The world: this answerless question. And inhabiting its trifling circumference, the fools who seek the answer. All for nothing.
And yet the doubt remains. The fact is, all those men and women did not have to go up the ramparts. They could have stayed in their houses, let the tyrant in. Resign themselves to it, get down on their knees, beg for their lives. But they didn’t. They fought. Knowing full well how slim their chances were, they held out for thirteen months of inexorable terror. Dying for the sake of a word, dying so their children could say for the rest of time, even if only under their breath: “My father defended our bastions.” This was the way Ballester—all the Ballesters—thought.
After Ballester’s death, I drifted, neither dead nor alive. For how long, and along which streets, I do not know. The gunfire was an innocuous murmur, not worthy of attention. Then someone was beckoning me: “Don Antonio’s calling everyone together,” the person said. Images, voids, morasses in the memory. But the words “Don Antonio” could bring the dead back to life.
Suddenly, I find myself in Plaza Born, the square at Barcelona’s very center. Not heeding the gunfire, Don Antonio is gathering a troop on the cobblestones. And what a troop. The remaining few. Remnants of the Coronela, wounded men dragged from hospital beds, young boys, some women. A couple of priests.
Don Antonio was about to launch the second counterattack, aimed at retaking the ramparts. An absurdity, given that the Bourbons had reached the far side of Plaza Born. There, thousands of white uniforms had gathered, and the first rank was kneeling. For the rest, aside from Don Antonio’s steed, I do not believe there were more than a few dozen cavalrymen. The others were lining up like infantry, with one or two officers trying to introduce order to the ranking.
Don Antonio, up on his horse at the front, made a brief speech. But the din was too great for us to hear him. And it made no difference what he had to say. The odd bullet grazed his body, and then one bounced off his saber. Out of the thousands and thousands of shots fired that day, the sound of that one bullet has stayed with me, metal on metal. Don Antonio’s response was to raise his saber even higher. I looked at him. And shall I tell you what? He was illuminated.
No, the word “happiness” doesn’t fit him. Don Antonio was never happy, just as fish may not see the sun until being torn from the ocean depths. He was about other things. He was going to surpass a threshold that was particular to him, and he had found the opportunity to do so without compromising his honor. That day—finally—it wouldn’t be him asking the impossible of his men but the other way around. Joyfully, he led them on their mad sortie.
And The Word? It’s ironic, because I began this book prepared to reveal it, and now, after all these pages, this word—this unique word—doesn’t matter. Because when it came to that final charge, we were beyond words.
This was The Word. These children, these women, these men from a hundred different places. All united behind Don Antonio’s horse. Lining up higgledy-piggledy, about to set out on a cavalry charge without any horses. Fewer than a thousand versus fifty thousand. And yet The Word may be reflected in the dictionaries. A pale reflection, very pale, but a reflection after all.
We attacked, shrieking like the savages who sacked Rome. The Bourbons were in perfect formation on the far side of the square. Their ranks, well stocked with men, reaching a long way back, thousands of rifles pointing straight at us. We were peppered with bullets. Volley after volley, perfectly coordinated. Their officers calling out, Feu, feu, feu! My companions falling left and right. The sounds of weeping, wailing, repentance. Don Antonio, like a commander out of antiquity, leading from the front, sheer madness, galloping forward with saber pointed. They shot him down, of course.
His steed was knocked onto its right flank, its huge frame crushing Don Antonio underneath. His knee ended up trapped between the saddle and the Plaza Born cobblestones, his bones snapping like twigs.
The horse thrashed about as though it had been placed over a campfire. It contorted its neck and let out a stream of dung. Goodness knows why, but its whinnying and its shitting remain firmly fixed in my memory. I was the first to go and kneel down next to Don Antonio. I grabbed him under his arms and heaved him out from under the beast. It took me a few moments to notice the look that was in his eye.
It was as though Don Antonio didn’t want to be rescued. He just lay there on the ground, half his body trapped beneath the horse. Then I felt one of his large hands grab me by the lapel of my uniform. He gave a violent tug, bringing my face close to his, and then spoke the closest thing to The Word that I would ever hear. And it was spoken not by an emperor in his most august hour but by a general defeated, fallen; I did not hear The Word from the mouth of my own captain but from a man who had crossed over from enemy latitudes, a man who had left everything to join the ranks of the weak and shelterless, the accursed few, and to lay down his life for them.
Don Antonio whispered into my ear: “You must give your whole self.”
My head was so empty, my body so detached from my being, that to be quite honest, my memory is a jumble now. I’ve gone back over this particular moment—everyone galloping forward in the pendulum of death, Don Antonio down on the Plaza Born cobblestones, his steed shitting in death, thousands of bullets zinging past our ears—and perhaps, only perhaps, memory alters what it was that Don Antonio said.
