When the other events of the Spanish war shall be lost in the obscurity of time, or only traced by disconnected fragments, the story of Zaragoza, like some ancient triumphal pillar standing amidst rui...

It was, I believe, the evening of the eighteenth when we saw Saragossa in the distance. As we entered by the Puerta de Sancho we heard the clock in the Torre Nueva strike ten. We were in an extremely ...

The place where we lay down did not by any blandishments invite us to sleep luxuriously until morning, and certainly a mattress of broken stones is conducive to early rising. We wakened with the dawn;...

But, alas! Don José de Montoria was not in his house, and we found it necessary to go a little way out of the city to look for him. Two of my companions, tired of so much going and coming, left us wit...

Before we left his house, Montoria became vexed at Don Roque and me because we would not take the money that he offered us for our first expenses in the city; then were repeated the blows on the table...

“Gabriel,” he said to me one morning, “dost thou not feel like smashing something?” “Augustine, dost thou not feel like smashing something?” I responded. It will be seen that we were “thee-ing” and “t...

The French had assaulted with great vigor the fortified positions of the Torrero. Ten thousand men defended them, commanded by Don Philip Saint March and by O’Neill, both generals of great merit. The ...

Night came, and when a part of our troops fell back upon the city, all of the people hastened to the suburb to look at the field of battle from near at hand, and to gladden their imaginations by going...

The following day, the twenty-second, Palafox said to the messenger who came under a flag of truce from Moncey to propose terms of surrender. “I do not know how to surrender. After death, we will talk...

From that day, as memorable in the second siege as Eras in the first siege, began the great work in whose frenzy and exaltation both besiegers and besieged lived for the next month and a half. The sor...

When I woke at daybreak the next morning I saw Montoria, who was passing by the wall. “I believe that the bombardment is going to begin,” he said to me; “there is a great activity in the enemy’s lines...

The fortress of San José had surrendered, or rather the French had entered it when their artillery had reduced it to powder, and all of its defenders had fallen, one by one, to lie among its fragments...

My battalion did not take part in the sorties of the days of the twenty-second and twenty-fourth, nor in the defence of the Molino and the positions situated at the back of San José, made glorious by ...

When we had finished carrying out the flour, I went and looked for Augustine; but I could find him nowhere, neither in his father’s house, nor at the headquarters of supplies, nor in the Coso, nor in ...

Augustine Montoria and I stood guard with our battalion in the Molino until after nightfall, the hour when we were relieved by the Huesca volunteers; then we permitted ourselves to be all night outsid...

We deceived the old man and went. The night was now far advanced, as the interment which I have just described had lasted more than three hours. The light of the fire could no longer be seen. The mass...

While they were talking, I observed the face of Mariquilla, which seemed in the darkness as if modelled of white wax, and of the soft tone and finish of ivory. From her black eyes, whenever she raised...

While the cannons on the Mediodía were throwing bombs into the centre of the city, the cannon on the east side were discharging solid balls upon the weak walls of Las Mónicas, and the fortifications o...

The French had taken possession also of the battery of Los Mártires. That same afternoon they were masters of the ruins of Santa Engracia and the convent of Trinitarios. Is it conceivable that the def...

The firing of the guns and cannon ceased. A great splendor was illumining the city. It was the burning of the Audiencia. The fire, beginning about midnight, was devouring all four sides of that splend...

I slept from three o’clock until daybreak, and in the morning we heard mass in the Coso. In the large balcony of a house called Las Monas at the entrance of the Calle de las Escuelas Pías all the prie...

On reaching this point in my story, I beg the reader to pardon me if I do not give the dates exactly of that which I relate. In this period of horror, lasting from January 27 to the middle of the next...

The good fathers encouraged us with their exhortations, and some of them, mingling with us in the most dangerous places in the ranks, said to us⁠— “My sons, do not be discouraged. Foreseeing this even...

Incorporated into the battalion of Estremadura, we went along the Calle de Palomar into the Plaza de la Magdalena, whence we could hear the roar of battle at the end of the Calle de Puerta Quemada. As...

As I have said, Palafox pulled us together; and although we abandoned almost all of the Calle de Pabostre, we remained strong in the Puerta Quemada. If the battle was bloody until three, the hour when...

Presently he seated himself upon a pile of stones, beating his brow from time to time, and without loosening his hold of the chicken, he laid his hand upon his heart, sighing deeply. I questioned him ...

On the third of February, the French gained possession of the Convent of Jerusalem,1 which was between Santa Engracia and the hospital. The battle which succeeded the conquest of such an important pos...

That afternoon almost all the efforts of the French were directed against the suburb from the left of the Ebro. They assaulted the Monastery of Jesus, and bombarded the Church of the Virgin del Pilar,...

The possession of San Francisco would decide the fate of the city. That vast edifice, situated in the middle of the Coso, gave an incontestable superiority to the side which occupied it. The French be...

Will Saragossa surrender? Death to him who says it! Saragossa will not surrender. She will be reduced to powder. Of her historic houses, let not one brick remain upon another! Let her hundred temples ...

Horrible nightmare, leave me! I do not wish to sleep. But the bad dream which I long to fling from my remembrance returns to distress me. I wish I could blot from my memory the melancholy scene. But o...

It was the twenty-first day of February. A man whom I did not know came up to me, and said⁠— “Come, Gabriel, I have need of thee.” “Who are you?” I asked him. “I do not recognize you.” “I am Augustine...

Today the Convent of Jerusalem still exists in a restored condition. Its façade is towards the Hall of Independence. The hospital occupied the place where the Hotel de l’Europe stands. The present Pal...