14 War and Soldiers in Don Quixote Minni Sawhney University of Delhi There have been interpretations of Don Quixote that have thrown light on the Spain of 1605 with the hero involved in fruitless and bitter quarrels with friars and puppeteers and the country squandering its wealth and military might fighting vainglorious wars. 1 The non confonnist Don Quixote forever shows up the underside of reality but whether he mirrors or refracts the author's views is another questíon. It is difficult to make the case historically that Cervantes was a pacifist, as he was a soldier in the Battle of Lepanto and in many campaigns like those of La Goleta, Tunís and Navarino against the Turks. He was thus decidedly not a pacifist in the modero connotation of the word as one who is opposed to violence at all times anywhere and for any 1 1 got interested in tbis idea after international events and two papers read by Dana Bultman and Daniel Eisenberg showed the way. Dana Bultman, "De un imperio a otro: El diálogo de la lengua de Juan de Valdés y un concepto de lenguaje para el nuevo milenio". Actas del Congreso El Siglo de Oro en el Nuevo milenio", ed. Carlos Mata Induráin, Pamplona, Spain: GRISO, 2005: 311-321 and Daniel Eisenberg, "Cervantes la guerra de Irak" XIV Coloquio Cervantino Internacional. Don Quijote en el Siglo XXI. Guanajuato en la geografía del Quijote. Guanajuato: Gobierno del Estado de Guanajuato, Museo Iconográfico del Quijote­ Fundación Cervantina de México-Universidad de Guanajuato, 2004. 29-49 Warand reason but 1 would like to suggest here that Cervantes was dissatisfied with the way Phillip 11 was waging wars and making untidy peace and his vindication of the work of the soldier in the Anns and Letters speech as well as his works of drama like El Gallardo español and Los Tratos de Argel is evidence of this. Cervantes writes the play Los Tratos de Argel which has been taken to be almost a testimonial of the lives of captives in AIgiers in 1580 and completes Don Quixote in 1605. A peace treaty as we know had been signed by King Phillip JI and the Turkísh Sultan in 1580 much to the surprise of the Holy League of the other European powers: the Pope and Venice that had been formed to fight against the Turks. On the terms of this treaty the Mediterranean was now considered a frontier between the two empires and the peace was favorable to both sides because it would leave them free to solve more pressing problems: the Protestants in the north for Phillip and the Persian threat for the Sultan. But it left out the fate of those who were already captives in Algiers, about 25,000 Christians many of them soldiers and also travelers or merchants who would contínue to languish in the prisons there. Cervantes would return from Algiers just then but we can surmise that this expediency on the part of Spain, this face saving device is what occasions the soulful entreaties to Phillip 11 to continue the fight to the finish, and not to leave those who were already engaged in it in the lurch? As Fernand Braudel has described it, in 2 For these and other insights see Enrique Femández. "Los tratos de Argel: Obra testimonial, denuncia política y literatura terapéutica." Cervantes, Bulletin of the Cervantes Society of America 20.1 (2000): pp.7-26. 231 J~inni The Mediterranean in the Age of Phillip II 3, the aIlies feH Spain had betrayed them but questions, had she not also betrayed herself and her history and, of eourse, for Cervantes the forees she had aIready eommitted and were fighting in the outposts, the eaptives who had been taken? Sinee the time of the Catholie Kings and the eonquest of Granada as also the deeision to rid the North Afriean eoasts of pirates who were in league with the Granada insurreetionaries during the Alpujarras wars, there was an attempt to eonvinee Europe that the real danger laid in the Mediterranean and Islam. But sinee the beginning resourees were stretehed and then just as abruptly an untidy self serving peaee was signed. It is in this eontext that I would like to read ideas of war and soldiers in Don Quixote. In the First Part Chapters XXXVII and XXXVIII of Don Quixote, Cervantes puts in the mouth of the Knight, the Diseourse on Arms and Letters a frequent eomparison between the sword and the pen and which ends with a clear vindication of the work of the soldier. "None in his poverty is as poor as he, for he depends on his miserable pay which comes late or never or on whatever he can steal with rus own hands at great risk to life and conscíence. Sometimes he is so naked that a slashed and tom doublet is both uniform and shirt and in the middle of winter in an empty field the breath from his mouth is his only protection against the inclemencies of heaven, and since that breath comes from an empty place 1 consider it certain that it must 3 Femand Braudel, The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age ol Phillip /l, Vol 11, (1949), London : Fontana, 1975, p. 1165 232 War and Soldiers in Don come out cold, contradicting the laws of nature.