One of the most fertile sources of disturbance in the old days of Isabel II. was the presence of the primo sargentos.  These petty officers, having risen from the ranks, and invested with an authority for which they were often quite unsuited, were always ready, for a consideration, to aid the cause of some aspiring politician, now on one side, now on another.  They are now, fortunately, abolished.

The Spanish artillery is a splendid body, and is officered from the best families in the country.  In the only military insurrection in which the common soldiers shot some of the officers obnoxious to them—­that of the Montano Barracks, in 1866—­the leader of the mutinists was a certain hidalgo.  It was the promotion of this man that led indirectly to the abdication of Don Amadeo, who opposed the action.  Indignant at the disgrace to the service, all of the artillery officers in Spain sent in their resignations.  They were accepted, and the primo sargentos raised to the rank of officers to fill their places.  The result was unlimited mutiny among the rank and file and danger to the State.  Some of the young officers who had retained their uniforms, though no longer attached to the corps, finding the troops in utter disorder and revolt, quietly donned their uniforms, went down to the barracks, and gave their orders.  The men instantly fell into the ranks, and the situation was saved.  The primo sargentos were abolished, the officers reinstated.  But Amadeo had had enough; he ceased to attempt to reign constitutionally in a country where the constitution meant only one more form of personal greed and excess.  He was demasiado honesto for the crew he had been called to command, and he left the country to tumble about in its so-called “republican” anarchy until another military pronunciamiento set Alfonso XII. on the throne.  And that has been, fortunately, the last performance of a kind once so common in Spain.

All military men admire the effective corps of light mountain artillery.  The small guns are carried on the backs of the splendid mules for which the Spanish army is famous, and can be taken up any mountain path which these singular animals can climb.  Mules are also used to drag the heavier guns, and must be invaluable in a mountainous country.  The animals are quite as large as ordinary horses, are lithe, active, and literally unhurtable.  I have myself seen a mule, harnessed to a cart which was discharging stones over the edge of a deep pit, when levelling the ground at the end of the Fuente Castellana in Madrid, over-balanced by the weight behind him, fall over, turn a somersault in mid-air, cart and all, and, alighting thirty feet below, shake himself, ponder for a few seconds on the unexpected event in his day’s labour, and then proceed to draw the cart, by this time satisfactorily emptied, out of the pit by the sloping track at the farther side, and continue his task absolutely unhurt and undisturbed.