Albert Sanchez Pinol - Victus - The Fall of Barcelona

Finally, after midday, several thousand men sprang from the city — my neighbors — ready for anything. I peeked over the parapet and saw the bones of the stockade thickening with people on their way to attack the recently begun trench.

Sheer pandemonium. The attack came at all points of the trench, right, left, and center. The cavalry came in support, attacking down the wings. Both armies’ artillery fired ceaselessly, and there was so much commotion, smoke, and gunpowder that you didn’t know who was killing whom. My initial idea was to hide in some rift in the ground, wait for the wave of attackers to come past my position, identify myself, and go back to the city with them. Good plan, wouldn’t you say? Unfortunately, it didn’t take into account my proverbial cowardice. Hundreds of men charged in my direction, drunk and screaming like stuck pigs. I thought I recognized them as a unit that had been set up recently, grenadiers under the orders of Captain Castellarnau.

My God, I thought, they seem rather angry. Three Normandy battalions went out to engage them. Castellarnau’s men rushed forward like demons, bayoneting the Normans to pieces and moving on. A little closer and I could see their wine-reddened eyes. Terrified, I said to myself: “Martí, they aren’t messing around.” They advanced, letting out drunken cries, calling Saint Eulalia’s name, and bayoneting any fallen men as they came past. The Normans dispatched, there was nothing now between them and the first parallel.

A troop attacking like that will recognize no one. No one! They in a frenzy, me in a white uniform. I then had one of the most bizarre thoughts of my long military life: Mother of God, my allies are nearly upon us. Mercy!

“Run, run!” I bellowed at the workers around me. “Let’s go or the rebels will cut us to shreds!”

The men near me were all workers and, seeing me flee, wavered. Castellarnau’s drunk grenadiers were nearly upon us, and all the while, the cannonballs continued to fall with devilish precision. If even the officers are fleeing, why would lowly workers, who have no military training, stay?

The entire brigade followed me. (Truly, it was a good thing for them, because as I later found out, the few who did stay were massacred.) Most flung their picks and shovels to the ground, carts and half-full fajinas , and sprinted astonishingly quickly — some were so frightened they even overtook me!

The attack fizzled out without any great effect. A spark rather than a full-blown fire, remarkable only for the numbers of dead. And who cares about the dead? The men in the sortie occupied the trench, yes, did as much damage as they could, yes, but the minute they were gone, another four thousand soldiers, workers, and sappers stepped in and renewed the digging effort.

I was handed a report on the day’s activity to take to Jimmy. On my way to Mas Guinardó I read it — a punishable offense. Six hundred and forty-eight dead and wounded on a single night and day of trench work. The note came from Verboom himself, and good old Zuvi (what irony!) was the one charged with taking it to Jimmy.

As I entered Mas Guinardó carrying the account, my thoughts were on how many more would have suffered had things gone well. Jimmy was standing in his study, looking out of the window. The carnage that had just taken place was clearly the last thing on his mind. He was lost in thought, gnawing a fist. He turned and looked at me and immediately returned his gaze to the window. His only words were a quiet groaning as he repeated obsessively: “She dies, she dies. . ”

“Who?” I asked.

“The queen, the queen. . ”

I stared in astonishment. “The queen of England! Dying?” I punched the air. “But Jimmy, what marvelous news!”

My God, what a coincidence, and what a disastrous one. Though for diametrically opposed reasons, both Jimmy and I were set to benefit from the news.

The balance of power in England is a very delicate thing, swinging between Tories and Whigs, who alternate in power. With Queen Anne dead, a change of government was inevitable, and with it, a reversal of the policy of conciliating the Beast, of which she had been the principal supporter. And if London turned against Paris, an alliance with Barcelona was also inevitable.

They honor a certain power in England, something unfamiliar in autocracies: that of public opinion. Catcalling critiques of foreign policy are constantly being published in the London gazettes. The “Catalan case” being a glaring example. There were debates about it in their Parliament.

Let’s not fool ourselves. Pericles’s Greece sent an expedition to Sicily, but not due merely to the goading of the demagogues. England was never altruistic, quite the opposite; public opinion and private interests spurred it on. But if there was a chance that they might come to our aid, what did it matter to us why? England had the strongest navy, and the French blockade would be broken. And as had happened at the first Bourbon siege, in 1706, when the English fleet came into port, they’d inject reinforcements and supplies and do wonders for morale. The besieging of a port that is not blockaded is, by nature, unpracticable: dixit Vauban.

With Anne’s death, it would make sense to defer the sentence. Even two or three days could change everything. And my trench was the deferral.

And Jimmy? That royal death made sense of everything that had happened so far in his life. England in turmoil, the succession to be decided. Jimmy was born to be king, and now that the opportunity had arisen, where was he? Pinned down thousands of miles south by a cause that was anything but close to his heart. Managing a full-blown siege in the south and a dynastic rebellion in the north at the same time — not possible. He would have to choose.

As cosmopolitan as Jimmy seemed, he was also a dyed-in-the-wool Englishman. When his father, the last Catholic king of England, was exiled, Jimmy was raised at the French court. The Beast’s ministers were good to him and let his talents develop, in spite of his being a bastard. But as a mercenary in France’s pay, he could aspire only to a secondary role, and by 1714 he had all the credentials needed to put himself forward in London. He’d been on the winning side in countless battles, he was a marshal, and he’d seen a few things. He was tolerant of different religious beliefs (he had none), conciliatory to factions (he didn’t believe particularly in any one), and would apply himself in the name of any cause that would reflect well on him (he had served, and would be served by, all kinds). Vauban, as politically naive as Cicero, believed in a republic made up of virtuous males. Jimmy didn’t believe in any regime that he (along with one or two vicious males) wasn’t ruling. His continuing service under the Beast, however, had brought him to Spain. To abandon the siege of Barcelona, just after replacing Pópuli, was unthinkable. Anne’s death forced him to decide between obligations he’d accrued in France since childhood, and his destiny.

He had plenty of reason to hate us. The war that had raged across the world for fourteen years was over, to all intents and purposes, but those blind Barcelonans, by refusing to face the truth, were going to hamstring his royal aspirations. Many were the days I spent at his side; I could have tried to understand what made him so fanatical. But I never did. Jimmy began and ended the sieges not bothering to find out who his enemies were or what cause they were fighting for. I believe that he didn’t hate us, because he didn’t have strong feelings about good and evil. We were an obstacle to him, more than an object of loathing.

And then he fell ill. The doctors failed to see the blindingly obvious: It wasn’t so much a bodily sickness as the core of his soul being fractured. He could stay loyal to the Beast and bring the siege to an end. Or he could betray him and go and pursue his destiny in England as a contender for the throne. Finally be a ruler himself, or via one of his mad half brothers. Carry on as a lackey with no future, or try for the ultimate prize.