Colonel of Dragoons

Foreword

This is an account of the Earl of Peterborough’s expedition to Spain in the period from September 1705 to September 1706. There is good evidence for believing that all the events described did actually take place; the persons mentioned actually lived, and did what they are said to have done, with the exception of Colonel Awbyn and the officers junior to him in the Queen’s Dragoons, a fictitious regiment which takes the part actually played in the campaign by the Royal Dragoons.

The reader has a right to some explanation of this substitution of a fictitious for a real regiment. The campaign is I think unique in English history; at least, I can think of no other in which an English commander-in-chief has turned himself into a guerrilla leader, has driven before him, by bluff and nothing else, forces usually three times, and sometimes twenty times, his own strength, and finally has thrown away the fruits of victory by the defects of his own character. It is tragedy rather than history and there is about it a dramatic symmetry, a rhythm of ebb and flow, that is too good for real life.

If I had been an Elizabethan, I should probably have made a play of it, but it would overflow the modern stage. The novel of course is the form in which most of us nowadays try to put what we have to say and it is a carpet-bag into which a good deal of incongruous luggage has at one time and another been crammed. But I do not think this will quite make a novel; I want to stick exactly to what happened. And I do not personally feel at ease with the form known as fictional biography. It is partly that I find my belief suspended by constant suspicion of the writer; how, one continually wonders, does she know that! Rather deeper is the feeling, perhaps over-scrupulous, that there is some disrespect for human personality involved. It is perfectly proper for a novelist to exercise seignorial powers over his characters, but I am doubtful whether they can be extended over people who really lived. Everyone has a right to some reserves, even in death, and to me it seems fair to judge a man by what he has written or said or done, and to make inferences as to what he thought, but unfair to enter his mind, to draw aside the veil, and to say positively that he did think or feel this.

Neither a play, nor a novel, nor ‘fictional biography’, then, but a chronicle of what happened as it might have appeared to a group of people living at the time; that is my choice. In fact, it is what for some inscrutable reason is called a documentary, and in the manner of the documentary the historical persons are displayed mainly through the impression they make on fictional characters. I have occasionally put words into historical mouths when there is an historical reason for believing that something of the kind was said; more often I have reported in slightly more modern idiom the substance of what the character said in letters or diaries; there is usually a fictional character to hear what is said. The fictional characters thus become the vehicles for a periscope from which the historical are surveyed. The only exception to this is the chapter in which Godolphin is reading his letters; here the reader is allowed to read the original words of the letter over the Lord Treasurer’s shoulder and can judge for himself.

In Colonel James de St. Pierre, who commanded the Royal Dragoons for part of this period and whose diary and letters are among the sources of our knowledge, I had just the straightforward regimental soldier I wanted as a contrast for the erratic brilliance of Peterborough, but I did not know enough about him to use him honestly as the periscope. Apart from the fact that relations of his were living not long ago, I respect him too much to invent what I do not know. And, to be honest, I craved for some remnant of the novelist’s feudal powers. So in his place I have put Colonel Awbyn and the rest; I know all about Colonel Awbyn because he is my own.

This explains why I have substituted the Queen’s Dragoons for the Royals; we know the names of every officer in the Royals at the time and of several one can form some impression. But I want more than that, so I have invented a set of men whom I can picture just as I like. Their concern, however, with brevets, staff-officers, precedence, new hats and the like is all there in Colonel de St. Pierre’s diary and letters. The name of the Queen’s Dragoons is not a bad one for the Royals, who were raised in 1661 for service in Tangier, part of the dowry of Charles II’s Queen; the foot regiment raised at the same time and for the same purpose has always been called the Queen’s. And in fact the Royals were occasionally referred to as the Queen’s in this period.

There are longer notes at the end about the manuscript sources, which explain why I have chosen one version of what happened rather than another; there has been a good deal of controversy about everything to do with Peterborough, which it seemed as well to keep out of the text. There is also a note on his life before and after this critical year and notes giving the modern names of regiments and other points that will not interest everyone.

I am very grateful for the help I have had from Professor Starkie of the British Council’s Institution in Madrid and from Mr. C. T. Atkinson of Exeter College.

P. W.

Part One — Barcelona 1705

Chapter 1

Midnight

September 12th, 1705

On September 12th, 1705, a little before midnight, Colonel James Awbyn was walking back from the general’s quarters in San Martino towards the camp. He walked slowly, being in the mood when thought flows with the movement of the limbs; he was thinking things out and did not want to reach his tent before he had finished. A servant walked in front of him, carrying a lantern; the moon was in her last quarter and would not rise for some hours. Colonel Awbyn called to him to go slowly and paced on, thinking how he should deal with the distasteful task he had to face tomorrow.

He had been a soldier for twenty years and for most of that time at war; he could never wholly cease to be alert when the enemy were near, and at present the unconscious part of his mind was standing sentry, ready to give the alarm at a moment’s notice. As a matter of fact, the enemy were very close; if they had wished, the garrison at Barcelona could probably have made things uncomfortable by indirect fire from their batteries; they could certainly have made some very troublesome sorties. But they did nothing; it was, to Colonel Awbyn’s mind, not the least odd part of the whole affair that they had so far stirred so little. They had done nothing to oppose the landing of the troops, nothing to molest them in the three weeks since the landing. The camp might have been on Hounslow Heath; you could walk through the night thinking of how to attack the town with no more than a faint feeling that the peacefulness was unnatural and therefore dangerous.

What he disliked about tomorrow’s task was not the substance of his orders, if they could be called orders; no, there he was in agreement with my lord and at odds with the subordinate generals who made up his lordship’s council of war. It was the way of going about things that he did not like; it was, he felt, unsoldierly; it was un-English. And he, who had talked French to his mother, whose name till his father’s death had been St. Aubin, well, he had come to like the English way of doing things.

A sentry challenged sharply; they were in the camp; another challenge; they were in the lines of his own regiment, the Queen’s Dragoons. They were approaching from the rear, moving towards the enemy; the camp was drawn up to face Barcelona, and they had first to pass the low ridged horsemen’s tents and the lines where the horses should have been picketed. But half the lines were empty and although from the rest there came the occasional stamp and snort, the sharp smell of stable litter, all the familiar and usually pleasant evidence that horses were there, it did not bring satisfaction to the colonel tonight. The regiment had brought from Lisbon only enough horses to mount four troops out of eight and they were most of them wretched screws, provided under treaty by the King of Portugal for nothing, and in Colonel Awbyn’s opinion worth about that. It was a slight but definite discomfort to be reminded of their existence.

The colonel and his guide passed the lines of men and horses and now they were among the subalterns’ tents, which loomed about them as dark shapes, round and flat topped, like overgrown haycocks. His own tent stood alone, ahead of his troop commanders and field officers, but in rear of the regimental staff and the sutlers. He had given orders that a light should be left burning; now he could see the lantern, a golden blur shining through the ticking. It was not in the doorway as he had expected but inside. He was irritated at the interruption to his thoughts, and for a moment considered turning away and continuing his walk. But the ground was uneven and divided; without a light he would stumble, and it would be eccentric to keep back a man with a lantern merely for a midnight stroll. He dismissed the servant, who had been sent with him by an aide-de-camp of the general’s, and turned to his tent. In the doorway, he stopped abruptly.

There was someone lying on the bed. Colonel Awbyn had expected to find someone, for he had ordered a dragoon to wait for him. But the man was on duty; that he should be asleep on his colonel’s bed was a neglect and an impertinence that could not be tolerated. Colonel Awbyn, however, controlled his first impulse of rage and uttered the man’s name in a voice sharp and cold with anger.

‘Hansford!’ he said.

The figure on the bed sat up and rubbed its eyes.

‘It isn’t Hansford; I sent him away,’ it said.

The speaker stood up. There was not much room in the small, round tent, and his movement brought him close to Colonel Awbyn.

‘Peter!’ began the colonel in a voice in which there was nothing but surprise. But he went on more coldly:

‘May I ask why you sent him away? He had my orders to stay.’

‘I know. But I wanted to talk to you and thought I would wait. Hansford would have been a nuisance.’

‘I kept him here because I was on duty and I might have needed to send a message when I got back,’ said the colonel coldly. ‘It was not a mere whim. I shall be obliged if you will respect my orders in future.’

‘I’m sorry, Sir. I was wrong; it shall not occur again.’

‘We will say no more about it,’ said the colonel. His manner changed and he resumed their normal relationship. They were brothers-in-law and both Huguenots; but even when alone they spoke English. Colonel Awbyn had made this a rule when Peter de Nérac joined the Queen’s Dragoons and its wisdom was so apparent that they never relaxed it. He went on:

‘But I am glad to see you. Peter, I will make a wager with you. I will lay you—’ he paused for a moment and went on impressively, for it was a large sum for a man with little besides his commission—‘I will lay you fifty guineas that within a year from today Charles III is proclaimed King of Spain in Madrid.’

‘Evens?’ Peter asked.

‘At the best. The Duke of Anjou is on the throne. He has been crowned in Madrid. He has Spain and France behind him. We have nothing in Spain but Gibraltar and the ground we stand on. You ought to give me odds. Everything is against us but one thing.’

‘And the one thing I suppose is my lord Peterborough. I should have guessed where you had been even if I had not known.’ The lantern threw the contours of Peter’s amused face into sharp relief. It was a face still round with youth, though scarred by a sword-cut on the cheek; its expression at the moment was characteristic, displaying perfectly the Gascon combination of sardonic scepticism in council and reckless daring in action.

Colonel Awbyn’s brow darkened again.

‘You knew where I had been? How did you know?’

‘Hansford told me, of course.’

‘And he, I suppose, had it from my lord’s messenger. There is too much talk in this camp. Not a sentinel but knows everything we do. Didn’t you—before you were aide-de-camp to the King I mean—know everything that was decided in every council of war?’

‘I knew what every man in the camp knew, within twenty-four hours.’

‘And then it is just so long again before the French know. Well, at any rate, that is another point against us and another reason for not giving you better odds. Will you sit on the bed? What about the fifty guineas? Do you take me?’

Colonel Awbyn threw his plumed hat on the bed, unbuckled his sword, took off his coat and gorget. He moved round to hang his clothes on the pole and then sat down near the head of the bed. He wore his own hair, a thing less uncommon among the Huguenots than among English officers.

Peter looked at him seriously.

‘It is not a fair bet,’ he said. ‘I mean not fair to me. As you say, we have only this corner of Spain. If we make the kingdom ours, you win your bet and I pay. But if we do not, if we are beaten, it is not very likely that we shall both be alive. So I do not get my money if I win.’

Awbyn made a quick movement with his hand.

‘Death ends all bets,’ he said. ‘All the same, so much is against us the odds ought really to be longer. Do you take me?’

Peter thought again.

‘You lay fifty guineas on the strength of my lord’s character. Well, I,’ said Peter, ‘I will take you, on the strength of His Majesty’s. Though it is as much his Austrian advisers as himself. Isn’t there some riddle of the philosophers about an irresistible cannon-ball meeting an immovable post; You wager on the cannon-ball, I on the post.’

Colonel Awbyn took out a note-book from the half-open saddlebag by the head of his bed and made a note of the bet.

‘Well,’ he said, ‘we are in the hands of God.’

‘There is no reason, all the same, why one should not calculate the chances of a purely human success,’ said Peter with a look of amused affection. He went on:

‘But what have you been hearing? Or ought I not to know, for I am on the staff of the immovable, you must remember?’

‘You should be more careful what you say,’ said Colonel Awbyn. ‘You should make it a habit to speak with respect of the King.’

But he spoke automatically and did not wait for an answer, knowing well that Peter would pay little attention to advice from a brother-in-law and feeling reluctant to fall back on orders from a colonel. He went on to tell how the general had sent for him.

Dinner had been finished, and the men had yawned through the rest of the hot afternoon and evening. Tattoo had been beaten at last and, half an hour later, Colonel Awbyn went out to follow the officer of the watch on his rounds. It was a precaution he had taken several times since the troops came ashore, because he was uneasy about the men’s state of mind. There was gloom and uncertainty in the camp; the difference of opinion between the Austrian court and the English commander-in-chief was well known; there were councils of war daily and nothing done; there was general despondency. And Colonel Awbyn knew well that despondency leads to slackness, which in the face of a resolute enemy would sooner or later mean surprise by night.

When he came back from his rounds, there was a messenger to summon him at once to the general’s lodging, a quarter of a mile away in San Martino. Having ordered Hansford to wait up for him with a light, he walked there without delay, arriving as Lord Peterborough was finishing business with his secretary Mr. Furly. He was asked to wait, and sat watching, fascinated by the speed with which his lordship’s quill drove over the paper, a quill that never paused to search for a word or hesitated as to the propriety of an expression, that was in no way interrupted by the stream of orders that poured from his lordship’s lips at the same time, so fast that it was all the secretary could do to make notes of them.

At last the business was finished, Mr. Furly was allowed to go, and the thin brisk man at the table came to meet Colonel Awbyn. He took him cordially by the arm and drew him into his bedroom, where he took off his coat and wig and sat down by the bed in his shirt, making the colonel sit too. It was at this point in his story that Awbyn found it difficult to convey the impression he wanted. He was searching for words, slowly and clumsily, when Peter interrupted.

‘But I know him,’ he said. ‘I know what you mean. I know that quick way he has, like—like one of those little birds that sit on a rock in a stream and bob up and down. And I know that way of taking you by the arm and making you feel that you’re the one man in the world whose opinion he values. He’s done it to me. I told you how he spoke to me in the King’s ante-room, the day I kissed hands—as though I were a major-general instead of still a long way from my captaincy.’

Colonel Awbyn agreed. Yes, that was how it was. You felt yours was the only advice that mattered. He went on with his story.

‘He said he had heard I was one who had always expressed myself in favour of undertaking the siege—’

Again Peter broke in.

‘I told him that,’ he said.

‘Richards, too, I think. But he wanted to know why I held such views. He knows what the men are saying, that we came here like fools and now we are going away like cowards. But, you see, Peter, he is neither fool nor coward himself. He thinks night and day what he ought to do. He must find a way of taking Barcelona or doing something else big enough to make a stir. Then we shall get help from the Spaniards, but not till then. He told me all this and then he said:

‘“Look at my difficulties. Here I am, by the Queen’s orders instructed to pay the greatest attention to the wishes of the King of Spain. Yet I am constantly urged by the Ministry in London to go to Italy to help the Duke of Savoy. Now the King of Spain will not hear of my going to Savoy; nothing will satisfy him but Barcelona. And the Portuguese say the same. Very good; I give in to them; we come to Barcelona. I am promised 1200 horse and 6000 foot, regular Spanish troops that will join us as soon as we land. But not one soldier comes to the flag.”

‘“But the country people are for us,” I said.

‘“What good is that?” says my lord. “Higglers and sutlers, peasants with baskets of oranges.”

‘“More than that,” I said. “There must have been fifteen hundred miquelets, and each of them has a musket and a pair of pistols.”

‘“And will run away at the first shot,” says my lord. “Irregular troops are no good but to pursue a beaten foe. If they would submit themselves to discipline and join a regiment of regular soldiers, they would be worth something.”

‘“They know we are not in earnest,” I told him. “They can see we are not setting about the siege of Barcelona. Till we do that, why should they risk their lives? They risk more than we do; we can go away, they have to stay. And they have wives and children. They will declare themselves once we are committed to the siege.”

‘“But how can we commit ourselves to the siege?” my lord asks. “I am tied by my orders. I must take the opinion of a council of war for everything I do. And every general is against a siege. The Dutch are against it. Scrattenbach is as definite as our own English generals.”’

Here Peter spoke again.

‘And they are right,’ he said. ‘And in your heart of hearts, you know it, James. You would need thirty thousand men to invest Barcelona, and we have not seven. The garrison is as strong as we are. It is against reason. And once we are committed to a siege, the French have only to bring up a few horse. Nothing is easier for them than that; Aragon is theirs; they hold all the country from here to Madrid. Then they can cut us off from all provisions except what we get from the fleet. And the fleet will not be here long; winter is coming, we have no port in Spain; they must be home before the autumn gales. We cannot hope to have the ships here a month from now. The Dutch talk of going already.’

‘I know, I know.’ Colonel Awbyn made an impatient gesture; he was a man to whom words usually came slowly and it was an irritation to him to be unable to express the deep feeling which he knew was right. He wanted to say that the moral in war is more important than the material; but he did not know how. What he did say was:

‘But this is not the Netherlands. This fortress was not built by M. Vauban or M. Cohorn. These are not French troops. Some of them are Neapolitan; they would as soon have an Austrian King as a French. Some are Catalan and they much prefer an Austrian. Even the Castilians are for King Philip only because the Catalans are for King Charles. The townspeople are for us. Once make a breach and you will see. It is not a matter of rules.’

Peter shrugged his shoulders.

‘If a general in the Netherlands attacked a fortress with a besieging army no stronger than the garrison, he would not only lose his commission, he would end his days in Bedlam.’

They had been through the argument before; there was no need for either of them to elaborate it. Awbyn continued:

‘Well, my lord thinks as you do. He thinks the generals are right as to a regular siege, such as the King begs him to try. I believe he would try it, though, to please the King, if he could. But how can he try it, when he has been ordered to listen to the advice of a council of war and they will not agree? It would cost him his head in England if he failed. He has worn himself thin with trying new plans, with running to the fleet for help.’

‘There have been plenty of new plans,’ Peter agreed gloomily. Both were silent, remembering how the first council of war had given a decided and unanimous opinion against the siege; how a second had considered the more limited project of a battery to breach the walls but no lines of circumvallation; how the engineers had objected to that; how the fleet had been asked for help to man the trenches but had offered too few men, and those governed by such careful rules as to make them seem fewer still. It had gone on and on, councils of war daily and nothing done. There they were, encamped almost within cannon-shot of the walls and nothing done. Nothing done day after day. Only the siege of Barcelona would please the King and the generals could not be brought to that. They would agree to anything else, but nothing would make them shift on the siege. One by one they had been taken aside privately by the King and his ministers; polite, embarrassed, obstinate, they had listened and gone away unconvinced. Councils of war at midnight; councils of war in the presence of the King, on board Sir Cloudesley Shovell’s flagship the Britannia, at the Earl of Peterborough’s quarters; at the Dutch general Scrattenbach’s quarters. But nothing done; nothing done; only plans changed as soon as made, only rumours in the camp. They were all to march to Tarragona; they were to start the siege tomorrow; they were to march to Madrid; they were to march to Valencia; they were to invest the town for eighteen days only and then if it had not surrendered sail to Italy. The King’s Prime Minister, the Prince of Lichtenstein, had thrown a stool at Mr. Furly’s head for bringing him the minutes of a council of war he did not like; the King’s military adviser, Prince George of Hesse, had not spoken to my lord Peterborough for a fortnight. Only one good piece of news, that in Flanders, the Duke of Marlborough had outwitted the French and forced the lines of Brabant.

Colonel Awbyn went back to his discussion with the general. He said:

‘He will get what he wants in the end; he never rests.’

‘Well, but what advice did you give him?’ Peter asked.

‘“You have landed,” I said, “you have made promises, you have put out declarations in the Queen’s name. How can you leave these poor Catalans to the mercy of a cruel and irritated enemy?” That was what I said to him. The English of course do not understand all that we do, Peter, of the mercy of the Grand Monarch. “How can you answer that to the Queen?” I asked him. What will Europe say of it? It would so tarnish the glory of the English that it is much better to venture losing the whole army than to leave these people.”

‘He took it in very good part. He had asked me to be frank. “But I am not going to leave them,” he says. “Since the generals will not agree to a siege, I am going to Tarragona.”

‘“To embark?” I asked him.

‘“No, to make a magazine. Collect stores, disembark powder and shot, before the fleet leaves us. Then with Tarragona at our backs, march to Madrid.”

‘“March to Madrid?” said I. “How can you? You have no pontoons to cross the rivers and no horses to pull your guns. There are no horses in Catalonia and if you had horses, you have no wagons. You cannot march to Madrid. It is far worse than the siege. All you have to do is to take the town.”’

‘He is right, all the same,’ said Peter. ‘Only it would have been far better to have marched from Valencia. We should have landed there and marched straight for Madrid, as my lord wanted, but the King would not let him. A shorter road and much easier. And there are horses and mules in Valencia. But one way or another, march to Madrid. Would the Duke of Marlborough waste his time here? He would march for Madrid, just as he went to the Danube last year.’

Colonel Awbyn disregarded this.

‘“But how am I to take the town?” my lord asks me. So I tell him that we are drawn up in the best place for a camp, with the strongest side of the city towards us. But the weak side of the town, the best for an attack, is inland to the south. There is a long stretch of curtain wall there, with no flanking fire but from a few small round towers. “Let your batteries play on that and you will make a breach in a week,” I said. There would be no need for trenches. The troops for the assault would lie in the convent, a long musket-shot from the walls. And when you make the assault, the town will rise, I told him.’

‘Your batteries would be under cross-fire from the fort of Montjuich,’ said Peter. He had listened attentively; this plan was new to him. ‘There would be fire from the city and cross-fire from the fort. Your guns would be dismounted the first day.’

‘There is a great deal of broken ground. You could site the battery so that it was hidden from the fort. It would be a slow business bringing up more guns and placing another battery for counter-fire against the fort. The elevation is too great except at long range.’

Peter agreed to the second proposition.

‘Montjuich is a steep hill and high,’ he said. ‘But I should like to see this site of yours. What did my lord say?’

‘He was much taken. He said he had noticed the weakness of that long stretch of curtain. And then, Peter, then, he put on me such a thing—’

‘What was that?’

‘He has told me to go tomorrow to Prince George of Hesse and tell him my plan—but it is not to come from my lord, it is to come from me! Now who am I to suggest a plan to a Field-Marshal of the Empire? Without invitation, too, mark you, for I have hardly spoken a dozen words to the Prince in my life.’

‘He is a fine officer,’ said Peter thoughtfully. ‘He is a soldier.’

‘That does not make it easier. I tell you, Peter, this is a politician’s way of going about things and I do not like it.’

‘You didn’t protest?’

‘I had no chance. In a moment, there was an aide-de-camp in the room, being ordered to bring in some deserters from the enemy to be questioned at dawn tomorrow. At dawn, mark you, and he will question them himself; there is not one of us but Brigadier Stanhope and Richards who speaks Spanish as he does. Next moment, he was back at his dispatches and his quill flying over the paper like an Arabian horse. I had no time to protest. And besides, Peter, to be frank with you, I was swept away. My lord is not a man you can protest to. He will get what he wants; he never rests.’

‘Well, I wish you luck. I shall win my bet, I am afraid, but I would rather stay alive and pay you. We must sleep. Good night, James.’

The colonel stepped to the tent door when Peter had gone and stood for a moment looking at the stars. He said his prayers standing thus. He was not, he would have said himself, a specially religious man; it was his father who had left France for the sake of his religion. His father had died while James was a child and his mother had continued to bring the boy up in his father’s faith. James had accepted it without very deep thought; indeed, it did not seem to him that there was much thinking needed. To fear the Lord and do his duty, that was his creed. He did not expect God to interfere in the dangerous world in which he lived and he supposed that, like many a good commander, God liked best those of whom he heard least. The only exception he made to this was Gabriel, his young wife, Peter’s sister; her he did commit to God’s care every night. But just as every man in an army can be conscious of the leadership of a good commander, he knew God was there all the time, and there were times when he was conscious of His presence. Beneath the stars in the stillness of the night, at sea on the tumultuous waves, near to death in battle, those were the times when he knew He was near. He knew it tonight and when he had finished the prayers in French which he had learnt from his mother he repeated in English the Hundred and Fourth Psalm:

‘Praise the Lord, O my soul; O Lord my God, thou art become exceeding glorious; thou art clothed with majesty and honour.

‘Thou deckest thyself with light as it were with a garment; and spreadest out the heavens like a curtain,

‘Who layeth the beams of his chambers in the waters and maketh the clouds his chariot and walketh upon the wings of the wind.

‘He maketh his angels spirits and his ministers a flaming fire.’

He had learned the words of many of the psalms long ago when he was recovering from a wound; he used them in times of silence or peril, and always quietness and confidence came with them. Now he ceased to trouble himself about what he should say to Prince George in the morning.

He could hear the thunder of the surf on his left. Around him was the circle of hills that crouch over Barcelona. The night was clear; it was still some hours till moonrise; the stars glittered gold against deepest blue. The splendid words rolled on:

‘The lions roaring after their prey do seek their meat from God. The sun ariseth and they get them away together and lay them down in their dens.

‘Man goeth forth to his work and his labour until the evening.

‘O Lord how manifold are thy works; in wisdom hast thou made them all; the earth is full of thy riches.’

He finished the psalm and went into the tent. He drew off his boots and within a minute was in bed. He fell asleep almost as soon as he closed his eyes.

Chapter II

Sunday

September 13th

When his servant came to shave him next morning, Colonel Awbyn at once remembered that he had to see Prince George. He still did not know what he should say if the Prince asked him why he brought his plan to the King’s adviser instead of to his own commander-in-chief. The Prince was a soldier and was sure to ask him the question, and he did not know the answer. It was a line of conduct so foreign to any he would have chosen himself that he could not imagine why anyone should do such a thing. He decided that he would have to say he thought it best because the Dutch and English generals were against a siege, and he would stick doggedly to that, unconvincing though it sounded, like a sullen prisoner before a court martial.

Shaved and dressed, he took a morning draught of a light Spanish white wine; it was a wine the quartermaster of his troop had done well to get before the vintners in San Martino had sold all their stocks. He qualified it carefully with water, for he was a moderate man and frugal, retaining those French virtues at a time when they were not admired in England. Then he sent a message to the major that he did not know when he would be back, and was just putting on his hat when his servant announced that Captain Petty wished to speak to him. He stepped out of the door to meet him.

‘I’m sorry, Petty,’ he said, ‘but I have some urgent business. If it’s the brevet, and I suppose it’s still that, perhaps it could wait?’

Captain Petty agreed that it could wait, but added politely that it had been waiting a long time and he would like to get it settled.

The colonel sighed.

‘I know,’ he said. ‘And I don’t see how it can be settled here. But before dinner I will talk it over with you and Wills and give you my decision, and that must hold till we hear further from my lord in Berlin or from the Captain-General in Flanders.’

‘Very good, Sir.’ Captain Petty left him and the colonel went on his way towards Prince George’s quarters. He had himself a brevet of colonel in the army, but he was only the lieutenant-colonel of the regiment. He was in command, but it was sometimes tiresome that he could do so little without reference to the colonel, Lord Raby, who was Her Majesty’s envoy in Berlin.

When he reached Prince George’s quarters, Colonel Awbyn found everything in a bustle. He saw an aide-de-camp and asked for the Prince in French, for his German was weak.

‘He has gone out, no one knows where,’ he was told. ‘Early this morning, milord Peterborough came, before the Prince was dressed. Milord went in to see him and in ten minutes the Prince called for a horse and the two of them went off together, with only one aide-de-camp, as friendly as could be. They have gone to look at something; no one knows what.’

Since the two generals had not spoken to each other for a fortnight, it was no wonder everyone was in a stir at this. Colonel Awbyn thanked his informant and left with a feeling of relief. Some men would have been conscious also of disappointment; an awkward task avoided, yes, but a lost chance of being at the hub of affairs, in the secrets of the great. But for Awbyn the relief was unmixed with anything but pleasure; he was delighted that the two leaders were at one again and felt a lively hope that something would come of it. He smiled at himself as he remembered how much he had disliked the commission his lordship had put upon him, how he had tried vainly to think what he should say. What had happened, he supposed, had been that the general had thought of the project all night and in the morning had been so much afire with it that he could not wait and had gone out to broach it to the Prince directly.

Awbyn drew out his watch; it was a present from Lord Raby, who held him in some esteem, as well he might, for, in addition to his pay as colonel, the regiment put a good six hundred pounds a year in the envoy’s pocket. There was still time to see the regiment drawn up for prayers, for it was Sunday. After prayers, Sunday or no Sunday, the major and adjutant would put them through the exercise; these had been Colonel Awbyn’s orders for every Sunday since the landing, for the men had nothing to do and he was a firm believer in the proverb about idle hands.

The men were in fact already drawn up when he arrived and he was content to take no part in the parade but to remain a spectator.

It was thoroughly unsatisfactory to see only half the men mounted and the rest unmounted, but there was no way out of it unless the men were to forget the mounted part of the exercise. It was the custom of the regiment to hear prayers drawn up as though for battle; that is to say, they were first drawn up mounted but left their horses linked and came forward on foot towards the chaplain, for dragoons were still mounted infantrymen and although increasingly used as horse were still a separate arm of the service. Colonel Awbyn watched with a critical eye as the major gave the words of command:

‘Dragoons, have a care.

‘Sling your muskets.

‘Make ready your links.

‘Clear your right foot of the stirrups.

‘Dismount and stand at your horses’ heads.

‘Link your horses to the left.

‘March clear of your horses and shoulder as you march.’

The men without horses on the left of each troop moved at the last order only.

‘Halt!’

Now the regiment were dismounted, in line, clear of the horses, which stood linked so that one man could hold ten. There was one thing about these Portuguese brutes; they gave no trouble when required to stand still linked.

The chaplain read prayers. Colonel Awbyn’s mind did not dwell on the words as it had done last night. He thought that considering what they had been through, and that it was two years since the last re-clothing, the men did not look bad. Coat linings and the borders of saddle-cloths and holster-caps were still recognizably blue, coats were still scarlet. The hats were the worst, and after all those months on shipboard in a Dutch port it was not surprising that they should be; indeed, it was a wonder they had not all been eaten by rats. Hats were a yearly issue, and he would see about getting new ones at the first opportunity.

His mind ran back over the past two years; the Netherlands; orders for Spain; the embarkation and that unforgettable winter weather-bound in port, cooped up on board for three and a half months from start to finish. And then, on top of all the discomfort for the officers and hardship for the men, the perpetual sickening wrangle about allowances. There was no reason on earth why they should not get the full allowance; the ship being weather-bound they might just as well have been ashore, but though everyone agreed, nothing was done. Portugal at last, not till March, and it had been November when they embarked. And after such a winter, when at last they went ashore in Portugal, they had been ordered to encamp! It would not have been so bad if there had not been good accommodation available, but to see it all taken by the brigadier for his own regiment, who were put into quarters that would have held twice as many, that really had made Colonel Awbyn angry. He grew angry again at the memory of that dispute with Harvey’s Horse and his interview with Brigadier Harvey. Horse they might be, and we only Dragoons, but we are the elder regiment, and a royal regiment at that, and we have King Charles’s proclamation that we take precedence as horse in the field and as foot in garrison. And Lord Raby is senior to Brigadier Harvey. So that we should certainly have taken precedence over Harvey’s Horse on any count.

But it was no use getting angry about that again. He watched the men again critically; prayers were finished and they were going through the musketry exercise.

‘Dragoons, have a care.’

Each man pulled off his right glove and tucked it under his waist-band. Gloves, he thought, were not suitable for this climate; they could not of course leave them off for public appearances, but for ordinary parades during the week, perhaps they could manage without them.

‘Handle your daggers.’

‘Draw forth your daggers.

They had fixed bayonets now and were charging to the right, charging to the left, as in the old pike exercise. Captain Wills’s troop was a trifle ragged; he was seeing Captain Wills anyhow about the brevet, and would mention it then. Now the bayonets were back in the scabbards and they were reloading.

‘Clean your pan.

‘Open your cartridge-box.’

It was a simple business nowadays, with flintlocks and cartridge-boxes, a dozen words of command saved since he had joined. It really had been a business then, with bandoliers and matchlocks, and wasteful of life too. For he could himself remember more than one occasion in battle when a musketeer had gone to a powder-barrel to fill his bandoliers without putting his match out and had blown up himself and half the company.

‘Blow off your loose corns.’

They had finished reloading and now came a part of the exercise which in Colonel Awbyn’s opinion should not be done too often. If it was kept for Sundays only, and those were his orders at present, the men enjoyed it and you could get some idea of whether there was anything seriously amiss with them.

‘Quit your arms.

‘March clear of your arms and break.’

The men had laid down their muskets and marched clear of them. They broke line and gathered in irregular knots. Now the drums beat a ruffle ending with a single flam, on which the men drew their swords and with a loud huzza ran to their arms as though charging an imaginary foe. Now came a second ruffle and on the final flam the men were drawn up again in their ranks, swords sheathed, muskets at the order. Not bad, the Colonel thought, not bad; but you would see them do it very differently if there was a chance of action.

He did not wait for the end of the parade but went back to his quarters to finish some correspondence before Petty and Wills should come to see him. As he went, he wondered whether the Earl and the Prince had decided to try his plan, whether perhaps that afternoon they would hear that the train of artillery was to march away to the south-east to batter that long stretch of unflanked curtain.

He was deep in a letter to his colonel, who was punctilious in requiring exact news of everything that happened in the regiment, when Captain Petty and Captain Wills came to see him. He greeted them in a friendly way, for he believed in being as informal as he could with his officers when off duty, and asked each of them in turn to explain why he thought he should take precedence over the other. He did, as a matter of fact, already know exactly what each of them would say and had made up his mind what he was going to say himself. All the same, he must hear them again, for if he did not his decision would seem arbitrary and tyrannical. So he listened attentively.

The case of Captain Wills was very simple. He had joined the regiment as a cornet two years before Petty and had served in the lieutenant-colonel’s troop until he was the second senior lieutenant in the regiment and often virtually in command of the troop. Then two vacancies for captain had occurred and Wills and the captain-lieutenant, or senior subaltern, were next for promotion. Wills had bought one of the two vacant troops from the outgoing captain for a thousand pounds. He had obtained permission to transfer to the new troop and on his colonel’s recommendation had been gazetted and commissioned captain. On a calculation, he had had ninety-two pounds back in return for discharging his predecessor of all liability for recruiting, re-mounting and re-fitting. He had had the troop now for six months and there could therefore be no question that he was senior to Petty who on the books of the regiment was the lieutenant in this same troop.

Petty had come to what was now Captain Wills’s troop as a cornet and had been duly promoted lieutenant. Then, being what Awbyn in his letters to Lord Raby always called a pretty gentleman, he had been chosen as an aide-de-camp to a general. He had been away more than two years, putting much extra work on the captain and cornet of his troop, for there was no one to take his place. While absent, he was reported to have behaved very well, and he was the only officer of the regiment who had been present at the battle of Blenheim last year. There was no doubt he had done well and the regiment were proud of him. Nor had he spoiled his good name by conceit since he came back. His good behaviour had brought him to notice and he had been rewarded with a brevet of the rank of captain under the hand of the Captain-General, the Duke of Marlborough, himself. Now his brevet stated clearly that from the date of the commission he would take precedence as a captain of dragoons not only outside his regiment but within it. And his brevet was two months older than Wills’s commission as captain, so that if the terms of Petty’s commission were followed he took precedence of the captain of his own troop.

Colonel Awbyn listened attentively and then gave his decision. He had referred the whole affair to Lord Raby whom he had asked to obtain from Mr. Cardonnel, His Grace’s secretary, orders that would make the matter clear. In the meantime a man who had a troop must take precedence over a man who had not. Captain Petty had a captain’s pay and allowances, which gave him fifteen shillings and sixpence a day instead of nine shillings as a lieutenant, and that must suffice him till he could buy a troop. But we shall have the whole trouble over again, he thought, when a troop does become vacant, for the captain-lieutenant, who commanded the colonel’s troop, was senior to Petty in the regiment and would certainly expect the vacancy. It was getting a troop that made the difference to an officer, for if too many recruits did not die or desert and he had reasonable luck with his remounts, it should be worth two hundred pounds a year beyond his pay. And the man who had stayed by the regiment felt he had a better right to a troop than the pretty gentleman who had been an aide-de-camp.

Captain Petty accepted the colonel’s decision with a bow; he was a tall man and fair, very self-possessed and easy in his manner. The three stood up and Awbyn called for wine. It was dinner-time and dinner on Sunday was something of an occasion, even when, as at present, they were dependent on what the troop quartermasters could provide. The smell of roast meat from the earth-built field kitchens was already strong and savoury in the hot air of early afternoon. Talk became general and came round to the everlasting topic of the siege.

‘Joshua was the man,’ said Captain Petty, ‘Ram’s horns and trumpets instead of a train of artillery. He made a breach in seven days, and such a breach as we could never make with modern guns, for it went right round the fortress. And look how much simpler transportation was when your battering train could be carried by your musicians.’

Everyone laughed, pleased that Petty was taking it so well. They were still laughing when Peter de Nérac joined them. He had not yet been aide-de-camp to His Majesty a fortnight and still lived with the regiment, for there were no more quarters available in the suburb of San Martino where the great men were lodged. Today it was his turn to be off duty.

‘Well, have you heard the news?’ he asked.

All three looked at him eagerly. They had heard nothing.

‘We march to Tarragona,’ said Peter. ‘The advanced guard starts today. I thought you’d have had orders, by now.’

Even at that moment, orders arrived. Awbyn told the messenger to wait and with an apology to the others broke the seal on his letter. It was from Mr. Furly, and conveyed very precisely and formally the general’s orders that a detachment of two hundred men of the Queen’s Dragoons should accompany the advanced guard on the march to Tarragona. The advanced guard were to be drawn up and ready to march by six o’clock on Sunday evening in front of Prince George of Hesse’s quarters; they were to be prepared for the possibility of action on the way; there might be a Castilian garrison in some small town. Then, with a slight change of wording, came the Earl of Peterborough’s particular request that Colonel Awbyn should command the detachment for the march, leaving Major Warren to pack up the camp and follow with the main body of the army.

Colonel Awbyn allowed himself no time to reflect on this till he had done what was necessary. He sent Captain Petty to give his orders to Major Warren; he sent for the adjutant and instructed him to have the men drawn up in the camp by five o’clock. Their cartridge-boxes were to be full and each man should have two pounds of bread in his haversack and what cheese the quartermasters could find, besides eight pounds of oats.

It was only when this was done and he sat down to dinner, that he allowed his mind to reflect on the particular request that he should accompany the advanced party. Was there perhaps some ray of hope in this? But all depended on the guns. He turned to Peter who was joining him for dinner, and asked whether he could say what orders had been given to the train of artillery. Peter understood his thought and it was with sympathy for his disappointment that he answered:

‘The battering train is to be re-embarked.’

The battering train, the heavy siege guns, would go by sea to Tarragona but the field train would of course come with the main army. Then the siege was not to be attempted; they really were to march away. Colonel Awbyn’s heart was heavy and, as the news spread, the same heaviness invaded every private soldier in the army. For whatever the strategists might say, the judgment of the soldier was that of the Catalan peasantry; the Allied army had come to take Barcelona and gone away without even trying. Either they had been fools to come or they were cowards to go; the soldier was inclined to think they were both.

But there was too much to do that afternoon for any time to be wasted on regrets. Colonel Awbyn had to leave Major Warren instructions as to what stores could go by sea and what was to follow with the main body of the army, and it was a difficult problem. For if stores were entrusted to the fleet, they might be sunk at sea or lost and never seen again, while it was still uncertain how the baggage of the main army would move because of the shortage of horses, mules and wagons. Major Warren was the kind of man who wanted exact orders, and it was very difficult to give them. He would have to use his discretion to some extent and see how much he could get on to the wagons of the baggage-train when they materialized.

Lord Raby’s troop, the lieutenant-colonel’s and two other troops were drawn up mounted at five o’clock before the camp. It had been necessary to borrow mounted men from other troops and leave behind the unmounted, all most unsatisfactory. Colonel Awbyn rode along the three ranks, checking here and there the contents of a cartridge-box or a haversack. They wheeled into fives and in a few minutes were marching at the trot to San Martino. Not that they could keep up a trot for long, the colonel gloomily reflected, and as for galloping, it was out of the question. Still, they could make a fair show for a short distance. The drums and oboes played them away, blue ribbons fluttered on the horses’ bridles, arms gleamed brightly in the afternoon sun. It was a pity that since they were unmounted there could be no question of the musicians coming with the advanced guard.

In the square in front of Prince George of Hesse’s quarters, where they must halt till six o clock, there was such a crowd of country people that it was not easy for the troops to move into their proper places. The peasants seemed to think that every dragoon had it in his power to change the orders for the march; women knelt before their horses, stretched out their arms to them and wept, caught hold of their bridles, imploring them to stay in a stream of words they did not understand.

Colonel Awbyn halted his four troops and pushed his horse through the crowd. He had to find the officer commanding the detachment of two troops of Conynghame’s Irish Dragoons that was to join them. A tall priest poured forth entreaties to him in Spanish and Latin, holding out to him and actually thrusting against his bridle hand a piece of gold plate, a tray from an altar-service; but whether for himself or the King was not clear. Colonel Awbyn thrust it away with a movement of his hand and edged his horse towards the priest so that he had to fall back. Gently, sidling at the half-passage first one way and then the other, he made his way towards the officer of Conynghame’s. He hated this; he had foreseen in his talk with the general last night what the Catalans would feel, but the reality was worse, and all the more so for being irrelevant to what he had to do. It was like having toothache when on duty; you wanted it to stop so that you could get on with the work.

He had to shout to make himself understood, but the officer of Conynghame’s was very reasonable. Although he had been first at the rendezvous, he recognized that the Queen’s as elder regiment must take the right of the line; but it was not so easy to get the men there. They were at first sorry for the people in the square, but since they liked the march no better than the peasants, they gradually became irritated and inclined to be rough. Impatience with the wretched beasts they rode added to the men’s annoyance; the officers had to get them through the crowd and across the square without hurting the country people, and because the noise was so terrific that no orders could be heard it was difficult to keep them moving and check roughness at the same time. But at last it was done, and the six troops of dragoons were drawn up in their ranks.

Behind them were drawing up four hundred grenadiers and six hundred musketeers, taken from several regiments of foot and including some Dutch. There were also some light carts with scaling ladders and ammunition. The foot were having even more difficulty than the dragoons in getting into position; Colonel Awbyn, riding across the front of his regiment to speak to the troop commanders, saw a fat major of foot struggling to free himself from a peasant woman’s arms round his neck, and the grenadiers behind him forced to use their carbines as staves to push the people back. It was the priests and the women who were most trouble; the men kept in the background, sullen and angry.

An aide-de-camp came out from the Prince’s lodgings and managed to push his way through to Colonel Allen, who commanded the detachment of musketeers. They consulted and a score of files under a captain wheeled away from the rest and, each man holding his musket before him by the butt and the muzzle, managed to clear the space in front of the parade, forming a line of men at each end to keep it clear. Into the haven thus created, horses were led; the Earl and the Prince came out and mounted and at once the order was given to move off. A trumpeter sounded the tucket, and the column moved away to the north, the crying of women growing more frenzied as they seized the muskets of the thin line of men who held them back, shaking them with all the strength of their bodies, wailing in despair as they saw their deliverers marching away, leaving them to the mercy of a sovereign for whose rule they had shown their distaste so openly.

The column wound its way north-westward into the hills. As the sun sank towards the horizon, the guns of Barcelona thundered in a joyous salute and rockets streamed their arrowy way into the night, bursting in coloured stars above the sea. The French and Castilians were rejoicing; the threat of a siege was ended; there would be a public holiday in Barcelona tomorrow.

Chapter III

The Assault on Montjuich

September 14th

The column wound its way from the market-gardens of San Martino north-westward towards the hills. Night had fallen; there were no more rockets and the guns of Barcelona were silent. It was dark and not easy to keep on the road. Peering through the gloom, leaving things as far as he could to his horse, there was not much of Colonel Awbyn’s attention available for anything else, but what thoughts he had were almost as gloomy as the night. An inconclusive and badly managed campaign in Portugal last year, and now, in spite of his lordship’s zeal and energy, divided councils and a bad beginning. Three weeks wasted in front of Barcelona and nothing to show for it. Peter might be right and a march to Madrid the better strategy, but to go away from Barcelona now meant the Catalans would never trust them again. And there would be no heart in the men, for if there was one thing that depressed them it was being endlessly moved about without purpose.

Captain Lediard, the senior captain of the regiment, commanding the third troop of the column, was occupied with thoughts not very dissimilar. He was a keen officer and he felt the regiment were not being treated fairly. They had missed the march to the Danube and the battle of Blenheim by being ordered away to Spain and so far everything that had happened here had confirmed his worst fears; an amateurish, rascally business, this Spanish war seemed to be; no horses, no wagon-master, no proper commissary of provisions, no sieges; nothing but argument and discussion. And to a man of his service, unlikely to lead to promotion; for in Flanders, he reflected grimly, a battle or a siege might carry off a dozen field officers in a day, but here the enemies that would do execution would be women, wine and green fruit. Young men’s enemies; it would be new cornets that would be needed, not majors or lieutenant-colonels.

That was the background of Captain Lediard’s thoughts, that and a perpetual slight irritation with the lieutenant that fate and Lord Raby had sent him. But the immediate question to him as to everyone else in the column was how much longer it would be before they halted. Supper and a bivouac and water, those were every man’s needs after three hours’ marching, of which the first part had been in the hot September sun. There was no point in going on like this all night; they were only an advanced guard, and the main body would certainly not start tomorrow.

At the rear of the troop, the lieutenant, Mr. Hedley, shared his troop commander’s interest in when they were going to halt. He shared too the regret of everyone in the column at leaving Barcelona, but his reasons were not those of his colonel. He was a young man of a sanguine complexion and temperament, an extremely healthy animal, and what he had looked forward to had been the fruits of a successful siege. When they got into the town, he had promised himself two things, a horse and a mistress. It was only as to the horse that he had anticipated any difficulty; Catalonia was notorious for the lack of them but surely there must be some decent horses in the capital. A man who had his eye on the governor’s stables should be able to lay his hands on something before they were all taken for the great men, and if he could have a horse that was any pleasure to ride, tills Spanish campaign might become bearable. As to his other requirement, he had been sure that would be forthcoming once they were in Barcelona, and so long as there had been some hope of meeting it his need had not been intolerable. But now that the prospect of gratification was receding, well, it had needed an effort to restrain himself from leaping from his horse in the square just now. Most of the women had been too old, but one would have suited him; his hot brown eyes had pictured the limbs, young, tender and vigorous, beneath her full peasant skirt, noted the rounded forearm and the thrust of back and loins as she tried to wrestle past a musketeer. But imagined delights were no solace to Lieutenant Hedley.

In the centre of the troop, the cornet, Mr. Francis, the latest joined officer of the regiment, was by now conscious mainly of thirst. At the beginning of the march, he had been full of excitement and anticipation; it was his first prospect of action, for there was a chance of action, even though proved soldiers from the Netherlands spoke slightingly of anything they were likely to meet. Action at last; he thought of it with a tightening of the throat, a drying of the mouth; he hoped he would be brave; he did not think he would be frightened to the extent of cowardice but he was far from sure that he would keep cool. It would be easy to do the wrong thing, to forget an order. He must keep cool and remember his men. He must not get excited, he must remember the exercise as though he were on parade. Those had been his droughts at the beginning of the march. Now he thought about water.

But as the darkness grew deeper, a suspicion had occurred to Colonel Awbyn. He was beginning to wonder whether perhaps, after all, there might not be something in the wind. He would not put it precisely into words, even to himself, but something he began to suspect there must be. He knew the country better than most; he had several times in the last three weeks ridden up into the hills to look back at Barcelona and see it as a whole, to learn where the roads led up there in case any expedition into the surrounding country became necessary. He knew they would soon be reaching the convent generally known as Gracias. That must be where they were going to halt, but why go so far? There was no point in tiring the men by a night march if they were only an advanced guard, and that to a main force which was not going to start till the day after tomorrow. And why were the Prince and the Earl both with the advanced guard? He had supposed that the Earl was coming to get away from the court and that the Prince would come with them a short way, in proof to the world of their new friendship, turning back as dusk fell; but the Prince had not turned back; he was still with the column.

A dark shape. A mounted figure was standing by the side of the road. Colonel Awbyn drew and cocked a pistol, but an English voice reassured him. An aide-de-camp from the general. The men were to halt at Gracias; there was a spring there and they could drink, water their horses and rest. They might light fires and eat their supper. Colonel Awbyn commanding the dragoons, Colonel Southwell commanding the grenadiers, Colonel Allen commanding the musketeers, and the Dutch colonel, whose name none of the English could pronounce, were to find the general as soon as they reached Gracias.

