TRANSLATION: Zaragoza

The sixth in the Episodios Nacionales series by Benito Pérez Galdós

Zaragoza by Benito Pérez Galdós is this week’s new translation. It is the sixth of the first series of the Episodios Nacionales and was translated from the original Spanish by Vox Day. The ebooks have already gone out to the subscribers. It’s now available on Amazon for Kindle, KU, and audiobook.

A CITY THAT WILL NOT SURRENDER

The sixth volume of the Episodios Nacionales — the great historical novel cycle of Spain — Zaragoza takes Gabriel Araceli into the most terrible siege in modern European history: the second French assault on the Aragonese capital, where sixty thousand civilians and soldiers held the ruins of their city against Napoleon’s marshals through two months of bombardment, starvation, plague, and hand-to-hand fighting in the cellars.

Gabriel arrives in Zaragoza half-starved and in rags, having escaped a French prisoner column in the company of Don Roque. They sleep among beggars in the shattered monastery of Santa Engracia and are taken in by Don José de Montoria, a proud Aragonese labrador of iron convictions and volcanic patriotism, who has given both his sons to the defence. The elder is already dead. The younger, Agustín, is a theology student whom the siege has transformed into a soldier and who is carrying on a desperate love affair with Mariquilla Candiola, the beautiful daughter of the most hated man in the city: el tío Candiola, a miser of Dickensian proportions whose house stands at the very edge of the French advance.

As the French tighten the noose, the novel compresses with the siege itself, from the open streets to the barricaded quarters, from the quarters to single houses defended room by room, from the houses to the tunnels where Spanish and French sappers dig toward each other in the dark. The city burns. The plague spreads. The dead lie unburied in the streets. Women carry ammunition under fire and friars take up muskets. And through it all, Gabriel watches the collision between Agustín’s love and his father’s honour, between the miser’s gold and the patriot’s sacrifice, between the claims of private tenderness and the needs of a city that will not surrender.

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. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature five times.

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Excerpt

The French had assaulted the fortified positions of Torrero with great determination. These were defended by ten thousand men under Don Felipe Saint-March and O’Neille, both generals of considerable merit. The Volunteers of Borbón, of Castile, of the Campo Segorbino, of Alicante, and the provincial regiment of Soria; the Cazadores de Fernando VII, the regiment of Murcia, and other corps I do not recall, opened fire. From the redoubt of the Mártires we watched the beginning of the action and the French columns running along the length of the Canal to outflank Torrero. The musketry fire lasted a good while, but the fight could not be prolonged, because that position did not lend itself to an energetic defence without the occupation and fortification of other nearby points such as Buenavista, Casa-Blanca, and the Canal embankment. Nevertheless our troops did not retire until very late, and in the best order, blowing up the Puente de América and bringing away all their guns save one, which had been dismounted by the enemy’s fire.

Meanwhile we could hear a tremendous roar resounding in the distance, and as the firing on our side had nearly ceased, we supposed another action was engaged in the Arrabal.

“Over there is Brigadier Don José Manso,” Agustín said to me, “with the Swiss regiment of Aragón commanded by Don Mariano Walker, the Volunteers of Huesca under Don Pedro Villacampa, the Volunteers of Catalonia, and other brave corps. And here we are, doing nothing! On this side it seems to be over. The French will content themselves today with the conquest of Torrero.”

“Unless I am much mistaken,” I replied, “they are going to attack San José.”

We all looked at the point indicated: a building of large dimensions that rose to our left, separated from the Puerta Quemada by the hollow of the Huerva.

“Renovales is there,” Agustín said, “the valiant Don Mariano Renovales, who distinguished himself so greatly in the other siege. He now commands the Cazadores of Orihuela and Valencia.”

At our position everything was ready for a vigorous defence. In the redoubt of the Pilar, in the Mártires battery, in the tower of the Pino, as in the Trinitarios, the gunners waited with lighted match, and we of the infantry chose behind the parapets the positions that seemed to us the most secure for firing, should any column attempt to storm us. It was bitterly cold, and most of us were shivering. Someone might have supposed it was from fear; but no, it was from cold, and whoever says otherwise is a liar.

The movement I had foreseen was not long in coming, and the convent of San José was attacked by a strong column of French infantry; or rather, it was the object of an attempted attack, or more properly a surprise. It appeared the enemy had short memories, for in three months they had forgotten that surprises were impossible in Zaragoza. They advanced, nevertheless, with great confidence to within musket range, and no doubt those unfortunates believed that the mere sight of them would cause our men to drop dead with fright. The poor fellows had just arrived from Silesia and did not know what manner of war this was in Spain. Moreover, having taken Torrero with so little trouble, they thought themselves in a position to swallow the world. The fact is they advanced as I have described, without San José making any demonstration at all, until, when they were within musket range or a little less, the embrasures and loopholes of that building suddenly poured forth so dreadful a fire that my brave Frenchmen turned tail with precipitation. A good many, however, were left stretched upon the ground, and when we who were watching from the Mártires battery saw the outcome of their valour, we broke into shouts and exclamations and clapping of hands. In this manner does the savage soldier in war celebrate the death of his fellow men, and he who feels an instinctive compassion in killing a rabbit in a hunt leaps with joy to see hundreds of robust, young, and cheerful men fall, who after all have done no one any harm.

Such was the attack on San José: a raid swiftly punished. From that day the French must have understood that if Torrero had been abandoned, it was by calculation, not by weakness. Alone, isolated, forsaken, without exterior bastions, without forts or castles, Zaragoza raised anew her walls of earth, her bastions of unfired brick, her towers of mud mixed the day before, to defend herself once more against the foremost soldiers, the foremost artillery, and the foremost engineers in the world. A vast show of men, formidable machines, enormous quantities of powder, scientific and material preparations, force and intelligence in their greatest splendour—all this the invaders brought against a fortified enclosure that looked like a children’s game, and even so it was not enough; everything crumbled and was reduced to dust before those walls one could kick down. But behind this frail material defence stood the steel of the Aragonese soul, which does not break, nor bend, nor melt, nor split, nor rust, and which girdled the whole perimeter like a bar indestructible by human means.

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