Page:The Martyrdom of Ferrer.djvu/80

74 the reluctant soldiers to fire on the mob. A circumstantial account by a creditable eye-witness of one incident was submitted to me. A group of men were firing from an elevated position at the troops. Up to this point the troops had taken no part. Infantry refused to fire, and cavalry to charge; the whole riot was on their behalf. The shrewder spirits among the people saw the danger and criminality of this attack on the soldiers, and dislodged those who were firing on them. The witness emphatically asserts that they were from the convents.

The "violation" of the dead bodies of nuns is an unscrupulous mis-statement. In one convent an iron bed was found, with gas-fire underneath its perforated sheet. Was it an instrument of torture? Well, the Catholics say that it was a philanthropic apparatus for warming the beds of ailing nuns. The reader may form his own opinion. It was, remember, a sheet of iron, perforated, with burners immediately beneath. At all events, the bodies of recently deceased nuns were disinterred solely to examine if they bore marks of torture, and were subjected to no indignity. I am further assured by a schoolmaster who entered the Jesuit convent with the crowd that, as was reported in the press, not only the shells of bombs, but apparatus for coining money was discovered. He declares that he examined this, and smiles at the Catholic suggestion that it was for making medals for sale. It was a time of great turbulence and intense passion. The reader must balance the probabilities from what I have previously described as to the known condition of the clerical and political authorities. One thing is certain. R. Thirlmere, in his authoritative Letters from Catalonia, said four years ago that the Church was doomed in that province, if not in the whole of Spain. That is beyond question now.

To conclude with the outbreak. By July 28 the insurgents were masters of the Town Hall and most of Barcelona and the question now arose of forming a definite plan of action. The whole episode had been an unthinking release of pent-up anger against the war and the clergy. The Republican and Radical leaders had kept entirely away, the committee of the strike were appalled at the turn of events,