Zaragoza. English

by Benito Pérez Galdós

  CHAPTER X

  When I woke at daybreak the next morning I saw Montoria, who waspassing by the wall.

  "I believe that the bombardment is going to begin," he said to me;"there is a great activity in the enemy's lines."

  "They will try to demolish this redoubt," I said, getting up lazily."How gloomy the sky is, Augustine! Day dawns very sadly."

  "I believe they will attack on all sides at once, until they have madetheir second parallel. Do you know that Napoleon in Paris, knowing theresistance shown by this city in the first siege, was furious withLefebre Desnouettes because he assaulted the plaza by the Portillo andthe Castle Aljaferia. He called for a plan of Saragossa, and they gaveit to him, and he showed that the city should be attacked by SantaEngracia."

  "By this place? A black day is indeed dawning for us if the orders ofNapoleon are carried out. Tell me, have we anything to eat here?"

  "I did not show it to you before because I wished to surprise you," hesaid to me, showing me a basket which served as the tomb of two coldroast fowls, some comfits and fine preserves.

  "You brought these last night? Indeed! How could you go out of theredoubt?"

  "I got leave from the general for an hour, and Mariquilla prepared thisfeast. If Candiola knows that two of the hens from his chicken-corralhave been killed and roasted to regale two of the defenders of thecity, the devil will be to pay. Let us eat then, Se?or Araceli, whilewe await the bombardment. Here it comes. One bomb! Another, another!"

  The right batteries opened fire upon San Jos? and the Pilar, and whata fire! The whole army seemed behind the cannon. Away with breakfasts,away with the morning meal, away with tidbits!--the men of Aragon willhave no food but glory!

  The unconquerable fortress answered the insolent besieger with atremendous cannonade, and soon the great soul of our fatherland movedwithin us. The balls, beating upon the brick walls and the earthworks,beat down the redoubt as if it were a toy pelted with stones by aboy. The grenades, falling among us, burst with a great noise, and thebombs, passing with awful majesty over our heads, went on to fall intothe streets and upon the roofs of the houses.

  Everybody out! Let there be no idle or cowardly people in the city. Themen to the walls, the women to the bloody hospitals, the children andpriests to carry ammunition! Let no notice be taken of these dreadfuland burning things which bore through roofs, penetrate dwelling-houses,open gates, pierce floors, descend to the cellars, and, bursting,scatter the flames of hell upon the tranquil hearth, surprising withdeath the aged invalid on his couch and the child in his cradle.Nothing of this sort matters. Everybody out into the street, and thussave honor though the city perish, and the churches and conventsand hospitals and the estates which are but earthly things! TheSaragossans, despising material good as they despised life, lived bytheir spirits in the infinite spaces of the ideal.

  In the first moments the Captain-General and many other distinguishedpersonages visited us,--such as Don Mariano Cereso the priest of Sas,General O'Neill, San Genis, and Don Pedro Ric. There was also there thebrave and generous Don Jos? Montoria, who embraced his son, saying tohim: "To-day is the day to conquer or to die. We will meet each otherin heaven."

  Behind Montoria, Don Roque presented himself; he had become a bravefellow, and as he had been employed in the sanitary service, hebegan to show a feverish activity before there were any wounded, anddisplayed to us a good sized pile of lint. Various friars mingled amongthe combatants during the early firing, encouraging us with mysticfervor.

  At the same time, and with equal fury, the French attacked the redoubtdel Pilar and the fortress of San Jos?. The latter, although moreformidable in aspect, had less power of resistance, perhaps becauseit presented a broader target for the enemy's fires. But Renovaleswas there with the Huesca and the Valencia volunteers, the Walloonguards, and various members of the militia of Soria. The great lack ofthe fortress was in its having been constructed for the protection ofa vast edifice, which the enemy's artillery converted into ruins ina little while; pieces of the thick wall were forced in from time totime, and many of its defenders were crushed. We were better off. Overour heads we had only the heavens, and if no roof guarded us from thebombs, neither did masses of masonry fall upon us. They demolished thewall by the front and sides, and it was a pity to see how that fragilemass fell away little by little, placing us in an exposed position.Nevertheless, after four hours of incessant fire by powerful artillery,they were not able to open a breach.

  Thus passed the day of the tenth with no advantage for the besiegersfrom us, even if they had succeeded in getting near San Jos? andopening a wide breach, which, together with the ruined condition of thebuilding, forced the unhappy necessity of its surrender. Yet, in themean time, the fortress had not been reduced to powder, and, dead oralive, its defenders had hope. Fresh troops were sent there, becausethe battalions working there since morning were decimated; and whennight fell, after the opening of the breach and the fruitless attemptat an assault, yet Renovales held the blood-soaked ruins, among theheaps of corpses, with only the third part of his artillery.

