That night, through jug after jug of wine, conversing silently with Ballester, I didn’t yet know the truly terrible, and at the same time unforeseen, thing: that the sky was just about to come crashing down on our heads.
5
Now, all these years later, I look back on Christmas 1713 with more affection than it merits. Being on duty up on the ramparts was freezing work. Below us, the icebound palisade stakes, and beyond them, the enemy cordon. Wind, rain, and, up above, a leaden sky, grayer than a mule’s belly. But when we were on guard on the bastions, high on their prowlike edges, there was always one thing we could do to lift our spirits, and that was to look back across the city we were defending.
Throughout the siege, the Red Pelts were consumed with the idea of maintaining calm among the populace. They’d ordered Barcelonans to fill balconies and windows with lamps and candles at nightfall, so the streets wouldn’t be as dark. Turning around, you’d be presented with a lit-up Barcelona. During those Christmas nights, there were more lamps than ever, and the shades were made of red, yellow, and green glass, making the city streets wink and glitter like a nocturnal rainbow.
1714 arrived, and everything carried on as it had been. Three, four, five more months passed, and still the same. Spring burst upon us, and everyone, including me, was becoming fed up with the siege. There was nothing to contend with, only the tedium, the occasional skirmish, and the fatigue that affected the free citizens-turned-soldiers. In Bazoches terms, any siege lasting so long would be considered a failure. More than that: an outright aberration, a complete departure from the very definition of a siege. Pópuli would have needed to sweep us aside within a week, yet there we were, and not an Attack Trench in sight.
Anyway, what I mean is that, in the spring of 1714, I’d had nearly all I could take. Everyone had, save one man: Don Antonio de Villarroel. Among my many tasks, one of the most demanding was accompanying him when he was inspecting positions. One bastion, another, the curtain walls covering the stretches between the bastions; Don Antonio was never satisfied. More soldiers were needed here, more cannons there; and over there, that old breach hadn’t been closed up entirely. On May 19 that year, I was taking the brunt of one of his tirades when we were interrupted by a heavier than usual artillery bombardment.
Silent explosions could be seen coming from the enemy cannons. Then you’d hear a faint whistling sound, followed, with a sonorous crrrack, by the impact of cannonball on ramparts. But it was different on this occasion. They were aiming high, and the cannonballs sailed over the walls and came down inside the city, on the roofs or west faces of civilian buildings.
“Lunatics!” I shouted. “Here, we’re here! Are you using your rectal holes to aim with?”
The cannonade continued, more and more off-target shots. I was raging. Don Antonio made me be quiet—he’d understood what was happening long before I had. “They know precisely what they’re about,” he said.
“But Don Antonio,” I protested, “they’re missing us by miles.”
He turned and went over to the command post. I followed behind. The light finally turned on in my head: They were shelling the city itself!
Years studying in Bazoches to learn how to storm a stronghold with minimal casualties, and here was Pópuli, the butcher, aiming his cannons at civilian houses rather than at the ramparts! It was a feat so unusual, such a departure from the Bazoches precepts, and from the slightest glimmer of human civility, and so flagrant, sordid, and brutal, that I didn’t want to believe it was happening. As we ran through the streets, an enormous cannonball landed on a four-story building. The facade crumbled, and as the stones and beams came crashing down, I heard amid the noise the wailing of a child. The sound of a child in pain will always stir up all-consuming hatred. I briefly went back up to the top of the bastion. I remember taking out a telescope and scanning the Bourbon positions. Casting around the fajina parapets, among which their cannons were concealed, my lens came to rest on a man standing still between all the smoke and the to-ing and fro-ing of the gunners. He, too, was looking through a telescope. We were looking at each other. He raised an arm in greeting—mockingly, mocking our agony. And then I recognized him: It was Verboom, that utter swine.
The high command, including Costa, were immediately called together in an emergency meeting. Everyone aside from Costa was unsettled; chewing a sprig of parsley and speaking in his usual dispassionate monotone, he seemed almost not to care: “They’re using long-range cannons. But even with them, they can’t reach all the neighborhoods, only the one nearest the walls, the Ribera barrio. It’s only a three-gun battery.”
I couldn’t help myself from making a selfish comment: “And as luck would have it, Ribera is where my family lives.”
Some of the officers called on Don Antonio to send out a couple of battalions against the battery. Others thought the cannonade was an attempt to provoke a large sortie that was doomed to fail. Still others argued for a missive to be sent to Pópuli, threatening the execution of prisoners if the shelling was not called off. Our resident parsley-chewer came up with a simple but brilliant solution: We needed to take our most accurate cannons, the shorter-range ones, closer to the enemy positions, and from there destroy their battery. How? Sallying forth from the city with one whole battery of our own.
“But,” I objected, “that will also put the enemy in a position to fire on our cannons.”
His answer was very much that of a gunner: “What is infantry for if not to provide cover for artillery?”
You could never tell if Costa was being serious. He fished around in his pouch and looked crestfallen to find himself out of parsley. “Give me and my Mallorcans ten minutes to carry out our own bombardment,” he said, looking up. “That’s all we’ll need.”
