On reaching this point in my story, I beg the reader to pardon me if I
do not give the dates exactly of that which I relate. In this period
of horror, lasting from January 27 to the middle of the next month,
the successive events are so confused, so mixed up, so run together
in my mind, that I cannot distinguish days and nights, and, in some
instances, I do not know whether certain skirmishes of those I recall
took place in daylight. It seems to me that all happened during one
long day, or in one endless night, and that time was not then marked
by its ordinary divisions. Many sensations and impressions are linked
together in my memory, forming one vast picture where there are no
more dividing lines than those that the events themselves offer,--the
greater fright of one moment, the unexplained panic or fury of another.
For this reason I cannot tell exactly on what day that took place which
I am going to relate now; but if I am not mistaken it was on a day
after the fight at Las Monicas, and somewhere, I should say, between
the thirtieth of January and the second of February. We were occupying
a house in the Calle de Pabostre. The French were in the one next to
it, and were trying to advance through the inside of the block to reach
the Puerta Quemada. Nothing can compare with the incessant activity
going on there. No kind of warfare, no bloodiest battle on the open
field, no sieges of a plaza, nor struggles in a street barricade can
compare with the succession of conflicts between the army of an alcove
and the army of a drawing-room, between the troops that occupy one
floor and those which guard the one above it.
Hearing the muffled blows of the picks at various points, not knowing
from what direction the attack might come, caused us some alarm. We
went up into attics; we descended into cellars, and glued our ears
to partition walls; we tried to learn the intentions of the enemy
according to the direction of the blows. At last we noticed that the
partition wall was being violently shaken near the very place where
we were standing, and we waited fire in the doorway, after heaping up
the furniture as a barricade. The French opened a hole, and presently
began leaping over beams and broken fragments, showing an intention
of driving us from the place. There were twenty of us, fewer of them,
and they evidently did not expect to be received in such fashion,
and retreated, returning soon with such reinforcement that we were
in great danger, and obliged to retire, leaving five comrades behind
the furniture, two of them dead. In the narrow passage we ran against
a stairway up which we hurried without knowing where we were going,
and presently found ourselves in a garret,--an admirable position for
defence. The stairway was narrow, however, and the Frenchmen who tried
to come up it died inevitably. So we remained for some time, prolonging
the resistance, and encouraging one another with huzzas and shouts,
when the partition at our backs began to resound with loud blows, and
we saw immediately that the French, by opening an entrance through
there, would catch us between two fires without means of escape. We
were now thirteen, as two had fallen in the garret, severely wounded.
Tio Garces, who was in command, shouted furiously: "By heaven, the
dogs shall not catch us! There's a skylight in the roof. Let us go up
through it to the tiles of the roof. Go on firing at whoever comes up
to try and cut through it! The rest of you enlarge the hole. Away with
fear, and viva the Virgin del Pilar!"
It was done as he commanded. This was to be a well-ordered retreat,
according to the rules of war; and while part of our army was
preventing the onward march of the enemy, the rest were occupied
in facilitating the retreat. This able plan was put into execution
with feverish activity, and very soon the hole of escape was large
enough for three men to pass through at once, without the French
gaining a single step during the time that we were employed in this
way. We quickly got out on the roof. We were now nine. Three had
been left in the garret, and another was wounded in trying to get
out, falling still alive, into the hands of the enemy. On finding
ourselves outside, we leaped for joy. We cast a glance over the roofs
of the quarter, and saw at a distance the batteries of the French.
We advanced on all fours for a good distance, exploring the lay of
the land, leaving two sentinels in the gap to pop off a gun at any
one who should seek to slip up by them. We had not gone twenty paces
when we heard a great noise of voices and laughter which seemed to us
to be French. And so it was; from a broad balcony those rascals were
looking at us and laughing. They were not slow in firing upon us, but
protected behind the chimneys, the angles and corners which the roof
afforded, we answered them shot for shot, and replied to their oaths
and exclamations by a thousand other invectives with which the lively
imagination of Tio Garces inspired us. At last we retreated, jumping to
the roof of the next house. We believed it to be in the hands of our
own men, and we entered by the window of a little upper room, supposing
that the descent from there to the street would be easy, and that
there we should be reinforced for the conclusion of the adventure that
had carried us through passages, up stairways, through garrets, and
over roofs. But we had scarcely set foot there, when we heard in the
apartment below us the sound of many blows on the wall.
"They are beating in there," said Tio Garces, and in a second the
French whom we had left in the house next us had passed to this one,
where they met comrades.
"Cuerno! Recuerno! Let us get out of this! The whole creation's down
below there."
