One service which Bacas performed diffused a general feeling of vindictive joy through La Mancha and the adjacent ♦CIRIA, THE NERO OF LA MANCHA.♦ provinces. D. Benito Maria Ciria acted for the intrusive Government as governor and _corregidor_ of La Mancha. He was a man of information and singular activity, who might have obtained for himself an honourable remembrance, if he had displayed the same zeal in the cause of his country which he exerted for its oppressors. From the beginning he was suspected of favouring the Intruder, and had been apprehended on that suspicion before the French forced the passes of the Sierra Morena; the military Junta of La Carolina spared him, and upon the first appearance of the enemy, he proved that his intentions had not been mistaken, by joining them. From that time Ciria served them with the rancorous alacrity of a true traitor, insomuch that he was called the Nero of La Mancha. This evil celebrity drew on him its proper punishment. Bacas was on the watch for a favourable opportunity, and as soon as it occurred, he entered Almagro at the head of his guerrillas, and seized him in the streets of that city: the people called out for his punishment upon the spot, but Bacas felt that the solemnity of a judicial sentence would make the example more impressive; he carried his prisoner therefore to Valencia de Alcantara, and delivered him there to the arm of the law, under which he suffered as a traitor. A victory could not have occasioned greater exultation throughout La Mancha; if Bacas and his party, it was said, had performed no other service than that of bringing this offender to justice, they would have deserved well of their country for that alone.
It would have been well for humanity, and honourable for Spain, if those who were engaged with right feelings in their country’s cause had always shown this regard to order and the course of law; but the Spaniards had, under long misrule, become a lawless nation; the great trampled upon the laws, and by the people murder was scarcely regarded as a crime; in their vindictive feelings they were unrestrained by any religious awe, or any apprehension of earthly punishment. A squadron of the La Manchan Crusaders entered this very city of Almagro; they sacked the house of the traitor who collected the revenues for the Intruder; and because his wife in her rage reviled them, professed her attachment to King Joseph, and threatened them with vengeance in his name, they killed her; and Ureña, a priest, who commanded the party, related the circumstance with perfect complacency in his official dispatch. The heart of the nation was already hard, and the little which might have been done by the legitimate Government for correcting the national inhumanity, and inducing, or at least endeavouring to induce, a more christian, a more civilized, a more humane spirit, was neglected.