As the excellent meal was about to end we were visited by the alcalde of Astorga, who said, thinking that I was British, ‘We are pleased to have you among us … in spite of what happened.’ When he had gone I asked Don Luis what had happened, and he replied, ‘He was referring to those unhappy days at the beginning of the last century when Napoleon besieged the city and knocked down many of the walls, the time when Sir John Moore allowed his troops to sack the place.’
‘Sir John Moore?’ I asked, surprised by such an accusation against my old friend.
‘Yes. He may be a hero to the British …’
‘He is to me. To everyone,’ and I recited the opening lines:
‘Not a drum was heard, not a funeral note,
As his corse to the rampart we hurried …’
‘Actually, he was a miserably poor general who made a botch of the whole matter. He came to protect Spain from the French but ended by destroying more than the French ever did.’
‘Are you talking about the great hero who died at La Coruña?’
‘I would advise you not to speak of him that way in a public restaurant in Astorga. Here we remember him as the general who abandoned his Spanish allies, the people of Astorga and the wives and children of his own British troops. Unlike other armies of the time, the English army still encouraged its men to bring their families along, and Moore sacrificed the lot.’ He then referred to a book he had recently read, the memoirs of General Baron de Marbot, aide-de-camp of Marshals Murat and Masséna and personal courier of Napoleon. ‘Marbot claims that Napoleon lost his world campaign in Spain, and his Spanish campaign in Astorga.’
‘But I thought you said Moore was defeated here.’
‘The point Marbot was making was sardonic. In the days following the victory at Astorga, Napoleon made three fatal mistakes that ensured his ultimate defeat. He took prisoner the Spanish royal family, which gave us something to rally around. He sorely underestimated the patriotism of the Spanish people, who were not going to be supine like the Italian and German collaborators he had met elsewhere. And worst mistake of all, at La Coruña he killed Sir John Moore, who was the most ineffectual general he faced, thus making way for Wellington, who was the best.’
The purpose of the alcalde’s visit had been to extend an invitation to see Astorga’s cathedral, but this I did not see, for as we were approaching it my eye was taken by a black-and-white structure so far removed from normal experience that I cried, ‘The Brothers Grimm must have built it,’ for what I saw was a delightful fairy-tale castle, the epitome of all the towers and moats one has imagined as a child. Yet it was very real and four stories tall. I was about to ask what it was when some detail of its construction caught my eye, an inspired portal that reminded me of Barcelona, and I cried, ‘Don’t tell me. It’s Gaudí!’ Don Luis nodded. Only the elfin architect of the unfinished church in Barcelona could have built such a fantasy. ‘How did he get to Astorga?’ I asked.
And Don Luis explained, ‘In 1887 Astorga’s bishop was a Catalan, the inspired Juan Bautista Grau Vallespinos, and as you already know, Catalans are cliquish, so when the tempter Gaudí came whispering to the bishop, the latter was inclined to listen. It was from this conspiracy that the grandiose plan developed for building near the cathedral of Astorga a supermagnificent bishop’s palace.’ The two Catalans dreamed up a building which was not an ordinary religious edifice but the grandest episcopal palace built since the days of the Piccolomini in Siena.
It would be Gothic in basic design, but a grander Gothic than men had seen before. It would have spires and turrets to tease the eye, donjons and mighty winged angels and drawbridges and battlements galore. There would be no flat walls, for each would be broken by arbitrary round towers; only pure white stones would be used, so that the building could be seen from afar, but between them a black cement would be laid so as to emphasize horizontal lines.
Inside, the palace would be as luxurious as the nineteenth century could produce, with ornate halls, complete chapels, audience rooms that would have delighted a Medici, dining salons that would seat scores of prelates, and lesser rooms by the dozen, each its own work of art. The finest contemporary painters, sculptors and tapestry weavers would provide ornament for the palace, and every window would be a masterpiece in stained glass.
Grandiose as the dream was, it came true. When I first saw the result, as lovely as the two inspired Catalans had intended it to be, I liked it, and the more I saw the more I liked it. From top to bottom there is not a false note on either the outside or the in. The two men who contrived this building were men of vision and joy, but I shall not try to describe in detail the perfection of their construction: the beauty of arch ribs made of red brick with lines of white cement, the manner in which the afternoon sun comes through the tesselated windows, the Moorish arches on one floor, as lovely as anything in Córdoba, the Gothic arches on the floor above, the grandeur of the paintings, and the sweeping splendor of the circular staircases. What I should like to point out, however, is that even in the basement the excellence of Gaudí’s inspiration is visible; in fact, it is more apparent there than elsewhere because one least expects it. The pillars are so varied that they have a kind of orchestral beauty, yet each with a function that proves Gaudí to have been well trained in classic architecture. One of the most impressive modern sights I was to see in Spain was this simple yet magnificent basement.
I spent profitable hours studying the place and concluded that it was a monument to the expensive relationship between any architect and his client, for I could hear Antoni Gaudí assuring his bishop, perhaps in the Restaurante La Peseta over a dish of marinated pork and garbanzos, ‘Look, Bautista, you’re already in up to your neck. Why not find a little more money somewhere and we’ll dig a moat around the whole thing.’ The moat is there, deep and wide and paved.
