The Siege Read online

  MEANWHILE, THREE-QUARTERS OF a league east of Lame Paco’s Tavern, unshaven and half-asleep, Simon Desfosseux, Imperial Artillery Captain attached to the general staff of the Premier Corps, 2nd Division, is cursing under his breath as he numbers and files the letter he has just received from the Seville Foundry. According to Colonel Fronchard, overseeing the manufacture of Andalusian howitzers, the three defective 9-inch howitzers received by the troops laying siege to Cádiz—flaws which caused the metal to crack after only a few firings—are the result of sabotage during the casting process: a deliberate mistake in the alloy that causes cracks and craters to form in the barrel—pipes and blowholes, in artillerymen’s terms. Two workers and a foreman—all Spaniards—were shot on Fronchard’s orders four days ago, but this is cold comfort to Captain Desfosseux. He had high hopes for these new field guns, which have now proved useless. Hopes that he foolishly shared with Marshal Victor and the superior officers who are constantly pressing him to find a solution to a problem that now seems intractable.

  “Scout!”

  “Yes, Captain.”

  “Inform Lieutenant Bertoldi I will be upstairs on the observation deck.”

  Pulling aside the old blanket covering the doorway of his hut, Captain Desfosseux steps outside, climbs the wooden ladder leading to the upper part of the observation post and peers through an embrasure at the city in the distance. Hatless beneath the blazing sun, hands clasped behind his back over the tails of his uniform frockcoat—dark blue with red cuffs. It is not by chance that the observation deck, equipped with several telescopes and an ultramodern Rochon micrometer telescope with a double rock-crystal prism, is situated on the low hill between the fortified gun batteries of the Cabezuela and the fort at the Trocadero. Desfosseux himself chose the location after a careful study of the terrain. From here, it is possible to survey the vast sweep of Cádiz and the bay all the way to the Isla de Léon and, using the spyglasses, to the Zuazo Bridge and the road to Chiclana. All this is his domain. At least in theory: this sweeping expanse of land and water has been placed under his authority by the gods of war and the Imperial Command. An area in which even the word of marshals and generals must sometimes defer to his. A battlefield composed of singular challenges, trials and uncertainties—and indeed insomnia—in which war is not waged through trenches, tactical maneuvers and bayonet charges but using intricate calculations carefully worked out on paper, parabolas, trajectories, angles and mathematical formulae. One of the many paradoxes of the complex war with Spain is that this strange battle in the bay of Cádiz—where the precise mixture of a pound of gunpowder or the combustion speed of fuse matter more than the bravery of a dozen regiments—has been entrusted to an obscure artillery captain.

  By land, Cádiz is unassailable. Even Simon Desfosseux knows this, and though no one dares say the word to the Emperor Napoleon, it is accurate. The city is connected to the mainland only by a narrow reef of stone and sand some two leagues in length. The reef road is heavily fortified at a number of points with strategically placed bastions and gun batteries, defenses further reinforced at two key points: the entrance to the city itself, the Puerta de Tierra, equipped with 150 cannons, and, midway along the reef, the Cortadura, a defensive trench still in the process of being dug. Further off, where the peninsula meets the mainland, is the Isla de Léon, protected by a maze of salt marshes, channels and tidal creeks. Such obstacles to any attack are further complicated by the English and Spanish warships anchored in the bay, and by the Fuerzas Sutiles—the fleet of gunboats that patrols the bay and the inlets. This formidable array of forces would turn a French assault on land into mass suicide; consequently Desfosseux and his compatriots confine themselves to waging a war of positions along the front line while waiting for better times or some reversal of fortune in the Peninsula. And as they wait, the orders are to tighten the stranglehold on the city, to intensify the shelling of military and civilian targets. It is a strategy about which the French authorities and the government of King Joseph harbor few illusions since it is impossible to blockade the principal access to Cádiz, which is by sea. Ships flying under the flags of various nations come and go and the Imperial Artillery is powerless to stop them. The city still trades with the rebel Spanish ports and half the world besides, resulting in the cruel irony that the besieged are better provisioned than the besiegers.

