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Untitled Article
perious authority , both on and off duty , over their subaltern officers ; which on many occasions would have been ludicrous , had it not so often placed the weaker party in a painful position . Court Martials , Courts of Inquiries , and placingone another under
arrest at Breviesca and Vitoria , seemed to be the principal business of the Legion . Hence , before the end of December 1835 , upwards of fifty officers resigned their commissions , and General Evans , to check a contagion which almost threatened the disorganization of the Legion , issued the following General Order : —
" G . O . « Head Quarters , Vitoria , " December 7 , 1836 . " Officers who have resigned their Commissions , or who have been dismissed from their Regiments or Departments , are not entitled to receive rations after their resignations or removals have been notified in General Orders .
" Passages to England in vessels employed for the service of the British Auxiliary Legion are not to be allowed to such officers , unless directions be received from Head Quarters to that effect . " That any officers should be refused rations , and a free passage to England in such vessels as were in the employment of the
British Legion , while the Spanish Government was at the same time indebted to them considerable arrears of pay , was a manifest , a gross injustice ; it was throwing them , without resources , beggars on the shores of a foreign country . The brother-inlaw of General Evans , Colonel Arbuthnot , the Commandant at
Santander , gave a sort of coup de grace to the principle of this order , for he posted a notice against the portals of his own door , to the effect that such officers as were anxious to return to England , might have a free passage , provided ( mark the condition ) they signed a paper , previous to embarkation ,
relinquishing all future claims on the Spanish Government . This nefarious compromise was of course only had recourse to as a dernier resort by such officers a 8 were reduced to the most abject extremity of want , and were obliged to quit the country at any sacrifice .
On the 2 d of December , 1835 , the British Legion arrived in Vitoria . " Hail to the brave English , who fight for the liberty of nations V * was the motto suspended over the gates of the town to welcome its arrival . It would have been far more appropriate had the inscription of Dante over the entrance into the Infernal Reerions been substituted in its stead . Who that
passed the January , February , and March of 1836 in that city of the plague , can ever forget the miseries they had to endure - —the honors they were doomed to encounter ? How many gallant and Enterprising young men within those few months died , fever * strickfcn , in the most agonizing condition of neglect
Untitled Article
The Civil War in Spain . 109
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), April 1, 1837, page 199, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1830/page/9/
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