Aztec Rage (42 page)

At the moment he had to decide what to do about the French unit that was approaching.

“We can't risk a fight,” Cipriano said, “they are too many.” He had been a shoemaker before he became second in command of a guerrilla unit.

“Then we won't risk a fight with
all
of them.” The priest laid out his plan, scratching terrain and troop movements in the dirt. “We still have that cannon we bluffed with before.” The “cannon” was nothing more than six feet of foot-thick oak tree trunk that had been painted black and mounted on a pair of wagon wheels.

“We'll put ten men on the road,
here
, and they'll pretend they are hauling the cannon.”

The maneuver would allow the French to spot the cannon in a ravine while the guerrillas hid on both sides. “The commander's mission is to escort the courier, but he won't be able to resist capturing a rebel cannon. He'll send some of his hussars, maybe forty or fifty to kill the rebels and take the cannon. We'll be waiting. When they come charging into the ravine, we'll fire and run.”

“Run” meant to melt into the rocks and hilly terrain where the mounted hussars wouldn't follow them.

They might get a dozen with the single volley he ordered and more than that in dead horses. It was often harder for the French to replace trained war horses than men. The losses to the French would not win the war, but it would be another bloody nose for them.

Not long ago, the priest had captured a French general who was on his way back to France after another general had replaced him. The fool had an escort of just a hundred, and the unit was slowed down by the general's insistence that his war wagons, packed with booty, go with him.

To elicit tactical information—and to exact retribution for his atrocities—he ordered the general lowered into a cauldron of boiling water . . . slowly. While the general parboiled, the priest had ten captured French soldiers and officers castrated in retaliation for the rape of Spanish
women. Whether the men being punished had actually raped any women was irrelevant. He turned them loose to convey their agony to their fellow soldiers.

Guerrillas routinely left captured French soldiers by the wayside, their eyes gouged, their tongues cut out, their limbs broken but still alive so they could think about the atrocities that had been inflicted on Spanish men, women, and children. It was up to their comrades to put them out of their misery.

As he waited to attack the French unit, he thought for a moment about the schism between what he once was and what he was now, but he quickly shrugged off the thought. He was a shepherd, and he had to protect his flock from wolves.

FIFTY-SIX

Cadiz, 1809

W
HEN WE WERE
in the Golfo de Cádiz, two days from the great port city, a passing ship dropped a floatable packet for us, which our captain fished out of the sea. In it were newspapers and pamphlets reporting on the war in Spain. The captain and crew knew something of the events already—and I'd heard many discussions during the voyage—but as the news indicated, the situation turned more critical each day.

Since the central junta governing Spain was in Seville—because Madrid was in French hands—Napoleon's army had besieged the city, and it was expected to fall any day to the overwhelming forces. The junta had relocated to Cádiz, because that city was easier to defend. Lying on a long, narrow peninsula, Cádiz was vulnerable by land from only one direction, and the British navy controlled approaches by sea.

Gerona, in the far north near the French border, and Zaragoza, along the Río Ebro, both suffered under long, murderous sieges. Each time they defeated a French army, another came over the Pyrénées and began another siege, battering the cities and their defenders with the world's finest artillary.

“Ay!” I muttered under my breath. I was entering another hornet's nest. The Spanish battled a French invader who seemed to have the upper hand. Almost the whole country was in French hands. Napoleon himself had led an enormous army into Spain to restore his brother Joseph to the throne after the Spanish had sent Joseph racing back to France.

I didn't care if the country was in the hands of the devil. I owed the Spanish nothing but grief and had nothing against the French. I just didn't want the war to affect me. Eh, I might as well have pretended to be Napoleon himself, as much good as my current guise might do me. Carlos was a French spy, and the authorities in New Spain might very well have uncovered that fact by now. A hangman with a rope could easily await my landfall when I got off the ship.

The newspapers and pamphlets demonstrated that any support for the invaders—even dressing in French fashions—could be deadly. Since the French massacre in Madrid on the second of May, from one end of the country to the other, Spanish patriots had executed traitors and malingerers.

The ship's captain told me Cádiz had been one of the major cities where the people seized control of the government because the city's notables refused to act.

“It was the common people who took to the streets, not the rich or the
nobles,” the captain said. “They marched on the Marqués del Socorro, the captain-general of the city, when he failed to immediately declare for Ferdinand. When he called out the garrison to drive them off, the marchers broke into the armory to confiscate weapons. Then they returned to the marqués's house, dragged him out, and executed him as a traitor. When they finished with the marqués, they aimed artillery pieces at the homes of the wealthy along Calle de la Caleta. The priests only barely persuaded them not to massacre the city's elites. Since that time, the people of Cádiz have been leaders in the war of independence.”

