The massacre of friars in Madrid in 1834 was an anti-clerical riot that took place on July 17, 1834, in the capital of Spain during the regency of Maria Cristina and the first Carlist war (1833-1840) in which several convents in the center of Madrid were assaulted and 73 friars were killed and 11 were wounded, because of the rumor that spread through the city that the cholera epidemic that had been ravaging the city since the end of June and that had worsened on July 15 had occurred because "the water in the public fountains had been poisoned by the friars". "The result of little more than twelve hours of violence" was a "party of blood and vengeance". According to one author, "It was the first time that the Church had been subjected to the uncontrolled actions of its own believers. As contemporaries observed, these events demonstrated, above all, the loss of prestige of the religious in Catholic Spain, as was happening in other countries".
Background
In April 1834 the regent María Cristina de Borbón-Dos Sicilias promulgated the Royal Statute, a kind of granted charter by which she intended to gain the support of the liberals for the cause of her daughter, the future Isabella II, who was then four years old, and whose inheritance rights had not been recognized by the Carlists, the supporters of the brother of the recently deceased King Ferdinand VII, Carlos María Isidro de Borbón, who did not accept the Pragmatic Sanction of 1830 that abolished the Salic Law that did not allow women to reign, so he lost his rights to the throne in favor of his brother's daughter. After the death of Ferdinand VII, at the end of September 1833, the succession dispute led to a civil war, the first Carlist war, which soon became a political and ideological conflict, between those in favor of maintaining the Old Regime, the absolutists who mostly supported Don Carlos -the "Carlists"-, and the defenders of a more or less radical change towards a "new regime", who defended the rights to the throne of Isabella II, for which they were called "Isabelinos" or "cristinos", after the name of the regent. Among the supporters of the "Carlists" were most of the members of the religious orders who, besides sharing the absolutist ideas of the Carlists synthesized in their trilemma "God, Motherland, King", also feared that the coming to power of the liberals would put an end to their existence. Historian Julio Caro Baroja wrote: "The cheers for Don Carlos went hand in hand with cheers for the Inquisition, and the rallies of villagers instructed by churchmen were everywhere, especially in Catalonia, the main theater of operations for the rebellions of 1827".
Events
Cholera epidemic and "poisoning of the springs"
Between 1830 and 1835 a cholera epidemic, which had originated in India around 1817, spread throughout Europe. It reached Spain in January 1833, the first town affected being Vigo, where it had probably been brought by English ships. At the end of 1833 it had spread through Andalusia and from this point or from Portugal it had been brought to Castile by the troops of General José Ramón Rodil y Gayoso who had gone to fight the Portuguese Miguelistas and the Carlists. At the same time it was spread by the ports of the Mediterranean by a military ship coming from France. During the two years that the epidemic lasted, it caused more than one hundred thousand deaths throughout Spain and half a million people fell ill. Rodil's army, coming from the border of Portugal, followed the path of the cholera epidemic that had isolated Andalusia and that had forced the establishment of sanitary fences in La Mancha, but it was not prevented from entering Madrid, from where it was heading north to relieve the troops of General Vicente Genaro de Quesada, who were unable to control the Carlist rebels.
In Madrid the first cases of cholera occurred at the end of June 1834 and although the government of Francisco Martínez de la Rosa denied its existence, he quickly left Madrid on June 28, together with the regent María Cristina de Borbón-Dos Sicilias and the royal family, to take refuge in the palace of La Granja in Segovia, which caused great indignation among the inhabitants of the capital. To this feeling of helplessness was added the summer heat, rising food prices and rumors of imminent Carlist attacks, which increased popular discontent. On July 15, news reached Madrid that Rodil's army had not been able to contain the Carlists either and that the pretender Carlos María Isidro de Borbón had entered Spain, proclaiming it in a manifesto from Elizondo.
On the very day that the bad news about the progress of the first Carlist war reached Madrid, the epidemic broke out again, "the sick died by the hundreds, with the horrifying circumstances that accompany such a cruel plague", according to Alcalá Galiano's account. The main victims were the inhabitants of the poorest neighborhoods where more than five hundred people had died every day since the 15th. Throughout the month of July, the victims of this epidemic numbered 3,564 people, dropping to 834 in August.
At that time, a rumor began to circulate in Madrid that the cause of the epidemic was the poisoning of public fountains, since "cholera manifested itself in many people after drinking water," according to a witness. The idea that water poisoning was responsible for the disease was also spread in other parts of the world among the urban working classes, who were convinced that the upper classes were behind it and wanted to reduce the number of indigents. In Manila, in 1827, the supposed poisoning was attributed to English subjects and some were murdered; in Paris, in March 1831, the friars and the legitimists were blamed and some of them were persecuted, and in 1833 the tavernkeepers were blamed with the complicity of the police, and several agents were thrown into the Seine. In Madrid, according to an eyewitness, it was first blamed on "some semi-beggar boys and some whores who approached the fountains, and from this concept came the imprisonment of some women cigar sellers, the murder that was committed in the person of a young man of the lowest class at 3 in the afternoon of the 17th in the Puerta del Sol, and the persecution of other boys in the fountains of Lavapiés, Relatores and others". But soon the rumor spread that those "semi-beggars" and those "whores" were in the service of the friars who were the real culprits. The news also spread that shots had been fired from the convents against the masses that were heading towards them, relating it to the support that the religious were giving to the Carlists.