Because sometimes, when I am strolling through autumn fields, I find myself overcome by a burst of memories that are not so bitter. And then I see Don Antonio’s large hand on my lapel and hear him speaking incredibly kindly: “Give yourself, fiyé.” At other times, when I can afford to buy myself a little of that syrupy schnapps, the words I read on Don Antonio’s lips are more martial: “Always give yourself, Zuviría, always; that’s what matters.” At other times, when I am desensitized by foul-smelling liquor, very drunk indeed, the face I see down on the ground of the Plaza Born is not Don Antonio’s at all but Vauban’s. And it is the marquis who pulls me close, and he says: “Cadet, you have passed.”
Yes, I no longer have any sense of who said what or how. All these decades and decades that have gone by, all those many turns around the sun. But what difference does it make, ultimately? Vauban said, “You must know”; Don Antonio said, “Give yourself.” And there, in that city square, the detritus of war all around, The Word crumbled under the weight of its own paradox: “You cannot know until you give yourself, and you cannot give yourself until you know.”
A number of officers came over to try and help the maimed commander. Don Antonio did finally get up, his splintered leg bone protruding through his breeches, and he started pushing everyone away.
“Don’t stop the charge!” he bellowed in his resounding Castilian voice. “Don’t stop! No falling back, not as long as I still draw breath. You sons of bitches—no one!”
Dear Don Antonio. How fate scorned him. Even when it came to that September 11, the glorious death he’d hoped for was denied him. Knocked from his horse and severely wounded, he was dragged off to the hospital by his aides. I can still see him struggling to shake off the men who were helping him, as though they were his enemies. Those of us who remained resumed the charge.
During life’s worst moments, it is incredible how calm one’s thoughts can be. Rightly, perhaps, because once you find yourself on the summit, the mountainsides no longer matter—you’ll never be going down them again. As I charged, all I thought was: Very well, at least that Fifth Point is mine now.
Thousands of white beetles raised their rifles in unison, training their sights upon us. We rushed headlong at them. We were no more than fifty in number now, a mix of old men, widows, cavalrymen without horses, horses without riders: my ragged fellow Barcelonans. The Bourbons had brought five cannons and made a battery on a mound of rubble, above and behind the infantry. Grapeshot, was my thought as I continued to hurtle forward, they’ve loaded them with grapeshot. My other thought being: They’ll fire the instant after a volley from these white beetles. I saw one
of those round cannon barrels staring me down. I saw a flash of white and yellow.
I was blown backward twenty or thirty feet. All I knew was that something had happened to my face. At first, curiously, it seemed more associated with a feeling of nakedness than death. I was beyond now. And I discovered that Amelis had been right, yes, she had: Anyone who wants to hear a piece of music, hears it. Destroyed, monstrous from that moment forth, I heard that music over the noise of wailing and explosions. “Give yourself, Zuviría, your whole self.”
I ought to have understood far sooner—when they put a noose around my neck in the Bourbon camp, or even when I sat beside Vauban on his deathbed. “Summarize the optimum defense.” It was this and no more—this was all. We are fallen leaves that linger on. Stars that burst forth in light, fables squandered. Truths whose only reward is lucidity itself. The smell of warm shit running down the legs of ranks of men. Blind telescopes, inane periscopes, lamentations. Funnels imbued with affection, that boy on our prow laughing, like dolphin laughter. The far side of the river. Admitting that we’ll always be looking out at the landscape through the keyhole of the dungeon, knowing that ears of corn fall but do not complain. My shredded spirits, my broken calculations. Give yourself, Zuviría, give.
And discovering—beyond the utmost extreme, beyond the Euphrates and the Rubicon, where there are no longer any tears, oh, the greatness and the consolation of the few and the poor, of the weak and forlorn—that the darker our twilight hours, the more blessed will be the dawn of those who will come after us.
A Historical Note
A few people who read this book in draft form have asked me about the historical basis of the facts that appear in it. I can only answer that I have worked according to the usual conventions of the historical novel, which require that you confine yourself to established pieces of data while at the same time tolerating fiction in the private realm. For all the dates and events relating to historical characters, or to political or military events, I have restricted myself to the facts. Fortunately, the chronicles that cover the Spanish War of Succession and the 1713–1714 Siege of Barcelona are generous enough to make it possible to go into some detail. The parliamentary debates that took place in Barcelona in 1713 have been extracted directly from documents of the period. Even where secondary characters are concerned, I have chosen to follow historical sources: the obsession that seizes Jeanne Vauban’s husband over the philosopher’s stone, the skirmish in Beceite in which Zuviría meets Ballester, as well as the death of Dr. Bassons and the charge of the law students in the battle of August 1714, or the events relating to the expedition of the military delegate, to cite just a few examples, are all fully evidenced. The words spoken by Berwick, infuriated at the Barcelonans’ resistance, with his staff officers, can be pursued in the chronicles and in his own autobiography. A good proportion of the insults aimed by Villarroel at Zuviría are also drawn from a range of documents, though in such cases we know only that they were directed at “a certain officer.” As for Zuviría himself, historical chronicles make only a very few elusive references to him, describing him as General Villarroel’s aide-de-camp, a translator, a member of a number of different commissions, and even a coordinator of the activities that took place outside the city walls during the course of the siege. In any case, he was one of the few senior officers on the pro-Austrian side who, following his participation in the 1713–1714 siege, managed to get to Vienna and thereby avoid the repression of the Bourbon regime.
