Chapter 5
The Board of the Pyrenees (1793)
Ten years had already passed since the young peasant from Castile first set foot on the marble of Barcelona.
Ten years in which the hoe had been definitively forgotten, replaced by an officer's rapier and high-precision maps.
At twenty-seven, Alejandro de La Vega was no longer a cadet; he now bore the insignia of captain of the Royal Corps of Engineers.
His name was respected in the barracks, and — to the despair of Count Diego de Mendoza — the furtive meetings and exchange of perfumed letters with Elena de Madariaga had endured through time, feeding a forbidden passion in the shadows of Catalan high society,
while the marriage to Mendoza still stood on nothing but a promise.
But in 1793, the world changed. Paris burned in the fury of the French Revolution.
King Louis XVI's head had rolled beneath the guillotine, sending a shockwave of terror through every monarchy in Europe.
Bourbon Spain wasted no time responding, declaring war on the young and bloodstained French Republic.
For most, it was a dynastic crisis. For Count Mendoza, it was the perfect opportunity to commit a legalized murder.
In the stuffy halls of the Ministry of War in Madrid, Mendoza turned a glass of wine in his hand as he studied the immense map of the mountainous border separating Spain from France.
Beside him, an aging and corrupt general, whose gambling debts were paid off with the count's gold, reviewed the troop movement orders.
"The reports coming from the northern front are grim, General," Mendoza murmured, pointing with his ringed finger at the narrow passes of the Pyrenees.
"The French revolutionaries are using guerrilla tactics. They know the mountains and they're tearing our regular infantry regiments apart. We need engineers. Men who know how to raise quick fortifications on ice and calculate artillery lines on mountainous terrain."
The general adjusted his glasses again, hesitant.
"Barcelona's Corps of Engineers has excellent men, Count. But most of them are guarding the coast."
"There are two in particular who have distinguished themselves beyond measure," said Mendoza, a venomous smile spreading across his thin lips.
"Don Luiz and his protégé, the peasant captain Alejandro de La Vega. I hear they're brilliant. Almost... miraculous. I believe it is their duty to defend the Crown in the most dangerous and forward position — the Aran Valley."
The old general looked at the map and turned pale.
"The Aran Valley? Send them there now, at the start of winter, with French patrols hunting our men through the passes? That isn't a commission, Mendoza. It's a death sentence. They'll be crushed by the Jacobins' mobile artillery."
Mendoza leaned over the desk, his black eyes gleaming with pure aristocratic malice.
"If they die for the fatherland, General, they'll be heroes entitled to a funeral mass in the cathedral. But more importantly... they'll be far from Barcelona. Far from Se?orita de Madariaga. Sign the dispatch. Send the order with the royal seal of urgency tonight."
Three days later, at the Barcelona headquarters, the paper bearing the Crown's red wax seal struck Don Luiz's oak desk with force.
Alejandro stood by the window, watching the harbor where Elena's family's ship had just docked. Hearing the crack of the document, he turned. Don Luiz's face was more rigid than usual. The veteran, now grizzled, read through the marching orders and let out a dry, contemptuous laugh.
"Count Mendoza's poison took ten years to distill, Alejandro, but he's finally found the right jar," said Don Luiz, tossing the paper toward the young man.
Alejandro caught the document and ran his eyes over the orders. His brows knitted together.
"The Aran Valley... the Pyrenees? They want us to set up an artillery defense line in the middle of a blizzard, against the vanguard of the French revolutionary army? This is a bizarre tactical error, my captain. We don't have enough supplies to hold a position up there."
"It isn't a tactical error, De La Vega. It's politics," Don Luiz retorted, standing and walking toward Alejandro.
He rested his hand on the pommel of his sword, his gray gaze burning with the same fire as in his recruiting days.
"Mendoza knows he can't challenge us with steel here in Barcelona without causing a scandal. So he's used the King's bureaucracy to send us to a frozen slaughterhouse. He wants French bayonets to do his dirty work for him."
Alejandro clenched his teeth, feeling the weight of the trap. He thought of Elena, of the future he was trying to build far from the mud of his past, and of the injustice of that power play.
"And what will we do, sir? Appeal to the generals of the Corps of Engineers?"
Don Luiz took a step forward and struck Alejandro firmly on the chest, exactly as he had done in the village square in 1782.
