The Marquis of Bolibar Read online

  Leo Perutz

  THE MARQUIS OF BOLIBAR

  Translated from the German by John Brownjohn

  Perutz, Leo [Der Marques de Bolibar, English] The marquis of Bolibar. 1. Title II. Brownjohn (J. Maxwell), John Maxwell, ISBN 0-00-271095-1

  Published in Austria by Paul Zsolnay Verlag, Vienna under the title Der Marques de Bolibar Originally published in Great.Britain 1926 First published by Collins Har.vill 1989

  CONTENTS

  FOREWORD

  A MORNING WALK

  THE TANNER'S TUB

  THREE SIGNALS

  SNOW ON THE ROOFS

  CAPTAIN DE SALIGNAC

  THE COMING OF GOD

  GERMAN SERENADE

  TROUNCED

  WITH SAUL TO ENDOR

  A FORGATHERING OF SAINTS

  THE SONG OF TALAVERA

  FIRE

  A PRAYER

  THE COURIER

  INSURRECTION

  THE BLUE BUTTERCUP

  THE FINAL SIGNAL

  CATASTROPHE

  THE MARQUIS OF BOLIBAR

  FOREWORD

  The death of Eduard von Jochberg occurred at Dillenburg, a small town in the former Duchy of Nassau, not long before the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War. An eccentric and almost pathologically uncommunicative old gentleman, he spent most of each year on his country estate. It was only toward the end of his life, when his health began to fail, that he moved to the little market town for good.

  None of Herr von Jochberg's few close acquaintances — horses and hounds were his principal companions - knew that he was an old soldier who had, in his youth, participated in some of Napoleon I's campaigns. No one had ever heard him allude to his experiences during this period of his life, far less describe them in detail. Those who had known him were all the more surprised, therefore, when his personal effects yielded a bundle of manuscript, neatly tied and sealed, which proved on closer scrutiny to be his recollections of the Peninsular War.

  This unexpected find caused a considerable stir throughout the province of Nassau and in the adjoining Grand Duchy of Hesse. Articles on Herr von Jochberg's memoirs appeared in the local press, together with long excerpts therefrom; scholars of repute inspected them; and the dead man's heirs — his nephew Wilhelm von Jochberg, a lecturer at Bonn University, and an elderly lady from Aachen named Fräulein von Härtung — were bombarded with offers by publishers. In short, Herr von Jochberg's memoirs were on everyone's lips, and even the war, which broke out soon afterwards, proved insufficient to dispel all public interest in them.

  Why? Because they dealt with an obscure and hitherto unexplained chapter in German military history: the annihilation by Spanish guerrillas of two local regiments, the Nassau and the Prince of Hesse's Own.

  Little information about this episode in the Spanish campaign can be gleaned from the literature on the subject. August Scherbruch, a captain in the service of the Grand Duchy of Hesse and a noted military historian of the Napoleonic era, devotes only two-and-a-half lines to "the tragedy of La Bisbal" in Der Kampf auf der Pyrenäischen Halbinsel, 1807-1813, a six- volume work published by Langermann of Halle. Stranger still, Dr Hermann Schwartze, a Darmstadt historian who published an extremely painstaking account of the part played in Napoleon I's campaigns by Hessian troops, makes no reference whatever to the fact that two regiments belonging to the Confederation of the Rhine were wiped out to a man. It also escapes mention in the less comprehensive works by Kraus, Leistikov, and Fischer-Tübingen. A critical study entitled Die Rheinbundtruppen in Spanien. Ein Beitrag zur Strategie der Unvernunft (Karlsruhe 1826) and published anonymously, doubtless by an officer discharged from the forces of Baden, is the only one to deal at length with "the catastrophe of La Bisbal", but without contributing any details of moment. It does, however, identify the officer commanding both regiments as Colonel von Leslie, a name that recurs in Lieutenant von Jochberg's memoirs.

