When I woke at daybreak the next morning I saw Montoria, who was
passing by the wall.
"I believe that the bombardment is going to begin," he said to me;
"there is a great activity in the enemy's lines."
"They will try to demolish this redoubt," I said, getting up lazily.
"How gloomy the sky is, Augustine! Day dawns very sadly."
"I believe they will attack on all sides at once, until they have made
their second parallel. Do you know that Napoleon in Paris, knowing the
resistance shown by this city in the first siege, was furious with
Lefebre Desnouettes because he assaulted the plaza by the Portillo and
the Castle Aljaferia. He called for a plan of Saragossa, and they gave
it to him, and he showed that the city should be attacked by Santa
Engracia."
"By this place? A black day is indeed dawning for us if the orders of
Napoleon are carried out. Tell me, have we anything to eat here?"
"I did not show it to you before because I wished to surprise you," he
said to me, showing me a basket which served as the tomb of two cold
roast fowls, some comfits and fine preserves.
"You brought these last night? Indeed! How could you go out of the
redoubt?"
"I got leave from the general for an hour, and Mariquilla prepared this
feast. If Candiola knows that two of the hens from his chicken-corral
have been killed and roasted to regale two of the defenders of the
city, the devil will be to pay. Let us eat then, Señor Araceli, while
we await the bombardment. Here it comes. One bomb! Another, another!"
The right batteries opened fire upon San José and the Pilar, and what
a fire! The whole army seemed behind the cannon. Away with breakfasts,
away with the morning meal, away with tidbits!--the men of Aragon will
have no food but glory!
The unconquerable fortress answered the insolent besieger with a
tremendous cannonade, and soon the great soul of our fatherland moved
within us. The balls, beating upon the brick walls and the earthworks,
beat down the redoubt as if it were a toy pelted with stones by a
boy. The grenades, falling among us, burst with a great noise, and the
bombs, passing with awful majesty over our heads, went on to fall into
the streets and upon the roofs of the houses.
Everybody out! Let there be no idle or cowardly people in the city. The
men to the walls, the women to the bloody hospitals, the children and
priests to carry ammunition! Let no notice be taken of these dreadful
and burning things which bore through roofs, penetrate dwelling-houses,
open gates, pierce floors, descend to the cellars, and, bursting,
scatter the flames of hell upon the tranquil hearth, surprising with
death the aged invalid on his couch and the child in his cradle.
Nothing of this sort matters. Everybody out into the street, and thus
save honor though the city perish, and the churches and convents
and hospitals and the estates which are but earthly things! The
Saragossans, despising material good as they despised life, lived by
their spirits in the infinite spaces of the ideal.
In the first moments the Captain-General and many other distinguished
personages visited us,--such as Don Mariano Cereso the priest of Sas,
General O'Neill, San Genis, and Don Pedro Ric. There was also there the
brave and generous Don José Montoria, who embraced his son, saying to
him: "To-day is the day to conquer or to die. We will meet each other
in heaven."
Behind Montoria, Don Roque presented himself; he had become a brave
fellow, and as he had been employed in the sanitary service, he
began to show a feverish activity before there were any wounded, and
displayed to us a good sized pile of lint. Various friars mingled among
the combatants during the early firing, encouraging us with mystic
fervor.
At the same time, and with equal fury, the French attacked the redoubt
del Pilar and the fortress of San José. The latter, although more
formidable in aspect, had less power of resistance, perhaps because
it presented a broader target for the enemy's fires. But Renovales
was there with the Huesca and the Valencia volunteers, the Walloon
guards, and various members of the militia of Soria. The great lack of
the fortress was in its having been constructed for the protection of
a vast edifice, which the enemy's artillery converted into ruins in
a little while; pieces of the thick wall were forced in from time to
time, and many of its defenders were crushed. We were better off. Over
our heads we had only the heavens, and if no roof guarded us from the
bombs, neither did masses of masonry fall upon us. They demolished the
wall by the front and sides, and it was a pity to see how that fragile
mass fell away little by little, placing us in an exposed position.
Nevertheless, after four hours of incessant fire by powerful artillery,
they were not able to open a breach.
Thus passed the day of the tenth with no advantage for the besiegers
from us, even if they had succeeded in getting near San José and
opening a wide breach, which, together with the ruined condition of the
building, forced the unhappy necessity of its surrender. Yet, in the
mean time, the fortress had not been reduced to powder, and, dead or
alive, its defenders had hope. Fresh troops were sent there, because
the battalions working there since morning were decimated; and when
night fell, after the opening of the breach and the fruitless attempt
at an assault, yet Renovales held the blood-soaked ruins, among the
heaps of corpses, with only the third part of his artillery.
