Saragossa: A Story of Spanish Valor

by Benito Pérez Galdós

While the cannons on the Mediodia were throwing bombs into the centre of the city, the cannon on the east side were discharging solid balls upon the weak walls of Las Monicas, and the fortifications of earth and brick of the oil mill, and the battery of Palafox. Very soon the French opened three great breaches, and an attack was imminent. They defended themselves in the Goicoechea mill, which they had taken the day before, after it had been abandoned and fired by us.

Certain of victory, the French ran forward over the plain, having received orders to attack. Our battalion occupied a house in the Calle de Pabostre, whose walls had been spiked along their whole length. Many peasants and various regiments were keeping watch in the Cortina, fiery of courage and with not the least terror before the almost certain likelihood of death, hopeful of being useful in death also, helping to stay the enemy's advance.

Long hours passed. The French questioned with the artillery to see if they were driving us out of the suburb; the walls were gradually being destroyed; the houses were being shaken down with the dreadful concussion; and the heroic people, few of whom had broken fast even with a bit of bread, were calling from the walls, saying that the enemy was coming. At last, against the right of the breach in the centre advanced strong columns sustained by others in the rear. We saw that the intention of the French was to possess themselves at all hazards of that line of crumbling bricks which some hundreds of madmen were defending, and to take it at any cost. Death-dealing masses were hurled forward, the living columns passing over the dead.

Let it not be said to make our merit less that the French were not fighting under cover. Neither were we, for none of us could show his head above the broken wall and keep it on. Masses of men dashed against one another, and bayonets were fed with brutal anger upon the bodies of enemies. From the houses came incessant fire. We could see the French fall in heaps, pierced by lead and steel, at the very foot of the ruins they were seeking to conquer. New columns took the places of the first, and in those who came after, brutalities of vengeance were added to prodigies of valor.

On our side the number of those who fell was enormous. The dead were left by dozens upon the earth along that line which had been a wall, but was now no more than a shapeless mass of earth, bricks, and corpses. The natural, the human thing would have been to abandon such positions, and not try to hold them against such a combination of force and military skill. But there was nothing of the human or the natural here. Instead, the power of defence was extended infinitely, to limits not recognized by scientific calculation, beyond ordinary valor. The Aragonese nature stood forth, and it is one which does not know how to be conquered. The living took the places of the dead with a sublime aplomb. Death was an accident, a trivial detail, a thing of which no notice should be taken.

While this was going on, other columns equally powerful were trying to take the Casa de Gonzalez, which I have before mentioned. But from the neighboring houses, and the towers of the wall, came such a terrible fire of rifles and cannons that they desisted from their attempt. Other attacks took place, with better results for them, at our right, toward the orchard of Camporeal and the batteries of Los Martires. The immense force displayed by the besiegers along one line of short extent could not fail to produce results. From the house in the Calle de Pabostre, close to the Molino of the city, we were, as I have said, firing upon the besiegers, when behold the batteries of San José, formerly occupied in demolishing the wall, directed their cannons against that ancient edifice. We felt that the walls were trembling; the beams were cracking like the timbers of a ship tossed by a tempest; the wood of the walls was cracking too in a thousand fragments. In short, the place was tumbling down.

"Cuerno, recuerno!" exclaimed Uncle Garces, "what if the house falls down upon us!"

The smoke of the powder prevented us from seeing what was going on without or within.

"To the street! To the street!" cried Pirli, throwing himself out of a window.