Albert Sanchez Pinol - Victus - The Fall of Barcelona

And here you have our worst defect. We never knew what we wanted, beyond having a good time, the last redoubt of the poor and insignificant. Neither one nor the other — neither France nor Spain — but incapable of building our own political edifice. Neither resigned to our fate nor disposed to changing it. Trapped between the slowly shutting jaws of France and Spain, we resigned ourselves to riding out the storm. Which left us adrift, directionless. Our ruling classes, in particular, were the height of chronic indecision, endlessly caught between servility and resistance. As Seneca said: If a sailor does not know to what port he is steering, no wind will be favorable to him. And when I think about our history, what comes to mind is the most nail-biting question: Which excuse is more melancholy, that which harks after “What we might have been” or that which says “We never should have tried”? We suffered both of those harrowings. The Catalans’ problem was that they never knew what they wanted, and at the same time, they wanted it intensely.

In 1705 a small group of upstanding Catalans conspired to seek the aid of the Allies in light of an incipient uprising against the Bourbons. The Treaty of Genoa between Catalonia and England was struck. The idea was for an Allied army to disembark in Barcelona. England committed to meeting the cost of operations. For their part, the Catalans would raise a Catalan army of volunteers to support the standard troops. This would open the way to Madrid, where they would place the Austrian ape Charles on the throne and give him the title Carlos III of Spain.

As good lawyers, they demanded every guarantee. The contract went so far as to detail what kind of feed the Allies should give to the beasts of burden. Very Catalan, yes. Oh, and if, by some twist of fate, as explicated in the contract, “any adverse and unforeseen events occur when weapons are drawn (God forbid),” the English crown promised that the Catalonian principality would remain “with all the security, guarantee and protection of the Crown of England, without their Persons, Goods, Laws and Privileges suffering the least alteration or detriment.”

And now, excuse me if I explode.

Who did these little lords think they were to speak in the name of the country without even asking the opinion of the Generalitat? Agreed, at that time Barcelona was in the hands of the Bourbon military. Even so, what authority did they have to involve us in a world war as nonchalantly as going out for a stroll in the countryside? Did it occur to no one that we weren’t bartering over a bag of green beans or a kilo of salt but, rather, the blood and the future of the entire country, all in exchange for a scrap of paper? Things did not simply go badly for us — they went as badly as could possibly be imagined. We lost the war. In 1713 our last forces were grouped together upon the walls of Barcelona. The foreign troops had boarded their ships, leaving us with our rumps naked in the wind. You can guess what England did next. They did not have the decency to lie to us. When someone brought out the famous little scrap of paper, those windbags simply spat, saying: “It is not in the interest of England to preserve Catalan liberties.”

Fabulous! And hard to believe as it may seem, when the Catalan ambassador knelt at the feet of Her Gracious Majesty, begging for aid to Barcelona — which, reduced though it then was to rubble, was still holding out against the Bourbon onslaught — what did she say? That we ought to be thankful for their constant concern, that was what!

In Utrecht in 1713, just as the siege of Barcelona was beginning, all the implicated powers negotiated a general peace. So that the English diplomats would not make an issue of the Catalonian question, France and Spain made them a gift of Newfoundland. This was what, in the eyes of the English, our thousands of years of liberty were worth, as well as the worth of that scrap of paper — the right to fish twenty tons a year of cod.

In the last year of the war, tragic 1714, the defenders of Barcelona had been reduced to fighting for their lives, their homes, their city. For the Catalan liberties, which were perfectly tangible, a regime that was opposed to the horror now raining down. They fought under the orders of Villarroel, Don Antonio de Villarroel. Wait a couple of chapters and you will see my view of this man, how he lifted me out of abjection like a boot out of mud. And if you were to ask me the cruelest of questions — to whom do I owe more, Vauban or Villarroel? — my answer would be: I should rather die than answer.

Of the five hundred or so of us who initiated the charge that day, September 11, 1714, I do not believe more than twenty or thirty survived. Villarroel was shot from his horse. The horse fell on top of him, kicking around in pain, and as the grapeshot flew, it was no easy task dragging him out from underneath. One of his legs had been crushed, and the bone above his knee was protruding from his trouser leg. Even so, he pushed away the men helping him, shouting as if possessed: “Don’t stop the charge! Don’t stop! No falling back, not as long as I still draw breath!”

When we pushed on, a charge of grapeshot flew from a cannon and took off half my face. I fell to the floor among mounds of dead and wounded. Lifting five trembling fingers to my left cheek, I found it wasn’t there; in its place, a cavity had been blown as far as the other side of my mouth, a wettish bloody hole with splintered bits of bone sticking out, and my left jaw was broken. I’d lost half my face. Blinded by my own blood, I became not the most reliable witness to those last few hours of Catalan freedom.

In the intervening seventy years, twenty or so different masks have covered my face. The first was somewhat cobbled together, skin-colored, covering my whole face, and with slanted eyes, as in the visor of a helmet. In America I had a craftsman make me a far better one. It cost me an arm and a leg, but it was money well spent. It came down over just my cheek, my left eye, and half of my mouth. The right side of my face was exposed to the sun, and this is what people have always been able to see; given that it was intact, no reason to hide it. It adjusted at the back with clever bands and invisible catches. My sharp nose could stick out all it liked — I was lucky not to have had that blown off, too. Women began casting admiring glances my way once more, and I felt almost human again.

Many other masks were to follow, a great many, some exquisitely designed. Some I sold, others I lost in tropical climes or in wagers, some were seized from me, others stolen, and many were broken by thumps and kicks and fallings-down from horses. The sixth one I owned was shattered by a stray bullet. I owe my life to that mask, which was made of a robust ivory.

Why am I telling the story of my masks? Why is it important? You, woman, you tell me to be quiet only when it seems a good time to you — not when it is good for the book.

Ihave just given an outline of the Catalan view of their final war, which saw an end to them as a nation. But at that time, April 1707, Longlegs Zuvi, nothing but a young lad who couldn’t have cared a pepper for politics and history, was headed into the thick of that French border war on the side he would later come to loathe. And all for the sake of a Word.

When we joined the main body of the Franco-Spanish army in Almansa, we could see for ourselves how bad things were. The two sides, the Allies and the Two Crowns, had spent the previous fifteen days seeking each other out and then withdrawing in a succession of marches and countermarches, indecisive skirmishes and sieges at minor fortresses.

The Allied army was led by the earl of Galway who, despite his title, was French: His name was Henri Massue de Ruvigny, and he was a veteran who had lost an arm the previous year, campaigning in Portugal. This is why, as historians love to repeat, Almansa was seen as a battle between an English force commanded by a Frenchman, and a French force led by an Englishman — General Berwick. The truth of the matter was more complicated.