tions had been overruled. He had to execute a project which he had constantly represented as impracticable. His camp was divided into hostile factions, and he was censured by all. The archduke and the prince blamed him for not proceeding instantly to take the town; but suggested no plan by which seven thousand men could be enabled to do the work of thirty thousand. Others blamed their general for giving up his own opinions to the childish whims of Charles, and for sacrificing his men in an attempt to perform what was impossible. The Dutch commander positively declared that his soldiers should not stir: Lord Peterborough might give what orders he chose, but to engage in such a siege was madness; and the men should not be sent to certain death, where there was no chance of obtaining any advantage. At length, after three weeks of inaction, Peterborough announced his fixed determination to raise the siege. The heavy cannon were sent on board. Preparations were made for re-embarking the troops. Charles and the Prince of Hesse were furious; and most of the officers blamed their general for having delayed so long the measure which he had at last found necessary to take. On the 12th of September there were rejoicings and public entertainments in Barcelona for this great deliverance. On the following morning the English flag was flying on the ramparts of Monjuich. The genius and energy of one man had supplied the place of forty battalions. At midnight Peterborough had called on the Prince of Hesse, with whom he had not for some time been on speaking terms. "I have resolved, sir," said the earl, "to attempt an assault; you may accompany us, if you think fit, and see whether I and my men deserve what you have been pleased to say of us." The prince was startled. The attempt, he said, was hopeless; but he was ready to take his share; and without further discussion, he called for his horse. Fifteen hundred English soldiers were assembled under the earl. A thousand more had been posted as a body of reserve, at a neighbouring convent, under the command of Stanhope. After a winding march along the foot of the hills, Peterborough and his little army reached the walls of Monjuich. There they halted till daybreak. As soon as they were descried, the enemy advanced into the outer ditch to meet them. This was the event on which Peterborough had reckoned, and for which his men were prepared. The English received the fire, rushed forward, leaped into the ditch, put the Spaniards to flight, and entered the works together with the fugitives. Before the garrison had recovered from their first surprise, the earl was master of the outworks, had taken several pieces of cannon, and had thrown up a breastwork to defend his men. He then sent off for Stanhope's reserve While he was waiting for this reinforcement, news arrived that three thousand men were marching from Barcelona towards Monjnich. He instantly rode out to take a view of them; but no sooner had he left his troops than they were seized with a panic. Their situation. was indeed full of danger; they had been brought into Monjuich, they scarcely knew how; their numbers were small; their general was gone: their hearts failed them, and they were proceeding to evacuate the fort. Peter borough received information of these occur rences in time to stop the retreat; he galloped up to the fugitives, addressed a few words to them, and put himself at their head. The sound of his voice and the sight of his face restored all their courage, and they marched back to their former position. The Prince of Hesse had fallen in the confu sion of the assault, but every thing else went well. Stanhope arrived; the detachment which had marched out of Barcelona retreated; the heavy cannon were disembarked, and brought to bear on the inner fortifications of Monjuich, which speedily fell. Peterborough, with his usual generosity, rescued the Spanish soldiers from the ferocity of the victorious army, and paid the last honours with great pomp to his rival the Prince of Hesse. The reduction of Monjuich was the first of a series of brilliant exploits. Barcelona fell, and Peterborough had the glory of taking, with a handful of men, one of the largest and strongest towns of Europe. He had also the glory, not less dear to his chivalrous temper, of saving the life and honour of the beautiful Duchess of Popoli, whom he met flying with dishevelled hair from the fury of her pursuers. He availed himself dexterously of the jealousy with which the Catalonians regarded the inhabitants of Castile. He guarantied to the province, in the capital of which he was quartered, all its ancient rights and liberties; and thus succeeded in attaching the population to the Austrian cause. The The open country declared in favour of Charles. Tarragona, Tortosa, Gerona, Lerida, San Mateo, threw open their gates. The Spanish government sent the Count of Las Torres with seven thousand men to reduce San Mateo. The