Albert Sanchez Pinol - Victus - The Fall of Barcelona

So the day was spent vying for ownership of this insignificant shack halfway between the barricades, an outcrop in the center of the cobbled yard. Now the Coronela would make a push for it, now the Bourbon forces. Unlike Jimmy, Don Antonio was there on the front line, moving between the most perilous positions. The sight of him was a boost to the troops. I can still see him slapping men on the back, chatting with the soldiers, more like a father than a high-up military man.

“My boys,” he’d say, “the least of you is worth as much to me as a general. How fortunate I am to have been allowed to lead you.”

A moment came when I said to myself: “Enough now.” It was well, very well, for him to set an example of fearlessness and self-sacrifice, like generals from antiquity (of course, we saw neither hide nor hair of Casanova), but we hardly wanted our commander in chief to end up like Professor Bassons.

What I couldn’t understand was Don Antonio’s strategy. Jimmy had a foothold on Saint Clara, meaning the bastion system was no longer to our advantage. Hours passed, and Don Antonio would regularly relieve the half-annihilated forces manning the different outposts, but never initiate any counterattacks. This meant simply accepting the series of bloody clashes in which we’d always be on the losing end. Jimmy was in a position to send wave after wave of men along the trenches to Saint Clara, and to evacuate his wounded; slow and arduous, yes, and the toll considerable, but we were so hugely outnumbered that sooner or later, they would gather together enough men to overrun us.

All the officers, to a man, knew how close we were to the abyss and that time was against us. Lose the second barricade, and it would be good night. The attitude of these officers said everything about the atmosphere in the city: Not a single one was exhorting Don Antonio to try and discuss terms. Far from it! There was a group of captains and colonels constantly asking Don Antonio to sanction a sortie, to let them try and dislodge the Bourbons from the first barricade. From the Catalans, “ si us plau, si us plau ”; from the pro-Charles Castilians who had changed sides, it was “ por favor, por favor ”; and you’d even hear a few Germans with their “ bitte, bitte, herr Ánton! ”

I can still see myself, standing back as officers swarmed around poor Don Antonio, who rejected their ideas one after another. They knew how desperate our situation was. And yet there they were, begging permission to carry out a frontal attack on a position held by several battalions. It was all Don Antonio could do to keep them at bay.

And so it went on until nightfall. The skirmishes continued in the same ferocious vein. Across the city, the bells tolled the warning alarm and didn’t abate at sundown. The area where the attack was concentrated stayed brightly lit; we sent up flares so we could see what we were aiming at; the flashes of rifle fire also lit the darkness, like thousands of blinking glowworms. At around four in the morning, I left Saint Clara to go and discuss with Costa which cannons to bring to the bastion, as the embrasures were now in effect. A brief dialogue that saved my life.

I had ordered an old sergeant major, once the general assault was under way, to empty the munitions cabin at the center of the disputed yard. I thought the Bourbons were certain to make gains, and it was imperative that they not seize the contents. What I didn’t know was that the old sergeant major had been one of the first to fall. That is, he hadn’t lived long enough to gather a group of carriers, go and open the padlocked door with its small firebreak strip of water across the entrance, and empty the store.

I find it amazing when I think how long it took for the catastrophe to come. All day long, each side vied for control of a building they had no idea was brimming with gunpowder, grenades, bullets, and pots and tins containing grapeshot. And nothing had happened. Le Mystère must have had a good chortle on our account that day.

One of the survivors later told me the story. Just after I’d left, four in the morning and darkest night, a cry had gone up of: “Forward, for Saint Eulalia, forward!” The Barcelonan troops had held out all that time and resisted their desire to counterattack; in their frustration, a number of them took the prompt of this insane anonymous voice. For the hundredth time, they reached the cabin, repelled the Bourbons who had gathered around it, and then halted before pressing on to the first barricade.

Behind the first assault line, you always had a few men going around with large straw baskets bearing ammunition, particularly grenades, to replenish the troops’ supply. At this point, after a day and half a night of constant skirmishing, the bastion yard was almost overflowing with dead bodies and scattered gunpowder. The place reeked of those two things.

Now, I was told, a number of the basket carriers sheltered behind the munitions cabin, and a spark fell from somewhere, setting fire to some gunpowder on the ground. The flame ran along a trail of gunpowder and came to two of the large baskets, which had been put down against the side of the cabin, both containing grenades. You can guess the next part.

I believe this to have been the second largest explosion I’ve witnessed in all my days. Costa and I were nowhere near Saint Clara and found our discussion interrupted as the shock waves threw us to the ground. Over six hundred feet away, we were. The eruption was red and bloomed upward like a flower. It was followed by an extended rumbling. Up went the flames, and up went the explosions, with half the city bathed in shards and fragments and rubble.

In a daze, I got to my knees. I looked over at Costa; his words came to me as though my head were underwater. I got up and set off for the bastion gullet, stumbling along in zigzags like a drunk.

Le Mystère, I’ll give it this much, does at least apportion its humor equally: Both sides suffered roughly the same losses. A little over seventy Coronela men were blown up along with the cabin, and while fewer Bourbons died, the damage was greater to them: Word quickly spread that the explosion had been a rebel mine.

Mines provoke almost uncontrollable terror. An assassin hidden under our feet could at any moment activate many thousands of pounds of explosives, as many as the mind can conceive. Yes, it was a simple accident, the kind that abounds in war, but the Bourbons fell back in droves. How ironic that the two sides, having fought tooth and nail for control of the Saint Clara yard, now abandoned their positions at the same time, as though an agreement had been struck.

The gullet — the entrance to the bastion on the city side — was very narrow precisely to prevent men ever fleeing en masse. There was a captain there, named Jaume Timor, and with his saber drawn, he was stopping anyone who could bear arms. “Quit Saint Clara and the city will be lost!” he roared.

Whole families fought side by side on Saint Clara. As great Herodotus said: “In peace, children bury their parents; war violates the order of nature and causes parents to bury their children.” The siege of Barcelona went further, with some burying not only sons but also grandsons. I saw a neighbor of mine named Dídac Pallarès coming along the gullet and Timor standing aside. He had good reason — three good reasons, to be precise: Pallarès was carrying his three sons, all of them injured, in his arms. The skin on their faces was in red and black tatters; I remember one of them in particular, one whom Peret always owed a few sueldos. His were the worst injuries; the flesh on his jaw had come away completely, exposing the bone. It was still raining debris, and Don Antonio was in the vicinity, uttering consoling and encouraging words to the survivors. He and a number of officers tried to reinstate a modicum of order. Well, on this occasion, they didn’t manage it.