Carlos Fuentes - Terra Nostra

Black, brilliant, turbid, liquid memory of the present: the heretics were well supplied with stores inside the walled city built upon a small hillock and encircled by a deep moat; it was additionally protected by its swampy lakes, as the heretics were protected by the inciting Brabantine and Batavian dukes who set their temporal authorities against the divine authority of Rome, claiming Caesar’s portion for themselves instead of God; in this way they freed themselves from the payment of tithes, kept in their own coffers all proceeds from the sale of indulgences, and favored the merchants and usurers of the gray Nordic ports; and too, El Señor smiled bitterly, the heretics, akin to Waldensian austerity and Catharistic sin, but who now called themselves Adamites, had ended up in the service of the sins they claimed to combat: greed and riches and power. That alone was enough to justify this war against heretics and princes who had rebelled against Rome, and merchants faithful only to their overflowing treasure chests. Give me strength, O God, to combat them in your name and in the name of the Christian power bequeathed me by my warrior father.

“Follow always the example set by your father,” his mother had told El Señor since he was a child. “On one occasion he slept thirty successive days in his armor, thus uniting the sacrifice of the body with the battle of the soul.” El Señor, entering the city he had conquered by siege, considered himself worthy of such a dynastic inheritance: later he would remember tremulous images of faces blasted by powder, raw and mutilated flesh, eyes and hands torn away by crossbow and cannon on the sites where these novelties had been employed; there was similar cruelty where the struggle had followed ancient seignorial custom: chain mail driven into flesh by heavy ax blows, eyes burned raw by enemy-thrown quicklime: the combat of body against body, mount against mount; horsemen killed not by enemy action but by concussion when their helmeted heads struck the ground; men drowned in the attempt to cross the lake in their heavy armor or dead of heat stroke inside their creaking cuirasses; men run through by El Señor’s swordsmen after they had fallen and were struggling like overturned turtles in their heavy armor. Maneuverability, on the other hand, was the rule of war in the troops of El Señor, who had brought with him Spanish infantry — Asturians and miners, by origin — to dig and sap and act as rear guard once the light cavalry, the strategic weapon of victory, had descended upon the heavily armored phalanxes of the heretic-protecting Duke; the victory had been won by the mercenaries recruited among the Germans of the Upper Rhine and the Danube, mounted forces most effective in this new style of warfare — effective, that is, as long as they received their wages, for otherwise the risk was great that they would desert to the enemy; these German reiters fought with the pistol, a new weapon invented in the Italian village of Pistoia; five or six of these light arms assured stunning mobility in skirmishes, confusing and unsettling at the first encounter the massed enemy cavalry, whose horses were slowed by armor and the disproportionately long lances of the troops. As their armor and trappings were all of black, these mercenaries were called the Germans of the Black Band.

The victory belonged to them, but also to El Señor’s cold and lucid martial ingenuity — inflamed by faith, cooled by the science of warfare learned from his father. Once its heavy cavalry had been destroyed, the enemy barricaded itself inside the city, protected by tall towers and projecting bastions, a deep moat, and the waters of the river that branched into many smaller channels to form small lakes and swamps about the city walls. But El Señor overcame this natural defense: observing the cumbersome cavalrymen drown in river and swamp, he had utilized the boats along the shore, formerly used to transport foot soldiers, to construct a surer, swifter crossing; gunwale to gunwale he lined up the boats and filled them all with earth; the clever Germans obtained information from fishermen about places a man could wade across the lake in waist-deep water: light, light at all costs, the advance upon the besieged city, give every horse a measure of oats, captains and horsemen must do without the service of their squires, maneuverability, the enemy has lost four flags in the battles outside its walls, we must entrench ourselves in that lost ground, mobility, set broad planks across the river, mark a route through the swamp, the enemy lies in ambush, cuts down trees we might use as refuge or hiding place in the woods along the river, for man and tree are easy to confuse by night, the mills are turning, mills driven by horsepower, water mills, windmills, praise God, the wind is rising, and a strong wind means a swift-spreading fire, the Germans thunder across the causeway of boats, the infantry follows across planks and tightly bound branches, straw huts in the false village outside the walls burst into flame, the enemy constructs ingenious trenches, deep inside, low outside, now black smoke engulfs the besieged city, they cannot see us but we can see the buttresses of the wall, now, Asturian miners, dig a honeycomb of trenches so we can reach the moat about the city, mine the bastions with powder so rotten that like the dead it must be carried in shrouds, now, from the side of the river lost by the enemy, fire the cannon, tower after tower falls, rampart after rampart, don’t hold back now, days pass, the city resists the siege but we can smell what is happening inside: the stench of death; deserters leap from the ravaged towers into the lake, our vanguard sees the city fathers expelled, they come to us and tell us: We are peaceful burghers, the Duke and his heretics force us to work like slaves repairing the walls, if we refuse we are flogged in public and if we are recalcitrant we are hanged, and if we do not accept his terms we are thrown from the city into the hands of the enemy, for the Duke considers this a worse punishment than the whip or the gallows, and we can tell you that although the city is without provisions or arms it is not lacking in courage, and it will defend itself whether with stones or arrows or caldrons of boiling pitch, for there are many archers and many strong arms, but no cannon or culverin or ordnance; El Señor ordered his troops to shield themselves against the falling stones and to assure their positions beside the battered walls and crumbling towers inside temporary shelters, and thus protect themselves from both defenders and attackers, from the stones and arrows of the Duke as well as the cannon and crossbows of El Señor; he ordered his German cavalry to position themselves outside the city’s rear gate, then the mines were exploded, the towers demolished, the artillery finally breached the wall, and shouting and yelling, El Señor’s troops entered the terrified city: the Duke and his heretics fell back and attempted to escape, but with pistols and daggers the Germans awaited them, fearful squadrons — the black splendor of the Rhinelanders’ cuirasses and the coppery refulgence of those of the Danubian mercenaries; with pistol and dagger they fell upon the heretics; the Germans shot and slaughtered, the Spanish shoveled and exploded, and at exactly one o’clock in the afternoon a captain of the Banner of the Blood planted his flag on the ruins of the highest tower, opened the gates, lowered the drawbridges, and El Señor rode into the city.

He expected a triumphal reception, if not from a populace accustomed to wars and indifferent to interchangeable lords, or from soldiers equally available to either side, at least from his own troops. But instead, as he advanced through the narrow streets, from the windows overhead, clouds of feathers and storms of loose straw rained down upon him and upon his caparisoned charger.