A red and yellow signal, in Allied code, meant a petition to friendly outside forces for urgent help. So here was a dilemma for Orléans! The flares signified that the garrison in Tortosa was on its last legs, yes, but also that an auxiliary Austrian army was close enough to see the signals in the sky. Which gave Orléans two choices: Lift the siege and head out to take on the external army, or (à la Coehoorn) throw everything he had at Tortosa despite the trenches not yet being complete. In either case, the mountains of earth that had been moved would all be for nothing.
This was what the high command had to reckon with. For me personally, the flares were a godsend, and I let out a sigh of relief like a buffalo. My long legs folded, slack from the fright, and I knelt down. I saw Anfán. It was just the two of us again.
“I’m going to break every single bone in your body!” I roared.
What do you think my dear, vile Waltraud? Did I catch him? Yes or no?
Of course not. A rat scurrying up into the nooks and crannies of a cathedral wall would have been easier to catch.
13
The assault was now down to the infantry, not the engineers. We fell back from the trenches as thousands of Bourbon soldiers took up their attack positions.
I did not see the assault, but I did hear it. I was by one of the entrances to the first parallel, in the rearguard. First came a bombardment at twilight, the attack beginning at exactly the same time we’d begun digging the trench: eight in the evening. Then we heard rifles being fired, and the sounds of the infantry charging up a forty-five-degree incline. The resistance was so fierce that civilians resorted to hurling statues of saints from the ramparts. It was four hours before the Spanish took hold of a single bastion. There was no cease-fire until two in the morning.
Predictably enough, Orléans had opted for a direct attack, cost what it may. And the vast majority of the wounded crying out were doing so in Spanish, not French. I didn’t think so at the time, but in hindsight, it’s enough to make you spit. What was the point of this war? A French monarch wanting to get his hands on the Spanish throne, with the Spanish army at his service. Any serious encounter, and it was Spanish soldiers who would be sent as cannon fodder into the charnel house. It was hardly as though the Spanish were dying against their will. Not even the Turks would have been obtuse enough to involve themselves in such a shambles as this.
At the Allies’ request, there was a truce. Orléans suspected they were playing for time, but he was so intent on taking Tortosa that he put up with it. He lost nothing by it. The auxiliary army was still a long way away, and Orléans had control of a bastion. Well, during this truce, something truly chilling happened.
We heard cries, women screaming. It was still dark when, from inside the walls, a lamentation went up, a clamor that put one in mind of passages from the Old Testament. We later learned that the inhabitants of Tortosa, hearing that the foreign officers had opted to surrender, were in despair.
I couldn’t understand it. In dynastic conflicts, the people hid; they never took part in the combat themselves. I remember saying to myself for the first time: “Zuvi, you have been away from your home too long. What on earth is going on here?”
Luckily, I didn’t have very much time to consider it. I was approached by a French official, a liaison officer with the Spanish command. He told me I was to go to the bastion we had taken, to tell the troops there they were about to be relieved. Fine, I supposed—falling back from such an exposed position would surely be taken as good news. What seemed strange was for a youngster like me to be sent, to speak with a general, no less.
Seeing my shambolic appearance, the liaison officer said: “Get washed, put a decent tunic on over that. And shine your boots.”
“But Captain,” I said artlessly, “shouldn’t someone with a far higher rank be going on such a mission?”
“Oh!” he said, patting me on the back. “Take it as a great honor, my boy.”
A great honor! What this “great honor” consisted of, I’ll now tell you.
It wasn’t until dawn that I was sent to the bastion, when the sun was already up, warming the living and causing the dead to rot. The path to the bastion was lined with bulging bodies. As I went up the mound made by the rubble of the bastion, my boots raised clouds of flies covering the bodies, like plump, winged chestnuts.
There were hundreds of soldiers up on the bastion, rifles loaded and bayonets drawn, sheltering in the ruins and looking out over the deathly quiet city. The general to whom I was to take my message was also sheltering among the bastion stones. He was the same man who had tried to have me hanged, though, thank heavens, he didn’t recognize me just then!