  To Captain Desfosseux, however, this is all relative. Or rather, it matters little. The outcome of the siege of Cádiz, or indeed of the war with Spain, weighs less heavily on his mind than the work that engages all his imagination and his skill. As far as he is concerned, war—something he has only recently experienced, having previously been professor of physics at the School of Applied Artillery in Metz—is a matter of the practical application of the scientific theories to which he has devoted his entire life. His weapon is a slide rule, he likes to say, and his gunpowder trigonometry. The sweeping panorama of the city and the bay is not a target but a technical challenge. He does not say this aloud—to do so would earn him a court-martial—but it is what he believes. Simon Desfosseux’s private war is not about national insurrection but a problem of ballistics, and his enemy is not the Spanish but the challenges imposed by the laws of gravity, by friction, air temperature, the nature of elastic fluids, initial velocity and the parabola described by a moving object—in this case a bomb—before it reaches (or fails to reach) the intended point with adequate efficiency. On the orders of his superiors, Desfosseux reluctantly attempted to explain this two days ago to a visiting delegation of French and Spanish officials who had come from Madrid to assess the progress of the siege.

  He smiles mischievously as he remembers. The delegates arrived in carriages by the road that runs along the San Pedro River: four Spaniards and two Frenchmen, thirsty, tired, eager for their trip to be over and fearful that the enemy might welcome them with a cannonade from the fortress at Puntales. They clambered down from the coaches, shaking the dust from their frockcoats, waistcoats and hats and all the while looking around apprehensively, trying to pretend they were at ease and composed. The Spaniards were officials in Joseph Bonaparte’s government; the French included a secretary to the Royal Household and a squadron leader named Orsini, aide-de-camp to Marshal Victor, who was acting as a guide for the visitors. It was Orsini who suggested a succinct explanation of the matter, so that the gentlemen might understand the importance of artillery to the siege and advise Madrid that, to be done well, things had to be done slowly. “Chi va piano, va lontano,” he added—Orsini, in addition to being Corsican was something of a buffoon—“Chi va forte va a la morte.”* Et cetera. Desfosseux, who understood the implication, fell into line. “The problem,” he explained, calling on his inner professor, still very much alive beneath his uniform, “is not unlike that of throwing a stone. If it were not for gravity, the stone would travel in a straight line. But gravity exists. This is why the trajectory of a projectile propelled by the expanding force of a gunpowder blast is not a straight line but a parabola determined by the uniform acceleration imparted as it leaves the cannon barrel and the vertical pull of free fall which increases in direct proportion to the time the projectile remains in the air. Are you following?” It was clear that they were having trouble following his logic, but seeing one member of the delegation nod, Desfosseux decided to proceed. “The problem, gentlemen, lies in determining the force required to maximize the distance traveled by the stone while minimizing the time it spends in the air. Because the difficulty, gentlemen, is that the ‘stones’ we are throwing are bombs with timed fuses which explode whether or not they have reached their target. Then there are additional factors: air resistance, divergence caused by crosswinds, not to mention vertical axes which, in accordance with the laws of free fall, determine that distance traveled will be proportional to the square of the time elapsed. Do you still follow me?” He was keenly aware that no one now was following him. “But, obviously, you know all this …”

  “That’s all very well, but wh
at I want to know is do these bombs reach Cádiz or not?” asked one of the Spaniards, summing up the general feeling of the group.

  “We’re working on it, gentlemen”—Desfosseux glanced at Orsini, who had taken a watch from his pocket and was checking the time—“We’re working on it.”

  One eye pressed to the viewfinder of the micrometer, the artillery captain surveys Cádiz, walled and white, resplendent amid the blue-green waters of the bay. Close yet unattainable—like a beautiful woman, another man might say, but Simon Desfosseux is not such a man. In fact the French bombs hit various points inside enemy lines, including the city itself—at the absolute limit of their range, although often they do not explode. However, despite the captain’s theoretical work and the dedication and skill of the Imperial Artillery veterans, they have not yet succeeded in extending their range beyond 2,250 toises, making it possible to reach the eastern walls of the city and the surrounding area, but no further. Even these bombs are usually ineffective by the time they land since the fuses snuff out during the long flight—an average of 25 seconds between discharge and impact. Desfosseux’s cherished ideal—what troubles his sleep and fills his days with a nightmare of logarithms—is a bomb with a fuse that will burn for 45 seconds fired from a field gun capable of attaining more than 3,000 toises. On one wall of his hut, pinned up next to the maps, the diagrams and tables, the captain has a map of Cádiz with the location of every bomb: those that exploded are marked with a red dot, those that did not by a black dot. The red dots are discouragingly meager and they, like the black dots, are all grouped around the eastern sector of the city.