  When night interrupted the firing, there had been great carnage on bothsides. We ourselves had lost many by death, and more were wounded.The wounded were carried at the time into the city by the friars andthe women; but the dead still gave their last service with their coldbodies, for they were stoically thrown into the open breach, which wasbeing stopped up with sacks of wool and earth.

  During the night we did not rest for one single moment, and the dawn ofthe eleventh found us inspired by the same frenzy, our pieces alreadypointed against the enemy's intrenchments, and already piercing withmusket shots those who were coming to flank us, without hindering fora moment the work of stopping up the breach, which was widening, hourby hour its dreadful spaces. So we endured all the morning until themoment when they began the assault upon San Jos?, now converted into aheap of ruins, and with most of its garrison dead. Centring the forcesupon these two points, they fell upon the convent, and directed anaudacious movement upon us; and it was with the object of making ourbreach practicable that they advanced by the Torrero road with twocannons protected by a column of infantry.

  At that moment we thought ourselves lost. The feeble walls trembled,and the bricks were shattered into thousands of pieces. We ran up tothe breach, which was widening every instant, where they poured uponus a horrible fire. Seeing that the redoubt was being shattered topieces, they took courage to come to the very borders of the fosseitself. It was madness to try to fill that terrible space, and to showan uncovered place was to offer victims without number to the fury ofthe enemy. We protected ourselves as well as we could with sacks ofwool and shovels of earth, and many stood as if petrified on the spot.The firing of the cannon ceased because it seemed necessary; there wasa moment of indefinable panic; the guns fell from our hands; we sawourselves routed, destroyed, annihilated by that rain of fire thatseemed to fill the air. We forgot honor, the fatherland, the glory ofdeath, the Virgin del Pilar, whose name adorned the bridge and the"unconquerable" defences. The most dreadful confusion reigned in ourranks. Descending suddenly from the high moral level of our souls, allthose who had not fallen desired life of one accord, and, leaping overthe wounded and trampling the dead under foot, we fled towards thebridge, abandoning that horrible sepulchre before it should shut us in,entombing us all.

  On the bridge we were swallowed up by insupportable terror anddisorder. There is nothing more frenzied than a coward. His abjectmeannesses are as great as the sublimities of his valor.

  Our leaders kept crying out to us, "Back, you rabble! The redoubt delPilar has not surrendered!" striking our swords with their sabres. Weturned back on the bridge, unable to go further, as reinforcementscame, and we stumbled over one another, the fury of our fear minglingwith the impetus of their bravery.

  "Back, cowards!" cried our officers, striking us in the faces, "and diein the breach!"

  The redoubt was vacated. None but the dead and the wounded were the
re.Suddenly we saw advance amid the dense smoke and the blackness ofpowder, leaping over the lifeless bodies and the heaps of earth andthe ruins, and the guns we had thrown down, and the shattered works, afigure, dauntless, pale, splendid, of tragic calmness. It was a womanwho had made her way forward and, penetrating the abandoned place, wasmarching like a queen towards the horrible breach. Pirli, who was lyingon the ground, wounded in the leg, exclaimed in affright,

  "Manuela Sancho, where are you going?"

  All this passed in much less time than I take to tell it. AfterManuela Sancho, first one, then another, then many hurried, then all,urged on by the leaders whose sabre-cuts had prodded us to the pointof duty. This portentous transformation came about by the impulse ofevery man's heart obeying sentiments which all feel without any one'sknowing whence the mysterious force emanates. I do not know why we werecowards, nor why we were brave a few moments later. What I do knowis that, moved by an extraordinary power, immense and superhuman, wehurled ourselves into the breach behind the heroic woman, at the pointwhere the French were attempting the assault with ladders. Without inthe least knowing how to explain it, we felt our strength increaseda hundred-fold, and crushed them back, hurling into the ditch thosemen of cotton who a little while ago had seemed to us men of steel.With shots and sabre-cuts, with shells, with shovels full of earth,by blows, and bayonet-thrusts, we fought. Many of our number died todefend others with their dead bodies. We defended the breach, indeed,and the French were obliged to retire, leaving many dead and woundedat the bottom of the wall. The cannons again began firing, and theunconquerable redoubt did not fall on the eleventh into the hands ofthe French.

  When the tempest of fire was calmed, we did not know ourselves. We weretransfigured, and something new and unknown palpitated in the depthsof our souls, giving us an unheard-of fierceness. The following dayPalafox said, with much eloquence: "Nor balls, nor bombs, nor shellsshall make our faces change color, nor can all France accomplish that!"