The Sun Over Breda

when I passed by our colonel, who was positioned with other mounted officers in the middle of the squad. His armor had stopped a Dutch musket ball, though it had already traveled such a long distance that it left only a fine dent in his tooled Milanese steel breastplate. Except for that, our colonel seemed in good health, unlike his bugler, who had been shot in the mouth and now lay on the ground at his horse’s hooves, with no one giving a fig whether he was bugling or not. I saw that don Pedro de la Daga and his cadre of officers were observing the Walloons’ badly compromised lines with furrowed brows. Even I, inexperienced as I was, understood that if Soest’s tercio collapsed, we Spaniards, with no cavalry to shield us, would have no recourse but to retreat to the Ruyter mill if we were to avoid being flanked. The ruinous effect would be that when the Dutch saw the tercio retreat, they would move on toward Breda. The respect and fear an enemy entertains when it encounters a wall of resolute men is very different from its attitude when it perceives that those men are looking less for a quarrel than for their own continued good health, and even more so at a time when we Spaniards were as renowned for our cruelty in attacking as we were for our pride and imperturbability in the face of death. Until then almost no one had seen the color of our backs, not even on canvas, and our pikes and our reputations were equally esteemed.

The sun was reaching its zenith when the Walloons, having served their king and the true religion with great dignity, finally collapsed. A charge of horse and the pressure of the Dutch infantry finally shredded their lines, and from our side of the road we watched as, despite the efforts of their officers, one section of troops withdrew toward the Ruyter mill and the other, more complete, surged toward us, seeking refuge in our formation. With them, surrounded by officers trying to save the standards, came their maestre, don Carlos Soest, like a condemned man, with his helmet missing and both arms broken by harquebus fire. They rushed toward us in such disorder that they nearly broke up our tercio. Even worse, however, was that right behind them, almost within reach, came the Hollander Horse and Foot, eager to accomplish their task by wiping out two regiments in one fell swoop. To our good fortune, they came straight from their first assault—their lines were ragged, and they were testing their luck to see whether we would come apart in all the confusion—but as I have said, the men of the Cartagena tercio were battle-wise and had seen everything. Almost without receiving orders, after allowing a reasonable number of Walloons to pass, the lines of our right flank closed as if they were made of iron, and harquebuses and muskets loosed an awesome round of fire that dispatched—two for the price of one—a good portion of the tag ends of Soest’s tercio along with the Hollanders pursuing them from the rear.

“Pikes to the right!”

Without hurrying and with the sangfroid their legendary discipline implied, the rows of coseletes on our flank veered to face the Dutch. They drove the butt end of their pikes into the ground, firmed the mud around it with a foot, and pointed the blade end to the front, holding the shafts in their left hands as they unsheathed their swords with their right, preparing to cripple the horses racing toward them.

“Santiago!…Spain and Santiago!”

It was as if the Dutch had hit a solid brick wall. The collision with our right flank was so brutal that long pike shafts buried in the horses broke into pieces, and defenders and attackers were entangled in a muddle of lances, swords, daggers, knives, and harquebuses-turned-clubs.

“Pikes to the front!”

The heretics were also charging the forward side of our square formation, again emerging from the woods but now with the cavalry leading and the coseletes behind. Our harquebusiers again performed their task with the composure of veteran infantry, loading and firing in perfect order with no trace of agitation. Among them I saw Diego Alatriste blow on a slow match, cheek his weapon, and aim. The volley left a large number of Hollanders on the ground, but the main body of soldiers remained, far too many for our own good, and our detachments of harquebusiers, and I with them, were forced to take cover among the pikes. In the confusion I lost sight of my master, and the only one of his comrades I could see was Sebastian Copons—the bandage on his head calling to mind the kerchiefs of his native Aragon—as he put hand to his sword with resolve. A few flustered Spaniards deserted, fleeing past their comrades toward the rear (Iberia did not always give birth to lions), but most stood their ground. Harquebuses blasted, and all around me musket balls dug into flesh. I was showered with a spray of pikeman’s blood as he fell atop me, invoking the Madre de Deus in Portuguese. I slipped from beneath him, freed myself from his lance, which was caught between my legs, only to find myself jostled in the ebb and flow of the battle, immersed in smells of rough, grimy clothing, sweat, powder, and blood.

“Hold!…Spain!…Spaaain!”

At our backs, behind the tightly knit rows protecting the standards, the drums beat on relentlessly. More musket balls whirred and more men fell, and each time the rows closed over the gaps they had left, while I stumbled over the armored bodies that lay scattered about me. I could see almost nothing of what was happening in front of me, and I rose to my tiptoes to look over the shoulders of men in buffcoats and leather, steel breastplates and helmets. I was suffocated by the heat and by the smoke of powder. My head was spinning, and with my last shred of lucidity I reached behind me and pulled out my dagger.

“Onate!…Onate!” I yelled with all my soul.

An instant later, with a crack of pike shafts, screams of wounded horses, and clash of swords, the Dutch Light Horse was upon us, and only God could recognize His own.

6. ATTACK WITHOUT QUARTER

At times I look at the painting, and I remember. Not even Diego Velazquez, despite everything I told him, was capable of portraying on canvas—it is barely insinuated in the clouds of smoke and gray fog of the background—the long and deadly road we had to take to compose such a majestic scene, or the lances that lay along that road and would never see the sun rise over Breda. I myself was yet to encounter the blood-dripping steel of those same lances in charnel houses like Nordlingen and Rocroi, which were, respectively, the dying rays of the Spanish star and a terrible sunset for the army of Flanders. And of those battles, like the one that morning at the Ruyter mill, I remember especially the sounds: the cries of the men, the crack of crossed pikes, the clash of steel against steel, the distinct notes of weapons ripping clothing, entering flesh, shattering bones. Once, much later, Angelica de Alquezar asked me in a frivolous tone if there was anything more sinister than the cur-rrunch of a hoe cutting into a potato. Without hesitating I replied, “The cur-rrunch of steel splitting a skull,” and I saw her smile as she stared at me with those blue eyes the devil had granted to her. And then she reached out and with her fingertips touched my eyelids, which were wide open as I again beheld the horror, and then she grazed the mouth that so many times had shouted my fear and my courage and the hands that had gripped steel and spilled blood. She kissed me with her full, warm lips and even smiled as she did it and drew back from me. And now that Angelica is as dead and gone as the Spain I am writing about, I still cannot erase that smile from my memory. It was the same smile that appeared on her lips every time she did something evil, every time she put my life in jeopardy, and every time she kissed my scars, for some of them, pardiez, as I have written elsewhere, were caused by her.

I also remember pride. Among the emotions that flash through one’s head in combat are, first, fear, then ardor and madness. Later, exhaustion, resignation, and indifference filter into the soldier’s soul. But if he survives, and if he is from the good seed from which certain men germinate, there also remains the honor of a duty fulfilled. I am not, Your Mercies, speaking of the soldier’s duty to God or to his king, nor of the inept but honorable soldier who fights to collect his pay, not even of the obligation to friends and comrades. I am referring to something else, something I learned at Captain Alatriste’s side: the duty to