  “At your service, Captain.”

  Lieutenant Bertoldi has just climbed the ladder to the observation deck. Desfosseux, who is still looking through the micrometer, turning the copper wheel in order to calculate the height and distance of the towers of the Iglesia del Carmen church, turns away from the eyepiece and looks at his aide.

  “Bad news from Seville,” Desfosseux says. “Someone added a little too much tin to the brass alloy when they were casting the 9-inch howitzers.”

  Bertoldi wrinkles his nose. He is a short, potbellied Italian from Piedmont with red whiskers and a cheerful face. He has spent five years with the Imperial Artillery. Those laying siege to Cádiz are not all French: there are also Italians, Poles and Germans. Not to mention the Spanish troops offered by King Joseph.

  “Accident or sabotage?”

  “Colonel Fronchard claims sabotage. But you know the man … I don’t trust him.”

  Bertoldi half smiles, something which always makes him look sweet and youthful. Desfosseux likes his assistant, in spite of his weakness for the sherry and señoritas at El Puerto de Santa Maria. They have been working together since crossing the Pyrenees a year earlier after the rout at the Battle of Bailén. Sometimes, when Bertoldi has had too much to drink, he can be a little too familiar, too friendly. It is an infraction for which Desfosseux has never reproached him.

  “Nor do I, Captain. The Spanish manager of the foundry, Colonel Sánchez, isn’t allowed anywhere near the furnaces … Fronchard supervises everything personally.”

  “Well, he was quick to find a scapegoat. He had three Spanish workmen shot on Monday.”

  Bertoldi’s smile broadens and he makes a gesture as though washing his hands.

  “Case closed, then.”

  “Exactly,” Desfosseux says scathingly. “But we still have no howitzers.”

  Bertoldi raises a finger in protest.

  “We have Fanfan.”

  “Yes. But it’s not enough.” As he says this, he peers through an embrasure at a nearby redoubt protected by gabions and mounds of earth where, covered with a canvas tarpaulin and angled at 45 degrees, stands an enormous bronze cylinder—a grand mortar—known to its friends as Fanfan. It was Bertoldi who named it. In fact it is a prototype Villantroys-Ruty 10-inch howitzer, capable of firing an 80-pound bomb at the eastern wall of Cádiz but, as yet, not one toise further. And this is only possible when the wind is favorable. With a west wind blowing, the only things being scared by these bombs are the fish in the bay. The howitzers cast in Seville should have been a marked improvement, having benefited from calculations and tests done using Fanfan, but there is no way to verify them now, at least not for some time.

  “We need to trust in Fanfan,” says Bertoldi resignedly.

  Desfosseux shakes his head.

  “I do trust him, you know I do. But Fanfan has his limits … as do I.”

  The lieutenant is staring at him, and Desfosseux knows he is looking at the dark circles under his eyes. The fact he has not shaved does little, he fears, for his military bearing.

  “You need to get more sleep.”

  “And you”—a complicit smile tempers Desfosseux’s harsh tone—“should mind your own business.”

  “This is my business, Captain. If you were to fall ill, I would have to deal with Colonel Fronchard and I’d defect to the enemy before I allowed that to happen. I’d swim over. They have a better life in Cádiz than we do here.”

  “I intend to have him shot. Personally. And afterward I plan to dance on his grave.”

