Somewhere in Spain, 1810
The private looks up from the mud and thinks about his past. He thinks of his life as a sheep herder in the mountains of France. He smiles at his children at home, who are hopefully safe. But then, a tear rolls down his cheek as he thinks of the fateful day the recruiter dragged him away for service. His colonial shouting orders in French wake him from this dream, “Get up, you lazy dogs! Napoleon needs you!” The private sneers out of view from the colonial, “That Emperor,” he thinks, “how dare he take me away from my family.”
They marched for hours through the fog, looking warily around for the Spanish. They hadn’t marched another mile before a yell came out from the mist. The private looked around him, eyes wide, as he realized that that wasn’t a French yell but the horrid Spanish battle cry. Suddenly, thousands of yells emerged from behind the trees and the rocks. They had come. The colonial yelled out orders in French, “Steadfast men! Hold your ground!” Shots came swirling around them, and many fell. The private’s shaken hands loaded his gun somewhat steady against his shoulder as he shot for his life. The skirmish continued for a few minutes until the French got reinforcements from a nearby regiment, who pushed the Spanish guerrillas back into the fog. As the private calmed himself from the fight, he asked the man next to him where they were going. the man said gruffly, “Córdoba”
After a few days of fighting the guerrillas, marching, and camping, the men finally arrived at their destination, Córdoba. They set up camp and rested their weary feet. The private went around the camp checking on his fellow comrades. Some dried their wet and blistered feet, while others tended to their wounds. When he returned to his tent, the private wrote about the daily march and the situation in his journal. Suddenly, the fog lifted to reveal the other regiments and the battered city. The private stared at the city before the colonial shouted that it was time to eat. The soldiers pulled out their daily rations and looked disgusted at the rotten, molded, meager portions they got. After the meal, the soldiers sat around fires and talked about rumors that had sprung up. Suddenly, someone called out, “Hey! I just heard that we’re storming the city tomorrow!” The camp fell silent. “Storming the city?” the private thought, “That can’t be true.” The private lie awake at night, thinking of the potential assault on the city. He thought about this before dismissing it as fake and fell asleep.
He awoke early in the morning with colonial, who was shouting orders. The troops rushed for their guns and fell into line. They marched forward and saw that while they were sleeping, the artillery crews opened up gaps in the walls for them to storm the walls. When they got into running range of the city, they ran forward. Shots whizzed around them, cutting their clothes like invisible shears, and men fell in droves. They advanced with caution, shooting and then running. They did this until they got within a hundred feet of the fortifications and charged. They showed their bayonets and fired blindly into the houses. They stormed the city. They sacked it. Taking gold and silver for their own. Their commander was dead, but they kept going farther and farther into the jaws of death.
It was noon when the French flag flew over the courthouses, but it took until one to take all government buildings. The sacking continued for the rest of the afternoon, and the city was taken entirely by evening.
At the end of it all, the private had survived. He sat atop a house, looking out from the rubble. Alone, he wondered aloud, “What’s next?”
