Albert Sanchez Pinol - Victus - The Fall of Barcelona

The enemy’s letter, delivered to this City by a messenger, required such attention that we considered it proper not to reply immediately.

I looked up from the sheet of paper. “Shall I go on?” I said. “Or do you already have an idea of what comes next?”

“Read on!”

I felt like I was breathing fire. This fat little colonel was really getting on my nerves with his self-important tone; I wasn’t there to take orders from him. I hesitated: to read or not to read? That was the question. I resolved to follow Don Antonio’s orders.

I filled my lungs so that the thousands of white uniformed soldiers digging the trenches would hear. Curious to know what was happening, they’d put down their picks and shovels to watch the scene. They viewed me thoughtfully, without any animosity. Their officers were so absorbed that they gave no order to go back to work. “Read it,” I said to myself, “like Jimmy announcing his own arrival at the gates of heaven.” I summoned my most stentorian voice:

This City will resist the enemy at its gates.

This City, and the whole Principality, innately loyal to its sovereign — whose charge it would be to declare peace — remains at war.

The unjust and extraordinary threats against us are not daunting, but rather give great heart to the vassals upholding their oft-stated oaths of allegiance.

And because this City is not accustomed to changing the terms of civility, it returns the messengers as safely as it received them. In view of this reply, the Duke of Pópuli should proceed as he judges best, for the City is resolved to oppose all invaders, as he is about to learn.

Barcelona, 29th July 1713

A long moment passed — longer than their execrable cordon — with the Army of the Two Crowns standing looking at us, as though le Mystère had turned us to stone. I lowered the paper brusquely, and only then did the greasy colonel turn indignant, or at least made a show of indignancy.

“What kind of farce do you call this?” he cried. “Do you know you are welcoming a siege?”

“What does it look like?” I said, rolling my eyes. “Think we’ve got cannons up on our bastions just to welcome you in with flowers?”

“Such folly can only be that of criminals who know they are guilty and are afraid of royal punishment.”

“Sir!” I said. “Show some respect.”

“Your ramparts are far from fit for war, and His Majesty’s army has forty thousand hardened soldiers!”

I raised my balled fists above my head. “And we have fifty thousand! Each and every city dweller, plus all the unfortunates who have fled to us seeking refuge!”

“Zuviría, please!” interrupted the Pelt, the first time he’d spoken.

But that colonel had succeeded in irking me, and I let him have it: “And for you to call us criminals! When we occupied Madrid in 1710, the worst we did was to hand out a few bags of coins. And you thank us by setting fire to villages and cities, hanging women and old people, and now setting camp before our walls, ready to scorch us with thousands of pounds of gunpowder.”

“No one raises his voice to me, least of all a rebel to the king!” roared the colonel. “The only thing stopping me from teaching you a lesson is the hospitality required by the rules of war! It’s not too late for you to come to your senses. Do you really think you can resist the most noble duke of Pópuli? He has already covered himself in immortal battlefield glory and is a descendent of the most august Neapolitan families.”

A Neapolitan! Now, there was a way of pacifying me! Their commander in chief, Pópuli, Neapolitan! See how they get absolutely everywhere?

“Neapolitan, did you say?” Making a show of moderation before I exploded.

“From Naples, yes, and of its most distinguished stock.”

But before he could finish, I bellowed like a hippopotamus. “Know the real reason why your little Italian general hasn’t attacked yet? Because he’s scared stiff! His rectum is clenched so tight, a beetle’s antennae couldn’t fit up there!”

“Please, Lieutenant Colonel!” cried the scandalized Pelt, who had turned green and white, rather like a chard.

“We’re going to give Pópuli such a kicking that he’ll go flying, all the way over the Mediterranean and back to his Italian boot!” Then, turning to the officers alongside the corpulent colonel, I said: “As for you, come any closer and we’ll riddle your bodies so full of holes, you’ll end up more like cream sieves, you bunch of blockheads!”

It goes without saying that there ended the courtesies. The Pelt was so dismayed that he didn’t say a word during our walk back to the city. For my part, when Villarroel asked how it had gone, I merely replied: “Mission accomplished, Don Antonio.”

So began the long, cruel, and singular siege of the city of Barcelona. Within a few days, the Bourbons had closed their cordon, just about, from one side of the city to the other. Following that, they were so occupied in applying the finishing touches that they didn’t bother to begin firing at us.

The mood inside the city fluctuated more than the London Stock Exchange; very quickly, the Barcelonans shifted out of euphoria and into the monotony of a never-ending standoff. Neither did the city consider surrender, nor did Pópuli attack. There were some routine artillery exchanges between the cannons on the bastion tops and the besiegers, more colorful than dangerous, the occasional cavalry sortie into no-man’s-land, and some desertions from either side. Strange as it may seem, more soldiers flowed in the direction of the city than fled it. The Spaniards tended to desert more regularly than the French, doubtless because they were given worse food. The defectors usually exaggerated the hardships they’d undergone — to win our sympathy — but we could see that the soles of their boots had rotted, and that spoke volumes.

Things were increasingly strained between the French and Spanish. The French accused their allies of being good for nothing, incapable of looking after their own allies in a siege. The Spaniards retorted by pointing out that the French navy was as good as pointless. (And right they were; the naval blockade was a constant source of embarrassment for the French, at least until Jimmy arrived.)

As an engineer, I couldn’t have been happier with the way the siege was going. Let me remind you that when a city was besieged selon les règles , even if everything went as well as it could for the attackers, they still had only thirty days. All an engineer in my position wanted, therefore, was to draw things out. What the government chose to do with that time wasn’t my concern: negotiate a respectable peace, bring in foreign reinforcements, or wait for other world powers to intercede with diplomacy. Any of these. If Barcelona’s cries were heard in the rest of Europe, sooner or later, someone would have to do something. Thus I reasoned, vaguely. Everyone did. Meanwhile, the months passed, and Pópuli never embarked on his Attack Trench, and so to us, every new dawn was like a victory.

A curious drôle de guerre , yes. Consider it: Most of us soldiers did a shift on the ramparts or in a bastion and would then go home for dinner or breakfast, often a stone’s throw from our battle post. I myself, within five minutes of being up on a bastion observing the Bourbons with the telescope, or directing defense works, would be back at my table with Anfán on my lap and Amelis putting a plate in front of me. “How was your day, darling?” “Great, sweetie, they sent out a patrol, and we dropped our breeches and showed them our bare behinds.”

People would go down to the seafront parade for aperitifs. Sometimes becoming the audience for exciting skirmishes between the two navies, our own ships sailing out into the bay to slip past the blockading French ships, who could do little to stop them. The crowds cheered and clapped, as though it were some kind of stage play on water going on, and not a siege.