indeed; the breaches were no longer defensible, and an assault was hourly expected. The king himself came down to receive the earl and his army; the city went wild with joy.
For a few days the French made a show of carrying on the siege. They were still enormously superior in force; but the energy and skill of Peterborough counterbalanced the inequality. He worked day and night in superintending the works of defense, and in placing the troops in readiness for the expected assault. Philip and many of his officers were still in favor of an attack upon the city; but Tesse as usual was opposed to anything like vigorous measures, and his views were adopted by a council of war.
At one o'clock on the morning of the 11th of May the besiegers broke up their camp, and in great confusion made their way toward the French frontier, for Tesse preferred even the ignominy of falling back into France with his unsuccessful and dispirited army to retracing his steps toward Saragossa, where his devastations and cruelty had caused the whole population to rise in insurrection as soon as his army had passed into Catalonia. Besides which, he had received news that Peterborough had caused every pass and town on his way to the west to be fortified and held by the Miquelets. Philip accompanied the retreating army to Roussillon. The downfall of his hopes had been utter and complete. But a few weeks before it had seemed that Spain was his, and that the forces at his disposal were ample to crush out the insurrection in Barcelona, and to sweep into the sea the handful of the invaders. But all his plans had been baffled, all his hopes brought to naught by the genius and energy of one man, in spite of that man being thwarted at every turn by the imbecile German coterie who surrounded the king, and by the jealousy and ill will of his fellow generals.
Bad news met the fugitive at Roussillon. There he heard that his countrymen had suffered a disastrous defeat at Ramillies; that nearly all the Netherlands had been wrested from France; that a heavy defeat had been inflicted upon her at Turin, and that Italy was well nigh lost. It needed, indeed, but the smallest amount of unanimity, enterprise, and confidence on the part of the advisers and generals of King Charles to have placed him securely and permanently upon the throne of Spain.
When the flight of the besieging army was discovered after daybreak by the besieged, they poured out from Barcelona into the deserted camp. All the ordnance and stores of the French had been abandoned. Two hundred heavy brass guns, thirty mortars, and a vast quantity of shot, shells, and intrenching tools, three thousand barrels of powder, ten thousand sacks of corn, and a vast quantity of provisions and stores were found left behind in the camp. Tesse had left, too, all his sick and wounded with a letter to the Earl of Peterborough begging him to see that they were well cared for.
The news of the hasty retreat of Marshal Tesse from before Barcelona caused a shock of surprise throughout Europe. In France it had never been doubted that Barcelona would fall, and as to the insurrection, it was believed that it could be trampled out without difficulty by the twenty-five thousand French veterans whom the marshal had at his disposal. As to the handful of British troops whose exploits had occasioned such astonishment, none had supposed for a moment that they would be able to effect anything when opposed to so overwhelming a force of the disciplined troops of France.
Peterborough himself had hardly hoped to save Barcelona, but, unlike his enemies, he had not considered that the fall of that city would necessarily entail the final defeat of the cause for which he fought. While busying himself with the marches and achievements of the troops under his command, he had never ceased to take measures to provide for the future. His marches and counter marches had made him thoroughly acquainted with the country, and he had won the entire confidence of the people.
He had, therefore, taken measures that even if Barcelona fell Philip should not march back again to his capital. From the day Tesse advanced he had had thousands of the country people at work, under the direction of a few of his own officers, rendering each of the three roads by which the French army could march from Barcelona to Madrid impracticable. Gorges were blocked with vast masses of rock rolled down from the mountain side at spots where the road wound along on the face of precipices; and where it had only been made by blasting, it was by similar means entirely destroyed. Bridges were broken down, every castle and town on the lines of retreat placed in a state of defense, and the cattle and provisions driven off to places of safety.
Thus while the earl was himself engaged in the most perilous adventures, he neglected nothing that the most prudent and cautious general could have suggested to insure the success of his plans. Even when affairs looked most unpromising in Barcelona the earl wrote cheerfully to the Duke of Savoy, saying that the circumstances were much better than were generally supposed; and that the French officers, ignorant of the situation of the country, would be astonished at the difficulties that would be opposed to them on advancing even after success; and that if the siege were raised they would be forced to abandon Spain, while all the western frontier would be clear for the progress of Lord Galway and Das Minas to Madrid.
A few days after the retreat of Marshal Tesse, to Jack's great pleasure Graham came into Barcelona. He had, in the confusion of the retreat, had little difficulty in slipping away from his captors. His only danger had been from the peasantry, at whose hands he had narrowly escaped death, as they took him for a French officer; but, upon being convinced by his assurances that he was an Englishman and an aide de camp of the Earl of Peterborough, they had provided him with a horse to make his way back to Barcelona.
CHAPTER XVI: INGRATITUDE
Barcelona rescued, Peterborough at once urged the king to march upon Madrid and have himself proclaimed king in his capital. There was no force which could oppose his advance, and Lord Galway and the Portuguese could move unresisted from the west and meet him there. But it was a long time before Charles and his counselors would listen to his advice; and although at last they agreed to follow it, their resolution was short. In the first place, they determined to leave so large a force to garrison Catalonia that the army available for the advance on Madrid would be very seriously weakened--fifteen hundred English and eleven hundred Spaniards were to be left at Barcelona, sixteen hundred English and Dutch and fifteen hundred Spanish at Gerona, eight hundred and fifty Spanish and Dutch at Lerida, and five hundred Spanish at Tortosa.
This left but sixty-five hundred men available for service in the field, and even this number was subsequently diminished by the vacillating Charles to forty-five hundred.
As Peterborough wrote to Lord Halifax: 'We have saved kingdoms in spite of the king, who would abandon them, and we have waged more dangerous war with ministers than with enemies. Lord Galway and the Portuguese generals pass all understanding.'
No wonder the earl was astounded by the incompetence of Lord Galway and the Portuguese generals. They had twenty thousand men, while to oppose them there were but five thousand under the Duke of Berwick; and yet after entering Spain they fell back, without doing anything, into Portugal--their retreat beginning on the 11th of May, the day on which Philip retreated from Barcelona. So that on the opposite side of Spain two large armies simultaneously retired before others vastly weaker than themselves. When the news of Tesse's retreat to France reached Portugal they again advanced. Berwick was too weak to oppose them, and on the 25th of June the advance guard of the allies occupied Madrid, and there proclaimed Charles as king.
Had Galway and his colleagues now shown the slightest energy, and moved against Berwick's little force, with which was Philip himself, they could have driven them across the frontier without striking a blow, and the French cause would have been lost in Spain; but, having reached Madrid, they remained there doing absolutely nothing --leaving ample time to Philip to repair his misfortunes, receive aid from France, and recommence the
