Saragossa: A Story of Spanish Valor

by Benito Pérez Galdós

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?"