The captain told me that all across the country the common people had taken control in Zaragoza, Seville, Córdova, León, Mallorca, Cartegena, Badajoz, Granada, La Coruña. In Valencia people took to the streets and crowded in front of the municipal offices, demanding that their leaders recognize Ferdinand as king and reject the French usurper, Joseph. But the civil leaders refused, perhaps as fearful of enfranchising the common people as they were of French retaliation. The insurgents exploded when faced with such treason, killing hundreds of people they believed to be in league with the French.

“In the city of El Ferrol,” the captain said, “the site of an important naval base and arsenal, a group of women insurgents seized the governor and distributed weapons to the people.”

Holy Mother! Petticoats with muskets. What was the world coming to?

A decree of the junta legalized the attack on the French by the bands of what were being called “land pirates.”

“More accurate to call them
privateers
,” the captain said, “on land.”

Privateers were civilian ships outfitted as war vessels and given commissions to attack enemy shipping and keep whatever they were able to steal as spoils of war. The attacked ships considered them nothing more than pirates. In essence, the junta authorized the guerrillas to attack the French units and take any material goods as “prizes.”

The captain told me that the goods taken from the dead French soldiers had in turn been stolen when the French ravaged Spanish cities.

He went back to his duties while I remained at the railing and read. The decree vindicated—even validated—the “land pirates” because French soldiers had violated Spanish homes, “with the rape of mothers and daughters, who had to suffer all the excesses of this brutality in sight of their dismembered fathers and husbands . . .” It went on to describe how French soldiers impaled Spanish children on their bayonets and carried them around in triumph as “military trophies.” They sacked convents, raped nuns, defiled monasteries, and murdered monks.

Dios mío.

“It's how he pays his soldiers,” a voice next to me said.

“Señor?”

The speaker was a fellow passenger, a merchant returning from a trip to the Caribbean. He gestured at the proclamation.

“Napoleon rewards his generals and his soldiers with booty,” the man said. “That's why they're raping our country. From generals right down to the lowest musketeer, they're stealing everything they can get their hands on because that's how they get their pay.” He wagged his finger at me. “But it will bring them down in the end. Have you ever tried to aim a musket or run for cover when you're loaded down with loot?” The man jeered. “We'll kill them all, first the French invaders, and when we've cut the throat of the last of them, we'll go back after the lovers of the French who betrayed us and rip out their throats, too.”

My hand instinctively went to my throat.

When the ship docked at Cádiz, custom inspectors came aboard. They searched my meager possessions, as they did everyone else's. I was tempted to give another false name to the inspectors, but a ship's officer who knew my name was standing nearby. I waited tensely, half-expecting the man to put me in chains, but he just wrote down my name and said nothing.

I left the ship a free man, stepping into a strange city in the midst of a war. My only plans were to stay alive and out of the hands of the authorities.

As I wandered down city streets, Cádiz appeared to be a fine city, smaller than México City, and hemmed in, nearly surrounded by water. The city was compact and pleasing to the eye, with a tall watchtower and many white buildings in the Moorish style, the city having been occupied by that infidel people for many centuries. I learned aboard ship that Cádiz was one of the oldest cities in Europe, founded by the Phoenicians nearly a century before the birth of Christ. Since that time it had been occupied by the Carthaginians, Romans, Moors, and Spanish. It had replaced Seville as the main port for trade with the colonies, but with that wealth came attacks by pirates and the British. Now, of course, it was the turn of the French to test the city's defenses.

From the docks I strolled to the center of the city and took a room at an inn. I was in a quandary as to what my next move should be. An ocean's distance from the viceroy's men would not protect me from them forever. Ships continually brought dispatches from the viceroy's administration. Authorities in Cádiz would learn that a notorious colonial bandido had fled to their jurisdiction. And there was the problem of money. I would have to turn to thievery when my last piece of eight was gone.

I ordered wine and something to eat and was chewing on a tough piece of beef when I looked up at two men wearing military uniforms.

“Carlos Galí?” one inquired.

I shook my head. “No, señor, I am Roberto Herra. However, I know of this man you ask about, his room is near mine.” I pointed up the stairs. “Second floor, first room on the right.”

The two soldiers started for the stairway, and I started for the front door. I was halfway to it when the landlord pointed at me. “That's him!”

The devil take him for not minding his own business.

One of the soldiers pointed a pistol at my face. “You are under arrest, Señor Galí.”

“For what crime?” I demanded.

“The one the executioner whispers in your ear.”

FIFTY-SEVEN