‘What about firing?’ the colonel asked. ‘Are they to scatter to get it?’

He was told that an officer and two men had gone ahead; there would be enough wood available.

The aide-de-camp had ridden beside Colonel Awbyn as he told him this. He wheeled to one side and let the column move on past him, waiting for the grenadiers. Colonel Awbyn gave his orders to the captain-lieutenant, commanding Lord Raby’s troop, who rode by his side, and then he too moved out of the stream and let the mounted men move on; he peered at the dark shapes, waiting for a break in the ranks that would tell him where the lieutenant of the major’s troop was riding. But the ranks were broken and straggling; there was no room on the narrow hill track for the five abreast formation in which the dragoons marched on parade. He had to call the lieutenant’s name till he found him.

They were near Gracias by the time he had seen all the troop commanders and stumbled back to the head of the column, taking advantage of every stretch of road that was a little wider than the rest. Then came an open space, the sound of water; a shadowy form in the starlight, an English voice, and in a few minutes they were dismounted, horses were being given a handful of oats, fires were lighted, they could drink. Awbyn saw that each troop was in place before he moved away to find the general. There was no need to hurry, for the leading files of the foot were only just coming in.

He was away some time; when at last he was back, the men had finished supper and were settling down to sleep. He called the troop-commanders together and spoke to them in a low voice for a few minutes.

‘Nothing to the men yet,’ he said when he finished. You can tell your cornets.’

Half an hour later the men were roused; sleepy, bewildered, cursing, they were on their feet, stumbling among the picket-ropes, strapping up haversacks, pulling on belts, feeling for horses’ heads, swearing at buckles. No drums, no oboes, only the sergeants’ fierce low orders.

‘Boot and saddle.’

‘Quiet there; quiet, you fool.’

‘Quickly; quick and quiet; boot and saddle. Leave the fires burning.’

Girths tight; curb-chains linked; everything present, hands in the dark patting and feeling to make sure, cartridge-box, priming-flask, sword, pistols, bayonet, firelock; mount; walk march; they were moving away from Gracias.

Awbyn waited till all six troops of the detachment had moved off, sent the adjutant once more along the line of blazing fires, making sure that no men or horses were left behind, then trotted after the men, slowly and awkwardly, pushing his unwilling horse.

West-south-west. That was their course, and by the mercy of God it was a clear night. He picked up the Bear, the Pole Star, Cassiopeia, Vega, Arcturus; he set a course, but it would be the devil of a business to keep to it in this rough country. There was a guide, but Colonel Awbyn knew better than to trust entirely to a guide.

And the devil of a business it was. For the dragoons, it was not so much the bodily exertion as the mental irritation that was tiring. They were for ever peering uncertainly ahead through the dark, for ever dismounting to reconnoitre a place that looked difficult or at which a sorry Portuguese nag had jibbed. Sometimes they found it was nothing; they could mount again and drive the brute over it with the spurs, but just as often they must lead up or down to pass a field wall among the terraced olives, the stony bank of a stream, a dangerous drop above a farm sunk in a hollow. They were moving across the grain of the country, for the streams ran down to the sea and they were marching parallel with the coast. It was always up or down. Rocky ground and dry soil; always there was the clink, clink, of horseshoes on rock, now and then a spark from the feet of the horse ahead. The night air was cool; wafting through the smell of horses in poor condition, it brought scents of dust and stone, sometimes for a few yards moisture and the aromatic fragrance of crushed mountain herbage.

Lediard suggested that the six troops might split and go on independently but Awbyn did not agree. To keep together made a long straggling line, very slow and tedious for all and worst for the men in the rear, but it was better to go like this, slowly in single file, than to be scattered all over the countryside. The men drank at every stream, but nothing quenched their thirst.

After hours of groping and stumbling in the dark, they struck a road, running right and left across the line of march, a deep stony rut between the fields which Colonel Awbyn believed must be the road he was looking for. He halted the column and sent a man out either way to look for a village. Meanwhile, he drew from his coat pocket a length of grenadier’s match which he always carried with him and, having lighted it from the lock of a pistol, blew it into a glow by which he could read his watch. It was already after three o’clock; if this was not the road they were looking for, they would be late for the rendezvous.

But it seemed probable that it was; both men were back now; the one who had gone up the road, away from the sea, had found nothing, but the other had found a village with the church on the right of the road; that must be Sejia, or at least it should be. They turned towards the sea, and filed along the road, through the silent village. A cock crew; a dog barked; a heifer lowed; no human voice disturbed the quiet; but nose would have said clearly that here was a village if they had been deaf or blind.

A lightening in the east; the faintest silver radiance, the chill sweet breath of an air from the sea. Colonel Awbyn looked at his watch again but he still could not read it without his match, and he was not going to stop to light that now. In another mile he could see; it was after four, and the waning moon was high enough now to help them. The road was a stony channel for flood-water; the feet of men and cattle had begun it, water had torn away the soil. It was deep between the fields now, sometimes narrow, descending sharply to a V-shaped bed, sometimes wider where a boulder had held up the torrent. It was the kind of road they would have sworn at heartily if that journey across country had not made them grateful for it.

Now there was a warmer colour in the east, for the sun’s dawn was only a little behind the moon. A faint suffusion of primrose, of saffron, a thin line of silver cloud gilt suddenly with fire, glowing, glowing, heating intolerably, anvil hot, to vermilion; then the sun, molten, brazen, shimmering.

They were on the brow of a hill; the road for a few hundred yards had been less steep than usual; now it took a fresh plunge downwards. But the view from the road was restricted; Colonel Awbyn gave the order to halt and himself dismounted. He climbed out of the road into a field only slightly sloping, set with olive trees. He stood in the shade of one of these trees, at the top of the bank in which the field ended, and looked about him, using a French perspective glass which he had bought from a trooper in the Netherlands.

Below him the road dropped towards the sea; a little on his left lay Barcelona in the early morning sun, the first smoke beginning to rise from the chimneys, the harbour glittering sharply, for it lay right in the track of the sun, the fleet lying at anchor, tiny as toys in a bottle, dark against the more opaque water beyond. The dragoons had toiled painfully all night to make a circle of the town, and now directly before them, a little to the south of east, rose in steep escarpments the hill of Montjuich, the last bastion of the mountains. His glass found the rugged and sharply slanting line made against the sky by its western face; his circle of enlarged vision staggered up that line to the fort on the summit. There was no sign of activity there, nor in the outworks below.

He lowered the glass and looked round. The foot should not be far behind; in fact they should be up, for a horse had not been an advantage in the country they had crossed last night. And unless they were up, the plan was not going to come off. It would mean an advance of more than a mile in the open, in broad daylight, across a valley; the governor of the town would have time to send reinforcements to the fort and once it was reinforced and the garrison alert, the fort was impregnable, simply by its position. Unless the garrison was surprised or the place had been battered for weeks, no one could hope to get up that hill-side, over those sharply escarped rocks.

There was no sign of the foot on the slopes of Montjuich; they were too late and the plan would fail. With a sense of deep disappointment, he moved up the slope and a little to his left, and then he saw, away to his right, a scarlet column moving slowly and painfully over the olive terraces, down the hill, towards Montjuich. He found them in his glass; looped felt hats they wore—and he could not forbear the momentary thought that he must get his dragoons new hats as soon as this episode was over—so they must be the musketeers under Colonel Allen. They must have crossed the Sejia road in the dark and made an even longer circle than the dragoons.

He turned right away from the sea and looked behind him, searching for the tall mitre-like caps of the grenadiers. And before he had looked long, he saw them for a moment through a gap, bobbing down the same stony track from Sejia that he had followed himself.

He went back quickly to the road and gave orders. The dragoons and their horses must be out of the road quickly to let the grenadiers go by. They were to draw up in the field in which he stood, towards the back of the field, away from the sea, so that they should not be visible from Montjuich. He told the troop commanders to have the men drawn up properly, to inspect them, to see that they looked to the priming of muskets and pistols; meanwhile, he walked up the road to meet Colonel Southwell.

The colonel commanding the grenadiers was as conscious as he of the lateness of the hour. But no one could have supposed that the journey across country would have been so slow. The guides had been useless; he would have been better without them. As to my lord and the Prince, he had no news; but the instructions were exact; he knew just what he had to do. He was getting his men on now as fast as he could to join Allen and the musketeers, but it was no use pressing them too hard after such a night. Already he had lost nearly a quarter of his men as stragglers.

The grenadiers went on while this conversation took place; it could hardly be called marching, for the freshest and smartest troops in the world could not have marched in that lane. Colonel Southwell pushed on after them; Colonel Awbyn turned back to his dragoons. He made sure his troop commanders were doing their inspection properly; as soon as that was finished he wheeled them into fives as though they were on parade and sent them clattering down the lane in single file. They would get some rest, perhaps, further down the hill at the Covered Cross, which was the place appointed for them when the assault began.

The men had seen nothing from the field of olive trees, but they could see glimpses of the sea, the fort and the harbour, as they jolted painfully and tenderly down the lane. They knew now what was afoot, and, tired though they were and knowing that their own part in this affair must be secondary, excitement ran through them, they looked ahead, eager as hounds feathering at the first hint of scent.

Their station was at the Covered Cross, near the place where the road from one of the gates of Barcelona, the Gate of St. Anthony, met the road from Sejia. The place took its name from a crucifix with a covering like the roof of a lych-gate. Here, on a knoll from which they could see the slopes of Montjuich, within easy cannon-shot to the south-east, the dragoons were drawn up by troops, dismounted but not linked, standing at their horses’ heads, girths still tight, ready to mount and act as horse if required.

Colonel Awbyn called Captain Lediard to his side. They could see, without using the glass, the grenadiers and musketeers together at the foot of the slope. The two parties had met and halted to divide afresh for the assault. Both watchers knew the plan, so that they were able to follow, without comment, what was happening. First, two small parties left the main body of troops and began to move slowly up the hill, parallel with each other. Those would be the two parties for the first assault on the eastern and western bastions of the fort, thirty grenadiers under a lieutenant in each. Behind them, in close support of each, a second party, a little larger; that would be fifty men under a captain. Last, a larger body, two hundred musketeers, following up each of the parallel advances. Colonel Southwell was in command of the whole of the western or right-hand party, Colonel Allen of the left-hand attack. The unpronounceable Dutch colonel commanded the reserve. He should have had five hundred men, but there had been so many stragglers that he had barely half.

Colonel Awbyn’s glass raked the fort, swung northwards to the walls of Barcelona.

‘Nothing unusual,’ he said. ‘They don’t seem to have noticed.’

‘Too busy rejoicing last night,’ said Lediard.

The enemy would certainly have had headaches this morning if they had been English, Awbyn thought, but Spaniards and Italians were more abstemious. On the other hand, their mental reaction to good fortune would be more extreme. It was quite likely the guards were all playing dice. He said:

‘It may come off. I suppose that even if they had seen us, they would never have supposed till now that we were going to attack Montjuich.’

‘That’s the beauty of it,’ Lediard agreed. ‘The strongest part of the fortifications.’

There was a clatter in the lane from Sejia. The Earl and the Prince, with a knot of staff officers, must also have missed their way in the night and were trying to catch up with the battle. They did not stop; a quick word, confirming that the dragoons were stationed in the right place, and they were gone. The ground was less steep here, and they were better mounted than the dragoons; they would soon be up with the advance.

Awbyn and Lediard turned again to watch the two groups of scarlet lines creeping slowly, slowly, like the hand of a clock, up the hill before them.

‘Poor devils must be thirsty,’ said Lediard. It had been bad enough for mounted men.

Puffs of smoke just ahead of the leading scarlet figures, and the scattered sound of a dozen shots. Awbyn said:

‘Miquelets, not soldiers; I can see them running back towards the outworks.’

‘Can you see what the outworks are like?’ Lediard asked.

‘Not very well. They do not look formidable.’

They had looked at the walls of Barcelona, a dozen times. But it had been an axiom of their thought that Montjuich could not be taken and none of them had studied the fortifications. It was clear enough all the same that the strength of the place lay in the donjon, a tower and a fort with four bastions on the top of the hill. There was some kind of covered way round the donjon, and then further down the hill a line of outworks. On the side near the town, the north-east, the outworks were close to the donjon. There was a strong bastion of cut stone at this end, but the line of outworks followed the contour of the hill far away from the donjon, to the south-west, out of musket-shot. Here, the works looked slight and unfinished except for a demi-bastion at the extreme south-west.

‘It looks to me,’ said Lediard, ‘as though the outworks were too extensive. If you had enough men to hold all that outer line, it would be too many for the donjon.’

Awbyn agreed.

‘We ought to be able to get into the outworks,’ he said. ‘Then we might rush the keep, but even if we don’t, it should be possible to make things very uneasy for those who get back to it, provided always we can prevent communication with the town.’

The two triple lines of scarlet were diverging, each making for a wing of the outworks. The right-hand party would have the easier task, making for the isolated demi-bastion on the south-west. The left-hand assault on the big north-eastern bastion would soon be joined by the Prince and the Earl; the group of generals and staff officers could be seen, moving more slowly now on the steep slopes, but gaining all the same on the red lines ahead of them.

‘They’re well within musket-shot now,’ said Awbyn.

‘Enemy are holding their fire,’ said Lediard.

In another minute there were puffs of smoke from the outer line of works below the donjon. The sound of the shots reached them; but there was nothing yet from the western end. Then came firing from the western end too, a little, and sharper firing in the east. The red lines went on; there was no pausing to answer the fire; they moved slowly on, enduring their losses. They were near the works on the east.

‘They’re throwing their grenades.’

It was the moment of the assault, the moment for which they had toiled slowly and painfully up the hill and watched their comrades drop beside them. To the watchers at the Covered Cross came, faintly on the light sea-breeze, the sound of an English huzza, the heavier thuds of grenades exploding, the crackle of musketry. The scarlet hue broke into scarlet dots that moved quickly, tiny beads that scrambled and tumbled up, on, out of sight.

‘I can see men running back to the donjon; ours are in the outworks,’ Awbyn said.

Now at the western end too came the huzza and the thud of grenades; Colonel Southwell’s men were in the outworks and in a few minutes came the sound of gunfire.

‘Two, three,’ Lediard was counting the puffs of smoke. ‘They’ve taken three pieces and are firing at the donjon. Sakers or minions, I should guess.’

‘But why don’t they go on at the eastern end? Now is the time, at once. They’ve still the chance of surprising the donjon by a rush. Ah, they’re going on.’

The red lines appeared again above the outworks, below the donjon. The firing from the keep grew fiercer, and it was not only from muskets, but from light pieces of cannon. The lines went on.

‘They’re losing a few,’ said Colonel Awbyn with the glass.

‘Bound to,’ Lediard answered. ‘They’re in the covered way. The second line are in too.’

‘Scaling-ladders. I can see them going up.’

This was the critical moment. The fire grew fiercer. The two watchers strained to see.

‘Not long enough,’ said Awbyn. ‘They can’t do it.’

The scaling-ladders would not reach the top of the walls. It was no use. Even without the glass, Lediard could see the scarlet dots falling back. In another two minutes they were running back from the covered way to the first line of outworks.

‘Now is the enemy’s chance,’ said Lediard. ‘Now is the moment for them to recover the outworks.’

‘Now is the time for us to bring up more men, and make sure of the communications with the town,’ said Awbyn. ‘I wish we were nearer to the town. We can do nothing here. From a little further round to the left, we could do something to stop reinforcements from the town. It’s what they’re bound to do. Take your troop, Lediard, two furlongs or so towards the town, and put some scouts out further to your left and a little forward. They’ll be able to see the moment any troops leave the town. But I’ve no orders to move.’

Lediard took his troop away. Colonel Awbyn continued to gaze at the fort of Montjuich. The small arms fire died down; only the three brass minions (as they turned out to be), which Colonel Southwell’s party had captured on the west continued to fire at the fort and were answered. The assault had reached a stage where both parties rested; neither could, for the moment, injure the other. It was a question which of the two would first make a move that would give it the power to harm.

Now there were a dozen horsemen riding back from the eastern lodgement towards the dragoons. The glass told Awbyn that these were the Earl and Prince with their staff officers. They had reached the outworks just as the grenadiers fell back from the keep; now they were coming to give fresh orders. He rode down the hill to meet them.

The thin brisk man at the head of the party showed no sign of remembering that midnight talk by his bedside only one night ago. He asked Colonel Awbyn at once if he had seen anything of Brigadier Stanhope, who with twelve hundred men was following the main column. Awbyn had seen nothing of him, but he had not been watching the hills behind him. The Earl gave orders to an aide-de-camp to ride up the lane towards Sejia, to find the brigadier and tell him what had happened, then to direct him to get his men as soon as he could into the long ravine between Montjuich and the walls of Barcelona. Here they would have cover from the fire of the town but could intervene in any attempt to send reinforcements to the fort.

‘And if he has any control over his miquelets, they may be directed to the same task,’ he added. ‘But remember the brigadier knows nothing. He thinks he is on his way to Tarragona. I shall have to make my peace with him for that.’ It was well known that Brigadier Stanhope was the Earl’s closest friend among the soldiers.

The Prince intervened. It was essential, he urged, that communications with the town should be stopped at once. It might be some time before Brigadier Stanhope was in position.

Colonel Awbyn seized the chance to suggest that he should move in that direction with his dragoons. But the Earl would have none of it. The dragoons were posted there to cover the retreat of the main force if it should be necessary, and they were to stay where they were and not—with a glance at Lediard’s troop—to edge round the hill towards the town.

As he spoke, one of Prince George’s aides-de-camp galloped up. There were horsemen coming from the town towards the fort, several hundred. Now at least, Awbyn thought, he would be allowed to take his dragoons to that critical spot, but he had no time to open his mouth, for the Earl, apparently reading his thoughts, told him that he would be too late and he must stay where he was. Without a second’s pause, he went on to the Prince, who was also clearly anxious to speak, pointing, with a hand still gauntleted, to the Dutch colonel and his reserve. They were already on their way and would be in position between the town and the fort before anyone else could be there. But it would be an additional advantage, urged the Prince, if some of the troops in the outworks moved round to their left to cover the gate of the fort towards the town. To this the Earl agreed and the Prince and his officers left at once to carry out the movement.

‘Can you lend me an officer as aide-de-camp?’ were the Earl’s next words. The messenger he had sent to Brigadier Stanhope might not be back for some time.

Awbyn had only one troop with three officers. He suggested Mr. Francis, cornet in Lediard’s troop, adding that he was inexperienced. But the Earl accepted him and directed that he should follow as soon as he could. Then with a quick smile.

‘We shall be battering that curtain of yours before the end of the week, Colonel,’ and in a moment he was on his way back to the north-east bastion.

Three minutes later, Mr. Francis left his colonel at the Covered Cross and followed Lord Peterborough as fast as his wretched jade could be made to go. It really had come; action at last; and this, he thought, would be better than giving orders to a troop, for he would certainly remember a message, though he might in the heat of battle forget part of the exercise. He had a chance now, a real chance, of covering himself with glory; for there was nothing an aide-de-camp might not be asked to do.

The dragoon holding horses in the cover of the bastion was one of their own men, and that was a slight but definite reassurance to Mr. Francis. He spoke to him as he gave him the reins and hoped he did not show his excitement. Then he walked round the bastion, scrambled over the low wall of roughly cut stone that made the rampart of the outworks and dropped into the ditch. His hand was still on the parapet when a musket-ball struck the topmost stone, a chip from which flew away with a whirring sound. He ran quickly into the bastion, where there was some cover from the fire of the donjon.

Lord Peterborough was in the bastion, surrounded by a knot of officers, all gazing at something on the ground. Francis approached, removed his hat and saluted the general, but no one took any notice of him. There was a groan from the ground and someone said:

‘He’s gone.’

Lord Peterborough asked a question in a sharp voice. An officer whom Francis did not know answered briefly; the Prince had been leading a party from the bastion along the ditch towards the Barcelona gate, but they had been exposed from head to foot to the enemy’s fire from the donjon and the Prince had fallen mortally wounded not fifty yards from the bastion.

The Earl gave directions that his body should be borne by his own officers to a convent at the foot of the hill; while he was still speaking, an ensign of foot came into the bastion in some excitement with news that a large body of troops, both horse and foot, were leaving the town for the fort.

There was no hesitation. The general’s orders were swift and brisk. He was going to see this body of troops for himself. Brigadier Lord Charlemont would remain in the bastion in command of the whole attack. Someone whom Francis recognized as Colonel Southwell asked for orders.

‘Your men at the other end of the outworks can manage without you. Stay here till I come back and can tell you the exact position.’

Francis took this chance to announce his arrival.

‘Come with me,’ were the orders he received. ‘Aides-de-camp only.’

Lord Peterborough ran out through the gorge of the bastion as he spoke, and was clambering out of the ditch, over the rampart, when Francis joined him. The little party made for the horses; they scrambled on their backs as they moved away after the Earl, gathering up reins, finding stirrups, tightening girths, as they went. Almost at once, Francis was left behind, but spurring and jerking he managed to keep within sight.

The Earl was making for a point further round the hill from which he could see the Barcelona Gate of the fort and the Montjuich Gate of the town; between these ran a lane, rising and falling over many hillocks, sometimes disappearing in folds of the ground, then cropping out again. A beginning had been made of a curtain wall along it to the landward side, but it was very imperfect.

Along this road, now hidden, now displayed again on the crest of a rise, was marching a body of troops. It was not easy to judge their numbers, for they were never all in sight at one time, but it was clear they were stronger than the whole of the assaulting column. One after another the general and his aides looked at those reinforcements pouring up to the citadel, reinforcements which would ruin the whole business of the assault; one after another, they turned away towards the north-west, looking for Brigadier Stanhope and his men. They could be seen now, coming down the lane from Sejia; now the head of the column reached to the Covered Cross, where small scarlet columns were beginning to leave the road for the fields. But they would be too late; before they could be within musket-shot, the enemy reinforcements would be at the gates of the fort.

But there was still the Dutch colonel and his reserve. They were moving round the hill, rather below the general. Lord Peterborough turned to the aide-de-camp on his right and began to give him orders, but suddenly his voice was drowned by a tremendous volley of firing and a wild shouting from the bastion he had just left. He raised his voice and made his instructions heard; the aide-de-camp was to tell the Dutch colonel to come up the hill at once, to get into the ditch on either side of the Barcelona Gate and hold it against whatever might come from above or below. With that he wheeled about and made for the bastion as fast as horse would carry him over the broken ground, Francis and two other aides-de-camp following as best they could.

There were so many obstacles that they went little faster than on foot, and they were only about three-quarter way to the bastion when they saw red coats streaming out of the ditch beyond it and down the hill in disorderly flight. It was flight; disorderly, disgraceful, each man running to save his skin.

Francis saw Lord Peterborough cross the last gully between himself and the fugitives and driving in his spurs ride to cut them off. He flung his horse at the leading men, shouting curses; his sword was drawn in his hand; he dropped the reins and sprang to earth, leaving the horse forgotten. Up the hill, against the stream of fugitives, on foot, he pushed resolutely, cursing horribly. He threw orders at the men he met and did not look to see if they were obeyed.

Francis saw the musketeer who had led the flight pause for a moment, irresolute. He half turned to watch the general climb the hill, made a motion as if to resume his flight, then slowly completed the turn up hill and now he began to plod up again, up the way he had come. Francis too had left his horse and, pressing on after his leader with the two other aides, he saw a stream of men running down towards him, he saw man after man stop as he met the general, stop, turn sheepishly as the first had done, turn, raise his musket, go back to the fight, go back with increasing pace, until now the whole current was reversed and was pressing hotly back to the attack.

A musket-ball’s dull whirr passed by his ear; a ball of lead splashed on a rock near his foot. A man fell at his side with a sharp grunt and a clatter of arms. But a fierce unfamiliar exhilaration filled Francis, he was anxious no longer; his sword was in his hand; he could see behind the parapet of the ditch men in strange garb firing at him; he wanted to be at them.

Now he was on the parapet and there was nothing in the world but himself and the man before him, a Spanish dragoon, a man with a long frightened face and big teeth, a mouth that never truly shut, trying to reload his musket, desperately cramming down the charge, dropping his weapon with a clatter, trying to pull out a sword and now slowly, slowly, crumpling backwards, with the fright wiped out of his face by surprise and one hand plucking feebly at Francis’s sword in his breast.

Now they were in the ditch and beyond it, for as the English came back with a fierce huzza, came back in a shapeless wave of ashamed and angry scarlet, the men in the ditch turned and fled. Francis saw an officer catch Lord Peterborough by the arm and urge something on him earnestly, saw him put up his sword with a gesture of agreement, heard him shouting orders to the men behind him to fall back and lie the ditch, getting what cover they could below the parapet. Then he turned with blistering invective on the knot of crestfallen officers whom he had left under the command of Lord Charlemont.

It was not till afterwards that what had happened was clearly known. But the tale was told that night over a hundred camp fires; what Francis had seen, what Colonel Awbyn had seen himself from the Covered Cross, what they heard from those who had been in the bastion, all fitted together to make a story. But as it happened it must have been confused and very swift, for it was crowded into unbelievably few minutes.

Lord Peterborough had hardly left the bastion when a group of two or three officers had begun to point out to Lord Charlemont that their position was impossible. They had failed in an attempt to surprise a citadel known to be impregnable; they were now precariously lodged in an outwork with very little cover from the fire of the fort and were about to be attacked by enemy reinforcements several times their strength. That had been the gist of their excited arguments; Lord Charlemont had been so much impressed that, in spite of the remonstrances of Colonel Southwell and Colonel Richards of the artillery, he had given orders to retreat. But no sooner did the men begin to fall back from the ditch than there was a shout from the donjon and from a sally-port came a rush of men waving their hats and crying:

‘Long live Charles III!’

At that the cry was raised that the enemy were surrendering and the retreat was arrested. The English began to come back into the ditch in careless groups confident of victory; and it was then that the men from the donjon opened on them a withering blast of fire. Men fell everywhere, and as the enemy rushed down into the ditch many surrendered and were taken back prisoners into the keep, Colonel Allen among them. And then, my lord being away, the Prince killed and Colonel Allen taken, the men, half dead with thirst and fatigue, bewildered by the sudden turn of fortune, lost their heads and ran. And it was at that moment that Lord Peterborough arrived to stem the rout.

That was the story as Colonel Awbyn pieced it together afterwards, talking it over with Colonel Richards of the artillery, listening again to Francis’s tale, remembering what he had seen himself. And afterwards, by the camp fires, as the Spanish wine went round, it seemed that that moment when Lord Peterborough led his men back to the outworks was the moment of crisis, that when that was passed the battle was won.

But it had not seemed so in the bastion at the time. Among those who listened with downcast faces to the terms in which Lord Peterborough addressed Lord Charlemont, there were experienced and gallant soldiers such as Colonel Southwell and Colonel Richards. The hearts of these men were heavy and anxious. For succour was coming to the enemy, and in overwhelming strength, the men were exhausted, and their position precarious. It seemed that only a miracle could save the whole force from overwhelming disaster. And then a miracle did occur, something at which Colonel Awbyn said quietly to himself:

‘If the Lord himself had not been on our side, now may Israel say; if the Lord himself had not been on our side, they had swallowed us up quick.’

It was the Earl who brought the news into the bastion. For his blast of invective did not last long; he was out again a moment later, in the ditch towards the Barcelona Gate, where Prince George had been killed. Here he went to direct the men under the Dutch colonel to take cover as they came up; and here it was that, as he drew nearer to the Barcelona Gate, he saw the enemy reinforcements turn, magically and unaccountably, turn and melt back into the town. They would get no second chance. Stanhope’s men were streaming down towards the ravine below the town walls with their miquelets in a light screen before them. It was the miracle he had needed.

He ran back into the bastion and called Colonel Richards, clapping him on the shoulder as he spoke:

‘Richards,’ he said, ‘we’ll have the horse or lose the saddle. Get back to the camp and order up what guns and mortars you can. And tell the King what has happened, for upon my soul I think the fort is ours.’

Chapter IV

Two Seven-Inch Mortars

September 14th

The sun was high now but not yet near its zenith. For the moment there was no firing and the affair of Montjuich could be said to have settled down. In the outworks, men fingered bristly chins that were gritty with a night of Spanish dust; they turned on each other eyeballs stiff with lack of sleep, like metal joints that need oil, and spoke slowly, their tongues dry. Word came along the line of a spring and men were sent in turn to get water; the rest tried to find shade among rocks where the lizards darted and the grasshoppers chirped harshly. The fires left by the enemy were made up and pots were heated. A smell of powder still hung in the air; there was a taste of it in the bread, a taste of dust and stale gunpowder.

A last burst of musket fire came from the ravine between the town and the fort, then silence. Stanhope’s miquelets had taken a little fort with two guns and the town was sealed; no more help would come to the garrison of Montjuich. Even the light cannon that had been captured in the western demi-bastion were silent now and after two more salvos the fort gave up the attempt to dismount them. The smoke drifted away in the bright sunlight.

Colonel Richards rode down the hill. He had been ordered to bring up guns or mortars and ammunition of all kinds, for there was little left for the muskets in the outworks. He knew already that the way to please his general was to go away and do what he had been told without asking questions. So he rode down the hill from the bastion at once, thinking as he went of all that he would have to do.

The first thing was to make sure of an escort, for he did not want to go far into the hills, nor could he take the risk of bringing his stores without protection by the shorter route beneath the eyes of the enemy. A mounted escort would be best and the dragoons had had no fighting. He made for the Covered Cross.

Colonel Awbyn heard his request with a grave face. His horses were wretched creatures and had been stumbling over stony ground for thirteen hours. To take them back to San Martino now and back again with the stores to Montjuich before nightfall would founder them entirely. But the regiment had a few more horses at San Martino, though not quite enough to mount a troop; they had been doing nothing. If he came with Colonel Richards, he could send away the guns with an escort of thirty men on fresh horses; not many in case of a sortie, but another troop from the Covered Cross would come to meet them half way and it was in the last part of the journey that the danger would lie. That would mean two hours rest before the second troop need start and only half the distance.

Lediard was senior to the officer of Conynghame’s; if he had not been, Colonel Awbyn would not have cared to go away, but he had perfect confidence in Lediard and having settled with him the rendezvous for the relieving troop, he started out with Richards.

The two men had been up all night; they were riding tired horses over bad ground within sight of the enemy. They were wearing thick stiff clothes and it was hot. They had to think of what they would do at the other end. All the same, there was room in Awbyn’s mind not only for curiosity about what had happened in the last two hours but for some awareness of the personality of the man by his side.

They had met for the first time three weeks ago, soon after the landing, in a company of several officers talking about the siege. The general opinion, noisily expressed, was professional; every soldier who confined himself to military considerations thought it ridiculous to undertake a siege with forces no stronger than the garrison. The silence of two members of the party which seemed to cover a disagreement was not challenged, but there was a consciousness of what was not said. It was this that drew the two together, and without any words exchanged Awbyn and Richards found themselves walking home side by side when the party broke up. They walked some way in silence; then Richards spoke and they had in the end gone to his tent and talked far into the night.

Awbyn recognized an attraction; he was not the man to analyse the points the two of them had in common. But there were several. It was perhaps partly because neither was English that both judged the issue of the siege on grounds wider than the purely professional. Awbyn’s parents had left their home to avoid persecution when he was a child; Richards, an Irishman and a Roman Catholic, had fought for Venice against the Turks and served in the armies of Poland. Each in his own way had acquired a critical outlook, detached from the tendency of the time to make war into a quadrille. Each had seen enough trouble to know that mathematics do not govern human conduct and that counting heads alone would not decide the issue. Yet both were soldiers before anything else, both had the masculine boyish mind that makes a man put his profession before ease or wife, health or life. And in both there was a tidiness, a desire to get a job finished neatly, to round the day off by recording its achievements in writing.

There the resemblance ended, for Richards was ambitious. He was a fine officer, capable of a noble resolution in adversity, shrewd, sometimes over-subtle in attributing deep motives to simple actions, one that steered his course deliberately. Awbyn’s profound, almost fatalistic, conviction that he was in the hands of an all-knowing Providence led him to accept his orders and to wait on events.

Now the two were riding together towards San Martino. They settled their route, then rode in silence for a little. Awbyn began to ask questions; he was puzzled by what he had seen, the beginnings of an orderly retreat from the outworks suddenly abandoned, a panic-stricken flight arrested, and most miraculous of all, the current reversed as the enemy reinforcements flowed up the road towards the fort and then flowed back like water poured abruptly into a trough.

Richards could tell him about the events round the north-east bastion, of Lord Charlemont’s error of judgment, the enemy’s ruse, Lord Peterborough’s passionate return to the outworks; but he could not explain the enemy’s volte-face. He in his turn asked about the earlier story of horsemen making for the town, and on this Awbyn could tell Richards what had happened.

The scouts Awbyn had put out on his left flank had seen a body of dragoons, they thought between three and four hundred men, making for the fort from the town. This had been after the first lodgement had been made, when the Earl and Prince George came back towards the Covered Cross. The enemy dragoons had reached the fort and probably it was this accession of strength that had given the garrison the heart to sally upon the attackers and so nearly to rout them. Immediately after their arrival, Awbyn’s scouts had seen about half as many men going back, each man leading a horse. The governor of the town must have ordered an immediate reinforcement to start while his main body was preparing, and probably the horses had come back to avoid being a burden on the water supply. Then the main body had started, but why they had turned, no man could yet say.

Awbyn and Richards were both too tired to puzzle long over that. They rode on in silence, sweating in their thick coats, intent on getting the best pace they could from tired horses. Then Richards began to speak again.

Montjuich was not an easy place to batter in the regular style; the elevation was too great for cannon unless they were at long range on the opposite hills and the stony ground was difficult for the trenches of a regular approach. But now that the Allies held the outworks, they were close enough to throw in shells or bombs from mortars. And mortars were lighter and could more easily be brought up. Two seven-inch mortars therefore he had decided to bring from the camp and have them in position by nightfall. The buildings in the donjon were old and unlikely to be proof against bombs of such a size, and though the outer walls could probably not be battered down, the continual bursting of bombs would do a good deal of execution among the garrison and might easily induce the survivors to surrender.

So far he spoke as a soldier; this was what he had decided. But now other considerations came in. He had to give the news to the King, and the King’s court was inspired both by memories of Vienna and by anticipations of Madrid. To go to the tents of the train of artillery before going to the King would give mortal offence if it were known, yet on military grounds it was the thing to do. It would not be a matter of minutes to find wagons and drivers, to load them and send away the stores, yet it could all be settled and the orders given if before going to the King he could have a few words with Major Collier, or with the Master Gunner, Richard Silver, or with Captain Schlundt the fire-master; but those few words he did not see how he could get. Everyone in the English camp knew already that no military consideration, no reasonable argument, counted for anything compared with the dignity of the Court.

As they talked, they agreed that Awbyn too must go to the King before he went anywhere else. He was known personally to the King and had had audience alone; if Colonel Awbyn busied himself with regimental affairs before coming to His Catholic Majesty with news of the battle, the fact would certainly be reported, and by the Austrian courtiers it would be represented as an affront.

But Peter de Nérac would be their salvation. For while it was impossible the Court should not take umbrage if the two soldiers delayed even by five minutes on their way, it was just as unthinkable that they should be permitted to burst in upon the King without a decent interval of waiting. They would certainly have to cool their heels in an ante-room for a little, and if Peter de Nérac was on duty they should be able to get writing materials and send by his hand written orders to Major Collier of the artillery and to Major Warren of the Queen’s Dragoons.

So they rode straight to the house in San Martino where the King was lodging. Dirty and unshaven, they were brought into the ante-room, among the brilliant uniforms of the gentlemen of the staff, who clustered round, asking questions, eager, but with an undertone of that amused patronage behind which the young and elegant shelter when they look out at a world less artificial than their own. Colonel Richards replied gravely in French that he did not feel it would be correct for news of the battle to come to any other ears before reaching those of His Majesty. An aide-de-camp went in search of a senior officer of the household. Colonel Awbyn caught Peter de Nérac’s eye and drew him aside.

‘Peter,’ he began, ‘I need your help. It is very important, for the affair is not finished and Colonel Richards and I want our people to start work at once.’

Peter broke in.

‘Can you not tell me in French?’ he asked. ‘To speak English here is worse than talking French in the regiment. There are a dozen pairs of eyes on us already.’

Colonel Awbyn continued in French, explaining distinctly, so that anyone in the immediate neighbourhood could hear, the need to send away a fresh supply of warlike stores that would reach Montjuich before dark. Could they have writing materials at once? And could Peter himself carry the orders?

But His Majesty had said he wished an English aide-de-camp always to be in waiting and, as it would take some time to find anyone to relieve Peter, it was decided to send the written orders by a dragoon, suitably impressed with their urgency and with strict instructions to report their safe delivery. The orders were written, sanded, sealed and dispatched, and both officers had had time to remove the worst traces of travel and battle before the processes of etiquette had been satisfied and they could be admitted to the presence of His Majesty.

The Archduke Charles of Austria, styled by the Allies Charles III of Spain, was at this time a young man of twenty. He was far from being either so weak, so stupid or so pompous as the behaviour of his advisers would have led anyone to suppose, but he had not the originality of outlook either to make a clean sweep of his Viennese or to resist their influence. He would have made Colonel Awbyn a useful cornet, liked by his men, possessed of a dogged kind of passive courage, obedient to orders, the more useful because there would have been little danger of generals striving for his services as aide-de-camp or of other regiments trying to tempt him away.

The King was grieved by the loss of Prince George of Hesse, for he realized that the Prince was the one man among his advisers who had the respect of the English and Dutch and the warm affection of the Catalans; not only that, but he had himself felt the affection that Prince George generally inspired. However, his grief was outweighed by the news of the lodgement in the outworks. Colonel Richards told the King that Lord Peterborough believed the Allies would soon have the fort and did not conceal that this was his own opinion too. Once they had the fort, said the King, then surely those careful Dutch and English generals would agree to attack the town. And once a siege was begun the garrison would be forced to ask for terms to save themselves from the hatred of the Catalan townsfolk. This had always been the view of the Court. Barcelona was as good as taken.

His Majesty asked many questions and it was not easy to get away. His boyish curiosity would break out afresh as the two Colonels reached the door and they must return and tell him more. But at last they were outside the presence-chamber, at last they were away from the ante-room and the courtiers.

Colonel Awbyn went to the lies of the Queen’s Dragoons and found that Major Warren had received his orders and that the dragoons would be ready to start as soon as the mortars and ammunition were in the wagons. The two officers went on together to the camp of the artillery train. Here things were not so far forward. The artillery, though it was called a train, had no means of movement of its own; it depended on wagons and mules hired locally. To move the whole train would involve collecting wagons from all over the countryside and would certainly take several days. Even the lighter field train could not leave till tomorrow. But a few wagons had been hired immediately after the landing and kept in the camp from day to day. They were enough for what was needed, the mortars and ammunition, once the waggoners were found. They were coming in now, and it would not be long before the convoy could start.

It was ready in fact about an hour later. Richards and Awbyn had eaten and for the moment Spanish wine had banished the consciousness that they had not slept. They had fresh horses, but their own weariness returned long before they reached Montjuich. They rode with an eye on the walls of Barcelona, whenever an eye could be spared from the needs of the narrow and uneven way they followed among the market-gardens at the foot of the hills; they did not talk much. But once Awbyn broke silence.

‘It was his first battle,’ he said. ‘He did well, but he moved about too much.’

Richards at once understood him and agreed.

‘He is a man who must do everything himself,’ he added.

The enemy made no sortie, and when the convoy arrived it was not yet too dark to get the mortars up the hill into a position within range of the donjon. Here they were covered by a fold in the ground from direct fire in reply; there was no reason to suppose the enemy knew what had just been brought into that little dip and no reason to expect an attack that night. It was resolved to open fire with the mortars first thing in the morning. At last, as the clear sky deepened to a darker blue, as the stars pricked out above the little fires of scented olive wood, at last it was possible to turn to sleep. Awbyn pulled his cloak about him and sleep came up to meet him, sleep so solid it could be touched, like the dough rising as the bread bakes. The dough came up to meet him and he rolled forward into it on his face. He did not wake till the first discharge of the mortars next morning.

Chapter V

Barcelona

December 1705

It was raining again. Colonel Awbyn was glad to get back to his quarters, but he could not get away from the thought of his men and the cold bare cloisters of the monastery where he had left them. It was a thought that gave him a slight distaste for his own comparative comfort. The men had no beds and although they had now some straw it had been damp and musty when it came and they had never been able to get it dry. And for the first fortnight they had not even had straw.

He called for a lamp, for it was December and the evening was closing in already. A girl brought the lamp and a brazier with charcoal; he frowned at this, for the men were very short of firing. Parties were sent out daily to get it but there was little to be had and constant trouble with the peasants over what there was. All the same, it would have been fantastic to send the brazier away. He thanked her and she left.

Colonel Awbyn sat down to his letter to Lord Raby in Berlin. He had written half of it last night; now he read over what had gone before and again he frowned, for it made a depressing picture and he was anxious not to make things seem worse than they were. Every point in his letter was true; bad quarters for the men and the hospitals full, the weather cold and wet, lodgings in Barcelona for officers only at the most exorbitant rates—they had to pay a year’s full rent and half of it down in advance—idleness and discontent among the troops and by all accounts disagreement among the generals. Every point was true, but the result was too black. Three months ago hardly anyone had believed the Allies would get into Barcelona and now here they were. What was more, the troops had now a lively faith in their general, if only he could be allowed to wage war as he wanted. Things seemed bad but that was often the way after a victory, when the first rejoicing was over.

It was the contrast with the jubilation of six weeks ago that cast everyone down.

Colonel Awbyn wrote swiftly enough when he was describing facts but thoughts of this kind did not go easily on to paper. He sat nibbling the end of his pen; then he wrote quickly:

‘You will think all this bad enough and the more so after my last letter when our business seemed in so good a way to success.’

He put down his pen again. That last letter had certainly been much pleasanter to write. He had told the Envoy of the assault on Montjuich and of how the mortars had opened fire, of how a bomb had fallen merrily—so he wrote—into the magazine and had killed the governor of the fort and a number of his officers. At this disaster the garrison had hung out a white flag and Colonel Southwell had taken their surrender.

After that, there had been little rest for some days and certainly no leisure to write letters. The dragoons of both the Queen’s and Conynghame’s were busy all day on the most tiresome kind of duties, and many of them for much of the night. They had to find small escorts for parties moving from the old camp, on the north side of Barcelona, to the new camp at the foot of Montjuich; a troop to go with wagons of ammunition, a half-troop for a detachment of infantry, another troop to cover the hard work of the sailors who were landing heavy guns from the fleet. It was at least a consolation that the commander-in-chief never wanted an escort; it would have been a disgraceful affair if he had, for the men would certainly not have been able to keep up with him.

Then there had been endless demands for messengers and orderlies; a stream of riders going back and forth between the two camps. Still worse, men were kept waiting at tent-doors till far into the night to carry dispatches. Altogether, the last kind of service a commanding officer wanted for his regiment; he never knew where half his men were.

There had been no more argument about undertaking the siege, and indeed, even before Montjuich surrendered, the general had decided where the batteries should be placed. It was not really that the surrender brought so great a practical advantage. True, the siting of the batteries was more convenient here than on the north side, where the ground was boggy, while with Montjuich in enemy hands, any batteries on the south side of the town would have been hard put to it to keep firing. And to land the guns from the fleet below the cliffs of Montjuich would have been a most dangerous operation, flat against all military canons. But the real change had taken place in men’s minds. Now everyone was eager; even the Dutch general forgot to be cautious. Each man vied with the next in courage and exertion.

The fleet had brought the battering guns of the train to the beach below Montjuich and had landed them there. They had spared too some guns of their own and much ammunition; the sailors had toiled to pull the guns up the steep slopes when it was found that mules could not. They had themselves made harness for men to supplement the sets brought from London. Where the slopes were too sharp for even men to drag, they had laid deal spars and parbuckled the guns up with hawsers. For one battery, they had had to drop the guns and their carriages separately over a precipice on to a prepared bed of sand and remount them below.

In spite of these difficulties, the work had gone forward well. The magazine of the fort had blown up on Thursday afternoon; on Saturday, under the direction of Colonel Richards, work began on the platforms for the batteries and eight days later he had fifty-eight heavy pieces in position, mostly twenty-four-pounders. During the first four days, the men at work on the batteries were under fire from the town, and the only reply was from field pieces which were too light to be effective against a fortified position. Two of them were dismounted and had to cease fire altogether, while none of them seemed able to touch the enemy guns. Of the six thousand mules promised by the Prince of Lichtenstein, only a few hundred had begun to appear by the eighth day. There were Catalan workmen who had undertaken to carry up powder and shot and the bundles of brushwood, known as fascines, that were needed for the breastwork. But the peasants would not go up to the batteries, flinging down their loads some two or three hundred yards short, whence they had to be taken forward by soldiers. Then there was water to be carried to the platforms, for there must be means of dealing instantly with a fire among the fascines. In all this the dragoons had played their part, mounted and unmounted alike.

On Wednesday, September 23rd, the fifth day since breaking ground, it had been possible to open fire with the first of the heavy pieces, though there were only eight in action to begin with. To the enemy, this day and the next seemed critical; they dragged to this point every gun they could spare and brought them to bear on the new battery. It was a strange kind of race. On each side, the gunners worked sweating at their pieces, loading and firing as fast as they could, trying to dismount the enemy’s guns, while behind the gunners, fresh guns were hauled into position, or men strove desperately to remount those knocked off their carriages by the heavy balls that flew hissing through the air or rebounded dangerously from the rocks.

Slowly, as the second day wore on, Colonel Richards’s battery drew ahead in the race. More and more of his guns moved into place and took up the chorus; towards evening the volume of the enemy reply was noticeably less. But a price had been paid. Twenty-five gunners had been killed, the colonel of engineers wounded, and Major Collier, second in command of the artillery, hit in the shoulder by a musket-ball. A fire broke out among the fascines and was put out, only to burst forth again after dark and again to be extinguished.

So it went on for ten days. The master gunner, Richard Silver, with two lieutenants of the fleet and more than thirty men, were destroyed when two powder barrels blew up, leaving Colonel Richards the only officer of the train. By now he had one great battery of forty guns firing, two more of six and four guns, and one Dutch battery of eight guns. A breach was first visible on Tuesday, September 29th, and for a week fire continued at the breach, widening it yard by yard, till it was a hundred paces across.

Meanwhile the mortars kept up a fire on the width of the breach to hinder the enemy from constructing defences behind it. They would certainly dig a trench and throw up a breastwork; probably there would be mines that could be touched off from the trench. And this proved to be the case for on October 3rd in the evening, just as the guards were changed, a bomb fell into an enemy mine behind the breach. There was a tremendous series of explosions as other mines blew up, and in a panic the garrison poured out into the gathering gloom volley after volley from their small arms. It was clear they expected an attack at any moment now.

But before the attack was launched the general had sent a trumpeter to parley. Messengers went back and forth all the next day and that evening Brigadier Stanhope went in to the town as a surety and a major-general of the enemy came out. Now it was simply a matter of drawing up the terms of the capitulation.

It had been the oddest kind of siege. For the besiegers, who by now were scarcely so many as the garrison, had lain in two camps at opposite ends of the town; there had been no continuous trenches and only the most hazardous communication between the two camps. If the enemy had sent out sorties, they could certainly have made it very uneasy for the besiegers. So Colonel Awbyn wrote; the word uneasy, used in varying degrees of ironic understatement, was in great vogue; it was a favourite of the Duke’s, had at first been the hall-mark of his staff in Flanders and had now spread to every officer who had any pretensions to professional advancement. Colonel Awbyn, however, was unconscious that he used it and intended no irony.

But the enemy made no sorties, for the governor, Don Francisco Velasco, as they found afterwards, could trust no troops but his Castilians, and those he kept in the town to watch the Catalan and Neapolitan soldiers and above all the townsfolk. And it was the disaffection of these soldiers and townsfolk that was the reason for the oddness of the final stage of the siege. For nothing here went in a regular and orderly manner as in Flanders.

