He didn’t recognize me. His mouth opened and shut, and his gaze was otherworldly. “Dr. Bassons,” he said. And throughout the rest of the day, he was in another world, and kept on calling me after his departed professor.
12
Jimmy, of course, reduced the human tragedy to numbers. And for a marshal, a number, so long as it is limited to an amount he can justify to his superiors, remains nothing but a number. He could absorb those initial losses, he reasoned, and the next morning, he began the assault again. He threw everything at the battered Saint Clara bastion.
For him, installed on the balcony of his Guinardó country house, watching the battle was no hardship. For the poor beetles of each army fighting over control of Saint Clara, it was like a recurring nightmare: Not twelve hours had passed since the charge of the students, and the situation was exactly as it had been previously, the Bourbons sheltering behind the first barricade, which they had retaken, and our forces behind the second.
Throughout August 13, there was a succession of attacks and counterattacks across the bastion yard. We were one step from the abyss; one step back, just one, and Saint Clara would be in Jimmy’s possession. And once he had the bastion, the entire city would inevitably fall. Being the sly fox that he was, Jimmy sent false attacks at other points along the ramparts. They were obviously nothing but feints, but they still meant Don Antonio had to disperse his forces—precisely Jimmy’s aim. The key position was protected by no more than a thin screen of men. The city was depending on this handful of combatants, worn out and choking on rifle smoke.
At the very center of the bastion was a small cabin, a munitions store whose construction I myself had overseen. Usually, a good bastion will have gunpowder storerooms underground, but Saint Clara was a woeful bastion, irregular and precarious, and had no basement. In the uproar of battle, prodigious quantities of gunpowder would be spilled. Obviously, the slightest scrap of anything alight would mean catastrophe. Even professional soldiers have trouble reloading a rifle with utter accuracy, and civilian militia more so. To point out the dangers to them, to insist they not rush as they loaded and reloaded, would have been as absurd as asking a child playing with a vase not to break it. This was why I thought it important to build this shelter, to protect the munitions from any stray sparks, and the consequent disaster. If you take a moment to flick back a few pages, you’ll see the said cabin on the plate depicting the battle map.
So the day was spent vying for ownership of this insignificant shack halfway between the barricades, an outcrop in the center of the cobbled yard. Now the Coronela would make a push for it, now the Bourbon forces. Unlike Jimmy, Don Antonio was there on the front line, moving between the most perilous positions. The sight of him was a boost to the troops. I can still see him slapping men on the back, chatting with the soldiers, more like a father than a high-up military man.
“My boys,” he’d say, “the least of you is worth as much to me as a general. How fortunate I am to have been allowed to lead you.”
A moment came when I said to myself: “Enough now.” It was well, very well, for him to set an example of fearlessness and self-sacrifice, like generals from antiquity (of course, we saw neither hide nor hair of Casanova), but we hardly wanted our commander in chief to end up like Professor Bassons.
What I couldn’t understand was Don Antonio’s strategy. Jimmy had a foothold on Saint Clara, meaning the bastion system was no longer to our advantage. Hours passed, and Don Antonio would regularly relieve the half-annihilated forces manning the different outposts, but never initiate any counterattacks. This meant simply accepting the series of bloody clashes in which we’d always be on the losing end. Jimmy was in a position to send wave after wave of men along the trenches to Saint Clara, and to evacuate his wounded; slow and arduous, yes, and the toll considerable, but we were so hugely outnumbered that sooner or later, they would gather together enough men to overrun us.
All the officers, to a man, knew how close we were to the abyss and that time was against us. Lose the second barricade, and it would be good night. The attitude of these officers said everything about the atmosphere in the city: Not a single one was exhorting Don Antonio to try and discuss terms. Far from it! There was a group of captains and colonels constantly asking Don Antonio to sanction a sortie, to let them try and dislodge the Bourbons from the first barricade. From the Catalans, “si us plau, si us plau”; from the pro-Charles Castilians who had changed sides, it was “por favor, por favor”; and you’d even hear a few Germans with their “bitte, bitte, herr Ánton!”