  Not unnaturally, somewhat fuller accounts are given by the opposing side. Among the major works available to me I would cite that by Don Silvio Gaeta, a colonel on the Spanish General Staff, who concludes that the defeat of the German troops at La Bisbal represented a definite turning point in the course of the campaign and crucially affected General Cuesta's further operations. Simon Ventura, an apothecary who, in addition to a life of Santa Maria de'Pazzi, a Handbook for Amateurs of Fungi and The Tulip Festival, a tragedy rather too turgid in style for the modern taste, wrote a history of his native La Bisbal, displays a largely accurate but purely superficial knowledge of the course of events. Pedro Orosco, too, mentions the destruction of the two regiments in Los jefers de la guerilla en las Asturias, a work of which I possess one of the few extant copies, though his account teems with glaring errors and inaccuracies.

  All in all, however, these and other Spanish historical works do little or nothing to explain the astonishing fact that both German regiments vanished without trace. Lieutenant von Jochberg's literary remains alone shed light on the strange events that ultimately conduced to the tragedy at La Bisbal.

  If Jochberg's account is correct, it presents us with a phenomenon unique in the annals of military history: the annihilation of the Nassau Regiment was directly occasioned - indeed, almost deliberately engineered - by its own officers! Despite the modern tendency to enlist explanations of an occult and mystical nature, not to mention concepts such as the "death wish" or autosuggestion, one finds this hard to credit. Professional historians will doubtless take a sceptical view of Lieutenant von Jochberg's memoirs and dismiss them as unduly fanciful. Far be it from me to censure them on that account. After all, how great a critical faculty can one attribute to a man who became convinced that one of the persons he encountered in Spain was the legendary Wandering Jew?

  Lieutenant von Jochberg's reminiscences have been abridged to some two-thirds of their original length. Many passages not directly relevant to the subject - an account of the fighting at Talavera and Torres Vedras, a description of the so-called "stick dance" at La Bisbal, sundry digressions and conversations of a political, philosophical and literary nature, an appreciation of the art treasures in La Bisbal's town hall, and a long-winded exposition of the genealogical ties between Jochberg's family and that of Captain Count Schenk zu Castel-Borckenstein - all these have fallen prey to the editor's pencil. While denying the reader much that is of historical interest, this has enhanced the narrative's impact and inherent suspense.

  And now let Lieutenant von Jochberg himself recount the singular experiences he underwent at La Bisbal, a town in the Asturian highlands, during the winter of 1812.

  A MORNING WALK

  It was eight in the morning when we at last sighted the two white church towers of La Bisbal. We were soaked to the skin, I and my fifteen dragoons and Captain von Eglofstein, the regimental adjutant, who had come to negotiate with the alcalde, or mayor of the town.

  Our regiment had, the previous day, survived a fierce encounter with the guerrillas under their Colonel Saracho, whom our men for some reason unknown to me - perhaps on account of his corpulent figure - called the "Tanner's Tub". Having succeeded toward nightfall in scattering the rebels, we pursued them into their forests and very nearly captured Saracho himself, for he suffered from gout and could move but slowly on foot.

  Thereafter we bivouacked in open country, much to the chagrin of my dragoons, who cursed their inability even to obtain some dry straw on which to sleep after such a day's exertions. I jokingly promised each of them a feather bed with silken curtains once we reached La Bisbal, and they professed themselves content.

  I myself spent a part of the night with Eglofstein and Donop in the colonel's quarters. We drank mulled wine and played faro, hoping to cheer him, but he so persisted
in talking of his late wife that we had to put down our cards and listen — and it was all we could do not to give ourselves away, for there was no officer in the whole of the Nassau Regiment whose mistress Françoise-Marie had not at some time been.

  I set out with Eglofstein and my dragoons at five in the morning. "Prenez garde des guerillas!" the colonel called after me as I rode off. It was a task that properly belonged to the officer of the day, but, being the most junior subaltern in the regiment, I had no choice.

  The road was clear and the insurgents gave us no trouble. A few dead mules lay in our path. Just outside the village of Figueras we came upon two dead Spaniards who had dragged themselves thus far in a moribund condition. One was a guerrilla belonging to Saracho's band, the other wore the uniform of the Numancia Regiment. They must have been hoping to reach the village under cover of darkness when death overtook them.

