The Siege Read online

  Lolita Palma smiles and gently squeezes his arm.

  “I didn’t mean to offend you, my friend.”

  “You could never offend me, hija.”

  On the corner of the Calle de la Amargura next to the British embassy is a small shipping office and a café frequented by foreigners and naval officers. It is far from the eastern walls where bombs have been falling; none has yet reached this far. Relaxed, making the most of the balmy weather, a number of Englishmen with blond whiskers and gaudy waistcoats are standing in the doorway reading old issues of British newspapers. Several are wearing red military frockcoats.

  “Then there are our allies,” Sánchez Guinea lowers his voice, “pressurizing the Regency and the Cortes to lift restrictions on free trade with the Americas. Constantly seeking an advantage, faithful to their policy of never allowing a stable government to exist anywhere in Europe … With Wellington here in the Peninsula, they can kill three birds with one stone: they get Portugal on side, they undermine Napoleon and in doing so they ensure we are in their debt—a debt they will make us pay for later. This alliance is going to cost us dearly.”

  Lolita Palma indicates the thrum of people all around: the cliques, the passersby. The new edition of the Diario Mercantil has just been delivered to the newsstand in the middle of the street and people are milling about, snatching copies from the newsagent.

  “Perhaps. But just look at the city … it’s bubbling with life, with business.”

  “That’s just an illusion, hija. The foreigners will leave the moment the blockade is lifted and we will go back to being the city of sixty thousand souls we have always been. What will become of those currently doubling the price of rent and tripling the price of a steak? Those making a living exploiting the suffering of others? The crumbs you see before you today will be nothing compared to tomorrow’s famine.”

  “But the Cortes …”

  “The Cortes lives in another world,” the elderly merchant growls, making no attempt to disguise his contempt. “Constitution, monarchy, Fernando VII. Such things have nothing to do with us. What the people of Cádiz want is freedom, progress. That, in the end, is the foundation of all commerce. Whether or not the Cortes passes laws, whether they decide the king rules by divine right or is the repository of national sovereignty will change nothing: the American ports will still be beyond our control and Cádiz will be bankrupt. When the pox of Constitution comes, the lean cows will low.”

  Lolita Palma laughs affectionately. Hers is a deep, resonant laugh. One that is young and healthy.

  “I always took you for a liberal …”

  Without letting go of her arm, Sánchez Guinea stops in the middle of the street.

  “And by God so I am,” he says glaring around him as if anyone might doubt the fact. “But I believe in a liberalism that offers work and prosperity … Political hot air will not put food on my family’s table or anyone else’s. The Cortes demands much but offers little. Just think of the million pesos they have demanded the merchants of this city pay toward the war effort. After everything they’ve already taken from us! Meanwhile, every state counselor is earning forty thousand reales a month, and every minister is pocketing eighty thousand.”

  They walk on. Just ahead, among the scattering of bookshops on the little plazas of San Agustín and El Correo, is Salcedo’s bookshop. Don Emilio and Lolita linger for a moment before the bookcases and the shop windows. In the window of Navarro’s are a number of soft-cover editions, their pages still uncut, and two large, handsomely bound volumes, one open at the title page: A History of the Conquest of Mexico by Antonio de Solis.

  “In the current climate,” continues Sánchez Guinea, “best to invest in something secure: houses, property, land … Keep cash reserves for those things that will still have value when the war is over. Trade as it existed back in the days of your grandfather, or of your father, will never return … Without America, Cádiz has no purpose.”

  Lolita Palma gazes at the shop window. Too much talk, she thinks, on subjects they have discussed a hundred times before. Don Emilio is not a man to waste his time on words. As far as he is concerned, five minutes with no resulting profit is five minutes wasted. And they have been chatting now for fifteen.

  “Come to the point, Don Emilio.”

  For a moment she fears he is about to suggest some venture involving contraband of the kind she has rejected three times in the past months. Nothing out of the ordinary. Nothing serious. Trading contraband has been a way of life in the city ever since the first galleons set sail from the Indies. It would be a very different matter were he to suggest trading with the occupied French territories, as a number of unscrupulous merchants have been doing since the beginning of the blockade. The house of Sánchez Guinea would never tarnish its reputation with such vile practices; but sometimes, in the gray area that exists between the exigencies of war and the laws in force, some merchandise passes through the Puerta de Mar without customs and excise duties being paid. Among the respectable businessmen of Cádiz, this is known as “working with the left hand.”

