The Sun Over Breda

The Sun Over Breda (#95) is the third installment of the Captain Alatriste novels as narrated by his apprentice, Inigo Balboa.  Unlike Arturo Perez-Reverte's previous two books in this series, which were mysteries, this book deals instead with the Spanish campaign of 1624 occupying the Dutch territories in the waning days of Spain's once great imperial powers.  Hardly surprising when one considers that Perez-Reverte was originally a war correspondent. 

In Sun Over Breda, Inigo is still only fourteen, a mochilero, or page, to his beloved Capitan Alatriste.  He has followed Alatriste, who had several reasons to want to be out of Spain itself, to Holland.  Inigo is packmule and general errand boy for the squadron Alatriste serves as team leader.  He is not allowed to carry a sword or pike himself, but that doesn't mean that Inigo isn't up at the front passing out ammunition and other supplies to the soldiers, or is immune to hazardous assignments.  The book is really more of a lengthy description of trench warfare at the close of the Thirty Years War and beginning of the Eighty Years War as waged between the mainly Catholic countries of Spain and Italy, and the mostly Protestant "heretics" - the Dutch, the Flemish, and the English.  Pitched battles, sapping, tunneling and mining towns, a long-drawn out seige, mutinies, and the great divide between the common soldier and their commanders all play a part in this story.  The miracle is that Inigo and Alatriste and a number of their companions manage to survive.  Inigo describes in the Epilogue how a decade later, he is able to assist Diego Velazquez with accurate descriptions of the details for his famous painting "Surrender At Breda" in which the Spanish General Spinola accepts the keys of the conquered city of Breda from the Dutch commander Justin of Nassau. You can see it for yourself by clicking on this link:  Painting of "Surrender of Breda"

Not knowing too much about Spanish history, I had read the first two books in this series (see my posts for Captain Alatriste 3/25/11 and Purity of Blood 5/17/11) as swashbuckling historical fiction.  I was therefore astonished to learn (from reading the Editor's Note Concerning the presence of Captain Alatriste in Diego Velazquez's painting The Surrender of Breda.) that both Diego Alatriste and Inigo Balboa are actual persons, and that Perez-Reverte has based his Captain Alatriste novels on the manuscript memoirs of Inigo Balboa sold at auction in London in 1952.  Balboa really did consult with Velazquez about this very painting, claiming that Alatriste was in it.  Perez-Reverte made a most interesting find buried in one of his source books about this painting.  I won't reveal it here, but it links to something equaling interesting in the Appendix to Sun Over Breda.  It does pay to read all the Notes and Appendices at the end of the book - you never know what you'll find back there!