And yet, and yet, in the end the skill of the Mallorcans would all be for naught. The Bourbons had inexhaustible resources, of machinery as much as of men. Whereas every one of the Mallorcan gunners we lost was irreplaceable. They were peculiar folk, the Mallorcans, and never said a single word about their dead.
Jimmy resorting to that firestorm took the situation one step closer to the absurd. The siege was no longer a duel between thinking minds but, rather, a steady stream of devastation. I received the order from Don Antonio to withdraw from the front line, and he was quite right: The enemy’s new strategy rendered any technical course of action useless. We had gone beyond the civilized and rational. “Perfection can be reached only by going beyond the merely human dimension,” Don Antonio had said. Certainly Jimmy’s approach, all powerful and at the same time atavistic, destructive, and simply berserk, was dragging the situation beyond all limits. And here is a thing worthy of note: On the first day I was away from the point of attack, I felt a sickness settle on me, as though I were in need of the pain that had been racking me.
So, being of no use to those battered ramparts, I moved back inside the city. We hadn’t checked in on the enemy’s mining endeavors for a long time. I’d always had a strong dislike for mines. Vauban had no truck with them, and whether we want to or not, we take on the likes and dislikes of our teachers. The marquis saw mines as decoys and therefore ungentlemanly. According to him, the enemy must be beaten head-on; underhand tactics were not acceptable. On top of which, to a mind as supremely rational as his, a moyen si incertain was intolerable.
Mines have their fair share of proponents. Should the besieging army succeed in drilling a tunnel underneath the enemy walls and packing it with explosives, the battlements will fall — by surprise, and avoiding all risks. The hardships usually associated with a siege, over in an instant. And in a thundering, apocalyptic manner — not subject to appeal. I’ve known Maganons who dreamed of packing fifty thousand pounds of explosives into a mine. Proof that even the most exact science can go overboard; were they looking to blow the walls or the entire city, or what?
You can understand the fervor of those who argue for mines. A mine is employed with the certainty of saving time and lives. In practice, and according to what I’ve seen, this is never the case. Drilling a subterranean tunnel consumes all manner of resources, and without fail, some of those must be taken from the Attack Trench works; in an effort to save time, you only cause delays. Then there is the fact that the besieged will take their own measures. As Vauban put it: on the road to glory, there are no shortcuts.
There was one other reason why Longlegs Zuvi loathed mines. That reason being, of all the ways humans have devised to end one another’s lives, there are none more sinister or terrifying than underground combat.
You’d smell miners before you saw them. They spent such long periods underground that their skin gave off a warm stench; you didn’t need your senses honed in Bazoches to detect them. They were known as Los Cucs—The Worms. What was their brigade leader called? Buggered if I can recall.
Los Cucs hadn’t had much success. We knew the enemy was working on a large mine and that it was aiming between Saint Clara and Portal Nou. Knowing Jimmy, if they did reach their destination, the explosion would make that of the night of August 15 seem like a tiny spark off a flint. I asked to be brought up to speed by the captain of Los Cucs. What was his name? Strange, the things we forget. His men looked haggard and hollow-eyed, and to be presented with reinforcements was a great lift to them.
The objective of countermines is to identify the position of the enemy mine and disable it. Underground labyrinth warfare, this, with far more recourse to fire, smoke, and daggers than rifles and bullets. Los Cucs had initiated several tunnels but not yet managed to hit the Bourbon’s primary gallery.
“Don’t you worry about digging any more galleries,” the captain said to me. “Going and sounding out the walls will be more than sufficient. If you find something, you come and let us know. We’ll see to the rest.”
Men with experience have always commanded my respect — far more than the bookish kind. I nodded and went and spoke with Ballester and his men.
“You come behind me,” I said. “Every man is to bring one grenade, a dagger, and two loaded pistols, that’s all.”
The entrance to our mine was located inside a house that had been blown up, just inside the city walls, the idea being to avoid the prying eyes of any Bourbon spies. The captain of Los Cucs—I simply cannot recall that man’s name — had readied some equipment for us. Very valuable material, and we would need to take care of it. Ignorant Ballester laughed when he saw it. “You’re going down there with eight canes and. . what are those? Plates? Four plates with holes in the middle?”
“These aren’t canes and plates,” I said, not looking at him. “These are sounding lines, and these are plugs. And extremely valuable they are too.”
Down in the narrow confines of the mine, silence was essential. Before descending, I gathered Ballester’s men and tried to teach them the rudiments of the sign language of engineers. I could not. I was so afraid that my fingers trembled, and I had to give up on the idea. Very embarrassing. The men, in a circle, regarded me, expecting some kind of instruction that would enable them to face whatever inferno we were about to go down into. I was their most direct line of authority; I was supposed to be showing them the way to return to the world of the living. I looked at that vertical black shaft, and my mind was filled with all the things we might encounter down there: a trench, but mazelike, and beneath the earth, with all kinds of nooks and crannies. And Bourbons who would show no mercy, infinitely more numerous and experienced in underground combat than we were. And even perhaps fifty thousand pounds of gunpowder, ready to go up the very moment we reached the chamber. The thought of it made me shudder violently.
After that time, never have I set foot in a mine or a countermine again. Once, in the Barcelona of 1714, was enough. And that time, in front of those manly Miquelets, I wept like a child. But would you like to guess what happened?
The Miquelets were incredibly good about it. And it wasn’t mere tolerance for my bleak view of things — sincerity was far more important to them than any authority. They thought I was afraid because I didn’t trust them, and they responded like remorseful children.
“Captain Ballester and I will go first,” I said, feigning enthusiasm. “Then the rest of you. Got it?”
Down we went. A ladder, which, to save wood, had been made with fewer rungs than it needed, led us down into the gallery.
All the manuals say that the primary tunnel ought to be wide enough for two miners to move along side by side: one carrying the tools, the other a lamp and a pistol, lighting the way and protecting the other if need be. Manuals! A lot of help they are! The tunnel was so narrow, it pressed against your shoulders. Ballester had to walk behind, with me carrying the tools and the lamp. We shuffled along forty or fifty feet. Feeling stifled, struggling to breathe as if on the gallows once more, I halted.
We were only ten or fifteen feet under the ground, but it was hot as an oven. We could feel the artillery exchanges going on as they reverberated the ground. A fine shower of loose earth was falling from the poorly braced ceiling. I felt sure it was going to cave in.
Zuvi, good old Zuvi, wasn’t born to crawl along on his belly. The air became more and more stifling, and I felt invisible pincers gripping my throat. Under the ground, my Bazoches senses were worthless or as good as; the darkness was a leveler, reducing all men to moles. Those guttering lamps in our hands seemed less to light the way than make apparent just how dark it was. And given that my sight could usually take in as much as that of four men at once, to lose it was all the more crippling.