Albert Sanchez Pinol - Victus - The Fall of Barcelona

He was a hefty, well-built man, and in the confines of the trench, his figure blocked out his entourage of Spanish assistants. Within seconds, they all piled on top of me, and I was under arrest.

“Before this day is out,” he growled, wagging a finger in front of my nose, “you’ll be swinging from a tree.”

He meant it; there was no point in my protesting or appealing. My only chance was if the French generalship interceded, but it was clear that this Spanish general had little sympathy with the French. Anfán was very pleased about the turn of events. As three men dragged me away, he followed after, skipping and jumping around me and my captors. His hands by his nose, wiggling his fingers, he mocked me: “What fun!” he said, then went on in Catalan so my captors wouldn’t understand. “Don’t you want me to clear off? Well, for once I’m going to listen to you. I wouldn’t miss it for the world, you getting hanged, stupid old mule!”

Then, by some miracle, someone shouted out: “General! General! Look! Up there!”

Sure enough, something came into sight up above Tortosa: Through the hazy gunsmoke, we saw flares going up. Obviously something other than the usual shooting and grapeshot. Little flashing red and yellow puffs of smoke, against the blue of the summer sky, and the pure white of the clouds, forming a beautiful five-colored painting. Unfortunately, I wasn’t quite in the right frame of mind to appreciate it.

“Red and yellow flares, red and yellow!” called out the general’s assistant, in high excitement. “The Allies are using the red and the yellow!”

“Let’s go, let’s go!” ordered the general. “Follow me!”

And he led the way to headquarters. He had one of these Castilian voices custom-built for telling others what to do, so forceful that they brook no reply. When someone like this general said “Follow me,” it meant “Follow me,” and everything else ceased to matter. The men who had a hold on me immediately let go and simply trotted after their leader.

A red and yellow signal, in Allied code, meant a petition to friendly outside forces for urgent help. So here was a dilemma for Orléans! The flares signified that the garrison in Tortosa was on its last legs, yes, but also that an auxiliary Austrian army was close enough to see the signals in the sky. Which gave Orléans two choices: Lift the siege and head out to take on the external army, or (à la Coehoorn) throw everything he had at Tortosa despite the trenches not yet being complete. In either case, the mountains of earth that had been moved would all be for nothing.

This was what the high command had to reckon with. For me personally, the flares were a godsend, and I let out a sigh of relief like a buffalo. My long legs folded, slack from the fright, and I knelt down. I saw Anfán. It was just the two of us again.

“I’m going to break every single bone in your body!” I roared.

What do you think my dear, vile Waltraud? Did I catch him? Yes or no?

Of course not. A rat scurrying up into the nooks and crannies of a cathedral wall would have been easier to catch.

The assault was now down to the infantry, not the engineers. We fell back from the trenches as thousands of Bourbon soldiers took up their attack positions.

I did not see the assault, but I did hear it. I was by one of the entrances to the first parallel, in the rearguard. First came a bombardment at twilight, the attack beginning at exactly the same time we’d begun digging the trench: eight in the evening. Then we heard rifles being fired, and the sounds of the infantry charging up a forty-five-degree incline. The resistance was so fierce that civilians resorted to hurling statues of saints from the ramparts. It was four hours before the Spanish took hold of a single bastion. There was no cease-fire until two in the morning.

Predictably enough, Orléans had opted for a direct attack, cost what it may. And the vast majority of the wounded crying out were doing so in Spanish, not French. I didn’t think so at the time, but in hindsight, it’s enough to make you spit. What was the point of this war? A French monarch wanting to get his hands on the Spanish throne, with the Spanish army at his service. Any serious encounter, and it was Spanish soldiers who would be sent as cannon fodder into the charnel house. It was hardly as though the Spanish were dying against their will. Not even the Turks would have been obtuse enough to involve themselves in such a shambles as this.

At the Allies’ request, there was a truce. Orléans suspected they were playing for time, but he was so intent on taking Tortosa that he put up with it. He lost nothing by it. The auxiliary army was still a long way away, and Orléans had control of a bastion. Well, during this truce, something truly chilling happened.

We heard cries, women screaming. It was still dark when, from inside the walls, a lamentation went up, a clamor that put one in mind of passages from the Old Testament. We later learned that the inhabitants of Tortosa, hearing that the foreign officers had opted to surrender, were in despair.

I couldn’t understand it. In dynastic conflicts, the people hid; they never took part in the combat themselves. I remember saying to myself for the first time: “Zuvi, you have been away from your home too long. What on earth is going on here?”

Luckily, I didn’t have very much time to consider it. I was approached by a French official, a liaison officer with the Spanish command. He told me I was to go to the bastion we had taken, to tell the troops there they were about to be relieved. Fine, I supposed — falling back from such an exposed position would surely be taken as good news. What seemed strange was for a youngster like me to be sent, to speak with a general, no less.

Seeing my shambolic appearance, the liaison officer said: “Get washed, put a decent tunic on over that. And shine your boots.”

“But Captain,” I said artlessly, “shouldn’t someone with a far higher rank be going on such a mission?”

“Oh!” he said, patting me on the back. “Take it as a great honor, my boy.”

A great honor! What this “great honor” consisted of, I’ll now tell you.

It wasn’t until dawn that I was sent to the bastion, when the sun was already up, warming the living and causing the dead to rot. The path to the bastion was lined with bulging bodies. As I went up the mound made by the rubble of the bastion, my boots raised clouds of flies covering the bodies, like plump, winged chestnuts.

There were hundreds of soldiers up on the bastion, rifles loaded and bayonets drawn, sheltering in the ruins and looking out over the deathly quiet city. The general to whom I was to take my message was also sheltering among the bastion stones. He was the same man who had tried to have me hanged, though, thank heavens, he didn’t recognize me just then!

“ Mon général! ” I said in French. “I find you at last.” I gave him the order to fall back.

He didn’t understand a word of my French. He looked at one of his men and said in the sternest of Castilian voices: “What does this Frog want?”

I repeated what I’d said, this time in Castilian, and with the kind of reverence and smile one reserves for the victors. “An order from the high command, mon général : You have carried out your task, gloriously and honorably, and now please allow yourself to be withdrawn. French battalions will take your place until hostilities are complete.”

His disdain turned into fury. Turning his head and squinting, he said: “Allow ourselves to be what ?”

“Leave him to us, my general!” said a nearby soldier, brandishing his bayonet.

I kept up my diplomatic smile, while saying to myself that I never would understand these military types.