Victus

  The message was written in arrogant and threatening terms, but Don Antonio saw its real meaning. The enemy would discuss terms! Exultant, he called the high command together, looking for them to take a unanimous proposal to the government. As his aide-de-camp, I was also present.

  Don Antonio began by pointing out what a unique opportunity it was. It would be beyond insane to let it pass by. We were in a position to save the city, its inhabitants, and even possibly one or two other things besides. Negotiating wasn’t a job for the military but for politicians, so our task was to make sure the government understood they couldn’t ignore this chance. It would be the last, and it might avert a catastrophe of biblical proportions.

  I remember Don Antonio smiling—a rare sight! All our hardships had not been for nothing, all our struggles had borne fruit: The enemy was willing to enter discussions. If our diplomats were worth their salt, the core of the Catalan constitutions and liberties might, might, be upheld.

  But the meeting with the high command did not go well. I remember the large rectangular table, packed tightly around with officers. Their uniforms clean but in tatters, and everyone gaunt. Not one of them went along with their commander in chief’s suggestion. Not one could look him in the eye. It wasn’t that they doubted his authority, he was still revered, but they simply weren’t in agreement with the idea of surrendering.

  Don Antonio refused to give up yet, and he turned to Casanova to urge a vote in the council. Casanova went along with it, but coolly; he knew better than anyone the leanings of Barcelona’s so very isocratic government.

  The vote was a landslide—in the wrong direction. Of thirty representatives, only three were in favor of Casanova’s motion to negotiate with the Bourbons: It was twenty-six against four. For only three to vote with the head of the government said everything about Casanova’s isolated position. In such circumstances, how could policies ever be enforced?

  Everything was topsy-turvy now: The only people willing to end the war were the generals.

  The news came to us the following day: Don Antonio had stood down. In the face of the inevitable disaster to come, he sent word to the government: Honor prevented him from taking charge of a rout. Therefore, with all military means exhausted, he requested to be put aboard a ship. He’d waive all moneys owed along with all privileges.

  I view this as one last attempt to win them over: Either they negotiate or lose him. Unfortunately, the situation had gone beyond all reasonable bounds. The government merely assented: If he wanted to stand down, they would provide him with a couple of swift ships, and he could try and slip through the blockade. Our small, easily maneuverable ships were always used whenever evacuating anyone important, the French ships’ hulls being too deep for them to venture into the shallows. The small Catalan vessels would depart under cover of dark, hugging the coast, and sail through the night in the direction of Mallorca.

  I was so stunned by the news, I almost thought it was a prank. Don Antonio was leaving us! Dumbfounded, I didn’t ask who was replacing him. I could imagine no one capable of taking the role, and indeed, no one was whom they appointed. That is: The Virgin Mary was proclaimed commander in chief.

  The Virgin Mary! It had to be a joke. But no, anything but. Martí Zuviría, educated in all the possible nuances of compass and telescope, in precisely displacing exact amounts of earth, would from now on be taking orders from the mother of Jesus.

  In the small hours of the next morning, while I was taking an uncomfortable nap against a battlement wall, a liaison officer came and woke me. “Don Antonio is boarding a boat and wishes to see you.”

  There were chests and trunks piled up in his courtyard, ready to be taken down to the port. Officers hurried in and out of the premises; even at this late stage, Don Antonio was keeping abreast of the situation on the ramparts. I found it strange seeing him dressed in full regalia now that he was no longer general. It is, and always will be, my belief that he clung to the hope that the government would change its mind and reinstate him. To the last instant. Seeing me, he said: “Have you not heard? Then I’ll tell you: I’m no longer commanding the forces of Barcelona. Someone else will be giving the orders.”

  “Who? The Virgin?”

  He was moved. Unusually for him, he made the effort to pronounce “son” properly in Catalan. “Be content, fiyé. Now that I am a private citizen, you can call me Don Antonio, as you’ve always wanted.”