Earl of Peterborough, with only twelve, hundred men, raised the siege. His officers advised him to be content with this extraordinary success. Charles urged him to return to Barcelona; but no remonstrances could stop such a spirit in the midst of such a career. It was the depth of winter. country was mountainous. The roads were almost impassable. The men were ill-clothed. The horses were knocked up. The retreating army was far more numerous than the pursuing army. But difficulties and dangers vanished before the energy of Peterborough. He pushed on, driving Las Torres before him. Nules surrendered to the mere terror of his name; and, on the 4th of February, 1706, he arrived in triumph at Valencia. There he learned, that a body of four thousand men was on the march to join Las Torres. He set out at dead of night from Valencia, passed the Xucar, came unexpectedly on the encampment of the enemy, and slaughtered, dispersed, or took the whole reinforcement. The Valencians, as we are told by a person who was present, could scarcely believe their eyes when they saw the prisoners brought in. In the mean time the courts of Madrid and The governor, without seeing an enemy. mineered over the weak and disordered mind of the late king. At length the impostures of the priest had triumphed over the blandishments of the woman; Porto Carrero had remained victorious, and the queen had fled, in Versailles, exasperated and alarmed by the fall of Barcelona, and by the revolt of the surrounding country, determined to make a great effort, A large army, nominally commanded by Philip, but really under the orders of Marshal Tessé, entered Catalonia. A fleet, under the Count Toledo had been for some time the retreat of Toulouse, one of the natural children of of two ambitious, turbulent, and vindictive Louis the Fourteenth, appeared before the intriguers-the queen-dowager and Cardinal port of Barcelona. The city was attacked at Porto Carrero. They had long been deadly once by sea and land. The person of the arch-enemies. They had led the adverse factions duke was in considerable danger. Peterbo- of Austria and France. Each had in turn dorough, at the head of about three thousand men, marched with great rapidity from Valencia. To give battle with so small a force to a great regular army, under the conduct of a marshal of France, would have been madness. The earl therefore took his post on the neighbour-shame and mortification, from the court, where ing mountains, harassed the enemy with incessant alarms, cut off their stragglers, intercepted their communications with the interior, and introduced supplies, both of men and provisions, into the town. He saw, however, that the only hope of the besieged was on the side of the sea. His commission from the British government gave him supreme power, not only over the army, but, whenever he should be actually on board, over the navy also. He put out to sea at night in an open boat, without communicating his design to any person. He was picked up, several leagues from the shore, by one of the ships of the English squadron. As soon as he was on board, he announced himself as first in command, and sent a pin-magnificent cathedral, and lighted up his panace with his orders to the admiral. Had these orders been given a few hours earlier, it is probable that the whole French fleet would have been taken. As it was, the Count of Toulouse stood out to sea. The port was open. The town was relieved. On the following night the enemy raised the siege, and retreated to Roussillon. Peterborough returned to Valencia; and Philip, who had been some weeks absent from his wife, could endure the misery of separation no longer, and flew to rejoin her at Madrid. At Madrid, however, it was imposible for him or for her to remain. The splendid success which Peterborough had obtained on the eastern coast of the Peninsula, had inspired the sluggish Galway with emulation. He advanced into the heart of Spain. Berwick retreated. Alcantara, Ciudad Rodrigo, and Salamanca fell, and the conquerors marched towards the capital. Philip was earnestly pressed by his advisers to remove the seat of government to Burgos. The advanced guard of the allied army was already seen on the heights above Madrid. It was known that the main body was at hand. The unfortunate prince fled with his queen and the household. The royal wanderers, after travelling eight days on bad roads, under a burning sun, and sleeping eight nights in miserable hovels, one of which fell down and nearly crushed them both to death, reached the metropolis of Old Castile. In the mean time the invaders had entered Madrid in triumph, and hau proclaimed the archduke in the streets of the imperial city. Arragon, ever jealous of the Castilian ascendency, followed the example of Catalonia. Saragossa revolted she had once been supreme. In her retirement she was soon joined by him whose arts had destroyed her influence. The cardinal, having held