The terms of capitulation had been settled and hostages exchanged. The enemy should have marched out on the fourth day with all the honours of war, drums beating, colours flying, each man with a bullet between his teeth, to show that he could still fire and reload if he wished; that should have been the enemy’s part and the Allies should have marched in with the same kind of military ceremony. But instead of all this came confused rumours and wild alarms and then suddenly every bell in the town ringing, muskets firing, a clamour of shouts that could be heard in the camp, and as every eye turned in the light of early dawn towards the town, here and there the smoke of burning houses.

My lord had given orders at once and the dragoons had been among the troops that entered the town by the gate of St. Angelo, one side of which was already, under the agreement, held by the Allies. Another column clambered in over the rubble of the breach. What exactly had happened then it was not easy to say. It was difficult enough in a battle, even when you had been in the thick of it, to know just what everyone had actually done; this confused affair in the narrow streets of Barcelona was far worse. It was not even clear who were the enemy and who was fighting who. For yesterday’s enemy, the soldiers of the garrison, had to be protected from yesterday’s friends, the miquelets who had helped to take the town, and from the townspeople. And as if that were not enough, half the troops of the garrison were anxious to change sides. It had been a very uneasy business indeed for half an hour or so, with bullets flying about the streets from every angle, chimney-pots and worse coming from the house-tops and no idea of which was front, rear, or flank.

But somehow or other the troops converged on the parade before the palace, where the noise was loudest, because here the mob of townspeople and miquelets were assembled to clamour for the body of the governor Don Francisco. They hated him because he was a Castilian and a tyrant; they had long wanted his blood but what now sent them out to howl for it was the rumour that he meant to take away with him the townsfolk he held prisoner. It was not easy to reassure them, for hardly any one among the English except Lord Peterborough and Brigadier Stanhope spoke Spanish, but somehow it was done. Something made them listen to the Earl; no one could say whether it was the impetuous energy to be seen in that thin little man’s management of the fiery barb he rode; whether in some incomprehensible way the crowd became aware before he spoke of the singleness of purpose that was always his in action; whether it was just a curiosity to hear the heretic general in the red coat and the large wig. Whatever it was, something made them listen, and once the mob were assured that none of them would be taken away by the governor, they began to slip off to their homes. There was still a good deal for the English troops to do, but it was easier now. There were no bullets flying about but their own; their task was simply to patrol the town and fire at any looter they saw. In a few hours order was restored.

All this Awbyn had told his colonel and he had written proudly of the admiration for the English troops and their discipline that every one had expressed, the King, the Dutch, the Catalans and even the surrendered enemy. A surprised admiration it had been, for there were not many soldiers who, so far from sacking a captured town themselves, would have actually gone out of their way to make looting impossible. Nothing that had happened in Spain before would have led anyone to suppose that in this respect the English were different from anyone else; indeed, three years ago, their barbarities in the villages near Cadiz had horrified the Andalusians.

The governor had been taken off to the Britannia, where he had certainly been safe and might have been comfortable, for he had the quarters the King had occupied; but the tale in the camp ran that he was so coldly treated by the Admiral that he complained to my lord, who moved him to another ship. Sir Cloudesley Shovell, said the sailors, was too good an Englishman to receive with open arms a man who had made himself odious and tyrannical to the people. But the wits round the camp fires saw to the heart of the matter; to give my lord and Sir Cloudesley a joint commission to command the fleet, as the Queen had seen fit to do, was like putting a barb in double harness with a Suffolk Punch. That, however, Colonel Awbyn did not think suitable for his letter.

But he had recounted another tale over which the camp were smacking their lips, of how in the first confusion, when no one was sure who was friend and who foe, when men were falling on both sides, and at the very moment when a musket-ball had passed through his wig, his lordship had chanced to meet the beautiful Duchess of Popoli, flying from the fury of the miquelets, her charms enhanced by fear and by the informality of her toilet, for her lovely hair was streaming about her shapely shoulders. My lord had taken her by the hand and led her to a place of safety outside the walls. And it had been some time, they said with relish by the camp-fires, before he came back. This last insinuation, however, Awbyn felt to be groundless, for he had seen Lord Peterborough on the parade very soon after this must have occurred.

It was, as it happened, very fortunate that things ended in this irregular way, for since the garrison had not handed the town over, and had in fact been rescued by their enemies, there could be no question of letting them take away their field pieces, as laid down in the terms. This was good news for Richards, and for Awbyn there was even better news, for he could mount the rest of his dragoons on captured horses. More than that, the numbers of the army were increased by two Neapolitan battalions of foot of about a thousand men between them and by about eight hundred Catalan horse.

When the rest of the garrison had been safely marched away and the officers’ baggage—all that had not been looted by the townsfolk—sent after them, then at last could be arranged that long-delayed triumphal entry into the town. To Awbyn, there had been a feeling of unreality about this, because the real work of occupation had been done, but there could be no question that the Court would require it. So the troops marched out quietly one morning and came in again that afternoon with their colours flying and musicians hard at work. The regiment made as good a show as could be expected, except for their lamentable hats.

The King drove into the town in improvised state that did very well, not as King of Spain but as Count of Barcelona; for by old tradition the Catalans knew no such person as the King of Spain. But once within the walls he had been proclaimed Charles III of Spain. The ancient liberties of Catalonia were confirmed; no man to be held prisoner without trial for more than a year; no soldiers to be billeted on the town, and much more of the same kind, to an English ear familiar but mildly surprising, for though little enough it was more than one expected foreigners to think they had a right to. Lord Peterborough had scattered dollars among the crowd and the townsfolk had arranged a procession with a long train of pageants. Mules with tall head-dresses of feathers, jingling bells everywhere, allegorical figures, birds of bright colours released suddenly to a liberty symbolic of the town’s; it had all been delightful and everyone had been very happy.

All this Colonel Awbyn had described in his letter, but when he had put down all he could remember of the festivities he went back to those few moments in which the outcome of the whole affair had been settled. He could only wonder at the strangeness of human affairs, for if Lord Peterborough had not come back when he did it would have been too late to stem the flight from the outworks and Montjuich would never have been taken. As to the miracle of the enemy’s retreat, that at least he could now explain. For the Marquis of Risburg, marching from the town with three thousand men to the relief of Montjuich, met at this critical moment messengers from the governor of the fort. From them he learnt that both the Earl of Peterborough and Prince George were with the assault. He concluded that the whole of the allied forces must be attacking Montjuich and decided that it was better the garrison of the town should not be divided. So back he marched.

All this had been in the middle of October; now it was December and since then there had really been nothing to report but sickness. The only event in six weeks, and it was hardly worth mentioning, was that when the delicious Duchess of Popoli and her husband decided to leave Lord Peterborough’s quarters and resume their status as enemies, a detachment of the regiment had escorted them safely to the frontiers of Aragon. This Colonel Awbyn had duly reported and he had repeated the request made in his last letter that he should be allowed to have new hats made locally. For there would be long delays if they were ordered from England and probably half of them eaten by rats on shipboard before they arrived; not only that, but unless the men had them soon, there was the danger that my lord would order them to take hats from the stores. ‘Nasty foot hats’ those would be, and:

‘I could not endure,’ he wrote, ‘to see the regiment with white or yellow tag-laced hats with a little white cony skin for a cockade.’ He had finished with hats and now there was nothing else to go into the letter except the feeling, for which he could not find words, that things were not as bad as they seemed and that the general would soon put them right. He was still nibbling the end of his pen in the effort to express his thought when there came a tap at the door and the next moment Peter de Nérac was sitting by his side.

Colonel Awbyn was pleased to see him. He had always felt soothed by Peter, even in those younger days when he had usually come to borrow money or get out of a scrape. Peter might be trying to persuade you to do something for his own benefit that for you would be unpleasant, but he would not for a moment forget how you would feel about it. He was always aware of your mood; he might laugh at it but he would know it was there, and his selfishness was deliberate; it never sprang from forgetfulness or lack of perception. His eye fell on pen and paper.

‘Nothing very cheerful to say; You are not by any chance, James, thinking better of your wager? Never mind, I will give you a good dinner one day from your fifty guineas.’

This was just the cue that Awbyn wanted; he could say, though he could not write, that he was more confident than ever that before long the general would produce some brilliant stroke. He still believed they would be in Madrid before the year was up.

‘You are a good Protestant,’ said Peter. ‘You go on believing in le bon Dieu, although you can see that appearances are very much against him. Now for the Catholic, it is much easier. He is kept hard at work doing what his priest tells him and believing in the wonderful works of his saints and he has no time to worry his head about how le bon Dieu is getting on. So they are quite right when they say we are half way to being atheists.’

Awbyn enjoyed Peter’s conversation but seldom felt that it needed a reply. He went on with his own thoughts. Although he was confident the general was planning something, he did wish that in the meantime the hospitals could be improved. It was true the regiment had fewer sick than most, probably because they had much more to do; but still there were sick dragoons, and they were not looked after. None but Portuguese physicians, who bled them to death; they were dying every week. Much could be done at once if fourpence a day were stopped from the pay of every man in hospital; if that were held by the paymasters it would buy some remedies and provide the officers with some incentive to get the men back. At present, the pay of a man in hospital went into his officer’s pocket, and what could be worse than that?

Peter agreed and went on with court gossip. The wranglings were almost as bad as before the assault on Montjuich. General Scrattenbach, the Dutch general, said the troops must go into winter quarters and have a good rest. Colonel Awbyn interrupted:

‘But a rest from what? They have not fought a campaign, only one little brush. And what sort of rest is it to shiver on the cold floor of a monastery? They would be much better marching or fighting. They have been cooped up too long, they need to stretch their legs. Idleness leads only to hospital and courts-martial.’

‘That is what my lord says too. But the Dutchman won’t shift and Conynghame is as bad. He has prophesied evil so often that my lord said he was an eternal screech-owl and it has come round to him, so there is no great happiness in that quarter.’

‘What does my lord want to do? Can you say?’

‘What he has always wanted. To march for Madrid. And the quickest and best way is by Valencia. All the country is friendly. There are no enemy troops by that road. As far as Valencia it is just a matter of marching. But if we must wait till the spring for that, then let us at least put out the troops in the country towns of Catalonia, where forage and firewood will be easier and they can be billeted in comfort.’

‘And the Court?’

‘The Court does very well in Barcelona, thank you, and all the troops should be close at hand in case the Court wishes for some military ceremonial. But like you, James, I have a feeling that the luck will change with the moon. She is in her last quarter, as she was for Montjuich.’ He paused and went on: ‘Tell me, James, do you think I could ask my lord to call me back from the King’s service? I don’t want to be stuck in Barcelona listening to court tittle-tattle if the regiment are going to march to Valencia.’

Awbyn considered the idea and could see no harm, provided Peter could find a chance to speak alone with the general. That should not be difficult, for it was well known that my lord turned with relief from the society of the general officers who sat on his councils of war. Each of them had an opinion of his own and usually one that my lord found dull and cautious. Far more pleasant to talk to young men who would not contradict him, and to refresh himself with gossip about Will’s Coffee House and the wits he met there. He would certainly not take amiss any dissatisfaction with the Court that Peter might hint, for already there was hardly a man in the camp who had not heard one or another of his witticisms at the expense of the avarice, the pomposity and the caution, of the Viennese.

It was just two days later that orders came. The most part of the troops were to move away from Barcelona into more comfortable winter quarters in the small friendly towns of Catalonia. The Queen’s Dragoons were to march in two days’ time to the south, to Tortosa, on the borders of the kingdom of Valencia, where three battalions of infantry would follow them before the month was up.

The regiment made a better show now than they had when they met in the square in San Martino before Montjuich, for at least they were all mounted and the drums and oboes could play them away. It was a fine day, with a gusty wind; the blue ribbons on the horses’ bridles fluttered gaily and only the riders on their backs could tell how bad they were. As they passed the general, a sharp gust displayed clearly for a moment the guidon of the third captain’s troop, gold on crimson silk, the rays of the sun shining from behind a cloud, the badge of an English leader who had come to Spain three hundred years ago, and fought and won and marched away, leaving no mark upon the land.

But it was not of the Black Prince that any of the Queen’s Dragoons thought as they rode away that gusty day. At the head of the senior captain’s troop, which was second from the left in line and last but one on the march, Captain Lediard had made up his mind that this talk of winter quarters was a blind. They were on their way to Valencia, he felt sure. For if, as the public announcement ran, the sole object was to find comfortable quarters, why should one regiment of dragoons and three of English foot be sent to the same little town on the frontier? Mountjoy’s, Barrymore’s and Donegal’s were to follow, a formidable concentration for this hole-and-corner business. It was the right thing to do, and he approved of it as much as he could of anything in Spain. From what he had seen so far, there seemed no reason why they should not be in Madrid within a year of the landing. And then with any luck back to Flanders, to make a sound professional job of the war. That was the place to beat the French. The only thing likely to spoil this prospect was political interference. For politicians, Captain Lediard felt dislike, suspicion and a touch of fear.

In the rear of the troop, Mr. Hedley, the lieutenant, was thinking of his farewell last night to Fernanda. He really had at the time meant every word he said, but today, with the wind blowing and the sun shining and a horse between his legs, things looked different. By the time he could get leave to come back to Barcelona, as like as not Fernanda would find his return embarrassing. She was of course absurdly in love with him at the moment, but that wouldn’t last; one must face the facts. The affair had been charming, as good as anything he had known, and she had enjoyed it as much as he had, but it was much better to end in a storm of tears than grow tired of each other by degrees. Tears gave the salt flavour an idyll needed. And better to look forward to fresh conquests as you rode in the sunshine, with the music stirring your blood and the scarves fluttering from the windows, better to look forward to the conquest of Valencia, where the women were the finest in Spain.

Mr. Francis, in the middle of the troop, was entirely happy. He too was sure the regiment was going to Valencia, and now he was confident of himself. He had fought and not been afraid, he had killed a man; now they were going on to win more battles, and the brisk clatter of hooves trotting on cobbles, the tug of the guidon he carried as the wind swelled its folds, the cheers of the crowd, these and the sword by his side, the sense of friends around him, all made him drunk with pride.

They left the town, they passed Montjuich; they took the road to the south, between the mountains and the sea, riding away to Valencia, that was half way to Madrid and to the crown and throne of Spain.

Part Two — The Campaign in Valencia

Chapter I

Leave It to Your Mistresses

January 1706

‘One hundred and seventy dragoons, on horses that could not gallop a mile if it were to conquer the kingdom of Spain; three battalions of foot that cannot make up eleven hundred men or one sound pair of shoes between them,’ said Peter. ‘That is the sum on our side, for we shall not get much good from a few Spanish dragoons that were raised last month and have no muskets. And between us and Valencia are fifteen hundred horse as well mounted as any in Europe and four thousand infantry. It is an obstacle to be taken into account.’

There was no answer to that. The four men sitting round the fire gazed into it reflectively, but there was no impression of despondency. A chestnut log crumbled and fell on its side, and the light flickered up for a moment, glowing on sharp nose and jutting chin, gashing faces with shadow; it sparkled on gorgets and gilt buttons and threw a gleam as far as the tents behind them. It was the second day of the new moon and the night was dark.

Colonel Awbyn moved his shoulders to warm them beneath his scarlet horseman’s cloak; it was a cold night even for January, a night to be near a fire or better still in a warm bed, for a fire roasted the face and froze the back.

‘Where is my lord?’ he asked. He had walked across from the dragoon’s lines to the general’s headquarters to talk to his brother-in-law before going to bed.

‘In his tent, writing hard at no one knows what,’ Peter replied. He was now aide-de-camp to the general, his request to be relieved of court duties having been successful. ‘It is a mercy, he went on, ‘that my lord is never long cast down. He strikes off so many sparks of wit at a piece of bad luck that he is soon in a good humour with himself, and then it is only a short step to think more kindly of the world. But he is still hot against the Court.’

Colonel Awbyn turned an inquiring face towards Peter.

‘The Court were wrong, of course, about almost everything. About de las Torres and about the peasants. The King was misinformed. But then he always is. There is nothing to be angry about in that.’

Peter shrugged his shoulders.

‘I think my lord is always angry with the Court, sometimes more, sometimes less. Now he is more angry than usual, because the King has sent him orders—peremptory orders, he says—when it had just been agreed to give him a wider discretion. And they are orders to do just what he has been begging to do for months. He does not like orders much at any time, but I think he would sooner forgive orders to capture the moon than these. There would be some glory in that, but there is none in this, for the King has every single particular so wrong that he says it is impossible for de las Torres to escape. Now you will allow it is galling to be sent orders to attack an enemy five times one’s strength and be told it is impossible he should escape.’

‘Yes,’ Awbyn agreed, though he clearly had some reservation.

‘It is the more galling for my lord because he surpasses all men at getting information himself.’ The speaker was a Valencian gentleman who held a commission from Charles III and was at present an additional aide-de-camp to Lord Peterborough. He spoke English fluently. ‘Women, priests and peasants, they all come to him and all tell him their secrets. He knows how to talk to a peasant; it is a rare gift. You see a peasant does not expect to understand you. He thinks you will speak some foreign language. So first you must make him understand that you are talking his own language and that he can understand you. Then you can talk to him. My lord knows that. And he never trusts one of them unless he has his dearest under lock and key as a surety. He takes so much trouble himself that he cannot forgive the King for believing false information.’

‘He would forgive him in a moment, my dear Truxillo, if he could demonstrate the superiority of his own. What he finds provoking is being too far away to convince the King that his orders are impossible. Once he had done that he would happily set out to obey them.’

‘He has certainly taken good care that de las Torres shall have no news of our strength,’ said Awbyn, who usually ignored, though he enjoyed, those of Peter’s remarks for which he felt he should have reproved him.

‘It is our great advantage, in Catalonia and Valencia, that no one will tell the truth to a Frenchman or a Castilian,’ said Truxillo. ‘And with all the roads leading forward from Traguera stopped by my lord’s pickets, no strangers who have had a chance to see our camp will get forward.’

At this moment, a tent door was pulled aside and Lord Peterborough came out into the circle of firelight. The four officers rose to their feet and he joined them at the fire. He spoke to Awbyn and then went on to Truxillo, using English, quick and business-like.

At his command, Truxillo sent an orderly to fetch a peasant, clearly a man of whom he and the general had spoken before.

‘Pablo is the first one, my lord,’ said Truxillo, as though reminding the general. ‘We have his father and mother, his young wife, one child. A stupid simple peasant, a man to be trusted as long as all goes well. He thinks that he knows our strength. I have made slips in talking to him. But he has seen very little, and what he has, calculated to deceive him. He thinks we have taken care to keep him ignorant.’

Lord Peterborough turned to Pablo and began to speak to him in Spanish. He was a young man, a strong sullen young peasant. The general spoke and waited, spoke again and waited, at last won an answer. Then he went on, pausing, waiting for confirmation, making Pablo answer before he proceeded, driving it in, getting each point repeated.

Awbyn’s Spanish was in its infancy, but he understood such simple words as those for father and mother, and it seemed to him that my lord began by impressing on Pablo the fact that all his relations were held in the camp as sureties. Then a letter passed; Pablo put it away carefully and repeated the words:

‘El coronel Inglese. San Mateo.’

A letter for the English colonel in San Mateo, and then a list of names, the names perhaps of villages, carefully repeated, one by one. He was being given the exact route he was to follow. At last Pablo was shown a piece of gold, significantly put back in the general’s pocket; he was dismissed; at a command from Truxillo an orderly stepped forward; he was blindfolded and led away.

‘And the other?’ asked the general.

‘Carlos,’ said Truxillo. ‘A very different man, my lord. Carlos is a peasant by birth, but he has been huntsman to the Conde de Traguera all his life. He has a cunning. He knows what it is to set a trap and to make a plan. We have his wife, a daughter, grandchildren. He knows nothing: he was brought blindfold into the camp.’

Carlos was an older man, short but very broad of shoulder, lean of body, like a stunted oak; in the firefight his face was as seamed with runnels as his own stony hills. With him, it was a longer and more complicated conversation, and Awbyn understood nothing except that he thought the route enjoined on Pablo was repeated. A letter was given to Carlos; he nodded; a smile of shrewd understanding; he repeated his instructions. At last he too was gone.

The general turned again to Awbyn; he spoke of secrecy; not a word must pass of what he had just heard. Then he added:

‘Tomorrow much will depend on your dragoons.’

He drew Awbyn aside, taking him by the arm with the familiar trick, with that old air of deferring to his judgment, spoke to him confidentially and at some length. Then he said good night and went back to his tent.

‘And he will be writing dispatches to England and Barcelona this many an hour yet,’ said the third aide-de-camp gloomily.

‘Your night to sit up,’ said Peter. ‘James? A bottle, or bed?’

‘We shall be up early and in any case it is too cold to sit out. Can you give me a torch or a lantern?’

As he walked away, Awbyn saw the light shining through the ticking of the general’s tent. There was hardly another light in the camp, though here and there were fires dying down like the one he had left. The night was close about him; there was low cloud and he could not see the line of the hills. To keep warm, he walked as quickly as was possible in the dark, but he was thinking as he went how he could best carry out his instructions tomorrow. Only the most general plan could be made before seeing the ground; by the time he had pulled off his boots and rolled himself up in his blanket he was clear about the general lines that he would follow. He closed his eyes, said his prayers in French as he had been taught by his mother, commended Gabriel to the care of the Almighty, and then before he fell asleep spared a last thought for Mr. Francis, cornet in Lediard’s troop, now besieged in San Mateo with thirty of the Queen’s Dragoons. He liked that boy and hoped he had come to no harm; but it did not occur to him to ask the Almighty to look after Francis any more than after himself. A soldier took his life in his hands and deliberately threw it on the green baize to win or lose; it was his own act and it would have been cheating to ask for help.

Mr. Francis was as it happened so far well and still incredulously delighted with his own exploits. He had been the first of the regiment to enter the kingdom of Valencia. He had left Tortosa with thirty dragoons about a fortnight before the others and about a fortnight after the regiment had reached the town. They had all at first been in expectation of orders to move on in a few days; but Brigadier Killigrew, who was to command the four regiments ordered to Tortosa, had been most positive that his orders were to settle down in winter quarters. He had commanded the Queen’s when Awbyn had first been major and the regiment were glad to be under his command. He insisted that according to his instructions they were there for two months at least, and so rather sulkily they had settled down.

But about a fortnight later Awbyn had been called one afternoon to the brigadier’s quarters, where he found him in conversation with one Jones, a captain in Barrymore’s. Awbyn knew Jones, a brisk active man and a good officer; he knew too that because he spoke Spanish well he had been lent to the King of Spain and had a temporary Spanish commission as colonel. He had passed through Tortosa a few days earlier with some three hundred miquelets, having the King’s instructions to command in his name any Spaniards favourably inclined in the area ahead of Tortosa.

Brigadier Killigrew now explained that Jones had gone forward through Traguera to San Mateo, both of which towns were favourable to Charles III, as indeed the whole countryside was. But just beyond San Mateo lay a regiment of enemy horse, Possoblanco’s. It would be a rash enterprise to attack regular horse with miquelets only; he had come back to ask for the Queen’s Dragoons. The brigadier’s orders, however, were to garrison Tortosa; he had no instructions to go further and as the foot had not yet arrived he had no other troops but the Queen’s. The most he felt he could spare was a cornet and thirty dragoons.

Disappointed though he was, Awbyn could not help agreeing that in view of his orders the brigadier was right. And if a cornet was to go, it must be Francis, for again there was only one troop with three officers. This was agreed and Francis, with thirty dragoons, rode away with Jones that evening.

News of their doings during the next few days came back to the regiment, for there were messages from San Mateo even after it was besieged. Colonel Jones had arrived at San Mateo for the second time to find he need not make the difficult decision of whether or not to attack Possoblanco with thirty dragoons, three hundred Catalan miquelets and some five or six hundred local militia who might or might not stay for the battle. Finding the whole countryside against him, Possoblanco and his horse had fallen back into Aragon by way of Segorbe. Jones established himself for a few days in San Mateo, where some check on the exuberance of the townsfolk was necessary; both here and in Traguera French sympathizers had to be put in prison to save them from the mob. But he had no inclination to linger, and there were good reasons for moving on. Pressing invitations came from two towns, Castillon de la Plana and Moreilla. Both towns wished to declare for Charles III but neither dared without support.

Castillon was further down the coast in the direction of Valencia, and there was an obvious advantage in securing one more town on the road where all eyes were turned. Moreilla was in the mountains, on the frontiers of Aragon; it lay in the mouth of a pass leading down from the mountains to the plains. It was on the route that an army would follow if it came down from Aragon to stem a revolt in this part of the province of Valencia, but there was at the moment no reason to suppose there was any such army on the move. The more cautious decision would have been to go to Moreilla and secure the flank before advancing, but Jones was not a particularly cautious man; he chose to go to Castillon; it was a natural decision to make at the time, but as Awbyn wrote later to Lord Raby, it almost lost the kingdom of Valencia.

Castillon is about nine Spanish leagues or thirty-six miles forward from San Mateo, three days’ normal march for the foot. Jones was hardly there when he heard that the Conde de las Torres, a veteran soldier and a good general, was on the march from Aragon with several thousand regular troops. The road he was following would bring him down from the mountains through Moreilla and place him between Jones and his friends. Jones at once sent Francis and the dragoons to Moreilla, with orders to put the townspeople in good heart and get them to close their gates to the enemy. He would follow as fast as he could.

Francis, with his first independent command, had felt his cup was full. He had started before dawn and by the late afternoon he knew that he was near Moreilla. He had with him a Valencian guide whose few words of English were enough to pass on the gist of what he picked up from the peasants they met. Moreilla was over the next ridge; that was what he said; already they were winding up the steep mule-track from the last river they had to ford. A stony track, sometimes lipping a ravine on bare slippery rock that made nervous riding with shod horses, sometimes turning in a sharp elbow where the stones made a loose bed of scree; an indeterminate track, broken by short cuts that the more impatient and energetic mules preferred to the winding gradient of the regular trail. It was hot in the afternoon sun; the air was heavy with the smell of the mules’ periodical staling-places. The horses were very done; not much more of it now and from the top they would be able to see Moreilla.

A peasant was coming down the track. The guide spoke to him; they stood talking, expostulating, the guide incredulous, the other indignant at disbelief. They came together to Francis who had halted to let his lean beast draw breath. The guide began to talk—soldiers—many soldiers—Moreilla—it was not difficult to understand. De las Torres had won the race; he was there first.

Francis halted his men and left them to rest while he went on to the top of the ridge with the guide on foot. He was deeply depressed; all his hopes seemed scattered, and as he climbed his mind was a whirl of uncertain droughts, blown hither and thither like snowflakes in a flurry of wind. He had no orders to cover this. He must get the news to Jones, but what else? Where should he go? He must get back without being seen. San Mateo, that would be the place. For San Mateo commanded the coast road from Barcelona to Valencia; since Jones had meant to hold Moreilla, which was valuable only as a flank for San Mateo, he would be all the more determined to hold San Mateo itself. That was the place to fall back on.

His mind was clearer now and steady. He would send the news to Jones and fall back on San Mateo. But now a new thought came to him. He began to wonder whether he could strike a blow before he went. He stopped at that for a moment; his mind would go no further; the thought of Henry Francis, young and inexperienced as he was, with only thirty dragoons, attacking an army, that was too much for him. But having recoiled his thought went on. Was it the right thing to do, even if it were possible? Ought he to let the enemy know they had been seen?

They were at the top of the ridge now. The two of them, Francis and his guide, wriggled forward into a patch of scrub oak from which they could see down to Moreilla. The town lay a little to their left, right in the throat of the gorge; it was certainly an obstacle, for above it, almost as far down as its walls, the sides of the valley were even steeper than here. A road of a kind led down the valley towards the plains. The townsfolk, despairing of help, must have opened their gates and let the enemy in; but perhaps the little walled town was not big enough to hold them all, for men were pitching tents on this side of the town, on a meadow between the road and the stream. As he watched, another party came out of the gate, a few horsemen guarding a string of mules. They halted on the road by the meadow for some time and then moved on slowly, as though looking for a camping place. Francis thought that they must have been in the rear of the march; last into the town, they could find no quarters. Now they were pitching tents on another patch of green, a few hundred yards beyond the first little camp. It was not good country for tents; most of it was too steep and rocky.

Watching them, Francis thought that it was a rash and careless way to camp. True, they had no reason for fear; they knew that the country-side was disaffected but it had not risen. There was no enemy army near them. But that, Colonel Awbyn had told him a score of times, was the one thing you should never take for granted.

And at that his heart leapt, for here he was, watching in secret; he was just that very unsuspected enemy that Colonel Awbyn had told him always to imagine. He might bring off just such a stroke as he had been warned against. But would Jones want him to do it? It would make de las Torres suppose that an enemy was near him; well, that would be all the better, for he would march more slowly and carefully.

He stayed for a little, studying that isolated patch of meadow where the tents were going up. Not more than a dozen troopers, and perhaps forty or fifty mules; if he could get there at night, with the horses held linked further down the road, it could be done. The moon would rise very late.

He talked to the guide. At night, in the dark, it was not going to be possible to get down the slope at the top of which he was lying, not, at least, without noise. But they could get on the road further down and come up. His eyes followed the road up and down, learning its turns and bends; a ford, then a side-stream, then road and river alike turned sharply north to get round a spur of the ridge: The camp was on that spur; there was a big boulder by the side of the road. He would know the place now.

He went back to his dragoons, sent word to Jones of what he was doing, and now with the guide’s help, he had to lead the way along the face of the ridge towards the sea. He was studying the route when he heard the sound of hooves among the loose stones of the track. He turned and saw the leader of the party of miquelets whom Jones had sent as his advanced guard. Francis saw at once that here was just the employment for miquelets and the one thing that was needed to perfect his own plan. If the miquelets attacked the camp near the town, his own attack on the mules and troopers would be covered and both attacks would stand a better chance of success. The difficulty was to settle the plan without misunderstanding. He talked, he waved his hands, he drew maps in the dust. At last the other seemed to get it. Francis made him demonstrate in his turn with a stick in the dust; yes, he was perfect; finally, with an anxious eye on the sun, the cornet resumed his traverse along the ridge. It was a difficult journey, with led horses for most of the way, and it had to be done by daylight. By nightfall they were near the crest of the ridge, above a spot on the road well below Moreilla. Here they rested and ate.

It was an easier track from this spot down to the road; they were on it an hour before moonrise. Not that the moon would give much light anyhow, for she was in her last quarter. It was a quick sudden attack and all went well. What had worried Francis most was doubt whether the miquelets would be in position in time. But they had done it and hardly had he attacked before he heard musket-shots from up the road. At his own end, it could not have been better; the dozen horsemen tumbled from their blankets half-dazed; most of them fled up the road, those who resisted were sabred; the mules were driven off. Within half an hour from Francis giving the word to attack, the dragoons were on the road, mounted, not a man lost, with thirty laden mules. It had been loading the mules that had been the anxious time, for if the enemy had attempted a counter-attack they would have been lost. But the enemy perhaps supposed they were in far greater strength than they were and did not sally from the town.

By mid-day, Francis and his dragoons were in San Mateo. The miquelets followed two hours later; they had killed a number of men, including the lieutenant-colonel of Mahoni’s Dragoons, and they had taken some loot and some muskets. Jones by a forced march arrived not long after Francis and that evening de las Torres with six thousand men pitched his tents before San Mateo and summoned the garrison to surrender.

The news had come back to the regiment at Traguera, for Jones was still able to get country folk in and out of the town. He had of course refused to surrender, and with thirty dragoons and a thousand irregulars had defied de las Torres. But he begged Brigadier Killigrew to relieve him at once, and also sent him letters to forward to the King in Barcelona.

Killigrew was not in a position to send any help, for he had no troops but the Queen’s, who were short of their full strength by a detachment at Lerida as well as by Francis’s, and he had no orders to do any more than garrison Tortosa. But he was daily expecting the three regiments of foot, and as soon as they arrived a council of war was held at which it was decided that San Mateo must be relieved. How exactly it was to be done was not part of the decision, but each regiment had orders to march next day. It was at this juncture that my lord arrived, closely followed by the messenger he had sent in advance with his orders. These were almost identical with the decision of the council of war, for the King in Barcelona had heard of de las Torres’s move, but he had every other particular wrong. He had thought de las Torres very weak and the whole country up in arms against him, and it was in this belief that he had had the temerity to instruct my lord to advance.

Next morning the march was to begin; my lord, who now for the first time understood the true strength of the enemy, at once decided that the troops were to be split up into small parties and that they should go to Traguera by different routes, so that no one should see them all at one time in one place.

That was the state of affairs, so far as he knew them, on which James Awbyn closed his eyes after walking back from the fire before the general’s tent on the night of January 8th, 1706. He slept for a few hours only and three hours before dawn was leading his dragoons out of Traguera, at the head of the little column that was to attack an army five times their strength.

The low cloud of yesterday evening had blown away during the night, and the sun was showing the hot copper rim of his disc above the sea when from the top of a low rise they first saw San Mateo. The little walled town rose like an island from the sea of green fields immediately around it. In these lay the tents of the besiegers. Closer at hand, the country was broken by water-courses coming down from the hills, little streams running through a stony land of miniature mountains, as though a Spanish province had been reduced to the scale of Lilliput. Here and there were shallow terraces of olive trees, here and there a scrub of low twisted oak. This was the remnant of the hills, the last struggle of the mountains before tamely surrendering to the plain. On the right, from the gash in the mountains where Moreilla lay, the river ran down to the sea on their left. San Mateo was the queen of this little space between sea and mountains.

This much Awbyn saw, crouched behind a boulder in the shadow of an oak. It was country well suited to what he had to do. He could move his men away to the right, under cover of a ridge, without being seen from the town. He had to split them into small parties, here leaving a file of three men, there another, to cover as wide a front as possible, but for the present to remain hidden. It was easy enough; the only difficulty was that far too many men would be taken up with holding horses.

At last he had his men strung out; they would have made barely four troops at full strength, and spaced as they were, with a hundred yards or so between each file, to Colonel Awbyn’s eyes they looked most unsoldierly. Open order was rare enough; that was six feet between horses. To straggle across the landscape like this was unheard of. But he saw the point of it. He moved slowly along the line, on the reverse slope, making sure that his men were all hidden till the word should come. Only one half troop were kept together in hand. He could see the foot moving into position now on his left; now the general and his staff were coming to see whether the dispositions he had made fitted into the plan.

It was a plan of which an essential part had already been put into execution and was beginning to take effect. What had already happened, and was going to happen, down there in the tents before San Mateo, Colonel Awbyn did not of course know till much later. He learnt most of it afterwards from Truxillo, who had it from Carlos, the Conde de Traguera’s huntsman.

It was a simple enough story. The Conde de las Torres, the enemy general, was roused by his staff a little before dawn. They had taken a prisoner, a peasant who had blundered into a picket. Threatened with torture, he had said he would tell what he knew if his life was spared. He was the bearer of a letter to the English colonel in San Mateo; he would hand it over at once. They had promised him his life but he insisted that he must have the general’s word before he would speak. He was at the tent door now. An officer who could read English had been summoned.

They brought in the prisoner, bound, a square man, broad of shoulder, lean of body, like a stunted oak; in the lamplight his face was as seamed with runnels as his own stony hills. He was sullen and frightened, but he had information that he would give if the general would promise him his life. The promise was given, but he said obstinately:

‘Not till my hands are free.’

An officer stepped forward as if to strike him but the general nodded and his hands were freed. Now he told how he had been led blindfold into the English camp, how the bandage had been taken off and he had stood before the English general, a little thin man in a red coat with a great wig. The general had seemed very pleased and was laughing with his officers. He had given him a letter to take into San Mateo to the English colonel. Then another man had been brought in blindfold. This second man had been given a letter too and he too had been told to take it to the English colonel. But in case one of them was caught, they were to go by separate routes. The second man had directions to go to a house in a village not a mile from San Mateo, where he was to wait till just before dawn, when a man would come to guide him into San Mateo. It was the smith’s house, in the square before the church.

An officer hurried away. The general stared at the English letter, he deciphered a word or two, but could make nothing of it; he paced up and down impatiently. At last the interpreter arrived; he spread out the letter, crumpled and dirty from the messenger’s pocket, read it through slowly to himself, the general fiercely expostulating, and then began a halting translation.

The letter became famous later; my lord’s secretary, Mr. Furly, kept a copy and it was published. But the first time it was read aloud was by a stout officer laboriously turning it into Spanish, keeping an apprehensive eye on the general sitting on his bed, peering at the unfamiliar script by the light of a smoky lantern that even inside the tent was beginning to pale in the grey of dawn. This is what he read:

To Collonel Jones: You will hardly believe yourself, what this Letter informs you of, if it comes safe to you; and tho’ I have taken the best Precautions, it will do little Prejudice, if it falls into the Enemies Hands, Since they shall See and feel the Troops, as soon almost, as they can receive Intelligence, should it be betray’d to them. The end for which I venture it to you is, that you may prepare to open the furthest Gate towards Valencia, and have your thousand Miquelets ready, who will have the Employment they love, and are fit for, the following and pillaging a flying Enemy. The Country is, as one can wish, for their intire Destruction. Be sure, upon the first appearance of our Troops and the first discharge of our Artillery, you answer with an English Halloo: And take to the Mountains on the right with all your Men. It is no matter what becomes of the Town; leave it to your Mistresses. The Conde de las Torres must take the Plains; the Hills on the left being almost impassable, and secur’d by five or six thousand of the Country People. But what will most Gall him, the old Regiment of Nebot, which revolted to us near Valencia, is likewise among them.

I was eight Days ago my self in Barcelona, and I believe the Conde de las Torres must have so good Intelligence from thence, that he can’t be Ignorant of it. What belongs to my own Troops and my own Resolutions, I can easily keep from him, tho’ nothing else. You know the Force I have, and the Multitudes that are gathering from all parts against us; so that I am forc’d to put the whole upon this Action: Which must be decisive, to give any hopes to our desperate Game. By nine or ten, within an Hour after you can receive this, assure your self you will discover us on the tops of the Hills, not two Cannon-Shot from their Camp.

The Advantages of the Sea are inconceivable, and have contributed to bring about what you could never expect to see, a force almost equal to the Enemy in number; and you know less would do our Business. Besides, never Men were so transported, to be brought with such Secrecy so near an Enemy. I have near six thousand Men lock’d up this Night, within the Walls of Traguera. I do not expect you should believe it, till you see them.

You know we had a thousand Foot and two hundred Dragoons in Tortosa: Will’s and a thousand Foot, English and Dutch, came down the Ebro in Boats; and I embark’d a thousand Foot more at Tarragona, which I landed at Vinaros; and the Artillery from thence I brought in Country Carts. It was easie to assemble the Horse: Zinzindorf and Moras are as good as our own, and with our English Dragoons make in all near two thousand. But the whole depends upon leaving them no retreat without interruption.

Dear Jones, prove a true Dragoon, be diligent and alert; and preach this welcome Doctrine to your Miquelets, Plunder without Danger. Your Friend, Peterborow.

The officer translating read on steadily; he was too intent on each sentence to understand the meaning of the whole. The officers of the staff looked at each other with horror. Their general’s orders were to march to Valencia and join the Duke of Arcos. He had intended to go direct but irritation at the loss of the mules at Moreilla had turned his eyes on San Mateo, a town lying near his route which had treasonably declared for the house of Austria. He had turned aside to snap it up as he passed, judging it a morsel easy to be had and too tasty to refuse. Now he was in danger of being brought to battle by a force equal to his own, if not superior, in unfriendly country. The heretic general was upon them, he who had taken Barcelona with a force no greater than the garrison. If de las Torres failed to join Arcos, if he was cut off and his retreat harassed by miquelets, he was guilty not only of defeat but of disobeying orders.

Carlos, sullen, stood as one neither hearing nor understanding. But in fact he was aware of much. He knew it was because the letter was important that the general himself sat without movement. Then he heard him, as the translator ended, say:

‘Gentlemen, this may be a trap. Where is the other man?’

They had found Pablo already. The village where he had been told to wait was on the fringe of the camp. He was very frightened. He gave up his letter. It proved to be a duplicate of Carlos’s, and the consternation of the staff officers increased. If the English general had taken so much trouble to send this news to Colonel Jones, it must be true.

Pablo was seized and threatened, but not many threats were needed. He would tell all. What he told, Carlos did not hear for he was taken outside the tent himself. But Truxillo had taken care that Pablo should tell the same tale as the letters.

It was growing lighter now; in a few minutes the sun would be up. Carlos was kept waiting, outside the general’s tent; he heard voices raised sharply, questioning; then he could hear the mumble of Pablo’s reply and more questioning, then the general’s voice, sharp and stern. Then they came pouring out, the general, his staff, Pablo and his guards.

Carlos tried to step forward; one of his guards tripped him and he fell, but he cried out as he fell:

‘Your promise, Excellency! Release me!’

An officer said:

‘You were promised life, not liberty.’

The general took no notice of him but strode away from the tents. The two guards pulled Carlos to his feet roughly and held his arms. He saw the officers crowding round their general, looking northwards towards Traguera, many with glasses. Carlos knew what a perspective glass was. He had looked through the Count his master’s. Now he looked the same way as the general; so did his guards.

The sun was up now; all stood silent, waiting, looking. Then Carlos saw a red coat; it seemed that a man rose from behind a rock and dropped behind it hastily as though hoping not to be seen. Then another, away to the left. Then again, to the right, another red coat; there, back on the left, across a defile, showing for a moment between two hillocks, came trotting half a troop of horse. The skyline seemed alive with men, a long line it must be, many thousands in line of battle.

Carlos heard the general’s sharp orders, saw the officers round him turn running, heard their shouts, saw the whole camp wake to panic-stricken life. Tent-ropes were cut, men pulling and tugging piles of canvas in frenzy towards the carts; whichever way his eye looked he saw disorder, servants frantically cramming blankets into valises, men rolling barrels of powder; mules being harnessed, carts pulled round; shouts, expostulations, arguments.

Then from the hill towards Traguera came a sudden crackle of musketry. This was from the Castilian right, towards the sea. The heretics were driving in de las Torres’s outlying pickets. A fresh outburst of shouting, and now men ceased to tug at tents and lug at carts and baggage; now they grabbed their arms and ran, southwards, away from Traguera. There were no officers to be seen now. A score of troopers trotted between the fallen tents, and rode here and there, picking up the last of the foot, taking them up behind on their horses. One of Carlos’s two guards called to them and stepped forward to speak. Carlos suddenly twisted free from the other, ran, doubled behind a tent that still stood, then behind another, crawled under a heap of fallen canvas. He lay still for a minute. There was no one chasing him.

He lay still; all was still about him. He crept from under the canvas and now, cautiously peering from the doorway of a tent, he could see the army of de las Torres streaming away to the south. Carlos looked about him carefully and then came out of his tent. On the skyline to the north, a sprinkling of red coats still seemed to be trying to hide themselves without success, and a few, a very few, no more than a hunting party, were riding down the hill towards San Mateo. Sure now that he was no longer in danger, Carlos decided that he had done what he had set out to do. He turned his face towards that hunting-party of men in red coats. The time had come to claim his gold.

Chapter II

The Episode of the Drunken Dragoons

January 1706

Wary and circumspect, like men inadequately armed who have roused a dangerous animal, the tiny army of Lord Peterborough followed de las Torres. If he should come to know that he outnumbered his pursuers by five to one, he would surely turn to fight; they marched therefore by night and in the mountains. In the small hours of January 12th, two and a half days after the bloodless relief of San Mateo, they came to Albocacer, a town on the fringe of the mountain country, a little off the main road that led along the coast to Valencia. Here came letters from the King. Here in the afternoon the general called a council of war to discuss them.

In Valencia, far from the Court, a council of war was composed of officers less senior than in Barcelona. There were no generals but Brigadier Killigrew and Brigadier Gorges; all field officers were present; there were no Dutch and but one Spaniard. It was the first such council that Colonel Awbyn had attended. But this body of a dozen colonels and majors were asked for an opinion on matters that might win or lose the war in Spain.

My lord began the discussion. He urged the council in the first place to take into account the advantages of going on to Valencia. From a narrowly military point of view, Valencia was important because it lay on the road from Barcelona to Madrid, and yet could be supplied by sea. It was a consideration almost equally pressing that the province abounded in horses and mules. The Allied army had few horse or dragoons and they wretchedly mounted; in Valencia they could remount all their regiments and raise a fresh army of six thousand horse. And they were even more deficient in mules for the transport of guns and baggage; in Valencia they could have all they wanted.

These were two arguments in favour of an advance of which every soldier must see the force. Another that weighed powerfully with my lord was the state of affairs in the city of Valencia, the capital of the province. And a very curious state of affairs it was. Every officer at the council had heard something, some more, some less. Now Lord Peterborough laid before them all his own information and each added what he knew. More came to light later, of course, and brought a fuller understanding, but at the time there was enough for the council to understand the story in almost every particular.

The strangeness came from the character of Don Juan Basset y Ramos, a Valencian by birth and at present military governor of Valencia, who had for some years served the Emperor as an engineer and in particular a constructor of fortifications. Valencia is a city that has always been famous for the beauty of its women, and at this time it was in addition infamous for the number of bravoes in its streets, men who by common report were ready to commit a murder for a smaller sum than would be needed in any other part of Europe. Among this class Basset y Ramos must have found his early associates; he was by profession a sculptor, but perhaps there were few orders for his art and he had to find another means of livelihood. At any rate, it was in consequence of several murders that he left his native city.

Nothing is known of his history in Germany and Austria; but he must have curbed his youthful exuberance for he had become an honoured officer of the Emperor when he next appeared in Spain. This was at the siege of Gibraltar in 1704. Here he was engineer adviser to Prince George of Hesse and acquitted himself so well that he came on from Gibraltar with the Earl of Peterborough’s expedition and was appointed governor of Denia when that Valencian seaport declared for Charles III. The Allies of course knew him only as a distinguished officer of the Empire and a Valencian; they knew nothing of his early history.

Basset y Ramos was left behind at Denia when the fleet finished watering and sailed for Barcelona. He was the only representative of Charles III in the province of Valencia, for though the Valencians rivalled the Catalans in their dislike of the Castilians, and of any king to whom the Castilians adhered, they were not ready to rise without some military encouragement. Perhaps the air of his native province went to Basset s head; certainly he seems in the course of a few months to have cast off the restraints, the propriety, and the torpor, of a major-general in the Imperial service and to have reverted to the ways of his former companions, the bravoes of Valencia.

Denia was besieged almost at once by troops under the orders of the Marquis of Villagarcias, Viceroy of Valencia on behalf of King Philip. The immediate commander of the besieging forces was the Duke of Gaudia. Now whether it was Villagarcias who thought it unwise to be too ardent in the cause of a sovereign his subjects repudiated, whether these were the sentiments of Gaudia, or whether both agreed, it is certain that the siege was not pressed hard. In fact before long the Duke of Gaudia and most of his forces were withdrawn, leaving only one regiment of horse lying at a distance to deal with any advance from the town.

Again, it is difficult to say whether it was by the negligence of Villagarcias or by deliberate intention that this particular regiment of horse was chosen. It was commanded by Don Raphael Nebot, a gentleman of Catalonia, whose brother Don Joseph had already done King Charles some service near Barcelona; many of the troopers were Catalans. It was in fact ‘the old regiment of Nebot’ mentioned in Lord Peterborough’s letter to Colonel Jones.

Whatever the reason, this regiment was the only enemy force near Denia and Basset soon entered into a correspondence with Colonel Don Raphael Nebot. They made a plot by which Basset and some of his officers were secretly admitted by Don Raphael to his camp one night. They surprised the lieutenant-colonel and other officers of the regiment in their beds and sent them prisoners to Denia. The Catalan troopers readily came over and now Basset felt that he had an army, for to Nebot’s Regiment of Horse he could add the militia enrolled for the defence of Denia. They were mostly seamen and fisherfolk, the hardiest and most warlike of the men of Valencia and all strong for King Charles.

