Читать книгу Childe Harold's Pilgrimage (With Byron's Biography) - Lord Byron - Страница 142

Foiled by a woman's hand, before a battered wall.

Stanza lvi. line 9.

Such were the exploits of the Maid of Saragoza, who by her valour elevated herself to the highest rank of heroines. When the author was at Seville, she walked daily on the Prado, decorated with medals and orders, by command of the Junta.

The story, as told by Southey (who seems to have derived his information from The Narrative of the Siege of Zaragoza, by Charles Richard Vaughan, M.B., 1809), is that "Augustina Zaragoza (sic), a handsome woman of the lower class, about twenty-two years of age," a vivandiere, in the course of her rounds came with provisions to a battery near the Portello gate. The gunners had all been killed, and, as the citizens held back, "Augustina sprang over the dead and dying, snatched a match from the hand of a dead artilleryman, and fired off a twenty-six pounder; then, jumping upon the gun, made a solemn vow never to quit it alive during the siege."

After the retreat of the French, "a pension was settled upon Augustina, and the daily pay of an artilleryman. She was also to wear a small shield of honour, embroidered upon the sleeve of her gown, with 'Zaragoza' inscribed upon it" (Southey's Peninsular War, ii. 14, 34).

Napier, "neither wholly believing nor absolutely denying these exploits," which he does not condescend to give in detail, remarks "that for a long time afterwards, Spain swarmed with Zaragoza heroines, clothed in half-uniforms, and theatrically loaded with weapons."

A picture of "The Defence of Saragossa," painted by Sir David Wilkie, which contained her portrait, was exhibited in the Royal Academy in 1829, and was purchased by the king (Napier's History of the War in the Peninsula, i. 45; Life of Sir D. Wilkie, by John W. Mollett, 1881, p. 83). Compare, too, The Age of Bronze, vii. lines 53-56—

" ... the desperate wall

Of Saragossa, mightiest in her fall;

The man nerved to a spirit, and the maid

Waving her more than Amazonian blade."]