I can still see myself, standing back as officers swarmed around poor Don Antonio, who rejected their ideas one after another. They knew how desperate our situation was. And yet there they were, begging permission to carry out a frontal attack on a position held by several battalions. It was all Don Antonio could do to keep them at bay.
And so it went on until nightfall. The skirmishes continued in the same ferocious vein. Across the city, the bells tolled the warning alarm and didn’t abate at sundown. The area where the attack was concentrated stayed brightly lit; we sent up flares so we could see what we were aiming at; the flashes of rifle fire also lit the darkness, like thousands of blinking glowworms. At around four in the morning, I left Saint Clara to go and discuss with Costa which cannons to bring to the bastion, as the embrasures were now in effect. A brief dialogue that saved my life.
I had ordered an old sergeant major, once the general assault was under way, to empty the munitions cabin at the center of the disputed yard. I thought the Bourbons were certain to make gains, and it was imperative that they not seize the contents. What I didn’t know was that the old sergeant major had been one of the first to fall. That is, he hadn’t lived long enough to gather a group of carriers, go and open the padlocked door with its small firebreak strip of water across the entrance, and empty the store.
I find it amazing when I think how long it took for the catastrophe to come. All day long, each side vied for control of a building they had no idea was brimming with gunpowder, grenades, bullets, and pots and tins containing grapeshot. And nothing had happened. Le Mystère must have had a good chortle on our account that day.
One of the survivors later told me the story. Just after I’d left, four in the morning and darkest night, a cry had gone up of: “Forward, for Saint Eulalia, forward!” The Barcelonan troops had held out all that time and resisted their desire to counterattack; in their frustration, a number of them took the prompt of this insane anonymous voice. For the hundredth time, they reached the cabin, repelled the Bourbons who had gathered around it, and then halted before pressing on to the first barricade.
Behind the first assault line, you always had a few men going around with large straw baskets bearing ammunition, particularly grenades, to replenish the troops’ supply. At this point, after a day and half a night of constant skirmishing, the bastion yard was almost overflowing with dead bodies and scattered gunpowder. The place reeked of those two things.
Now, I was told, a number of the basket carriers sheltered behind the munitions cabin, and a spark fell from somewhere, setting fire to some gunpowder on the ground. The flame ran along a trail of gunpowder and came to two of the large baskets, which had been put down against the side of the cabin, both containing grenades. You can guess the next part.
I believe this to have been the second largest explosion I’ve witnessed in all my days. Costa and I were nowhere near Saint Clara and found our discussion interrupted as the shock waves threw us to the ground. Over six hundred feet away, we were. The eruption was red and bloomed upward like a flower. It was followed by an extended rumbling. Up went the flames, and up went the explosions, with half the city bathed in shards and fragments and rubble.
In a daze, I got to my knees. I looked over at Costa; his words came to me as though my head were underwater. I got up and set off for the bastion gullet, stumbling along in zigzags like a drunk.
Le Mystère, I’ll give it this much, does a
t least apportion its humor equally: Both sides suffered roughly the same losses. A little over seventy Coronela men were blown up along with the cabin, and while fewer Bourbons died, the damage was greater to them: Word quickly spread that the explosion had been a rebel mine.
Mines provoke almost uncontrollable terror. An assassin hidden under our feet could at any moment activate many thousands of pounds of explosives, as many as the mind can conceive. Yes, it was a simple accident, the kind that abounds in war, but the Bourbons fell back in droves. How ironic that the two sides, having fought tooth and nail for control of the Saint Clara yard, now abandoned their positions at the same time, as though an agreement had been struck.
The gullet—the entrance to the bastion on the city side—was very narrow precisely to prevent men ever fleeing en masse. There was a captain there, named Jaume Timor, and with his saber drawn, he was stopping anyone who could bear arms. “Quit Saint Clara and the city will be lost!” he roared.