“Mon général!” I said in French. “I find you at last.” I gave him the order to fall back.
He didn’t understand a word of my French. He looked at one of his men and said in the sternest of Castilian voices: “What does this Frog want?”
I repeated what I’d said, this time in Castilian, and with the kind of reverence and smile one reserves for the victors. “An order from the high command, mon général: You have carried out your task, gloriously and honorably, and now please allow yourself to be withdrawn. French battalions will take your place until hostilities are complete.”
His disdain turned into fury. Turning his head and squinting, he said: “Allow ourselves to be what?”
“Leave him to us, my general!” said a nearby soldier, brandishing his bayonet.
I kept up my diplomatic smile, while saying to myself that I never would understand these military types.
What could they be thinking? They’d suffered terrible losses. I had come to them with the good news of being allowed to leave that dreadful spot. And how did they respond? By threatening to spill my guts with the sharp end of a bayonet.
The general launched himself at me. His puffy cheeks flushed dark red. Grabbing me by the collar of my shirt, he thrust me the way I’d come, back down the glacis covered in dead bodies, and said: “Look at them! Look! Do you think they died so that some Frenchie can come and take all the credit? Do you really think I’m going to let some cousin of Orléans come and have the keys to the city placed in his hands?”
I resisted him, aided by the knowledge that I’d done nothing wrong. For all that he was a general, I shouted: “Do you think this mess has anything to do with me? Let me go, imbecile, I’m just a messenger!”
That stopped him in his tracks. He hesitated for a moment—how does one deal with a soldier who would speak to a general in this way?—before exclaiming: “Tell that to the person who sent you!”
What happened next, all the historians must somehow have missed, for it has never seen mention in any of the accounts of the siege.
He gave me such a kick up the behind that it was a miracle I didn’t go into orbit. I flew down the slope, bouncing over the rubble like a ball, dislodging stones of all sizes, as well as cadavers, which, in the moment I bumped into them, seemed to come to life for a moment.
I returned to camp with my tunic ripped and my rear end on fire from the kick. I was ready to burst with umbrage. I ran into the liaison officer.
“Ah!” he said cautiously. “How did it go?”
Now I understood why I’d been sent! No one was brave enough to go and tell the general he was being relieved, so to avoid a scene, they’d sent the most insignificant creature in the army.
“How did it go?” I said, infuriated. “Where did you get that Spanish general?”
“Mm, yes . . . ,” the Frenchman said apologetically. “General Antonio de Villarroel does have quite the temper.”
Yes, dear readers, that’s right: This was my first encounter with Don Antonio. It was he who, years later, would go on to drag good old Zuvi out of the most pernicious existence to the highest heights; the same man who, though of Castilian origin, in 1713 would lead the defense of the Catalan capital, Barcelona, and make the ultimate sacrifice for us.
Dear vile Waltraud, weighing heavier on me than an anchor, c
onstantly interrupts. She’s finding it hard to understand how, if Villarroel was serving a Bourbon king in the summer of 1708, we’ll find him fighting on the Austrian side in 1713.
Let’s see, my most horrendous Waltraud: I already know you to be dimmer than a glowworm’s fetus, but even so, has it not occurred to you that, in order to be understood, this book must be read in order, all the chapters, and to the very end?
What a tonic a kick up the backside can be! I should really have thanked that mad general.
What on earth was I doing there? Since failing Vauban’s test, I had been floundering in inertia. Fine, well, now I had a siege under my belt, and what else? Had I discovered The Word? I had not.
That kick up the backside was going to send me straight home. I would go and apologize to my father, on my knees if I had to. I’d come clean. And he would forgive me—bad-tempered as he was, I was still his only son. I said to myself that however bad a father might be, he could never trump a siege. To hell with warfare, and generals ready to kick you about, and all the Monsieur Forgottens in this world!
