TRANSLATION: Napoleon at Chamartín
The fifth book in the Episodios Nacionales of Spain
The fifth volume of the Episodios Nacionales — the great historical novel cycle of Spain
Napoleon at Chamartín by Benito Pérez Galdós is this week’s new translation. It returns the protagonist Gabriel to Madrid in the closing weeks of 1808, as the imperial Grande Armée, recovered from its humiliation at Bailén, marches on the capital with the Emperor himself at its head.
Gabriel’s Inés has vanished into another world. Discovered to be the lost heiress of one of the greatest houses in Spain, she has been carried off to a palace on the Cuesta de la Vega and groomed for a marriage of fortune to the young Count of Rumblar — the dissolute, easily led Don Diego, who divides his nights between gaming dens, comic masonic lodges, and the salons of the manolería, where the celebrated greengrocer beauty known as the Zaina holds court. Barred from the palace and reduced to flinging pebbles at a lighted window, Gabriel shadows his rival through this doomed demimonde — while behind the marriage scheme moves the afrancesado Santorcaz, who has his own secret plans for Inés.
Around this private drama, Madrid braces for the French. The city throws up earthworks and musters a citizen militia, and Galdós fills these chapters with the comic Gran Capitán playing at general, the swaggering bully Mañara, and the whole brawling life of the lower town. Then comes the unthinkable betrayal that Galdós renders into one of the great crowd scenes of European fiction, and the mob, sold out and maddened, falls upon Mañara.
Madrid falls. Napoleon installs himself at Chamartín, just north of the city, and from his headquarters dictates the decrees that will remake Spain entirely to his design. Amid the wreckage Gabriel is captured and swept out of the conquered capital in a chained column of deported “patriots,” driven past the Emperor’s own coach on the road by Chamartín, and sent toward a city about to endure the most terrible siege of the entire war.
Napoleon at Chamartín is at once a panoramic chronicle of a nation’s capital under siege, a savage comedy of Madrid society, and a love story pursued through a falling city, narrated with the older Gabriel’s characteristic blend of self-deprecating wit and moral seriousness.
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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 corps of volunteers to which I belonged was assigned to defend the Puerta de los Pozos (the same gate later called the Puerta de Bilbao, at the top of the Calle de Fuencarral), and the adjacent garden of Bringas. Its fortifications consisted of a ditch of no great depth, a large parapet of earth and stones thrown up in the greatest haste, and six six-pounder cannon. The wall, which had no appearance of being impregnable, as those who have seen any of its heroic remnants will recall, had been loopholed along its entire length. The fortifications at the neighbouring gates of Santa Bárbara and Fuencarral were more or less the same. The place where the most considerable works had been raised was the Puerta de Recoletos, a monument that lasted until yesterday and that I need not locate for my readers with its little hill of the Veterinaria or its Augustinian convent, for beardless youths have known them. But let us return to the Pozos, the gate destined to be the theatre of our heroism, and begin by saying that on the night of the first of December we took up our position there, so convinced that we were about to be attacked that we stood to arms for long hours, prepared to sell our lives dearly.
The force was composed of these elements: some sixty soldiers, who, though not all artillerymen, served as such from dire necessity; four companies of old volunteers, among whom was mixed an irregular number of conscripts; and some eighty men of the honourable militia, whom the Gran Capitán commanded, or wished to command, whether with the title of sergeant, colonel, or general I cannot say, for any of these ranks would have suited him. The soldiers were cold and dispirited; the volunteers ablaze with patriotism and full of illusions, but so inexperienced that they could not hit the broad side of a barn, as the saying goes, despite having among them the great Pujitos; and finally the honourables could not contain their enthusiasm, notwithstanding that they were all men of peace and that some bore a good burden of years upon their backs, especially those of the company, or rather, the little band over which Don Santiago held sway, whose forces were composed of respectable porters and clerks from the office of the Accounts and Records.
As for officers, I must say that there were none in the strict sense of the word, for although among the troops there were brave and capable men, they did not know how, or did not choose, to make themselves obeyed by the civilians, with the result that each man did as he pleased and followed his own inspiration; and although my friend had pretensions to impose his authority, this never went beyond a tentative dictatorship that inclined more to the comic than to the tragic.
On the other hand there reigned great fraternity, and when, late in the night, we had the certainty that no French were anywhere in the vicinity, we gathered in the garden of Bringas, and lighting a great bonfire, held an agreeable gathering where patriotic subjects were discussed with the volubility, eloquence, and exaggeration proper to Spanish tongues. One man praised the defence of Zaragoza; another set the defence of Valencia against Moncey above all feats of arms ancient and modern; a third said that nothing could equal the affair at the Bruch; yet another extolled to the skies the return of La Romana’s troops; and at last there was one who, without denying these glorious actions their merit, set upon the horns of the moon a certain famous Portuguese campaign of 1762.
All fear having been dispelled, many women came to visit us, and among them Doña Gregoria was not wanting, nor Doña Melchora with her girls, nor the wife of Cuervatón, for it should be known that her husband served in the ranks of the honourables. And lest anyone suppose we were all people of no account, I will add that certain very great ladies came to visit their sons, brothers, or husbands, who were there rubbing shoulders with us, whether as volunteers or as conscripts.
We supped, we drank, we sang, we talked, and at last we were all seized with the desire to carry forward some feat of arms that very night. The first to put the idea forth was Don Santiago, and it was accepted at once with great rejoicing, the resolve being to make a reconnaissance up the road toward Fuencarral, to see whether the French were really as near as was believed. In the greatest haste the sortie was prepared, and at about two in the morning we set out, some two hundred men, in good order and commanded by an army colonel.
“What a fine thing it would be,” Fernández said to me, “if we were to stumble upon an enemy advance guard and rout them in the blink of an eye, returning to Madrid with a few thousand prisoners!”
“Anything is possible, my friend,” I replied, “for to the will of God nothing is impossible.”
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Napoleon at Chamartín by Benito Pérez Galdós
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