CHAPTER XVII
While the cannons on the Mediodia were throwing bombs into the centreof the city, the cannon on the east side were discharging solid ballsupon the weak walls of Las Monicas, and the fortifications of earth andbrick of the oil mill, and the battery of Palafox. Very soon the Frenchopened three great breaches, and an attack was imminent. They defendedthemselves in the Goicoechea mill, which they had taken the day before,after it had been abandoned and fired by us.
Certain of victory, the French ran forward over the plain, havingreceived orders to attack. Our battalion occupied a house in the Callede Pabostre, whose walls had been spiked along their whole length. Manypeasants and various regiments were keeping watch in the Cortina, fieryof courage and with not the least terror before the almost certainlikelihood of death, hopeful of being useful in death also, helping tostay the enemy's advance.
Long hours passed. The French questioned with the artillery to seeif they were driving us out of the suburb; the walls were graduallybeing destroyed; the houses were being shaken down with the dreadfulconcussion; and the heroic people, few of whom had broken fast evenwith a bit of bread, were calling from the walls, saying that the enemywas coming. At last, against the right of the breach in the centreadvanced strong columns sustained by others in the rear. We saw thatthe intention of the French was to possess themselves at all hazardsof that line of crumbling bricks which some hundreds of madmen weredefending, and to take it at any cost. Death-dealing masses were hurledforward, the living columns passing over the dead.
Let it not be said to make our merit less that the French were notfighting under cover. Neither were we, for none of us could show hishead above the broken wall and keep it on. Masses of men dashed againstone another, and bayonets were fed with brutal anger upon the bodies ofenemies. From the houses came incessant fire. We could see the Frenchfall in heaps, pierced by lead and steel, at the very foot of the ruinsthey were seeking to conquer. New columns took the places of the first,and in those who came after, brutalities of vengeance were added toprodigies of valor.
On our side the number of those who fell was enormous. The dead wereleft by dozens upon the earth along that line which had been a wall,but was now no more than a shapeless mass of earth, bricks, andcorpses. The natural, the human thing would have been to abandon suchpositions, and not try to hold them against such a combination of forceand military skill. But there was nothing of the human or the naturalhere. Instead, the power of defence was extended infinitely, to limitsnot recognized by scientific calculation, beyond ordinary valor. TheAragonese nature stood forth, and it is one which does not know how tobe conquered. The living took the places of the dead with a sublimeaplomb. Death was an accident, a trivial detail, a thing of which nonotice should be taken.
While this was going on, other columns equally powerful were trying totake the Casa de Gonzalez, which I have before mentioned. But from theneighboring houses, and the towers of the wall, came such a terriblefire of rifles and cannons that they desisted from their attempt. Otherattacks took place, with better results for them, at our right, towardthe orchard of Camporeal and the batteries of Los Martires. The immenseforce displayed by the besiegers along one line of short extent couldnot fail to produce results. From the house in the Calle de Pabostre,close to the Molino of the city, we were, as I have said, firing uponthe besiegers, when behold the batteries of San Jos?, formerly occupiedin demolishing the wall, directed their cannons against that ancientedifice. We felt that the walls were trembling; the beams were crackinglike the timbers of a ship tossed by a tempest; the wood of the wallswas cracking too in a thousand fragments. In short, the place wastumbling down.
"Cuerno, recuerno!" exclaimed Uncle Garces, "what if the house fallsdown upon us!"
The smoke of the powder prevented us from seeing what was going onwithout or within.
"To the street! To the street!" cried Pirli, throwing himself out of awindow.
"Augustine! Augustine! where art thou?" I called to my friend. ButAugustine did not appear. In that moment of alarm, not finding eitherdoorway or ladder to descend, I ran to a window to throw myself out;and the spectacle which met my eyes obliged me to draw back withoutstrength or breath. While the cannons of San Jos? were essaying onthe right to bury us in the ruins of the house, and seemed to beaccomplishing it without effort, in front of and towards the gardens ofSan Augustine, the French infantry had succeeded at last in penetratingthe breaches, killing those unhappy creatures scarcely to be calledmen, and finishing those who were already dying, for indeed theirdesperate agony could not be called life.
From the neighboring alleys came a horrible fire. The cannons of theCalle de Diezma took the place of those of the conquered battery. Butthe breach taken, the French were securing themselves on the walls. Itwas impossible for me to feel in my soul a spark of energy on beholdingsuch stupendous disaster.
I fled from the window, terrified,--beside myself. A piece of the wallcracked and fell in enormous fragments, and a square window took theshape of an isosceles triangle; through a corner of the roof I couldsee the sky. Bits of lime and splinters struck me in the face. I ranfurther in, following others, who were saying, "This way! this way!"
"Augustine! Augustine!" I called again. At last I saw him among thosewho were running from one room to another, going up a ladder which ledto a garret.
"Are you alive?" I asked him.
"I do not know; it is not important," he answered.
In the garret we broke through a partition wall, and passing intoanother room, we found an outside staircase. We descended and came toanother house. Some soldiers followed, looking for a place to get intothe street, and others remained there. The picture of that poor littleroom is indelibly fixed in my memory, with all its lines and colors,and flooded with plentiful light from a large window, opened upon thestreet. Portraits of the Virgin and of the saints covered the unevenwalls. Two or three old trunks covered with goat-skin stood on oneside. On the other side we saw a woman's clothes hanging upon hooks andnails, and a very high but poor-looking bed, although the sheets werefresh. In the window were three large flower-pots with plants in them.Sheltered behind them were two women firing furiously upon the Frenchwho occupied the breach. They had two guns. One was charging, the otherfiring. The one who was firing had been stooping to aim from behind theflower-pots. Resting the trigger a minute, she lifted her head a littleto look at the field of battle.
"Manuela Sancho," I exclaimed, placing my hand upon the head of theheroic girl, "resistance is no longer of any use. The next house isalready destroyed by the batteries of San Jos?, and the balls arealready beginning to fall upon the roof of this. Let us go."
She took no notice, and went on shooting. At last the house, whichwas even less able than its neighbor to sustain the shock of theprojectiles, quivered as if the earth trembled beneath its foundations.Manuela Sancho threw down her gun. She and the woman who was with herran into an alcove, where I heard them crying bitterly. Entering, wefound the two girls embracing an old crippled woman who was trying toget up from her bed.
"Mother, it is nothing," Manuela said soothingly, covering her withwhatever came first to her hand; "we are only going into the streetbecause it seems as if the house is going to fall down."
The old woman did not speak. She could not speak. The two girls hadtaken her in their arms; but we took her in ours, charging them tobring our guns and whatever clothing they could save. We passed outinto a court which opened into another street where the fire had notyet reached.
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