  “Thank you, General,” I said, grinding my teeth on the irony in my words. “You can’t imagine how happy that makes me.”

  Unfazed, he adjusted his sword in his belt. “Didn’t you hear? I’m not your commander anymore, I’m Don Antonio to you now. All these years I’ve been slapping your wrist when you have had the impertinence to call me that, and now you can. From now on I am, to you and to anybody else, just another citizen. Don Antonio, if that’s what you wish. Understand?”

  “Loud and clear, General.” And I added: “From today, I’m allowed to address you as a simple fellow citizen, General.”

  For a brief second, emotion seemed to creep into his mien. The ongoing cannon fire added melancholic urgency to his reflections. For I had spoken on behalf of all who loved him. During the time he had commanded armed civilians, they had considered him one of their own, another Barcelonan. And now that he was leaving, the least obedient of these Barcelonans had shown him his true standing, not so much in a military as a moral sense.

  Of course, a man like Don Antonio wouldn’t allow himself to be overcome by emotion. He began pacing up and down. As he spoke, he became increasingly incensed. “I’ve done everything I can, I’ve argued and begged, I’ve warned the government of all the ills to come! Defending this city is pure madness now! Staying would mean signing my men’s death warrants. Leaving, I abandon them. What have I done to deserve such ignominy?”

  I tried to calm him down. It was then that he revealed the real reason he’d sent for me.

  “I saved you from bondage once before, at Illueca. I see no reason why I shouldn’t do so once more. We’ll wake tomorrow in Mallorca, and after that go on to Italy, and from there to court. In Vienna, all your unpaid wages will be seen to: Remember that yours was a royal conscription, not a municipal one. Which means your allegiance is not to Barcelona, and to board a ship would not constitute desertion. And, when I am given a post in the imperial army, I will want an engineer on my staff.”

  Before I could speak, he went on: “You have a wife and children, as I do. There are a number of spare berths on the ships. Go and gather up your family, and do it now.” He bade me hurry with a wave of the hand.

  I stayed where I was. Knowing what that meant, he demanded I explain myself. I remember the way my voice didn’t seem to belong to me: “General, I cannot,” I said.

  He looked me up and down, and finally, our eyes met.

  “I don’t understand. Your temperament is entirely opposed to that of the brave men out there still fighting. The city is being sacrificed, and to what end? Answer me that!”

  I did not know what to say.

  “So starved you’ve eaten your own tongue?” he went on, raising his voice. “What makes you want to be a part of the carnage now? You’ve always been against it. What? You’ve always been the first to support any retreat! Why stay? Tell me your reasoning!”

  In spite of myself, I said nothing. Don Antonio insisted. “Say something, even if just a word. One word, Lord above, at least give me a word!”

  One word. Seven years on, and Vauban, in the shape of Don Antonio, was asking me that question again. I blinked, cleared my throat. I racked my brains, but nothing.

  I’d unwittingly inflicted more pain on an already suffering soul, an immaculate hero whose very honor was forcing him to depart. Even Martí Zuviría, prince among cowards, had decided to stand and fight. A contrast that undoubtedly would have pained him.

  Bewildered, I put my tricorn on my head and, without asking his permission, made to leave. He stopped me: “Wait. You we
re with me at the Toledo retreat and at Brihuega as well. And you’ve been with me throughout this siege. It’s only right you share in my punishment.”

  And it was quite some punishment: Before he left, he wanted to bid the troops farewell. Don Antonio de Villarroel, the perfect warrior, had to tell his men that he was abandoning them to the inferno while he sailed away to a palace somewhere. Hard as it would be, nothing in the world would prevent him from bidding that farewell, even if they were going to insult, condemn, and revile him.

  We left his residence, and someone brought us horses. We both mounted up, and settling on his saddle, Don Antonio said: “Let’s go to it.”

  Spoken like a martyr. I’m certain that what he wanted was a famous death, the chance to die taking part in some heroic action. Instead, fate had presented him with a pitiful exit through the back door. We rode side by side. As we approached the ramparts, and in breach of all protocol, I grabbed him by the forearm and said: “General, this isn’t necessary.”