"Appeal? Never! A Barcelona officer doesn't beg for his life from fat-bellied bureaucrats. We will accept the march. Mendoza thinks he's sending us to die, but he's forgotten the motto we carved into our minds:
Nunc Minerva, postea Pallas. We will use science to survive that hell of ice, and we will use war to shatter the French.
And when we come back from those mountains covered in Jacobin blood and victory medals, Mendoza will swallow every drop of his own poison.
Ready your men, Captain De La Vega. We're going to the Pyrenees."
The climb into the Pyrenees was a test of infernal endurance that nearly broke the regiment's spirit.
As the Spanish troops advanced toward the Aran Valley, Barcelona's Mediterranean landscape gave way to gray cliffs and pine forests choked with dense snow.
The wind blowing from the French side cut the skin like razors, and the mules hauling the heavy bronze cannons slipped on the icy passes, plunging into bottomless abysses with echoing crashes.
The soldiers, poorly clothed due to the corruption Mendoza had encouraged in the supply lines, marched with their feet wrapped in bloodied rags.
Alejandro, now at the vanguard of the detachment, led the men, clearing a path with pickaxes and improvising bridges over frozen crevasses.
He did not cover himself in the luxurious furs the other noble captains wore; he marched on foot, side by side with the enlisted men, carrying his own equipment.
In early December, the detachment finally reached the summit of the assigned pass. The situation was catastrophic. The position the Crown had ordered them to defend was an open gorge, ringed by higher peaks from which any enemy could fire down with absolute advantage.
"It's a perfect trap," a veteran sergeant murmured, teeth chattering with cold as he scanned the white horizon. "If the French show up with artillery on those ridges, we'll be massacred before dawn."
"They won't show up, sergeant. They're already here," Alejandro corrected, pointing his spyglass toward the mist at the base of the valley.
Through the lens, he saw the tattered but fearsome blue uniforms of the French revolutionary army. These were not ordinary soldiers; they were the Jacobins, fanatically loyal to the Republic, advancing in silence with batteries of light mountain guns, ready to flank the Spanish positions.
"Breaking off in retreat isn't an option," said Don Luiz, appearing on horseback behind Alejandro, his military cape whipping in the icy wind.
"If we pull back along the narrow roads now, their cavalry will hunt us from behind. Our duty is to hold this pass for forty-eight hours to let the bulk of the Spanish army regroup at the rear. Alejandro... Barcelona's science needs to work now.
How do we block this gorge with the few cannons we have left?"
Alejandro closed the spyglass and spread the topographic map over an ice-covered rock.
His engineer's mind began spinning at high speed, calculating angles, snow masses, and the acoustics of the mountains.
He looked at the white peaks surrounding the valley, and suddenly a bold, dangerous idea lit up his eyes.
"We're not going to raise earthworks, my captain," Alejandro said, pointing to the crest of the highest cliff, looming directly above the French line of advance.
"The snow up there has been accumulating for weeks, unstable from the night's ice. If we use our cannons not to fire on the French soldiers, but against that specific wall of ice..."
Don Luiz narrowed his gray eye, instantly grasping the terrifying genius of his pupil's tactic.
"A ballistically induced avalanche."
"Exactly," Alejandro confirmed. "But the calculation has to be exact to the millimeter. If we fire too low, the impact just scatters the snow. If we fire too high, the avalanche falls on us. I need to align the main cannon myself."
The tension reached its peak as the first French war cries echoed through the pass.
The revolutionaries began advancing en masse, silent bayonets gleaming under the pale winter light, climbing the slope certain they would crush the small Spanish detachment.
The muskets began to crackle, covering the valley with smoke and the whine of bullets in the frigid air.
Spanish soldiers fell in the snow, staining the white with red.
Alejandro ran to the one heavy artillery piece remaining on the ridge.
His hands were frozen, nearly numb, but he refused to wear gloves for the sake of precision.
With the compass and brass quadrant, he measured the elevation of the upper ice crest.
The wind shifted with every second, threatening to throw off the trajectory of the heavy iron ball.
"They're two hundred meters out, captain!" the sergeant shouted, as French bullets chipped the rocks around the cannon. "If we don't fire now, they'll take our line!"
"Wait..." Alejandro ordered, his eye fixed on the line of sight, calculating the vector of the north wind.
The French advanced, singing the Marseillaise, mere steps from burying the Spanish vanguard. Don Luiz had already drawn his sword, leading the infantry line in hand-to-hand combat in the deep snow.
"Now!" Alejandro roared, pulling the cord with all the strength of his calloused arms.