Albert Sanchez Pinol - Victus - The Fall of Barcelona

The body of the army arrived early in the morning, without incident. Meanwhile, Ballester and I negotiated with some locals over requisitioning a boat, one of a decent size but light and swift. The plan was for Deputy Berenguer and his advisers and assistants to depart at twilight, and sail away under cover of dark.

The old man kicked into life for once. He ordered a security perimeter be established, with the men positioned at the high points that dominated the bay. Five thousand men on guard struck me as excessive, but I shrugged and got on with it. All Pelts esteemed protocol very highly, and I just thought Deputy Berenguer wanted to make a show of his eminence.

Ballester and his men were the only ones exempt from guard duty. While the rest of the army took up positions on hilltops and where any paths entered the area, they hunkered down in a fisherman’s tavern in Alella, on the outskirts of the town and about a hundred yards away from the beach. I could see what they were about, but I was supposed to be taking part in seeing Berenguer off.

“Don’t forget to pay for what you drink,” was all I said. “We’re not Bourbons.”

Coming back to camp, I found Berenguer sprawled in his chair with five or six of his officers around him, Dalmau and Shitson included. They’d begun without me, the babe of the expedition. Dalmau was making a florid farewell speech.

“Excuse me for interrupting,” said Berenguer as I came in. “But I ought to point out, you and all the rest of the senior officers will also be setting sail with me.”

I was standing behind Dalmau and, like him, was stupefied by this.

“Pardon me?” said Dalmau, as though he’d misheard. “How can we come with you? If I and the other officers aren’t here, who’s going to give orders to the men?”

“Everyone from lieutenant colonel up,” Berenguer said. “All are to return with me to Barcelona. It’s an order. No discussions.”

Abandon five thousand men! Not carry out the attack on the cordon! All these months of hardship and sacrifice for nothing! We found this injustice, this monumental lunacy, so hard to digest that neither Dalmau nor any of the other officers reacted.

“But Your Excellence,” Dalmau finally said, extremely disconcerted, “this isn’t possible. Who will lead the attack on the cordon?”

“I believe we have a commander eager to gain his stripes in war,” said Berenguer. “The troops will be in good hands.”

He meant Shitson! It was tantamount to discharging the troops. There hadn’t been time for the new recruits to forge bonds with their leaders by taking part in any conflict. Now, if their leaders abandoned them, they were also sure to go back on their promises. Dalmau’s regiment would disintegrate; since they were light on veterans, personal ties were extremely important to them (as they are in any army, to be fair). What would they do if their commander left them on some beach in the middle of nowhere, without any explanations, and now to take orders from some reprobate? We might as well hand them straight over to the Bourbons.

The other officers, though speechless, complied, following Berenguer and his oafs aboard. Not Dalmau. He stood where the gangway touched down on the beach, refusing to go aboard, and becoming increasingly vocal in his opposition to the decision. One of the men who’d already gone aboard rebuked Dalmau. An order was an order. Did he think he was the only one who felt this to be an affront to his dignity?

“Not at all,” said Dalmau. “But again, it isn’t just or reasonable to leave my regiment, as well as other equally dignified officers, at the orders of a man who has shown himself to be anything but.”

While Dalmau and Berenguer continued to argue, I ran back up to the tavern, barging open the door. Seeing me in such a state, Ballester thought we were under attack. If only that had been so!

“They want to leave!” I shouted. “Tell the lads!”

At first he didn’t take my meaning.

“They want to leave,” I said again. “Not only Berenguer and his aides. The order’s been given for all officers to sail, all except Shitson! We have to put a stop to it! Get the men together! The deputy might change his mind if we kick up enough of a fuss.”

Ballester promptly did as I said, for once. He and his men left the tavern and rode out to the perimeter positions. I went back to the boat, another wearying dash down the beach. The argument had gone up a few notches, with Dalmau still refusing to board and all the other officers already having done so. I’d never seen the usually affable Dalmau so furious. I began shouting and screaming as well, using far less decorous language than Dalmau, as you can imagine.

Up in the surrounding hillsides, the news began reaching the troops. They turned to the sea to look, when they were supposed to be looking out for a possible attack. Dozens, hundreds, of men began streaming down to the beach, none of them fully understanding what was happening. Up on deck, one of the officers beseeched Berenguer to order Dalmau to embark. “Otherwise,” he said, “we’re all done for.”

Berenguer shouted at Dalmau from his wheelchair: Either he embarked immediately, or he’d be tried for insubordination. For a few moments, Dalmau gazed out at the waves as they broke on the shoreline, before turning to me: “Come, Zuviría.” Still I refused. He took me by the elbow and added: “A direct order from the deputy of the military estate cannot be disobeyed.” And then he whispered: “Plus, someone has to be there in Barcelona to say what’s gone on.”

I’m neither proud nor ashamed to say I was the last to take the few steps up that wooden gangway and board the ship. Seeing their entire high command getting into this small ship, leaving them behind, the men came careering toward the beach. Five thousand armed men, coming after us from all sides; Berenguer’s oafs nearly pissed themselves. Berenguer called out for the anchor to be weighed—“Posthaste!”—and what happened next is something that has stayed with me all my many days.

In spite of the misdeed, those five thousand men did not come and try to kill anyone. They gathered in the bay, looking out at us not with hate so much as the incomprehension of an abandoned dog. If I couldn’t understand why we were leaving them, how were they supposed to? I saw Ballester and his men, grouped on a ridge to one side of the beach. He knew what was going on. Their centaur silhouettes, lit by the Mediterranean twilight, filled me with an unbearably weighty feeling of shame.

Before we had sailed two hundred feet, I saw a fair-haired youngster wade out up to his knees. He stood out to me because of the blond plaits he wore on either side of his head, which reminded me of Anfán. He was waving something above his head. Then the rest of the troops began chanting. At that distance, the noise of the sea and the wind made it difficult to hear. I was the only person aboard looking back at the coast. I listened harder. When I realized what it was, I thumped the deck four times with my fists. “Turn back! Turn back!” I cried. “Damn it all, turn the ship around!”

The oafs came over, ordering me to be quiet. For once I was able to say what I thought about them to their faces: “Imbeciles! The deputy’s forgotten the silver mace!”

And so it was. The men were shouting, “The Club, the Club!” Berenguer and his oafs had been in such a hurry to get away from their own men that they’d managed to forget about the supreme symbol of Catalan resistance.

How is it possible for a people to be so brave and at the same time so submissive? I’ll tell you: It’s possible because, as Alella demonstrated, they had far more faith in their free institutions than in the people running them. Berenguer had left behind the silver mace, while the ragtag army he’d shown so much contempt for had remembered it. And it didn’t even occur to them to hang him — they just wanted to make sure the Club was safe.