  Offended, he threw my hand clear. “Let me go! I have never in all my days fled an enemy. Am I to do so now, from my own men?”

  He spurred his horse on, and I followed. I was consumed by worry—not for myself but for Don Antonio. Very few knew the straits he was in, leaving not out of fear but because there was no way for him not to.

  We came to the foot of the ramparts. By some miracle, there was a pause in the fighting. Up on Saint Clara, Portal Nou, and the intervening wall, heads turned. At the sight of Don Antonio, they began to gather at the rear of the remaining fortifications. Once they were all there, crammed together and listening, Don Antonio tried to speak, but words failed him. Something in him broke.

  His horse began rearing, and Don Antonio barely managed to steady it. Pinching the bridge of his nose as if to stifle the emotions, he again tried to speak. Again the words wouldn’t come.

  At certain rare moments, time stands still. Up on the bastions and ramparts stood those hundreds of skeletal men, thinner than the rifles they were carrying. Gaunt faces and tricorns tattered and rent by bullets and grapeshot. Uniforms dull with soot and ash, sleeves only barely attached to the rest of their jackets. And the smell. Like long-dead carrion. Right down to the last drummer, they’d heard the news: Their commander was departing. What did he have to say? Hundreds of them, they all kept their eyes fixed on Don Antonio.

  And after weeks and weeks in which the sun had beaten down mercilessly and not a cloud had been seen, fat drops of rain began to fall. A great crowd had gathered, and yet you could hear the raindrops land. The stones of the city, warmed by a year of artillery fire, smoldered in the downpour. Nobody blinked.

  For the third time, Don Antonio tried to find the words. There was a moment when it seemed like the skin on his face would fall from it. Still mute, he exposed his head, lifting off his tricorn with his right hand, saluting the gathered men. His horse skittered nervously, its rider keeping his hat high in the air as the rain continued to fall. He said nothing; there was nothing more. The only thing left for Don Antonio was to depart. For the men of the Coronela, it was back to manning the walls.

  Spurring his horse forward, Don Antonio rode along the interior of the ramparts. His hand still in the air, bearing his tricorn aloft, bidding farewell to the citizen army he’d led for so long. I decided to catch up with him. I rode on his right side, between him and the ramparts. Ridiculous, but I thought by putting my body between him and them, even if there were some soldier in deep despair, it might stop them from shooting the departing general from his saddle. What a difference between this and that long-ago battle of Brihuega in 1710, when Zuvi the rat rode with Don Antonio between him and enemy bullets.

  I hadn’t quite caught him when a roar went up. I lifted my head.

  The men of the Coronela, Castilians, Aragonese, Valencians, and Germans, all waving their rifles above their heads. And they weren’t cursing Don Antonio but cheering for him. A piecemeal clamor, formless, consisting of just his first name, repeated—Don Antonio! Don Antonio! Don Antonio!—that grew louder and louder. The rain intensified, and with it, the commotion. Don Antonio was overcome and spurred his horse on to escape the ovation. Catching up with him, I saw something I thought I’d never see in all my days: The man was crying.

  Don Antonio crying! I thought oak trees would dance before it came to that! Noticing that I’d seen his tears, he tried to justify himself: “My one desire is to stay with them, but honor prevents me. I cannot act as commander to a defense that has moved out of the realms of bravery and become sheer recklessness. Nor could I ever forgive myself for putting so many innocent lives at risk.”

  We left the ramparts behind. The rain continued to fall. Calming his horse with unhappy caresses, Don Antonio whispered to himself, seemingly unaware of me: “I hope those ships never come,” he said. “That way I might die shoulder to shoulder with these men, like any other soldier.”

  Don Antonio bade his men farewell on the eighth, and between then and the eleventh, that dismal September eleventh, the rain fell nonstop, all day and all night.