I hurried back to my tent. I was ready to cut my losses, grab the few things I really needed, and head to Barcelona.
The whole army was waiting for the terms of the surrender to be agreed, so I wouldn’t find a better moment to make myself scarce.
Given the engineers’ elite specialism, their tents were surrounded by a makeshift stake fence that separated them from the common troops. Monsieur Forgotten’s tent, with its bulbous roof, was in the middle of our precinct. Around that, individual officers’ tents, and next, the lower engineers, where aides-de-camp like me slept. There were usually three pairs of soldiers on guard, but that morning, with the conclusion of the siege imminent, there was just one soldier, a youth. He was walking up and down, rifle at his shoulder, and greeted me as I came past. Ignoring him, I went into my tent.
Someone had been through my things, I was surprised to find. All my money, everything I’d saved from Bazoches, plus my wages since I’d joined the French army, all gone! Understandably enough, I shot out of there in a rage, angry even at the fact that anyone had entered the tent, which was bad enough in itself.
“Soldier!” I shouted at the unfortunate sentry. “Are you blind? I’ve been robbed!”
“Sir, I’m very sorry,” he said. “It must have been that pair.”
“Pair? What pair?”
“A dwarf wearing a funnel for a hat and a boy with dirty pigtails.”
I let out a howl. “So if you saw them, what came over you that you let them enter? Didn’t you think they looked suspicious?”
“They showed me a pass, sir, I had to let them through!” said the soldier, excusing himself. “I can’t read, but an officer who was passing by helped me. It was fine, according to him. The pass had their names on it, and it was signed by you.”
I kicked a fencepost with my sapper boots. Childhood! That time of the soul’s innocence! My good friend Rousseau ought to have met this miniature monster Anfán before writing his essays on pedagogy!
They’d employed a brilliant strategy, waiting until the last day of the siege to use my pass, when all eyes were on Tortosa and camp was practically empty. This prompted a thought in me. I ceased my attack on the post and asked the sentry: “Was it long ago they were here?”
“Not at all. They just left. I think I saw them a few minutes ago.” He pointed toward the outskirts of camp. “They went that way.”
I trotted in the direction indicated. I traversed the camp, coming to the last tents. Beyond these stretched parched fields, only one or two bushes here and there. I spotted the pair. Nearly half a mile away, cutting across the fields at a run, and weighed down with more booty than ants in the Yucatán.
There were thousands of nooks and crannies in the trenches for them to hide in, but in open country, they didn’t have a chance against Longlegs Zuvi. I ran after them, accelerating, eating up the distance.
Seeing me coming, they also picked up the pace, though each was weighed down with a sack larger than his own body. They reached the top of a rise and disappeared down the other side.
It was a couple of minutes before I reached that point, and once there, I couldn’t see them anymore. Damn it, where had they gotten to? I paused for a moment to catch my breath.
I scanned around, thinking maybe they’d hidden in some hole in the ground. But no, there weren’t any. “Come on, Zuvi,” I said to myself, “think! Wasn’t it the lord of Bazoches himself who taught you to use your eyes?”
A couple of hundred feet to my right: a small construction, abandoned. One of these stone huts where peasants keep tools and suchlike. There was nowhere else they could be.
I circled the place before going in, checking for any escape route. No, the windows were too small even for them. Only then did I approach the door and shout: “Come on, out with you! I know you’re in there!”
To my surprise, the door opened immediately. It wasn’t either of them, though, but a French soldier.
He was the paradigm of soldiery at its most depraved. His belt was loose, and his uniform was so dirty that its whiteness was a mere memory. He peered out of drunken, sleepy eyes. Leaning lazily against the doorframe, picking at his teeth with a knife, he asked what I wanted. What was going on there? I pushed him to one side and took a step forward into the hut. Once my eyes had adjusted to the gloom, I was dumbstruck.