Whole families fought side by side on Saint Clara. As great Herodotus said: “In peace, children bury their parents; war violates the order of nature and causes parents to bury their children.” The siege of Barcelona went further, with some burying not only sons but also grandsons. I saw a neighbor of mine named Dídac Pallarès coming along the gullet and Timor standing aside. He had good reason—three good reasons, to be precise: Pallarès was carrying his three sons, all of them injured, in his arms. The skin on their faces was in red and black tatters; I remember one of them in particular, one whom Peret always owed a few sueldos. His were the worst injuries; the flesh on his jaw had come away completely, exposing the bone. It was still raining debris, and Don Antonio was in the vicinity, uttering consoling and encouraging words to the survivors. He and a number of officers tried to reinstate a modicum of order. Well, on this occasion, they didn’t manage it.
I was so dazed that I felt like I was seeing with my ears and hearing through my eyes. There were shreds of meat everywhere, remains similar to the formless gobbets you tend to see on the floor of an abattoir. I lifted my gaze. From the top of the bastions, the burning, howling bodies of Coronela men were falling after they leaped off the edge, as if the bastion were a burning ship. I saw all these things and then said to myself: “Ladies and gentlemen, enough. This is more than good old Zuvi can bear. To the hell with the city, the home country, and the constitution.” I turned on my heel and ran like a rabbit.
“Fear will rise up into your eyes,” I was told in Bazoches, “and do the looking on your behalf. Don’t let it.” Not bad in the context of a classroom. But when a power comes to bear that can make a bastion lurch and teeter like a paper boat, not even the memory of Bazoches could quash an individual’s self-preserving instinct. I wasn’t the only one who ran. Dozens of men had been pushed beyond their limits and were fleeing in all directions. I crossed the cutting and entered the city streets before being confronted by a huge crowd.
Women, in droves. They were holding their skirts clear as they ran—but in the opposite direction: toward the walls. Amelis was among them. “What’s happening, Martí, what’s happening?” she asked, but didn’t stop. They’d been drawn by the explosion, and the prevailing chaos had meant there was no one to stop them from reaching the front line. Those of us who had succumbed to panic and fled, now hesitated.
In my view, Barcelona’s rescue that night owed more to its women than Timor’s saber. We fugitives were deemed cowards, picaroons, eunuchs. Amelis halted and called back at me: “You mean you’re going to let the enemy enter?”
Allow me a moment’s reflection in place of memories: What ideal was it that motivated the people of Barcelona to keep on going throughout a yearlong siege? Their liberties and constitutions? No, what kept them there was that bond—heavenly or demonic, it matters not—that prevents a man from abandoning the spot he’s fighting on. Raw civilians, fourteen-year-old boys, sixty-year-old grandfathers, clung like limpets to the bastions. And why? I’ll suggest an answer: because of the overwhelming, unshakable force of the question: “What will people think?” When your whole city’s watching, it takes a lot of courage to be a coward.
Thus, even a prissy rat like Longlegs Zuvi went back to his post. And that whole night we resisted an irresistible force, and through the next morning, and come midday next, good old Zuvi’s nerves were utterly shredded, as was the case with the rest of the Coronela.
The center of Saint Clara was now a crater, a solemn gap clung to by what was left of the bastion’s five walls. The unutterably mad struggle was for possession of this gap. The hail of rifle volleys was unceasing. And still no offensive from Don Antonio. Throughout this period, Jimmy continued to smugly accumulate men on the first barricade. Time was on his side. He thought (as I did at the time) that Don Antonio had taken leave of his senses—or even his valor—and was relinquishing the defensive positions. Once enough Bourbon battalions had gathered behind the first barricade, there would be no way of stopping an onslaught from them. And there we were, doing nothing but holding the second barricade and firing from Portal Nou and the adjacent sections of the ramparts. A lot of noise but little else came of it: rounds upon rounds of bullets spent while the Bourbons kept their heads down behind the first barricade and in the trench, or came along the cut, digging in deeper and building their parapets higher with every hour that passed.