power just long enough to convince all parties of his incompetency, had been dismissed to his see, cursing his own folly and the ingratitude of the house which he had served too well. Common interests and common enmities reconciled the fallen rivals. The Austrian troops were admitted into Toledo without opposition. The queen-dowager flung off that mourning garb which the widow of a King of Spain wears through her whole life, and blazed forth in jewels. The cardina! blessed the standards of the invaders in his lace in honour of the great event. It seemed that the struggle had terminated in favour of the archduke, and that nothing remained for Philip but a prompt flight into the dominions of his grandfather. So judged those who were ignorant of the character and habits of the Spanish people. There is no country in Europe which it is so easy to overrun as Spain; there is no country in Europe which is more difficult to conquer. Nothing can be more contemptible than the regular military resistance which it offers to an invader; nothing more formidable than the energy which it puts forth when its regular military resistance has been beaten down. Its armies have long borne too much resemblance to mobs; but its mobs have had, in an unusual degree, the spirit of armies. The soldier, as compared with other soldiers, is deficient in military qualities; but the peasant has as much of those qualities as the soldier. In no country have such strong fortresses been taken by a mere coup-de-main; in no country have unfortified towns made so furious and obstinate a resistance to great armies. War in Spain has, from the days of the Romans, had a character of its own; it is a fire which cannot be raked out; it burns fiercely under the embers; and long after it has, to all seeming, been extinguished, bursts forth more violently than ever. This was seen in the last war. Spain had no army which could have looked in the face an equal number of French or Prussian soldiers; but one day laid the Prussian monarchy in the dust; one day put the crown of France at the disposal of invaders. No Jena, no Waterloo, would have enabled Joseph to reign in quiet at Madrid. From that moment to the end of the cam Austrian cause. Berwick had placed his army between the allies and the frontiers of Portugal. They retreated on Valencia, and arrived in that province, leaving about ten thousand prisoners in the hands of the enemy. The conduct of the Castilians throughout when the whole force of the allies was collectthe War of the Succession was most charac-ed at Guadalaxara, it was found to be decidedteristic. With all the odds of number and ly inferior in numbers to that of the enemy. situation on their side, they had been ignomi- Peterborough formed a plan for regaining niously beaten. All the European dependen- possession of the capital. His plan was recies of the Spanish crown were lost. Catalo- jected by Charles. The patience of the sensi nia, Arragon, and Valencia had acknowledged tive and vainglorious hero was worn out. He the Austrian prince. Gibraltar had been taken had none of that serenity of temper which enaby a few sailors; Barcelona stormed by a few bled Marlborough to act in perfect harmony dismounted dragoons; the invaders had pene- with Eugene, and to endure the vexatious intrated into the centre of the Peninsula, and terference of the Dutch deputies. He demandwere quartered at Madrid and Toledo. While ed permission to leave the army. Permission these events had been in progress, the nation was readily granted, and he set out for Italy. had scarcely given a sign of life. The rich That there might be some pretext for his decould not be prevailed on to give or to lend parture, he was commissioned by the archduke for the support of war; the troops had shown to raise a loan at Genoa, on the credit of the neither discipline nor courage; and now at revenues of Spain. last, when it seemed that all was lost, when it seemed that the most sanguine must relinquishpaign, the tide of fortune ran strong against the all hope, the national spirit awoke, fierce, proud, and unconquerable. The people had been sluggish, when the circumstances might well have inspired hope; they reserved all their energy for what appeared to be a season of despair. Castile, Leon, Andalusia, Estremadura, rose at once; every peasant procured a firelock or a pike; the allies were masters only of the ground on which they trode. No soldier could wander a hundred yards from the main body of the army without the most imminent risk of being poniarded; the country through which the conquerors had passed to Madrid, and which, as they thought, they had subdued, was all in arms behind them; their communications with Portugal were cut off. In the mean time, money began, for the first time, to flow rapidly into the treasury of the fugitive king. "The day before yesterday," says the Princess Orsini, in a letter written at this time, "the priests of a village, which