At the head of this army, Basset y Ramos now marched out of Denia to Oliva, which town declared for Charles III and welcomed him. It was here that Basset began to give some hint of what was to come; the French, of whom there were many settlers among the tradespeople and skilled artisans of Valencia, he plundered mercilessly, while those who were known to sympathize with the French cause fared no better, for they were thrown into prison and their property confiscated. Of the booty thus obtained he managed to keep a sufficiency for himself and yet to win the hearts of his followers and the mob by a distribution of the rest.

Basset’s advance continued towards Valencia. He entered Gaudia and Alcira in triumph, and in both towns his followers were guilty of great barbarities against the French. As he drew nearer to Valencia, his confidence and rapacity increased, while his titles and proclamations became almost daily more pretentious. He published a decree announcing that peasants might keep their land but need no longer pay rent or perform any feudal service; this brought the peasants flocking to his standard and it was at the head of a rabble of many thousand unarmed men that he entered the city of Valencia and took upon himself the duties of military governor on behalf of King Charles. But it was a governorship of an unusual kind.

Of the nobles, there were some who might have declared for Austria if a regular army had come to the city but who were so much alarmed by Basset’s proclamations that they fled to Madrid. Here they begged the French King Philip V to recover his revolted province. They were of course joined by those who were in any case thorough-going partisans of the French; and the property of both parties was immediately confiscated by Basset. A certain number of the nobles, however, headed by the Conde de Cardona, declared for King Charles and at the head of their followers took part in the welcome the townsfolk gave to Basset.

The latter at once began to act in the arbitrary and tyrannical way that one would expect of a Valencian bravo suddenly elevated to supreme power. He imposed the penalty of death for a number of acts or omissions of the most trivial kind; he confiscated the property of all the French in the city, to the number of at least three thousand, although they offered to raise a regiment for the service of King Charles; he incited the people to tumultuous demonstrations against the archbishop and the nobility, and he did nothing to raise troops for the king. His original army of hardy sea-folk from Denia melted away because they were not paid. His hold on the mob of Valencia he maintained partly by fear, partly by the distribution of plunder, but largely also by imposing on their superstitions. For he made believe to be guided by Heaven and sustained the belief by a number of tricks that to anyone of an inquiring turn of mind would seem not difficult to arrange. For example, one day as he was borne through the streets of Valencia, he ordered his litter to stop and, pointing to a boy playing by the side of the road, declared that it was revealed to him that the boy was the bearer of a message of treachery. A crowd collected, a search was made, and eventually a message was discovered in the boy’s shoe which was said to incriminate someone of whom Basset wished to be rid. And there were other stories of the same kind.

This had been the state of affairs in Valencia at the end of December. It was clear enough to the council of war that the sooner my lord reached the city and superseded Basset y Ramos, the better. For he was alienating the nobles and tradespeople daily, while as for the mob they were unlikely to believe in his inspiration and submit to his tyranny for ever. If they turned against him, they would turn against Charles; if he retained his hold on them, a province that had been ruled by Basset y Ramos, and peasants among whom his levelling doctrines had been preached so long, were not likely to be of great value to the crown of King Charles.

To all these were now added still more pressing reasons for an advance. Already the city of Valencia was threatened by a force of some five hundred horse and fifteen hundred foot under Don Francisco Velasco, the former governor of Barcelona. To this force would probably soon be joined the army of de las Torres, which had been strengthened by Possoblanco’s Horse but had lost some infantry by desertion. Its strength was now believed by the council of war to be not less than two thousand horse and two thousand eight hundred foot. Worst of all, another five thousand men under the Duke of Arcos was said to be approaching Valencia from Madrid and were within five leagues of the city or about two days’ normal march. Altogether it seemed that before long more than ten thousand of the enemy would converge on Valencia, and they would probably not take long to oust Basset. Once the city had changed hands, it was to be expected that the Bourbon party would take care to impress the inhabitants with the unwisdom of any further defection, and, whatever their sympathies might be, the townspeople would be slow to rise again.

To my lord, all these considerations were arguments for pressing on. But to the council, although they understood the value of a rapid advance, it seemed that the means were lacking to carry it out. Two hundred dragoons, badly mounted; hardly more than a thousand infantry, almost barefoot—and the countryside unable to find them shoes, for the country people went without—that was the force at my lord’s disposal. A council of war could hardly vote for the advance of such an army against so strong an enemy, had there been not another Bourbon soldier in Spain. But when the horizon was widened, when eyes were turned back as well as forward, the arguments for caution were stronger still.

For the King’s letters told of large enemy forces moving towards Barcelona as well as Valencia. The Captain-General of Aragon, the Prince of Serclaes, was moving up to the frontiers with four or five thousand men, report said that the Duke of Noailles would before long be entering Spain from Roussillon with eight thousand, while the Duke of Anjou, Philip V of Spain, with Marshal Tessé, was advancing from Madrid with ten thousand more. Nor was this dismal news all, for the Duke of Berwick, a Marshal of France and one of the most skilful, was falling back from the Portuguese frontier and shifting his strength to the east.

In view of this concentration of enemy force against Barcelona, the King had thought it right to countermand certain orders his lordship had passed. There were already on the march to join him in Valencia three hundred Spanish horse and a thousand infantry; since even with these the King had less than a quarter of the forces moving against him, His Majesty had ventured to halt them in Catalonia, near Tortosa. His Majesty went on to impress upon his lordship the desirability of protecting his royal person and conserving what had already been won in Catalonia. But, as my lord took care to point out to the council of war, His Majesty did not give him positive orders to return. Indeed, when His Majesty emphasized the importance of Catalonia, he clearly implied, by the mere fact of deigning to give reasons, that Lord Peterborough had discretion to advance or retire. And His Majesty had had no hesitation in positively ordering his lordship to cross the Ebro and attack de las Torres; those positive orders had been based on the falsest of intelligence and could only be described as perverse in view of months of pleading to be allowed to advance into Valencia when there was no opposition.

These were the considerations his lordship urged. There was much talk, but at last a stage was reached when there was no more to be said but plain yes or no by each man. Colonel Awbyn was reluctant to reach the only conclusion that was possible. He saw how strongly inclined his lordship was to go on, in spite of all human reason; his determination was none the less valorous for being partly occasioned by pique. Awbyn warmed at his general’s refusal to give in to circumstance, but he was asked his professional opinion; he must give it honestly, and with a heavy heart he concurred in the unanimous recommendation of the council of war. They should take the small town of Peniscola, which lay on the way to Vinaros on the sea-coast near by. They should halt at Vinaros till further news was received; the troops could be moved from that port north or south by sea, back to the Ebro if the threat to Catalonia grew worse, on to Valencia if opportunity offered. It was the opinion of all, they added, that they would be rightly held guilty if they did not advise his lordship to post his troops so that he could not be cut off from being able to assist the King in person and pass to the defence of Catalonia in the extreme necessity which in all probability was to be expected.

His lordship remained silent for what in anyone else would have been a very short time, but for him was unusually long. He saw that the council would not be persuaded to alter their unwelcome advice. Very well; he accepted it. The foot should march tomorrow to Vinaros. He would by then have letters for them to take, to the King, to the Admiral. But he himself, with one hundred and fifty of the dragoons, would follow the enemy a little further, to see what they would do.

The Council frankly gaped. It had been judged too rash to follow the enemy with twelve hundred men; now the general proposed to do it with a hundred and fifty. They looked at each other doubtfully, wondering who should speak. Killigrew began; Gorges took up the tale; each in turn begged his lordship to change his mind. Only Awbyn was silent. It would not have been proper for him to urge caution when his regiment was chosen. It was madness to pursue five thousand men with a hundred and fifty, but against all reason, his heart beat the more quickly, and it was pleasure that made it beat. He knew my lord would not shift and he was right.

The officers of the council took their leave. Awbyn stayed behind, expecting orders for the dragoons. But instead of giving orders, Lord Peterborough regarded him for a moment with a quizzical air and then addressed him as a junior officer of the French army would speak to his commanding officer:

‘Je crois, mon colonel, que vous êtes trop sage pour aller avec moi. It will be better if I take some mad young cornets and perhaps one captain to keep them in order.’

‘Autrefois, milord, j’étais sage, c’est vrai; mais maintenant, depuis San Mateo, je suis fou comme—comme—’ Awbyn stumbled for a word.

‘Comme je le suis. Very good: you shall come.’ And now Lord Peterborough went on quickly to talk, not of the council that had just passed, but of the conduct of the enemy. He asked whether Awbyn had considered de las Torres’s action in besieging San Mateo. Had be been right; Or was it a mistake?

Awbyn replied cautiously and in general terms. It was, he said, a mistake to invest any place unless you were in earnest and meant to take it, cost what it might. His lordship brushed this aside.

‘But it is this case,’ he went on, ‘it is this case I am talking about. De las Torres should have made straight for Valencia. There he would have joined Velasco and Arcos and returned with such strength that we could not have withstood him. You see, it is Valencia that is important. It was the greatest folly the enemy could commit to besiege San Mateo; there could be no greater folly in the world unless it were for us to endeavour to relieve it. If it had not been for this mad order from the Court, we might have passed them and got first to Valencia.’

Colonel Awbyn was silent. He did not see how the English force could have moved more rapidly even if there had been no enemy at all and the idea of passing de las Torres and racing him for Valencia was so foreign to all his ideas of war that he found it simply bewildering.

‘But now,’ went on the general, ‘now what is de las Torres to do? He thinks we are as strong as he is, mark you. And de los Arcos is coming up to Valencia.’

‘I suppose to fall back slowly, until he is joined by de los Arcos, delaying as much as possible and avoiding battle.’

‘Exactly. And that is what we must take care he does not do. We must send him back helter-skelter and make room for ourselves to raise an army and above all some horse. I am not going back to Barcelona without positive orders from the King, council or no council. I want a dozen dragoons. And a young officer who is quick and stirring. The young man who took the mules, can he be spared?’

Awbyn agreed to spare Mr. Francis and a dozen dragoons. My lord explained his plan in a swift undertone.

‘Truxillo will go with them,’ he said. ‘Truxillo understands everything and will explain to your officer. I think it is an employment in which the dragoons will not be sorry to take part.’

Francis left an hour later with a dozen dragoons, accompanied by Truxillo and a young Valencian gentleman, younger than Francis himself. His complexion was between almond and olive, his face the long smooth oval of an almond. There was not much either could say to the other, but Francis took to him at once, for he had an engaging smile. They had also a shaggy peasant as a guide.

It was a long and difficult night march, but their guide made no mistake and in the grey of early dawn he, Truxillo and Francis were peering down from a patch of broom at the camp of de las Torres.

‘They are not very comfortable without their tents,’ said Truxillo. The rows of tiny figures could be seen rolled in their cloaks, like newly hatched caterpillars on the underside of a cabbage leaf. They lay in a meadow above the confluence of two streams, not far from the sea. A few were already beginning to stir.

‘You see this place is as though made for our purpose,’ Truxillo went on. ‘It is not easy for an army to pass over this ridge where we lie. There is only this place and one more pass. Look! Can you see where the stream comes out from the cork trees over there to our right? The stream which runs to their camp and joins this stream of ours? There is the pass at its head. Beyond that the mountains go down to the sea in a cliff and there is no way round.’ He spoke to the guide and resumed.

‘Yes, that is right. There is no way to the south but these two passes. And you can see what a fright de las Torres will be in if he thinks there is an army of my lord’s here at this pass. It is only one step to the next and then he is cut off altogether.’

Francis nodded.

‘How long will it take you?’ he asked.

‘An hour to get down to the camp. Then there will be much talk. It will be nearly noon before we are back.’

‘That will make it all the more natural,’ said Francis with a smile.

‘How was it we did not see you?’

‘Oh, we hid at once in a wood till you had passed and then stole past and reached the pass before you.’

They were back now, on the side of the pass away from the sea and from the enemy. Here the dragoons were breakfasting in the open before a small inn. Truxillo called up the smiling almond-faced boy and looked at him critically.

‘You will pass,’ he said. ‘And I?’

Francis, the Valencian and the guide, all looked him over but could detect nothing distinctively military. Truxillo and his companion went on over the crest and towards the enemy’s camp. The guide disappeared into the back parts of the inn. Francis posted sentries on the crest and further down the hill up which they had come, and then found a comfortable spot near the dragoons to eat his breakfast.

About an hour before noon, having made sure that every man understood exactly what he had to do, Francis joined the sentry on the side of the pass towards the sea. They crouched together in the same patch of broom from which Truxillo and Francis had looked down on the camp at dawn. Before long they saw a party of men on foot emerge from a wood near the enemy’s camp and move up the stony track down which Truxillo had taken his companion. The track wound along the bank of the stream, dry in summer but now a brisk tumble of falls and rapids; stream and track were hidden here and there by trees or high banks and then again visible. Francis and his sentry kept still and watched. There were five men. Before long Truxillo and his companion could be recognized and three strangers with them.

The five men came up the hill with frequent pauses. As they drew nearer, it could be seen that they paused for breath, but that every time they stopped they looked about them keenly. At last they reached and passed Francis’s hiding-place. He kept still. They disappeared over the crest; Francis rose to his feet and with the dragoon by his side he quietly followed them.

The crest of the pass was like a narrow door. You stepped between a boulder and a precipitous face and at once you were in a different world. The seaward side of the pass faced east and south; it was bare rock or crumbling slope, baked by the sun; but on the other side, the air was damp and cool, heavy with the scent of rotting leaves; the sun came only here and there in golden shafts between the moss that hung from the oaks and chestnuts. Through this wooded gloom, the track slanted downhill for fifty yards to the clearing before the inn.

Francis and the dragoon crept quietly down this track, keeping close to one side, then slipped into the trees and looked out on the clearing. They saw Truxillo and his party stop before the inn and look round; there was no one to be seen. One of them called for the host; no one came. Francis whistled and stepped out from cover.

It seemed as though many more than twelve dragoons burst into the clearing from the inn and its outbuildings, from behind trees and boulders. The five men were surrounded; they seemed bewildered. Hands moved as if to swords but they were unarmed. They could not fight. They stood still and sheepish. Truxillo began to talk quickly in Spanish.

Francis interrupted him. He spoke very loud and very slowly in his infantile Spanish.

‘Who are you; Where are you going?’

But they talked too fast, he could not understand a word of the reply. He made a weary gesture to stop Truxillo.

‘Carlos?’ he asked. ‘Carlos? Felipe?’

The answer to that he could understand.

‘Carlos! Carlos!’ they clamoured.

‘I don’t believe them,’ Francis said to the corporal. ‘I saw that man’s hand go to his sword when we appeared. They’re soldiers, they’re spies. Search them and bind them.’

Of the three strangers, one had a military waistcoat beneath his peasant’s clothes, and a second had a pocket pistol and a commission signed by de las Torres.

Francis laughed loud. It was a hearty, brutal laugh.

‘Spies!’ he said. ‘The general will hang them. No doubt de las Torres would like to know there are English soldiers here. But these at least shall not be the ones to go back and tell him. Bind them hard, corporal. And here is half-a-guinea to drink the general’s health in, for it isn’t every day we capture five spies.’

The peasant who kept the inn had appeared now. Francis threw him the half-guinea, told him by a gesture to bring wine, wine for all, himself dragged out a bench and sat on it astraddle. The five spies lay bound beneath a tree. A girl came out with a jug of wine and leather drinking cups.

‘Name? Thy name?’ Francis asked.

It was Juanita; the English made Waneeta of it and called after her with jokes she did not understand. She was a big coarsely built girl, but shy and frightened. She ran away; her father came back with her, scolding, telling her to go round with the jug and fill again.

‘Come, corporal, a song,’ Francis commanded.

The corporal was shy of singing before an officer, but the others urged him in undertones, speaking with eyes on the ground, from the corner of lips half shut:

‘Come on, Toby!’ said first one and then another, at intervals.

At last he cleared his throat.

‘One you all know,’ he said.

He sang the song that had caught every man’s fancy twenty years ago and turned James II off the throne. They joined in the chorus, dutiful but without enthusiasm:

A wind, a wind, a Protestant wind!
Lilhburlero, bullen a-la!

The cups were filled again.

‘Another! cried Francis, draining his wine off as though it were small beer, and again there were nudges and the respectful, muttered exhortations.

‘Come on, Toby.’

The corporal still felt he must sing a correct song, and there was no real spontaneity behind:

Come here’s a good Health, the Duke I do mean,
That bravely fought for his country and Queen,
  May his fate still be
  That Conquer shall he
Till the Nation with peace it be crown’d,
  Come, Lads, never think,
  But his health let’s drink
And sing his great praise whilst the Bumpers pass round.

More gold passed, more wine, and the temperature was rising with:

Drink, drink, drink we then
A flowing health to Prince Eugen.

The corporal’s colour was mounting and his eye brightening and he had everyone with him when he broke into:

  Ho boy, hey boy,
  Come come away boy,
And bring me my longing desire,
  A lass that is neat
  And can well do the feat
When lusty young blood is on fire.

This was a song he had sung round the camp fires, before; the men knew the verses as well as he did and sang each verse after his solo, describing the lass in a good deal of detail. His blood was up now, and without pausing he went on:

I went to the ale-house

and the chorus crashed in:

As an honest woman should.

On went the corporal:

And a knave followed after,

and again they came in:

As you know knaves would.

The corporal had a fine clear baritone and an inexhaustible memory; he carried his audience on without a stumble through the stages of the honest woman’s rapidly blossoming friendship with the knave, the men following each line doggedly:

As an honest woman should,

and again:

As you know knaves would,

till her final disillusionment.

The innkeeper and his daughter ran in and out with drink, the corporal went on to:

Man, man, man
Is for the woman made;
And the woman made for man;
As the spur is for the jade,
As the scabbard for the blade
As for digging is the spade
As for liquor is the can
So man, man, man
Is for the woman made;
And the woman made for man.

The songs went on; the wine flowed free; the corporal’s head seemed of iron, but two of the dragoons lay unashamedly asleep, the others clutched each his neighbour for support and roared a chorus without words.

The corporal’s songs grew steadily bawdier and now they were accompanied by action and pantomime:

He pressed me, I stumbled,
He pushed me, I tumbled,
He kissed me, I grumbled,

he sang in the mincing voice of a female impersonator.

Francis staggered to his feet, overturning the bench. He swore, hiccupped, made a lunge at Waneeta who ran into the inn. He ran in pursuit, caught his shoulder on the door-post, leaned against it laughing helplessly, propped himself up with one arm, waved to his dragoons with the other.

‘Come on, boys,’ he called. ‘Share and share.’

The dragoons swayed and stumbled into the inn; one fell and did not trouble to get up. Two still lay sleeping.

‘Now is the time,’ Truxillo whispered. ‘Can you move your hands at all?’

One of the three strangers said his bonds were loose, but not enough to free himself.

‘Turn on your side, away from me; let me look.’

Truxillo looked; then he turned away from the other but wriggled closer to him till they were back to back. His fingers felt the ropes; he tugged and picked; a loop was coming, coming; it had come. One man was free and began to loose the others. From the inn came a scream and a burst of laughter.

‘Into the stable. Take their horses. Tell the general what you have seen.’ Truxillo pushed them in his eagerness.

‘But you? You must come. You will not be safe.’

‘We must go to our homes. We must be there; these heretics are in every village. You see what they are like. Tell the general what we have done. God bless King Philip.’

Nervously, walking their horses but with backward glances, the three strangers rode back up the track to the pass and on towards the camp of de las Torres; Truxillo and the boy ran across the clearing and disappeared among the trees. But no one came out of the inn.

Five minutes passed; Truxillo came back; he went to the inn, put in his head and called. Francis came out. He passed his hand over his forehead.

‘I poured in the water myself but for all that I am a little unsteady,’ he said.

The corporal came out and saluted. He coughed and begged pardon if he had made too free. Francis gave him money and thanked him.

‘Get the men together now, corporal,’ he said. ‘We shall have to start back soon.’

He went on to Truxillo:

‘It is the saddle-cloths the colonel will never forgive,’ he said. ‘We can get more horses.’

‘But don’t you see it is just the saddle-cloths that will convince de las Torres? And my countrymen do not make little of the dangers they have run. Oh, it will work. Saddle-cloths indeed! You can get more saddle-cloths.’

‘Not scarlet, edged with blue, and the Queen’s cypher in yellow,’ said Francis gloomily.

But he forgot about the saddle-cloths when less than an hour later he saw for the second time in a week the army of de las Torres in headlong flight, this time from an enemy who could hardly be said to exist, for the dragoons were less than a twentieth of their strength. Francis and Truxillo lay in that same patch of broom, smiling as they watched them go; then back to the pass to mount and follow the corporal and his dragoons. A brisk trot, and soon they could see red coats winding through the trees ahead of them and hear faintly a voice singing words that they knew must be:

He pushed me, I tumbled
He kissed me, I grumbled,
But still he kissed on . . . .

It was with regret that Francis spurred forward to tell them to march in silence.

Chapter III

The Surrender of Nules

January 1706

Although Colonel Awbyn was not a man who analysed his own feelings, he was far from insensitive. It would never have occurred to him to put what he felt into his letters to Gabriel, still less to Lord Raby; he was not aware of it. But it was there all the same and if anything had made him turn his eyes inward, he might have become conscious that something beyond himself had sustained and carried him forward during the five days since the council of war at Albocacer. Not that even then he would have been able to put words to it, but he would have agreed if someone had told him that he felt as though he were being carried forward and upward by the surging weight of a great mass of water.

It was a feeling of buoyancy, almost light-headedness, and of complete rest, because Almighty God had taken the two hundred in his charge, because his shield and buckler were over them and the shadow of his wing. For nothing went wrong; they were one against twenty, yet the enemy fled before them. They could ride all day and half the night and yet they would be none of them conscious of fatigue; they seemed hardly to feel heat, cold or hunger. It was only when their horses stumbled that they knew it was time to rest.

There had been hardly any fighting and in fact they had only once drawn weapons upon the enemy. That had been when they had been moving cautiously forward from Albocacer, on the day when the stratagem of the drunken dragoons had sent de las Torres flying southward again; they had not yet heard from Francis how that affair had gone, when a peasant had told them of a party of enemy horse ahead. It seemed from what he said to be probably not more than a hundred strong or at most two hundred; it was undoubtedly the rearguard of de las Torres’s army, but what no one could even guess was how far it might be from his main body. If it were in touch, to attack it would be most hazardous. But my lord had not hesitated for a moment. He had with him about a hundred and twenty of the Queen’s Dragoons; the rest being detached in small parties. He had at once given the order to deploy into line and advance at a round trot. They had come through a screen of trees, emerging in a distinctly ragged line; they had halted to dress their line and then had charged, starting at a slow trot and quickening the pace steadily as they drew near the enemy, just as the Duke had done with his cavalry at Blenheim. The enemy had been surprised and had barely had time to form line; they had made a poor showing and at the first shock most of them had fled, leaving not a few upon the ground, and only two men hurt of the Queen’s.

That had been near Alcala de Chivant and the only brush they had had. The remnants of the enemy had made the best speed they could to join de las Torres, and, as the English learnt later, had caught him up when he was already in flight, bringing the news that they had been driven in by the English advanced guard. For it occurred to no one that the party of horse that had charged at sight so boldly could be the whole pursuing army.

Since then, the Queen’s had not been even the semblance of a regiment. After the charge, while they were still breathing those sorry horses which had fortunately not yet been asked to gallop a mile, while they were still wiping their swords, my lord had split them up into a dozen parties and sent them into every village he could see or had heard the name of from his spies. But before they went he gave them very careful instructions.

A dozen dragoons and a guide would clatter into a village and the leader would shout for the priest or mayor.

‘Five hundred troopers will be here in the next week,’ he would say through his interpreter. ‘I must have oats, barley, grass and stabling; I must have lodgings and bread for five hundred men.

And then he would go round the village, chalking up signs on the doors, billeting ten men here and half a dozen there, assessing such a farm to deliver so much barley or straw or hay and the next as much again, till he almost believed himself in the five hundred men his lordship’s fancy had evoked.

The party would go in the afternoon to another village, where they would perhaps make preparations for the train of artillery, choosing the site for the park and laying out lines for the gunners and matrosses. Then in the evening they would ride away, up into the mountains, riding all night till they took up position on some desolate ridge, to show de las Torres at dawn a sprinkling of scarlet coats on the wild heights above him.

That had been their life for five days; one in which the colonel had little more responsibility than a cornet or a sergeant, for command of a score of men was the most he could hope for. It was his lordship himself who gave their instructions to each little group; they came back only to sleep and to set out on the next fantastic errand. Each man lay down where he was told and slept; there had not been a question in the heart of one of them since they left Albocacer. They were happy and busy, like children absorbed in building castles.

Horses went ungroomed, saddlery unpolished, and the officers took no notice. Colonel Awbyn had been unmoved by the loss of the three saddle-cloths; years of training dropped from them all; officers and men alike had to learn new ways. They had been taught to link their horses and fight on foot with musket and bayonet, loading and re-loading to the word of command and firing in volleys from close order; or to charge in fine as cavalry, sword in hand, at a round trot. Now they must crawl unseen up a gully, string themselves out along a sky-line with fifty yards between each man instead of eighteen inches, hide behind a boulder or in a patch of bracken, and then for a moment show themselves, clumsily and by deliberate mistake.

On the evening of the fifth day, their rendezvous had been near the small town of Villa Real and most of their parties had met there before dark and had moved on towards the town. It was a melancholy story that they heard. Rumours had reached them during the day, but nothing certain till they reached the meeting-place, where they came to know the state in which de las Torres and his men had left the town that morning. It was safe now to advance and they moved up for the night to what remained.

Villa Real was a little town that was all for King Charles, like most of Valencia. The townsfolk were more daring than others, for they had formed their young men into a militia and sent them off to join Colonel Jones, with whom they had been besieged at San Mateo. The young men were not yet back and when their fathers heard that de las Torres was approaching, there was a sad panic in the town and a hasty meeting in the market-place for discussion. Here it was resolved that with the young men away it would not be safe to open the gates to de las Torres. For he would soon learn, if he did not already know, where they had gone, and that would be the excuse for letting his men burn and plunder as they wished. They would close the gates and ask him to go peacefully round the walls. He had, they knew, no artillery; he would not risk a second delay like that before San Mateo with the English general on his heels.

They closed the gates and manned the walls as well as they could, the burghers bringing every firearm in the town and every pound of powder. But it was agreed they would not fire unless they were fired upon, and that when de las Torres appeared they would speak him fair. They waited for him all morning, their pans primed and their weapons cocked. When he appeared, the few who had matchlocks lighted their matches and blew upon them, those with flintlocks looked to their priming, but still no one fired.

De las Torres was angry and impatient; he did not want to waste time marching round the town; perhaps he had hoped to find quarters there for the night, for he had no tents, or perhaps it was only that he was irritated by his failure before San Mateo. At any rate he stormed and threatened; he was still high in argument when someone fired a musket from the walls and one of his staff officers fell dying at his feet.

Who fired the shot no one ever knew, nor whether it was fired in anger or by mistake. But there was no doubt about the result; at once de las Torres ordered an assault upon the town by scaling-ladders supported by musket fire, for it was true that he had no artillery. The assault was brisk and the defence stubborn; de las Torres had lost four hundred men in killed or wounded before he called a parley.

He said he would offer terms if the townsfolk would admit one of his officers to discuss details in a manner more becoming than shouts from the top of a wall. The burghers too had suffered losses and they were short of powder; they agreed to admit an officer. When he came, many of them gathered round him in the marketplace to hear his terms. The officer talked and talked without making any definite offer; as he was not dealing with regular soldiers, de las Torres had calculated that the longer the talk went on the more men would slip away from the walls to find out what was going forward in the market-place. This was the ambassador’s first object, and the second was to find out whether the defence consisted entirely of townsfolk or whether there was also a force of active young miquelets from the countryside. As he talked, he looked at his audience; they were old men, every one, not a miquelet among them. Suddenly, he drew a cocked pistol from his belt and fired it in the air.

Outside, de las Torres and his men had been edging closer to the gate; at the signal they rushed forward and the scaling ladders went up again on either side. There was only a feeble volley; the few defenders left on the walls were taken by surprise. In a minute the attackers were inside, and now de las Torres had no mercy. The town was given up to fire and sword. The soldiers ran through the streets, killing all they met, men, women and children. Eight hundred of the people perished; every shop, every burgher’s house was plundered and many set on fire; the younger women were taken by the soldiers for their pleasure, some being carried away with the army next morning. And what caused greater horror in the town and countryside than anything else, there were more than forty nuns among those thus ravished away.

This was the town to which Lord Peterborough and the better part of his handful of men came on the evening of January 17th, 1706. The tale they heard would have roused pity in any heart, and certainly among the Queen’s Dragoons there was both pity and anger that night. But nothing, not even anger, could spoil the certainty of success they felt and their happiness to be taking part in this adventure.

Colonel Awbyn had quarters in one of the undamaged houses. His hosts were full of apologies; he did not say much but let them feel that he understood their difficulties and their sorrow. He did not want to trouble them with his company; their daughter was one of those who had disappeared; he ate and drank quickly and went out, meaning to get his orders for tomorrow and also find Peter de Nérac and exchange news with him before sleeping.

‘Is there not some English saying about the cow jumping over the moon?’ Peter asked as soon as they met. He was alone in an outer room of the general’s lodging. ‘That is all we need, one or two cows to jump over the moon, and this campaign would be perfect. You have heard, I suppose, what we have done now?’

Colonel Awbyn shook his head.

‘You remember that the King, God bless him, dared to order three hundred horse and a thousand foot to stay behind and help him to defend Catalonia against twenty-five thousand Frenchmen! Well, we have again sent them orders to cross the Ebro and come to us here in Valencia. And in case their unfortunate commander cannot make up his mind which orders to obey, we have sent another order to our own Colonel Wills, whom the King cannot command. If the Spanish do not march, Colonel Wills is to march himself and to bring with him—listen to this, James!—to bring with him three hundred English horse and a thousand English foot from the garrison of Catalonia. So this poor devil His Most Catholic Majesty has only to choose whether he sends us Spanish or English, nothing more.’

‘Well, he will send Spanish,’ said James.

‘But of course. That sees itself. James, you become more English every day. And of course that is what we came to Spain for, to teach the King he must not give orders, to leave him in Barcelona with five hundred men at the mercy of the Duke of Anjou, while we go a-Quixoting across Spain and conquer kingdoms by magic to show what we can do.’

James rose to his feet, turned away to the door and sat down again. He knew in his heart what he wanted to say. He wanted to say that this was all very reasonable but that reason was not enough, that he felt as the three hundred felt who were chosen to go up with Gideon and work the will of the Lord upon the Midianites. All he said was:

‘You are right, Peter, but you are wrong all the same. Have you spoken to the men?’

‘Oh, I have spoken to the men and the officers too, for that matter. I am as bad as the rest of you when I see him. If we had nothing to do but conquer Spain! A few score more windmills would be nothing to his lance. But we have to put the King on the throne. One thing I grant you, though; it is a deal more amusing than a campaign under Scrattenbach or Conynghame.’

Awbyn as usual had been pursuing his own more sober train of thought.

‘Then if he is calling up more foot from Catalonia, he is not troubling his head about the council of war and is going forward with what he has?’

‘That is what it looks like. Rub-a-dub-dub, ta-ra-ra-ra.’

Truxillo came into the room. Awbyn asked him.

‘What are tomorrow’s orders?’

Tomorrow there would be only three or four small detachments, and the rest, rather more than one hundred, would ride with my lord, leaving as usual before dawn. After a little more idle talk, Colonel Awbyn went back to his quarters.

They rode out of Villa Real next morning by the south gate and moved slowly southward, halting in every dip in the ground until news had come back from scouts that the country was clear of enemy. It was necessary to be particularly careful, because de las Torres, encumbered by the wounded from Villa Real, had moved yesterday only half a day’s march to the town of Nules, and it was not yet known whether he would leave Nules today.

For some reason unknown to the English, Nules was the only town on the Valencian coast that was hostile to King Charles and staunch for King Philip. It was besides one of the best fortified, the walls being high and in good repair, and although of course not angled to provide flanking fire like a fortress in Flanders, furnished with a number of towers which to a limited extent served the same purpose. To mice in pursuit of a lion it was a considerable barrier.

It was about half way through the morning, when they were hidden in a wood not a mile from the town, that a countryman brought them the news that de las Torres had marched out that morning. The messenger had in fact seen the rearguard leave by the south gate and that no longer than a few minutes ago, for he had come straight to tell them.

‘March!’ said my lord, and led them at a round trot straight for the town. For the last hundred yards he broke into a gallop and it was with a great flourish that he pulled up his barb under the gates.

The burghers were on the walls, their pans primed, their weapons cocked. When the English first appeared, the few who had matchlocks lighted their matches and blew upon them, those with flintlocks looked to their priming. But as the enemy drew nearer, as their pace quickened, all gazed open-mouthed at this charge of dragoons against a walled town. Perhaps they were too much astounded; perhaps, remembering the tale of Villa Real, they were too cautious; but at any rate no one fired. Those with matchlocks blew on their matches, every man looked to his priming; they waited in silence.

My lord called out in a loud voice in Spanish, telling them to send him down at once the mayor or some priests, some one with authority to parley.

‘And let them be quick,’ he added. ‘For we have no time to waste and if we do not parley, it will be the worse for you.’

In a very few minutes, a small black-gowned party came out from the gates and advanced to my lord, who with three aides-de-camp, stood checking his restive barb within easy musket-shot of the walls. He did not waste many words.

‘If you surrender at once, at discretion,’ he said, ‘I will undertake that there is no plundering and that no one is hurt. But if you resist, I shall have to let my army treat Nules as de las Torres treated Villa Real. My artillery has only to march from Villa Real; it will be opening fire in an hour if you resist. But I am not going to wait an hour for your answer. I give you six minutes to make up your minds. Six minutes.’

And without taking any further notice of them he pulled out his watch and began to study it.

‘One minute!’ he counted aloud. ‘Two minutes! Three minutes!’

‘My lord, we surrender!’

And before the six minutes were ended, the dragoons were riding in at the gate.

Loudly, in Spanish, Truxillo was ordered to ride back and to stop the main army and the train of artillery; they were to camp in the wood the advanced guard had left a few minutes before. For he would not, continued my lord to the burghers, permit any occasion to arise by which his pledged word might be endangered. He then demanded every horse in the town to be brought to the marketplace, and touched by his clemency the burghers hastened to fetch them and make them over to the dragoons.

My lord announced that he and his escort would he at Nules that night and at once the townsfolk arranged to set before him the best of all the enemy had left. He learnt that evening that de las Torres had intended to halt for the night at Almenara, the next town, but that hearing that Peterborough and his army were so close on his heels he had again decamped and pushed on to Murviedro, only one day’s march from Valencia. This was a defile where a small force might easily hold up an army. Here de las Torres left his wounded and a regiment of five hundred Irish dragoons under Brigadier Mahoni, while he went on with his main body to join de los Arcos.

At this news, my lord decided to fall back for a few days to Castillon de las Planas. He made no secret of his intentions and, as he thanked the townspeople for their hospitality, he warned them that he would shortly be returning, that his troops would not have forgotten Villa Real and that he would only be able to save Nules from a similar fate if they obeyed his instructions exactly.

Next day, the dragoons clattered back with their led horses, the beginnings, said my lord to Peter, of his new cavalry. He did not explain where the men were to come from, but added that now, with de las Torres driven back beyond Murviedro, there was a very suitable opportunity for forming that army which he did so unquestionably require.

Chapter IV

With What I Have

January 1706

In the few days that followed the surrender of Nules, the Queen’s Dragoons had more rest by night, they were not so feverishly busy by day and above all they knew the enemy were further away. Each man felt a relaxation of the tightly wound spring that had been driving him forward; he had time to look round him at the rest of the world, to see the sparkle of light on the sea and feel its salt breath on his face, to savour his food slowly, to let his eyes dwell on the women going to draw water at the well. It was like waking from a dream and lying for a few moments reflectively awake, with the knowledge that presently you would sink back into sleep and take up the dream again at the point where it had stopped.

For certainly the week from Albocacer to Nules had seemed more like a dream than any experience of war they had known before. War to them had been long marches, dull boring privation and discomfort, cold, hunger and wet; moments of intense danger and excitement, an assault on a breach or a raid on a convoy; now and then a few days of rest or dissipation in a captured city, and then again boredom and discomfort. Nothing at all like the last few days, when they had been on horseback from dawn to dusk—and on good Andalusian horses now—busy all day in tingling sun-lighted air on tasks with an exhilarating touch of madness about them, in a topsy-turvy world where you chased an enemy twenty times your strength and he fled in helpless fright. A dream, yes; but, as with all dreams, you did not know you had been asleep until you woke again. It was only now, when there was time to stop and think, that you realized how mad it all was.

But for the moment there was comparative sanity and they were arranging billets for real men, as well as for creatures of the imagination. They never knew, when they made their arrangements, whether anyone would come to sleep in the houses they marked but they knew that some real men were coming. A hundred of Moras’s Horse had turned up already; five hundred more Valencian militia had come in followed by fifteen hundred Catalan miquelets from the country round Tarragona. The thirteen hundred regular Spanish troops whose march the King had countermanded were still expected and my lord, as everyone knew, had ordered up three battalions of English foot, Barrymore’s, Mountjoy’s, and Donegal’s, the three he had sent to Vinaros on the advice of the council at Albocacer. What had now made him decide to ignore that advice, whether he had later news that made him believe the storm was gathering more slowly than had then been thought, whether it was only that the impression the council had made on his mercurial spirit had already grown fainter, these questions no one could answer; but the three battalions were on the move. As usual each was to come by a different route, winding through as many villages as possible. Surely from one house at least there would look out eyes that hoped to see the French march past. Surely de las Torres would hear the news of English troops on the move and surely their numbers would be multiplied as the news travelled.

For five days the headquarters was at Castillon de las Planas, in the neighbourhood of which my lord was buying horses from every village to add to those he had taken at Nules. He went on buying until there were none left in the villages and the Queen’s had half-a dozen horses for each man to look after. There were more, in fact, than there was time to look after properly, but what Colonel Awbyn regarded as the minimum of attention was probably more than they had ever had before and they improved quickly. They were good horses these, very different from the ugly jades they had brought with them.

It was the third night at Castillon when Colonel Awbyn was summoned, late one evening, to the general’s tent, just as he had been those four months ago before Barcelona. But this time he was asked no opinions. Hard facts were what he had to supply, questions about the organization of a regiment of dragoons; the terms of a dragoon officer’s commission; the pay of each officer, how many servants, how many horses, his allowances for servants and horses; the selection of troop quartermasters; the promotion of sergeants; the procedure for allotting new horses to each troop; the questions went on and on with Mr. Furly taking notes. Then instructions, quick, precise and mystifying.

Next morning, January 20th, 1706, the Queen’s rode north, away from the enemy, to Oropesa. What happened there was a story round camp fires for the rest of the war in Spain; it was told in different forms, and from different points of view, but it made the best story as told by Peter de Nérac. Awbyn had all the clues in his hand if he could only have seen their meaning, and afterwards he was so conscious of his own lack of perspicacity that he overemphasized the clues when he told the story; a child would guess what was going to happen long before he reached the climax.

But Peter was in perfect ignorance. He knew nothing of Awbyn’s instructions, for he had not been on duty when Awbyn left the general. Awbyn and most of the Queen’s had left for Oropesa the next morning, the 20th; it was on the 21st that Peter and another aide-de-camp followed the general in the same direction. Peter rode out of Castillon behind his commander with no idea of where they were going, or on what task. He had been given a flat leather saddle-bag to carry, but did not know what was in it. All he did know was that the general seemed to be in particularly good spirits, and that though he rode as usual much faster than any other man would have done, he found time for a good deal of pleasantry on the way.

No one on his staff was in the secret of what he meant to do except Mr. Furly, who was far too discreet for gossip. The aides-de-camp had long ago given up trying to get anything from him and as a rule trusted my lord to tell them something sooner or later. But today he was in a mood they all recognized, voluble on trifles, delighted with some stroke in contemplation, and determined it should lose none of its effect by being blabbed in advance.

It was twenty miles to Oropesa and it was not long before noon when they came out on a small plain to the south of the town. My lord looked about him as though taking up his bearings and recognizing a place he had seen before. The sea lay on the right; a stream crossed the plain and on this side of the stream was good level ground, a meadow well suited for a camp or for putting a regiment through the exercise. On the left a little group of rocky hills hid the country that lay inland below the mountains. Having taken all this in, my lord turned to his two aides and told them to stay where they were and eat what they had in their haversacks. This, as Peter said afterwards, had no other object but to mystify and impress them. The general himself rode briskly towards the group of hills on the left and disappeared between two of them.

He was not twenty minutes away, coming back apparently well pleased with what he had seen and with an air, even more marked than before, of having something in preparation. He joined the two young men in a few mouthfuls of food, keeping an eye on the northern entrance to the plain and rattling on, as he ate, with, the friendly equality he always showed to those considerably his juniors or inferiors, talking for once of his early days in Tangier, of which something in the air of that sunny winter day had put him in mind.

There was something moving on the other side of the plain, and in a few moments a body of troops could be seen. At once my lord was on his feet, giving orders to pack the haversacks and mount. He rode forward with the two officers behind him and waited for the arrival of what could now be recognized as a battalion of English infantry advancing across the plain.

They came closer, and now Peter could see their yellow breeches; they were Barrymore’s. The head of the column wheeled to its right; they halted; every man turned left and now they were facing the general. The drums ruffled as they dressed their ranks. Now they were in review order of six ranks at double distance, or twelve feet apart, with three feet between each file. Lord Peterborough and his two attendants moved along the ranks reviewing them.

Their coats had once been scarlet, but now they were rusty as the autumn leaves, ragged as the dying bracken. The yellow of their breeches, the yellow coat-linings which showed on either side where the skirts of the coat were looped back, the yellow ribbons of their hats, were as faded and blotched as the pale leaves of a plane tree fallen in a city street. Their grey stockings were torn; some had none at all. But it was their shoes that were worst; they were mended with canvas, with raw pig-skin, with goat-skin that was still hairy; they were botched and patched with every variety of unskilled cobbling. Some of the men had clearly decided that the frame of the old shoe must be preserved, come what might; others had thrown it away and started anew with moccasins or babouches of what leather they could find, gathered clumsily into a foot-shaped bag.

When all six ranks had been reviewed, Lord Peterborough returned to a station in front of the grenadiers of the battalion, who were drawn up separately on the right of the line. Lieutenant-Colonel Pearce, who in Lord Barrymore’s absence was commanding, gave the order:

‘Double your files to the right,’

and each file of six men moved into the intervening spaces of the file to their right, making twelve ranks. Every man turned to face right; they closed up and turned left again. Now they were a serried phalanx, twelve men deep and forty men wide, the kind of cluster in which the Spanish pikemen had defied the cavalry of Europe when the harquebus was beginning to supersede the cross-bow.

Lord Peterborough could speak to this compact mass without greatly raising his voice. He complimented the regiment on all they had done, their long marches, the hardships they had shared, their discipline, their courage; he spoke of their appearance, praising them because they had done their best to keep trim and smart in spite of great difficulties. Then he was silent; he had clearly not finished and the regiment waited, a little group, silent in the sunshine between the mountains and the sea, while my lord appeared to reflect and then went on in a conversational voice:

‘It is a pity,’ he said, ‘that we have no more shoes in the stores. And since I have no shoes, it would be a suitable reward for a corps of so good a reputation if instead of shoes I could give them horses and turn them into dragoons.’

It was as though a breath of wind passed along the ranks. No one spoke; there was no sound or movement that could be given a name, but something stirred, an inaudible mutter, an invisible ripple. Feet and shoes, those were the things they thought about in Barrymore’s whenever they were awake. To have horses and march no more on their feet; to be dragoons, whose pay was a shilling and sixpence a day instead of eightpence. There could be hardly any bait more tantalizing dangled before their eyes.

But not a man of them was taken in. They were old soldiers, not recruits; in his mind each man thought of the comment he would make to his friends afterwards. It would be the scoffing good-humoured answer of the English soldier who doesn’t expect the world to give him anything for nothing. You might offer him a horse, or the Golden Fleece, or a night with the Queen of Spain, and his answer would still be the same. Well, he wouldn’t mind that and he wouldn’t mind free quarters for life neither, nor he wouldn’t mind a quart of Derbyshire ale in his favourite house within sound of Bow bells. That would be the kind of answer he would make; but in his heart each man felt it cruel that their own general should torment them with so tantalizing a jibe as this.

Lord Peterborough paused again, then continued briskly:

‘Colonel Pearce, would you be so good as to march your men in the direction I shall ride? I will give you the word to halt.’

He led them towards the little group of hills that had lain on his left. His aides-de-camp followed; behind them came Colonel Pearce and his foot-sore soldiers. The column wound between two rocky slopes and came out on another much smaller natural parade-ground, and here, standing linked, as though their riders had just marched away from them, were the horses of eight troops of dragoons. Dragoon saddles, dragoon bridles, saddle-cloths, all the accoutrements needed to turn a battalion of foot into a regiment of dragoons, all were there.

Lord Peterborough instructed Peter to open the bag he carried and take out the commissions he would find inside. There was a fresh commission made out by name for every officer present. Barrymore’s Foot had become Pearce’s Dragoons.

The field officers were allowed in turn to choose the horses of their troops; the captains drew lots; there were many questions to ask, much fingering of unfamiliar straps. The horses had been brought from Castillon yesterday by the Queen’s, but they had halted at a village short of Oropesa to make sure that Barrymore’s knew nothing. Their accoutrements had been brought from Barcelona by a man of war. All this and much more had to be explained and in the end a few officers resolutely refused to transfer but at last they were mounted and riding away, not perhaps, to the critical eyes of the men of the Queen’s, not perhaps keeping their distance very well, and certainly showing a marked tendency to lean forward uncomfortably at the trot, but a regiment of dragoons all the same.

As Peter told the story, it ended with his own discomfiture. For he had ridden twenty miles; he had been considering, during the latter part of the felicitations and discussions, just what would happen next. Even infantry regiments, he supposed, must have something of the nature of troop quartermasters. Barrymore’s had only come to Oropesa last night, and there had been no other troops there, so the vintners would have had something left. And it was the first time in history that a battalion of foot had been changed into a regiment of dragoons in an hour.

But nothing of the sort happened. They rode straight back to Castillon with nothing but water from a mountain rill to quench their thirst; and as soon as he was in his quarters at Castillon my lord sat down to write dispatches.

Next day, the 22nd, he finished his arrangements for billeting troops round Castillon and gave Mr. Furly several letters previously written, together with exact instructions for carrying on, as though he were still at Castillon, his correspondence with the Conde de Cardona, General Basset y Ramos and several ladies in Valencia. Valencia was now surrounded by the troops of de las Torres and de los Arcos, who prevented any food from going in and, by stopping the sluices of the mills, had made it impossible to grind what corn was stored inside the city. Piteous letters begging for relief came to the general every day. In the evening he wrote a long letter to the Lord Treasurer, the Earl of Godolphin, and next morning very early he started for Tortosa, sixty miles up the coast. He was going to make sure that the thirteen hundred Spanish troops whose march had originally been countermanded by the King were actually on the way.

They were. Lord Peterborough met them near Vinaros and turned back again towards Castillon, staying on the night of the 27th at Alcala, near which the Queen’s had fought the first little brush after the council at Albocacer. Here he wrote a letter to the King of Spain that was of great importance. He had a clerk with him and kept a copy; indeed, the letter was afterwards published. At the time, however, no one but Mr. Furly and his clerks knew the exact terms in which it was written. But of the gist of it my lord made no secret, talking of it freely to the field officers and his aides-de-camp as soon as he was back at Castillon.

The letter was supposed to be a reply to one in which the King had complimented the general on his successes at San Mateo and thereafter, and it began with a number of expressions of a very proper nature. But when Lord Peterborough had made it clear that the King did him too much honour he went on to say something of which the wisdom was far more doubtful. This is the letter, as it was published two years later:

Sir, The Honour your Majesty does me in your last Letter would give me Courage, had I more Enemies to deal with: you promise me, Sir, to confide in me, and assure me of your Esteem and Friendship. It is too much; the recompence is too great: but I desire your Majesty to believe, that I will do all in my Power, not to be wholly unworthy of your Favours. There is nothing more true, than that I most certainly desire some Credit with your Majesty; but I take God to witness, it is for no private Interest, and I have only wished for it to be able to serve you. It is your Establishment, that I desire above all things.

