HEREBY CONFIRM, before God and such men as wish to heed my words, the following capitulations:
One: that my behavior toward Waltraud Spöring, since she entered my service and up until this day, has not always been entirely appropriate, especially in handling her efforts to tend to my poor health.
Two: that I beg her forgiveness, publicly and privately, humbly beseeching that she come and work (not too hard) for me again.
Three: that she has never asked to share in my literary glory, nor earthly vainglory, and that all her efforts with regard to this work are for the benefit of historical commemoration, for what it might be worth. (Less than nothing, by the way — but you are to leave this bit out.)
Four, a further and freely ceded capitulation: that Waltraud Spöring is not ugly but has an especial beauty. She is beautiful inside, and that’s what counts (in the eyes of God). (Very nice, though not even you would believe it.)
Happy now? Now that you’ve got your quill back, I imagine it makes no difference what I say, you’ll write whatever you feel like writing. This book is going to end up more disfigured than my face because of you! If you were honest, you’d include the fact that this has all been a horrible kind of extortion, a humiliation beyond compare.
No, I never insulted you! What did you expect? To be treated like a forest nymph? You’re more like a German forest bear, the only difference being that there’s no such thing as a bear with blond hair. .
Don’t leave! Wait, please, my best beloved vile Waltraud. Who am I going to talk to if you leave?
Sit. Pick up the quill, I beg of you.
Better, much better. Help yourself to a coffee with honey, if you like. Don’t forget I’ll be taking it out of your fee, though.
So then, July 25, 1713, finally, and the Bourbon army under the duke of Pópuli arrived outside Barcelona. The palisade soldiers, led by Zuvi Longlegs, went down into the bunkers. The good thing about captaining a retreat is the distance you can put between yourself and the enemy.
Predictably enough, Pópuli’s army was welcomed with a barrage from our cannons. In fact, when we palisade soldiers dropped back into the city, three cavalry squadrons galloped out past us. A skirmish with the Bourbon advance party took place, and the Catalan cavalry came away with a number of prisoners.
Pópuli took this defeat as badly as if he’d lost a regiment. In war, morale is everything, and when the cavalry rode back into the city, they received a hero’s welcome. The prisoners looked bewildered, as befits anyone who has just suffered a sudden defeat. They couldn’t believe they’d gone from conquerors to captives in such a short space of time.
“Planning to enter Barcelona, were you?” crowed the people lining the streets. “Well, here you are now!”
Pópuli’s full name was the not at all pompous Restaino Cantelmo Stuart, prince of Pettorano, gentleman at the court of Camara, and goodness knows how many other surnames and fluffy titles. Little Philip’s choice of general to defeat the “rebels” was very deliberate: Pópuli was even more pro-Philip than Philip himself, and he hated old Barcelona with a vengeance. Should the Allies choose to pull out, Pópuli would be only too happy to take charge of the occupation of Catalonia. And he quickly had a chance to show his affection for heinous acts of war.
Before reaching Barcelona, as his army had been advancing through Catalonia, upon taking control of a certain locality, Pópuli had two alleged pro-Austrians brought before him. “You two are going to play dice,” he said to them. “The winner gets to keep his life.”
An abuse, of course, but perfidious, outrageous, and arbitrary to boot. Also, he went on to pardon the loser: Acquaintances of the man claimed he was actually a Bourbon and had only feigned loyalty to Little Philip. (There’s something that now might seem laughable in this. For seasoned gamblers like the Barcelonans, honesty in the game was sacred. What really infuriated them wasn’t Pópuli’s tyrannical cruelty but that he hadn’t hanged the loser.) But this was only a small, if macabre, side story. His truly atrocious act was to hang every single prisoner taken after a skirmish near Torredembarra. Two hundred prisoners, that is.
In this, he followed Madrid’s logic. The ministers there, after the Allied withdrawal from Spain, said that anyone opposing Bourbon forces was to be considered a rebel and treated accordingly. The view from Barcelona was obviously quite different. With the foreign troops gone, the Generalitat had hurriedly formed an army, paid for out of its own coffers. So they had regulars at their disposal, uniformed and on the Catalan government’s payroll. The spiral of reprisal and counter-reprisal between Bourbon and Miquelet — we’ve covered that. But for Pópuli to do that to two hundred men at a stroke was beyond atrocious. Two hundred regulars hanged! Don Antonio sent a missive to Pópuli asking if he’d drunk away his senses. Pópuli answered by saying the same treatment would be meted out to any prisoners taken from that day hence. Don Antonio was especially offended that Pópuli addressed him as the “Rebel Chief.” Don Antonio, a career soldier, and the most respectful gentleman when it came to the courtesies and conventions in war! This time Don Antonio replied, very well, he was then obliged to accord the same treatment to any prisoner taken by his side.
The men hanged from the city walls, in sight of the enemy encampment, comprised his answer. A dismal sight if ever there was one: below, the sharpened stakes of the palisade; above, the hanged men.
This opening exchange was more than enough to warn Pópuli’s army to take precautions. The regiments installed themselves two thousand yards from the city walls, just out of range of the artillery. They immediately began building a cordon, an enormous circuit of parapets to surround the entire city, blocking it off between the River Llobregat to the south and the River Besòs to the north — the idea being to isolate the city until the engineers had planned their line of attack.
A military cordon, in and of itself, is no great secret. A hastily dug ditch, basically, along which barricades are thrown up with compacted earth, planks of wood, stones, sticks, and anything else the besiegers can lay their hands on. They put any unevenness in the land to their advantage, making extra obstacles out of hummocks or natural ditches. As far as possible, they create scaled-down versions of the five-sided bastions. Needless to say, the besiegers will flatten any buildings in the vicinity, no matter how small, for matériel.
The building of the cordon was under way when three messengers arrived bearing Pópuli’s surrender ultimatum. The mood in the city was such that these were more likely to be strung up than welcomed — a double guard, bayonets drawn, had to form to protect the men from the baying crowd.
That night Don Antonio called me in to see him. As soon as I came into his study, he addressed me: “I want you to go with the emissaries bearing the reply.”
“Me, Don Antonio?”
“You’re my aide-de-camp, if memory serves. And this is precisely the kind of occasion when aides-de-camp come into play. It isn’t only the city’s honor that’s at stake here but, since I am commander of the garrison, mine, too.”
“Certainly, Don Antonio.”
“I already know you’re not a soldier, just an engineer in uniform, and the most basic rudiments of militariness are quite beyond you. But do you think you could be so kind as to address me as ‘General’?”
“Yes, General.”
“I need to know you won’t be discourteous in any way with the enemy. Their army has just pitched, and in war, appearances are as important as in matters of the heart.”