contains only a hundred and twenty houses, brought a hundred and twenty pistoles to the queen. My flock,' said he, are ashamed to send you so little; but they beg you to believe, that in this purse there are a hundred and twenty hearts faithful even to the death.' The good man wept as he spoke, and indeed we wept too. Yesterday another small village, in which there are only twenty houses, sent us fifty pistoles." In January, 1707, Peterborough arrived at Valencia from Italy, no longer bearing a public character, but merely as a volunteer. His advice was asked, and it seems to have been most judicious. He gave it as his decided opinion, that no offensive operation against Castile ought to be undertaken. It would be easy, he said, to defend Arragon, Catalonia, and Valencia against Philip. The inhabitants of those parts of Spain were attached to the cause of the archduke; and the armies of the house of Bourbon would be resisted by the whole population. In a short time, the enthusiasm of the Castilians might abate. The government of Philip might commit unpopular acts. Defeats in the Netherlands might compel Louis to withdraw the succours which he had furnished to his grandson. Then would be the time to strike a decisive blow. This excellent advice was rejected. Peterborough, who had now received formal letters of recall from England, departed before the opening of the campaign; and with him departed the good fortune of the allies. Scarcely any general had ever done so much with means so small. Scarcely any general had ever displayed equal While the Castilians were everywhere arm- originality and boldness. He possessed, in the ing in the cause of Philip, the allies were serv-highest degree, the art of conciliating those ing that cause as effectually by their mismanagement. Galway stayed at Madrid, where his soldiers indulged in such boundless licentiousness, that one-half of them were in the hospitals. Charles remained dawdling in Catalonia. Peterborough had taken Requena, and wished to march toward Madrid, and to effect a junction with Galway; but the archduke refused his consent to the plan. The indignant general remained accordingly in his favourite city, or the beautiful shores of the Mediterranean, reading Don Quixote, giving balls and suppers, trying in vain to get some good sport out of the Valencian bulls, and making love, not in vain, to the Valencian women. At length the archduke advanced into Castile, and ordered Peterborough to join him. But it was too late. Berwick had already compelled Galway to evacuate Madrid; and whom he had subdued. But he was not equally successful in winning the attachment of those with whom he acted. He was adored by the Catalonians and Valencians; but he was hated by the prince, whom he had all but made a great king; and by the generals, whose fortune and reputation were staked on the same venture with his own. The English government could not understand him. He was so eccentric, that they gave him no credit for the judg ment which he really possessed. One day he took towns with horse-soldiers; then again he turned some hundreds of infantry into cavalry at a minute's notice. He obtained his political intelligence chiefly by means of love affairs, and filled his despatches with epigrams. The ministers thought that it would be highly im. politic to intrust the conduct of the Spanish war to so volatile and romantic a person. They therefore gave the command to Lord Galway, an experienced veteran-a man who was in war what Molière's doctors were in medicine; who thought it much more honourable to fail according to rule, than to succeed by innovation; and who would have been very much ashamed of himself if he had taken Monjuich by means so strange as those which Peterborough employed. This great commander conducted the campaign of 1707 in the most scientific manner. On the plain of Almanza he encountered the army of the Bourbons. He drew up his troops according to the methods prescribed by the best writers; and in a few hours lost eighteen thousand men, a hundred and twenty standards, all his baggage and all his artillery. Valencia and Arragon were instantly conquered by the French, and at the close of the year, the mountainous province of Catalonia was the only part of Spain which still adhered to Charles. residence. Women of rank, rather than remain behind, performed the journey on foot. The peasants enlisted by thousands. Money, arms, and provisions were supplied in abundance by the zeal of the people. The country round Madrid was infested by small parties of irregular horse. The allies could not send off a despatch to Arragon, or introduce a supply of provisions into the capital. It was unsafe for the archduke to hunt in the immediate vicinity of the palace which he occupied. The wish of Stanhope was to winter in Castile. But he stood alone in the council of war; and, indeed, it is not easy to understand how the allies could have maintained