( ... ) Then after this the day and hour arrive when he receives the degree his profession offers: the day of battle, there he will receive rus tasseled academic cap made of bandages to heal a bullet wound, perhaps one that has passed through his temples or wiU leave him with a ruined arm or leg.,,4 There is no immediate context or provocation for Don Quixote to launch bis speech. He is talking during dinner at an inn much to the amazement of those present who marvel at what they consider bis very good sense when he isn't talking about tales of chivalry. The soldier here for Don Quixote is generic but bis suffering is couched in such terms that it would be a failure of imagination on the part of the reader if he didn't empathize with his situation. Of course the representation of a soldier's suffering is not common, it is more usual to read about the depredations of the army on civilians, on women. Besides one generaHy accepts that soldiers will suffer anyway, they are prepared for it. The picture he provides even if not drumming up support for militarism does not regard war as an anomaly but something inevitable given the times he lived in. But then isn't pacifism or the belief that violence is wrong in aH circumstances quite a minoritarian idea even today. There is general sadness with war here the image he draws up is a constant of all wars but of a context his contemporary readers could imagine: Spain' s African adventures and those she had preferred to forget. 4 Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote, Trans. Edith Grossman (2003) London: Vintage 2005, p. 331. 233 Minni Indeed the soulful entreaties to the king, Phillip n, are most evident in Los Tratos de Argel where the captive Saavedra in the prison of Algiers begs the king to intervene and says that only the latter has the key to the prisons of AIgiers where Christian soldiers languish. Re reminds him that his father Charles the Fifth had valiantly defended and overrun this area a haven for pirates. And exhorts him "Alto señor, cuya potencia ( Arise Sir, you whose power) Sujetas trae las barbaras naciones (Has made barbarian nations subject) Al desabrido yugo de obediencia (To the harsh yoke of obedience) A quien los negros indios en sus dones (To whom black Indians freely ) Reconocen honesto vasallaje (owe honest vassalage) Trayendo el oro aca de sus rincones (And bring gold from all corners) Despierte en tu real pecho coraje (Let this awaken anger in your royal heart) La desverguenza con que una vil oca (At the manner in which a vile weed) Aspira de continuo a hacerte ultraje .. " 5 (continuously defies you) Rere far from fostering rnilitancy, the captive's speech beseeches a king to not forget them, that his greatness elsewhere in America is dependant on how he comports himself in a half 5 Miguel de Cervantes, Obras completas, ed. Angel Valbuena Prat, Madrid: Aguilar 1962, p. 117 234 War and Soldiers in Don finished jobo With hindsight the historian Femand Braudel avers that Spain had no sense of Africa. They had shed theÍr blood in vain. The geographical conditions of war there were awesome. The mountains and aridity made it necessary to transport supplies from Spain and fighting here was not akin to that of fighting wars in Europe. To this was compounded the half hearted manner of Spanish conquest since the initial excuse was only to rid the African coasts of pirates and then a few outposts were created where these badly fed and paid and poorly equipped soldiers maintained vigil in the garrisons. They called their presence there "occupation restreinte" a kind of "empire lite" in today's jargon but Braudel described the soldiers as prisoners between the sea and the indigenous peoples who had to fight as much agaiost huoger as against the enemy. 6 lo this scenario Don Quixote's ideas about the soldier ring plausible as also those of Saavedra in Los Tratos. "Su gente es mucha mas su fuerza es poca (You have force s but little power) Desnuda, mal armada que no tiene (They are naked and badly armed) En su defensa fuerte muro o roca (And have neither rock nor stone as defense) Cada uno mira si tu Armada viene (They look to see if your Armada comes) Para dar a los pies el cargo y cura (That will save them and bring the priest) 6 Fernand Braudel Les écrits de Femand Braudel, Autour de la Médit erranée, Paris: Editions de Fallois 1996, p.56 1 am grateful to Jean Marie Lafont for showing me this work of hitherto unavailable Braudel papers.