The Sun Over Breda

No one in the tercio questioned Captain Alatriste’s honor. The proof was that a week later, when the decision was made to attack the Sevenberge dike, he and his squad were among the forty-four men chosen for the task. They left our position at sunset, taking advantage of the first night of heavy fog to conceal their movements. They were under the command of Captains Bragado and Torralba, and they all wore their shirts on the outside of their doublets and buffcoats, in order to recognize one another in the dark. This was common practice among Spanish troops as well as the origin of the term encamisadas, being “shirted,” given to night maneuvers. This attack was designed to capitalize on the natural aggressiveness and skill of our men in hand-to-hand combat: infiltrate a heretic camp, catch them unawares, kill as many as possible, burn their barracks and tents—though only when they were about to retire, to prevent providing unnecessary light—and get out at top speed. The troops were carefully chosen, and among Spaniards it was considered an honor to participate in an encamisada, so much so that often there were squabbles among the soldiers who wanted to be one of the party, as it was a bitter affront not to be included. The rules were strict, and customarily the execution of the raid was extremely well disciplined, in order to save lives in the confusion of the night. Of those undertaken in Flanders, the one at Mons was famous: five hundred Germans under salary of the House of Orange dead, their camp burnt to ashes. In another, fifty were chosen to carry out the night foray, but when the appointed hour came, soldiers arrived from every direction, claiming to have been selected. When finally they did set off, instead of the usual silence, there were boisterous arguments in the middle of the night, more like a Moorish raid than a Spanish encamisada, with three hundred men racing along the road, trying to reach the goal ahead of their comrades. The enemy awoke to see coming toward them a swell of maddened, yelling demons in white shirts, slaughtering indiscriminately and brawling among themselves, competing to see who could kill better and more.

But as for Sevenberge, our General Spínola’s plan was to travel the two long hours to the dike with great stealth and silence, surprise those guarding it, and destroy the work, breaching the locks with axes and burning everything in sight. It had been decided that a half-dozen of us mochileros would be needed to carry the equipment for the fire and the sapping. So that night saw me in the line of Spaniards marching along the right bank of the Merck, where the fog was thickest. In the hazy darkness all you could hear was the muffled sound of footsteps—we were wearing espadrilles or boots wrapped in rags, and we knew we would pay with our lives if we were to speak aloud, light a cord, prime pistols or harquebuses—and the white shirts moved through the night like ghostly shrouds. Some time before, I had been forced to sell my beautiful Solingen, for we mochileros were not allowed to carry a sword, so I had only my dagger snugged into my belt. But I was not, pardiez, short of a load: The large pouch over my shoulders was packed with charges of powder and sulfur wrapped in petards, garlands of pitch to set the fires, and two sharpened hatchets for splintering the wood of the locks.

I was trembling with cold despite the coarse wool jerkin I was wearing beneath my shirt, which looked white only at night and had more holes in it than a flute. The fog created an unreal atmosphere around us, soaking my hair and dribbling down my face as if it were fine rain or the chirimiri of my homeland, making everything slippery and causing me to walk with great care, for if I slipped on the wet grass it would mean tumbling into the cold waters of the Merck with ballast of sixty pounds on my back. The night and the misty air allowed me to see about as far as a fried flounder might: two or three vague white splotches before me and two or three behind. The closest soldier, whose progress I was diligently following, was Captain Alatriste. His squad was in the vanguard, preceded only by Captain Bragado and two Walloon guides from the Soest tercio, or what remained of it, whose mission, apart from acting as guides since they knew this region well, consisted of outwitting the Dutch sentinels and getting close enough to cut their throats before they had time to sound the alarm. To do that they had chosen a route that entered enemy territory after passing between large swamps and peat bogs and along very narrow paths that often became dikes where men could walk only in single file.