Your Majesty has conferr’d particular Honours upon me, which I can’t deserve. But, Sir, both the English Minister and my self have apprehended, we have had little share in your Councils. If our Advices had been approv’d; if your Majesty had trusted us in the management of your Troops, they had been now in a condition to have oppos’d your Enemies: If your Majesty had permitted me to have march’d into the Kingdom of Valencia, when I so earnestly desir’d it, without making me stay under pretence of the March of Imaginary Troops; if your Majesty would have believ’d me upon that occasion, your Majesty probably had not only had at this time a Vice-Roy of Valencia, but the Kingdom.

With what I have, I march strait to Valencia. I can take no other Measures, leaving the rest to Providence. Your Majesty has made me pass the Ebro, with positive Orders for the relief of this Kingdom; it is but reasonable, that your Majesty give me the like Orders to repass that River, when the succouring of Catalonia requires it. If the Time lost (so much against my Inclination) exposes me to a Sacrifice, at least I will perish with Honour, and as a Man deserving a better Fate.

Alcala the 27th of Jan. 1706.

Peterborow

None of them had seen the letter, but it lost nothing in the repetition and all of them talked about it. There were plenty of officers at Castillon now, for the two brigadiers were there, Killigrew and Gorges, and the three English regiments, Pearce’s Dragoons, Mountjoy’s and Donegal’s Foot. The younger officers laughed, and the expression ‘With what I have, I march to Valencia,’ became a byword in the camp. But among the older officers the feeling was different; every one of them had learnt at some time or another that it is unwise to remind anyone, and most of all a King, of good advice not taken. And to this affront must be added the affair of the thirteen hundred Spanish troops which my lord had forced the King to send. Even Colonel Awbyn was conscious of the mistake, though he believed the general’s star would carry him over many such unwisdoms. He said to Peter one evening:

‘I am afraid, Peter, that my lord is very little a courtier.’

Peter looked at him with affection.

‘Very little a courtier,’ he repeated. ‘You are perfectly right. The longer I know you, James, the more I like you. Let me fill up your glass. It will be necessary for this army to leave Castillon very soon, for not a vintner in the place has anything left that is fit to drink. Never mind, I have a bottle or two of my own put away, and with what I have, I march to Valencia.’

They did march, as a matter of fact, on January 30th, and early on February 2nd they halted before Murviedro, the strong point behind which de las Torres had retired, leaving as a garrison to block the path Brigadier Mahoni and eight hundred men, among whom were his own Irish dragoons. It was a formidable obstacle, not only in itself, but because of the nature of the country beyond.

Murviedro, which is only four leagues from Valencia, is a small walled town on the banks of a river, below the steep hill that is crowned by the ruins of the ancient Saguntum. The river is not difficult to pass in summer, when the water is low, but the banks are very steep and rocky and as soon as the autumn rains fill them, the ford becomes dangerous, even for peaceful travellers. It lies under the walls of Murviedro and everyone in Lord Peterborough’s army saw at once that to cross it without artillery and in the face of an enemy would be a very difficult operation. At the best, it would mean heavy losses and more probably the crossing would be repulsed. It would be a different matter of course with a proper train of artillery in support.

But that was only half the problem, for beyond Murviedro and the river lay a broad plain which had to be passed by an army going to Valencia. There was no room for subterfuge here, for as they advanced the whole force must be exposed to view and beyond the plain lay the armies of the Duke of Arcos and de las Torres. Their strength, of course, was not known exactly, but it must be considerable. At Albocacer, the council had reckoned that the two joined together would muster more than ten thousand. It did not seem now to be quite as bad as that, for de los Arcos had not brought up all his men; there were four thousand somewhere beyond Valencia; but at the very least there were more than four thousand of de las Torres’s army and two thousand of Velasco’s, and, of these, two thousand five hundred were horse, and very good horse. Against them, my lord had only the few who had been at San Mateo, the thirteen hundred Spanish he had forced the King to send, a hundred of Moras’s, and two hundred of the ‘old regiment of Nebot’, who had joined at Almenara the day before. It gave him of regular troops about twelve hundred horse and rather more than two thousand foot. And some of the horse were hardly regular as horse, for Pearce’s Dragoons had only been mounted a week; while of the foot there was one regiment so recently raised they had no uniform and only a few muskets.

As for the miquelets, there were between two and three thousand of them as a rule, though it was never safe to be definite since they came and went as they pleased. Wonderful fighters behind walls or in pursuit of a beaten foe, but they had never yet come to scratch in the open for a set battle and they could not be counted on now.

So that even if my lord’s army could miraculously be transported beyond the awkward ford at Murviedro, they would still have to cross the open plain in the face of de los Arcos, who with twice their numbers, and in particular with much greater strength in cavalry, ought in such country inevitably to defeat them. And it was no good hoping for any help from Basset y Ramos, for only a fortnight before this he had led a sally from Valencia against an isolated outpost of de los Arcos and his men had run at the first sight of regular troops.

In short, there seemed to be no way past Murviedro and into Valencia. It was a full stop.

Chapter V

Murviedro

February 1706

To Colonel Awbyn, pacing slowly backwards and forwards before his tent, that first evening before Murviedro, there seemed no solution open to human reason. Thinking it out as a soldier, he had to admit that a council of war would certainly advise against advancing towards an enemy at least double one’s own strength, and drawn up, what was more, on ground of his own choosing that was peculiarly favourable to the arm in which he was strongest. It was bad enough put like that, but even that situation, unpleasant though it was, would only arise if you could get across the river. And with the town in enemy hands, a council of war would certainly not advise the crossing. Nor could anyone hope to take the town with no artillery but four very light field pieces, falconets, throwing a ball not much over a pound’s weight. Nor was there really any way round. Even if the army went miles up the river to the next ford they would be no better placed, for de los Arcos need hardly move to face them anew. He could sit still like a spider in the middle of the web and let them walk round him. No, there was no plain soldier’s way of getting into Valencia. And yet all the news went to show that unless they did they would lose both city and province. But his faith in his general did not waver. Somehow or other they would get in all the same.

This was on the evening of February 2nd. During the two days that followed he seemed, when he tried to understand the complicated events in which he took part, to be unpacking clothes neatly brushed and folded by a good servant and put away in a box. But it was like unpacking in a dream, for he would bring a cloak to the light, hold it in his hands and judge it; yes, the cloth was untouched by moth, it would do to wear on parade; and then when he tried to lift it clear there was another and better cloak below it of which it seemed to be part, and of that too there would be layer upon layer. Orders would come for actions that seemed meaningless; then, as he puzzled it out, he would see a stratagem and a purpose and conclude that he had hit on the plan. And so indeed he had, and everything that happened would bear this out. It was only later, talking it over with Peter, that another plan would be revealed to which the first had been only the introduction, and another layer still below that.

Next morning, February 3rd, the men cleaned muskets and saddlery, mended their clothes and cobbled their shoes. The gossip was that a trumpet had gone to the town to ask for a parley. It was not till an hour before noon that orders came for the men to be drawn up. The camp was out of sight of the town, hidden by the main slope of the hill that ran down to the ford. The track came into sight of the town about half way down, and then again was hidden by a low hillock. As the Queen’s saddled up, they saw a small party move off down the track with some baggage mules and tents; they had been instructed to put up a few tents for the general and his staff, to one side of the track, in view of the town. It was a place from which, as from the town, a section of the track could be seen, between the mountain and the low hillock.

When the men were drawn up, my lord himself gave the officers their instructions. There were orders for everyone, and they were complicated, but their general purpose was fairly obvious. The four light field pieces, for instance, were to be taken down the track to a place visible from the tents now being put up and there left negligently on a bank as though of no account. The Queen’s Dragoons were to go down the track, troop by troop, at some distance from each other; as soon as they were hidden by that convenient low hillock each troop was to scramble down the hillside, come back out of sight and do it again. The foot regiments were to be drawn up two deep, with miquelets for the rear ranks, and were to march down the hill with soldiers on the side towards the tents, the miquelets being partly hidden by soldiers.

It did not need any remarkable intelligence to see that all this was intended to make anyone in the general’s tents suppose that the army was much stronger than it actually was. When the instructions had been carefully absorbed and repeated, the men were allowed to rest; then came orders to draw them up again, for the parley was about to begin. There followed, for the Queen’s, a thirsty and irritating afternoon with much scrambling and slipping in steep places with led horses. But it all seemed clear enough; it was like unpacking the first cloak from the box.

Of the next two layers, Lord Peterborough made no secret to his officers. He had invited Brigadier Mahoni to a parley without giving any very definite indication of what he meant to discuss. He felt sure Mahoni would come, relying partly on the supposed size of his forces, which if all he had done round Castillon was believed Mahoni must greatly exaggerate, but also on a connection by marriage, for the former Countess of Peterborough, the general’s aunt, was Irish and related to the Mahoney family. Whichever of these considerations induced him, Mahoni replied politely and agreed to come to a parley if the general would give him safe conduct.

Lord Peterborough began by trying to seduce Mahoni from the service of Philip V. He offered him promotion to major-general and command of ten thousand Irishmen, together with much else that he would have found very difficult to implement if his offers had been accepted. But, as he had no doubt expected, the brigadier was firm in his allegiance; he had thrown in his lot with the Bourbons and the rightful Catholic king and he would not quit the service of France until King James III was crowned King of England and Ireland.

Lord Peterborough then changed his tactics. He became very frank. He referred to the affair at Villa Real and said that the feeling it had caused was still so strong that he knew he would not be able to control his Spanish troops when they had once forced a way into a city that had offered resistance.

‘Now,’ he continued, ‘let us consider your position and mine frankly, for we are sensible men. I want to take Murviedro and move my army over the ford. You can delay me but you cannot stop me, for I have overwhelming strength. You can come with me and see my troops and artillery if you like; I have nothing to hide.

He had placed Mahoni so that through the tent door he could see the section of the track between the mountain and the hillock and could hardly help noticing the constant movement of large bodies of troops. Nor could he fail to deduce that it must be a considerable train of artillery to which four falconets were so unimportant that they were left by the side of the road with no one to look after them.

‘Now you cannot delay me long, and yet by resisting me at all you expose the people of the town to barbarities such as de las Torres permitted at Villa Real. And what is it you would most like to do yourself? You have done your work here; you have prevented my advanced guard crossing and forced them to wait till my whole army had come up. The time has come now for you to join de los Arcos. You are a cavalryman, and your dragoons are wasted in a siege. But your horse will be of great advantage to de los Arcos in the plain beyond the river. That is what you would like—to fall back and meet him at—let me guess—the Carthusian convent where there is an admirable position for him to draw up. Well—I am being very frank—I cannot stop you. I cannot prevent your falling back to the Carthusian convent nor can you prevent my taking the town. Then in God’s name, let us be sensible and arrange it amicably.’

These were the lines on which Lord Peterborough himself afterwards said that he had spoken. The brigadier answered with a laugh that it was all perfectly true. There was indeed nothing he would like better than to meet de los Arcos at the Carthusian convent. It was true too that his lordship could not stop his going there nor he long delay his lordship before the town. For his part, he agreed that it would be most sensible to hand over the town and fall back; but before he could start negotiations as to terms he must consult his officers, for, as Lord Peterborough would understand, his position as an Irish officer commanding Spaniards was delicate.

It was a point which had not, as a matter of fact, escaped Lord Peterborough’s notice and indeed it was an essential fold in the next layer of his plan. But of the further layers no one of the Queen’s Dragoons and possibly none of my lord’s officers knew anything.

All they knew at this stage was that Brigadier Mahoni had gone back to the town to consult his officers but that probably he would shortly send out his second-in-command to arrange the terms of a capitulation. As far as the Allied army were concerned, it all seemed simple enough; Nules again—it was simply the bluff at Nules repeated on a larger scale and with rather more elaboration.

James Awbyn thought it over, but he could not see how it was going to get them over the second part of the problem. They had still to face de los Arcos with twice their strength and much better cavalry, and face him in an open plain. It was all very well to bluff Mahoni into giving up Murviedro but that only meant that Mahoni’s excellent regiment of Irish dragoons would be at the Carthusian convent to help de los Arcos. That was as far as he got in his thoughts by dusk on February 3rd, and it was in fact as far as he was to get till they were in Valencia. But he had all the time the feeling that there was more there if he could get at it. Certainly there were one or two things that he saw but could not explain.

Mahoni’s second-in-command came over before dusk to arrange the capitulation. The terms were simple; Mahoni would march out at one o’clock that night, that is, more properly, in the very early morning of February 4th. Until one o’clock, none of the Allied army should cross the stream. That was all; everyone in the camp knew that much. But only Lord Peterborough’s staff knew that in order to reach these simple conclusions, the general had spent more than an hour in discussion alone with Mahoni’s Spanish second-in-command, and that, after announcing the terms he had given orders that if any further detail required discussion, he must himself see any officer from the garrison, no matter how trivial the point involved. His staff knew this but could not explain it.

Nor could they explain the general’s order that as soon as dusk fell parties of infantry were to go up and down the river bank and about an hour after dusk were to fire a few brisk volleys in rapid succession. It sounded from the camp as though skirmishing parties had met and engaged each other as they do before a battle. It was soon after these volleys that a trumpet came from Brigadier Mahoni, to which my lord sent a reply in writing which no one saw but himself, and immediately afterwards he ordered the Queen’s Dragoons down to the ford where he joined them. They waited at the water’s edge till after about an hour another trumpet came and at that they crossed, with some difficulty, losing two horses but no men. It was not that the water was very deep but it was swift and beneath the water were great rocks and holes that could not be seen.

There was another long halt under the walls of the town, with a good deal of parleying, and in the end it was one o’clock, as arranged, before the gates were opened and they were in. The whole army came over the ford at once and there was no rest that night, for before dawn they were marching for Valencia.

As soon as it was light enough to see, the column halted and deployed into a line of battle. The Queen’s Dragoons, who in this campaign were always used as horse rather than dragoons, were on the right of the line; they had to keep back to the pace of the infantry in the centre. All day the advance continued in line, warily, with frequent halts to dress the line and make sure that pans were primed and grenadiers’ matches in order. In such a place the enemy’s horse might be upon them in a few minutes, and it was in the expectation that this was just about to happen that they moved all day.

The suspense grew as they came near the Carthusian convent, for here was an ideal position for the enemy. Yet they were not there either; the dung of Mahoni’s horses was fresh on the ground; he seemed to have waited there some time but he had ridden on. Men looked at each other in astonishment; how could de los Arcos have let slip such a chance?

A little further and they came on the ashes of his camp-fires. He too, like de las Torres at San Mateo, had fled without a blow. They were to have a bloodless march into Valencia.

To Awbyn and others it was a mystery to which they could see no explanation. It was several days before Peter got the story from my lord himself; even then it was not entirely complete and it was only several years later, from an officer who as a prisoner of war had talked it over with Mahoni, that they heard the answers to every question that puzzled them.

It appeared that Lord Peterborough had tried to seduce Mahoni’s second-in-command from his allegiance, making offers to him of the same kind as he had made to the brigadier. In the course of their talk, he had dropped hints, making no plain statements, but by a nod or a meaning silence letting the Spanish colonel imagine that if he decided to look to his own interest he might find that he would not need to desert his present commander. Whatever Lord Peterborough said or did not say, he contrived to send back a very puzzled and suspicious man; and in two interviews with junior officers he was able to water the seeds of suspicion he had sown in the colonel.

All that afternoon and evening, the garrison were becoming more and more convinced that some betrayal was about to take place. The family relationship between Lord Peterborough and Mahoni was one reason for this feeling and another was the fact that the time named for the capitulation was so soon; every trumpet that passed made it worse; by evening, the fears of some were so acute that they slipped out of the town and made their way across the plain to tell de los Arcos that they were convinced Mahoni meant to betray them all.

Lord Peterborough could not have been sure that this would happen, but he had certainly hoped for something of the kind and it fell in pat with his plans. As soon as Mahoni had left him, he had sent for two Irishmen who were serving as dragoons in Zinzendorf’s Austro-Spanish regiment. He had chanced to hear of these men when reviewing their troop a day or two before and had spoken to them. They were both anxious for commissions in the Queen’s service, which my lord now showed them a way to earn. He recounted to them what he had actually offered Mahoni when he tried to seduce him. He told these two that they had been sharing a bottle of wine behind a rock when they had chanced to overhear these offers; not only that, but they had actually seen a bag of gold pass to Mahoni. This story they were to take to de los Arcos the moment Lord Peterborough gave them the word to start. If de los Arcos showed signs of indecision or disbelief, they were to say that they would stand or fall by one simple test of the truth of their story.

If they were telling the truth, a message would shortly come from Mahoni announcing that he had surrendered Murviedro and asking de los Arcos to meet him at the Carthusian convent.

‘But beware of doing as he says,’ they were to go on. ‘He has made a plot with Lord Peterborough to change sides in the middle of the battle and attack you in the flank.’

That was their story, and they had been given the word to set off as soon as Lord Peterborough had finished his talk with the Spanish second-in-command. That was exactly the right moment for Mahoni’s messenger to de los Arcos would not start till the second-in-command was back in the town with an agreement about the time of the capitulation. Peterborough’s two Irishmen had therefore half an hour’s start; and sure enough by about half an hour they beat Mahoni’s messenger.

De los Arcos, now in sole command, de las Torres having been summoned to Madrid to give an account of his conduct, was wakened some time after midnight by the arrival of the officers of the garrison who had left Murviedro; they had come to tell him, excitedly but with no real proof, that they were sure Mahoni planned treachery. Next came the two Irishmen with their story of seeing the gold pass. Then came Mahoni’s aide-de-camp, who said exactly what Lord Peterborough had guessed he would say, and exactly what his two Irishmen had told de los Arcos. It was enough; de los Arcos broke up his camp and marched to the other side of Valencia. And when Mahoni arrived, he was immediately arrested and sent to Madrid.

It would be easy to blame de los Arcos for being so credulous as to believe that an officer of Mahoni’s experience would carry on such a conversation without first looking for dragoons under the rock on which he sat. But de los Arcos was an inexperienced officer, already very nervous at the approach of a general whose exploits were becoming fabulous, and confirmation came in so exactly as the deserters foretold that his mistake can easily be understood. In Madrid, however, though they may have understood, they did not forgive; de los Arcos was recalled and Mahoni in the end promoted.

It was still necessary to understand what had happened at Murviedro. The parties who had fired volleys up and down the river were meant merely to increase the confusion and suspicion; they succeeded so well that Mahoni had sent a trumpet to my lord begging him not to violate the terms of the capitulation by crossing the stream before one o’clock, for if he did, it would cost Mahoni his life. My lord had replied suggesting that he should send over a regiment of dragoons at once to protect Mahoni, who had eventually agreed to the dragoons crossing the stream but not coming into the town. The arrival of the dragoons before the fixed time and the parleying which resulted had certainly increased the suspicions of the garrison, but this part of the plan had no influence, as it happened, on de los Arcos, at whom it was indirectly aimed, the officers from Murviedro who had first told him their suspicions having left long before any of this happened.

That was the story that they ferreted out in the end; but they did not know it when they marched into Valencia. To the men, it was like magic; all they knew was that once again a much larger force had melted at their coming. They had marched all day with pans primed and muskets unslung, ready to fire the moment they were attacked, as alert as though they were walking up partridges, and keyed up too with the extra tonic of danger. Now the anticipation of death and danger were removed but they must brisk themselves again to enter the city.

The Queen’s Dragoons led the column; they had done the best they could but it had been a campaign very hard on horseshoes and shoe-leather, very hard on clothing and saddlery, though very light on powder and shot. A rascally rat-catching-looking lot they were, but their colonel’s heart was just as proud and happy as the junior cornet’s when they rode in through the gates of Valencia. For in less than a month they had advanced nearly two hundred miles, driving before them an enemy usually five times their strength. Now they were entering in triumph the capital of an ancient kingdom, and the people were mad with joy to see them. Among the cheers, the flags, the flowers, he could forget for once their rusty coats, their dirty buckles and bridles, deplorable hats and ragged breeches. He was entirely happy; he remembered how David danced before the ark, how Joshua entered Jericho and all that Gideon did with his three hundred; he said quietly to himself as he rode under the great gate:

‘The sword of the Lord and of Gideon!’

Part Three — The Relief of Barcelona

Chapter I

Valencia

March 1706

They were beating the Assembly in the square before the Cathedral. Colonel Awbyn stood half way up the steps, watching the drummers. It had been decided, after some discussion between the commanding officers, that the halt in Valencia should count as garrison duty. That meant that the Queen’s Dragoons were the senior regiment in the town, for according to the warrant of Charles II which Colonel Awbyn took with him wherever he went, they were to rank as foot in garrison and as horse in the field. It was understood by everyone that in garrison foot took precedence of horse, and according to their own reckoning there were no infantry regiments in the army older than the Queen’s except the First Guards and the Coldstreamers.

It followed of course that the Queen’s must mount guard with the foot. Today it was their turn to supply the captain for the main guard in the square, and so it was the drum major and all the drummers of the Queen’s who had begun to beat the Assembly at eight o’clock. They had been drawn up with detachments from the drums of the other regiments on their left; they had beaten the long roll, the sharp flourishes, standing to the order; then they had moved off, the other detachments following, and had marched, beating, once round the square, out by one main street, round in a short circuit and in by another. Then the detachments had marched away to the different parts of the town where their own regiments were drawn up. The pulse and ruffle of the distant drums could be distinguished by a selective ear as soon as the drum major of the Queen’s ordered a halt. In a few minutes the drums of the detachment would be escorting the different guards back to the square.

The drum major had not paused for long. His men were at it again, beating away in a thunderous fusillade that drowned speech and stunned thought. Colonel Awbyn looked at them with a critical eye. The first time it had been the turn of the Queen’s to find the drummers for the Assembly, he had been really horrified at the state of their shirts. Every dragoon with his gloves off showed a wristband and six inches of shirt where the scarlet cuff of his coat was buttoned back and the blue lining displayed; when they entered Valencia most of the gloves were lost and all the shirts had been ragged and dirty. The drummers showed more than six inches on the right arm, for they wore their top coats, which were shorter than a dragoon’s, on the left arm and shoulder only, the sleeve hanging empty on the right, revealing the richly gilded waistcoat and the right shirt sleeve. And of course the position of the hands, raised over the drums, emphasized the state of their shirts.

They were certainly much better now: rents had been mended and shirts were clean, though dingy. Nothing could be done about rusty scarlet, faded blue linings or tarnished gold lace. But he had managed to lay hands on some silver binding for hat brims and some blue ribbon, just enough for the musicians. That had helped, but it was the shape of the hats that was so bad. Shoes of course were shocking; the musicians, in their shoes and spurs, were worse off than the dragoons, whose short boots, coming half way up the calf, were better made and had had less dismounted wear. But they were all in far better trim than the foot; that was his only lasting consolation.

The guards from the other regiments with their drummers were coming into the square; the drum major of the Queen’s seemed determined that his Assembly should drown their marches. Then silence; all the drums had stopped. The town major was assigning each guard its place and each took it up in succession with a stamp and the rattle of ordered arms. Then smaller stampings, as the sergeants took post four paces from their men and turned to face them. Then the larger rattle and stamp of a fresh guard and so on till all were formed.

For the third time, the drum major of the Queen’s and his drums beat the Assembly at the head of the parade, while the officers, except the captain of the Queen’s—it was Lediard—drew lots for their posts. Then a long ruffle on the drums; then a flam and the arms came to the rest; a second flam and muskets were at the poise; a third and muskets came with a faint sharp rattle to the shoulder. The officers and sergeants turned to face their front at the same instant; all the drums broke into a march and played the guards away to their posts.

It was good; considering everything, very good; and certainly, thought Colonel Awbyn with some complacency, very different from anything the people of Valencia had seen before. He walked back to his quarters, where he had some complicated business to discuss, for he had been warned that in the next few days there would be an inspection by the commissary of the musters. That, he felt, was one of the advantages of being at a sea port that he could have done without. It meant, for a prudent commanding officer, a certain amount of preparation; the numbers of each troop would be decided by those present at the muster and pay would be calculated on those numbers till the next muster. So that each troop commander before mustering day had to make a number of calculations and weigh up certain risks. If he was short of men at the muster, he might be out of pocket for months. No one would wish actually to let money go by that he might have had the use of, and it had always to be remembered that troop commanders were sometimes unlucky. The levy money for a dragoon was twelve pounds, but from that he must not only be given an inducement to enter the service but clothed, fed, equipped and brought to the regiment; a recruit had cost more than the levy money by the time he got to Spain and as like as not he would the on the voyage or at any rate before the first muster day and the regiment not be a penny the better of him. So it was only prudent for a troop commander to provide against possible misfortune and make the best showing he could, always provided that it was a showing plausible enough to be passed by the commissary.

Servants were one matter to be considered. A colonel was entitled to six, field officers and troop commanders to three each, and subalterns to two each; they were paid at the same rate as the dragoons, no ingenious secretary at the Horse Guards having yet remembered that the dragoon’s pay was supposed to include the keep of his horse. Here then were fifty-nine men at one shilling and sixpence a day, not all of whom were strictly necessary. A dragoon might be used as a servant and the servant’s pay pocketed or a servant who did exist might on occasion pass muster for a dragoon who did not. There were after all quite a number of men for whom pay was drawn who were authorized never to appear by the indubitable legality of a warrant. One man in every troop was a widow’s man; he had a name but nothing else and his pay went to the fund for widows. In garrison, there were two fictitious men or faggots in every troop or company to cover the town major’s pay, and if the Queen found this a suitable way of meeting her expenses, it was not unnatural that her officers should do the same.

Colonel Awbyn had first to decide what was to be done with his own troop. He must be sure that for each sick man he had a medical certificate in the proper form—and it had to be signed by a surgeon and countersigned by no less than three senior officers not of the troop. Then he must reckon how many authorized absentees he had and how many genuine soldiers. The result was always something short of establishment. What could his pocket stand? A shipload of recruits coming the day after a muster might ruin the officers, who would have to pay them from their own pockets till they were mustered. But to provide against this by being up to strength at the muster was not so easy in Spain as in England, for it was no good setting up as John Jones a man who could not pronounce his own name.

The colonel went through the delicate operation of balancing his pocket against his conscience and the result against the risk of some miscarriage, then turned his attention to Lord Raby’s troop. This was really the captain-lieutenant’s responsibility, but Awbyn always helped him by discussion. For to take the risk of being broke was bad enough when you did it for your own profit; to do it for a rich man in Berlin required an even nicer sense of values. He saw the other troop commanders; they were all ready, he could be satisfied there was no likelihood of the commissary having to report anything really scandalous.

He left the adjutant at work and went to hear one of the roll-calls that by his own orders were held three times a day as though they were in camp. It was all very well to count this garrison duty, but they were at war and would be moving soon. The men must be kept together, particularly amid the temptations of Valencia. For the same reason, he had kept on the sutlers who had been with them during the campaign. The men were all billeted in the town, and in excellent lodgings, some of the sergeants actually sleeping in damask beds; most of them had their meals where they slept, but as far as he could he made them go to the regimental sutlers for their wine, for the meals they took out, and for anything else they needed. It was much better for the men, for it kept them away from the pimps and pickpockets of the city, and there was the further advantage that the sutlers were kept in touch with the regiment, were profitably employed, and would be ready to march when the time came. After the roll-call he went to look at the sutler’s shops, to see that all was decent and in order, the garbage properly buried and the kitchens clean. It was the major’s work and he left it to him as a rule, but now and then he liked to look at things himself.

The English had for once adapted themselves to local customs; they took a siesta and dined much later here than usual. But before lying down, Colonel Awbyn had a letter to write to Lord Raby. He took off his coat and gorget with relief, for it was the end of March and it was beginning to be warm. He sat to his table in his shirt-sleeves and began to write.

His table was set in a gallery outside his bedroom; through pointed Moorish arches he looked out over a jumble of houses, standing up sharp and edgy as rocks from a dark green foam of orange trees. Three miles away the sea shimmered through a light haze, a flat brightness without colour, a silk veil laid over a sharply lighted mirror. But something of the freshness that blew from it every evening lingered in the room and could be tasted on the lips. There was a feeling of spring in the air, not the shy first hint of a northern spring, but the sudden exultant spring of the south, that runs in a man’s blood like love achieved. Colonel Awbyn felt it, but he could not give himself up to the triumph and exultation of it. He was worried and doubtful in his heart about the whole expedition but not yet prepared to admit it.

The feeling of uneasiness was at the back of his mind as he wrote a dull letter of regimental news. Promotion; he had sold a quartermaster’s place for sixty guineas to an outsider. It meant disappointing a sergeant in Lord Raby’s own troop who was a good man but he had been promised the next vacancy and the newcomer was a very stirring man who would be useful to the regiment. The next cornet for promotion to lieutenant would be Lord Raby’s nephew, a young gentleman still at Eton; what were his lordship’s views on that? Pay; they had received their subsistence allowance and everything had been settled with the men up to four months ago; Lord Raby’s own pay as colonel up to the same date, his pay as troop commander, and the allowances for his six fictitious servants and three fictitious horses would be sent him shortly; but the complexities of what perquisites were due to the colonel of the regiment as such, the balance of the off-reckonings, the sale of commissions, and the pay of the vacant officer appointments, together with what he made on his troop, all that would take longer to straighten out. Shirts, boots, above all of course hats; the only bright feature in the state of the regiment was the Andalusian horses, which were excellent.

But as he wrote he was wondering how much he would say about more serious things. He had told in his first letter from Valencia of the brilliant success with which my lord had cleared a space round the city. For it had been all very well to get into the city by bluff; de los Arcos was still near at hand and still with greatly superior forces. The four thousand Castilians he had left behind him on his march from Madrid were at last coming to join him, and then his strength would be overwhelming. Worse than that, there were sixteen twenty-four pounders on their way from Alicant with which he would undoubtedly be able to make a breach in the walls. The guns were intercepted, captured and brought into the city, while an expedition started to deal with the Castilians. Four hundred horse, including the Queen’s, and eight hundred foot my lord contrived to pass out of the city one evening without much notice being taken; they marched most of the night, passing near the enemy’s main army and crossing the river Xucar, lay up in hiding in a wood all day and towards morning of the second night surprised and scattered the Castilians, three times their number. What was still more remarkable, they managed to cross the Xucar and avoid the main army a second time on the way back and marched into Valencia early one morning with six hundred prisoners.

That had made things a little easier. De los Arcos had been recalled and de las Torres, who now came back to take his place, treated Lord Peterborough with respect and did not venture too close to Valencia. But it looked as though he hardly need, for the whole cause of the Allies in Spain seemed at the moment desperate.

Awbyn could not bring himself to say all that he feared to Lord Raby; it would have meant expressing his fears to himself in the first place and he was not yet ready for that. Ending his letter untruthfully with the words that he had no time for more, he lay down to rest. He had all his life been used to sleeping when he could and at once he was asleep.

But later in the evening, when he set out to meet his friends for dinner, Awbyn braced himself slightly for what he knew was coming. There would certainly be talk of the state in which the expedition now stood, and much of it would be talk with which Colonel Awbyn did not feel he could agree in public. He wished that he could dine quietly with Gabriel; it was necessary to risk one’s life and fortune, but a mistake to spend evening after evening talking about it.

They made it a custom, some of them, to dine at each other’s lodgings in turns. Tonight it was Lediard who was giving the dinner; Peter would be there and Truxillo, Warren, the major, a really stupid man, and Petty, whose brevet as captain had caused so much trouble. All were there; they stood up when Awbyn came into the room but treated him with no further ceremony. It was just as he had expected; he was hardly seated before Lediard asked:

‘Is there any news of the fleet?’

The question was addressed to Peter, as a member of the headquarters staff. He shook his head, and a general look of gloom settled on the company.

Lediard went on:

‘We are doing no good here. When are we to leave?’

Awbyn spoke rather reluctantly in answer to this:

‘What can we do, till the fleet comes with more troops? We can only raise fresh regiments and buy horses and mules; and that is what we are doing.’

Lediard drank his wine slowly. He was a short man, the face square and resolute. The candlelight accentuated the sharpness of his nose and the thickness of his dark eyebrows. He was seeking for words that would not hurt Truxillo’s feelings, but he could find none really satisfactory and at last he said something rather worse than his first thought.

‘We shall get no further with the help of troops raised in Valencia,’ he said, and went on hastily: ‘I mean, they will be no help till they are trained and disciplined and that will take time.’

Everyone knew what he was thinking of, for a fortnight ago they had suffered a sharp reverse through relying on just these locally raised and ill-disciplined troops. De las Torres, though cautious, was much more of a soldier than de los Arcos, and Lord Peterborough had guessed that he would try to hold the crossings of the Xucar river. To one of these the small town of Alciras was the key. My lord had put in a thousand recently raised Valencian troops, and only just in time, for no sooner were they there than a detachment of de las Torres’s Castilians arrived before the town and settled down as though considering an assault. My lord now planned to take this enemy detachment between the garrison of Alciras and another force of the same strength and kind which he led out from Valencia. But although the garrison came out boldly enough, they fled in disorder as soon as they ran into twenty Castilian soldiers, and it was such disorder that they killed each other as they ran and would probably not even have closed the gates and held the town if my lord had not himself contrived to rally them.

It was this memory that made everyone try hard to think of something to say. Petty, who was more a man of the world than anyone else present, leaned over the table and spoke into the awkward silence.

‘But what do you make of it yourself, Major?’ he asked. ‘What would the Duke do if he were here?’

Lediard had received a brevet of major only a week before; it was something of an affectation for Petty to address him by his rank, since he had a brevet of captain himself, but they all understood that it was because Petty was anxious not to appear conceited, and they were grateful to him for the intervention. Lediard was particularly grateful. He said at once:

‘The Duke might perhaps have come on to Valencia and left Barcelona unmasked, but only if he was strong enough to go on to Madrid. He would have had shoes and bread and powder waiting for us here and we should have gone on at once. And then we should have drawn the French after us; Marshall Tessé and the Duke of Anjou would have had no time to spare for Barcelona if we were on the road to Madrid.’

‘But surely,’ said Awbyn, ‘that is exactly what my lord is planning. That must have been his idea ever since Albocacer, when we first learnt what strength was threatening Barcelona.’

‘But, Colonel, we are not strong enough,’ said Lediard. ‘We have got into Valencia, yes, but not by fighting and we cannot go on. We have deceived the enemy, not defeated him. We have stayed here nearly two months, but Tessé has not come to Valencia. Nor will he. Barcelona is a better prize. Nothing but a threat to Madrid would make him leave it.’

‘But we shall be strong enough,’ Awbyn went on doggedly, ‘when we get the reinforcements the fleet are bringing. We have been expecting them three weeks now and nothing but contrary winds has delayed them. As soon as they are here we shall start for Madrid. De las Torres will fall back and Tessé and Anjou will hurry off to Madrid the way they came.’

Lediard answered with respect, but he was very definite in his opinion.

‘Do you think they would hurry back now, Sir?’ he asked. ‘Isn’t it too late? Three weeks ago, yes, but they are near Barcelona now and the King is there; that is a prize they won’t abandon easily. The Toulon fleet is there too. Tessé will be expecting the fleet to supply him. He has taken an unconscionable time getting there, but he must be there this week. Once he sits down before the town, no mere manoeuvring will move him. We have waited for reinforcements too long.’ He paused but no one spoke and he went on:

‘Till a month ago or even three weeks ago, it was reasonable, but to go on waiting for reinforcements when it is clear they will be too late even if they do come, to go on with your plan when everything has changed, why that is plain—’ he checked himself on a word which might have been folly or obstinacy and went on—‘well, it is not the part of a great commander.’

Peter spoke quickly because he could see James Awbyn struggling for words and he loved James.

‘I know,’ he said, ‘I have criticized him myself again and again, and yet if he were to walk into this room now, we should every one of us forget what we have said and be his slaves, at his feet. And if he told us to walk out of that door and be shot, we should go.’

‘Oh, he is a commander,’ Lediard agreed. ‘He has the nobleman air.’

‘And the energy!’ said Truxillo. ‘That is what I find so amazing. He is chaffering for mules in the market place like a peasant as soon as the sun is up, he will be out all day, and writing all night. Such letters he writes! Pages and pages, to everyone. To a Valencian, you know, it is fatiguing even to watch him.’

‘All the same,’ Lediard said, ‘Tessé will be at Barcelona this week. And then—let me see. We took Barcelona in a month with forces equal to the garrison. The garrison now is half what it was then and the besieging force is four times what we were. They will have the place in a week.’

‘If there is really any point in learning mathematics, in just four days,’ said Peter. ‘But if there was really any point in learning mathematics, we should not be in Valencia.’

‘I do not see what can stop them,’ Lediard went on, disregarding this. Tessé has twenty-three thousand men coming together at Barcelona. We have all known it ever since Albocacer. And the King has not six thousand in the whole of Catalonia. There is nothing to stop Tessé taking the town and the King at the same time. And if they take the King, it will be a Spanish prison for us and we have lost the war.’

It is very like chess, said Petty. ‘It is certainly check. The question is whether it is mate.’

Awbyn said:

‘Well, we cannot see a clear way out. But we could not see a clear way into San Mateo or Valencia.’

‘That is true,’ Peter agreed, ‘and it is very useful to be able to do miracles. But it is not being a good general. Who was it made the sun stand still? Joshua or Gideon? It was a good way to get out of a fix but he could not be sure the sun would do as he asked. It would have been better to start the fight earlier in the day. But my lord does not always rely on miracles; it seems you have not heard what he has done.’

No one had, and he went on:

‘As we all know, there is no one can be more secret than my lord when he has a mind. And he was secret about this when he first hit on the project. But now that he has had his answer and the King will not stir, why, he talks of it to everyone. I am surprised you have not yet heard of it, James.’

He paused to drink, for Peter enjoyed an effect. Then he went on:

‘Well, it was three weeks ago. My lord wrote to the King and suggested nothing less than the finest stroke of pokey in this or any other age. That is what he called it. The King should leave Barcelona in a clean-bottomed ship and sail round to Portugal. He could be there in a week. There are twenty-five thousand men there under das Minas and my lord Galway and there is really nothing to stop them marching straight to Madrid. All the Bourbon troops in Spain have been drawn to Barcelona, just as a boil sucks together all the evil humours in a man’s body. It would take them a long time to get back.’

There was a silence at this, while each man digested this project. At last Lediard said:

‘And the King will not stir?’

‘He will not leave the Catalans,’ said Truxillo. ‘It might, as a matter of fact, be the saving of them. But they will not see it. I am a Valencian myself, but I understand them. They think that so long as the King is in Barcelona there is a chance that the English will come to save them. But once he has gone there will be no hope. That is what they think. And the King is a brave young man. He will not leave them. So it is no use thinking out these clever moves at chess.’

‘It would be castling,’ said Petty. ‘But I fancy it is against the rules to castle when your King is in check.’

‘It would have been a good move all the same,’ said Awbyn. ‘And my lord Galway would have had the honour of bringing the King to Madrid. Now I suppose the King cannot get out if he would.’

‘He has always said,’ went on Peter and everyone knew who he meant. ‘He has always said that to go back to Barcelona now would risk the loss of everything.’

‘If the King won’t or can’t come out, and our fleet doesn’t come in, he will have to,’ said Lediard. ‘I see of course what his plan was. He wanted to lead the war after him as the Duke led the French to the Danube. But he hadn’t enough.’

‘And so,’ said Peter, ‘it looks as though, with what I have, I should have to march back again to Barcelona.’

‘And it will not be easy to explain to the politicians why he did not go to the King’s relief a month ago,’ Lediard added. That was a thought that reduced everyone to silence, until again Petty came to their help with regimental small talk. But unfortunately, and it was only because he had been away from the regiment a great deal, he broke an unwritten rule among the officers of the Queen’s Dragoons; he mentioned muskets in the presence of Major Warren. The flints of the fusils in his troop, Petty said, were worn out in the campaign in Valencia, not with shooting at the enemy, but with trying to light damp fires. The moment he said this, Major Warren’s eye lighted and he began to talk about matchlocks. He believed that the army had made a mistake in changing from the matchlock to the flintlock or fusil. For although the fusil was a quicker weapon to reload, it was not much quicker; it was the introduction of cartridges instead of bandoliers that had really speeded up re-loading, and there was no reason why you should not use cartridges with a matchlock. The great advantage of the matchlock was certainty and accuracy. There were no misfires and there was no jerk; you brought the match steadily down into the pan. It was, he could demonstrate, a fact that with a matchlock the average man could get more balls into the centre of the mark than with a flintlock, at least one more in ten. On the other side, Major Warren had heard the argument that on a night attack a battalion with lighted matches could be seen from far across the plain, advancing in serried ranks of glowing embers. To this he would reply that it was absurd to choose a weapon with a view to night attacks, because they were an exception.

It was a dull argument, even the first time you heard it, and it was an understood thing that at all costs Major Warren must not be allowed to start it. He had only one theory and never seemed to remember that he had explained it before. Awbyn, Lediard and Peter began to talk noisily and at the same time; Truxillo looked bewildered.

It was not till late in the evening that they came back to the subject of the general. The wine had passed freely and tongues were loosened but all stopped, all turned to their colonel, when he said suddenly:

‘He is the most extraordinary man that ever I knew in my life.’

They waited for more; they loved and respected Awbyn, and they wanted to know his opinion. It was unheard of that he should speak directly of the general’s character in the presence of junior officers but tonight the wine, the company, the long uncertainty, all worked together to produce a strange mood and he talked. He went on, half to himself:

‘He is indeed the most extraordinary man. See what gifts he has. Generous, beloved by all below him—but something a good less than a courtier to those above him. If only he had more experience! I really believe that with experience he would be such a general as few can equal and none go beyond.’

He looked round with an air of mild challenge. No one spoke, for they feared to provoke an argument and distract him; only Petty nodded encouragement. Awbyn continued:

‘No one I have known applies himself to business as he does, on horseback all day, writing dispatches all night, and that for days together at a stretch. And who else goes into the detail of troops as he does when he has a mind to it? We have all seen that; and what difficulties he has had to face! He is the first general of this age that has made war without men or money and bettered the troops at the same time.’

He looked round again to see if anyone questioned it, but as no one did he continued, placing his fist firmly but gently on the table as he spoke to emphasize his words.

‘For he has bettered them. Look at the horses. The confounded ugly lame jades we brought with us are turned into fine Andalusian horses; Barrymore’s Foot are turned into Pearce’s Dragoons; and I believe, if only the Court would have done as he said, by now we should have seen an Austrian Archduke turned into a real King of Spain!’

A murmur ran round the room, of agreement, of pleasure, simply of affection, with perhaps an undertone of amusement at so long a speech from Awbyn. But he had not done. He went on:

‘If only he were more of a courtier! And if only he were not so easily diverted from serious business!’

At that there was a general laugh.

‘Do you remember how the day we rode into Valencia he took over the governorship of the city, appointed the Conde de Cardona temporary Viceroy, told Brigadier Killigrew to settle the guards, and within ten minutes left us all and was off to visit two ladies he had been corresponding with ever since Barcelona?’

‘Do you remember. . . . ?’

‘Do you remember. . . . ?’

There was a good deal more of it, for there had certainly been distractions in the last six weeks and the conversation did not again become entirely decorous until good nights were being said in the street before Lediard’s lodging. There were only a few days to go till the new moon; the sky was clear, a sapphire drowned very deep in darkness, brilliant with starry fires. Awbyn walked home in a sober exultation; his doubts had gone with his words. His faith was restored. Somehow my lord would find a way to relieve the King and save them all from a Spanish prison.

Chapter II

The Defence of Montjuich

April 1706

It was almost exactly three months since they had left Tortosa when the Queen’s Dragoons rode out of Valencia by the North Gate and took a way that was sadly familiar. They were going to Barcelona, past the Carthusian convent, over the crossing at Murviedro where they had lost two horses in the night, past the little hillock where the general’s tent had been pitched, back to Nules and Villa Real, to Castillon and Oropesa, to Albocacer and San Mateo, back two hundred miles over all the country they had won with so little loss of life and with such hard wear to breeches, saddles and horseshoes.

They had started in the early morning, when the first clear light was turning the sea to the grey of clean old steel. The April sun would soon be hot, and they would halt long before noon. It was a small column, no more than six hundred horse and dragoons and two thousand foot, commanded at present by Brigadier Killigrew. Lord Peterborough would catch them up on the road before they were half way.

There was a sullen weary look about the men; they hated going back. The officers were anxious and irritable for none could see how any good could come of this. All but Colonel Awbyn felt, as Lediard did, that a month ago would have been the right time to start, that to have waited a second month for reinforcements by sea had been a month wasted. Their march now would be too late; they would find Barcelona taken when they got there. Unless the fleet came. Whenever a turn in the track showed them the sea on their right hand, they pulled up and strained their eyes for a sail, but there was never anything but a felucca or a tartane; there was no sign of the square topsails of the battle fleet.

Colonel Awbyn, however, was strangely content. It was true he could not feel the buoyancy, the exultation, of those days when there had been only the Queen’s and no one else to shepherd the army of de las Torres, but he was no longer worried. Hard service he expected, for he believed Lord Peterborough would risk all to parry this check to the King, but to that he looked forward with quiet pleasure; a faith beyond reason sustained him.

As they rode north, some news reached them by miquelets of what was happening in Catalonia, but there was nothing they could rely on. Camp rumours; they talked them over round the sweet-scented fires every night, but only two things were certain. Barcelona was not yet taken and the fleet had not yet come.

They did not know the truth until they were in the hills near Barcelona, where the Conde de Cifuentes with a few thousand miquelets had established a guerrilla headquarters. What they heard then, though not very heartening, was better than they could have hoped. Marshal Tessé had arrived before Barcelona nearly three weeks ago on April 3rd, accompanied by the Duke of Anjou, whom the French and the Castilians called Philip V of Spain. The other King of Spain, whom the Allies called Charles III, had not believed that they would come without first reducing Lerida and establishing communications with Saragossa and Madrid. He had countermanded Lord Peterborough’s orders to part of the garrison of Lerida to fall back on Barcelona, and he had had very few men indeed in the city, barely a thousand, when Tessé was within five leagues of him. Tessé and Anjou had as a matter of fact decided to leave Lerida untouched and to rely on the corn and powder they would get from the Toulon fleet, which had now anchored off Barcelona. It was commanded by the Comte de Toulouse, Admiral of France and a grandson of Louis XIV, and thus Barcelona witnessed the conjunction of a striking galaxy, two grandsons of the Sun King and a Marshal of France, at the head of twenty-three thousand good French troops and twenty-seven sail of the line of battle. What might perhaps be almost as useful as royal blood, the besieging forces had with them two generals who were counted among the best engineers in the French service.

Fortunately, the officers commanding the garrisons of both Tortosa and Lerida had at the last moment sent every man they could spare to the King’s help. Hamilton’s Foot marched from the south and arrived only a few hours before Tessé; they were at once sent to strengthen the garrison of Montjuich. Brigadier Lord Donegal brought eighteen hundred men from Gerona by sea; he managed to evade the French fleet and land them on the coast near the town. They were able to slip through the besieging forces and enter Barcelona on April 5th. Among this eighteen hundred were Charlemont’s Foot, who were sent to join Hamilton’s and the Guards in Montjuich. This made up a total of rather less than four thousand regular troops, in Barcelona and Montjuich together, about half of them English or Dutch; there were a number of miquelets, and the townspeople with the greatest diligence and enthusiasm formed themselves into bands for the defence of their city.

No one in the town worked harder or exposed himself more freely than the King. He was at his best, and the enthusiasm of his people for a King who would not leave them was so great that they forgot even their dislike for his ministers. Defence bands of the burghers went through the exercise daily with what weapons they had; the women were enrolled as pioneers or nurses; even the monks tucked up their skirts, tied up their beards with ribbons of the Austrian colours, and set to work to build walls and dig trenches. Much work was needed behind the breach that Colonel Richards had made with his cannon six months ago; till the emergency came, nothing had been done to repair it.

