TRANSLATION: Bailén
The fourth book in the Episodios Nacionales of Spain
BAILÉN by Benito Pérez Galdós is this week’s new translation.
The fourth volume of the Episodios Nacionales — the great historical novel cycle of Spain
July 1808. Napoleon’s armies are invincible. They have crushed Austria, humiliated Prussia, and forced the Tsar to the negotiating table. Now twenty thousand French soldiers occupy Andalucía, and all Europe waits for Spain to submit as every other nation has submitted.
Gabriel Araceli, a young Spanish soldier who survived the slaughter of the Dos de Mayo and the French firing squads in Madrid, rides south with the ragged army assembling to challenge the Empire. Around him march raw recruits, militia volunteers, and hard-bitten regulars — fourteen thousand men with short rations, blistering heat, and the knowledge that no army on the continent has yet beaten Napoleon in open battle.
But Gabriel is fighting two wars. On the parched plains before Bailén, he faces Dupont’s veteran infantry and the terrible French marines. In the intercepted letters he carries in his coat, he faces something worse: the news that Inés, the woman he loves, is to be made legitimate and married to another man — his own commanding officer’s son. While the armies clash under a pitiless Andalusian sun, while men kill each other for a mouthful of water and the guns fall silent for want of powder, Gabriel must reckon with the possibility that victory on the battlefield will mean defeat in everything that matters to him.
Bailén is the fourth novel in Benito Pérez Galdós’s Episodios Nacionales, the great historical cycle that follows Gabriel Araceli from Trafalgar through the upheaval of the Napoleonic Wars. In this volume, Galdós delivers one of the finest battle narratives in nineteenth-century fiction — the engagement that shattered the myth of Napoleonic invincibility and changed the course of European history.
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About the author. Benito Pérez Galdós (1843–1920) is widely regarded as the greatest Spanish novelist since Cervantes. Over four decades, he produced the Episodios Nacionales, one of the most incredible accomplishments of world literature ever written; only 8 of its 46 volumes have ever been translated into English. Pérez Galdós was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature five times but never won.
Excerpt
The estate of that house was handsome, though much inferior to those of other families of Andalucía and Castile; but Doña María counted upon its becoming one of the first in Spain once her son inherited the mayorazgo of certain collateral relations who lacked direct heirs. To bring this about, Doña María had conceived a vast project upon which, as the reader will see, the perpetuity of that house and lineage and illustrious seat depended through the long course of the centuries; she proposed to marry her son to a young woman of the family of those relatives who at that time held the mayorazgo, and who resided in Córdoba, though their habitual dwelling was Madrid. The moral rather than physical childhood of Don Diego was no obstacle, for it was then the custom to marry off the mayorazgos as early as possible, wedding them while they were still fresh and before they had time to poke their noses through the cracks of the door of the world, where, as Don Paco maintained, there was nothing but perdition and vanity for youth, because the sweetnesses of the cup of pleasure lasted but fleeting instants, while its bitter dregs persisted for many a long year.
But someone upset, or at least postponed, the plans so wisely laid by Doña María and her illustrious cousins; that someone was Napoleon, Emperor of the French, when he cast his eyes upon this jewel of the continent and invaded it. The war, that holy war of which history shows us no other example in our times, obliged the suspension of this as of other projects, and Doña María, who was Aragonese and a great patriot, found it necessary to summon Don Diego and, from the height of her chair, to strike him with terror by means of the following words, which were afterwards confided to my discretion by Don Paco:
“My son, I love you dearly. Your death would not only kill us with grief but would annihilate our house and lineage. You are my only male child, you are the soul of this house, and yet you must go to war. Valiant blood runs in your veins and I am well assured that despite your few years you will leave in a worthy place the name you bear. All young men owe themselves to their king and their country in these terrible days when a miserable foreigner dares to conquer Spain. My son, I love you deeply; but I would rather see you dead on the field of battle and trampled beneath the hooves of French horses than have it said that the son of the Conde de Rumblar did not fire a shot in defence of his country. The sons of every noble family of Andalucía have already enlisted in the army of Castaños; you shall go too, with a retinue of servants whom I shall arm and maintain at my own expense for as long as the war may last.”
As she spoke these words the marble face of Doña María did not alter; but Asunción and Presentación wept without restraint. The young man thrilled with excitement at finding himself sent to take part in a game he did not know and which, seen from a distance, is very pretty.
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