The rumor that "the water of the public fountains had been poisoned by the friars", especially by the Jesuits, was reinforced by the fact that some of them in the previous days had explained the cholera epidemic as "divine punishment against the unbelieving inhabitants of the city, while the people of the countryside remained free because they were faithful and devout".
Assault on the convents
Everything took place in the most central area of Madrid, between Puerta del Sol, Plaza de la Cebada, the convent of San Francisco el Grande and the streets of Atocha and Toledo. The first violent event took place at 12 noon in the Puerta del Sol with the murder of a boy who had thrown dirt into a water carrier's bucket. According to Benito Pérez Galdós in Un faccioso más y algunos frailes menos (chap. xxvii), it was a frequent prank, which was "commonly punished with a slap in the face", but on that occasion it was taken as an excuse to blame the friars, when the news spread through the corridors, proclaimed by spontaneous speakers, that "of the two boys who had been surprised [. ...] throwing some yellow earth into the water carriers' vats, one was killed instantly; the other managed to escape and took refuge.... Where? In San Isidro itself". In a similar way, Benjamín Jarnés narrates the triggering of the tragedy:
Cholera appears in Madrid [...] A little boy plays in the Puerta del Sol, next to the Mariblanca fountain. Suddenly an idea came to him to throw a handful of earth into a water carrier's bucket. The water carrier goes after the boy, and behind them a few idle people swarm nearby. The crowd swells. One of them shouts:
—That one, the friars sent him to poison the water!
They caught up with the miserable boy, stabbed him to death and dragged his corpse down Main Street.
The tumult intensifies. The mobs spread out in groups, spread out through the convents. At noon a crowd of women dragged a layman. At three o'clock in the afternoon the mobs entered the Jesuit convent of San Isidro; they killed, plundered, burned...
Benjamín Jarnés, Sor Patrocinio. La monja de las llagas, IV.
After the events of the Puerta del Sol, the second violent event occurs an hour later in the Plaza de la Cebada where a well-known royalist is attacked and killed. At four o'clock in the afternoon a Franciscan religious is attacked in Calle de Toledo.
In the early afternoon, various groups had already formed, also made up of many urban militiamen and some members of the royal guard, who had gathered in the Plaza Mayor, in the Puerta del Sol and in the Plaza de la Cebada, shouting protests against the friars. From there these groups went to the Imperial College of San Isidro run by the Jesuits, which was assaulted at five o'clock in the afternoon. "The pretext, to corroborate the version that since the previous day had spread about two women cigarette sellers from the nearby tobacco factory, they said they were surprised with poison powder to pour into the fountains and that they were paid by the Jesuits. Inside the convent they kill some with sword blows, seize others and lynch them in the side streets, stripping and riddling the dying bodies with mockery. The troops arrive after half an hour with none other than the captain general and police superintendent, Martínez de San Martín, an expert in repressing riots of the exalted liberals during the constitutional triennium in Madrid. He reproaches the Jesuits for the poisoning and looks for proof of it, while they continue killing friars in his presence". A total of fourteen Jesuits were killed.
The next target of the mutineers was the convent of Santo Tomás of the Dominicans on Atocha Street where part of the friars had already had time to flee. There, in addition to killing seven friars in the presence of the troops, who did nothing to prevent it, the mutineers carried out burlesque acts by dressing up in liturgical clothes and forming a sacrilegious dance that continued along the streets of Atocha and Carretas. Around nine o'clock at night the convent of San Francisco el Grande was assaulted, where forty-three Franciscan friars were murdered (or fifty, according to other sources) in the midst of macabre scenes, while the officers of the regiment of the Princess, billeted on the premises, failed to give any order to intervene to the more than one thousand soldiers who composed it. At eleven o'clock at night the convent of San José of the Mercedarios in the present Tirso de Molina square was attacked, with the result of nine or ten more murders.
After midnight there were scattered attempts of assaults on other convents, but there were no more victims. "However, the rest of the friars were left in terror: some opted to disguise themselves and take refuge in the houses of friends; the Capuchins of the Prado opted for the heroic act of opening the doors and waiting in prayer".
Julio Caro Baroja affirmed that "no less than seventy-five were the religious murdered in Madrid on July 17, 1834. In San Francisco el Grande, seventeen fathers, four students, ten laymen and ten donates; that is, forty-one Franciscans. In the Imperial College of San Isidro, seventeen Jesuits died: five priests, nine teachers and three brothers. In the convent of Santo Tomás, six Dominicans (five mass priests and one layman). Finally, in the convent of La Merced, there were seven known discalced Mercedarians and four others whose names were unknown at the time".
Government response
In the early morning of the following day, July 18, the state of siege was declared and a proclamation was made public: "Madrileños: the authorities are watching over you, and whoever conspires against you, against health or public peace, will be handed over to the courts and will be punished by the laws". In the afternoon of that same day there were new attempts of assaults to convents that were avoided by the presence of the troops, although several properties of the Jesuits and the convent of the Trinitarians were looted.