The defenders were as a matter of fact lucky to have the opportunity to work on the breach now, but then Marshal Tessé’s conduct of the siege from start to finish was not at all what anyone would have expected of a Marshal of France. He had at his disposal some of the best professional advice in the French army, but the example he chose to follow was that set by the English general, amateur and inexperienced though he was. The fashion had changed completely. In 1698, the French had taken Barcelona from a breach on the north side, towards San Martino. Until September 14th, 1705, therefore, it had been obvious to every experienced soldier that this was the way to take Barcelona. Montjuich, anyone could see, was too strong to be assaulted and without Montjuich the south side of the town was impracticable. So a breach must be made on the north side and Montjuich must be left till the city had fallen. But now it seemed just as obvious to Marshal Tessé that he must begin with Montjuich, that till he had Montjuich in his hands it was no good setting about the siege of Barcelona.

Accordingly, the French began by attempting to storm the outworks of Montjuich, attacking at dawn with the bayonet just as Peterborough had done. But Lord Donegal was in command, with Hamilton’s to back him as well as Charlemont’s, and the Guards under Colonel Russell. There were also some Spaniards who had changed sides after the first siege of Barcelona. The French could make no lodgment in the outworks, as Colonel Allen and Colonel Southwell had done. Three times they tried to storm the ditch; three times they fell back with heavy loss. They fell back, and no fiery little man in a scarlet coat met them sword in hand and led them to victory.

To the officers of the Queen’s, and every soldier who heard of it, the next move of Marshal Tessé seemed unaccountable. He had failed to storm the fort; then he should give up the idea, congratulating himself that a considerable part of the garrison was occupied in defending a place he had no intention of attacking; he could then concentrate on the city itself. With the forces at his disposal he could surely attack from the other side, as the English had at first considered doing, and as the French had done in 1698. But he was obsessed with the idea of Montjuich, to which he now laid regular siege. His batteries had to be placed at some distance, because the elevation was too great from the valley. But he began to batter the place and to drive trenches steadily nearer, breaking the hearts of his pioneers by making them dig parallels in the stony ground, with zigzag communication trenches between the parallels, just as though he were sitting down in form before Lille or Mons. Day by day the guns battered the donjon and the outworks; day by day the trenches crept closer to Montjuich; but not a gun was yet turned on the walls of Barcelona.

That was how things stood on April 21st, when Lord Peterborough and the column headed by the Queen’s joined Cifuentes in the hills. Everyone among the English had heard some at least of the hard names my lord had used at one time or another of Cifuentes. He was a beggar, a murderer, a madman and much else. Certainly he was an odd choice as a counsellor to a young king. He had lost his estates and was forced to live by his wits; he had made many enemies in Valencia by stirring up some political riots, in which more than one Valencian noble had lost his life, and some said directly at the hand of Cifuentes. He had been in prison for political reasons at the time of the descent on Barcelona, but he had broken prison by remarkable feats of personal strength and agility, bending an iron bar and leaping out of a high window into a street full of people.

These were doubtful qualifications for a statesman but excellent for a guerrilla chief. He had begun the campaign well by capturing seven hundred sheep which had been meant for the French field kitchens. Since then he and his several thousand miquelets had harried the French outposts and had prevented any supplies reaching the besiegers from the country; but so much corn and powder had been landed from the fleet that this had caused them discomfort rather than hardship.

It was the kind of warfare into which my lord entered with spirit and the Queen’s found themselves at once involved in that hard service that Awbyn had expected. Their first hope was of course the fleet; it was known now that Sir John Leake’s squadron with the reinforcements had reached Gibraltar and he was daily expected at Altea on the Valencian coast. It was known also that Sir John Leake and his captains were doubtful of the wisdom of attacking the Toulon fleet until they should be joined by another squadron under Admiral Byng, which would give them a superiority beyond question. My lord’s first care therefore was to establish some communication with the fleet the moment they should arrive at Altea; he sent letters daily and though these were taken in their later stages by miquelets, the Queen’s must escort the messengers for the first few leagues, until they were out of danger from the French. Letters to Colonel Stanhope, a brigadier no longer but Her Majesty’s envoy to the Court of Spain; letters to Sir John Leake; all urging haste for the battle fleet. That much every one knew, and they knew too that the letters contained something of far more doubtful wisdom, orders, positive orders to land the troops and the stores near Valencia. His lordship was ready to talk about this to anyone. He was confident that a sea battle would be enough to relieve Barcelona. The transports and the Tower ships, that is those with ordnance stores, would obviously be an encumbrance to the battleships and should, my lord considered, be placed ready for the next move, which was the march on Madrid from Valencia. But few officers, either land or sea, were able to share his lordship’s conviction that once the French fleet was gone Tessé would give up the attempt on Barcelona.

Escorts for messengers to the fleet, that was the first duty, and the next was to get men into Barcelona. Not that my lord wanted to put into the city all he had; it was essential, to his way of drinking, that Tessé should believe the mountains strongly held. That was needed to give full effect to the sea battle; with the ships gone and the mountains hostile the French would have nowhere to turn. But to put some men into Barcelona would strengthen and encourage the defence and perhaps give the King a few more days. There was no doubt it would be a near thing, even if the fleet reached Altea tomorrow and sailed on at once.

It was not easy to get men in and a good deal of preparation was needed, while at the same time the Queen’s were never allowed to neglect their old duty of deceiving the enemy. Never a man went out but he had orders to show himself in a dozen places, to represent twenty men in one place and ten in another. It seemed to each of them as though he had just awakened from sleep; he had a feeling that he had been here, that he had done this, before. It was like, and yet very unlike, the days in Valencia when they had been alone with my lord and the enemy. Much that they did was the same but now no feeling of triumph and elation swept the men forward; their sole thought was whether the fleet would come in time. Only Colonel Awbyn went about all he did with quiet happiness, knowing that all would be well.

They had been four days at this work when the news of Montjuich came. On April 21st, the day after my lord joined Cifuentes, Tessé had judged the fortress ripe for a second assault. He had attacked at dawn and all morning the French had fought to get into the now almost shapeless outworks. All morning Lord Donegal and the brave men of Hamilton’s, Charlemont’s and the Guards, had kept them out. Charlemont’s were Irishmen used to rain and wide skies above the heather. Hamilton’s too had spent long years in Ireland but their homes were in East Anglia, where the wind comes in bitter over the saltings; the men of the Guards came, many of them, from London. Now they fought side by side under a blazing southern sun, far from the soft rain and fog of their homes. One man dropped after another but they were killing three Frenchmen for every one of their own and they were keeping the French out. Charge; ram; prime; cock; fire; steady as though at practice, every shot was aimed.

Later in the day, they lost a stretch of the outworks. The Spaniards on their flank gave way and they had to fall back. They fell back still fighting; the enemy had had enough of their bayonets and did not follow. Brigadier Lord Donegal found them in a thin line in the covered way of the donjon, firing at the French in the outworks. He drew them up in close order and sword in hand led them back. Three times they flung themselves at the battered ditch they had held for so long; in each attack, Lord Donegal charged at their head, fighting with the fury of a madman; he cut down four Frenchmen with his own hand; at last he fell, with a musket-ball through his brain. They said of him that he had played the part of a good grenadier.

It was hopeless now, and the Guard’s, Hamilton’s and Charlemont’s were driven back from the outworks everywhere. By the evening they held only the donjon. All the same, a day had been saved and the French had been kept out. Though not a man of the three regiments cared who was King of Spain, they would the one by one to keep out the French. But there was a regiment of Spaniards in Montjuich as well, and that night an officer of Hamilton’s found the Spanish guard busy taking flints out of the muskets. That meant no Spaniards for the walls tomorrow; what was worse good troops would be kept guarding prisoners, and others, after a day’s hard fighting and with another before them, must lose their sleep putting the flints back again.

The second day, the French tried to storm the donjon at dawn. They kept up a heavy fire from the outworks while they raised scaling-ladders and tried to climb them. When they were beaten back, they fired for some hours at the ramparts with mortars. Then another assault. Then more mortar fire.

For the three English regiments, it meant at each assault a few minutes of firing quickly and steadily, ready all the time with the bayonet for any man who got up the ladder; then long hours crouching on the ramparts with shells from the mortars bursting all round. A look-out must be kept, but a musket-ball would smack against the stone by his ear the moment he showed his head. It was very hot; in the sunshine the stone of the parapet burnt the hand; even when the sun was down the stone gave back heat. It was the twentieth day since Montjuich had first been assaulted and the guns had been battering the place all the time. It was the second day of intense fighting. They kept the French out all the second day.

The third day was like the second, but there were fewer of the three regiments now and they more tired. They kept the French out all the third day.

The fourth day was like the third. But now their fatigue was so great that they moved rustily, like machines; the sun did not seem so hot nor the day so long now. They fired when the enemy attacked; they crouched still when the shells were bursting; they did not think any longer nor mind when a man fell by their side. That day too they kept the French out.

But in the evening of the fourth day, Count von Uhlfeldt, who commanded the entire garrison, sent orders to fall back into Barcelona and abandon Montjuich. Those that were left of the three regiments took their prisoners with them and before moonrise broke out of Montjuich by the Barcelona Gate. They were inside the city walls in less than half an hour. They had cost Marshal Tessé twenty-two days and many lives.

Chapter III

The Sails of the Battle Fleet

April 1706

It was during the night of April 25th, the same night that the three regiments came back from Montjuich, that the garrison received another reinforcement. One of the tasks on which the Queen’s had been busy had been accompanying parties of miquelets, who were sent out to collect barks and galleys secretly at a spot on the coast that was within a few hours rowing of Barcelona. On the 25th they escorted to the boats a regiment of Neapolitan foot who, since they came over to the Austrian cause, had shown themselves good soldiers. These men were under the immediate command of Prince Henry of Hesse, brother of the Prince George who had been killed at Montjuich in September; at nightfall they rowed out of the cove where they had assembled and made their way along the coast. The tholes had been greased and strips of rag tied round both oars and thole-pins to deaden sound. No lights were permitted and no talking. The boats escaped the notice of the French fleet and they were most of them actually inside the harbour before they were discovered.

Some confused fighting followed in the harbour, but the moon was not yet up and it was all over before the French had realized what was happening. They should have had flares ready for some such attempt, but they did not take this obvious precaution till later. They did, however, capture some fifty or sixty of the Neapolitans and two boats turned back, but four-fifths of the regiment were put into the city.

That was some encouragement, and it was badly needed. Next day, April 26th, and the twenty-third of the siege, the French batteries began to play on the walls of Barcelona from the side of Montjuich and soon there were eighty guns firing. It did not take them long to demolish the temporary defences which the King, with the burghers, women and monks, had built behind Colonel Richard’s breach. Indeed, almost as soon as this part of the siege began, it seemed that the enemy had nothing to do but storm the breach. A man would meet a friend in the streets of Barcelona and his first question would be:

‘The fleet? Is there any news of the fleet?’

And when the other answered with a sad shake of the head, he would go on:

‘Thanks be to God they did not storm us this morning.’

That was the behaviour of the burghers, the shopkeepers, the men of substance. But the people of the mob were not so patient; they ran hither and thither, in a frenzy of fear and excitement, snatching at every rumour they heard. There was, for example, a tale that the King had at last agreed to Lord Peterborough’s suggestion that he should leave the city; on that, the mob ran to the King’s lodgings and many of them burst into his apartments; one greasy fellow seized the Prince of Lichtenstein by the collar and shook him; they shouted in the ante-room, yelling that if the King planned to leave them they would tear his limbs apart and surrender next day. This went on till the King himself came to them and promised them again that he would not leave them till Barcelona was relieved. At that they thanked him with tears running down their faces and at last went away.

All the same, it was true that the King had written to Lord Peterborough, and in very moving terms, saying that as he now saw his cause and his honour utterly ruined, as nothing remained to him but life, he begged to be taken away by sea if it could still be done. But after this fresh promise to the mob, he told my lord it was impossible for him to leave. Instead he went back to another project he had broached before and begged my lord to attack the French from the mountains, when he himself would come out from the town with every man who would follow him and they would stake all on a single battle.

It was a project that had been raised before, but opinion had been so strong against it that my lord had not judged there was any need of a formal council of war. But now, when things were so desperate, he felt he must take the opinion of the senior officers on the King’s proposal. So a council was called, at which every officer commanding a regiment or battalion was to attend.

It was the second such council to which Colonel Awbyn had been summoned. To the first, at Albocacer, he had gone with divided mind, and it had been with reluctance that he had given an opinion to which there seemed no professional alternative. But in his heart, even then, he had wanted to throw aside all he had learnt in years of soldiering and vote for a prank that sober reason told him was mad and boyish. Now, at this second council, he had no such doubts. His mind was quite clear and he knew just what he would say.

The council met in the court-room of the alcalde at San Colgad, a small town in the hills. It was at night, for the matter was urgent and it had not been possible to get every one together by day, almost all the members of the council having been out on horseback since dawn. There were candles of tallow on the table, which flared, sputtered and stank. It was not easy to see men’s faces.

As usual, my lord spoke first, and spoke at some length, the words pouring out in long sentences which never seemed to end. His manner was as gay as ever in this moment of apparently extreme adversity. But though he made each point with his usual verve, his usual volubility, it seemed that for once he was genuinely asking the council’s opinion instead of trying to force his officers to give their support to an intention he had already formed.

It was not really a question to which much introduction was needed. Everyone knew the facts for themselves. Marshal Tessé had an army which had been reckoned at twenty-three thousand when he arrived, and he could hardly have lost so many as three thousand. He must be more than twenty thousand strong, all regular troops, of good quality and nearly all French, with a good proportion of horse and dragoons. His forces were besides drawn up with considerable skill. There were only a limited number of avenues by which troops in any number could approach him from the mountains, and all these were strongly defended, with cannon placed to cover them and foot lying near by in positions from which they could be quickly called. The chance of any more troops getting into the town by sea was small now; the French had flares ready on rafts all round the harbour and galleys patrolling all night long.

That was how Tessé was placed. As for the strength of the Allies, there were, in the hills, some seven thousand miquelets under the Conde de Cifuentes, and perhaps their number could be increased if everyone possible was called in from all over the countryside. There were some miquelet parties away from headquarters at present; they were some of them demolishing roads in the more precipitous passes of Aragon, in order to hinder Tessé’s return to Madrid if the fleet should force him to raise the siege; there were garrisons in the little walled towns of the mountains, waiting there for the same purpose; all these could be called in and perhaps a force of ten thousand might be made up, but what they would be worth was another matter. Of regulars, there were not three thousand.

In the city, it would not be safe to reckon on more than three thousand regulars. Here my lord, who had so far kept admirably to the point, added a recital at some length of the orders he had sent to the garrison at Lerida which the King had seen fit to countermand. He recounted all the evil consequences that had followed, and it was some time before he returned to Barcelona. However, he resumed, as to the burghers’ defence bands and those miquelets who had got in with Lord Donegal when he came from Gerona, as to these, there was no very precise information. Certainly not all of them would be able or ready to leave the walls for a sortie. Perhaps seven thousand altogether, counting the regulars, might be reckoned for an operation from the town outside the walls.

By the most optimistic reckoning, then, it was barely possible to collect an army as numerous as the French, and it would include no more than five or six thousand regular troops. The prospects in a set battle would be poor; no one could be sure how the miquelets would behave. On the other hand, it might be worth attempting, not a set battle, but an operation to reinforce the garrison. An attack from the hills, not on the whole French line, but on a selected spot which seemed to be weak, and a sortie at the same time, either aimed at the same spot or somewhere else as a diversion, the force from the hills trying to cut their way in. That seemed a project that required consideration.

But before the officers of the council gave an opinion, it would be well, my lord went on, to remember the whole state of affairs in Spain. In the west, my lord Galway and the Marquis das Minas, with an army of twenty-five thousand men, English, Dutch and Portuguese, had no one between them and Madrid except the Duke of Berwick with some five thousand horse, and indeed it was a mystery they were not in Madrid already, all the Bourbon troops having been drawn to Barcelona, in spite of the fact that the Allies on that side of Spain had only a handful of troops, no money and no support, hardly even a letter from England in six months. All the work had been done for Lord Galway, he had only to step forward; but perhaps it was the climate of Portugal that delayed him, well known to be conducive to eternal rest. But be that as it might, when the English fleet arrived, the French fleet would either run for it or be defeated, and in either case Tessé would be left in the air, with no communications either with Madrid or with France. He would then have to make up his mind whether to try to cut his way back to Madrid through the fierce mountains of Aragon, difficult country at the best of times and now infested with hostile bands who at my lord’s orders had been demolishing all the more vulnerable roads, and not only that but all the little walled towns were garrisoned, and there would be my lord Galway waiting for him when he got there; or whether to go down the coast in the hope of meeting de las Torres near Valencia, where again the country was hostile and some of the towns garrisoned; or whether to make for France, in fact, if the fleet came, Marshal Tessé was in a much more awkward situation than was generally thought.

On the other hand, if the fleet did not come in time he was sure to take the town. Indeed, a general of energy and initiative would have had it before this, for his forces were five times those of the garrison, and the English had taken the town in no longer than this when they were if anything slightly weaker than the garrison. In that event, he would be the better off for having captured the King, a danger which would have been avoided if only my lord’s advice had been taken, his repeated advice, sent half a dozen times, over a period of at least six weeks; but Tessé would not otherwise be at any great advantage. For even if it was too late to save the town, sooner or later the fleet would come, and then he would be in the predicament prepared for him. Marshal Tessé had in fact walked into a trap.

It was time now for the officers of the council to state their opinion. It was not like a court martial in which the youngest must speak first. There were two Dutch generals, Scrattenbach and St. Amant, three English brigadiers, among whom was Killigrew, and then the officers commanding regiments and battalions. Colonel Awbyn’s eye ran round the table; they were in the field, not in garrison; dragoons counted as horse and horse took precedence over foot in the field, so there was no question that he commanded the eldest regiment. These considerations passed mechanically through his brain as he reckoned when he would have to speak. My lord, however, did not always consider matters of that kind, nor of course would he be aware of the date of Awbyn’s brevet if he wished to go by personal seniority; he might ask them to speak in order as they sat; in that case his turn would come four after Killigrew. But if by seniority he should be next after Killigrew, whether it was seniority of regiments or of commissions.

His mind was made up, and that was why he hardly listened to Scrattenbach’s heavy grating French. St. Amant took up the tale. The English brigadiers continued. They were all of one mind. More than one had been present when Major-General Conynghame had been killed. They had seen the miquelets take to the hill-tops and stay there, watching with curiosity, as spectators, that gallant defence. Not one of them believed that it was any use relying on miquelets. And to every one of them it seemed madness to attack the French Army. The only course was to continue as at present, to hope for the fleet, and meanwhile to harry the French outposts, to cut off supplies, to magnify their own numbers.

Lord Peterborough came to the colonels and he took them as they sat. Three were of the same opinion as the brigadiers. Now it was Colonel Awbyn’s turn. He was not usually a man to whom words came easily, but today he had no hesitation. He spoke the words, fluently and steadily, but it seemed to him as though the world had receded to a great distance; James Awbyn, and he alone, knew the truth with the certainty of a child or of a drunken man who perceives and reiterates one point. He knew the truth and had to state it. There was utter silence about the alcalde’s table while he spoke.

‘My lord,’ he said, ‘as I see it, we are here to put the King of Spain upon the throne of his fathers and by that means to confine King Louis to the unhappy country of France. How can we do that if we lose the King of Spain? To me it seems that we should venture all before we risk that. And I believe that the country people of Catalonia would readily die rather than see their King lost. What they may have done in the past is not to the purpose, for the King was not in danger. I believe that if we attack now they will fight so bravely they will put us all to shame. But if we lose the King by sitting still, they will turn on us the hatred they now feel for the Bourbons. It will no longer be safe for one of our men to go out alone. My lord, my vote is for battle.’

The silence continued. No one spoke or moved. Then from the head of the table a voice said:

‘Ca, ce n’est pas sage, mon colonel. C’est un conseil comme un de les miens.’

There was another pause, but a short one and then the voice went on, asking for the vote of the next colonel. He was embarrassed; he cleared his throat and spoke huskily, supporting the brigadiers. No one but Awbyn voted for battle.

When all had spoken, my lord said briefly that he accepted the recommendation of the council; the heavy oak benches grated on the flagged floor as the officers stood up, gathering gloves and papers from the table. The candles flickered in the wind of their movement and it was more difficult than ever to see men’s faces. Perhaps for this reason there was not much talk; it would not be easy to speak of Awbyn’s opinion till you could see clearly the expression of the man you were talking to. At heart perhaps every man felt a sneaking shame that he too had not voted for the utter folly of battle. One by one they left; Awbyn was delayed, looking for his hat. A voice said:

‘Mon colonel! Ce n’est que pour deux jours. Après deux jours, je serai de votre conseil.’

For the two next days, the Queen’s Dragoons continued the routine into which their strangely irregular life had fallen. There would be so many men on duties allotted by the general; the rest would be divided by Awbyn into two bodies, one to harry and frighten the enemy, the other to collect food and forage. Awbyn had at last been persuaded that barley was a suitable food for horses and indeed for Spanish horses the most suitable, so that his anxiety about forage was much less than when he had insisted on oats; still, it was a constant worry. Not only was it difficult to get enough, particularly in Catalonia, but it was very expensive; a dragoon’s subsistence allowance was not enough to subsist himself and his horse in Spain. My lord was most insistent everything should be paid for, which was quite right of course, but it was hard on officers and men that they should be losing money because they had been ordered to serve in this scorching stony land, with no chance of slipping over to London to see their wives or sweethearts every winter as the regiments in Flanders did. My lord knew all about it and had written to England, but nothing happened; what was the more vexatious, the mounted troops in Portugal had a special allowance and certainly did not cover so much ground as Lord Peterborough’s troops.

Barley and hay and enemy outposts were the things Awbyn thought about for two days. He hardly noticed the jumpiness of every officer he met; this was partly because his quiet absorption in immediate problems calmed others, but more because he was not jumpy himself and did not expect anyone else to be. But undeniably jumpy they were, for there was no news of the fleet; Barcelona seemed a ripe plum for the picking; and the King lost, there seemed no hope for the war and little for themselves. No one believed in Lord Peterborough’s idea that Tessé had walked into a trap.

On the evening of the second day since the council of war at San Colgad, Peter came to see Awbyn. James asked if there was any news of the fleet. There was news at last. The fleet had reached Altea but a council of war had decided to wait there until they were joined by Admiral Byng’s squadron. Peter went on:

‘That means of course fresh letters to Admiral Leake and Mr. Stanhope begging them to come on quickly. And I have come partly to give you your orders about escorting the messengers, when the letters are written.’

‘But the troops? Where are they to be landed?’ Awbyn asked.

‘Mostly at Tarragona, to lighten the fleet for the sea battle. But a thousand are to come on as reinforcements for Barcelona.’

Awbyn paused to consider. He found it difficult to picture this sea battle or to understand its effects. Like the rest of the soldiers, he saw only the siege and wanted to get as many men as he could into Barcelona. He was still thinking of this when Peter went on:

‘James, it is a serious thing when a man of your age falls in love, and just now you are like a man in love. There is no telling what you will say or think. First, you wanted us to lay siege to Barcelona with six thousand men; now you want us to attack twenty thousand men with three thousand.’

The friendship of these two men, so dissimilar, was based on a deep respect for each other and Awbyn did not retort that he had been right about the first siege of Barcelona. Peter knew that. He did not in fact say anything to this remark of Peter’s; he simply smiled, and then added:

‘When will they be here?’

‘They have to wait for Byng and then—’ Peter held up his wetted finger—‘precious little breeze and that north-easterly. And it has only just dropped. For two days it has been stiff and northerly. They won’t be here for three or four days.’

‘If Tessé were a man he could have Barcelona tomorrow,’ said Awbyn. Peter nodded.

‘And that brings me to the second part of my instructions. I was to tell you that, two days having passed, my lord is come round to your sentiments. But this is for no one’s ear but yours.’

‘What does he mean by that?’ Awbyn asked thoughtfully. ‘If there is really hope of the fleet—’

‘What he means is that we must still wait for the fleet, and that Barcelona may fall and the King be lost while we wait. So he has a plan for giving Tessé something to think about and getting some men into the town. It is not a battle to risk all, but a sally from the town and an eruption from the hills, to pass in two or three battalions of foot. But there is no chance unless it is agreed with von Uhlfeldt. It is not easy to get in to him now, but Truxillo has a man who for ten pistoles thinks he can do it. If the garrison get the message and agree to the plan, they are to fire three rockets at nine exactly tomorrow evening. And all day tomorrow my lord will be waiting for another message from the fleet. If the rockets go up and he hears nothing from the fleet, we attack at dawn next morning. It will not be an easy operation, James.’

Awbyn agreed.

‘But he is right,’ he said. ‘Anything is better than to lose the King. And even if we get no one into the town, it will give us two days. We know Tessé. He will be too busy writing letters all the next day to attack a breach. But what is the message from the fleet that we are hoping for, Peter?’

‘That the two squadrons have joined, of course, and are sailing.’

Awbyn considered.

‘But the ships will be here before the message.’

Peter shook his head.

‘It is a very swift messenger they have chosen, my lord and Mr. Stanhope. They have fresh horses for him posted all the way. But he was frightened to carry a message in English so far. They have agreed that all he need bring—’ Peter lowered his voice—‘is a blank sheet of paper torn in the middle. We shall know what that means.’

‘I see.’ Awbyn was still thoughtful. ‘Rockets and no messenger—then we attack. Messenger and no rockets—we don’t attack. But messenger and rockets? What do we do then, Peter? I suppose we don’t attack, for if the wind is fair, the ships will not be far behind the messenger.’

‘I can’t tell you that.’ Peter went on to give the instructions about the escort, his normal duty as an aide-de-camp.

All the next day, tension mounted in the camp. Everyone knew that if the fleet did not come soon, my lord had some plan for an attack; almost everyone believed that any such attack would fail, that there would be many lives lost and nothing done. And for two days there had been fresh northerly winds, rising occasionally to a force that whipped the tops from the waves. Lediard, having brought his troop back before midday from a foraging expedition, found himself idle. He walked down the main street of San Colgad to Wills’s quarters, but Wills was out; he found Petty and suggested they should ride up to a point from which they could see the sea.

They rode in silence, each deep in gloomy thought; they were a dissimilar couple, Lediard being short and square, his brown eyes always intent on the immediate problem, while Petty’s legs were too long for his Spanish horse, his light blue eyes seemed always fixed on the horizon except when he turned to speak to you with bland inscrutable politeness.

The moment they could see the sea they turned towards it. But it was no use straining their eyes; there was no sign of Leake’s topsails, only the Toulon fleet, compact and menacing, lying in Barcelona road. They did not spend long looking to sea; Lediard said gloomily:

‘This north wind!’ and they left it at that. If the fleet did not come, they would have to fight on land, and the more they studied the ground they would have to fight on, the less either of them liked the look of it.

‘You see how it is,’ said Lediard. ‘Can you find any way of bringing troops into that plain that is not enfiladed by his cannon! For the life of me, I can’t.’

‘Not troops. A few men, perhaps, yes; but a body of troops must go by those defiles. And they are not merely guarded; they’re fortified.’

‘I don’t like it,’ said Lediard.

‘Nor do I,’ said Petty, and they rode back to San Colgad.

That evening from about half past eight onwards till ten, the officers of my lord’s staff and one or two others stood gazing towards Barcelona, waiting for the three rockets that would mean von Uhlfeldt had received the message and agreed to the plan. The moon would not rise till late; it was the first night of the last quarter, and it was through darkness that they peered towards the city, fearing to see a sudden snake of golden sparks dart rippling through the night, fearing, yet almost hoping, because it would end the strain.

By ten o’clock there had been no rocket; all but the sentries went to bed. But by soon after midnight, the officer on duty at the general’s quarters went to rouse his lordship. A messenger had come from the south with something he would give to my lord and no one else. It was a blank sheet of paper, torn in the middle.

Within five minutes every officer of the headquarters staff had been summoned; each one tumbled sleepily up the stairs, paused outside the door to straighten his clothes and assume an appearance of alertness, knocked, entered and in another minute was scurrying away with orders for someone. By dawn, two thousand foot were on the move, marching for Seges, a small town on the seashore, about six leagues from Barcelona. My lord followed two hours later, escorted by a troop of the Queen’s under Petty. He was attended by Peter and no other aide-de-camp.

It was a hot, dry and dusty march and at every turn in the road, anxious eyes scanned the sea. The wind had dropped now; what there was blew from the south but not hard enough to bring Leake’s topsails into view. It was towards evening when they reached Seges and the men were tired. But there was no rest for the officers. My lord had collected a flotilla of small sailing-vessels, fishing-craft, any kind of boat capable of going along the coast to Barcelona. He had to allot these to the regiments before night and he had to give the officers their orders. He said he expected the fleet to pass within sight that evening or very soon afterwards; the ships might of course pass Seges in darkness but in that case, although he himself would not be there, the officers of the two thousand would know what had happened by the sound of naval gunfire from Barcelona early in the morning. The thudding of the bombardment they could hear already, but it would be easy to tell if a sea-battle started as well.

The officers listened, some stolid, some bewildered, their faces betraying their feelings in varying degrees. They were used to finding themselves at a loss with my lord, for his ideas were such as no one else would have entertained and he had a way of beginning his explanations in the middle. They were mystified now as to where he would be himself when they heard gunfire. But he went on without pausing; they were then immediately to embark and sail for Barcelona; by the time they arrived the naval battle would be over and the French ships sunk or in flight. Their two thousand men would be needed in the city, for Tessé, perceiving the awkward situation in which he was placed by the loss of the fleet, might well decide to assault the breach at once. Indeed, it would be the best thing he could do.

If they saw the fleet pass, they were likewise to embark, but they should give the men-of-war at least two hours’ law before they sailed themselves. Someone ventured to ask where my lord would be and he replied gaily that he would of course be with the fleet. He made sure that everyone understood their instructions and then, before their eyes, embarked with Peter and no one else in a felucca, which stood off into the gathering darkness.

The sentries had orders to gaze out to sea as soon as it was light. They saw no square topsails, but about half an hour after dawn they saw the pointed sail of the felucca standing in. She ran in to the beach and was pulled up by Catalan fishermen and English sailors together. My lord’s thin face under the great wig looked strange in a stubble of beard, but the light blue eyes were gay and he had an unseemly jest for the regimental barber who was found to shave him. Peter, waiting for his turn, told the officers who had come down to the beach how all night long they had cruised to and fro, hoping for sight or sound of the great ships and praying, Peter added, for his own part, that the great ships would not run them down. It had blown a fair south wind all night and there had been every chance the fleet would come, but no dark hull and sails had suddenly blotted out the stars for them that night.

When he was shaved and had eaten, my lord took himself to the top of a cliff, where he spent most of the day with a glass, gazing out to sea, for he would not trust the sentries to bring him news. He sat there all day, peering at the horizon, pausing only to eat and once, for two hours only and at Peter’s urgent entreaty, to sleep. And for those two hours, Peter must be on watch.

It did not occur to any of the officers of the two thousand to inquire why Lord Peterborough was so anxious to go aboard the fleet. They were soldiers; they would have been surprised if a commander-in-chief of the army had not wished to be present at a land battle. There was every prospect of a sea battle and they saw nothing odd in the wish of the joint admiral of the fleet to be there. But though no one asked any questions, his lordship in the course of the night had volunteered something to Peter. He reckoned that the two squadrons, Leake’s and Byng’s, would number fifty sail of the line of battle. The Toulon fleet was but twenty-seven. If the French had word by a fast-sailing scout that so great a navy was approaching they would cut their cables and run. So it was my lord’s plan, if he could but come aboard in time, to divide the fleet into two again, ordering the larger squadron to bear away to the east, so that the scouts would bring the French news only of the smaller. Then surely the Comte de Toulouse would come out to fight, only to be hopelessly involved when the larger squadron from the east turned towards the land and sailed for the sound of the guns.

But all that day there was no sight of the men-of-war, and when dusk began to fall, my lord came down to the beach and the felucca was run down again over the flat pebbles of the shingle. Some officers of one of the regiments, and Mr. Crow, Her Majesty’s representative to the Catalans, ventured to remonstrate, pointing out that Barcelona was only a few leagues away and my lord was just as likely to fall in with a French scout as with the English fleet. But my lord would have none of it and once more he and Peter embarked, and in a few minutes disappeared into the dusk. There was a stiff south wind and the sea was rising.

Next morning, the English officers went one by one, each as soon as he was awake, to stand beside their sentries, gazing out into the east over a wide sea, still grey and colourless, flecked with foam by a brisk south-easterly wind. It was the morning of May 8th; for some days everyone in the Allied camp had heard that Tessé meant to storm Barcelona on the 8th. Each stood for a little, feeling the chill salt wind on his face, gazing out to sea, and then, seeing nothing, went to shave and finish dressing. One by one they came back to question the sentries. Nothing. Now the grey sea had turned silver-gilt; it deepened to blue. Still nothing. All that morning there was nothing.

Chapter IV

The Lord Treasurer’s Mail

May 1706

It was past the middle of May but in London the nights were still cold. A fire of sea-coals was burning in a clear blaze beneath a heavy carved chimney-piece. Two servants came in. One attended to the fire, adding fuel which damped down the flames a little and sweeping the hearth clean; the other snuffed the candles on the desk and placed a decanter of wine and a glass. They moved quickly and quietly; they were not two minutes in the room.

The man at the desk was left alone with his work. He was reading letters which he took from a pile on his left hand. When he had finished a letter he paused and raised his head, pondering for a moment. But it was not often for more than a moment. Then sometimes he would take a pen and write a short letter in answer, but this was seldom. More often he would make a few notes, heads of reply which he would give to a secretary in the morning. Most often of all, he would pause, reflect, memorize, and put the letter aside without touching a pen.

When he raised his head to consider at the end of each letter, the candles shone clear on the face below the heavy wig. If you had come into the room from the half darkness of the spring night, your eyes perhaps a little dazzled by the shine of fire and candles, your first thought would have been that here was a man out of place. The sanguine complexion, the round cheeks, the snub nose like a baby’s, these belonged to a country gentleman, and one unlikely to break his neck galloping after foxes, one who would be content perhaps to amble gently along a lane or over the downs while his pack towled and yowled slowly over the mazy track of a hare. But that would have been at the first look only. For the eyes gave the lie to that picture, and fascinated by the eyes, and by those high fantastically arched eyebrows, you might perhaps have forgotten the first impression altogether and thought him a man so aloof, so intellectually arrogant, that lie would find no pleasure in companionship or sport or the use of the body out of doors.

It was a mistake no one in London would have made, for everyone knew of the Earl of Godolphin’s house at Newmarket, his barb and Arab stallions, the races he kept winning. What they could only guess at were the long hours in the study, reading the letters that every minister sent on to the Lord Treasurer, the long hours endeavouring to soothe and comfort the Queen, to reason her out of prejudice or foreboding, the long hours spent in careful directions to colleagues, all the burden of the great war which those shoulders must bear alone when the Duke was in Flanders.

Now Lord Godolphin was opening a fresh packet of letters. They were tied together with tape and marked by a secretary:

'SPAIN
brought to Genoa by the Mary galley.'

It was a bundle of about six weeks’ letters, forming an enclosure to a packet from Mr. Hill, Her Majesty’s representative at the Court of the Duke of Savoy. Lord Godolphin knew very well that among them would be at least half a dozen from Lord Peterborough, that every one of these would seem to a busy man far too long, that every one would have been written at top speed without a moment’s reflection and would teem with criticisms and suggestions, half of which the writer would be ready to abandon if he gave them a second thought. But although he was alone, from long habit he allowed no reflection of all this to appear on the round and rosy face in which those high-pitched eyebrows were so incongruously set.

There was no neat docket of previous letters from Spain placed below the fresh packet. The Lord Treasurer was accustomed to rely on his memory and his broad grasp of the subject. As his fingers untied the tape, he would be remembering the state of things in Spain when he had last had letters. French forces converging on Barcelona from every direction, both by land and sea, Charles III shut up in the city, Peterborough in Valencia urging him to come out; that would be the situation he remembered and one may guess that the most important thing in the whole of the last packet had perhaps been Peterborough’s letter to Charles—one page that was worth reading in a great deal that would have been better not written:

I cannot help offering to your Majesty an advice, which will appear extraordinary. I find many that would propose ways to lose all in our present circumstances, which is to march part of our troops towards Catalonia. I confess, Sir, I would have your Majesty in the present conjuncture take a resolution as extraordinary, as that which brought you before Barcelona.

I would not have your Majesty go to Lisbon; but embark in some clean ships I have prepar’d for that purpose, some careen’d at Argiers and in other places, and with a fair wind endeavour to gain the first Land in Portugal, putting yourself at the head of the 25,000 which are in good condition on the borders of Portugal. The Enemy have but 5,000 men on that side of Spain in Arms; affairs well chang’d in our favour, I doubt not but your Majesty wou’d soon arrive at Madrid.

Sir, at first this has an extraordinary appearance; but the voyage from Denia to that part of Portugal may be perform’d in a week without hazard, no vessels of France being upon this Coast. I see nothing so great, nothing so secure for your Majesty. But, Sir, the utmost Secrecy is necessary; and I wou’d have no body trusted but the Portuguese Embassador, whose Vanity wou’d perhaps be touch’d, to see the finishing Stroke from his own Country . . . This, Sir, perhaps was the finest Stroke in Politicks that any Age has produc’d, and the least expected; and which might even give the quickest relief to Catalonia, which wou’d not be so vigorously attack’d if your Majesty were in Person elsewhere. . . .

Valencia, March 13th.

That had been the proposal, and a strangely unselfish one, for the glory of bringing the King to Madrid would have gone to Lord Galway and the Portuguese. But clearly the proposal had not been accepted. He need not read many pages of the new packet to see that.

The first letter addressed to himself and from Lord Peterborough was dated April 8th. Even if he had not known the handwriting, even if there had been no signature, it would have been perfectly clear who had written it before you had read very far. On the first page, Lord Peterborough wrote:

The first money I touched came two nights ago. Judge, my lord, our severe trial—information of a flood of enemies from all parts, without a letter in five months, without any assistance of men or money, without any ground for hopes, with a most wretched minister influencing a young king frighted out of his senses, the Prince of Lichtenstein, assisted by a mad Spaniard, the Count of Cifuentes, having with more than German pride, and ignorance baulked and disgusted the Catalans, our only refuge, we owe our safety to the virtues of the officers, to the courage and discipline of the troops. We have been this ten weeks in the field against an enemy twice as strong without the desertion of one man to the enemy or ten men dead of sickness. . . .

So it ran on, telling once more the tale of the campaign in Valencia and the successes which had followed. Then:

I send your Lordship letters of the King, the Prince of Hesse, Lichtenstein and Cifuentes; these and mine to the Duke of Savoy give a full account of our circumstances. Everybody here thinks them desperate, they are—

Here the reader puzzled over a word, gave it up, and went on:—

and dangerous but I will not despaire of playing this critical game to your satisfaction. I have other ideas than some people and another practise in war than the common road. As foolish as it seems, I dare flatter myself for a stranger I have a good interest in Spain, I have done what I could to deserve it . . . I have such assurances from the Spaniards as one would hardly believe they would give to a foreign heretick . . . I would wager some money on Madrid in June . . . Of Barcelona you will see my opinion in my letter to His Royal Highness the Duke of Savoy.

There was a good deal more of it; everything depended on the fleet, but the fleet, he feared, were gone a-galleon-hunting. More about money and accounts, but on this subject Lord Peterborough’s thrusts were very wild and his blade never for a moment looked like slipping under the guard of his adversary and employer. And he soon changed the subject; he would like a repetition of the instructions previously sent him to act only on the recommendations of a council of war; this would be a protection against unreasonable demands from the Court.

At last the end of the letter was in sight. ‘This moment I take post for Catalonia.’ At last the final paragraph:

returning a thousand thanks for all your favour and the zealous and hearty assistance you have given to our labour. . . .

The head was raised; there came the moment’s pause, memorizing and reflecting, but nothing in the face showed whether that last paragraph was taken as an ironic impertinence. The fingers turned on, the head bent to read the letter to the Duke of Savoy which gave Lord Peterborough’s views on Barcelona. It was in French.

Your Royal Highness will see by the letters I send you the state of affairs here. The Duke of Anjou and the French have done their utmost, all has been against us, our ships have been blown all winter out to sea by tempests and have reached Lisbon late. It is only a few days since I received the least money to support the troops, I have not received a reinforcement of one man and our fleet and our reliefs have not come even yet.

My greatest difficulties and my greatest hindrance come from our German ministers. Your Royal Highness has sufficient experience of them, but I can say with truth that their pride, their ignorance, have never burst out before as they have done now. Please God they will not lose their Master. Your Royal Highness will see something extraordinary, one King who besieges, another who defends the fortress.

. . . the breach of Barcelona is still open, Montjuich without the least fortification, the capital without garrison, the King with few troops and without money, all the preparations they have seen fit to make have been in the direction of Lerida, and as the commands of the King have sent me to Valencia, which I have preserved for him by a miracle, they have given orders regarding Catalonia themselves and even, contrary to the orders I had given, they have kept in Lerida or nearby four thousand of our troops, so that the enemy has been able to pass them by and make direct for Barcelona, leaving behind him Lerida, Tortosa and Tarragona.

I had warned the King and his ministers in repeated letters that the enemy would do this . . . but they delayed so long to reach a decision that now the King cannot be withdrawn.

The reason that the French have taken this rash step is the necessity in which they find themselves and the retreat still open to them to France by Roussillon. I assure Your Royal Highness that the Ministers have done all that is possible to ruin the best enterprise that ever was and that our affairs have a very dangerous look but your Royal Highness will do me the honour to believe me when I tell you that I give the Duke of Anjou up for lost. God knows what will happen to the person of the King. I have done my duty and perhaps more than that. I am going now with six hundred good horse to see if I can save him. I did my utmost to make His Majesty leave the place, I could not get him to do it, one must have patience.

Barcelona may be taken easily or make an extraordinary resistance, I protest I do not know which of the two; a great number of Catalans will go into the town and will do well or will do badly, there are fifteen hundred English got in by the extraordinary pains that have been taken. But I will answer for it to Your Royal Highness that the return of the French through Aragon will be difficult. They will find some friends waiting for them in the defiles when they try to go back; I shall have four thousand good troops behind them and all the country. Their army consists of sixteen thousand men, but they have first to take Barcelona and put a garrison there, and it seems to me that by taking Barcelona they give me the rest of Spain in exchange for half Catalonia. This will be if the Spaniards do not lose heart in the event of some fatal accident to the King’s person.

The letter went on to enumerate the troops the Allies would have in Spain when the fleet arrived with reinforcements. These were to be landed near Valencia, ready for the advance on Madrid that would follow as soon as the French fleet had been beaten or chased away; by then all Spain would be in the hands of the Allies. But returning to the immediate situation, Lord Peterborough wrote:

I find myself in a situation so remarkable that I am forced to dream of the most dismal accidents. God preserve His Majesty; his subjects know and will see what I have done and what I will do for his service, but it is my duty to tell Your Royal Highness that in case of his death (with very little help but it must be prompt) I shall give Spain to him who ought to have it. I ask only fifteen hundred good horsemen, with horses, weapons and equipment, and I will answer for the rest . . . If the fleet arrives, in this same fatal contingency, I shall send it to fetch him who has the most interest, who knows best the public interest which he has so gloriously sustained .. . [and so on] . . . . In this matter I know already the feelings of the Spanish. Your Royal Highness will believe that I shall not be found lacking in my duty. . . .

The worst case for the public good that could arise would be a King of Spain who was a captive. The game will be difficult and delicate. I can only say I will do my best and Your Royal Highness will often have my news. . . .

As this strange letter came to an end in a flurry of compliments, Godolphin raised his head and for longer than usual gazed before him across the room. But for long that he pondered, nothing in his face showed what he thought of the man who could combine in the same letter such profound strategic insight with such devastating indiscretion and could crown all by gaily sending a copy of his essay in king-making to the government he had not thought fit to consult. All Europe believed that the French had brought off a most skilful concentration of forces against Barcelona and that once Barcelona fell, Spain was in their hands. Lord Peterborough, alone was confident that once the fleet came, the French in Spain were lost, that Spain was in the hands of the Allies, that he would be in Madrid before the end of June. But if the King should by ill luck be killed, why, he would give away Spain, South America, Mexico, Belgium and most of Italy, the greatest empire in the world, with a lighter heart than he would a few farms from his private estate.

Lord Godolphin bent his head to the next letter. It was from the King to Lord Peterborough.

My dear Lord, As I have often in so many occasions experimented your great Zeal and Affection for my Interest, and Person; so in the fatal conjuncture I now find myself, I place my greatest Confidence in You; hoping, that with the utmost resolution and diligence you will endeavour to succour a Prince, and without loss of Time, who (as the present hazards, I am expos’d to, demonstrate) Sacrifices himself for the Publick Interest, rather than abandon his Faithful Subjects, and what you have so Gloriously contributed to Conquer.

So it went on, full of compliments almost obsequious.

. . . Lose no time, my Lord, to come to my assistance, lest it prove too late. We want everything here, to resist, and defend ourselves for any Time. Adieu, my Lord, I hope to embrace you in a few Days, as glorious as possible: Lose no Time. I shall ever remain with the same affectionate Inclination.

Barcelona the 30th of March,
at Night, 1706.
Charles

Next came four letters from Lord Peterborough to Admiral Leake; they were all long and full of repetition, but the points to be made were few and simple:

it is highly necessary that all ships or Fleets stop at Altea, it being every way proper since any troops sent to Barcelona in the present circumstances are sent so much out of the way. . . . [received March 11th]

. . . I sent several orders by boats and ships, to signify my desire that the troops, money, artillery, stores and all relating to the land service might be landed in Altea or Denia . . . These orders were previous in time to those which perhaps you may receive from his Majesty, which I fear are the produce of land admirals . . . How unsafe it is for a fleet to come before an enemy with the incumbrance of transport ships is obvious. . . . [written April 17th]

The destiny of Spain depends upon the arrival of some thirty of Her Majesty’s ships before the taking of Barcelona. . . . [April 22nd]

By what fatality our fleet has been delay’d so long, I can’t imagine, the conquest of Spain was secure and is so still if the fleet comes before the surrender of Barcelona, whereas the King will be lost and all Her Majesty’s subjects destroyed if it arrive not in four or five days. This is our case and I have hardly time to write. There needs no order nor advice, crowding sail night and day is our only refuge . . . for God’s sake send on a clean frigate that running five leagues to the Eastwards of Barcelona in the night off of Matero might by three false lights about midnight give us notice of the approach of our fleet. I can say no more, a day may prove our ruin or the enemy’s. [April 28th, 1706]

Now came a letter from King Charles to Admiral Leake, written on May 4th:

It seems by the movements of the enemy that they have already received news of the approach of the fleet, but, instead of drinking of their retreat, they have redoubled their operations and their fire on the breach, which, by tomorrow or the day after at latest, will be fit to be stormed, and the said enemy according to all appearance will make a desperate bid to make themselves masters of the town before relief can come with the fleet. You will see the absolute necessity of making every possible effort and all possible speed to bring me help as soon as possible and to bring the fleet, the troops, and everything that is to be disembarked, straight to my town of Barcelona, without stopping or putting the said troops on shore elsewhere, as others will perhaps see fit to instruct you, where they can never be so necessary as in this town, which without help is in the last extremity. . . .

And now for once Lord Godolphin abandoned his usual method of reading one letter carefully through before he started the next; he turned quickly through the pages till he had three letters before him. One was from the brother of Mr. Robert Walpole at the Admiralty; he had just gone to Spain as secretary to Mr. Stanhope, and here is his news letter, sent to one of the secretaries of state, Mr. Edward Southwell, who has sent it post-haste to the Earl of Nottingham, who has sent it on to the Lord Treasurer.