  Figueras itself we found entirely deserted by its inhabitants, the peasants having fled into the mountains with their herds of sheep. Three or four Spaniards — dispersas, or stragglers cut off from Saracho's main force - were sitting in a tavern on the outskirts of the village, but they hurriedly made off at our approach. They yelled "Muerte a los Franceses!" like madmen as soon as they reached the edge of the forest, but none of them fired a shot. "For ever and ever, amen, you he-goats!" Such was the shouted response of one of my dragoons, Corporal Thiele, who thought — God alone knows why - that "Muerte a los Franceses" signified "Praise the Lord Jesus" in German.

  On reaching our destination we found the alcalde awaiting us outside the town gate with the entire junta and several other citizens. He stepped forward as we dismounted and greeted us with the words that were customary on such occasions. La Bisbal, he assured us, was well-disposed toward the French because Colonel Saracho's guerrillas had done its citizens much harm, looted their property, and driven off the peasants' cattle. Such ill-disposed people as had settled in the town were very few. He begged us to be merciful, for he and his fellow citizens were eager to do all in their power to assist the gallant soldiers of the great Napoleon. Eglofstein curtly replied that he himself could promise nothing: the colonel's decision alone would determine what treatment the town could expect. He then accompanied the alcalde and his clerk to the town hall to have the billeting warrants made out. The townsfolk who had mutely and apprehensively witnessed this conversation, hat in hand, dispersed and hurried home to their wives.

  Having posted some of my men at the gate, I repaired to a roadside posada or inn beyond the walls, there to await the arrival of the regiment over a cup of hot chocolate, which the landlord produced with alacrity.

  After breakfast I went out into the garden, for the air in the cramped little tap-room stank of boiled fish and had made me queasy. The garden was neither large nor well-tended, the landlord having planted it at random with onions and garlic, pumpkins and broad beans, but the scent of the rain-sodden soil did me good. Moreover, the garden adjoined a spacious park in which grew fig trees, elms, and walnut trees. A narrow footpath flanked by yew hedges led between expanses of grass to a pool, and in the background stood a white-walled country house whose slate roof, wet with rain, I had earlier glimpsed from the road.

  My corporal followed me out of the tap-room and into the garden. Exceedingly annoyed, he strode up to me with a reproachful air.

  "Lieutenant!" he cried. "Musty flour in our breakfast gruel, soup at midday, and bread and garlic for supper — such has been our fare for weeks now, yet when one of us stopped a peasant on the road and requisitioned an egg or two, he was brought before a court martial. Tables laden with food, the best wine put to cool, and a goodly piece of bacon in every cook-pot — that was what you promised us when we reached La Bisbal, and now ..."

  "Well? What did the landlord serve you?"

  "Rotten little pincer-fish, twelve for a groschen!" the corporal cried angrily, and thrust his hand under my nose. On it reposed a small shrimp such as Spanish peasants steep in jugs of vinegar.

  "Come now, Thiele," I replied in jocular vein, "the Bible tells us that God gave man everything that moveth and liveth to be for his meat, so why not that shrimp?"

  The corporal opened his mouth to remonstrate, but no adequate rejoinder to my Biblical quotation occurred to him.

  A moment later he put a finger to his lips and gripped me by the wrist. He had seen something that made him forget his ill- temper in an instant.

  "Lieutenant," he said softly, "there's someone hiding over yonder."

  I dropped to the ground in a trice and crawled stealthily toward the garden fence.

  "One of the guerrillas," the corporal whispered close beside me, "— there, under that bush.'

  Sure enough, I saw a man crouching among the laurel bushes barely ten paces from me. He carried neither sword nor musket; if he was armed, he must have had his weapons concealed beneath his clothes.

  "There's another - and another, and another! There must be more than a dozen of them, Lieutenant. What devil's work can they be up to?"

  I could make out more men lying or crouching everywhere — behind the trunks of the elms and walnut trees, in the yew hedges, in the bushes, on the grass. As yet, none of them appeared to have seen us.

  "I'll hurry back to the inn and warn the others," whispered the corporal. "This must be the guerrillas' lair or headquarters. The Tanner's Tub cannot be far away."

