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Juana By: Honoré de Balzac (1799-1850) |
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BY HONORE DE BALZAC Translated By Katharine Prescott Wormeley DEDICATION To Madame la Comtesse Merlin.
JUANA (THE MARANAS)
CHAPTER I. EXPOSITION Notwithstanding the discipline which Marechal Suchet had introduced into
his army corps, he was unable to prevent a short period of trouble and
disorder at the taking of Tarragona. According to certain fair minded
military men, this intoxication of victory bore a striking resemblance
to pillage, though the marechal promptly suppressed it. Order being
re established, each regiment quartered in its respective lines, and
the commandant of the city appointed, military administration began. The
place assumed a mongrel aspect. Though all things were organized on a
French system, the Spaniards were left free to follow "in petto" their
national tastes. This period of pillage (it is difficult to determine how long it lasted)
had, like all other sublunary effects, a cause, not so difficult
to discover. In the marechal's army was a regiment, composed almost
entirely of Italians and commanded by a certain Colonel Eugene, a man
of remarkable bravery, a second Murat, who, having entered the military
service too late, obtained neither a Grand Duchy of Berg nor a Kingdom
of Naples, nor balls at the Pizzo. But if he won no crown he had ample
opportunity to obtain wounds, and it was not surprising that he met with
several. His regiment was composed of the scattered fragments of the
Italian legion. This legion was to Italy what the colonial battalions
are to France. Its permanent cantonments, established on the island of
Elba, served as an honorable place of exile for the troublesome sons of
good families and for those great men who have just missed greatness,
whom society brands with a hot iron and designates by the term "mauvais
sujets"; men who are for the most part misunderstood; whose existence
may become either noble through the smile of a woman lifting them out
of their rut, or shocking at the close of an orgy under the influence of
some damnable reflection dropped by a drunken comrade. Napoleon had incorporated these vigorous beings in the sixth of the
line, hoping to metamorphose them finally into generals, barring those
whom the bullets might take off. But the emperor's calculation was
scarcely fulfilled, except in the matter of the bullets. This regiment,
often decimated but always the same in character, acquired a great
reputation for valor in the field and for wickedness in private life.
At the siege of Tarragona it lost its celebrated hero, Bianchi, the man
who, during the campaign, had wagered that he would eat the heart of a
Spanish sentinel, and did eat it. Though Bianchi was the prince of the
devils incarnate to whom the regiment owed its dual reputation, he had,
nevertheless, that sort of chivalrous honor which excuses, in the army,
the worst excesses. In a word, he would have been, at an earlier period,
an admirable pirate. A few days before his death he distinguished
himself by a daring action which the marechal wished to reward. Bianchi
refused rank, pension, and additional decoration, asking, for sole
recompense, the favor of being the first to mount the breach at the
assault on Tarragona. The marechal granted the request and then forgot
his promise; but Bianchi forced him to remember Bianchi. The enraged
hero was the first to plant our flag on the wall, where he was shot by a
monk. This historical digression was necessary, in order to explain how it was
that the 6th of the line was the regiment to enter Tarragona, and why
the disorder and confusion, natural enough in a city taken by storm,
degenerated for a time into a slight pillage. This regiment possessed two officers, not at all remarkable among these
men of iron, who played, nevertheless, in the history we shall now
relate, a somewhat important part. The first, a captain in the quartermaster's department, an officer half
civil, half military, was considered, in soldier phrase, to be fighting
his own battle... Continue reading book >>
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