The Sun Over Breda

In these and related discussions we mochileros made our way along with the troops, and even in the squad of Diego Alatriste I heard different views about the affair: Curro Garrote being the most stirred up and, as usual, Sebastián Copons the most indifferent. From time to time I shot uneasy looks at my master to see if I could read his opinion, but he was walking along without a word, as if he heard nothing: sword and dagger in his belt, and the tail of his short cape swinging to the rhythm of his steps. He was tight-lipped when anyone spoke to him, and his face was unreadable beneath the wide brim of his hat.

“Hang them!” said don Pedro de la Daga.

In the eerie silence of the esplanade, the colonel’s voice sounded sharp and cold. The companies were aligned to form three sides of a great rectangle with the banner of each in the center: pikemen and coseletes (soldiers so called because of the armor they wore) lining the sides and detachments of harquebusiers at each corner. The twelve hundred soldiers of the tercio

were so quiet and motionless that a botfly could have been heard among the rows. Under different circumstances it would have been a beautiful sight: all those men lined up with such precision, not sumptuously dressed, it is true—their clothing was covered with patches that at times were no more than rags, and they were even more poorly shod—but their weapons were oiled in accord with regulations, and their breastplates, helmets, pike heads, and harquebus barrels had been conscientiously cleaned and polished. Mucrone corusco, “with shining sword,” the chaplain of the tercio, Padre Salanueva, would undoubtedly have said, had he been sober. Every man was wearing or, rather, had sewed onto his doublet or buffcoat, as I had, the faded

aspa, the crimson cross of Saint Andrew, also known as the cross of Burgundy, an insignia that allowed Spaniards to recognize a fellow soldier in combat. And on the fourth side of the rectangle, next to the flag of the tercio itself, surrounded by his principal officers and the six German halberdiers of his personal guard, was don Pedro de la Daga on horseback, his proud head bare, lace collar white against his tooled cuirass, cuisses of good Milanese steel, damascened sword at his side, antelope gloves, right hand on his hip and reins in his left.

“From a dead tree,” he added.

Then, with a flick of the reins, he made his mount rear and wheel to face each of the twelve companies of the tercio, as if defying any inclination to discuss his order, which added to a dishonorable death by hanging the insult that the adjudged would not swing from a leafy green branch. I was with the other mochileros, close behind the troop formation, keeping our distance from the women, the curious, and the rabble watching the spectacle from afar. I was a few paces behind Diego Alatriste’s squad, and I could see some of the soldiers in the last rows, Garrote among them, mumbling under their breath when they heard de la Daga’s words. As for Alatriste, his eyes were fixed on the colonel, and his face was as emotionless as ever.

Don Pedro de la Daga must have been about fifty, a small man from Valladolid, with bright eyes, a quick wit, and long experience in the military, though little esteemed by his troops. It was said that his sour temperament came from bilious humors, that is, a constipated nature. A favorite of our General Spínola and with influential patrons in Madrid, de la Daga had made his reputation as a sergeant-major in the Palatinate campaign and had been granted command of the Cartagena tercio after a falconet ball blew off don Enrique Monzón’s leg in Fleurus. Jiñalasoga was not a nickname someone dreamed up out of nowhere; our maestre was one of those men who, like Tiberius, chose to be despised and feared by his men, using such means to impose discipline. That he was courageous in battle was indisputable. He scorned danger as he did his soldiers (you recall that his personal escort consisted of German halberdiers), and he had a good head for strategy. He was close-fisted with money, sparing with favors, and cruel with punishment.