It had been hell maneuvering the three cannons up to the bastion. And rather than firing those cannons, the Mallorcans wouldn’t so much as peek out of the embrasures. As ever, it was as though they were fighting a separate battle from everyone else. They sat around on the bases of the cannons, drinking an abominable liquor from the Balearics—sharing it with none but themselves—and seeming removed from the bedlam surrounding them.
“For the love of God,” I said, “fire these cannons, blow up the barricade they’re holding! What are you waiting for?”
Their captain shook his head, his only concession being to mutter at me in his islander accent: “Ses ordres.” Orders.
There was a considerable stretch of ground between the end of their trench and the bastion because, as per good old Zuvi’s modifications to Verboom’s plan, the third parallel had been dug as far from the ramparts as possible.
I later learned that it had never been Don Antonio’s plan to take back the first barricade. Jimmy was too strong there, it would only have been a bloodbath, so Don Antonio was content to delay them. He waited until the last possible moment before launching his counterattack, anticipating some pause in the assault. Then and only then did he give an order, one that just three officers had been let in on.
Lowering the telescope, he called out in that booming Castilian voice of his: “Do it!”
A flare went up, turning red the thick smoke on and around the bastion and ramparts. The moment he saw this, Costa gave his signal, lowering an arm. I wasn’t nearby, but I believe I heard him shout something as well, and within an instant, each and every cannon and mortar began pounding the trenches, creating a barrier of flames.
We saw the explosions hitting the Bourbon lines, and the next two troops charging out from the garrison, one from the left and one from the right. (The arrows on the plate below indicate their trajectories.)
Two hundred previously selected men, under Lieutenant Colonel Tomeu and Colonel Ortiz, attacked each flank. And my God, what a mad dash that was.
They hurtled out alongside the third parallel, exposing themselves to fire from the trenches. Those four hundred had to be very fast to make the most of Costa’s barrage. They converged on the cut, some jumping down inside and others tipping the fajina parapets onto the heads of the enemy. Like this:
Ortiz was in charge of blocking off the cut on the side of the Bourbon encampment with the fajinas, and Tomeu’s men did the same on the city side, trapping the enemy in between.
This was one of the swiftest and most exact maneuvers I’ve ever seen carried out from a besieged position. If Costa hadn’t been a superior artilleryman, his cannon
s and mortars would have been the death of that four hundred. We watched as, having reached the cut, they shot their rifles down into it, annihilating the surprised Bourbons. I still have trouble banishing the memory of that underground wailing.
By the time Jimmy found out, it was too late. With Ortiz blocking the cut, there was no longer any use sending reinforcements.
As for the Bourbons already on Saint Clara, they saw what a sticky position they were in, with Tomeu behind them. And that was when the three cannons manned by the Mallorcans came into play: A large section of the first barricade sank, the brickwork beneath it pummeled so hard that it buckled inward and down.
With cannonballs coming from one side and rifle bullets riddling them from the other, the Bourbons scattered, leaping down into the moat below and sprinting past Tomeu’s position, trying to reach the trench. It goes without saying that Ortiz’s and Tomeu’s men mercilessly gunned them down at close range. The volleys from the rifles up on the Saint Joan tower also intensified, prompted by the sight of the stampede. And then the order came for those of us on the second barricade to charge the first and, finally, unopposed, retake it.
Such is war. In the time it takes to crack your knuckles, the tables turn, and a seemingly hopeless battle that was going nowhere turns into a rout for your enemy. More than four hundred French never made it back to their lines. No prisoners were taken.
I managed to make out a French official through the smoke, standing with his body half out of the third parallel, using his telescope to try to discern what was happening, clearly incredulous at the way the assault had just crumbled. Ballester happened to be next to me, and he was scanning around for a target.
“Give me that!” I said, grabbing his loaded rifle, aiming it at the officer with the telescope, and firing at that reckless figure. The bullet went through his neck, blood gushing out the other side. The man’s arms went up, like a pagan hailing an idol, and he fell backward into the trench. I remember the way his telescope, which he’d inadvertently flung upward, twirled around and around in the air. A not insignificant shot: The man I’d taken down was none other than Dupuy.
Victus Page 54