The War of the Spanish Succession: A Chronology
SPAIN
EUROPE
1700
—Charles II of Spain, known
as El Hechizado, or “The
Bewitched,” dies.
1701
—Philip V is named king.
—The Grand Alliance between Austria, Denmark, England, and Holland is formed.
1702
—The Grand Alliance declares war on Spain and France.
1703
—Portugal and the House of Savoy join the Grand Alliance.
1704
—The Austrian pretender to
the Spanish throne, Charles III,
disembarks in Portugal.
—Portuguese Campaign: The
Anglo-Portuguese army attacks
Spain from Portugal but is repelled
by the Franco-Spanish army under
the duke of Berwick.
—Admiral Rooke takes Gibraltar
in the name of Charles III of Austria
but with the flag of England hoisted.
—France loses forty thousand men in the Battle of Blenheim.
1705
—Treaty of Genoa, by which a
group of Catalan leaders make
a pact with England to support
them in a pro-Charles war effort.
—Charles III enters Barcelona and
establishes it as the provisional
capital of his kingdom.
1706
—Philip V lays siege to Barcelona,
but the arrival of an Anglo-Dutch
fleet forces his withdrawal.
—The Allies occupy Madrid, but
Charles III’s unpopularity leads
to the evacuation of the city.
—French defeat at the
Battle of Ramillies.
1707
—The Army of the Two Crowns
defeats the Allies at the Battle of
Almansa.
—The Bourbons occupy Lleida.
1708
—The Bourbons besiege
and take Tortosa.
1710
—Battles of Almenar and Zaragoza.
—The Allies enter Madrid for the second time, before being forced to evacuate by a Bourbon counteroffensive.
—Battles of Brihuega and Villaviciosa.
—Girona taken by the French army.
1711
—Emperor Joseph I of Austria dies. Charles, his younger brother, is
named as his successor and leaves
Barcelona for Vienna.
1713
—Signing of the Treaty of
Evacuation. The Allied armies
commit to withdrawing all
troops on the peninsula.
—June: The Catalan executive
declares resistance.
-—July: Siege of Barcelona begins.
—Treaty of Utrecht: General peace between Europe’s powers is sealed. Philip V renounces any claim to the French throne, and Charles III to that of Spain. England reneges on the Treaty of Genoa, by which it had undertaken to uphold the Catalan constitutions in the case
of a military defeat.
1714
—September 11: Final assault on, and
fall of, Barcelona. Abolition of the
Catalan constitutions and liberties.
1719
—War between France and Spain.
Marshal Berwick’s French army,
with five thousand Catalans among
its number, takes several strongholds
in the Navarran region of Spain.
—Catalan guerrillas continue to fight
the Bourbon forces.
1725
—Treaty is signed between the Spanish and Austrian empires.
The Characters in VICTUS
ALEMANY, FRANCESC: Catalan nobleman who in 1713 argued against defending Barcelona. He did, however, agree to fight, accepting the result of the vote. Died in combat.
AMELIS: Fictional character.
ANFÁN: Fictional character.
BALLESTER, ESTEVE: Miquelet officer. According to the chronicles of the time, he was captured by the Bourbons during a skirmish at Beceite and subsequently rescued by his men in an epic counterattack. Although Ballester is a minor figure in historical terms, in Victus, Zuviría dedicates a large number of pages to him, perhaps because he came to consider him a representative of Catalan peasantry taking up arms.
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BARDONENCHE, ANTOINE DE: French captain descended from a noble family. Took part in the siege of Barcelona as a member of the French army. According to Castellví’s Crónicas, he was involved in a rather frivolous and strange episode (which Zuviría does not include): In the early stages of the siege, he entered the city as a “guest,” of his own initiative, drawn by the beauties of its architecture. Despite their initial astonishment, the Barcelonans obliged him, and Zuviría was given the task of walking him around the city. He was soon returned, safe and sound, to the Bourbon lines, where the duke of Pópuli reprimanded him for his extravagance, but with no further consequences. Most likely, Waltraud Spöring decided to suppress the pages in question, like so many others, before sending the book to be printed.
BASSONS, MARIÀ: Barcelonan professor of law. He enlisted in the city’s militia and took part in its defense as captain to his own students. Died in combat in the battle of Santa Clara (Saint Clara) in August 1714.
BASTIDA, JORDI: Catalan soldier who defended Benasque in 1709. He was in Barcelona during the siege and met a valiant death defending the Santa Clara bastion in August.
BATLLE, BALDIRI: Catalan nobleman. He voted against the decision to defend the city from the Bourbon troops. He accepted the results of the vote, which went against his position. He died defending the city.