When it came to it, five minutes was more than enough. Don Antonio sent out two full battalions, and these attacked the cordon in ostentatiously well-ordered ranks, with twenty drummers announcing the onslaught. The Bourbons sent twice their number to tackle them, falling for the trap. Making the most of the diversion, Costa set out with six cannons. Our cannonballs landed right on the heads of that poor Bourbon battery. The Mallorcans hooked the light cannons back onto the carriages and fell back into the city. This was mud in Pópuli’s eye—outmaneuvered, and three cannons down.
Infuriated, he brought together all his cannons and pushed the cordon a little closer to the city—close enough to put the whole of Barcelona within range, save the seafront. The attack of May 19 was nothing next to what was about to befall us. The bombardment of the whole urban district commenced. An uninterrupted and systematic barrage, raining down upon us night and day for months.
Such military terror as that has a great fondness for destruction on a grand scale. The tall defiles formed by the city’s buildings, along with the narrow streets, were too great a temptation. Missile upon missile they hurled, with all the glee of a child stamping on ant nests. I can still see streets thick with fleeing civilians as the walls around them erupted like pus-filled pimples.
To all Barcelonans, this was the inferno; for Pópuli, a calculated measure. His reasoning being that, in the face of such terror, the people would pressure its government to open the city gates. In a sense, putting all emotion aside, it was the right move from Pópuli. Would it be worth us paying with our homes and our cathedrals, our very lives? The army defending Barcelona was made up of militia fighting to defend their families. Now, with those loved ones coming under fire, if they were going to be killed anyway, where was the sense in continuing the resistance? But Pópuli had acted in anger, and he had miscalculated. The people didn’t think along the lines he’d expected. Quite the opposite.
Nor even did Martí Zuviría, an engineer trained in coolheaded decision-making. Precisely because I knew how barbarous the enemy was, and that they would stop at nothing, it was my duty to plead for the white flag to be shown. Why did I not? I don’t know. Perhaps we’d gone too far for that. In spite of what I’d learned at Bazoch
es, beyond its walls, the reality of war was altogether different. The marquis’s rationale was not equal to the changes being wrought in the world at that time.
Plus, Pópuli’s maneuver merely demonstrated his impotence and frustration. Rather than denting people’s faith, the bombardment—by showing that Pópuli didn’t believe he could overcome the defenders—was a spur. Further—and something we didn’t know yet—Madrid had made it known that, because of his negligence, Pópuli was to be replaced. He’d never have the chance to ride victorious into Barcelona. Pópuli took his frustration out on the Barcelonans. The sustained flurries of missiles came in fifteen-minute intervals, precise and forbidding. So it was for months. Some streets took such a battering, you had to resort to memory to discern where you were.
Old Barcelona, always lighthearted, full of joy and cheer, now coming under aerial torment. Cannonballs that were the enemies of all intelligence, including the printing press: One fell on the offices of the city’s most venerable newspaper, the Diario del Sitio, killing its entire writing staff as well as the proprietors. Anti-religious cannonballs: One came through the rose window at the Church of Pi during a service, slaughtering the parishioners. Cannonballs, that is to say, that were nocturnal, blind, and deranged, because one also killed three of Philip’s agents as they were pinning lampoons to a wall. Poor boys, in quite a state they were. I came across a paintbrush attached to a wall—the point about this brush being that it was also attached to a hand, and that hand to half an arm. Up to the elbow was left. Its owner was putting up lampoons when the cannonball fell on his head. Anyway, the teams of cleaners didn’t hurry to take it down, leaving it as an example and a lesson to traitors.
All we could do was evacuate the Barcelonans to the beach or up to the mountain of Montjuic, the only places beyond the cannons’ reach. The minority went up to Montjuic—those who had servants they could send back down for provisions. So on the beach, an enormous encampment of exiles was established. First mattresses were laid out, and over those the most sturdy and welcoming tents. The feminine touch was evident in them. They always used their best linens, quilts, and curtains for the awnings—the most visible part of the tent. A kind of unspoken competitiveness broke out, roofs covered with damask silks and colorful cashmere. Around the tents, domestic furniture was placed, some of it baroque in style. It made sense that the owners brought their most precious belongings, so they could keep an eye on them. But what a contrast! Humble cooking fires in the sand, and around them oak tables with spiral legs, fine mirrors, wardrobes taller than a person, upholstered chairs, and even one or two up-to-date lady’s dressing tables, toujours à la mode.
The massive bombardment had something isocratic about it: In the face of such an onslaught, everyone became equal; where you came from and your social standing ceased to matter. The grouping together on the beaches, the immodesty of contact, provoked the opposite of Pópuli’s desire. These people, neighbors but now in a new sense, no longer separated by walls as before, came to form an open-air community. Forced together, they felt more unified than ever. The children ran in the sand, the women cooked together. Elderly men conversed, sitting smoking their pipes; there were not many male adults to be seen besides.