  Just then a tall old man in a dark cloak trimmed with velvet came out of the house and slowly descended the steps, head bowed.

  "They're after him, I'll wager," I said softly, and drew my pistol.

  "The bandits plan to murder him!" hissed the corporal.

  "When I vault the fence," I told him, "follow me and have at them." No sooner had I spoken than a figure rose from the lee of a mound of gravel and ran up behind the old man.

  I raised the pistol and took aim, only to lower it a moment later, for then we witnessed the strangest occurrence I ever saw in my life. One of my mother's brothers is a physician to a lunatic asylum at Kissingen - I used to visit him on occasion as a boy — and in truth, I now fancied myself transported to the garden of that same madhouse. One pace to the old man's rear the fellow came to a halt, doffed his cap, and addressed him at the top of his voice.

  "Greetings, Señor Marques de Bolibar! A very good morning to Your Excellency!"

  The same instant, a lanky, bald-headed fellow in muleteer's garb darted out from behind a sandstone statue. He, too, pranced clumsily up to the old man, halted, and bowed low.

  "My respects, Señor Marques. May you live a thousand years."

  But the strangest thing of all was that the old man continued on his way as if he had neither seen nor heard the pair of them. I could discern his face, now that he was closer to me, and inordinately stiff and motionless it looked. His locks were snow-white, his brow and cheeks pale, his eyes lowered. As for his bold and terrible cast of feature, I shall never forget it.

  While he walked on, the other men deserted their places of concealment one by one. Like figures in a puppet show they popped out of bushes, emerged from behind tree trunks and under garden benches, jumped down from trees, and, placing themselves in his path, accosted him.

  "Your most obedient servant, Señor Marques de Bolibar!"

  "Good day, Señor Marques. How fares Your Grace?"

  "My humblest respects, Your Honour!"

  But the nobleman threaded his way in silence through the lackeys who swarmed around him like flies around a dish of honey. He made no attempt to fend off their importunities. His face was as unmoved as if all these noisy salutations were directed, not at him, but at some other person invisible to me.

  While the corporal and I were gazing open-mouthed at this curious spectacle, a shaggy little fellow darted out of a summer- house and minced up to the old man in the manner of a dancing master. Having halted, he busily scratched at the ground with his feet like a hen on a dunghill and addressed him in execrable French.

  "If it isn't my frien
d Bolibar! Delighted to see you!"

  But not even he, who behaved as if they were the best of friends, attracted a single glance. A lone figure lost in thought, or so it seemed, the old nobleman returned to his house, climbed the steps, and, as silently as he had come, vanished into the gloomy interior.

  We rose to our feet and watched while the servants, arm in arm now, followed their master into the house in small groups, chatting and smoking as they went.

  "Well," I said to the corporal, "what the devil was all that about?"

  He thought awhile. Then he said, "These Spanish grandees are dignified beyond measure and melancholy in the extreme. It's in their nature to be so."

  "The Marquis of Bolibar must be a perfect idiot, so his servants treat him as such and make sport of him. Come, let's return to the tap-room. The landlord will be able to tell us why the Marquis's gardeners, coachmen, grooms and lackeys greeted him with such ceremony, and why they earned no thanks for it."

  "They were celebrating his name-day, I'll be bound," said the corporal. "If you wish to return to the tap-room, Lieutenant, do so alone. I would sooner remain outside than venture back into that rat's nest. The tablecloth is as tattered as our regimental colours after the battle of Talavera, and the landlord's floor is covered with dung enough to dress every Spanish field between Pamplona and Malaga."

  He lingered outside the door while I betook myself to the proprietor of the posada, who was busy frying thin slices of bread in oil. His wife was lying on the floor and fanning the flames with the aid of a makeshift bellows, the tube being an old musket barrel.

  "Who owns the big house over yonder?" I asked.

  "A nobleman," replied the landlord, without looking up from his work. "The wealthiest man in the entire province."

  "I can well believe that such a mansion wasn't built to house geese or goats," I said. "How does the owner style himself?"

  The landlord eyed me warily. "His Excellency the noble Señor Marques de Bolibar," he said at length.