Albert Sanchez Pinol - Victus - The Fall of Barcelona

At midafternoon I was called in to join the general staff. Members of the senior military were posted in the country house down near the beach where we’d landed. A debate was going on, a most heated one, between Deputy Berenguer and Dalmau. The former nestled in his pisspot throne, the latter with his fists thrust against the table, leaning forward.

“Our objective is to raise recruits and then go and liberate Barcelona!” bellowed Deputy Berenguer.

“Our objective is to win the war!” replied Dalmau from his side of the table. Seeing me come in, he said: “Ah, Zuviría. You, I believe, interrogated a couple of French prisoners whom Busquets was holding.”

“I did, Colonel.”

“And they corroborated the information on the storehouses?”

“In every respect, sir,” I said, not understanding the argument.

Dalmau turned to face Deputy Berenguer, his energies renewed. “Do you hear that? If you don’t trust Busquets, at least have faith in his enemies. Four and a half million kilos of wheat! Their whole foodstuff supply! We’re past harvest now, the land’s going to be producing nothing more; they’ll have no way of feeding their army! Plus, imagine what it’ll do for morale to take control of those stores. We can easily sail a portion into Barcelona as a trophy. Or better still: Transport all we can and share it out among the most needy! They’ll enlist in droves!”

Deputy Berenguer, though listening, was clearly annoyed. “And I say again,” he said, “the decision’s been made by our superiors, quite apart from the circumstances we’re faced with here. Obey orders! Your attitude is near insubordinate!”

I couldn’t help but get involved. “Your Excellence, may I ask what you mean by a decision made by our superiors?”

Dalmau had subsided into a chair, looking like he’d given up. He passed a tired hand over his face. “We’re not going to be attacking Mataró,” he said dispiritedly. “The deputy’s against it.”

I was astonished. “Mataró will open its gates to us!” I cried. “No blood need even be spilled! We lose nothing by attacking and gain everything. It might even mean the end of the war!”

“You will obey my orders, as I will obey those of my superiors,” said the deputy before I had finished. “I have instructions from the government not to enter Mataró. And that’s how it will be.”

I was speechless. This was beyond me. Our own deputy refusing to use force against the enemy. “Your Excellence,” I said, my mouth dry. “Your opinion may be down to the fact you’ve never seen our lads in action. They’d storm Paris and Madrid, given the order. Have faith in them, I beg you.”

“Come now, you don’t fool me,” he said with disdain. “I may be old, my legs may not work anymore, but my eyes still do.” Pointing at me, he addressed Dalmau once more. “The man who accompanied Lieutenant Colonel Zuviría before, was that not the infamous Ballester? Ballester! A country bandit, a prince among brigands! I myself sent out a decree to have him hunted down a couple of years ago, calling for him to be hanged, drawn and quartered, and his body displayed as an example.” He took a breath. “War indeed inverts and subverts the natural order of things. And you, Dalmau, know very well, better than anyone, that the men in your regiment are little different. The lowest of the low and, as such, prey to the basest urges.”

Dalmau protested. “My men fight like lions!”

“And I congratulate you on that,” said the deputy. “Your regiment has only recently been assembled, and they’ve very quickly shown themselves to be hardy. But Dalmau, tell me something: Have you ever given them an order not to use violence?”

“If you are referring to discipline, all the officers here will back me up in saying there have never been any issues.”

“In Barcelona!” specified the deputy, wagging a finger. “Under the watchful and paternal eye of the Generalitat. But once inside Mataró, can you guarantee that discipline will hold?” He turned and addressed me once more. “Lieutenant Colonel Zuviría, I hear you served as an engineer in His Majesty’s army in 1710?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Tell us, in that case: Is it reasonable to suppose of a place that has been turned into a general storehouse, and in which a huge quantity of grain has been gathered, that other goods and stuffs will also be gathered in that place?”

“Of course, Your Excellence,” I said, because it was true, and because this way there would be more arguments in favor of an attack. “Weaponry, munitions, material that can be used for sapping and for building trenches, certainly, and possibly carts and horses we’ll need to transport it all away—”

That old graybeard with his drooping eyes was both canny and astute, because before I could finish, he cut in. “What about wine? Cheap liquor?”

“Well—” I hesitated. “Possibly.”

He raised his voice. “Possibly? They’ll have food enough for an entire army and not a drop of filthy alcohol? Lieutenant Colonel! Before an attack, what do men use to calm their nerves?”

I gave in, to my great regret. “A little alcohol, doubtless.”

“Not a little, a lot!” he said scornfully. Taking a couple of breaths, he turned back to Dalmau. “The first thing your men will do is to get drunk. And once they’ve turned into a drunken mob, any discipline you’ve instilled will melt; nothing will hold them back. There are very many of the most noble families in Mataró, lineages going back to King Jaume I. Ill-advisedly, they’ve betrayed their country, but we can’t allow them to be massacred, least of all without any kind of a trial! We have here the ideal conditions for the lowest plebes to wreak the lowest vengeance: stabbing noblemen and taking advantage of ladies. Need I tell you what our enemies would do if they heard news of such an atrocity? Spread it around Europe, debasing Catalonia’s blessed name! We’re a small country; international consensus matters to us. No, sirs, I will not allow a minor victory to annihilate all our possibilities.”

I was so riled by all this that I myself took the floor. “Don Antonio would never approve such a decision! Quite the reverse.”

“Our commander in chief is at the government’s command, and my orders come from the government,” shouted the deputy. Like any Red Pelt, he was immediately incensed by any discussion about the Generalitat and Don Antonio’s competing influence. “It isn’t a military dictatorship!”

“Don Antonio, a dictator?” I said, becoming animated. “I’ve never heard such bilge in all my days!”

My tone forced Dalmau to intercede: “Lieutenant Colonel Zuviría! Act in a manner more befitting your rank — that’s an order!”

But I couldn’t control the frenzy taking hold of me. “If Don Antonio loved the saber regiment so much, he’d be fighting for the Bourbons; they offered him far higher wages than Vienna now pays him! And if our lads get their hands on a few botiflero petticoats, where’s the harm in that? That’s how it is in war, and these cowardly, self-serving so-and-so’s abandoned their people to join the butchers. What should we do with them? Pin medals on their chests? Extol their honorable virtues? We could exchange them for patriots! Take this many botifleros and we’d stop the execution of hundreds, thousands, of Miquelets!”

A number of the officers in the room wanted me arrested. When I put my hand to my sword hilt, Dalmau came and pushed me to the door. “Easy, Zuviría,” he said as he led me out. “You’ll achieve nothing, speaking to people like that.”

I still had time to shout over his shoulder: “What is this war, anyway? Let clockmakers make clocks and politicians politic — soldiers should be left to do what they do, make war!”