  In his heart, Desfosseux knows that the setback in Seville changes little. He has spent long enough here in Cádiz to know that neither conventional cannons nor howitzers will be enough to raze the city to the ground. Having studied similar situations, like the siege of Gibraltar in 1782, Desfosseux would be inclined to use large-caliber mortars, but none of his superior officers shares his opinion. The one person he succeeded in convincing—after much effort—Alexandre Hureau, Baron of Sénarmont, artillery general and commander, is no longer here to support him. Having distinguished himself at the battles of Marengo, Friedland and Somosierra, the general became so overconfident, so dismissive of the Spanish—whom he disparagingly referred to as manolos—as did all the French, that during a routine inspection of the Villatte gun battery on the Isla de Léon near Chiclana with Colonel Dejermon, Captain Pinondelle, the battery commander and Simon Desfosseux, who had been assigned to the cortège, the Baron of Sénarmont insisted on testing the new gun limbers. The general insisted that all seven cannons be fired at the Spanish lines, specifically at the Gallineras battery. When Pinondelle argued that this would simply draw greater enemy fire, the general, playing the role of the brave artilleryman to the hilt, took off his hat and quipped that he intended to catch every manolo grenade.

  “Now stop arguing and fire, at once,” he ordered.

  Pinondelle duly gave the order. And when the Spaniards returned fire, it transpired that Hureau, to his credit, had misjudged the position of his hat by only a few inches. The grenade landed between him, Pinondelle and Colonel Dejermon, the resulting explosion killing all three. Desfosseux was spared because he was somewhat further back looking for a place where he might discreetly urinate behind some earth-filled gabions which took the brunt of the impact. The three men were buried in the Chiclana hermitage of Santa Ana, and with the Baron of Sénarmont was buried any hopes Desfosseux had of leveling Cádiz by mortar fire. Though at least he had the consolation that he lived to tell the tale.

  “A pigeon,” says Lieutenant Bertoldi, pointing at the sky.

  Desfosseux looks up in the direction indicated by his aide. It is true. Coming from Cádiz, the bird flies straight across the bay and past the inconspicuous pigeon loft located next to the artillery barracks and along the coast toward Puerto Real.

  “It’s not one of ours.”

  The two soldiers exchange a glance then Bertoldi looks away. He is the only person with whom Desfosseux shares his professional secrets. One of which is that without carrier pigeons, there would be no red or black dots on his map of Cádiz.

  THE PAINTED SHIPS hanging on the walls and the scale models in the display cases seem to sail through the gloom of the little mahogany-furnished office, circling the woman writing at her desk in the patch of sunlight that filters between the half-drawn curtains of one window. The woman is Lolita Pa
lma, thirty-two years old, an age by which any tolerably intelligent woman of Cádiz has given up all hope of marriage. But marriage has not been among her chief concerns for some time now; indeed it does not concern her at all. She has more important matters to worry about: the time of the next high tide, for example, the movements of the French corsair felucca that regularly plies the waters of the bay between the headland at Rota and the cove of Sanlúcar. Today, she is worried about the imminent arrival of a ship. From the watchtower on the terrace an elderly manservant has been following the ship’s progress with a spyglass ever since the tower at Tavira signaled a sighting to the west: a ship at full sail two miles south of the sunken reefs at Rota. It could be the Marco Bruto, a 280-ton brigantine equipped with four cannons, two weeks late coming back from Veracruz and Havana with a declared cargo of coffee, cocoa, dyewood and currency to the value of 15,300 pesos. For some days the Marco Bruto has been listed in the worrying fourth column of the register that charts the fate of every ship linked to the trade of the city: delayed, no news, disappeared, lost. Sometimes, in this last column, are inscribed the fatal words: lost, with all her crew.

  Lolita Palma is bent over the piece of paper on which she is writing a letter in English, pausing now and then to consult the figures inscribed in the thick volume of exchange rates, weights and measures that lies open on the desk next to the inkstand containing a silver box of sharpened quills, a sandbox, seals and sealing wax. She writes on a leather desk blotter that belonged to her father and bears the initials TP: Tomás Palma. The letter, bearing the family letterhead—Palma y Hijos, established in Cádiz in the year of our Lord 1754—is addressed to a correspondent in the United States of America and details a number of irregularities in a cargo comprising 1,210 fanegas of flour which arrived in port a week ago after forty-five days in the hold of the schooner Nueva Soledad arriving in Cádiz from Baltimore. The cargo has since been reshipped to Valencia and Murcia where food is scarce and flour more prized than gold dust.