He turned his head and spat by the feet of my horse. “You’re the deserters,” he retorted.
Busquets came over, bedraggled and weeping. “Ballester!” he said beggingly. “If we joined forces, maybe we could try it ourselves?”
Ballester just shook his head. “They’ll have been warned by now,” he said. “And they’ll be getting reinforcements soon enough.” Then he flashed a rare smile. “Anyway, what would be the point of staying here with you? You’ll be dead before you ever pay me back.”
“It’s for Saint Peter to decide how long we’re for this earth,” said Busquets. “And my bullet pouch is still only half empty.”
“Or half full,” said Ballester.
Busquets and his men made their way away from the column. I had no notion where they were headed. They didn’t even bid us farewell.
And what about me, why did I carry on under the orders of that insect Deputy Berenguer? I don’t very well know. Don Antonio had ordered me to go with him, and I found it unthinkable to disobey Don Antonio. I believe I may also have been moved by the impulse, latent in every person, to drink a bitter cup to the very last dregs.
It rained for the rest of that day.
Things went from bad to worse after Mataró. When Pópuli learned of the expedition, having recovered from the fright, he threw all he could at us. Thousands of Spanish and French were sent from their posts across Catalonia to seek us out and crush us. Pópuli went so far as to take a handful of battalions away from the cordon to join the hunt; he knew very well how dangerous a mass uprising would be to him. Sad to say, but our enemies had more faith in the Catalan peasantry than our own leaders did.
With such inferior numbers, the expedition soon became the fox trying to outrun the pack of hounds. We’d enter a town or village with trumpets blaring and the silver mace up front. Deputy Berenguer had given the order for us all to wear our finest attire, to make a stronger impression. To begin with, the order was obeyed. Then we ran out of changes of clothes. Soon enough we became unkempt, had no footwear, and our blue tunics were covered in mud and patches. In spite of everything, the marching band always had a full complement; its upbeat songs contrasted with our general aspect. Pu-rum pum pum! We’d come into a town square and the Crida would be read out, along with a little oration from Deputy Berenguer. And the following day, or the one after that, we’d have reports from our patrols that entire enemy regiments were approaching, and we’d have to take to our heels — Deputy Berenguer aloft, truly almost shitting himself.
Well, all this was more or less to be expected. (The Bourbon attempts to pin us down, I mean, not Deputy Berenguer’s flatulence.) Evading ambushes became our specialty; we traveled light and had a thousand eyes to inform us of the enemy’s positions. But the true disaster had already happened, and its name was Mataró.
Word of the Crida from Barcelona spread, along with news of the fiasco at Mataró. People aren’t stupid. With precedents like that, how could they trust the deputy? When he harangued them, his argument was based around three things. One, that Archduke Charles was a pious man, deeply, deeply pious. (As if it mattered in the slightest that a king, in some far-off place called Vienna, loved God.) Two, that they should trust in Our Lord God, for He would come to devout Catalonia’s aid. (If everything was in God’s hands, and if God was on our side, why had He stood by and watched the country’s current plight?) Three, so as not to scandalize the upstanding Christians in the crowd, he would keep quiet about the enemy’s iniquitous outrages. (No, man, no! That you want to shout from the rooftops! Let even the deaf know that we share their pain!) I remember Dalmau, during Deputy Berenguer’s speeches in the town squares, looking to the heavens and showing his opposition with the occasional snort.
One of the worst things was seeing how self-confirming Deputy Berenguer’s social prejudice was. All the zealous patriots had already joined groups of Miquelets like those of Busquets. Our presence was meant to encourage town councils to resist and govern in the name of the Generalitat, and to let the clergy know how treacherously their superiors had acted. But above all, we were hoping to win over the undecided majority: those who weren’t prepared to become outlaws but would happily oppose tyranny if it were done under the banner of a free and legitimate power. Deputy Berenguer’s speeches, full of as much hot air as his bowels, brought only excuses and tepid responses. Those who did join were the dregs of society — the dregs of the dregs. The usual layabouts, or folks so starved that they joined up simply for the meal. And thus Deputy Berenguer’s recruitment drive served to confirm his opinion about the lower classes. If any doubts remain as to what that man was like, here are a few more examples.
One day we found ourselves faced with several Castilian battalions. They were occupying a town we wanted to take, and when they came out to engage us in battle, once the firing had begun, a group of patriots inside the town scaled the bell tower and began firing at them from behind. Our men waved their tricorns to salute the men’s efforts, and our standard-bearers waved the flags joyfully. There are few sensations as exhilarating as finding kinship with complete strangers. This put the Castilians on the back foot; you could feel them vacillate for a moment, and that was the moment to sound a charge and sweep them aside. Instead of that, what we heard were the trumpets sounding the retreat.
Not believing what I was hearing, I pushed the soldiers nearest to me. “There must be some mistake,” I said. “Keep firing! Don’t stop!”
Shitson himself had to come riding over and gave me the order to fall back. “Didn’t you hear the retreat being sounded?” he howled at me from up on his horse. “We’re leaving! We’ve had word from the scouts that a full regiment is on its way to hem us in.”
“We’ve got them hemmed in!” I shouted, beside myself. “We could get to Portugal and back before that regiment arrives.”
Shitson had it in for me in particular because we were the same rank. I tried to make him feel less envious by saying it meant nothing, Don Antonio had promoted me only so my orders to do with engineering would be obeyed. It was pointless. All that happened was, as well as considering me a pen pusher, he also decided I was an imposter. He was obsessed with being promoted to colonel. That would happen only if a new regiment was formed, or if an existing colonel was killed, and that made any other lieutenant colonel a rival. Leaning out of his saddle, he prodded my nose with a finger. “You’ll never make a soldier, Zuviría. Your problem is you fail to see the bigger picture.”
The bigger picture! Let me tell you about the “bigger picture” of that day.
After we left, the Bourbons didn’t take the trouble to capture the snipers in the bell tower: They simply set fire to the church, and the men burned alive. The tactics they used against us were proof of the straightforwardness of the Bourbon approach. Any town that had taken us in would have its houses burned down, and one in ten inhabitants would be shot. Straightforward indeed.
Not long after that, the expedition forces divided into two. It was Dalmau’s suggestion, it being his view that there was no way for us to tackle such great numbers head-on; the best thing was to split the column. The main unit would stay under the deputy’s command. A secondary but well-stocked column would be under Dalmau, and a number of other, smaller units would go farther afield and try to raise troops.
Not a bad plan. If we split up, it would make it harder for the Bourbon patrols to track us, and in the first place, they’d be delayed trying to work out how many units we’d split into. They’d have to divide their forces, too. The large-scale war had become one of smaller encounters, so it was advantageous to try and reduce the numbers. Also, Pópuli’s terror tactics had other impacts. Once people knew their towns would go up in flames the day after we left, they became less willing to open their doors to us. By splintering, we’d move into a great many more towns, and not even the commanders of the Army of the Two Crowns would be brazen enough to burn down every single town and city in Catalonia.