Albert Sanchez Pinol - Victus - The Fall of Barcelona

I took Ballester to one side. “Busquets hasn’t done anyone any favors,” I whispered. “If everyone was fighting their own little wars, there’s no way we’d win the main one. Do you see that now?”

“Busquets did well,” Ballester said. “This is his home, and he fought to protect it. What did you expect? For him to sit there waiting for us to show up? Until last week, not even we knew we were going to come to Mataró.”

Despite the distance between us, Busquets had overheard. “At least I tried, damn it. We gave it a go!” he shouted, leaning on his elbow against the saddle. “And now you show up, from God knows where, and start criticizing.”

I went over to him. “I have no issue with you killing Bourbons. But you’ve also been making it easy for them to kill patriots.” I gestured around us. “Look at your men, torn to shreds, holed up in the middle of some dreary forest. And Mataró still in Bourbon hands.” I crouched down so we could speak eye to eye. “These men will listen to you, Busquets. Order them to join the Army of the Generalitat.” I turned to Ballester to try to get him to help. “Say something, man.”

He held out his hand. “You owe me twenty pesos.”

“To hell with you,” shouted Busquets, his blond mane and long gold earrings shaking, “you and your twenty pesos! And you”—he pointed at me—“can leave off. The deputy! My men don’t trust the Red Pelts, to them they’re as good as botifleros . We’ve no grand strategies, all we want is to get the enemy out of our homes, and have a home again. No, we won’t go running around all of Catalonia, we won’t abandon our families.” He sighed bitterly. “And what kind of leader would I be who orders his men to do something they don’t want to?”

His invective was interrupted by one last howl. The barber had finally extracted the bullet. “For you,” he said, placing a bloody red ball in Busquets’ hand. Kissing it, Busquets then introduced it delicately into a small leather pouch. Lead against lead — that was the sound it made dropping in.

Ballester whispered in my ear: “Busquets collects all the bullets that enter his body. Saint Peter told him he’d only open his gates when the pouch was full.”

“And you,” said Busquets, addressing Ballester now, “I’d like to know what you think you’re doing running around doing the deputy’s bidding. He’s one of the worst Red Pelts around.”

Ballester’s look became more sarcastic still. “Twenty pesos,” he said.

Same old story. Put three Catalans in a room, and you’ll have four different opinions. Shaking my head, I said to Ballester: “This is pointless, let’s go.”

“Fine, go, then!” shouted Busquets, incensed, as we made our way out of the clearing. “I expected nothing more from Red Pelts! We’ll keep up the fight though! You hear? We’ll carry on fighting as long as one of us remains alive!”

I wafted my hand in the air, not turning around, as though bidding farewell to an incurable madman.

“And yet we’re supposed to follow you!” Busquets ranted. “Well, I’ll have you know: We’re going to liberate Mataró, and its storehouses, and its sixty thousand cuarteras of wheat!”

I stopped in my tracks as though I’d walked into an invisible wall. I strode back over to Busquets. “What did you say? Say it again? Sixty thousand cuarteras of wheat? Are you sure?”

“The storehouses are full to bursting. Mataró’s the natural place for the Bourbon army to keep their provisions. Very close to their cordon at Barcelona, and the patriots all fled from the town. No fear of sabotage.”

I stood staring ahead, my jaw on the ground. Sixty thousand cuarteras of wheat! The besieging army’s entire supply, a stone’s throw from where we were. The Two Crowns had no idea about the deputation having disembarked. Which explained their having placed only a few cavalry squadrons at Mataró, sufficient to keep a few flighty Miquelets at bay and nothing more.

“Captain Busquets!” I cried. “You are under orders from the deputy now, and you will obey them. Work with the army, and we’ll have taken Mataró in no time.”

Busquets screwed up his pained face even more. “But you yourself said a second ago that we would have to follow where you went, and that taking Mataró was a useless enterprise!”

Ballester and I led the horses away, crossing through the thick undergrowth, crestfallen. When we reached the path again, I couldn’t keep myself from hugging Ballester, who was taken aback by my enthusiasm. “We’re going to turn the siege of Barcelona into a latter-day Cannae!”

“What do you mean, ‘can I’?” he said, annoyed. “Explain yourself, damn it! I haven’t read as many books as you.”

“Think about all the prisoners and deserters who come over to our side. They all say the same: They’ve got no decent footwear, they’re eating insipid gruel day after day. Which is to be expected — the Bourbons have ravaged the country so badly, there’s nowhere to get supplies. They’re like the gluttonous fox after it’s eaten the whole chicken house.”

“And? You have no idea what hunger is. When push comes to shove, people will always resort to stealing.”

“That’s your view; you lead a small crew of mountain men. But at Barcelona, there are forty thousand mouths to feed, and they’re stuck there. We’ve got enough to feed them all right here: the foodstuff in Mataró. The Bourbons are doubtless thinking they can starve Barcelona into submission.”

“And what about can I?”

“Cannae was Imperial Rome’s worst defeat. Hannibal was facing a Roman army that had twice his number. When battle commenced, he let his frontline buckle back, drawing the Romans in, and, meanwhile, had his Carthaginian cavalry come down the wings and encircle the enemy. Our cavalry will be the wheat they’ve stolen. If we deprive them of wheat, and the deputation is situated at the Bourbon cordon’s rear, all will be lost for them. The besieger, besieged.”

There was a hint of a smile on Ballester’s face. He took my meaning. “Forty thousand men can’t survive for weeks and months on empty bellies. They’ll have no choice but to lift the siege.”

Before we mounted up again, I hugged Ballester. “Setting up a new siege will be totally impractical for them. Their morale will be rock-bottom; the military coffers in Madrid, empty. Europe’s sick of war. Little Philip will come under pressure from all different ministries to sign a pact with the Generalitat.”

We rode as hard as we could back to the deputation. They’d posted themselves inside an old country house. Deputy Berenguer, Dalmau, and the other staff officers were holding a council of war. Shitson was there as well, which meant we’d arrived just in time.

I was so excited, I could barely get my words out straight. Deputy Berenguer was annoyed. “This Busquets you speak of, he’s nothing but a petty tyrant! He has neither title nor uniform. We can’t be sure to whom he owes loyalty.”

“But Your Excellence,” I said, “the man’s wounded. I saw him with my own two eyes.”

“You’ve been fooled, then,” retorted Deputy Berenguer. “You just don’t have the brain to see it. How can we be sure his reports are accurate?”

“Because Busquets and his men are from Mataró,” said Ballester dryly.

Dalmau stood up and, with his usual congenial smile, made a proposal: “Leave them to me, Your Excellence. We lose nothing by moving out a little from our current position.”

We led the cavalry and the whole regiment to Busquets’s wood. When the Miquelets saw us, they erupted in sheer delight: a whole army come to rescue them! War, that great pendulum. A few hours earlier, Busquets was wounded and far from help in some forest, and now here was an army, well equipped and ready to go. Mataró would open its gates to us, the enemy storehouses would be ours, and, with a little luck, the final victory, too. Busquets’s Miquelets were over the moon. They embraced Dalmau’s men, weeping with pure joy. It was the first time I had felt at all optimistic during the war — and it would be the last. We didn’t need to win it; it was good enough not to lose.