Unfortunately, Bishop Grau died in 1893, when construction had been under way for only six years, and work was halted. Gaudí was fired as architect and the unfinished palace stood as a Church scandal. A poor district like Astorga had no excuse for having such an edifice and for years it stood empty. When in 1905–1909 it was brought to grudging completion, subsequent bishops were ashamed to occupy it, but in the 1960s Bishop Marcelo Gonzáles Martín, who many believe may one day be the primate of Spain, cut the Gordian knot and decreed, ‘The palace will be a museum dedicated to showing life along the Way of St. James in the Middle Ages.’ At last the dreamlike building has a function, which it performs well.
I cannot join in the chorus of abuse which has been heaped upon both the palace and the bishop who authorized it. It is not something that I as bishop would have constructed for a city like Astorga, nor is it a building I would have planned had I been the architect. It is about as unfunctional a structure as one could imagine, and yet, of all the buildings erected along the Way of St. James in the last three hundred years, it and the new church at Estella are the only ones that capture the spiritual grandeur of the pilgrims’ way. I believe that the millions who trod these stones in ages past would approve, in a contrary sort of way, of what the two crazy Catalans did, for in its flamboyant yet dedicated style, this bizarre palace represents the continuity of the spirit which animated the pilgrims. A church ought to be big enough to absorb unique personalities like that of Gaudí and Bishop Grau. I for one was totally delighted with their majestic nonsense.
At Ponferrada, on the other hand, I came upon a structure which elicited no delight. There, on a high hill overlooking a network of valleys, which because of the gold and silver they contained have throughout history been of strategic importance, a massive castle was erected in the early eleventh century. Manned by the Knights Templars, it played a major role in policing one of the wilder parts of Spain, but today the empty old building sleeps quietly on its hill, one of the best-preserved ruins of its age in Europe.
Why does the old fortress provoke mournful connotations? Not because of what I know took place here but because of what I can imagine
. In the Crusades the Knights Templars played an honorable role, even though they sometimes found it necessary to reject kingly and Papal leadership and go their own way. During a report I once made on the siege of Acre in 1291, the final Christian defeat in the Crusades, I found occasion to study the Knights Templars in some detail as they evacuated the Holy Land in retreat to Cyprus, where they set about establishing that kind of semi-autonomous kingdom which had marked their occupancy of Jerusalem. In the Holy Land they had been too powerful for kings to discipline; they disciplined kings. But now they had come on evil days, so in 1306 the King of France, Philip IV, and his Francophile Pope, Clement V, decided that the time was at hand to exterminate these fractious knights.
Accordingly, in 1307, in what has always seemed to historians one of the worst connivances in history, brutal charges were brought against the Templars, and dissident members were produced to testify that when they had joined the Templars they had been forced to submit to sodomy, that the rulers of the order expropriated funds rightfully belonging to either Pope or king, and worst of all, that at initiation ceremonies the Mass was said backward and made a mockery.
In hideous manner with fire and torture the leaders were executed. Lesser members were hanged. The rank and file were scourged from their castles and turned loose to wander across the countryside, and by 1312 this once-great order was eradicated, its holdings absorbed by Church and king. Looking at the Templars’ castle in Ponferrada, I could not help speculating upon the terror which must have overtaken this mighty fortress when word reached Spain that the King of France and the Pope had found the order heretical and had ordered it dissolved at whatever cost. Which disgruntled underlings, thirsting for revenge, lied about their superiors in this fortress? Which addlepated young men swore that their seniors had forced sodomy upon them or had profaned the host in ceremonial mock Mass? Sitting within the stormy old fortress, I wondered what the death agonies of the last master must have been. Was he one who abjured the order in forced confession or was he one of those Templars who endured all manner of torture to die at the stake in flame and silence?
In my report on Acre, I wrote some fairly harsh words about the Templars, their selfishness and lust for power; but never did I find them cowardly or deficient in honor, and the manner in which they vanished, leaving their embattled castles behind, seems one of the most poignant historical tragedies, and I know of no spot more appropriate for brooding upon this matter than Ponferrada, because in this same region, in 1476, Fernando and Isabel, and more particular the latter, faced a similar problem and solved it in a more humane way. The Catholic Kings decided that the powerful Order of Santiago, the Templars of their age, had served its purpose; it had defended the weak pilgrims and brought security to the Way of St. James. Now it had become a mighty force generating its own power and direction, and like the Templars, it had to be suppressed; but the Catholic monarchs, unlike the French, brought no shattering charges against the knights of Santiago. Isabel simply maneuvered so that her husband was elected head of the order, from which position he quietly disbanded the knights, and anyone who has seen Henry de Montherlant’s moving drama The Master of Santiago, dealing with the last legitimate master, knows with what dignity Spain eliminated its equivalent to the Templars.