Not above two days ago there scarce appeared one speck of blue to give any hopes not only of the preservation of the town but even of the King’s person and consequently of the whole Spanish monarchy. And yesterday the heavens brought with our fleet and forces life and spirit to the whole affair . . . Our fleet of fifty sail of the Line of battle was obliged to anchor in the bay of Alfaros near Tortosa the 6th instant; the next day Mr. Stanhope received letters from the King . . . Nothing could be done without a fair wind, which in a very few hours blew to our wishes. . . .

Now a letter from Sir John Leake to the Admiralty. It was dated from Barcelona.

. . . I called a council of war wherein it was resolved to stay until Sir George Byng joined me, which he did with all the ships under his command by 10 o’clock the next morning and at noon we bore away for Tarragona. The two days following we had hard northerly winds which drove us back as low as Altea . . . The 8th May I got to this place and in a lucky time to preserve it from falling into the enemy’s hands, for they expected to have been stormed the same night. Count Toulouse, with the fleet under his command, which consisted of about 28 sail, retired the night before, but if it had pleased God that the wind had continued that brought Sir George Byng to me, I believe I should be able to give you a much better account of his strength. . . .

Another letter from Sir John Leake:

I forgot in my last to acquaint you that my lord Peterborough came aboard me when I was within but three leagues of this place and hoisted his flag for that day . . . I shall take the best care I can, as well as of the fleet, as not to have any disputes with his Lordship. . . .

And now a letter in an unfamiliar writing, an odd writing with the small round letters separate like print; sent in a separate packet, from the Envoy in Berlin, Lord Raby. By a freak of chance it must have come in the same ship as those from Turin, which had perhaps been delayed in Holland by contrary winds. The signature meant nothing to Lord Godolphin, but it was clear in a few lines that it was from the lieutenant-colonel of Lord Raby’s regiment; he glanced at the signature again; ‘Awbyn’,—no, it meant nothing.

My lord Peterborough hovered about the town with eight hundred horse and sixteen hundred foot for ten or twelve days pretty near the enemy’s camp. All that time we could not throw in but about 400 Neapolitans in some boats, one half galleys, which went in the night and were attacked and fifty of the men taken. Since then the enemy were so watchful that it was impossible to introduce any more by sea and by land it was judged impracticable, the enemy having above 4000 horse and having fortified all the avenues and posted foot and cannon in most of them. I do not doubt but the King repented the resolution he had taken, contrary to my lord’s advice, that he would not come out when he could and now he could not when he would, for the people watched him very narrowly, thinking that as long as the King was with them, Lord Peterborough would venture, rather than lose him, to attack the enemy with the few standing forces he had, seven or eight thousand miquelets without and as many would sally from within. This was also the opinion of all the country gentlemen, but all the English and Dutch officers in the council of war were against it except an humble servant of yours, who thought it was much better to venture that than to lose the King and be exposed to the fury of the country people, which I believe would have cut us all to pieces . . . Those of the contrary opinion could not believe that the miquelets would have engaged more heartily than they did at the business when Major-General Conynghame was killed, when they stood on top of a hill as expectators. I leave your Excellency to judge the trouble and anguish my lord Peterborough was in, specially after a very moving letter from the King, for he was offering to take his leave as an undone man and by sea, which was the only way left and would have put him in much danger if the people had perceived it, for they would have seized him and sacrificed him. For they began to say openly that we were come into their country only to betray them to the enemy . . . that the English had framed a Perkin upon them, that this was but a schoolboy whom they had brought along with them to act the Archduke, who would not be such a fool to come so far like a Don Quixote with but a handful of men. Great indeed was the sweat we and those of the town were in, when God was pleased to send our fleet most opportunely when the breach was almost good enough to be assaulted. We now began a little to cool, though they continued to batter and we to sweat. Four days later their army went in the night in the most shameful manner leaving more artillery and provisions and ammunition of all sorts than ever was left at the raising of a siege, thirty-seven battalions and above forty esquadrons, without contriving some secure way to destroy four thousand barrels of powder . . . About ten in the morning there came an eclipse, so dark for a time one could not see to read; this enabled the miquelets to escape who had attacked them from the hills and even in the plains with a great deal of courage and a great many had been cut off having been surrounded by the horse but then came the eclipse.

Lord Godolphin read on. It had come about just as Lord Peterborough had foretold. When the fleet came, the army of the Bourbons had fled incontinently towards the frontiers of France. By now perhaps they were already across the Pyrenees. The Sun, the emblem of the Bourbons, the Sun of the Sun King, the Great Monarch, had been darkened in the hour of that great affront to his armies, the greatest next to Blenheim they had yet suffered, for Ramillies was not to come for a few days yet. In the whole of Spain, there were left to the Bourbons only the Duke of Berwick, with five thousand horse near Madrid, and de las Torres, still before Valencia with an army that had melted now to but four or five thousand men. That was all, and Galway and Das Minas had twenty-five thousand in the west, Peterborough was reinforced, and the road lay open to Madrid from either side.

The Lord Treasurer read on. One may guess that he saw all that was now possible; that he remembered that one man only had foretold it all. But perhaps in that masterful comprehensive brain, even as he pictured the rejoicings in the City, the service in St. Paul’s, the grateful address in both Houses of Parliament, even as he framed his own message of congratulation, as he calculated the cost of the state coach and present of plate, of the post of Ambassador with sumptuary allowance, all the rewards of the victor, perhaps at the same time he was drawing up another bill, one that would be shown secretly to Marlborough and no one else, one to be kept in a drawer of the mind till it was presented, a bill that ran:

• He has quarrelled with the King’s ministers.
• He has insulted and endangered the King.
• He has quarrelled with the Fleet.
• He has been reckless of money.
• He has offered the throne of Spain to a foreign prince without consulting the Queen.
• He has criticized the Queen’s ministers to a foreign prince.

And at the foot of that mental bill, one may picture him drawing a red fine and setting down the conclusion:

• Give him more rope.

Chapter V

Barcelona

May 1706

To his great content, Colonel Awbyn was in the same lodging he had had when they were first in Barcelona, just over six months ago. He liked the people and it was pleasant to come back where things were familiar and where there was a friendly welcome. On May the 18th, he was sitting once again at his table, writing to Lord Raby; nothing had been moved, nothing but the season had changed since December. Again, the girl of the house came into the room, bringing this time neither lamp nor brazier, but jugs of cooled wine and cooled water. He thanked her with a smile and went on with his letter.

He had written a week ago the tale of how the siege had ended, keeping to himself his reflection that it was very like the affair of Sennacherib’s army before Jerusalem. True, Sennacherib had not actually begun the siege, having only sent a strong advanced guard under Rabshakeh to call on the garrison to surrender. But his superiority in numbers had been even greater than Tessé’s and his departure as sudden. The Catalans were already talking of a miracle, which to Awbyn seemed superstitious. There were, after all, sound military reasons why Tessé—and for that matter Sennacherib—should go, nor did that make his defeat any the less God’s purpose. In fact, Awbyn preferred a God whose will made sense to a soldier. But all this he had kept to himself; his letter had ended rather hastily, as the Mary galley was leaving next morning, and he had had no time to tell his colonel anything of regimental affairs. Now, more at leisure, he had written of the aftermath of the siege, of the hundred brass cannon the enemy had left, of the barrels of flour and other provisions, and of the terms in which Marshal Tessé had written to Lord Peterborough begging him to look after his wounded and save them from the fury of the miquelets. Having disposed of all this he could give Lord Raby the news of the regiment and ask for his orders.

It was with a certain grim satisfaction that he mentioned the fate of a man who had been a dragoon in the regiment and who had caused him a good deal of thought. The man, one Campbell, had put his hand on his sword as though to draw it upon a sergeant. This had been during the march from Valencia, when, although not exactly in the presence of the enemy, they were on conditions of active service. It was an offence punishable by death under the articles of war and the man had been tried in San Colgad by a court-martial composed mainly of officers from other regiments. But the court had in Colonel Awbyn’s opinion evaded their responsibility most shamefully, merely finding him guilty and leaving his punishment to the discretion of his commanding officer. After careful thought and consultation with the other officers, Colonel Awbyn had had him whipped and turned out of the regiment. To turn a man out of the regiment in a foreign country might seem to show no consideration for what became of him, but everyone had known that he would have no difficulty in reenlisting in the Foot. This he had done, and now within a month he had been hanged for robbery and murder, so the regiment had certainly been well rid of him.

Clothes were Colonel Awbyn’s next concern; they were always a worry and now it was really becoming desperate. There was nothing for it but to send an officer to England by the next ship, and Awbyn begged Lord Raby to give his agent full instructions, and a wide liberty beyond them, to help in every way he could. But however hard anyone tried, it really seemed now beyond any hope that they should be re-clothed in time for the triumphant entry into Madrid and ‘it will be a pity’, he wrote, ‘to show a Royal Regiment in rags in Madrid’.

He wrote like this because everyone was quite sure now that they would be in Madrid by the end of June and because he could name no reason why they should not. But somewhere deep in his heart was the seed of a doubt. He had been certain of God’s help when everything had been against them; now he was aware, if he would have admitted it, that that certainty had gone. Even in answer to a question, he would have denied it; there could be no question of asking himself when it had gone or why. But to his Protestant mind the world was always a place from which man must win bread and ease by his own sweat and danger, and perhaps somewhere deep within him lay an unacknowledged feeling that now it was all too easy, that life was not like that.

He pulled out the watch Lord Raby had given him after his first year as lieutenant-colonel of the regiment. It was almost time to go to dinner at Major Warren’s lodging. He put back his watch and obeying a rare impulse drew out the flat gold case he wore at the other end of the chain; it contained a miniature of Gabriel, painted on ivory, her wedding present to him. Gazing at those features, so delicate and so gay, he felt the deep tenderness and pity one feels for a child. He must sell out soon; it was not fair to a young woman, this life. He snapped the thin case to, put on his coat and went out to dinner.

The talk was all of the council of war that had been held that day in the King’s presence. Everyone knew the issues to be decided, of which the most important was whether the advance on Madrid was to be by way of Valencia or Aragon. Everyone knew that my lord had strong views on this point, that he had already held a council of war of flag officers and captains on board Sir John Leake’s flagship, the Prince George, and from them obtained the decision he wanted. And since he had spoken in advance to every member of the King’s council of war who would listen to him, since it was known how well he now stood with the King, all past differences being for a brief moment forgotten in the glory of Tessé’s departure, there had been little doubt that he would carry the council with him today.

My lord had good military reasons for preferring the advance by Valencia; quite apart, as Peter had been heard to say, from three or four very charming reasons that were not military at all. If you measured in leagues, it did not make much difference whether you went by Saragossa, the capital of Aragon, or by Valencia. But though no shorter, it was a good deal quicker by Valencia. The coast road became increasingly easier as you neared the city, and from Valencia to Madrid the road by Requena was as good as any in Spain. But by Aragon it was mountains all the way, every day’s march a long toilsome climb followed by as long a descent to the next valley, so that it took twice the time for a loaded mule to get to Madrid.

That was not all. The fleet could take stores straight to the city of Valencia, where magazines could be built up and every thing prepared for the next step in a quarter the time that would be needed for magazines of the same size at Saragossa. That was a point that occurred to everyone, but there was another, almost as important, which an Englishman did not appreciate till it was explained to him by a Spaniard.

Every town as far as Valencia had now either declared for Charles or been reduced, while the city itself, though impatient to see the King, had grown used to the presence of his Viceroy and would be ready to let him go on quickly to Madrid. But if he went by Saragossa, it would be quite different. The kingdom of Aragon had not surrendered her old rights to the King so easily as Castile. If he went that way, every little town would expect the King to halt at its gates while they deliberated whether to declare for him; when they had reached the inevitable conclusion they would be hurt if there was not a week of rejoicing. And at Saragossa itself, they would insist on calling the Cortes and the King would have to confirm the ancient liberties of Aragon. It would all take time.

These were good reasons for going by Valencia, because everyone was agreed that now the thing was to get quickly to Madrid. Catalonia and Valencia were for Charles already, Murcia and Andalusia would follow as soon as they dared, the people of Aragon were favourably inclined and wanted only the chance to be flattered a little and to assert their rights. For all that there would be plenty of time after Madrid. But Madrid was the crux; the Castilians were tired of French courtiers and were half ready to accept an Austrian King who did not mean to split the Spanish empire. If Charles went quickly to Madrid before the French had time to gather fresh forces, Spain was his.

No one questioned that, or at any rate not openly. But no secret was made of the preference felt for Aragon by the Court party, headed by the Prince of Lichtenstein and the Count of Cifuentes. The arguments they put forward were that here was a province, one of the two most important in Spain, which lay in their way; it would be a slight that would alienate the Aragonese for ever, to go by way of a province that had been a tributary of the Crown of Aragon. Valencia, they argued, had already declared, but Aragon hung in the balance. Those were the arguments they had used on every possible occasion in the days before the council of war, but in the opinion at least of the English their real reasons were less respectable. It was probable that when they reached Madrid, the King’s ministers would find they must give place to Castilians; they were naturally anxious to postpone that unhappy day and in the meantime to do the best they could for themselves. The Prince of Lichtenstein was already said to be selling the same places twice over, which even he would hardly have regarded as good business if he had expected to stay in office long. And if these really were the considerations that influenced the Court party certainly there were likely to be more pickings in Aragon than Valencia. Valencia being a tributary province, there were fewer appointments to be made and many of them had been filled already without payment of a pistole. Further it had always to be remembered that Major-General Basset y Ramos had been there before them. He had taken the cream and only the blue skim milk was left.

All this was generally believed by the English, and Lord Peterborough himself had frequently expressed it as his own opinion. But it may well have been that there was also another motive almost as powerful, which Lord Peterborough would be the last to see. However rapacious and unfeeling the ministers might be, they were human beings and they could not be expected to welcome the presence of one high in the King’s counsels whose indifference to money and hardship, whose energy and whose courage were in such contrast with their own qualities and who seldom missed a chance of saying or writing just what he thought of them. It was not unnatural therefore that they should prefer to go to Madrid through a kingdom that would give its homage direct to Charles, the King from whose glory they drew warmth, rather than by one that had already accorded almost idolatrous popularity to their rival.

It might perhaps be because their motives could hardly be stated openly and they felt themselves on weak ground that at the council of war the Court party did not press the arguments they had urged beforehand. On the other hand, they may have deliberately planned to give way at this stage and renew their arguments when they had the King to themselves. At any rate, they did now acquiesce in the views of the English and at dinner that night at Major Warren’s lodgings, Peter was able to announce that the decisions of the council of war were unanimous and had been approved on the spot by His Majesty. The advance was to be by Valencia and would be supported by the fleet. Seven thousand men were to remain in Catalonia, but apart from miquelets there would be six thousand five hundred troops for the campaign, and among them would be the Queen’s and Conynghame’s Dragoons. My lord would leave by sea with the infantry and the train of artillery; the mounted troops were to march by land.

‘We shall soon get to know that road,’ said Petty. ‘Once more to Valencia and back and I could find my way from village to village with no help but my nose.’

Lediard said reflectively that this strength should be enough. They would be stronger than de las Torres now, and since he had always run away when they were much weaker, there should be no difficulty in dealing with him.

‘And in any case,’ he went on, ‘my lord Galway and the Portuguese should be in Madrid before we are. It is perfectly true that my lord drew all the French troops in Spain over to this side. You were right all the time, Colonel. You were the only one of the whole army who never had any doubts or fears.’

Everyone looked at Awbyn, who said:

‘Yes, I always thought the French had made a mistake.’

‘Really, the only thing to delay us now is the business of marching,’ Lediard continued. ‘The King has only to get in his coach and drive to Madrid. But the foot and the train of artillery must have wagons and mules to go on from Valencia. There is plenty of corn with the fleet, I believe.’

‘That is the point,’ said Peter; ‘and I think it is one that has not escaped our friends. I hear—but this is for our ears only and never mind where I heard it—I hear that they will persuade the King to write to my lord, asking him to say positively that he can feed the troops in Valencia, that he can find the mules, and, above all, that he can find enough money for the King and the Court.’

‘Not easy to answer,’ said Lediard slowly. ‘We know there is much that is not ready and we know there is never enough money; say so, and they will clamour for the Aragon plan and we are back where we were. But undertake without question or evasion to do all they want, and my lord will be caught; they will hold him to it. He knows this is coming?’

Peter nodded.

Petty said with some scorn:

‘That is not the way for them to catch him. He will find it easy enough to spin them a tale to get him out of that.’

‘Didn’t they show fight at all?’ Lediard asked.

Peter shook his head.

‘Not a shot was fired. In fact, there was very little talking. My lord set out the course he suggested, the admiral made a little speech explaining that sea warfare was quite different from land warfare, and then everyone agreed to the proposals. There was some argument about the numbers for each garrison, none about any matter of principle. But we haven’t heard the last of them. They are keeping their powder dry, that’s all.’

The talk round Major Warren’s dinner-table flowed on; talk of friends in Valencia they would be glad to see again, friends in Barcelona they must say goodbye to, the heat of Madrid in summer. The men would be glad to get out of the cloisters again, not that there was much to complain about in summer, but they would look forward to Valencia, a soldier’s paradise, with good quarters and soft beds, plenty of cheap wine, and the women kind as well as beautiful.

‘But we shan’t stay long in Valencia,’ said Petty and that was everyone’s feeling. Optimism was general; Lediard before they parted was speculating on next summer’s campaign in Flanders and Petty had quoted my lord’s remark about finishing the affairs of the Spanish monarchy in a year and getting back to Will’s Coffee-house in winter.

‘In fact, Colonel,’ said Peter, ‘I might as well pay you the fifty guineas I owe you. I have the money, now that subsistence has been cleared up to January, and by the time we reach Madrid I certainly shall not.’

Awbyn had not forgotten the wager but he had not thought of it for some time. He refused Peter’s offer with more vehemence than was usual for him; he did not really believe, in fact he would have emphatically denied, that Almighty God would allow His purpose to be deflected by the premature payment of a bet, but he felt it would be wrong to put his opinion to the test.

‘It would be tempting Providence,’ he said and foresaw as he said it the nature of Peter’s reply.

‘Elle est gamine, votre Providence, mon colonel,’ said he, for once breaking their rule. Petty smiled; Major Warren, who did not understand French, surprised everyone by saying firmly:

‘I quite agree with the Colonel. Nothing could be more unlucky.’

For Major Warren to speak about anything but muskets was so rare that everyone felt his opinion must be treated with respect. There was no more general talk, and a few minutes later Awbyn found himself walking home with Peter. He had been rather silent all the evening, throwing in a word now and then, but noticeably quieter than usual. Peter was careful to say nothing; he guessed that if he kept quiet James would speak in the end. He was right, but they had walked some way in silence before the colonel said suddenly:

‘I don’t like it.’

But he did not find it easy to answer Peter’s question and explain just what he did not like.

‘One never heard it in Flanders,’ he said. ‘All this plotting and talk. In Flanders, if one asked what they were going to do next, it meant the Queen’s enemies. Here it means the King’s ministers.’

And that was all he would say.

It was on May the 29th, less than three weeks since the day of the eclipse and Marshal Tessé’s flight, that the fleet sailed from Barcelona, Lord Peterborough flying his flag in the Somerset and Admiral Leake in the Prince George. The day before this, the Queen’s Dragoons and the rest of the mounted column had left Barcelona for the south.

As they rode past the general, it might have seemed to a citizen of Barcelona, watching from the roof of a house, that there had not been so very much change in the regiment since that December morning six months ago when for the first time they had ridden out of Barcelona to the south. The red of their coats and saddlecloths was a little more faded now, the blue of coat-linings, ribbons and holster-caps almost colourless, but they were better mounted, the drums and oboes played as merrily, the guidon of each troop, a little tattered now, lifted as proudly in the sea breeze, tugged as insistently at the cornet’s arm.

But there was a difference the citizen would not have seen. Some of it perhaps was due to the heat, for it was the end of May, full summer, and there was a tiredness in the air, very different from the sparkle and tingle of January. It was more than heat, though, for this was the second time they had left Barcelona on the road to Madrid and nothing can recall the freshness of dawn. They were taking that road for the third time, they knew every landmark now, and there was no freshness in their thoughts.

At the head of the regiment Colonel Awbyn was conscious only of staleness, of a lack of attraction in the prospect of riding to Madrid in summer, with nothing that could be called opposition, with no enemies but heat, dust and thirst. If he had been introspective, he would have been surprised to realize how much he was stirred and braced by danger. As it was, he knew only that he felt slack and the thought of selling before very long kept recurring to him. It was a persistent thought just now.

Something he had said the night before had perhaps given away the turn his thoughts were taking; at any rate Lediard, at the head of the last troop but one, was thinking of the possibility of a vacancy in the lieutenant-colonelcy. There was the other possibility of Flanders next summer to think about as well; finally, and with some irritation, there was Major Warren. To serve under his command for any length of time would be intolerable.

At the rear of the same troop, Hedley’s thoughts ran on Fernanda just as they had done six months ago. But with a difference, for now he was unquestionably glad to go. He had always thought it would be better to end it for good but of course he had known it would start again if he did come back to Barcelona. And of course it had and in a purely physical sense it had been as good as ever—there was no one quite like Fernanda—but she had become a drag, she wanted too much of his time. He had said goodbye with genuine regret, but not because he was going away: no, what he regretted was the missed perfection of the first phase of their affair.

In the middle of the troop, Francis held aloft the guidon of crimson silk that bore a King’s badge, but his mind was not on Madrid. His head ached a little, he thought hard thoughts of Spanish brandy, and in his mind ran a song which he had heard before, which last night he had heard for the second time, sung this time by a cornet in Conynghame’s:

He pushed me, I stumbled,
He kissed me, I grumbled,
But still he kept kissing on. . . .

They left the town, they passed Montjuich; they took the road to the south, between the mountains and the sea, riding for the second time to Valencia, that was half way to Madrid, to the crown and throne of Spain. But the crown did not glitter so brightly now and the throne seemed unaccountably a little tarnished.

Part Four — The March to Madrid

Chapter I

Valencia

June 1706

Mules were what they had to think of most when they reached Valencia. The fleet had anchored in the bay on June the 4th and put the infantry and the train of artillery ashore next day; the Queen’s, Conynghame’s, and two Austro-Spanish regiments, the Guards of Zinzendorf and Moras’s Regiment of Horse, rode in on the evening of the 6th. They had taken ten days for the journey; since it had been agreed beforehand what quarters should go to each regiment there had been no need to race the fleet. The very next day they had started buying mules, or rather trying to buy them, in every village within a day’s march of the city.

During the first stay in Valencia, the dragoons had been remounted and horses had been sent to Catalonia for the mounted troops there. Some mules had been bought too, but they were nothing like enough to carry the baggage of the infantry who had now arrived, let alone the train of artillery. Valencia was a good country for both horses and mules, but not inexhaustible, and unfortunately the Allied forces left behind while his lordship was in Catalonia had found themselves hard put to it to keep Valencia, let alone sweep the countryside for mules. De las Torres had been able to recover several small towns and his patrols had been seen from the walls of the city; he had fallen back when he heard of Tessé’s flight from Barcelona, and now that Lord Peterborough had come to Valencia with reinforcements he had retreated further still into Castile. But realizing what his enemies would need most he had driven with him every mule he could find.

As if that were not bad enough, the English were short of cash, so that the best that could be done was to give half its market-price for a mule, and even of that half only half again was to be paid down at once on the spot; the rest was to be met by a bill drawn on the Commissary of Supplies, payable when he should next come to Valencia. This of course meant that only a few patriotic and ambitious noblemen brought in mules of their free will; it was too much to expect of peasants, particularly as de las Torres had run his comb through the country already. Mules really had to be seized and the peasants forced to accept payment of a quarter of the value; they preferred as a rule to take nothing, for then they had some hope of getting the animal or its true value back, while once they had accepted money, they felt they had no hope at all.

The collection of mules was thus an unpleasant task, one that no one could like. Colonel Awbyn in particular detested it; they had come to free the people of Spain from the yoke of Louis XIV and it was extremely distasteful to set about this by taking from a peasant the draught animal that earned him his bread. After a day in such employment, he was more than usually ready to dine away from his lodgings and hope for talk of something besides mules.

It was not surprising then that one evening when the Queen’s had been in Barcelona about a fortnight he should find himself in a gathering of officers from different regiments among whom was Colonel Richards of the artillery, with whom he had ridden to San Martino nine months ago to bring up the mortars. In the meantime Richards had been with Brigadier Stanhope to London on my lord’s business and had only returned with the fleet in time to relieve Barcelona. Awbyn had barely exchanged a dozen words with him since he came back. Now it happened as it had that other evening when they had first met; a noisy gathering, with much talk and many opinions freely expressed, while two men sat silent, each conscious of the other’s silence. But whereas that first evening they had been silent for the same reason, a disagreement with the general opinion, tonight there was no general opinion and the two who were silent would have been on opposite sides if they had spoken.

There was criticism that was ill-informed and optimism that was thoughtless. Why do we stay here? Why don’t we start for Madrid? Spain is ours and we needn’t hurry, we can have it when we want—those were the kind of things people were saying, from one point of view or the other. But to Richards it would be the act of a fool to join in criticism of his commanding officer in a public place, while at present he was not inclined to praise and could not share any hopes of easy success. With Awbyn it was not a matter of ambition but of temperament to withhold criticism; he would have withheld it even if he had formulated any to himself. He was, however, still far from criticizing the general; his uneasiness was still too vague to be put into words. But each interpreted the other’s silence in terms of his own, and, as before, they found themselves walking home together.

The streets of Valencia at midnight in summer were not the place for a private talk. There were many people still about, bent on pleasure or affairs; the moonlight made a sharp edge to the shadows of gables, to the blackness at the entrance to lanes and gulleys; there was movement in the shadows, there were low voices; from the houses, turned inwards in deep reserve, there came soft sounds of laughter, music, or sometimes the upward rush, the patter of falling drops, from a fountain.

The two soldiers did not speak. Their way lay together until they reached Awbyn’s lodging; he asked Richards to come in and found him a cool drink of wine. Both men took off their coats; they stepped out on to the balcony and then for two or three minutes they stood in a companionable silence, leaning on the balustrade in the milky air beneath the moon, gazing out towards the faint radiance of the distant sea. Awbyn turned to go in:

‘We have come a long way since Montjuich,’ he said.

Richards sat down and agreed. Then, warily, watching Awbyn as he spoke, he said:

‘Much further than we had a right to expect, seeing my lord had so little experience of war.’

‘Yes,’ said Awbyn. ‘Our success has been beyond all expectation.’

‘But in my judgment,’ Richards continued, still watching, ‘in my judgment, it will last no longer.’

Awbyn did not reply to this for a moment. It was his own secret feeling put into words. He passed the wine jug to Richards and then said slowly:

‘There is no reason to think so.’

‘Have we not delayed long enough already?’ Richards asked. ‘It is six weeks since the siege was raised.’

‘The King should certainly be here by now, and we should be pushing on towards Madrid by some means, mules or no mules. But the delay is not yet—serious.’ Awbyn had paused, looking for a word and had fallen back on the most cautious he could find.

‘Serious, but not yet fatal,’ Richards corrected. ‘But if the delay continues it will be fatal. And what is likely to be fatal sooner or later in any case is the bad feeling between my lord and the Court. Did you know they had raised again the question of Aragon?’

‘No!’ Awbyn was shocked. ‘But it was settled in a council of war. In two councils of war. And if the arguments for coming this way were strong then, they are twice as strong now. We have been a month getting things ready here. If we change now, that month is altogether wasted. The King could still be in Madrid in three weeks if he comes this way; if he changes and goes that way, he will be three months.’

‘That is true. And what is as bad, it gets steadily more dangerous to go by Aragon. Berwick is being reinforced every day. All the same, on the very day when he should have left Barcelona, the King writes to my lord and asks what he thinks of the Aragon project; he says he has fresh news of the favourable sentiments of the Aragonese, but of course the truth is our friends have got him to themselves now. They are with him every day. What can Mr. Stanhope and the Portuguese Ambassador do against that?’

‘If Berwick is getting reinforcements and the King goes by Aragon, we are back where we were. We shall have to conquer Spam foot by foot all over again,’ said Awbyn.

‘And it was in our hands only a month ago.’

‘Has my lord answered?’ Awbyn went on.

‘Oh, he has answered. He has told the King all the old arguments and the new ones. He has said the foot must come by Valencia, but perhaps the King might himself go to Aragon with a party of horse and come on to catch the army. That is what my lord would do. But it is not what the King will do. He was brought up in Vienna. He must do everything slowly and in state. They will go back to the Aragon plan.’

‘But it was agreed,’ Awbyn persisted.

‘That will weigh nothing with them. I tell you, nothing will go right now. Do you know that in every letter he writes my lord tells the King of the difficulty we have in getting mules? Will the Court party not seize on that? Will they not make that an excuse for going by Aragon? But nothing will make him change.’

Now that Richards had begun to talk, he was talking in earnest. He had no doubt kept his thoughts close for a long time; in Awbyn he felt he had found the one man to whom he could talk, one man who would never betray him or repeat idle gossip.

Awbyn murmured:

‘He is very little a courtier. They will never forget how he made the King change his orders in January.’

Richards went on:

‘But the money is the worst of it. The ministers in London send my lord money; they have encouraged the King to think they will support him and his Court and his troops, but they have never said how much they will give him. Now the money comes to my lord and the King knows it has come but he does not know how much is for him. My lord is told he must first pay the Queen’s troops, and the rest is for the King. But in London they do not know what it costs to make war. They have allowed nothing for transport; they think perhaps the troops can drag the guns to Madrid; they allow for corn, but not for fuel to bake it nor carts to take the bread to the soldiers in the field. All this would be bad enough, but if proper accounts were kept there would be a chance of fixing the blame where it lies. But the money destined for the King of Spain is so embroiled with the other public money that no one can say who is right and who wrong. My lord says he has overpaid the King at the expense of his private estate, and I dare say he has, but he has given no account of it to the King or anyone else. You know yourself how he has given money to officers for the men so that it has seemed to come as my lord’s bounty, and not through the hands of the paymasters. What good can come of that?’

Awbyn was silent. He was himself precise and exact in all his ways. His shirts, his nightcaps, his handkerchiefs, were numbered and he never sent a sock to be washed without making a note. But he felt no distaste for Lord Peterborough’s reckless improvidence with money, as Richards did, as nine men out of ten would have done. He felt in fact a slight irrational warmth for a man so regally prodigal, so disregardful of all common sense. And the fact that the Earl was, for an Earl in Queen Anne’s reign, very far from rich, increased if anything the warmth of that feeling.

‘How can there be good feelings between my lord and the King when things are like that?’ Richards asked. ‘I tell you, nothing can go right. Look at this expedition to Alicante. Four regiments of foot thrown away from the main purpose.’

‘It was agreed to take Alicante in a council of war.’ Awbyn’s answer came slowly, as though he were puzzling it out.

‘Yes, but by the fleet. Not the land forces. For how can they go to Alicante, a hundred miles away to the south, and at the same time westward to Madrid?’

‘They can be back by the time the King comes, to judge by what you say,’ Awbyn said gloomily. ‘But it was for mules and money he sent them.’

‘And because the country people said they could get us the port. He snaps at that—but it was not worth sending one troop of horse or one company of foot that could have gone to Madrid. It was worth sending the fleet—for they can do nothing else at present.’

There was a pause and then Richards went on:

‘He has had such a command as never subject had before and success in it far beyond what any man could have expected. Now pride and a loose pen must undo it all.’

Awbyn, in a tone of voice between sulky and reflective, said after a little:

‘But what would you have him do? He cannot start for Madrid by himself without the King. He is getting what he can together for the march.’

‘I would have him not write such letters, nor send away troops to Alicante. And I would have him clear his accounts with the King. If he would set about that as he did about the enemy that day below the bastion at Montjuich, there would be no more talk of Aragon. But I do not say it is all his fault. It is a tangle that would puzzle any man. There are orders come this week telling us to send four regiments at least to Savoy; they think in London our business in Spain is done. So it should be; and so I am afraid it is.’

There was a silence between them again and Richards repeated his opinion that nothing could go right. He was going to England again in a few days, to explain my lord’s accounts; he hoped he would not come back to Spain. This news Awbyn received with surprise and a faint distaste; there was to him something incongruous in Richards holding the views he had just expressed and accepting a confidential mission on behalf of the man he criticized. Awbyn rose to pour wine; Richards refused and in a few moments left.

Awbyn stepped out again on to the balcony, and again leaned on the balustrade, gazing at the moonlighted scene before him. The moon was behind him now; she was in her first quarter and would be setting in an hour. Her radiance showed him the tangle of houses below him, the sea a faint shining and trembling far away. The stars were clear above his head but veiled towards the horizon. He stood gazing, his mind creased by perplexity. There were things of which he was so sure that he never put them in words; the goodness of God was one and another was the badness of Louis XIV, or at least the badness of a Louis who could dominate Europe. But the purpose of God worked through the will of men fighting to make themselves free. He did not expect miracles; he wanted good men to win for sound human reasons. What he saw now was the purpose of God frustrated, the selfishness of the King’s advisers working together with all those faults in my lord which he summed up in the phrase ‘very little a courtier’, working together to spoil the glory of what had been done, to lengthen the war and postpone the day when Louis should be confined to his own dominions. He stood for a little, perplexed. Then he said, quietly but aloud:

‘When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained:

‘What is mail that thou art mindful of him; And the son of man that thou visitest him?

‘For thou hast made him a little lower than the angels, and hast crowned him with glory and honour.’

Peace came to him as he spoke and ten minutes later he was asleep; he slept peacefully until his servant called him. By the time the drums were beating the Assembly, he was outside the city walls, leading a troop to the distasteful business of getting mules.

Chapter II

The March to Madrid

July 1706

For the next ten days, the life of the Queen’s Dragoons continued without much change. The days were spent looking for mules, the circle of their search widening steadily till every other night had to be spent away from Valencia. When they were in the city, it was natural that there should be supper-parties and much talk over the wine, and hardly ever did two officers meet and drink without one or the other criticizing, not perhaps the general in person, but those in authority, those, whoever they might be, who ordered them about. The cornets of the Queen’s knew very well that if they uttered such sentiments in the hearing of a senior officer they would be sharply checked; Colonel Awbyn had spoken sternly to everyone of this disrespectful habit. But among themselves, the seniors resumed a more informed, a more reasoned, discussion, which in the end involved always a criticism of the King or the general. Why do we stay here? Why don’t we start for Madrid? Where is the King? Why is he still in Barcelona? Those were the words on everyone’s lips.

Peter de Nérac told the Queen’s how my lord grew increasingly irritable, spending the day as often as not just as they did, looking for mules in the villages like any cornet, spending the night writing angry letters to the King, to Mr. Stanhope, to the Ministers in England, to the Duke of Savoy, pouring forth to everyone the tale of his difficulties, the shortage of mules, the folly and avarice of the King’s ministers, the King’s delay in starting from Barcelona, the need for more money. He was raising two new regiments of dragoons, which were certainly needed, but for which he had no authority from England; they had to be paid from what was sent him for the authorized troops or for the King, supplemented by what he could borrow on bills of which it was never clear whether they were issued against his own estate or Lord Godolphin’s Treasury. Of these two regiments he was very proud and his letters were full of them, but there could be no question they added to his difficulties.

So things went on for a fortnight and then the blow fell. When May and June had been frittered away, on July 2nd, Lord Peterborough received a letter from the King of Spain, who by now had left Barcelona and advanced as far as Tarragona, in which he asked whether it would not be advisable to go through Valencia to Requena as quickly as possible, without even halting for a day. This letter was dated June 29th and there was nothing startling so far. But four days later there came letters from Mr. Stanhope and the Portuguese Ambassador to say that on the very day when this first letter had been written His Majesty had held a council of war at which, in spite of all their protests, he had decided to accept the advice of the majority and go by Lerida to Saragossa, the old project of Aragon. The Court party had been in the majority; it had all been settled beforehand and they had simply disregarded the arguments, overwhelming to any reasonable and disinterested person, which Mr. Stanhope and the Ambassador had advanced.

Lord Peterborough immediately wrote His Majesty an impassioned letter, begging him to come to Valencia, whence he could go to Madrid in his coach as if in a profound peace. He wrote five letters in five days, each more emphatic and with less punctuation than the one before.

But not for three days did His Catholic Majesty himself think it proper to inform the general commanding his armies of the change of plan, a change on which he had apparently decided within a few hours of asking the general’s advice on a minor point of the old plan, the plan solemnly agreed and confirmed at two councils of war by representatives of all the Allied nations. His decision, His Majesty said, was due to agreeable news from Aragon. And it was only on July 7th, in a cold and haughty letter written in the tones of the Imperial Court at Vienna, not of the young man who had displayed his valour in the breaches of Barcelona, that His Majesty informed Lord Peterborough that the change of plan was made in consequence of his lordship’s own letters. The same day the King had dispatched to Lord Godolphin a long memorial justifying himself for his change of plan on the grounds that he had been discouraged from going to Valencia by Lord Peterborough’s letters, from which he quoted some of the more injudicious passages about his difficulties. On July 18th, exactly two months after the council at which he had decided to go by Valencia, and while Lord Peterborough was still begging him to come there in letter after letter, His Majesty entered Saragossa.

It was now almost a month since Lord Galway and the Marquis Das Minas had reached Madrid and they appeared to have done nothing since then. That delay of a month, wrote Lord Peterborough, was as fatal as Hannibal’s at Capua; or, added Lord Galway’s admirers, as Lord Peterborough’s at Valencia. It was easy enough to say things of that kind; Lediard, for instance, looking at the problem simply as a soldier, as a senior commander of troops, said that just as the King should not have delayed in Barcelona nor Peterborough in Valencia, so Galway should not have halted in Madrid any longer than was necessary to instal a military governor; that he should have instructed the governor to collect bread and stores and himself at once have moved out of the city at least as far as Alcala on the Henares, between Madrid and Saragossa, where he could have decided whether it was possible to pursue the Duke of Berwick further and thus cover the King’s advance from Saragossa. While Lord Peterborough, Lediard would continue, as soon as he knew that the King was going to Saragossa, should have pressed forward with every man he could raise to join Lord Galway.

It was all very well to talk like this; looking at a map, with pins in your hand and coloured flags to stick in, there was no gainsaying a word of it. But Awbyn knew, or perhaps rather felt, that war was not like that. He had an admiration for Lord Galway, a Huguenot like himself; he knew something, and guessed more, of the difficulties of the advance from Lisbon to Madrid. He had served with the Portuguese; he knew something of the indifference of their officers to the discipline and comfort of their men, of the strange system on which the men were recruited and periodically returned to their homes, so that they were little better than militia. He had heard from a compatriot of the methods by which the Portuguese leaders had been induced to come so far from home, tempted with offers of booty, cajoled, persuaded, led step by step, the glory going always to the Marquis das Minas, the efforts, the rebuffs, to Lord Galway. He could make a guess, then, at how the Portuguese would treat the idea that they should not halt at the capital of their ancient enemies and masters, a capital they had reached, to their own incredulous delight, after an advance every step of which had seemed to them an act of the highest daring.

And Awbyn could see something too of the uncertainties in which Lord Peterborough was now plunged. In the first place, all through July, my lord still believed that it would be better for the King to come by the southern route than for the troops to go by the northern. Even as late as July 26th, when the King had been a week at Saragossa, a council of war expressed that opinion, and my lord concurred in it. His advanced troops were less than forty leagues from Madrid; indeed, one of the few gleams of pleasure he displayed during July arose from this, for, in reply to Charles’s instructions to send some of these troops to Saragossa, he could not resist writing that the shortest way for them to march would be by Madrid. But it was not only the hope that the King would still come to Valencia, or at least Requena---and it was no idle hope, for on July 17th, Mr. Stanhope wrote that the King had changed his mind, only to change it again two days later—it was not only this hope that kept Lord Peterborough by the sea; he was also sadly puzzled, as Richards had foreseen, by continual orders to send troops to help the Duke of Savoy. The Duke was in considerable danger, being besieged in Turin; to the Ministry in England it had always seemed that to keep Savoy in the war, and on the right side, was more important to England than anything else in the Mediterranean, and as the Duke’s danger grew more pressing, they became more insistent in their letters to the Earl of Peterborough. On April 2nd, May 4th, June 12th, and again June 19th, they sent instructions to dispatch regiments to Savoy, though they left the Earl some discretion as to whether he should go with them himself. And King Charles too constantly urged the importance of this project and clearly wished Lord Peterborough to go with the troops. He suggested it in his letter of July 2nd and again on the 3rd. But the movement of troops towards Madrid, he particularly said, must be as he should himself direct.

The truth was that neither Charles III, the Earl of Galway, the Earl of Peterborough, nor, least of all, the Ministry in England, saw the two dangers that were growing. The Duke of Berwick himself said later that if Galway and das Minas had continued their advance beyond Madrid, ‘ils m’auroient infalliblement chassés à l’autre côté de l’Ebro’; but they had not, and now he was being reinforced from beyond the Pyrenees much more rapidly than the Allies knew. He was soon stronger than they. But even more menacing was the growing anger of Castile.

The main concern of the Castilians, faced with the prospect of a king either French or Austrian, had been to prefer the one who would keep the Spanish Empire together and would bring in the fewer foreigners. They soon tired of the French courtiers brought by Philip and probably most of them had looked at Charles with indifference if not with enthusiasm. If he had come straight to Madrid when Barcelona was relieved, most people who knew the Castilians believed they would have made no difficulty about accepting him. But a king who for six weeks, for two months, for three months, would not take the trouble to come to his capital, a king who left it to be occupied by Portuguese and heretics and still would not come, that was too much for Castilian pride. Their anger grew steadily fiercer as the weeks went by and there were still Portuguese uniforms in the streets of Madrid but no news of the King. All through May, all through June, all through July, the King did not come. The French spread a tale that he was dead; if it had been true, it would have been the only thing that could have excused him in Castilian eyes. At last their resentment flamed even higher against the Austrians, Portuguese and English, than that of the Catalans had against the French; small parties of soldiers would be cut off by Castilian militia, every narrow pass was fortified by stockades and many thousands of men were in arms at every river crossing that lay in the way of Allied troops. All the stubborn genius of the Spanish people for an irregular war of ambuscade and night attack, all that in Catalonia and Valencia had helped the Allies and harried the French, all that now swung the other way and all over Castile was directed against the supporters of Charles.

Meanwhile in Valencia, July was a month of strain and uncertainty, during which new plans were constantly broached and rejected, and orders came constantly from the Ministry at home and from the Court in Aragon, but usually for projects mutually contradictory and both rejected by military opinion on the spot. At last, on the 26th, fresh orders came from the Court directing Lord Peterborough to take ship with all the regiments of foot on the seaboard and either go to the help of the Duke of Savoy or capture a port in the Balearic Islands. At this my lord held a council of war, who advised him, as things then were in Spain, to disregard both these orders and march to Madrid with all the available troops, at the same time once more inviting the King to come by the southern route. My lord accepted this advice and was just about to march when fresh letters came from the King begging him after all to come to his help as soon as he could and with every man he could bring. His case, he at last began to realize, was becoming desperate.

So at last the march to Madrid began.

Chapter III

Guadalaxara

August 1706

The council of war had lasted more than four hours now. The members were forty-five general officers, English, Spanish, Dutch, Austrian and Huguenot; the discussion was in French. It was a hot August evening; the heat, doubly trying to men in wigs and thick uniform coats, the fatigue of following a foreign language, the interminable discussion and the absence of any decision, all had combined to produce a state of weariness when the energy to fight a fresh argument had to be dragged up by the will from depths of torpor, when almost any plan would be welcomed, any decision that was not patently ridiculous.

Colonel Awbyn sat behind Lord Peterborough at the end of the long table furthest from the King. He was not a member of the council, but was in attendance on my lord, who had pushed on as fast as he could in the last stages of the journey with only four hundred mounted troops. During the last stages, they had heard that Lord Galway had at last left Madrid for Guadalaxara on the Henares; they had changed their route and come straight to his camp. A council had been called without delay, for with Berwick now in strength and very close it was clear that something must be done soon. Colonel Awbyn wished the table had been set up out of doors; the air in the long tent was oppressive and heavy with the smell of sweat.

They had begun with the question of command, though there had been no intention of deciding it then and there. The Marquis das Minas was the eldest general and had brought with him the largest number of troops; he had in name commanded the Portuguese and British armies in their advance across Spain, but everyone knew that it was due to Lord Galway alone that they had come so far. Galway had the senior British commission, but he was old and ill, he had recently lost an arm; he offered to serve under Lord Peterborough until the Queen should grant him permission to retire. Lord Peterborough had a Spanish commission in very wide terms from the King; he had also been prepared to dispute seniority with Lord Galway on the grounds of a commission which had been given him in the first year of the Queen’s reign, for an expedition to the West Indies which had never sailed. He found it after all unnecessary to raise tins question, in which in any case he would have been embarrassed by specific instructions in his pocket from the Queen that Lord Galway was senior. In view of Galway’s virtual resignation, he now proposed a partition of the troops into three divisions commanded by das Minas, himself and the Comte de Noailles, all under the King as commander-in-chief; it was an arrangement which Awbyn felt my lord would regard as intolerable within a week. Noailles had arrived at Barcelona with the relieving force; he was a professional soldier to whom Charles proposed to entrust his Spanish troops.

The discussion had dragged on and was no nearer settlement after an hour and a half. The council turned to consider what should be done immediately. It was a problem urgent enough, for no further away than the other side of the river lay the Duke of Berwick, now stronger than the Allies, particularly in horse. His army had come in sight before the Portuguese and British knew it was on the move; they knew nothing, so universal was the feeling in the country against them. The Duke of Berwick was still getting reinforcements, while against the Allies the anger of the Castilians was mounting, and the Portuguese, who had dwindled rapidly in Madrid, were dwindling still. Many had deserted and made for their homes; the drabs and vintners had taken toll of the rest.

In the long and rambling arguments that followed, only Lord Peterborough’s opinion had been clear. Most of the others had inclined to a battle; things were daily getting worse and perhaps the best course was to risk or lose all in one fight. Lord Peterborough alone of the forty-five generals was sure that this was exactly what the Duke of Berwick wanted. With the country hostile to the Allies, he had only to place his army near them in a strong defensive position and sooner or later, short of food and intelligence, they would attack him in desperation. That was what he was counting on; but for the Allies, it would be fatal to risk defeat in hostile country by attacking an enemy with superior numbers in a position he had chosen himself. Far better to resolve on a defensive war, falling back slowly if necessary, but when possible forcing Berwick to abandon his prepared position by slipping past him and threatening a sensitive point.

In face of this clear opinion, the council had been silent; at last they had one by one reluctantly agreed that it would be a mistake to force a battle now. Perhaps some of them remembered that discussion a year later, when, maddened by the hostility of the country, driven to fury by Berwick’s patient refusal to attack, Galway with fifteen thousand men attacked Berwick, waiting in a strong position with twenty-five thousand, and suffered a bloody and total defeat at the battle of Almanza. But that was still to come; now, the council argued on until at last, after four hours, nothing was decided and all were worn out with discussion.

Now, the rapier thrust at the heart of the bull; Lord Peterborough leaned forward and began to speak again. He had a plan; the council, weary and tormented, hardly flinched from the sword.

Madrid, said my lord, was the sensitive point. Berwick was on the right side of the Henares river to go to Madrid, the Allies on the wrong. If a force of five thousand men, which he was willing to command, moved to the crossing of the Henares by Alcala, Berwick would see at once that they were between him and Madrid and he would send a detachment to get to Madrid first. If that detachment was less than five thousand, my lord would attack it; if more, he would let it pass and then return swiftly along the string of the bow to join in the battle which the Allies would meanwhile have started against Berwick, whom they would now outnumber.

This was the plan; it held out the only promise of success that had been heard that evening. But if it was to be done at all it must be done quickly; if it were not done within twenty-four hours, Berwick himself with his whole army would move to Alcala. As to the means, my lord had few troops of his own with him; five thousand must be selected and placed at his disposal tomorrow, and must be provided with two days’ bread.

The thrust placed, my lord leaned back and surveyed the council. It was on its knees, there was no fight left in it. All round the table the great wigs nodded. The proposal was accepted. In another five minutes the meeting had broken up; everyone was anxious to get away to his own quarters.