themselves through so unpropitious a season, in the midst of so hostile a population. Charles, whose personal safety was the first object of the generals, was sent with an escort of cavalry to Catalonia, in November; and, in December, the army commenced its retreat towards Arragon. "Do you remember, child," says the foolish woman in the Spectator to her husband, "that But the allies had to do with a master-spirit. the pigeon-house fell the very afternoon that The King of France had lately sent the Duke our careless wench spilt the salt upon the ta- of Vendome to command in Spain. This man ble ?" "Yes, my dear," replies the gentleman, was distinguished by the filthiness of his per"and the next post brought us an account of son, by the brutality of his demeanour, by the the battle of Almanza." The approach of dis- gross buffoonery of his conversation, and by aster in Spain had been for some time indi- the impudence with which he abandoned himcated by omens much clearer than the mishap self to the most nauseous of all vices. His of the saltcellar;-an ungrateful prince, an sluggishness was almost incredible. Even undisciplined army, a divided council, envy when engaged in a campaign, he often passed riumphant over merit, a man of genius re- whole days in his bed. His strange torpidity called, a pedant and a sluggard intrusted with had been the cause of some of the most severe supreme command. The battle of Almanza defeats which the French had sustained in decided the fate of Spain. The loss was such Italy and Flanders. But when he was roused as Marlborough or Eugene could scarcely by any great emergency, his resources, his have retrieved, and was certainly not to be re-energy, and his presence of mind were such trieved by Stanhope and Staremberg. as had been found in no French general since the days of Luxembourg. At this crisis, Vendome was all himself. He set out from Talavera with his troops; and pursued the retreating army of the allies with a speed, perhaps never equalled, in such a season and in such a country. He marched night and day. He swam, at the head of his cavalry, the flooded stream of Henares; and, in a few days, overtook Stanhope, who was at Brihuega with the left wing of the allied army. "Nobody with me," says the English general, Stanhope, who took the command of the English army in Catalonia, was a man of respectable abilities, both in military and civil affairs; but fitter, we conceive, for a second than for a first place. Lord Mahon, with his usual candour, tells us, what we believe was not known before, that his ancestor's most distinguished exploit, the conquest of Minorca, was suggested by Marlborough. Staremberg, a cold and methodical tactician of the German school, was sent by the emperor to command in Catalonia. Two languid campaigns fol-"imagined that they had any foot within some lowed, during which neither of the hostile armies did any thing memorable; but, during which, both were nearly starved. At length, in 1710, the chiefs of the allied forces resolved to venture on bolder measures. They began the campaign with a daring move; pushed into Arragon, defeated the troops of Philip at Almenara, defeated them again at Saragossa, and advanced to Madrid. The king was again a fugitive The Castilians sprang to arms with the same enthusiasm which they had displayed in 1706. The conquerors found the capital a desert. The people shut themselves up in their houses, and refused to pay any mark of respect to the Austrian prince. It was necessary to hire a few children to shout before him in the streets. Meanwhile, the Court of Philip at Valladolid was thronged by nobles and prelates. Thirty thousand people followed their king from Madrid to his new days' march of us: and our misfortune is Scarcely had Vendome signed the capitulation, when he learned that Staremberg was marching to the relief of Stanhope. Preparations were instantly made for a general action. On the day following that on which the English had delivered their arms, was fought the obstinate and bloody battle of Villa Viciosa. Staremberg remained master of the field. Vendome reaped all the fruits of the engagement. The allies spiked their cannon, and retired towards Arragon. But even in Arragon they found no place of rest. Vendome was behind them. The guerilla parties were around them. They fled to Catalonia; but Catalonia was invaded by a French army from Roussillon. At length the Austrian general with six thousand harassed and dispirited men, the remains of a great and victorious army, took refuge in Barcelona; almost the only place in Spain which recognised the authority of Charles. Philip was now much safer at Madrid than his grandfather at Paris. All hope of conquering Spain in Spain was at an end. But in other quarters the house of Bourbon was reduced to the last extremity. The French armies had undergone a series of defeats in Germany, in Italy, and in the Netherlands. An immense force, flushed