Albert Sanchez Pinol - Victus - The Fall of Barcelona

Thousands of white beetles raised their rifles in unison, training their sights upon us. We rushed headlong at them. We were no more than fifty in number now, a mix of old men, widows, cavalrymen without horses, horses without riders: my ragged fellow Barcelonans. The Bourbons had brought five cannons and made a battery on a mound of rubble, above and behind the infantry. Grapeshot, was my thought as I continued to hurtle forward, they’ve loaded them with grapeshot. My other thought being: They’ll fire the instant after a volley from these white beetles. I saw one of those round cannon barrels staring me down. I saw a flash of white and yellow.

I was blown backward twenty or thirty feet. All I knew was that something had happened to my face. At first, curiously, it seemed more associated with a feeling of nakedness than death. I was beyond now. And I discovered that Amelis had been right, yes, she had: Anyone who wants to hear a piece of music, hears it. Destroyed, monstrous from that moment forth, I heard that music over the noise of wailing and explosions. “Give yourself, Zuviría, your whole self.”

I ought to have understood far sooner — when they put a noose around my neck in the Bourbon camp, or even when I sat beside Vauban on his deathbed. “Summarize the optimum defense.” It was this and no more — this was all. We are fallen leaves that linger on. Stars that burst forth in light, fables squandered. Truths whose only reward is lucidity itself. The smell of warm shit running down the legs of ranks of men. Blind telescopes, inane periscopes, lamentations. Funnels imbued with affection, that boy on our prow laughing, like dolphin laughter. The far side of the river. Admitting that we’ll always be looking out at the landscape through the keyhole of the dungeon, knowing that ears of corn fall but do not complain. My shredded spirits, my broken calculations. Give yourself, Zuviría, give.

And discovering — beyond the utmost extreme, beyond the Euphrates and the Rubicon, where there are no longer any tears, oh, the greatness and the consolation of the few and the poor, of the weak and forlorn — that the darker our twilight hours, the more blessed will be the dawn of those who will come after us.

Afew people who read this book in draft form have asked me about the historical basis of the facts that appear in it. I can only answer that I have worked according to the usual conventions of the historical novel, which require that you confine yourself to established pieces of data while at the same time tolerating fiction in the private realm. For all the dates and events relating to historical characters, or to political or military events, I have restricted myself to the facts. Fortunately, the chronicles that cover the Spanish War of Succession and the 1713–1714 Siege of Barcelona are generous enough to make it possible to go into some detail. The parliamentary debates that took place in Barcelona in 1713 have been extracted directly from documents of the period. Even where secondary characters are concerned, I have chosen to follow historical sources: the obsession that seizes Jeanne Vauban’s husband over the philosopher’s stone, the skirmish in Beceite in which Zuviría meets Ballester, as well as the death of Dr. Bassons and the charge of the law students in the battle of August 1714, or the events relating to the expedition of the military delegate, to cite just a few examples, are all fully evidenced. The words spoken by Berwick, infuriated at the Barcelonans’ resistance, with his staff officers, can be pursued in the chronicles and in his own autobiography. A good proportion of the insults aimed by Villarroel at Zuviría are also drawn from a range of documents, though in such cases we know only that they were directed at “a certain officer.” As for Zuviría himself, historical chronicles make only a very few elusive references to him, describing him as General Villarroel’s aide-de-camp, a translator, a member of a number of different commissions, and even a coordinator of the activities that took place outside the city walls during the course of the siege. In any case, he was one of the few senior officers on the pro-Austrian side who, following his participation in the 1713–1714 siege, managed to get to Vienna and thereby avoid the repression of the Bourbon regime.

SPAIN

EUROPE

1700

— Charles II of Spain, known

as El Hechizado , or “The

Bewitched,” dies.

1701

— Philip V is named king.

— The Grand Alliance between Austria, Denmark, England, and Holland is formed.

1702

— The Grand Alliance declares war on Spain and France.

1703

— Portugal and the House of Savoy join the Grand Alliance.

1704

— The Austrian pretender to

the Spanish throne, Charles III,

disembarks in Portugal.

— Portuguese Campaign: The

Anglo-Portuguese army attacks

Spain from Portugal but is repelled

by the Franco-Spanish army under

the duke of Berwick.

— Admiral Rooke takes Gibraltar

in the name of Charles III of Austria

but with the flag of England hoisted.

— France loses forty thousand men in the Battle of Blenheim.

1705

— Treaty of Genoa, by which a

group of Catalan leaders make

a pact with England to support

them in a pro-Charles war effort.

— Charles III enters Barcelona and

establishes it as the provisional

capital of his kingdom.

1706

— Philip V lays siege to Barcelona,

but the arrival of an Anglo-Dutch

fleet forces his withdrawal.

— The Allies occupy Madrid, but

Charles III’s unpopularity leads

to the evacuation of the city.

— French defeat at the

Battle of Ramillies.

1707

— The Army of the Two Crowns

defeats the Allies at the Battle of

Almansa.

— The Bourbons occupy Lleida.

1708

— The Bourbons besiege

and take Tortosa.

1710

— Battles of Almenar and Zaragoza.

— The Allies enter Madrid for the second time, before being forced to evacuate by a Bourbon counteroffensive.

— Battles of Brihuega and Villaviciosa.

— Girona taken by the French army.

1711

— Emperor Joseph I of Austria dies. Charles, his younger brother, is

named as his successor and leaves

Barcelona for Vienna.

1713

— Signing of the Treaty of

Evacuation. The Allied armies

commit to withdrawing all

troops on the peninsula.

— June: The Catalan executive

declares resistance.

— July: Siege of Barcelona begins.

— Treaty of Utrecht: General peace between Europe’s powers is sealed. Philip V renounces any claim to the French throne, and Charles III to that of Spain. England reneges on the Treaty of Genoa, by which it had undertaken to uphold the Catalan constitutions in the case

of a military defeat.

1714

— September 11: Final assault on, and

fall of, Barcelona. Abolition of the

Catalan constitutions and liberties.

1719

— War between France and Spain.

Marshal Berwick’s French army,

with five thousand Catalans among

its number, takes several strongholds

in the Navarran region of Spain.

— Catalan guerrillas continue to fight

the Bourbon forces.

1725