  What a contrast from the inferno that August had been. To begin with, it was a balm, refreshing and relieving us, bringing life where before there had been only the stifling heat. All exposed gunpowder dampened, the Bourbon shelling was briefly suspended. But the downpour also transformed our environment into one of mud and darkness, making the place all the more inhospitable.

  The breaches in the walls were a sight to behold. There were five of them, each between a hundred and two hundred feet wide. As many as 687 men would be able to pass through them shoulder to shoulder (don’t be surprised at the exactitude of the 687, a Bazoches calculation); that is, roughly two regiments in battle formation.

  And there was no way of plugging such gaps. We threw hundreds of spiked wooden bats down into them, spiked with six-inch nails. The workers threw them as far as they could, to try not to expose themselves to enemy fire, even if that meant the placing was not very exact. Thus we made spike-fields of the ground in the gaps.

  Dripping wet, beneath dark skies, I continued giving instructions to the living dead manning the defenses. Everyone was worn out, which made it deeply unpleasant having to force them to carry on plugging the gaps. On the city side of each, we dug a ditch and stacked fajinas along it, and behind, another ditch, another fajina parapet, and another. We made a good number of these, all equally fragile. At certain chosen positions, we placed “organs,” which was the name for the invention of a certain local Archimedes.

  Essentially, “organs” were wooden platforms with ten or fifteen loaded rifles lined up along them. A thin piece of string ran along all the triggers. A single yank—anyone could do it, even an ancient like Peret—and a synchronous volley would be fired into the invaded area. It was never likely to be very effective, but at that late stage, we had far more weapons remaining than we did men.

  There was one final feat. With Don Antonio gone, I felt free to fight on my own account. I’d learned that, in the desperate defense of a city, everything, rocks, flesh, and even blood are brought to bear. Why not the very elements?

  I took aside the workers who were in the best condition. We used the last reserves of wood to create a long canal, paving it with overlapping timbers. The rain meant well water didn’t have to be saved, and this aqueduct of ours ran from one of the largest municipal reservoirs out as far as the ramparts. We opened the sluices one night, and a torrent of water inundated the enemy’s forward positions. Water gushed over the “gentlemen,” and into the cuts, and then the trenches, taking people, fajina baskets, and armatures with it. A flood during the night is all the more fearsome. The Bourbons couldn’t have known what was going on; besides, what purpose could it possibly serve to shoot at a torrent of water?

  The forward part of the trenches became a sewer. At points, the water was chest-deep. A whole day was spent by the enemy bailing out that putrid water. One day, which for us meant one more day in the world of the living. A victory
, however brief. Though inside the city, we were so weary, we didn’t even have the energy to celebrate it.

  While the Bourbons wallowed in the mud, I went and found Costa. I’d never seen him looking so downcast. Francesc Costa, a man who needed nothing but his sprig of parsley to be content.

  “Come, Costa,” I said, trying to cheer him up. “We’ve come too far to give up. Prepare guns and munitions.”

  But he was sitting down, letting the rain fall on his uncovered head, soaked through and hugging himself as though he had a fever. “Munitions. Munitions, you say?” he spat sarcastically. “I haven’t even got parsley left to chew. That trench was it for us.”

  This reference to my handiwork pained me. “The cannons!” I suddenly shouted, and leaving aside all formalities, I went on: “Place them behind the breaches and forget everything else!”

  When things become desperate, rumors have the power to displace hope. Dreams. People began saying that an English fleet was on the way and that Charles had sent a German legion. All lies. The anguished multitudes rushed to Plaza del Born, at the center of the city, praying for Barcelona to be saved. Inanities. Deep down, those of us manning the breaches didn’t believe in anything, we just fought.

  And a good thing that Jimmy’s artillery volcano had been extinguished. As I’ve said, the damp gunpowder prevented them from shelling us for a short time. In place of projectiles, they hurled taunts and threats our way. They were positioned at the crown of the ditch, and their shouts carried across that short distance. They could not have been more than a hundred feet from what remained of the ramparts.