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Soulé says, "they were an industrious, contented, and numerous class, though, indeed, in intelligence and manly spirit they were little better than the beasts, after all." The Jesuit Father, Venegas, remarks, discouragingly: "It is not easy for Europeans who were never out of their own country to conceive an adequate idea of these people.
When Morelos had given to his lieutenant, Bravo, three hundred of the King's soldiers to be used as a ransom for his father, who was a prisoner in the hands of the Royalists, and when the viceroy, Venegas, scornfully rejected the offer, and ordered his victim to immediate execution, Bravo instantly set at liberty the soldiers: "For I would wish," he said, "to put it out of my own power to avenge on them the death of a parent, lest, in the first moments of grief, the temptation should prove irresistible."
The men who had brought in the officer reported that they had learned that Wilson, with his command of four thousand men, was in the mountains north of the Escurial; and that spies from that officer had ascertained that there was great alarm in Madrid, where the news of the British advance towards Plasencia was already known; and that it was feared that this force, with Cuesta's army at Almaraz and Venegas' army in La Mancha, were about to combine in an attack upon the capital.
On 20 September he was seized while he was working at the great recitative of Manuel Venegas in the first act. He was taken to Dr. Svetlin's private hospital in Vienna, and remained there until January, 1898. Happily he had devoted friends who took care of him and made up for the indifference of the public; for what he had earned himself would not have enabled him even to die in peace.
This, indeed, was Sir Arthur's plan, and had been arranged with the Supreme Junta. The Junta, however, being jealous of Cuesta, had given secret instructions to Venegas to keep aloof. On his arrival at Plasencia, the English general had learned at once the hollowness of the Spanish promises.
As to Venegas, he is a mere tool of the Supreme Junta and, as likely as not, they will order him to do nothing but keep his army intact. "Then again, the delay at Plasencia has upset all Sir Arthur's arrangements.
A Spanish army of 30,000 men, collected by General Venegas, was expected to join the two principal armies. On leaving Madrid, with the forces at his disposal, King Joseph had impressed upon Soult the necessity of attacking the enemy's rear, so that the Anglo-Spanish army might be crushed between superior forces. The marshal announced his departure.
"But I have, certainly, no faith whatever in either Venegas or Cuesta. Cuesta is loyal enough, but he is obstinate and pig headed and, at present, he is furious because the Supreme Junta has been sending all the best troops to Venegas, instead of to him; and he knows, well enough, that that perpetual intriguer Frere is working underhand to get Albuquerque appointed to the supreme command.
Wilson's force had been greatly exaggerated by rumour. Venegas was known to be at last approaching Toledo, and the king feared that one or both of these forces might fall upon Madrid in his absence, and that all his military stores would fall into their hands. He therefore earnestly desired to force the British to retreat, in order that he might hurry back to protect Madrid.
At Christmas his friend Müller sent him some of Michelangelo's poems, translated into German by Walter Robert-Tornow; and Wolf, deeply moved by their beauty, decided at once to devote a whole volume of Lieder to them. In 1897 he composed the first three melodies. At the same time he was also working at a new opera, Manuel Venegas, a poem by Moritz Hoernes, written after the style of Alarcón.
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