Between the beach and the city ramparts, the city was one of deserted streets and abandoned buildings. And what an unprecedented sight, these streets. The rumbling of the cannonballs opened doors. Many of the buildings’ damaged facades had dropped away like masks, exposing three or four storeys with furniture and beds still in place. People couldn’t carry everything, and so much unguarded wealth was a considerable temptation. The Red Pelts were nothing if not rigorous, though, and they placed guards on the streets with a license to kill.
One of the first looters to be caught was called Cigalet (a nickname, roughly translatable as “little chicken”). Following a summary trial, he was sentenced to hang—immediately, as an example to others. Cigalet was well known, making it a high-profile case: It so happened that the first person caught with his hand in the silver chest was also the city’s main executioner. His assistant, who was betrothed to Cigalet’s daughter, had to do the honors. Cigalet was far calmer about it than his future son-in-law. Walking up the scaffold steps, the prisoner joked with the crowd. They said encouraging things, lightly mocking him, halfway between irony and sympathy. “Remember your promotion is down to me,” he said as his son-in-law-to-be placed the noose over his head. What a scene! I wonder what the wedding night must have been like.
Poor Cigalet at least got a trial; subsequent looters were never even brought before a tribunal. There were stakes in three different places in the city—the looter would be tied to whichever happened to be nearest to the crime, then shot. No question, any city under siege is subject to extraordinary measures, but it was as though the Red Pelts’ regime and the bestiality of the Bourbons had become two wheels on the same axle.
Members of the Civil Guard were recruited from the lowest of the low. There wasn’t any choice, given that the honorable citizens were manning the ramparts as part of the Coronela militia. The Red Pelts enlisted the procurers, tricksters, tavern ruffians, masterless goons, back-alley cutthroats, and hallucinating drunkards. And these were the ones charged with upholding the law. The naval blockade had seen food prices soar—most looters were impelled not by greed but by hunger. It meant that, by government edict, criminals were given the right to execute those who were starving.
My dear vile Waltraud bids me not to erupt, but how can I not? Calling together these roving patrols, the Red Pelts appealed to order and public calm: the “Octavian peace,” they called it, in their most affected language. I’ll tell you now what that Octavian peace consisted of: The sky was tumbling down on our heads—in the most literal sense—and right until the last day, the patrols were standing guard at the homes of wealthy botifleros such as the ones who had deserted Mataró. When a skeletal child or an old toothless woman slipped in through a hole in the wall, trying to find food, there those killers were, armed by the government itself, tying the hungry to a post and shooting them dead. Bourbons rained down death from without, and Red Pelts from within. There you have it.
There is no such thing as a fortress fully covered by a roof. And fiery tempests were raining down on us from above. When it was all over, seven in ten of Barcelona’s houses were either in ruins or had holes punched through them by cannonballs. In just the first two months of the bombardment, in a city with a population of 50,000, precisely 27,275 cannonballs were said to have fallen. Every Barcelonan, therefore, was treated to half a cannonball each by Philip V.
I wonder to this day who the person might have been to keep such close count. I picture him at the top of a bell tower with tablet and chalk, impassive, bored, noting down the impacts with dashes and scores. Which will be where our proverb comes from: “A man who’s out of work counts cannonballs.”
Meanwhile, news reached us from the enemy lines. Pópuli was now to be replaced as commander of the besieging army. Strange though it may sound, this was the worst news possible.
To replace the useless Pópuli, Little Philip had asked his grandfather to send French reinforcements, including their best general. Guess who that was. Who else but the faithful, invincible marshal of Almansa, scourge of Louis XIV’s enemies: Who else but Jimmy.
According to our spies, he had already crossed the Pyrenees, the cream of the French army in tow. They were advancing slowly because of the poor state of the roads and because—pity for us!—of the heavy artillery they were bringing with them.
It was as though someone had ripped my lungs from my chest when I heard this. Jimmy. His cruel and calculating nature, his inexorable determination. I’d have been far happier taking on Satan. Why? Because Jimmy only ever entered the fray if the odds were in his favor.
Don Antonio gave us the news in a military council with the principal commanders. Our agents must have been professionals when it came to counting things, because he then went on to enumerate, bat
talion by battalion, the French forces Jimmy was bringing with him. I remember the hush that came down. Any officer with half a brain knew what this meant. Nobody spoke the words, but everyone was thinking: “Now what?”
Don Antonio gave me that night off. We’d also moved to the beach, into a basic tent made out of strips of old clothes. To Barcelonans, boredom was like a sickness, and on the beach, they kept it at bay with music. The truth is, dining out in front of the beach, my troop of children, dwarves, and old men around me, I felt a little lighter.
Amelis and I retired soon after. I was too tired for lovemaking. Our bed could not have been more simple: one blanket under us and one on top, the sand itself our mattress. The tent had very few comforts, but Amelis kept her music box beside the pillow. She opened it. There, in that crude beach tent, the melodies it played had an especially consoling air.
I recounted the war council to Amelis. “The good news is that the siege will be over soon,” I said.
“We’re going to surrender?”
I didn’t think she’d understood. “We’re already at a disadvantage in every department,” I said. “But when these French reinforcements arrive, the mismatch will be too huge. We’ll send an emissary to negotiate terms, honorable ones, probably something safeguarding lives and property. Jimmy won’t oppose that.”