The Sun Over Breda

Our camp was yelling victory at the top of their voices, and men who had fought all morning in obstinate silence were exuberantly calling out the names of the Virgen Santísima and Santiago. Exhausted veterans set down their weapons to kiss rosaries and medallions. The drum was pounding without mercy, without quarter, marking the pursuit and capture of the conquered enemy, a time for collecting spoils and for making them pay dearly for our dead and for the arduous day they had put us through. The lines of the tercio

were breaking up to chase after the heretics, catching first the wounded and the stragglers, then splitting open heads, lopping off limbs, and cutting throats. In short, mercy for no man. For if the Spanish infantry was fierce in attacking or defending, it was twice as fierce when taking revenge. The Italians and Walloons were not far behind, the latter fervently desiring blood in return for that their Soest comrades had shed. The landscape was dotted with thousands of men racing about helter-skelter, killing, then killing again, pillaging the wounded and dead scattered across the field, so badly butchered that at times the most intact body piece was an ear.

Captain Alatriste and his comrades were participating like everyone else, as heatedly as Your Mercies could imagine. I was trying to keep up with them, still stunned by the melee and by the egg-sized lump on my head but yelling as wildly as any. Along the way, I took a splendid short Solingen sword from the first dead enemy I came across and, sheathing my dagger, moved on, thrusting that fine German blade at anything dead or alive in my path, like someone stabbing blood sausages. It was carnage, game, and madness all rolled into one, and what had once been a battle had turned into a slaughter of young English bulls and Flemish cuts. Some did not even defend themselves, like the group we caught up with splashing waist deep in a peat bog. There, we descended on them, taking a fine catch of Calvinists, plunging our swords into them, slicing and ripping right and left, deaf to their pleas and to upraised hands begging for mercy, until the blackish water was bright red and they were floating in it like chopped tuna fish.

We did a lot of killing, for we had a place to do it. And since there were so many, we could not stop with a few. The hunt went on for a league and lasted till nightfall, and by then my fellow mochileros had joined in, along with local peasants who knew no band other than their greed, and even some vivandières, whores, and sutlers who had migrated to Oudkerk, drawn by the smell of booty. They followed after the soldiers, plundering anything that was left, a flock of crows leaving in their passing nothing but naked corpses. I was still in the chase, keeping up with those in the vanguard, not feeling the exhaustion of the day, as if fury and desire for revenge had given me strength to go on to the end of the world. I was—and may God forgive me if it be His wish—hoarse from yelling and red with the blood of those wretched Dutch. A pink dusk was closing over the burning villages on the far side of the forest, and there was no canal, no path, no road along the dike that was free of the dead. At that point, bone-weary, we stopped by a small cluster of five or six houses where even the domestic animals had been killed. A group of Dutch stragglers had hidden there, and finishing them off took the last moments of light. Finally, in the reddish glow of burning roofs, we calmed down, little by little, our pouches stuffed with booty, and here and there men began to drop to the ground, suddenly seized by untold fatigue, breathing like beaten animals. Only a fool maintains that victory is joy. As our senses slowly returned we fell silent, avoiding one another’s eyes, as if ashamed of our filthy hair standing on end, our black, strained faces, reddened eyes, the crust of blood drying on our clothing and weapons. Now the only sound was the sputtering of the fire and creaking of beams collapsing among the flames, but occasionally from the night around us came shouts and gunfire from those who continued the kill.