  “Come now, tell me what is on your mind.”

  The merchant stares at the bookshop window, although Lolita Palma knows that he cares little about the conquest of Mexico. He takes his time. “I think you are managing things very well, Lolita,” he says after a moment, “reducing costs, cutting back on luxuries. That’s intelligent. You know that this boom will not last forever. You have managed to retain that most precious commodity in this city: reputation. Your grandfather and your father would have been proud of you. What am I saying? They are proud, looking down on you from heaven …”

  “Don’t sugar the pill, Don Emilio.” Lolita Palma laughs again, her arm still linked in his. “Please, come to the point.”

  Emilio stares at the ground between the tips of his impeccably polished shoes. Glances again at the books. Eventually he turns and looks at her, determined.

  “I’m arming a corsair ship … I’ve purchased a blank Letter of Marque and Reprisal.”*

  As he says this, he gives her a wink as though he expects her to be shocked. Then he looks at her inquisitively. She nods. She saw this coming; it is a subject they have discussed many times. And she has heard rumors about the Letter of Marque. The cunning old fox. The expression on her face says, “As you know very well I have no taste for such investments. I do not wish to be involved with that. With the war, with those people.”

  Sánchez Guinea raises a hand, half in apology, half in good-natured protest.

  “It’s just business, hija. These are the same people merchant ships deal with every day … and the war affects you just as it affects everyone.”

  “I despise piracy.” She has let go of his arm and is clutching her bag with both hands. “We have suffered from it all too often, and it has cost us dearly.”

  Don Emilio reasons with her, puts forward his arguments. With genuine affection. A wise counselor.

  “A corsair is not a pirate, Lolita, they operate according to strict laws, as you know. Your father, if you remember, had a very different opinion on the subject. In 1806 we shared the cost of arming a corsair and made a handsome profit. Now is the moment. There are incentives, bounties to be earned for captured ships. Enemy cargoes to be seized. It’s all perfectly legal. It is merely a matter of putting up the capital, as I am doing. Simply business. Another form of marine insurance.”

  Lolita Palma gazes at their reflection in the shop window. She knows Don Emilio does not need her money. Or not urgently, in any case. The offer is a generous one, an opportunity to participate in a profitable business venture. There are many people in Cádiz who would be willing to invest in such a business, but Sánchez Guinea has chosen her. A clever, serious girl. Someone who inspires trust and respect. Someone with a reputation. The daughter of his friend Tomás.

  “Let me think it over, Don Emilio.”

  “Of course. Think about it.”

  CAPTAIN SIMON DESFOSSEUX is feeling awkwar
d. Generals are not his preferred company and today they are all over him. On top of him. Every one hanging on his every word—a fact that does little to calm his spirit: Marshal Victor, Chief of Staff Semellé, generals Villatt and Laval from the Ruffin division, and General Lesueur, Desfosseux’s direct superior, commander of the Premier Corps artillery and successor to the late Baron de Senarmont. They landed on him mid-morning when the Duc de Belluno suddenly decided to make an impromptu inspection of the Trocadero, leaving his headquarters at Chiclana under a heavy escort of hussars from the 4th Regiment.

  “The idea is to be able to reach the whole of the city,” Desfosseux is explaining. “Until now this has proved impossible, we are working at our absolute limit and we’re faced with two difficulties: the range, on the one hand, and the fuses on the other … The latter are a particular problem since my orders are to launch bombs on the city that actually explode, like grenades. This is why we use a delayed trigger; but the distances involved are so great that many of the bombs explode before they reach their target … We have been working on a new fuse, one that burns more slowly and does not snuff out en route.”

  “And is it available now?” inquires General Leval, head of the 2nd Division quartered in Puerto Real.

  “It will be in a few days. Theoretically it should burn for more than thirty seconds, but the timing is not always precise. Sometimes friction with the air accelerates the combustion rate … or blows out the fuse.”

