is chief historian entitles
him, was a man of high military genius, rigid in discipline, skilful in
administration, and daring in leadership; a stern, grave soldier, to whose
face a smile rarely came except when shots were falling thick around him
and when his staff appeared as if they would have preferred music of a
different kind. To this intrepid chief fear seemed unknown, prudence in
battle unthought of, and so many were his acts of rashness that when a
bullet at length reached him it seemed a miracle that he had escaped so
long. The white charger which he rode became such a mark for the enemy,
from its frequent appearance at the head of a charging troop or in
rallying a body of skirmishers, that all those of a similar color ridden
by members of his staff were successively shot, though his always escaped.
On more than one occasion he brought victory out of doubt, or saved his
little army in retreat, by an act of hare-brained bravery. Such was the
"Uncle Tomas" of the Navarrese, the darling of the mountaineers, the man
who would very likely have brought final victory to their cause had not
death cut him off in the midst of his career.

Few were the adherents of Don Carlos when this able soldier placed himself
at their head,--a feeble remnant hunted like a band of robbers among their
native mountains. When he appeared in 1833, escaping from Madrid, where he
was known as a brave soldier and an opponent of the queen, he found but
the fragment of an insurgent army in Navarre. All he could gather under
his banner were about eight hundred half-armed and undisciplined men,--a
sorry show with which to face an army of over one hundred and twenty
thousand men, many of them veterans of the recent wars. These were thrown
in successive waves against Uncle Tomas and his handful of followers,
reinforcement following reinforcement, general succeeding general, even
the redoubtable Mina among them, each with a new plan to crush the Carlist
chief, yet each disastrously failing.

Beginning with eight hundred badly armed peasants and fourteen horses, the
gallant leader had at the time of his death a force of twenty-eight
thousand well-organized and disciplined infantry and eight hundred
horsemen, with twenty-eight pieces of artillery and twelve thousand spare
muskets, all won by his good sword from the foe,--his arsenal being, as he
expressed it, "in the ranks of the enemy." During these two years of
incessant war more than fifty thousan