The bitterest day of the siege
If last week I told you the story of Patricus, the Roman dog whose master wept his death two thousand years ago, today you must read the other side of the coin. The one in which that same ancient, luminous love for dogs collides with the darkest thing the human being has ever invented: war. And, as you will see, war is merciless with everyone, including those who have never harmed a soul.
I take you, dear readers, to the island of Malta in the year 1565, surrounded by an enormous Turkish fleet under the command of Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent, with forty thousand soldiers occupying the island and the aim of wiping the Christian knights of the Order of Saint John off the map. The island holds out, entrenched in the Borgo and the forts of Sant'Angelo, San Michele and Sant'Elmo, under the command of Grand Master Jean Parisot de la Valette, a French veteran of the hardest temper. Provisions are beginning to run short, the Turkish cannon-fire tears the wall apart piece by piece, and the sentinels do not sleep.
And, in the midst of that hell, on 28 May 1565, La Valette found himself forced to give one of the most bitter orders of the entire siege. An order that none of the soldiers of the Borgo would ever forget. And it is of that order, and very especially of a little white dog that had a name, owners and a piece of meat set aside for the very last moment, that this article tells.
An impossible order
The situation had become untenable. The dogs of the Borgo, which for years had been the companions of the Maltese and the soldiers (guards at the posts, hunters of the rats and wild rabbits that infested the fortress, playthings of the children), had suddenly become a twofold mortal problem.
The first problem was hunger. The food stored in the besieged city was barely enough for the human beings, and every mouthful given to a dog was a mouthful denied to a wounded soldier or a child. The second problem was worse still: the barking. At night, the dogs of the Borgo would not stop barking at the Turkish shadows moving beneath the walls, and that ceaseless barking drove the sentinels mad. The guards on duty could no longer distinguish the relevant sound (that of an enemy sap digging a tunnel, of footsteps advancing toward the base of the wall) from the canine din. That could no longer be allowed, for every night like that was an invitation for the Turks to open a breach and for no one to hear it.
So La Valette, much against his will, gave the order. That ALL the dogs of the Borgo, of Sant'Angelo, of San Michele and of Sant'Elmo be killed. No exceptions. No distinctions of breed, age or owner. Maltese bichons, Italian braccos, Corsican hounds, Ibizan podencos, German shepherds, and of course the mongrel strays: all to the slaughter. For hunger and for silence.
When the soldiers of the company of the chronicler Francisco Balbi received that order, they all looked at one another and not one said a single word. Because almost every infantry company of the Borgo had its own little dog adopted as a collective mascot. And Balbi's company had Nuvola Bianca.
Nuvola Bianca
Nuvola Bianca, which in Italian means «white cloud», was a small dog, pure white, with very long, soft fur. They had picked him up as a puppy, abandoned in some street of Birgu when the siege had not yet begun, and among the men of the company they had raised him on scraps, caresses and games. He was an affectionate, curious, hyperactive little dog, utterly incapable of harming anyone. It was Balbi himself who had given him the name, because that tiny white bundle reminded him greatly of the Bolognese bichon typical of his region of origin.
Nuvola had grown especially attached to Balbi, the eldest of the group. He followed him everywhere, waited asleep on his cot when the old harquebusier was on watch on the wall, and at night, when Balbi returned exhausted from the trenches, he was the first to leap up to greet him, wagging his tail with such frenzy that it seemed it would come off his body.
Well, that little dog had to be killed. That one, and no other. Because of the Turkish cannon crushing the island, because of the hunger looming over them all, because of a very distant sultan who had decided to wipe them off the map. That innocent puppy, who had never even left the Borgo, was now one more victim of those invaders who besieged them.
When the moment came to carry out the order, none, and I mean absolutely none, of the men of the company wanted to be the one responsible for doing it. While they discussed it among themselves, not daring to decide anything aloud, Nuvola Bianca trotted at their feet wagging his tail, playing with the lace of a boot, barking happily as he did every morning, entirely unaware of what was being cooked up over his head.
The five rifles and the last piece of meat
And then one of them, we do not know who, had an idea. A cruel and at the same time merciful idea, one of those that occur only to men who have spent a long time in a war. He proposed the following: that five of them form a firing squad. And that of the five rifles they would use, only one be loaded with a lead ball. The other four, with powder alone. In this way, when all fired at once, none of the five marksmen would ever know which of them had been the one to kill Nuvola. Each could think, for the rest of his days, that his shot had been one of the four harmless ones, and that the killing lead had come from the rifle of the man beside him. A murky, twisted mercy, but the only mercy possible in that situation.
They all accepted. Five harquebusiers volunteered, and Balbi included himself among them, being the eldest of the group and the one with the deepest bond to the animal: he thought, rightly, that he could not shirk carrying that on his conscience. Three companions from outside the squad took the five rifles to a separate room, loaded four with powder alone and one with powder and ball, mixed them up without looking and returned them to the five marksmen. No one knew which rifle carried the ball. Not even those who had loaded them, because they had chosen at random which one took what.
Then they took Nuvola in their arms and carried him to the top of the wall. They brought a piece of meat set aside especially, a portion that any of those men would have eaten whole in those days of hunger, but which they had saved for the little dog. Reaching the chosen spot, they threw the piece of meat on the ground for him to eat. Nuvola Bianca, none the wiser, pounced happily on that unexpected feast.
The five men took up firing position. They aimed at the little animal's head. And, just at the moment when Nuvola Bianca raised his snout to look at them, happy and carefree, with the last trusting gaze a dog can give its masters, the five rifles fired at once.
He died on the spot, without suffering.
The victims that history does not usually tell of
Balbi wrote this scene in his chronicle of the siege years later, his hand still trembling over the paper. And, at the end of the paragraph, he left a line that is surely the only honest way to close a story like this:
«And we wish to think that now that poor innocent soul, white as snow, is in heaven gladdening and stirring up all of Paradise with his charm and his barking.»
That same day all the dogs of the Borgo were killed. Each company had its own Nuvola Bianca, each man had his own bullet to think was not his. And as night fell, the Borgo of Malta was silent for the first time. The sentinels could at last hear the Turkish saps digging beneath the walls. The fortress won a few hours of safety that night. And some families of soldiers lost, in a single afternoon, a few mute companions they had loved like sons.
When we speak of the great sieges of History, we tend to keep the figures: so many dead on the attacking side, so many on the defending side, so many breaches in the wall, so many cannon deployed. But sieges, dear readers, do not kill only soldiers. They also kill children, old people, women, mules, horses, cats. And they kill, of course, dogs like Nuvola Bianca. Creatures that had never seen a Turk, that understood not a word of religion or empire, and that left this world with a piece of meat in their mouth and a trusting gaze toward the men who had loved them most.
Last week I told you how, two thousand years ago, an anonymous Roman wept for his dog Patricus and had carved in marble that he hoped to be reunited with him in heaven. Well then: if that heaven of the Roman truly exists, I imagine it also full of a little dog white as snow that once scampered along the walls of Malta. And beside him, waiting for him, must be all his furry brothers of the Borgo, barking happily at whoever comes through the door.
May they rest in peace, Nuvola Bianca and all his kin.