  A pause. The generals, their frockcoats bedecked with medals, regard him attentively, waiting. The marshal is seated, the others, like Desfosseux, standing. On an easel is a large map of the city and another of the bay of Cádiz. Through the open windows come the voices of the sappers working on the foundations for the new gun battery. In a patch of sunlight, flies are swarming around a crushed cockroach. Flies and cockroaches in their thousands teem the barracks and the trenches of the Trocadero. And there are enough rats, bedbugs, lice and mosquitoes to infest the whole Imperial Army.

  “This brings us to the second problem: range. I am being asked to cover a range of 3,000 toises. With the current means at my disposal, the best I can guarantee is a range of 2,300 toises. And even then, we must factor in the crosswinds in the bay which can have a pronounced effect on both distance and trajectory … Currently, our range allows us to shell an area extending from here to here.”

  He indicates several points in the eastern sector of the city: Puerta de Mar, the area around the Customs House. He does not trouble to name them since everyone here has spent the past year poring over this map. Desfosseux’s index finger traces a line just inside the city walls that barely encroaches on the city proper aside from a few streets in the Pópulo district next to the Puerta de Tierra. This is all there is, the moving finger seems to say. Desfosseux takes his hand away and looks over at his direct superior, General Lesueur. Implying the rest, sir, is down to you, and wordlessly requesting permission to leave. To get out of this place and go back to his slide rule, his telescope and his carrier pigeons. To his work. But of course he does not leave. The worst, he knows, is yet to come.

  “The enemy ships anchored in the bay are within this range, are they not?” asks General Ruffin. “Why not launch an attack on them?”

  François Amable Ruffin, commander of the 1st Division, is a lean, serious individual with expressionless eyes; a veteran of the battles of Austerlitz and Friedland to name but two. A sensible man, respected by his men. Barely forty, he has risen quickly through the ranks. A firebrand. He is the sort of soldier who dies young and whose name is inscribed on a memorial somewhere.

  “We do not bomb the ships,” explains Desfosseux, “because they are not within range—the English warships are slightly too far out, the Spanish ships too close. They cleave close to the city, if I may put it so. It is difficult to be accurate at such a distance. Artillery fire is imprecise. It is in the lap of the gods. It is one thing to drop bombs on a city, but to hit a precise target is a very different matter, impossible to guarantee. Take the Customs House, for example, the headquarters of the insurrectionist Regency. Not a single hit.

  “Simply put,” he concludes, “with the means at our disposal, greater range and greater precision are impossible.”

  He is about to add something, but hesitates and General Lesueur, who, like the others, has been listening in silence, raises a warning eyebrow. The artillery commander’s warning is clear: do not make trouble. Do not make your life or mine any more difficult than it already is. This is just a routine inspection. Tell them what they want to hear, I’ll deal with the rest.

  “But leaving aside the problem of accuracy, let’s concentrate on range; I believe we could obtain better results if we used mortars rather than howitzers.”

  There, the words have been said. And he does not regret them, even if Lesueur is now glaring at him furiously.

  “Out of the question,” Lesueur says curtly. “The tests carried out last November using the 12-inch Dedon mortar cast in the foundry in Seville were disastrous … The shells fired did not even attain a range of 2,000 toises.”

  Marshal Victor leans back in his chair and gives Lesueur an imperious look. Victor is an experienced artilleryman, well versed in such matters, meticulous and disciplined; he is the sort of man who dives into something only when he knows how he will get out of it. He and Lesueur have known each other since the siege of Toulon when the marshal was still the humble Claude Perrin and they were shelling royalist redoubts and Spanish and British warships with another comrade-in-arms, the young Captain Bonaparte. Let the professional explain himself, the wordless scowl implies. I can speak to you any day, whereas this man is an expert, or so I am told. This is why we are here: so he can tell us what he needs to say. Lesueur slowly closes his mouth and the Duc de Belluno turns back to Desfosseux and invites him to continue.

  “At the time I warned that the Dedon mortar was not equal to the task,” continues the captain. “It was a plate mortar with a spherical chamber. Extremely difficult to aim and dangerous to operate. The 30-pound charge required was too much: the gunpowder did not combust simultaneously and the substandard thrust resulted in a shorter range … Even conventional cannons were more effective.”