When night interrupted the firing, there had been great carnage on both
sides. We ourselves had lost many by death, and more were wounded.
The wounded were carried at the time into the city by the friars and
the women; but the dead still gave their last service with their cold
bodies, for they were stoically thrown into the open breach, which was
being stopped up with sacks of wool and earth.
During the night we did not rest for one single moment, and the dawn of
the eleventh found us inspired by the same frenzy, our pieces already
pointed against the enemy's intrenchments, and already piercing with
musket shots those who were coming to flank us, without hindering for
a moment the work of stopping up the breach, which was widening, hour
by hour its dreadful spaces. So we endured all the morning until the
moment when they began the assault upon San José, now converted into a
heap of ruins, and with most of its garrison dead. Centring the forces
upon these two points, they fell upon the convent, and directed an
audacious movement upon us; and it was with the object of making our
breach practicable that they advanced by the Torrero road with two
cannons protected by a column of infantry.
At that moment we thought ourselves lost. The feeble walls trembled,
and the bricks were shattered into thousands of pieces. We ran up to
the breach, which was widening every instant, where they poured upon
us a horrible fire. Seeing that the redoubt was being shattered to
pieces, they took courage to come to the very borders of the fosse
itself. It was madness to try to fill that terrible space, and to show
an uncovered place was to offer victims without number to the fury of
the enemy. We protected ourselves as well as we could with sacks of
wool and shovels of earth, and many stood as if petrified on the spot.
The firing of the cannon ceased because it seemed necessary; there was
a moment of indefinable panic; the guns fell from our hands; we saw
ourselves routed, destroyed, annihilated by that rain of fire that
seemed to fill the air. We forgot honor, the fatherland, the glory of
death, the Virgin del Pilar, whose name adorned the bridge and the
"unconquerable" defences. The most dreadful confusion reigned in our
ranks. Descending suddenly from the high moral level of our souls, all
those who had not fallen desired life of one accord, and, leaping over
the wounded and trampling the dead under foot, we fled towards the
bridge, abandoning that horrible sepulchre before it should shut us in,
entombing us all.
On the bridge we were swallowed up by insupportable terror and
disorder. There is nothing more frenzied than a coward. His abject
meannesses are as great as the sublimities of his valor.
Our leaders kept crying out to us, "Back, you rabble! The redoubt del
Pilar has not surrendered!" striking our swords with their sabres. We
turned back on the bridge, unable to go further, as reinforcements
came, and we stumbled over one another, the fury of our fear mingling
with the impetus of their bravery.
"Back, cowards!" cried our officers, striking us in the faces, "and die
in the breach!"
The redoubt was vacated. None but the dead and the wounded were there.
Suddenly we saw advance amid the dense smoke and the blackness of
powder, leaping over the lifeless bodies and the heaps of earth and
the ruins, and the guns we had thrown down, and the shattered works, a
figure, dauntless, pale, splendid, of tragic calmness. It was a woman
who had made her way forward and, penetrating the abandoned place, was
marching like a queen towards the horrible breach. Pirli, who was lying
on the ground, wounded in the leg, exclaimed in affright,
"Manuela Sancho, where are you going?"
All this passed in much less time than I take to tell it. After
Manuela Sancho, first one, then another, then many hurried, then all,
urged on by the leaders whose sabre-cuts had prodded us to the point
of duty. This portentous transformation came about by the impulse of
every man's heart obeying sentiments which all feel without any one's
knowing whence the mysterious force emanates. I do not know why we were
cowards, nor why we were brave a few moments later. What I do know
is that, moved by an extraordinary power, immense and superhuman, we
hurled ourselves into the breach behind the heroic woman, at the point
where the French were attempting the assault with ladders. Without in
the least knowing how to explain it, we felt our strength increased
a hundred-fold, and crushed them back, hurling into the ditch those
men of cotton who a little while ago had seemed to us men of steel.
With shots and sabre-cuts, with shells, with shovels full of earth,
by blows, and bayonet-thrusts, we fought. Many of our number died to
defend others with their dead bodies. We defended the breach, indeed,
and the French were obliged to retire, leaving many dead and wounded
at the bottom of the wall. The cannons again began firing, and the
unconquerable redoubt did not fall on the eleventh into the hands of
the French.
When the tempest of fire was calmed, we did not know ourselves. We were
transfigured, and something new and unknown palpitated in the depths
of our souls, giving us an unheard-of fierceness. The following day
Palafox said, with much eloquence: "Nor balls, nor bombs, nor shells
shall make our faces change color, nor can all France accomplish that!"