The rest of the Miquelets had fallen, and several Frenchmen came to their captain’s aid, bayoneting Ballester’s body. In the melee, and with the two bodies intertwined, they also managed to finish off Bardonenche by stabbing him a few times. By the end, the pair were a single mangled lump enveloped in thick mud. Two men with such different trajectories, so perfectly unalike one from the other, and in their demise, unified by death — as though their destiny had been to end up in each other’s arms.
I turned and I ran as never before. Corre, Zuvi! Run! Only when there was no breath left in me did I finally come to a halt. Wheezing, with no thought for where I was, I dropped to the ground. I couldn’t believe they were all dead. Amelis, Anfán, Nan. Ballester. And still the battle was raging. More images: brave men, the kind I never thought I’d see give in, fleeing home; and cowards, who had never shown their faces anywhere near the ramparts, taking on the enemy armed with hatchets. I’d need a whole page to list the nobles who, back in June 1713, had voted against resisting, and come September 11, 1714, died defending their city.
Questions abound. So many pointless sacrifices — why? Was it worth filling the world with so many tragic, extraordinary tales, all those brilliant, meteoric ends? We know what happened afterward. All officers put in chains, hauled to Castile, and Don Antonio first among them. The Saint Eulalia flag captured and transported to the Atocha shrine in Madrid. The entire country under a military regime for decades. And Barcelona in the hands of that mercenary murderer, the Antwerp butcher, Verboom.
My thoughts turn to another of the Miquelet captains, Josep Moragues. He was tied to the back of a cart and dragged the length and breadth of the city before being decapitated and his arms and legs cut off. They placed his head in a cage and had no qualms about hanging it from one of the city gates. There his bare skull stayed, as mockery of and a warning to the rebels, for twelve long years — twelve, as all the while his widow’s protests went unheard.
Could there be any greater ignominy than that of Moragues? Yes, perhaps that of a man named Manuel Desvalls. And not because his body was subjected to torments but because he didn’t die from his treatment. Desvalls had commanded troops outside Barcelona. When the victors exiled him, he couldn’t have had any idea what the rest of his days would hold. Remarkably, he lived to a hundred. Can you imagine? A larger proportion of his life spent outside his home than in it, his return never allowed. A hundred years — a century. And I’m headed the same way.
Or should I talk about the women, our women, all the women who sustained us and who spat when we said they couldn’t fight on the bastions? Or perhaps Castellví, Francesc Castellví, our starry-eyed captain of the Valencian company? When he was exiled, he chose the path of the writer or, more specifically, his own dead end. He stubbornly dedicated his life to chronicling our war, corresponding for decades with participants from either side, men from dozens of countries. He wrote a book five thousand pages long and more, an impartial testimony of all the great deeds. And do you know what happened? No publisher would touch it. He died without a single page making it into the public domain.
But above all, my thoughts turn to Don Antonio, Don Antonio de Villarroel Peláez, renouncing glory and honor, family and even life itself, and all for an allegiance that made no sense — to a group of nameless men. He, a son of Castile, embodying what was good about that harsh land, sacrificing himself for Barcelona, no less. And his reward? Infinite pain, eternal oblivion.
In my delirium, another of my tragedies occurred to me: With Anfán dead, I had a son remaining, one I’d never meet, and who would never learn that his father had fought and died defending the freedoms of a people he’d also never know about. But no, I thought, my pain wasn’t unusuaclass="underline" When we lost and all of us perished, all our children would be educated by the victors.
The world: this answerless question. And inhabiting its trifling circumference, the fools who seek the answer. All for nothing.
And yet the doubt remains. The fact is, all those men and women did not have to go up the ramparts. They could have stayed in their houses, let the tyrant in. Resign themselves to it, get down on their knees, beg for their lives. But they didn’t. They fought. Knowing full well how slim their chances were, they held out for thirteen months of inexorable terror. Dying for the sake of a word, dying so their children could say for the rest of time, even if only under their breath: “My father defended our bastions.” This was the way Ballester — all the Ballesters — thought.
After Ballester’s death, I drifted, neither dead nor alive. For how long, and along which streets, I do not know. The gunfire was an innocuous murmur, not worthy of attention. Then someone was beckoning me: “Don Antonio’s calling everyone together,” the person said. Images, voids, morasses in the memory. But the words “Don Antonio” could bring the dead back to life.
Suddenly, I find myself in Plaza Born, the square at Barcelona’s very center. Not heeding the gunfire, Don Antonio is gathering a troop on the cobblestones. And what a troop. The remaining few. Remnants of the Coronela, wounded men dragged from hospital beds, young boys, some women. A couple of priests.
Don Antonio was about to launch the second counterattack, aimed at retaking the ramparts. An absurdity, given that the Bourbons had reached the far side of Plaza Born. There, thousands of white uniforms had gathered, and the first rank was kneeling. For the rest, aside from Don Antonio’s steed, I do not believe there were more than a few dozen cavalrymen. The others were lining up like infantry, with one or two officers trying to introduce order to the ranking.
Don Antonio, up on his horse at the front, made a brief speech. But the din was too great for us to hear him. And it made no difference what he had to say. The odd bullet grazed his body, and then one bounced off his saber. Out of the thousands and thousands of shots fired that day, the sound of that one bullet has stayed with me, metal on metal. Don Antonio’s response was to raise his saber even higher. I looked at him. And shall I tell you what? He was illuminated.
No, the word “happiness” doesn’t fit him. Don Antonio was never happy, just as fish may not see the sun until being torn from the ocean depths. He was about other things. He was going to surpass a threshold that was particular to him, and he had found the opportunity to do so without compromising his honor. That day — finally — it wouldn’t be him asking the impossible of his men but the other way around. Joyfully, he led them on their mad sortie.
And The Word? It’s ironic, because I began this book prepared to reveal it, and now, after all these pages, this word — this unique word — doesn’t matter. Because when it came to that final charge, we were beyond words.
This was The Word. These children, these women, these men from a hundred different places. All united behind Don Antonio’s horse. Lining up higgledy-piggledy, about to set out on a cavalry charge without any horses. Fewer than a thousand versus fifty thousand. And yet The Word may be reflected in the dictionaries. A pale reflection, very pale, but a reflection after all.
We attacked, shrieking like the savages who sacked Rome. The Bourbons were in perfect formation on the far side of the square. Their ranks, well stocked with men, reaching a long way back, thousands of rifles pointing straight at us. We were peppered with bullets. Volley after volley, perfectly coordinated. Their officers calling out, Feu, feu, feu! My companions falling left and right. The sounds of weeping, wailing, repentance. Don Antonio, like a commander out of antiquity, leading from the front, sheer madness, galloping forward with saber pointed. They shot him down, of course.