We passed on into another garret, and found our way to a ladder leading
down to a large interior room, from whose doorway came the lively
sound of voices, chiefly those of women. The noise of the fight seemed
much further off, and we decided it must be at some distance. So we
dropped down the ladder and found ourselves in a large room filled
with old men, women, and children who had all sought refuge here.
Many, lying upon rude mattresses, showed in their faces traces of the
terrible epidemic, and one lifeless body lay on the floor, breath
evidently having left it but a few moments before. Some were wounded,
suffering cruelly and groaning unrestrainedly; two or three old women
were weeping and praying. Occasionally voices were heard begging,
"Water, water!" From where we entered, I saw Candiola at the end of
the room, carefully depositing in a corner a quantity of clothes and
kitchen utensils and crockery. With an angry gesture he drove away the
curious children who wished to look over and handle the poor stuff.
Anxious, eager only to heap together and guard his treasures without
losing a fragment, he was saying,--
"I have already lost two cups. And I have no doubt whatever as to what
has become of them. Some one of these people has taken them. There
is no security anywhere; there are no authorities to guarantee to a
citizen the possession of his property. Out of here, you unmannerly
boys! Oh, we are hard pushed! Cursed be the bombs and the one who
invented them! Soldiers, you have come in good time. Can you not have
two sentinels placed here for me to guard these treasures which I have
been able to save only with great trouble?"
My comrades laughed at such pretension, as may readily be believed. We
were just about to go, when I saw Mariquilla. The poor girl was sadly
changed from lack of sleep, much weeping, and the constant alarms. But
the trouble of her brow, and that which looked forth from her eyes,
only added to the sweetness of expression of her beautiful face. She
saw me, and immediately came eagerly up to me, showing that she wished
to speak with me.
"And Augustine?" I asked her.
"He is down there," she replied in tremulous tones. "They are fighting
below. We who took refuge in this house have been apportioned to
different rooms. My father came this morning with Doña Guedita.
Augustine brought us something to eat, and put us in a room where there
was a mattress. Suddenly we heard blows on the partition walls. The
French were coming. The troops entered, and made us leave, carrying the
sick and wounded to an upper room. They shut us all in, and then the
walls were broken through. The French met the Spaniards then, and began
real fighting. Yes, Augustine is below."
She was saying this when Manuela Sancho came, carrying two pitchers of
water for the wounded. The poor wretches threw themselves from their
beds, disputing even to blows over the water.
"No pushing, no scrambling, señors!" said Manuela, laughing. "There is
water enough for all. Our side is winning. It has cost a little labor
to drive the French from the alcove, and now they are disputing half of
the hall, having gained one half of it. They do not wish to leave us a
kitchen or a staircase. The whole place is filled with the dead."
Mariquilla turned pale with the horror of it.
"I am thirsty," she said to me.
I immediately tried to get some water for her from Manuela; but as the
last glass she had was in use, quenching soldiers' thirst, as she went
from mouth to mouth with it, I took, in order to lose no time, one of
the cups which Candiola had in his pile.
"Eh, you meddler," he said, shaking his fist at me, "leave that cup
here."
"I am getting it to give water to the señorita," I answered
indignantly. "Are these things so valuable, Señor Candiola?"
The miser did not reply, but did not oppose my giving his daughter a
drink. After her thirst was quenched, a wounded soldier reached out his
hands eagerly for the cup, and, lo! it began to go the rounds also,
passing from mouth to mouth. When I went to wait upon my comrades, Don
Jeronimo followed me with his eyes, and watched with bad grace the
forced loan that was so slow in returning to his hands.
Manuela Sancho was right in saying that our side was winning. The
French, dislodged from the main floor of the house, had retired to
the one below, where they continued their defence. When I descended,
all the interest of the battle was centred in the kitchen, disputed
with much bloodshed, but the rest of the house was in our power. Many
bodies of French and Spanish covered the gory floor. Some soldiers and
patriots, furious at not being able to conquer that dismal kitchen,
whence such a fire was pouring, hurled themselves forward into it,
defending themselves with their bayonets; and although a goodly number
of them perished, their courageous act decided the matter, for behind
them others could come, and then all that the room could hold.
The Imperial soldiers, panic-stricken with this violent assault, looked
quickly for a way out of the house which had been taken room by room.
We pursued them through passages and halls whose confused arrangement
would craze the best military topographer. We finished them wherever we
could find them, and some of them escaped, dashing in desperation out
through the court-yards. In this manner, after reconquering one house,
we reconquered the next one, obliging the enemy to restrict themselves
to their old positions, which were the first two houses of the Calle de
Pabostre.