with victory, and commanded by the greatest generals of the age, was on the borders of France. Louis had been forced to humble himself before the conquerors. He had even offered to abandon the cause of his grandson; and his offer had been rejected. But a great turn in affairs was approaching. The English administration, which had commenced the war against the house of Bourbon, was an administration composed of Tories. But the war was a Whig war. It was the favourite scheme of William, the Whig king. Louis had provoked it, by recognising, as sovereign of England, a prince peculiarly hateful to the Whigs. It had placed England in a position of marked hostility to that power, from which alone the Pretender could expect sufficient succour. It had joined England in the closest union to a Protestant and republican state; a state which had assisted in bringing about the Revolution, and which was willing to guaranty the execution of the Act of Settlement. Marlborough and Godolphin found that they were more zealously supported by their old opponents than by their old asseciales. Those ministers who were zealous for the war were gradually converted to Whigism. The rest dropped off, and were succeeded by Whigs. Cowper became Chancellor. Sunderland, in spite of the very just antipathy of Anne, was made Secretary of State. On the death of the Prince of Denmark, a more extensive change took place. Wharton became Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, and Somers President of the Council. At length the administration was wholly in the hands of the Low Church party. the greatest security of the Whigs. That affection had at length turned to deadly aversion. While the great party which had long swayed the destinies of Europe was undermined by bedchamber-women at St. James's, a violent storm gathered in the country. A foolish parson had preached a foolish sermon against the principles of the Revolution. The wisest members of the government were for letting the man alone. But Godolphin, inflamed with all the zeal of a new-made Whig, and exasperated by a nickname which was applied to him in this unfortunate discourse, insisted that the preacher should be impeached. The exhortations of the mild and sagacious Somers were disregarded. The impeachment was brought; the doctor was convicted; and the accusers were ruined. The clergy came to the rescue of the persecuted clergyman. The country gentlemen came to the rescue of the clergy. A display of Tory feelings, such as England had not witnessed since the closing days of Charles the Second's reign, appalled the ministers, and gave boldness to the queen. She turned out the Whigs, called Harley and St. John to power, and dissolved the Parliament. The elections went strongly against the late government. Stanhope, who had in his absence been put in nomination for Westminster, was defeated by a Tory candidate. The new ministers, finding themselves masters of the new Parliament, were induced by the strongest motives to conclude a peace with France. The whole system of alliance in which the country was engaged was a Whig system. The general by whom the English armies had constantly been led to victory, and for whom it was impossible to find a substitute, was now, whatever he might formerly have been, a Whig general. If Marlborough were discarded, it was probable that some great disaster would follow. Yet, if he were to retain his command, every great action which he might perform would raise the credit of the party in opposition. In the year 1710, a violent change took place. The queen had always been a Tory at heart. Her religious feelings were all on the side of the Established Church. Her family feelings pleaded in favour of her exiled brother. Her interest disposed her to favour the zealots of prerogative. The affection which she felt for the Duchess of Marlborough was A peace was therefore concluded between England and the princes of the house of Bourbon. Of that peace Lord Mahon speaks in terms of the severest reprehension. He is, indeed, an excellent Whig of the time of the first Lord Stanhope. "I cannot but pause for a moment," says he, "to observe how much the course of a century has inverted the mean ing of our party nicknames; how much a medern Tory resembles a Whig of Queen Anne's reign, and a Tory of Queen Anne's reign a modern Whig." We grant one-half of Lord Mahon's proposi tion; from the other half we altogether dissent. We allow that a modern Tory resembles, in many things, a Whig of Queen Anne's reign. It is natural that such should be the case. The worst things of one age or nation often resemble the best things of another. The livery of an English footinan outshines the royal robes of King Pomarre. A modern shopkeeper's house is as well furnished as the house of a considerable merchant in Anne's reign. Very plain people now wear finer cloth than Beau Fielding or Beau Edgworth could have pro cured in Queen Anne's reign. We wou.d |