Victus: The Fall of Barcelona

A Historical Note

A few people who read this book in draft form have asked me about the historical basis of the facts that appear in it. I can only answer that I have worked according to the usual conventions of the historical novel, which require that you confine yourself to established pieces of data while at the same time tolerating fiction in the private realm. For all the dates and events relating to historical characters, or to political or military events, I have restricted myself to the facts. Fortunately, the chronicles that cover the Spanish War of Succession and the 1713–1714 Siege of Barcelona are generous enough to make it possible to go into some detail. The parliamentary debates that took place in Barcelona in 1713 have been extracted directly from documents of the period. Even where secondary characters are concerned, I have chosen to follow historical sources: the obsession that seizes Jeanne Vauban’s husband over the philosopher’s stone, the skirmish in Beceite in which Zuviría meets Ballester, as well as the death of Dr. Bassons and the charge of the law students in the battle of August 1714, or the events relating to the expedition of the military delegate, to cite just a few examples, are all fully evidenced. The words spoken by Berwick, infuriated at the Barcelonans’ resistance, with his staff officers, can be pursued in the chronicles and in his own autobiography. A good proportion of the insults aimed by Villarroel at Zuviría are also drawn from a range of documents, though in such cases we know only that they were directed at “a certain officer.” As for Zuviría himself, historical chronicles make only a very few elusive references to him, describing him as General Villarroel’s aide-de-camp, a translator, a member of a number of different commissions, and even a coordinator of the activities that took place outside the city walls during the course of the siege. In any case, he was one of the few senior officers on the pro-Austrian side who, following his participation in the 1713–1714 siege, managed to get to Vienna and thereby avoid the repression of the Bourbon regime.