The Sun Over Breda

Dawn was breaking when I was awakened by strange noises and voices calling “To arms!” I opened my eyes to a dirty gray morning, to find Alatriste and the others moving around me, all in heavy armor, lighting the slow matches of their harquebuses, filling powder pans, and ramming lead into muzzles as fast as they could. Close by I heard a deafening eruption of harquebuses and muskets and, amid the confusion, voices in the tongues of every nation. We later learned that Henry of Nassau had sent his English musketeers, all handpicked, and two hundred coseletes along the narrow dike. At their head was their English colonel, named Ver, who was also supported by French and German troops, his whole force numbering some six thousand, and all of them preceding a Dutch rear guard of heavy artillery, carriages, and cavalry. At first light the English had fallen upon the first Italian redoubt, which was defended by one lieutenant and a small contingent of soldiers, some of whom they blew out with grenades, killing the rest with their swords. Then they had placed harquebusiers in the protection of the redoubt, and with the same felicity and daring had taken the demilune in front of the gate of the fort, scaling the wall by hand and foot. When the Italians defending the trenches saw how far the enemy had advanced and their lack of cover on that side, they threw the handle after the ax head and vacated their position. The English fought with great vigor and honor—there was nothing lacking in their courage—so much so that the Italian company of Captain Camilo Fenice, who had come to defend the fort, saw themselves in a tight situation and showed their backs, with no little shame. Perhaps to make true what Tirso de Molina had said about certain soldiers:

Mutter thirteen curses,sputter thirty ’Pon my lifes,in cards harass the winners,gather in wanton wives;and in skirmishes and battles,or in any grave disputes,all the enemy will see of meis the bottom of my boots.

It was not with verses but straightforward prose that the English reached the tents where our colonel and his officers had spent the night. They found them all outside in their nightshirts, armed however God allowed, fighting with swords and pistols in the midst of fleeing Italians and arriving English. From where we stood, some hundred paces from the tents, we watched the disorderly flight of the Italians and the throngs of English troops, all etched upon the gray dawn in flashes of powder. Diego Alatriste’s first impulse was to lead his squad to the tents, but as soon as he stepped up on the parapet he realized that that would be fruitless, for the Italians were fleeing down the dike and no one was running toward us because there was no way out: At our backs was a small earthen elevation and behind it swampy water. Only don Pedro de la Daga, his officers, and his German escort were making for our redoubt, battling their way, facing, not turning away from, the enemy, who was cutting off access to the retreat others were so vigorously pursuing. All this while, Lieutenant Miguel Chacón was attempting to protect our standard. When Alatriste saw that the small group was trying to reach our position, he lined up his men behind gabions and ordered them to fire continuously and protect de la Daga’s withdrawal, and he himself loaded his harquebus and took shot after shot. I was squatting behind the parapet, hurrying to supply powder and musket balls, when I was called.