fought to establish their claim to a throne. Several times during the period from 1833 to 1876 the Carlists -- followers of Carlos and his descendants - rallied to the cry of "God, Country, and King" and fought for the cause of Spanish tradition (Absolutism and Catholicism) against the liberalism, and later the republicanism, of the Spanish governments of the day. When Ferdinand VII of Spain died in 1833, his fourth wife Maria Cristina became Queen regent on behalf of their infant daughter Isabella II. This splintered the country into two factions known as the Cristinos (or Isabelinos) and the Carlists. The Cristinos were the supporters of the Queen Regent and her government. The Carlists were the supporters of Carlos, a pretender to the throne and brother of the deceased Ferdinand VII, who denied the validity of the Pragmatic Sanction that abolished the Salic Law. The First Carlist War lasted over seven years and the fighting spanned most of the country at one time or another, although the main conflict centered on the Carlist homelands of the Basque Country and Aragon. Queen Isabella II was overthrown by a conspiracy of liberal generals in 1868, and left Spain in some disgrace. The generals replaced her with Amadeo, the Duke of Aosta (and second son of King Victor Emmanuel of Italy), Then when the Spanish elections of 1872 resulted in government violence against Carlist candidates and a swing away from the Carlists, the Carlist pretender, Carlos VII, decided that only force of arms could win him the throne. The Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) was considered by the Carlists as yet another crusade against secularism. In spite of the victory of their side, General Franco frustrated the pretensions of the Carlist monarchism and subsumed their militias into the Nationalist army and their political party into his National Movement.

Historiador colaborador del Instituto de Historia y Cultura Militar del Ejército.
Historiador colaborador Foundation Ecole Militaire de Saint-Cyr.
Historiador colaborador US Army Military History Institute.
Historiador colaborador The Strategic Studies Institute of the Army War College.
Historiador colaborador del Aula de Cultura de Defensa.
Historiador Colaborador del Museo Nacional Militar del Dia-D (Universidad de Nueva Orleans-EEUU).
Miembro de la Real Hermandad de Veteranos de las Fuerzas Armadas y Guardia Civil.

Among the most colorful Confederate officers was Scottish-born Karl F. Henningsen, of Swedish family origins. 1834, being only 19 years old, he started his military career as both an idealist and warrior: he went to Spain and joined the Carlist troops to fight the Liberal government of Queen Isabel II. Serving in the cavalry of General Zumalacárregui he became a Captain and took part in several mayor battles. He was present at the signing of the Lord Elliot Convention of 1835, being the British diplomat astonished to find a compatriot among the Carlistas. After a time at home he travelled again to Spain to join the Carlist Army again, this time he earned the commission of a Lieutenat-colonel.

After the death of Zumalacárregui he went back to Britain. There he wrote extensively in defense of the Carlist Movement and arguing British neutrality in that Spanish conflict. 1836 his first book was published in London: "The most striking events of a twelvemonth´s campaign with Zumalacarregui in Navarre and the Basque Provinces". The book became a bestseller and was translated into several languages, including German, French, Italian and Spanish. In Britain the book caused much controversy because of its defense of Carlism and the glorifying of General Zumalacárregui.

After the Carlist War, Henningsen got involved in several other wars, including uprisings against Russia in Circassia and against Austria in Hungary (the Kossuth rebellion of 1849). After losing in this causes, 1851 he travelled to America. In 1856 he joined the William Walker expedition to Nicaragua, was appointed a Major-general and given command over Walker’s artillery. Henningsen fought several mayor battles in Nicaragua against Central American forces, including troops from El Salvador and Guatemala. After those tumultuous times, he seemed to retire in the USA. He got married to a niece of John M. Berrien, U.S. Senator from Georgia and his father-in-law brought him the spirit of the South close to the heart. In 1860 he exchanged open letters in the London Times with famed French liberal author Victor Hugo regarding the execution of John Brown after Harper’s Ferry, 1859.
Most naturally, in 1861 he chose to do battle for the Confederacy. Being his military skills and experience most valuable, he was made Brigadier-general within a year. During Burnside’s North Carolina Expedition in February 1862 he took part in the defense of Elizabeth City, but when learned of the destruction of the Confederate naval task force and the surrender of the Cobb's Point coastal battery, Confederate troops retreating from Roanoke Island set fires in Elizabeth City, acting under orders from Brig. Gen. Henry A. Wise to destroy the town. Later in 1862 Henningsen took part in planning the artillery defenses of Richmond.

After the WBTS he took residence in Washington D.C. and worked in filibustering to release the island of Cuba from Spanish rule. A restless spirit, always seeking adventure and a self-chosen Cause to defend, Karl F. Henningsen died June 14, 1877. In an obituary he is described as a “man of striking appearance, being tall, erect, and soldier-like in his bearing. He was gentleman of scholarly attainments, and spoke the French, Spanish, Russian, German, and Italian languages with the fluency of a native. He died without ever winning any of the causes for which he fought.