At unexpected spots along the Way of St. James the traveler finds a crucifix or a shrine reminding him that he is passing through a religious country, or he hears an old legend which recalls the age of faith. Few surpass that of Noriberto, the citizen of Luxembourg, who in the year 1080 joined five other knights for a pilgrimage to Compostela. They composed an oath of fealty, whereby each man volunteered to protect to the death each other, and five swore, but Noriberto, aware that he was not a courageous man, said that he could not. Nevertheless, as a secondary member of the six he was allowed to tag along, and when Felix, the originator of the oath, fell ill in Spain, the others, each eager to be first at the cathedral, forged on ahead, but Noriberto stayed behind to nurse the sick man. Through his agonies Felix called for help, and always Noriberto was there, but in spite of all that he did, Felix died and Noriberto abused himself for his failure. ‘I knew I was not worthy,’ he mumbled. But when the faithless four reached Compostela they found that Noriberto had preceded them, borne on a white charger by Santiago himself.
At the little town of Villafranca del Bierzo, I was to have two experiences, and since neither was due to planning on my part, they were doubly rewarding. At a roadside café I was accosted by a man I did not know, an English traveler heading in the opposite direction, and he handed me a book which he had finished, saying, ‘You might like it, seeing that you’re headed west.’ It was Corunna, written by Christopher Hibbert and published in London in 1961. I was happy to get a copy, for Corunna is the English name for La Coruña; this was an account of Sir John Moore’s disastrous retreat through Villafranca and his death in La Coruña on January 6, 1809. For the next hours I was immersed in this mournful history, marking on the map the battlegrounds through which I had just passed; over this terrain Moore had led his disintegrating army, deserted by his disillusioned Spanish allies and harried by Marshal Soult, and the behavior of the English had become so barbarous that I began to understand why Don Luis had spoken so harshly of Moore, for in the retreat, and particularly in the events centering on Villafranca, one saw a rare thing: the degeneration of a British army and the ineffectual efforts of General Moore to hold his remnant together and to maintain them in some kind of decent discipline. The true tragedy of Moore was not the incompetence about which Don Luis had joked nor the burial about which the poet sang, but that he allowed the spiritual control of his army to slip out of his hands.
By the time the English reached Villafranca, discipline had vanished. English soldiers abandoned the English women who had accompanied them; when one woman stumbled into a swamp the men following did not try to help out but used her head as a stepping stone to their own safety. Food depots belonging to the English were looted and those established by the Spanish army were expropriated with no regard for the native troops. Monasteries were sacked; homes were ripped apart; castles were assaulted as if the Spanish were the enemy and not the French. There was murder and pillage and insubordination, and never in the long account of British arms did an army behave worse. Whatever discipline did appear in the ranks seemed to come from German mercenaries serving with the British; what personal courage and good spirits, from the Irish.
A handful of stern-willed English officers did try to maintain some kind of order: floggings were administered, a looter was shot, rapists were ordered to be hanged. But nothing substantial was accomplished, and when even greater tribulations overtook them on leaving Villafranca, the army came close to actual rebellion.
I was interested in what memories Villafranca retained of this debacle, and in making inquiries I encountered a second bit of good luck. I met a distinguished gentleman whose ancestors had owned the castle of Villafranca during that terrible winter of 1808–1809. The Condes de Peña Ramiro occupy one of the surprising castles of Spain, a low-roofed, round-towered structure that looks rather more like an enclosed Norman farm than a castle; but it is so definitely a part of the peculiar terrain of this region that it has an ingratiating charm. It looks, for once, like a castle in which somebody really lives.
The twenty-four figures guard the Holy Door, which is opened only during the Holy Years.
The Condesa de Peña Ramiro is a handsome, hard-fibered woman in her middle years, with a face that reminded me of two things: some of the paintings by Velázquez, and those strong-featured Quaker women of Philadelphia who use no make-up except a flawless complexion and a radiant inner beauty. When I presented myself at the garden gate that gives access to the castle grounds, she led me to a cool, tree-shaded part of the lawn, where we sat on old stone benches and discussed many things before we got around to Sir John Moore and the catastrophe of Villafranca. She said, ‘I trust you’ve stopped by our beautiful Romanesque church of Santiago and
seen the Puerta de Pardón. It was very necessary in the old days, that gate, because the road from here on to Compostela is terribly difficult. The old and sick who reached this far often knew they couldn’t survive the last hundred miles. So we established this door in our church which anyone of faint spirit could enter and receive thereby all the indulgences he would have gained had he persevered to Compostela itself.’
Later she showed me the door, a stolid, heavy thing consisting of five recessed semicircular arches displaying figures in pairs. It was a simple yet very effective portal, with a prudent, peasant-like roof projecting out from the church wall to protect the sculptures from rain. Standing before it, I could imagine the spiritual relief attained by those pilgrims whose strength had permitted them to come this far but no farther; for them the long pilgrimage was over; they had been excused from the final drudgery by a very real pardon.
‘What happened to places like this when Napoleon was chasing the English out of Spain?’ I asked, and the condesa summoned a young man of the town who understood these matters, and he sat with us through a long afternoon and said, ‘For a hundred years the peasants remembered that winter. They looked on the English and the French alike as the enemy, and there was no jubilation when either entered the town. Burning, looting and hunger. When I was a boy old men said that bf the two the English were worse, but technically it was the French who were the enemy. It was all very confusing.’