The dwarf was in there, tied to a beam, his mouth gagged with straw and a rag tied around him. Anfán was seated on an old chair, bound tight at his ankles and wrists. Gagged, too, and with a black hood that came down over half his body. The French soldier had an accomplice, and he was kneeling down finishing tying Anfán’s binds. Even the flies had fled that place. Nan looked at me in utter terror. They’d stumbled into an atrocious situation, one of these small hells you’ll always find in or near a war, just as cobwebs always inhabit corners.
My first thought was to recover my belongings and get out of there. This perverted pair of maniacs disgusted me, of course. But we were in a time of widespread indiscriminate killing. The sooner I could get away, the better.
There was a small detail, though, something otherwise quite minor, that made me more upset than I ordinarily might have been. Want to know what this trivial thing was? A bead, a bead of sweat, running down the cheek of one of those swine. This little drop betrayed foul desires, a soul gone rancid. His mouth hung half open, and he was staring intently at Anfán, who was desperately trying to free himself on the chair. Like all scavengers, he had large gaps between his teeth, which made him all the more repulsive. Sometimes it’s trivial details that spur us into action. It had been a bad day, and someone was going to have to pay for it.
There was a thick, rusty chain hanging from the ceiling. I picked a large stone up off the floor and, stowing this under one arm, reached up and took down the chain with my free hand. I took a step toward the soldier at the door. “Mind holding this stone for a moment?”
“All right,” he said, putting away his knife and holding out his hands. “But what do you want me to hold it for?”
The answer was very simple: so he would have his hands full as I brought the chain down across his head, knocking him to the floor. The other man was too much of a coward to take me on. Seeing me coming toward him with the chain, he curled up in a ball, protecting his head with his hands. I’d scared him witless, and I left it at that. Dropping the chain, fed up with Tortosa, with war, with the world, I untied the boy and the dwarf, gathered my belongings, and left the hut.
Anfán and the dwarf followed me out. “Monsieur, monsieur!”
Any hostility I’d felt toward them had faded. I’d recovered my money and my effects, and if you have saved a person’s life, you do not then give him a hiding. Which isn’t to say I cared what happened to them, not in the slightest. Without breaking stride, I said scornfully back to them, “Go and get back in the trench. Turns out you might have been right: With what’s going on at the moment
, it might be the safest place for you.”
They swarmed around me like butterflies.
“Get out of here!” I said again. “You ought to be hanged, you little thieves. Luckily for you, I myself am in too much of a hurry to get back to Barcelona.”
But the mention of Barcelona only made them more excited.
“Monsieur!” cried Anfán. “We’ve wanted to go to Barcelona for so long! We’ve been saving up to do exactly that.”
Saving up! What my father would have said of this pair’s ideas about work! I was about to give them a farewell thrashing when I heard the snorting of animals.
A cavalry squadron in the near distance. The rearguard of the besieging army was protected by these mounted patrols. They would escort foragers, ward off Miquelet attacks, as well as rounding up deserters. I could have spoken with them but was too much the fugitive by this point. My first impulse was to dash into a small forest that stood nearby and looked dense enough to make it difficult for horses to enter.
“No, monsieur!” said Anfán. “You won’t make it in time. Follow us!” They turned in to an abandoned vineyard, Anfán gesturing for me to follow. “Run! Quick!”
The vines were a little above knee height. In such open country, cavalry would trap us easily. They were insane, these two. But do you know what? I followed them anyway.
The patrol came after us. We made a desperate dash, me weighed down with the two sacks, sweating. I cursed myself. But when the horses reached the edge of the vineyard, they pulled up as though obstructed by some invisible force. The riders didn’t attempt to spur them on.
Anfán laughed, very pleased with himself indeed. “Horses hate vineyards—they break their legs on the vines.”
The riders fired a few shots our way, with no great intent. By the time they went around this vineyard, which was extensive, we’d be well into the forest. They decided against following us.
Victus Page 17