Afterwards we removed our dead and wounded, and I had the sorrow of
finding Augustine Montoria among the latter, although the gun-wound in
his right arm was not of a serious nature. My battalion was reduced
one-half that day. The unfortunates who had sought refuge in the
upper room now wished to make themselves a little more comfortable in
the lower rooms; but this was not thought practicable, and they were
obliged to leave the place and look for an asylum further from danger.
Every day, every hour, every instant, the increasing difficulties
of our military situation were aggravated by the sight of the great
number of unburied victims of battle and of the epidemic. Happy a
thousand times those who were buried in the ruins of the undermined
houses, as happened to the valiant defenders of the Calle de Pomar,
close to the Santa Engracia! The most horrible thing was a great number
of the wounded piled up together, so that nobody could get at them
to help them. There was no medical aid for a hundredth part of them.
The charity of women, the zeal of patriotic citizens, the multiplied
activity of the hospitals, really availed nothing.
There came a time when a sort of impassibility, a dreadful apathy,
began to take possession of the besieged. We became used to the sight
of a heap of dead bodies, as if they were so many sacks of wool. We
were accustomed to see, without pity, great numbers of the wounded
creeping and tottering to the houses, each one caring for himself as
best he could. In the keenness of our sufferings, it seemed as if
the usual necessities of the flesh had gone, and that we lived only
in the spirit. Familiarity with danger had transformed our natures,
infusing them apparently with a new element,--absolute contempt of
the material, and indifference to life. Every one expected to die at
any moment, without the idea disturbing him in the least. I remember
hearing described the attack on the Trinitarios convent, made in the
hope of snatching it from the French, and the fabulous exploits, the
inconceivable rashness of that undertaking seemed to me natural and
ordinary.
I do not know whether I have said that next to the Convent de las
Monicas was that of San Augustine, an edifice of good size, with a
large church, spacious cloisters, and vast transepts. It was inevitable
that the French, now masters of Las Monicas, should show great
perseverance in the effort to gain possession of this monastery, in
order to establish themselves firmly and definitely in that quarter.
"Since we have not the luck to be in Las Monicas," said Pirli to me,
"we will, to-day, give ourselves the pleasure of defending until
death the four walls of Saint Augustine. As the Estremadurans are not
sufficient to defend it, we are ordered in, too. And how about rank,
friend Araceli? Is it true that we two young gentlemen have been
promoted to be sergeants?"
"I don't know anything about it, friend Pirli," I answered; and it was
true that I was ignorant of my elevation to the hierarchical altitude
of a sergeant.
"Yes, indeed, the general says so; Señor de Araceli is first sergeant,
and Señor de Pirli is second sergeant. We have worked hard enough for
it. It's a good thing we have enough of our bodies left to hang the
epaulets on. I heard that Augustine Montoria has been made a lieutenant
for his gallantry inside the houses. Yesterday, at nightfall, the
battalion of Las Peñas de San Pedro was reduced to four sergeants, a
lieutenant, a captain, and two hundred men."
"Let us see, friend Pirli, if we cannot earn two more promotions apiece
to-day."
"All that we have to do is to keep our skins whole," he answered. "The
few soldiers of the Huesca battalion who survive think that they are
all going to be made generals. There is the call! Have you anything to
eat?"
"Not much."
"Manuela Sancho gave me four sardines. I will divide them with you. How
would you like a dozen of these roasted peas? Do you remember how wine
tastes? I ask, because it is so many days since they have given us a
drop. They will give us a spoonful when the battle of San Augustine is
over. Here you are! It would be too bad if they should finish us off
before we know what color the stuff is which they are going to pass
around to-night. If they would follow my advice, they would give it to
us before the fight, so that those who drop off would get a taste. But
the committee of supplies has evidently said, 'There is very little
wine; if we give it out now there will scarcely be three drops to a
man. We will wait until evening, and as it will be a miracle if a
fourth part of those who defend San Augustine are alive then, there
will be at least one swallow apiece for the rest.'"
He followed this criticism with a general discourse upon the scarcity
of provisions. We did not have time to indulge ourselves much on that
topic, for we had scarcely joined the Estremadura men at the monastery,
when a loud report warned us to be on our guard; then a friar appeared,
shouting,--
"My sons, they have blown up the middle walls on the side towards Las
Monicas, and they are already in the building! Run to the church.
They must have seized the sacristy; but that makes no difference. If
you go in time, you will be masters of the nave, of the chapels and
the choir. Viva the Holy Virgin del Pilar, and the battalion of the
Estremadura!"
We marched serenely into the church.