Albert Sanchez Pinol - Victus - The Fall of Barcelona

À bas Villabajo

Le maraud!

À bas Villarriba

Le gros Verrat!

À bas Vendôme,

Ce sale bonhomme!

Which might be loosely translated as:

Neither Villabajo nor Villarriba. Oh, Vendôme, but what a fool you are.

Well, it obviously sounded better in French, because it rhymed.

The Retreat of 1710 can be summarized as one long, unending logistical nightmare. Geographers can say what they like, but having experienced the Retreat, I can tell you that in my opinion, Barcelona will always be farther away from Toledo than the Land of Saturn.

Stanhope and his Englishmen insisted on marching parallel to the bulk of the army. Maintaining communication between the two bodies of men complicated everything. An army advancing or retreating lays waste to a huge area around it for its own maintenance. With the Castilian land being so poor and the winter so harrowing, it is understandable that the two columns needed to be moving very far apart from each other. “Close together when in combat, far apart when on the move,” so says the military maxim. But not quite that far apart, caray !

On December 8, Stanhope — that conceited ass Stanhope — allowed himself to be surrounded in a small town by the name of Brihuega. He didn’t know how near or far behind the enemy was. Unbelievable though it sounds, he stopped in Brihuega for three whole days so that his army could rest and he could have himself a nice little cup of hot tea. Before he knew what was happening, Vendôme was upon him. He dug himself in at Brihuega. He sent the bulk of the army as many as six desperate messages, begging them to come to the rescue of the English.

How could he have allowed himself to get trapped so easily? The explanation is simple. Stanhope didn’t have Don Antonio’s eyes. His heavy cavalry did not move easily in that war of feints and dodges. And Stanhope was a great Coehoornian brute, capable of heavy frontal batterings and nothing else.

After some conference between the senior command, Don Antonio came out of the tent to tell us how things were going. When we asked his opinion, he shook his head. “There aren’t enough of the English to survive a mass assault. Vendôme knows that, and he’ll throw everything he’s got at the attack. They’ll never make it.”

But the Allied army went to their aid. The trumpets sounded, and the whole army turned tail and headed for Brihuega at a forced march. The political and military consequences of losing the entire English contingent would be equally serious. After so many protracted maneuvers, after making such efforts to put some distance between us, we turned around and headed of our own free will into the battle we had striven so hard to avoid. Well, Lord In-a-Trice, thank you very much!

Oh, but let us be a little more indulgent; perhaps it was not such a senseless maneuver after all. The Allied army was hastening to the rescue; if In-a-Trice could hold out a little, we would be able to catch the Bourbons between the devil and the deep blue sea. While we were driving our mounts to their limit, Vendôme surrounded Brihuega and demanded the surrender of the English forces. Stanhope responded with a most peculiar note: “Inform the Duc de Vendôme that my Englishmen and I shall defend ourselves to the bitter end.”

Somebody ought to have explained to In-a-Trice that heroic proclamations only become a source of perpetual ridicule for anyone who fails to live up to them. By the third attack, he was having doubts. Why die in some godforsaken Castilian village in the middle of nowhere if he could spend that night dining on pheasant with his opponent general, Vendôme? When we approached the outskirts of Brihuega, the sound of cannon fire had already stopped. It wasn’t hard to guess what had happened: The English, the entire English force, had surrendered.

Four thousand veterans taken with all their weapons and all their equipment! And General Stanhope at their head, the same man who had arrived in Spain so very generously supplied with arrogance and with horses. I’ll sort this out in a trice! And now his four thousand Englishmen were marching toward captivity, heads lowered and with a bayonet escort.

Well, we planted ourselves on the outskirts of Brihuega, gasping for breath. And who should be waiting for us, rubbing his hands in glee? Only Vendôme and the entire Army of the Two Crowns, in perfect battle formation.

The Bourbons exceeded us in number by two to one. Our men and horses were exhausted after a day and a night’s marching to rescue Stanhope. And with the enemy so close, we had no way to retreat. Never has a battle been so unlooked for and yet so unavoidable.

An engineer will never be a soldier. Our mentality differs in one fundamental point: Why are human beings so keen on killing each other out in the open when we’ve invented such marvels of self-preservation as trenches and bastions? In case it comes in useful to you one day, let me cite Martí Zuviría’s Brief Instruction Manual for Surviving a Pitched Battle . Thus it goes:

CHAPTER ONE: Devise some good excuse to separate yourself from your fighting formation.

CHAPTER TWO: Drop to the ground facedown, feigning death, with your head behind the biggest rock you can find, and don’t move till your ears inform you the shooting is over.

CHAPTER THREE: Instruction Manual concludes.

I can assure you, it has been of great use to me, as evidenced by the fact that at the age of ninety-eight, here I am, with half my face missing and three holes in my ass but still dictating my memoirs to my dear vile Waltraud. The only defect of this guide is that in certain circumstances, such as in Brihuega, it is not possible to put it into practice. And do you know why? Because of all the generals in the world, I had to be serving the only one who used his rank not to hide behind but to make himself more exposed.

Villarroel had been born in a uniform, and for a fellow like that, dying in battle was one more perk of the job. That particular battle had been lost before it was even begun; anyone could see that. My own war vehicle was a horse who had been worn out by the cold, the deprivation, and his exertions. His ribs were so prominently visible, his flanks looked like a bellows. My horse stood beside that of Don Antonio, who, without looking at me, gave me a telling-off: “Sit up straight, Captain Zuviría! Any soldier who happens to glance to one side should see his officers proud and ready for the attack. And you look like a limp head of lettuce.”

I did not answer. He gave me a sharp blow to the kidneys with his riding crop and added: “An officer is the spirit and the mirror of the troops. If an officer has doubts, the men will collapse.”

I straightened up a little, not much. I, too, spoke without looking at him. It was as though we were in a horseback confessional.

“I’m not an officer, sir, you know that as well as I do,” I said sadly. “ Merda .”

That Catalan word, merda , made him smile. “You might not know it, but I was born in Barcelona.”

I looked at him, astonished. Villarroel, the epitome of Castilian virtues: severe, inflexible, and just. That piece of news simply astonished me.

“My father was also a soldier, and he was posted there,” he explained. “Which was why my mother gave birth to me in Barcelona. Beautiful city.”

While Villarroel made a happy speech about the beauties of Barcelona as seen through the eyes of a Castilian, the fighting stretched all the way down the line. From where we sat, we could just hear the din of the gunfire, see the injured men pouring back toward the rearguard, hear the yells of the sergeants trying to maintain order in the ranks.

“Don Antonio,” I groaned, “this is madness. There’s no way we can possibly win this battle, you know that already.”