  “A botched job—typical of Dedon,” comments the marshal.

  Everyone laughs politely except for Desfosseux and Ruffin, who is staring out of the window as though expecting some omen. General Dedon is despised within the Imperial Army. An intelligent theorist and consummate artilleryman, Dedon’s noble birth and aristocratic manner rankle with the hard-bitten soldiers who rose from the ranks after the Revolution, as Victor did, starting out as a drummer boy thirty years ago at Grenoble, earning his saber d’honneur at Marengo and relieving Marshal Bernadotte at Friedland. They all do their utmost to discredit Dedon’s projects and consign his mortars to oblivion.

  “The basic concept, however, was a good one,” says Desfosseux with the confidence of an expert.

  The silence that descends is so charged that even General Ruffin turns to stare at the captain, now vaguely interested. Meanwhile Lesueur, no longer content to raise a single admonishing eyebrow at his subordinate, raises both, his eyes boring into Desfosseux, heavy with menace.

  “The problem of partial powder combustion is common to a number of larger field guns,” Desfosseux carries on, imperturbable. “The Villantroys howitzers, for example, or the Rutys.”

  The silence continues. The Duc de Belluno studies Desfosseux thoughtfully, running a hand over his leonine brow and through the thick mane of gray hair whose care he entrusts to a Spanish barber in Chiclana. The captain knows that to speak disrespectfully of the howitzers is to pour scorn on the favored weapons of the siege. Lesueur, his superior, has long vaunted the technical merits of these weapons. And, in doing so, has foolishly fueled expectations among senior personnel which Desfosseux considers unwarranted.

  “There is a fundamental difference,” says the marshal. “The Emperor is of the opinion that the appropr
iate field gun for shelling Cádiz is the howitzer … The Emperor personally dispatched Colonel Villantroys’s designs to us.”

  A buzzing of flies. All eyes turn to Desfosseux, who swallows hard. What am I doing here? he thinks. Squeezed into this uncomfortable uniform with its itchy collar, holding absurd conversations when I could be back in Metz teaching physics. Instead, here I am in the back of beyond, playing soldiers with bigwigs decked out in medals who only want to hear what suits them. Or what they think suits them. And that pig Lesueur knows it as well as I do, but he’s happy to throw me to the wolves.

  “With all due respect to the Emperor, I believe the assault on Cádiz should be carried out using mortars rather than howitzers.”

  “With all due respect,” echoes the marshal, smiling.

  His pensive smile would send a shiver down the spine of any soldier. But Captain Desfosseux is a civilian in uniform. A reluctant soldier for the duration of his posting. Which, for the moment, is Cádiz. They put him in a uniform and sent him here from France for this.

  “Your Excellency, even the flaws in the fuses have a bearing on this … The shells fired by the howitzers require fuses that have proved ineffective whereas larger bombs of greater diameter fired from a mortar would make it possible to use larger fuses. Furthermore, the increased gravity would result in the full combustion of the powder charge when fired thereby affording greater range.”

  The Chief Marshal of the Premier Corps is still smiling, but his expression now betrays a certain curiosity—a dangerous trait in marshals, generals and their like.

  “The Emperor is of a rather different opinion. Don’t forget, Napoleon himself was an artilleryman, and prides himself that he is still one. As indeed am I.”

  Desfosseux nods, but they can’t stop him now. He feels uncomfortably hot under his frockcoat, with a pressing need to unbutton the high, stiff collar. But it hardly matters; he has nothing to lose: he will never have a better opportunity to explain himself. Certainly not if he is languishing in a military prison or facing a firing squad. So he takes a deep breath and replies that he is not calling into question the competence of His Imperial Majesty, nor that of His Excellency the Duc de Belluno. Indeed it is precisely because of their knowledge of artillery that he dares to say what he is saying, trusting only to his science and his conscience. His loyalty to the Artillery Corps … To France above all things. To his homeland. With regard to the howitzers, he goes on, Marshal Victor was present at the Trocadero when the tests were conducted and must surely remember that of the eight howitzers fired at an angle of 45 degrees, not a single one achieved a range greater than 2,000 toises. And many of the shells exploded in midair.