My lord was himself again; all the old gaiety came back; he kept Awbyn and Peter talking, or rather listening, for another hour. Next morning as soon as it was light he sent an aide-de-camp to Lord Galway to ask what troops were allotted to him, what arrangements had been made for bread. Probably no definite answer to this message was expected; certainly none was received. The result of a second message two hours later was not much better. It had not been settled for certain at the council of war who was responsible for providing either the men or the bread; the morning passed in discussion of these points and by evening neither men nor bread were ready. Lord Galway and the Portuguese had already been at Guadalaxara for three weeks and they had eaten all the corn in the neighbourhood. On the second morning, the men were ready but no bread. By midday, half the bread had been provided; in the evening, they were still waiting for bread when the news came that the Duke of Berwick with his whole army had already marched for Alcala.

That was the end of my lord’s plan. The Allied army trailed down the Henares, keeping pace with Berwick, who was leading the dance now. Then they settled down again, the two armies facing each other across the river at Alcala.

On this, Lord Peterborough remarked that he thought there were quite enough generals for a stationary war and they could do without him very well. He had repeated orders from Her Majesty to go to Italy and Genoa was the only place where there was any prospect of borrowing money for the King. And next to bread, money was what the army needed most. The King wrote him a commission empowering him to borrow money on the security of any rents or revenues of any of the Spanish dominions, and in two days’ time, on August 11th, Lord Peterborough started for Italy. He was to be escorted by the Queen’s Dragoons as far as Huete; from there, most of the regiment would return, only eighty dragoons under Captain Petty accompanying my lord to Valencia. But as far as Huete they would all go.

Lord Peterborough would never drive in a coach if he could ride on horseback. He rode at the head of the column by Colonel Awbyn’s side, talking gaily, for he seemed to have put aside the cares that had made him irritable during the last six weeks. He looked forward with pleasure to a sea voyage and a change of scene in Italy. Not that he talked only of indifferent subjects; he had much to say about the state in which he left Spain. Lord Galway, he said, must fall back on Valencia and adopt a defensive war; now that the Castilians were against the Allies, there was nothing else for it in such country as this. He could not help contrasting the hostility of the country people now with their indifference or even friendliness six weeks ago when the march to Madrid should have taken place, but apart from this he talked of affairs in Spain in a detached spirit quite different from his usual fiery partisanship.

They were nearing Huete on the third day when they were met by a small body of English soldiers and servants with the news that while in Huete the whole of my lord’s personal baggage had been looted by the enemy, with the connivance and indeed in some cases the active assistance of the people of the town. It included all the equipage as Ambassador to the Court of Spain which he had brought with him for Madrid, all his plate, his carriages and barb horses, his cheeses and wine, his table and bed linen. Eight thousand pounds’ worth; four years’ rents; declared my lord, and he spurred on in great anger, determined to avenge the affront on the people of Huete.

But the news that the English general was coming with a regiment of dragoons was there before him, and he found the leading men of the town and the priests kneeling before him in a long row with joined hands, begging him in tears to forgive them, to spare their town, to accept in compensation for the loss of his goods a bag of ten thousand pistoles. And there was the bag, ready to be handed over.

My lord poured forth a torrent of angry words. He waved aside the bag of gold and a fresh burst of sobs broke from the inhabitants, convinced he meant to burn their town to the ground. At last, my lord stopped speaking. Then, very slowly, he pronounced sentence. He would not take the gold, nor accept any personal compensation, but as a penalty for their hostile act he would exact from them twenty thousand bags of corn, to be ready tomorrow, and to be taken by the townspeople of Huete to Lord Galway’s army. Having thus provided for the well-being of the army he was leaving and finally crippled his own estate, Lord Peterborough emphasized to Colonel Awbyn the importance of his repeated orders against looting and rode to his lodging.

Early next morning, Peter came to Colonel Awbyn. The colonel and all the regiment but eighty dragoons were to halt that day in Huete and to escort the corn tomorrow. Lord Peterborough would be leaving in a few minutes and Peter would go with him.

Awbyn rose to his feet. He opened a bag, drew out a purse and began to count on to the table fifty golden guineas. Peter protested.

‘There is still a month to go,’ he said. ‘It was on September 12th.’ Awbyn shook his head and pushed the money towards him. Peter took it up, for it was not a point on which a rational man could argue. He resolved to make Gabriel a present with most of it. Only a few words were exchanged; then they were in the street, riding towards the market place.

The dragoons were drawn up with Captain Petty’s eighty men for the escort on the right. Colonel Awbyn put the regiment through the mounted exercise as though they were horse:

‘Dragoons, have a care.
Lay your right hands on your swords.
Draw your swords.
Put your swords in your bridle hands.
Lay your hands on your pistols.
Draw your pistols.
Cock your pistols.
Hold up your hands.
Give fire.’

The volley rang through the morning air, already sultry. My lord spoke to them. He thanked them for their companionship in all they had shared, hopes, dangers and hardships. He did not say much but every man felt his words, because the Queen’s and no one else had been with him all the time and most of them could remember those days of madness and endeavour when they had been alone with my lord and the enemy.

Then Captain Petty was giving his orders. The five men on the right of each of the three ranks wheeled in succession to the right, making three ranks of five; then the next five and the next; the drums beat a ruffle; on the flam the eighty marched. The oboes played gaily; ribbons fluttered; the guidons lifted as they met the breeze and Lord Peterborough and his escort trotted briskly away.

Colonel Awbyn left the parade to Major Warren and went back to his quarters. He had to spend an idle day, waiting for the corn. He proposed to fill part of it by writing to Lord Raby.

He wrote:

‘It is vain for Your Excellency to send us pretty gentlemen for cornets, the Regiment is not a whit the better for them, our letters will have informed Your Excellency how we hindered Mr. Waldock to go Cornet to Harvey’s Regiment, which I believe would have been his ruin. Now having parried that blow they have put it in his head to go aide-de-camp to my lord Galway. Pray, my lord, when you send us any pretty gentlemen for officers, let it be with that condition that they shall serve with the Regiment.

‘The Regiment is in a most miserable condition. I wish you would order us new housings and caps, some more saddles, cross-belts and cartridges, all accoutrements being in pieces or lost, or rather I wish for several reasons that you would make a good peace this winter. . . .’

But in all he wrote that day he did not say a word about Lord Peterborough.

Epilogue

It was the first warm day of that season between late spring and high summer when the lilac is still in blossom and the hawthorn not yet finished. There was still gold in the leaves of the oak, the black buds still showed here and there through the ash, and the green of the beech was still fresh and delicate, clear and gay. The spring of 1736 had been a joy to Colonel Awbyn, now a man of seventy-six. He was not one who clung greedily to fife; he looked at his death fairly, spoke of it without embarrassment and knew no fear, because he believed in the goodness of God. He had never permitted himself to waste regret on orders to move to fresh cantonments and saw no reason to break the habit. But the knowledge that it would not be long now added a regretful keenness to his pleasure in the first snowdrop, in the blackthorn starry against harsh spikes, in the flood of foaming blossom when the apple-clusters opened.

It was the first warm day, and though it was still fresh and moist and Gabriel would not let him sit down in the garden, he was taking a gentle turn after dinner, very straight in the back still though slow and stiff in the joints. He went down the path to the gate between the two mulberry trees; he paused on the way, to debate whether the pleasure of sniffing the faint earthy scent of a gilly-flower was worth the pain of stooping; he decided that it was. He turned at the gate and stood between the mulberry trees looking back at the house; he was beginning to get used to the modern style of building, which at first he had disliked. The house had seemed to him square and box-like, too tall for its width, the windows big and staring, the red of the brickwork harsh, but he had submitted to Gabriel’s taste. Certainly the big, light rooms were pleasant to live in and now he was getting used to the look of the house and indeed coming to like it.

The gate clicked behind him; he was glad he was not deaf. It was Peter, who at sixty still seemed young to Awbyn.

‘James!’ he said. ‘It is pleasant to see you enjoying this fine day. But I wonder if you wish sometimes for the sun of Spain to warm your bones. I know I do, though I used to curse the heat and dust.’

‘No, said James. ‘No, I don’t think of it. The air in England is too fresh and sweet. Smell that,’—and he pointed with his stick to the gilly-flower, for he did not want to stoop again—‘smell that and forget your dust and your sunshine.’

They walked slowly round the garden. The house had been new a quarter of a century ago when James bought it from the money he got by the sale of his commission. He had had time to watch his fruit trees grow; even the mulberries and the walnut had borne fruit. This year it had been a late cold spring, but there was no harm in that; there had been no late frost and the fruit was setting nicely.

Gabriel called them in; there was a fire in the parlour and they sat down to a decanter of port and some biscuits.

‘I have something I want to read you,’ said Peter, at last. ‘It is a copy of a letter written by Mr. Pope to a friend. She showed it to a friend of mine, who copied it for me because I had been aide-de-camp to Lord Peterborough when he was in Spain. It is about his last hours in England. You know that he was cut for the stone last year before he died; I hear now that he drove in his coach from Bristol to Bath the day after the operation. The doctors told him he must not do that, but he did. They told him also he must winter in a warm climate, and to that he paid more attention. He was making plans for that journey when Mr. Pope saw him.’

‘Yes,’ said James. ‘Will you read it?’

Peter read:

‘The warmth with which he spoke on these subjects made me think him much recovered, as well as him talking of his present state as a heaven to what was past. I lay in the room next to him, where I found he was awake, and called for help most hours of the night, sometimes crying out for pain. In the morning he got up at nine, and was carried into the garden in a chair. He fainted away twice there. He fell about twelve into a violent pang, which made all his limbs shake, and his teeth chatter, and for some time he lay as cold as death. His wound was dressed, which was done constantly four times a day, and he grew gay and sat at dinner with ten people. After this he was in great torment for a quarter of an hour, and, as soon as the pang was over, was carried into the garden by the workmen, talking again of history, and he declaimed with great spirit against the meanness of the present men and Ministers, and the decay of public spirit and honour.

‘It is impossible to conceive how much his heart is above his condition. He is dying every hour, and obstinate to do whatever he has a mind to. He has concocted no measures beforehand for his journey, but to get a yacht in which he will set sail; but no place fixed to reside at, nor has he determined what place to reside at, nor has provided any accommodation for his going on land. He talks of getting towards Lyons, but undoubtedly he never can travel but to the seashore.

‘I pity the poor woman who has to share in all he suffers, and who can in no one thing persuade him to spare himself. I think he will be lost in this attempt, and attempt it he will. He has with him, day after day, not only all his relations, but every creature of the town of Southampton that pleases. He lies on his couch and receives them, though he says little. When his pains come he desires them to walk out but invites them to stay and dine or sup, &c. He says he will go at the month’s end if he is alive.

‘Nothing can be more affecting or melancholy to me than what I see here; yet he takes my visit so kindly that I should have lost one great pleasure had I not come. I have nothing more to say, as I have nothing in my mind but this present object, which indeed is extraordinary. This man was never born to the like other men any more than to live like them.’

He finished reading and there was a silence between them. Peter remained motionless with his eyes on the letter; at last he raised them to the face of the old man sitting stiff and still with his feet to the warmth. He felt he must speak and was searching for words when the silence was broken.

‘He was always very self-willed,’ said Colonel Awbyn slowly.

1. The Evidence
2. Notes on Chapters
3. The Assault on Montjuich
4. The Events of June and July 1706
5. Peterborough’s life before and after this year

I. The Evidence

I first read of Peterborough in Fortescue’s History of the British Army. It was a fascinating story and I wanted to know more. But when I looked for the references given by Fortescue, none were to be found in any library available to me in India. I turned to the Dictionary of National Biography and found that Peterborough’s military exploits rested on nothing but his own assertions, which were not to be credited.

This was still more intriguing. For Fortescue is a careful historian and essentially a sound man. He admires sound strategy based on painstaking administration and he says himself that he turns with relief from ‘the fitful if dazzling flashes of Peterborough’s eccentric genius’. He would be the last man in the world to record fairy tales of anyone, let alone of Peterborough.

It was some time before I was able to satisfy myself that Fortescue was right and the Dictionary wrong. The process was like going through the evidence in a criminal trial, and one in which almost every witness displayed strong emotions for or against the accused. I have tried throughout to be fair and to keep an open mind but I must plead guilty to one bias. I do not welcome avidly, but regard with deep suspicion, suggestions that the plays attributed in his lifetime to Shakespeare were written by someone else, that Queen Elizabeth was a man, or the Great Pyramid a prophecy foretelling that England would go off the gold standard in 1931. And in the case of Peterborough it seems to me that the burden of proof is on the prosecution; it is for them to prove that he did not in fact do what his contemporaries thought he did. It is not surprising that Peterborough had enemies in his own day, for he never curbed his tongue and he was consistent in little except a curious kind of misplaced honesty that put him almost always in opposition to authority. But it is surprising, and I think a tribute to the brilliance of his personality, that he should have aroused such violent feelings among historians. For no one has written of him who does not show a degree of positive liking or dislike that is usually kept for living persons.

But let us forget the historians and go back to contemporary evidence. The first witness is Dr. John Freind, who was the general’s physician in Spain. On his return, Peterborough gave Freind his papers and Freind produced An Account of the Earl of Peterborow’s Conduct in Spain, followed by The Campaign in Valencia. Political controversy was raging at the time; the Tories wanted Marlborough’s blood because he was too great a man to be a party politician and they set up Peterborough, who had been recalled, as a martyr and the Tories’ general. Peterborough, though an arrant Whig—a lifelong Whig in the sense in which Lucifer was the first Whig, and up to now a Whig in the party sense as well—accepted their championship and Freind must be read in the light of the resulting conflict.

‘The Account’ is counsel’s speech for the defence; it does not profess to be impartial and contains little direct narrative. It marshals the evidence and makes deductions. The evidence consists of letters and the minutes of councils of war and is of course carefully selected but sound so far as it goes. The opinions are those of a partisan, an extreme admirer, and the judicially minded will dilute them to taste.

The Campaign in Valencia, however, is on quite another footing. It is a narrative, by Dr. Freind, an eye-witness. Counsel has come into the witness-box, and to my mind the most important point about his evidence is that it was not questioned for more than a century after his death. Lord Mahon, in his War of the Succession in Spain (1832), and Macaulay, in his essay reviewing that book, take the ‘Leave it to your Mistresses’ letter and the rest at their face value. In spite of recent doubts, it seems to me there are good grounds for doing the same.

In the first place, Dr. Freind had a reputation of his own. He had published works on logic as well as medicine; he is the subject of an article in the Dictionary of National Biography. Swift, whose amiable weakness it was to count up in exile the number of his distinguished friends, has left a list of men he was proud to have known. In this Freind shares a place with Pope, Congreve, Vanbrugh, Gay and Wycherley, as well as Harley, St. John and Peterborough. This is not to argue that distinguished men do not publish what is false; it is, however, unlikely that distinguished men will publish falsehoods that are bound to be found out. Freind published in 1707; the campaign in Valencia took place in 1706. If there was no letter to Colonel Jones, no elaborate stratagem at Murviedro, surely, in an age of bitter faction, someone would have said so. Stanhope must have known what happened; he was a voluminous correspondent, a Whig of the Whigs, a member of Parliament and at one time Lord Treasurer, on bad terms with Peterborough after his recall; yet he never said a word to impugn Freind’s evidence. Loyalty to an old chief might have restrained Stanhope, but Peterborough had plenty of enemies. Yet not one of them asked a few questions of some old soldier and unmasked the tissue of fiction that Freind had woven.

Further, in 1712 there was published An Impartial Enquiry into the Conduct of the War in Spain, a publication as far from being impartial as Freind’s. It is actually a vindication of the Whig ministry, and as far as Peterborough is concerned, may be reckoned as counsel on the opposing side. It is an able piece of pleading and quotes many letters; but though it questions their value it does not attempt to deny that the Valencian events took place.

Freind is the only witness for Peterborough’s part in three of the four adventures (no other word will do) that happened between Tortosa and Valencia. But for the fourth (Nules) he is confirmed in every detail by St. Pierre, and it may be taken as proved that Nules did surrender more or less in the way Freind describes. But Nules would hardly have surrendered unless Peterborough had taken steps to persuade the enemy that he was following with a large force, and if Freind is confirmed on one point he may well be believed on the other three. Then there are the minutes of the council of war at Albocacer and St. Pierre’s two accounts of it, which again support Freind. This, however, is to anticipate, for St. Pierre is the fourth witness; the second is Captain George Carleton.

Carleton published his memoirs in 1728, twenty years after the event, when he was himself seventy-six. It would be strange therefore if he were accurate in every detail. He supplements Freind by a narrative account of the assault on Montjuich, refers rather sketchily to the campaign in Valencia, and gives more detail, and some good stories, of what happened after Peterborough entered Valencia for the first time. For the campaign in Valencia, he does not claim to have been present, as he does for Barcelona and the later part, and he clearly wrote with Freind before him, for he quotes almost verbatim from the minutes of the council of war at Albocacer. It is convenient to conclude at once that for the Valencian part of Peterborough’s story, Carleton’s evidence has little value.

As to the rest, there has been much dispute. Carleton has an ear for a story and a lively interest in his surroundings; he is a good traveller and journalist and he is certainly readable. Dr. Johnson said of Carleton’s book that he sat up till he had read it through and found in it such an air of truth that he could not doubt its authenticity. Sir Walter Scott was of the same opinion, but by 1830 this liveliness appears to have bred suspicion; the theory was put forward that Carleton’s Memoirs were fiction, on the model of Gulliver and Crusoe. Defoe was suggested as the author by Lockhart, Scott’s biographer; some forty years later Colonel Arthur Parnell proved to his own satisfaction that Swift was responsible.

Some of Colonel Parnell’s arguments have been demolished by facts that have since come to light; there is no doubt that there was a real Carleton whose presence can be verified at most of the incidents he mentions. No one now believes that either Swift or Defoe wrote the Memoirs, and I do not myself see how anyone with an ear for a sentence could ever have supposed they did. It seems to me that Carleton reads like the first book of a man with some natural talent for writing; there are passages of action or description in good plain prose and then he pulls himself up, remembers that though only a half-pay captain he had a good education, and works in a Latin tag or a piece of that pretentious elegance that was often a danger to eighteenth-century writing.

But this is not the place for a detailed consideration of Carleton’s authenticity. The question is admirably discussed by A. W. Lawrence in his introduction to Carleton in the Traveller’s Library; he concludes that ‘there is no good reason to suppose that the memoirs are not as trustworthy as any book could be, allowing for the conditions under which they are written’—that is to say, the age of the writer. The only qualification I would add is that some of Carleton’s enthusiasm for Peterborough does strike me as a little over-done. But it is easily accounted for. Picture the garrulous half-pay captain telling his tales over the wine in Dublin, urged by his friends to make a book of them, diffident of his chance of success and unwilling to risk a rebuff. He would be likely to ask the advice of a bookseller; he might even, though it is pure guesswork, have spoken to the great Dr. Swift, whose reputation in Dublin was then at its height. But whoever he approached would suggest that if he did ample justice to Lord Peterborough he could be sure of one noble patron with many friends among the wits. And it is reasonable to infer that this not unnatural motive did heighten his expression of an honest and spontaneous admiration.

I am concerned here not with Carleton’s literary gifts, which are considerable though intermittent, but with his value as a witness. I rate him as honest though partial, conceited, talkative, sometimes inaccurate, not a good witness; definitely the least valuable of the four main contemporaries, if only because he wrote long after the event. But he provides useful confirmation and occasionally fills in a picturesque detail. His account of the assault on Montjuich is discussed in more detail in another note.

The third witness is Colonel Richards, whose diary, memorial and letters came to light only in the nineteenth century. They are in manuscript, in the Stowe collection in the British Museum. They are of the utmost value, far above the two former witnesses for the period they cover. For Richards, although in Peterborough’s confidence, was in the later stages of the campaign a sharp critic. ‘The conduct of the great men in this Catalonian war’, he writes, has been so very much out of the way that one may plainly perceive that God Almighty would not leave us so much as a pretence to that glory . . . of which we might otherwise have boasted. He writes his diary daily during the period of the first siege of Barcelona, missing only when kept in bed for a few days with a hurt to his leg—and even then writing letters. An admirable witness, but he was sent to England immediately after Barcelona was taken, on a mission to raise money and reinforcements. He and Brigadier Stanhope were away until the relief of Barcelona in May 1706, so that neither of them can give direct evidence about the Valencian campaign. But they must have heard what had happened.

Lieutenant-Colonel de St. Pierre, the fourth witness, ought to be even more useful than he is. His diary was found among his papers long after his death and not published until the second half of the nineteenth century. He heads it with a note in French—he was a Huguenot:—‘Règles qui doit observer un historien.’ And his historian must be precise, impartial, clear, without ornament or favour. Perhaps it is to comply with this standard that St. Pierre never refers to his own part in what takes place and never says what he has seen. Even his own promotion is mentioned in the third person. He cannot resist including the conversation with Lord Peterborough described by Colonel Awbyn in the first chapter of my story, but he says it happened to ‘a certain officer’. The human touches, his concern for his men, for the appearance of his regiment, for the quality of his horses, creep in, however, in spite of his resolutions, and he tells a good story the moment he gets away from what was under his own nose. His accounts of Basset y Ramos and the business of Villa Real are admirable, but he really ought to tell us more about the Valencian campaign, for he commanded the Royals and must have heard what happened when the strengths were two hundred to five thousand. He confirms the Nules adventure in detail but says nothing about the episode of the drunken dragoons. As to San Mateo and Murviedro, he describes both affairs as you might expect of a regimental officer who was not aware of the general’s plans, and the only point in his evidence that would lead one to suppose that a stratagem had taken place is his marked surprise that the enemy with such superiority of strength should not stay to fight. A sticky witness, from whom the truth must be dragged by questioning; but what he does give us is all the more valuable.

St. Pierre’s diary is supplemented by his letters to Lord Raby, Colonel of the Royals, in Berlin. He lets himself go a little more in these, but still leaves much unsaid. The letters continue for some time after the diary stops.

The fifth witness is the accused himself. Long ago, in the shifting sands of Indian evidence in criminal cases, I came to the conclusion that the evidence of the accused is usually the best evidence on which to convict. For there will be one rock that is firm, a material point, a wound, a letter, or a bloodstain; what does the accused say about that? If he is guilty, he will usually give himself away. Now in this case, we have the allegation that the accused was not pursuing a foe frightened into flight by arts and feints, but cautiously following an enemy who happened to be going the same way as himself. Were the arts and feints a fiction made up long afterwards or did they actually take place? It seems to me an important point that Peterborough mentions them, casually and not in detail, in his first statement to the police, his letter to Godolphin of January 22nd, 1706.[Addl. MSS. 39,757.] This is not a conclusive argument, but we can be fairly sure that we are not listening to a tale concocted by the lawyers under a tree outside the court.

Later, we have a number of charges against Peterborough brought formally by a Secretary of State. His answer to these was to produce the complete correspondence, and this is the best possible evidence for the crucial period from May to August in 1706. I have dealt with this in detail in Note IV.

These are the five main witnesses, and they agree together reasonably well on the whole. For the first siege of Barcelona, Richards is much the best evidence, supported by Carleton and St. Pierre; for the campaign in Valencia, Freind, supported to some extent by St. Pierre; for the return to Barcelona, we have St. Pierre, Richards, Peterborough’s letters to Godolphin, Leake, Stanhope and Charles III; for the last phase, from the relief of Barcelona onwards, we have St. Pierre’s letters to Raby (no diary), Carleton, Horatio Walpole the elder, Richards, Stanhope, the Portuguese Ambassador and Peterborough’s correspondence with Charles III.

There are other witnesses who give confirmation of the main outline of events, but they do not go into enough detail to be much help to me; Paul Methuen, for instance, and an unknown Royal Dragoon whose diary was edited by Mr. C. T. Atkinson. And there are of course a number of minor witnesses, usually called to prove a piece of formal evidence, Commissary William Musgrave for instance with his ordnance stores. There are the minutes of the Board of Ordnance, the inquiry into Lord Charlemont’s behaviour, and others, most of which are mentioned in the notes on the chapters, and included in the Bibliography. This note is meant to be no more than an introduction to the principal witnesses.

On the charge brought by the Dictionary of National Biography then, I unhesitatingly acquit. But if the charge is that Peterborough was intolerant of criticism, advice or direction; that he could never restrain his tongue or his pen; that his courage amounted to rashness; that a personal slight would grow in his eyes till he could not see round it; then his own letters are the witness against him.

Bibliography

Printed Books, excluding Contemporary Sources

This is a guide to the main printed books and is not exhaustive. The best general biography of Peterborough is still Stebbing, English Men of Action series, 1890, but he is very weak on the military side. The earlier biographers wrote before the papers of Richards and St. Pierre were known; Warburton s Life, published in 1853, is the last before these came to light and like the rest is badly infected with the furor biographicus, nor can Colonel Frank Russell, who like St. Pierre commanded the Royal Dragoons, be acquitted of this. His is the most complete biography, with many letters quoted in full. Brigadier Colin Ballard in The Great Earl of Peterborough (1929) is more critical than Russell, and has some interesting suggestions; he is naturally more authoritative than Stebbing on the military aspect but otherwise does not add a great deal and is a less accomplished writer.

Lord Mahon’s History of the War of Succession in Spain has been reviewed at length by Macaulay; his account of Peterborough is not up to date, being based mainly on Freind and Carleton. Both Macaulay and Mahon admire Peterborough and write well of him, but praise him too highly. Colonel Arthur Parnell also wrote a History of the War of Succession in Spain, which he claimed to be the first based on contemporary sources. He is an industrious historian, but a man of strong passions. His admiration for Prince George of Hesse and the Earl of Galway is as uncritical as his hatred of Peterborough, whom he accuses of treachery, cowardice and indeed much else. Two examples are enough. Of the whole Valencian campaign, he says only that ‘Peterborough, by his own account, did all he could to avoid fighting’; while of Peterborough’s intervention to stem the rout at Montjuich, he writes: ‘A group of staff officers persuaded the men to return to their posts. This group was accompanied by Lord Peterborough.’ This is in spite of having read Richards, St. Pierre and Paul Methuen; Freind and Carleton of course he discounts. One could enumerate a dozen more instances as glaring.

For the general political background, we are fortunate in that two of the great histories of the world have been published in our time. But I take courage (in this small corner of the field they have covered so brilliantly) to believe all the same that neither Dr. G. M. Trevelyan nor Mr. Churchill has examined the sources exhaustively or been entirely fair to Peterborough.

As to military and social background, Ashton’s Social Life in the Reign of Queen Anne (1892), is a mine of information; and Fortescue s History of the British Army is supplemented by Clifford Walton, History of the Standing Army, 1660-1700, a most detailed and reliable book, which for its period is more useful than Grose’s Military Antiquities. There are also the various regimental histories, of which Mr. C. T. Atkinson’s for the Royal Dragoons has been particularly helpful.

The memoirs of the period mostly deal with Marlborough and Flanders. On the French side, de la Colonie, Chronicles of an Old Campaigner (1692-1717) published in English in 1904, is most readable and of most general interest; Colonel Kane and Captain Parker of the Royal Irish are soldierly and exact rather than lively. Captain Peter Drake (1755), an Irish Catholic, was an engaging rascal who usually deserted or took his discharge from the French at the end of the campaign and came over to the English for the winter in order to get leave to London, where he had several mistresses. He was once condemned to death for treason; he made a good thing every year of the bounty money for recruits, enlisting and deserting in several regiments before going to Flanders and changing sides.

Matthew Bishop (1744), was a seaman before he was a soldier. He was constantly lecturing the men on patriotism and duty; he says they took it in very good part and he had more influence than the colonel. They all wept when he left the regiment. He went on the abortive expedition to America under Hill, the brother of the sly Abigail, and tells how in a storm he found that the captain did not know his duty, so he, a private soldier, took command and saved the ship. He says the captain was very grateful. He must have been intolerable to know but is quite amusing to read about.

Kane: Discipline of a Regiment in Camp, and the same for a battalion in action, is useful for details of military life.

Contemporary Sources

• John Freind: An Account of the Earl of Peterborow’s Conduct in Spain, with The Campaign in Valencia. 1707.

• Anonymous: An Impartial Enquiry into the Conduct of the War in Spain. 1712.

• George Carleton: Military Memoirs of Captain George Carleton. 1727. The most recent edition is in the Traveller s Library, 1929.

• St. Pierre, Col. James de; diary published in the Journal of the Royal Engineers, a contribution by Major-General E. Renouard James, who afterwards published privately Colonel J. de St. Pierre, Chatham, 1882.

• St. Pierre’s letters are many of them in the Strafford collection in the British Museum: Addl. MSS. 31,143 and 22,231.

• Richards, Major-General John: Journal, Memorial, Narrative and various letters.

• British Museum. Stowe MSS. 467, 468, 471.

• Peterborough’s letters: many are printed in Freind; the Impartial Enquiry; Russell; House of Lords MSS. vii; a privately printed edition (50 copies only) Peterborough to Stanhope, edited by Lord Mahon, 1834; a few to Swift in F. Elrington Ball’s edition of Swift’s correspondence; those not printed are mainly in the following volumes: Brit. Mus. Addl. MSS. 39,757; 28,056; 28,057; 28,058 [to Godolphin], 29,588; 29,589 [to Nottingham], 5,438 to Leake. Paul Methuen’s letters to his father are in 28,056 and are good evidence; there are two excellent newsletters in 29,589.

• The House of Lords MSS. vii prints a great many of the relevant papers, not only Peterborough’s letters. His instructions are to be found here; the original of his commission in the land forces is at the Public Record Office 1704-1707—W.O. 25/8, p. 176. The Ordnance Office minutes relating to the expedition are W.O. 47/22 at the P.R.O. and W.O. 71/1 contains most of the inquiry regarding Lord Charlemont.

II. Notes on Chapters

Part One — Chapter I

. . . wretched screws provided . . . by the King of Portugal . . . St. Pierre mentions the ‘extraordinary bad horses for which we did not have to pay’, which the Royals got under the treaty when they were near Lisbon in 1704. Later they got some Irish horses, which were very disappointing. Whether they brought the Irish or the Portuguese or both with them to Barcelona he does not say, but they had only 170 ‘that would go’ when they landed and he speaks later of the ‘confounded old lame ugly jades we brought with us’. I have made them all Portuguese for the sake of simplicity.

Tents. Horsemen’s tents were simply a ridge pole with a piece of cloth stretched over it; officers’ tents were more like the modern bell tent but had a ring to hold out the cloth from the pole, about six feet from the ground, giving a flattish top. There are drawings of them as illustrations to Walton in the Royal United Service Institute.

The midnight interview with Peterborough. This story is told by Colonel de St. Pierre in his diary, though he does not say who the officer was. Everyone has assumed that the ‘certain officer’ was himself and I think it must be so. There is no indication of this very frank talk leading to any further intimacy, but that, it seems to me, is quite in character. Peterborough, hearing St. Pierre thought the siege should be undertaken, and being himself anxious to please the King, sends for St. Pierre and asks for his advice, with that air of deference that is so frequent in a man of charm and so often misleading. He does not take the advice; but it sets him thinking on new lines, and the plan is born. Next day he sees Prince George and Richards is brought in. Peterborough hardly thinks of St. Pierre again but I have made him remember when he sees Awbyn’s face. He was a man very attractive to his subordinates, so we must assume that elementary courtesy.

I have kept closely to the conversation reported by St. Pierre. It does not seem to me that this is inconsistent with Richards’s story, and the business of asking his adviser to see Prince George and then impatiently going himself is very much in Peterborough’s character. Richards says: . . . ‘my lord, being informed by several deserters of the ill state of Montjuich, the cittadel of Barcelona, he proposed to me the surprisal of it this night by escalado . . .’ By ‘this night’, he means Sunday night.

. . . I am tied by my orders. I must take the opinion of a council of war . . . Colonel Parnell says that Peterborough made councils of war the refuge of a coward; he only consulted them because he did not want to fight. But his instructions were very precise in this respect—it is a pity they were not in others. They are printed in H. of L. MSS. vii, 361, 362, 363. Other writers have suggested that the instructions were only given because Peterborough was an amateur general; but such instructions were common at the time, particularly when both sea and land forces were involved, or where any forces were engaged a long way from home. Sir Cloudesley Shovell, a very old hand, was instructed to call councils of war just as stringently as Peterborough and seems to have done so more often. He was certainly much more scrupulous about following their advice.

. . . urged to go to the help of the Duke of Savoy. There is a point here which I have not seen made by any writer. Peterborough was from the start put in an awkward position by the Ministry. His ostensible instructions left him a wide discretion, mentioning as possible objectives Cadiz, Barcelona, or help to the Duke of Savoy. But his secret instructions were to use Barcelona as a cover for concerting with the Duke of Savoy an attack on Toulon. And throughout his year in Spain instructions to help Savoy came with almost every mail. These secret instructions were on no account to be shown to the King of Portugal. If Peterborough had been tactful and diplomatic—and he was anything but—he would have found it difficult to keep the confidence of his Allies with such instructions as these. Imagine General Eisenhower with secret instructions from the President for a strategy he must on no account reveal to the French.

Miquelets were armed peasants or guerrillas.

The minutes of the Councils of War are most of them printed by Freind. Richards gives an excellent account of the indecisive discussions at many of which he was present: St. Pierre, though a regimental officer and not present, had a good idea of the conclusions of the councils of war. There is also a useful letter from Paul Methuen to his father. [Brit. Mus. Addl. MSS. 28,056, f. 323.]

. . . a brevet of colonel . . . I have promoted Awbyn a little before St. Pierre was really promoted.

. . . Half the men mounted . . . When the Royals arrived in Portugal they had at first no horses at all. Then a few were allotted, but a troop was so much a matter of personal property that they were divided equally between the troops, each having about ten men mounted and thirty or forty unmounted. This must have been awkward on parade and even worse tactically; I was tempted to mount four troops and leave four unmounted, but I have stuck to history. The drill is based on Walton.

Harvey’s Horse. Later the 2nd Dragoon Guards. When dragoons became cavalry, there was a dispute about precedence, because the old regiments of horse belonged to a separate arm of the service, reckoned superior to mounted infantrymen or dragoons. A trooper was paid 2s. 6d. a day in Marlborough’s time to the dragoon’s 1s. 6d. But the Royals, the senior dragoon regiment, were senior to any horsed regiments except the Life Guards and the Blues. So the old regiments of horse were made dragoon guards, guards by courtesy, and kept their precedence, the Royals becoming the first regiment of cavalry of the line.

Part One — Chapter II

Petty’s brevet. This trouble is constantly referred to in St. Pierre’s diary and letters.

. . . bought a vacant troop for a thousand pounds . . . I have seen much higher sums mentioned but think this was nearer the normal.

. . . two pounds of bread. . . Rations for the garrisons of Minorca and Gibraltar were, weekly, per man [Ashton]:

• 7 lb. bread
• 1 lb. pork
• 2½ lb. beef
• 4 pts. peas
• 3 pts. oatmeal
• 6 oz. butter
• 8 oz. cheese.

This was at the end of Anne’s reign; a ration in the field in 1670 was [Walton]:

• Bread 2 lb.
• Meat 1 lb., or Cheese in lieu—familiar words—and one bottle of wine or two of beer.

Conynghame’s. Later the 8th Royal Irish Hussars. I know of no evidence that they were at Montjuich, but do not see how the Royals could have found three hundred mounted men.

Carbines. Grenadiers carried light carbines, because of the weight of their grenades. Dragoons had muskets, being really horse-musketeers. There were horse-grenadiers in the Guards for a short time, but in the English service they did not survive long.

Part One — Chapter III

There is a longer separate note on the assault on Montjuich. The halt at Gracias. St. Pierre says the rendezvous was at Gracias, which is not very clear, since the whole column for the assault started together. I can only suppose he means it was the first halt; the column commanders must have been let into the secret at some stage and this would be a convenient place.

Sejia. The village is called Serjac on the French maps; I know of only two contemporary maps of Barcelona and both are French. One clearly illustrates the French siege of 1698, showing the batteries on the north side, near San Martino; the other must be meant to illustrate Tessé’s siege in April 1706, for there are batteries shown firing at Montjuich and again at the curtain wall of Barcelona between the Bastion of St. Anthony and the sea. They are reproduced in Russell.

Sakers or Minions. Sakers fired a shot weighing 5 to 7 lb., minions about 3½ lb.

. . . the brigadier knows nothing . . . Richards specifically mentions Stanhope as not knowing the plan.

. . . The dragoons . . . were not to edge round the hill . . . This is the best I can do with St. Pierre’s statement that the Earl and the Prince told the dragoons to go back.

Horsemen coming from the town. St. Pierre says horse-grenadiers; the others say dragoons.

. . . We shall be battering that curtain of yours . . . St. Pierre does not say that Peterborough ever again mentioned their midnight talk. But Peterborough was clearly the kind of man who wins hearts by flattering his subordinates.

Prince George’s death. I follow Richards’s account, which is quite different from Carleton’s, the most usually quoted. See longer note on Montjuich.

. . . turning with blistering invective . . . Richards says: having grievously reproached my lord Charlemont for his retreat, made the men face about . . .’[Stowe 467] In this juncture, my lord Peterborough returned, who falling into the horriblest passion that ever man was seen in and with a great deal of bravery and resolution, led us back. . . . [Stowe 471.1.]

. . . We’ll have the horse . . . They are Richards’s words; they may not have been used by Peterborough but were used of him and clearly express his thought. [Stowe 471.1.]

Part One — Chapter IV

It is possible that I have run together in this chapter the events of two days. In his diary, Richards says:

‘His Lordship having resolved to perish or to take the dungeon I posted away in all haste to the camp to acquaint the King with what had passed and to send away the necessary stores of warr.’

This was on Monday, and the entry ends at that. He goes on to tell in his entry for the next day, Tuesday, how he ‘concerted everything with the Prince of Lichtenstein’ and ‘marched away the feald-train and Incamp’d them at the ffoot of Montjuich.’ ‘A small mortar too bombs and some ammunition I forth with carry’d up to our People in the Cittadel but it was so late . . . we could not make use of them this night. . . .’

But in his memorial he says:

‘My lord Peterborow being resolved to win the horse or lose the saddle sent me to the King and to bring stores. I brought 2 7-inch mortars which Captain Schlundt our ffyer-master made such good use of as to blow up the enemy’s magazine.’

It seems to me possible that he brought up the two mortars on the Monday (as I have made him in the story) and went back to make arrangements for the field train next day. Surely some ammunition must have gone to the outworks before Tuesday evening; they were running short by ten o’clock on Monday morning, and there was no need to wait for the field train. If that were so, the one small mortar and ammunition would be a second instalment. But it may be that everything was more leisurely than I have supposed, that the small mortar was the first thing that reached the attackers and the two bigger mortars were not in position till Wednesday. In that case, Captain Schlundt must have been very lucky, for the magazine blew up on Thursday afternoon. St. Pierre says the explosion was on the third day, Carleton on the third or fourth day. If they mean the third or fourth day of firing, the mortars must have come up on Monday. You could argue either way and I have chosen the possibility that is more compressed and urgent and therefore makes a better story. Carleton, incidentally, implies that the mortars were landed with the heavy guns by the fleet, but that is clearly wrong; it is against all the evidence and the fleet would not have mortars of their own unless they had ‘bombs’ or bomb-ketches. Paul Methuen, who agrees with Carleton on other points, has the same story.

The dates are confusing. Richards uses the New Style of reckoning, as was general on the continent; this was eleven days ahead of the Old Style still used in England. But he forgot that August has thirty-one days, and his entry for Sunday August 30th is immediately followed by Monday September 1st; this makes him one day wrong in his dates until he puts in a blank day between 24th and 25th. He says the assault took place on Monday September 15th, really the 14th, N.S. I use N.S. in the text without exception.

St. Pierre also usually uses the New Style but for some reason uses the Old Style for these few days. And oddly enough he makes the same mistake as Richards, putting the assault on Monday 4th, whereas it was really Monday 3rd O.S. There is a faint suggestion here that he may have spoken to Richards when writing up his diary afterwards. They both held views about the siege that were contrary to general military opinion; but there are only these two hints that could lead one to suppose they knew each other with any intimacy. The part of this chapter about the escort has no authority but common sense.

It is encouraging in work of this kind to find confirmation of detail and I was pleased to find an entry of ‘Seven-inch mortars—two’, which occurs in:

‘An account of what Ordnance Stores were Laded on Board the Severall Store Shipps for the Service of the Traine of Artillery Commanded by His Excellency the Earl of Peterborow by Mr. William Musgrave Commissary and Paymaster of the said train.’

Other entries in this account which are mentioned in other chapters of this story are:

• For the officers of the traine [Stowe MSS. 324.]
• • Ticking Tents, furnished — 3
• • Large Canvas do. do. — 2
• Horsemen’s tents — 52
• Feild Bedds — 36
• Dragoon saddles — 900
• Dragoon bridles — 900
• Harness for men: setts: — 200

This may be as good a place as another for mentioning Colonel Richards’s position. The Dictionary of National Biography states positively that he was a Roman Catholic and could not hold the Queen’s commission, leading one to suppose he held an Imperial or Spanish commission. This statement, and most of the article, is taken from Colonel Arthur Parnell’s History of the War of Succession in Spain, from which at least one inaccuracy has been copied that is exposed by comparison with the original manuscripts. But I find that on October 16th, 1705, the Board of Ordnance sent orders to Colonel Richards, ‘Commander of the Trayne with my Lord Peterborow’ to discharge one Charles Allen, a conductor in the train. There is also a commission, before the expedition started, to Richard Silver, master gunner, to command the train in the absence of the colonel. (Major Collier must have joined later; he was wounded soon after Montjuich surrendered, an incident mentioned both by Richards and Carleton.) Richards thus is twice spoken of as commander and he writes to the Board of Ordnance in the language of a commander: ‘Unless the Queen will give me drafts on the infantry, I had rather have the old gunners that are to be found here than your new raised good-for-nothing fellows from home.’ He is continually writing to the secretary of the Board about his promotion and busies himself with another employment that has been dear to officers throughout the ages, drawing up the establishment which he ought to have if the business of the train is to be conducted as the Board would wish. This is all very odd if he did not hold the Queen’s commission; and his brothers were Protestants; but I cannot find his name as a commissioned officer in Charles Dalton’s Army List, so perhaps Colonel Parnell is right this time.

As to Richards’s character, it was not quite so simple as Dr. Trevelyan suggests. His description of the meeting of Galway and Rivers two years later is interesting; the inevitable question of command arising, Galway, as with Peterborough, made the unselfish suggestion that he would either stand down or let Rivers have a separate command. Richards says of Galway that ‘the cunning old gentleman’ well knew the Queen would not permit it. All the evidence, however, shows that Galway was brave, honourable, unselfish, but very far from cunning. And when Richards ‘made specious arguments’ to my lord for sending him home to explain the accounts, he was already sharply critical of his general and was becoming more so every day. He had a perfect right to his criticism, but surely not to push himself forward as the confidential agent of its object.

Part One — Chapter V

. . . Colonel Southwell had taken their surrender . . . Carleton has a story that, when the shell fell into the magazine of Montjuich part of the bastion was blown down and the miquelets rushed in and would have put the whole garrison to the sword had not Peterborough arrived to save them. To my nostrils, this story is tainted; St. Pierre speaks of an orderly surrender to Colonel Southwell (whom he calls Southwick); Richards also speaks of hanging out a white flag and surrendering at discretion. I reckon this as one of the occasions when Carleton’s enthusiasm for Peterborough got the better of his memory. He is confusing Montjuich with Barcelona, or perhaps repeating camp gossip, for Paul Methuen, in his letter to his father, Ambassador in Portugal, has a similar story. [Addl. MSS. 28,056, f. 323.]

The caution of the Dutch. To any right-thinking Englishman who reads the history of this period Marlborough is a hero, and it is not always possible to imitate that great man’s patience with the restraints put on him by the Dutch. Scrattenbach in Spain seems to have been a true Hollander. But to be fair we must remember that the Dutch had stood alone against Louis XIV for a long time, a small people with no allies against a tyrant. They had got into the way of conserving their resources at a time when a small loss might have been fatal; they were not ready to give up the habits taught them by experience at the bidding of a more numerous people who had only slowly been brought to realize where their true interests lay. The parallel in our own times need not be laboured.

. . . laid deal spars and parbuckled the guns up . . . cf. Matthew Bishop at the taking of Gibraltar. Dropping the guns on to sand is Carleton’s story.

Twenty-four pounders. The minutes of the Board of Ordnance mention brass 24-pounders for this expedition, also 12-pounders and demi-culverins (which varied in bore; some firing 9½ lb. shot and some 8½), 6-pounders and 3-pounders, all the latter being mounted on ship’s carriages, so presumably not meant for the field train. There were also sakers (5 to 7 lb.), minions (3½ lb.) and falcons (2½ lb.). The list is not exhaustive but there is no mention of anything bigger than a 24-pounder; the next biggest gun in use was the demi-cannon firing a 36-lb. shot. Guns of all sizes were made both in iron and brass; the brass was what we should call bronze; brass guns were better than iron and would take a heavier charge of powder.

The authority for everything in the text about the firing of the batteries is Richards’s diary and letters.

The Duchess of Popoli. A detachment of the Royals escorted the Marquis of Aytona, his lady, and some other ladies, to the frontiers of Aragon. I do not know when the Duke and Duchess of Popoli actually left. Richards says they stayed at Peterborough’s quarters in Barcelona. Carleton says he saw Peterborough rescue the delicious Duchess and is rapturous about her beauty; St. Pierre tells the same story in his drier way, so it clearly made an impression.

Hats. I cannot deny myself a note on hats. I have lived and worked with soldiers for many years; I like and admire them more than I can say; but I have never been able to understand their passionate interest in hats. How often have I seen a board of general officers turn with resolute and weighty concern from lesser matters of strategy or administration to talk about a new kind of hat! One has only to list the kinds of hat they have chosen in the last ten years to see how lively their interest is; service caps, deerstalkers, forage caps, sidehats, bush hats, berets, and the hideous and shapeless creation that is neither Balmoral bonnet nor beret, all these have been regulation wear, apart from local variations and the varieties peculiar to units. Think of them, too, in the nineteenth century, bearskins, busbies, shakoes, domed and spiked helmets, and the strange head-dress lancers used to wear, something between an Emmett top-hat and an academic mortar-board. Colonel Awbyn’s words about hats are taken from St. Pierre’s letters to Colonel Raby. [Addl. MSS. 22,231.]

Major General Conynghaine. It is true that when General Conynghame’s advice was not to his liking, Peterborough, who never attempted to restrain his tongue, referred to him as an eternal screech-owl (to Stanhope; 1834 private edition). But it is fair to both of them to add that, in a later letter to the Lord Treasurer, Peterborough supported Conynghame against complaints made by the Court, and praised him as a very quiet, cautious and temperate man, adding: ‘His cautious temper is most proper for the situation of affairs on that side.’ [Addl. MSS. 39,757] Conynghame was then at Lerida on the frontiers of Aragon; he was killed while defending this approach to Barcelona against Marshal Tessé.

Portuguese physicians. St. Pierre says, in 1704, when the Royals were in Portugal, that they had none but Portuguese physicians who bleeded them to death (Diary). By 1708, there was a regimental surgeon, Dr. Brown, who died at about the same time as the chaplain, Dr. Allen, who was murdered by miquelets. [Addl. MSS. 22,231] It seems not unnatural to suppose that some Portuguese physicians came on from Lisbon with the expedition and stayed until English surgeons were appointed, but it is a guess.

Care for the men. It has been suggested to me that Colonel Awbyn’s thoughtfulness for his men is surprising in view of the general attitude of eighteenth-century officers to their men’s pay. I can only reply that there is authority in Colonel de St. Pierre’s letters and diary for all of it. The truth is that to make a certain sum out of the men was the custom and was regarded as fair by all, but custom prescribed limits, as to the power of a prefect in an English public school. An officer who ‘does shark most abominably upon his men’ was condemned strongly by contemporary professional opinion. But it was normal for the colonel to keep any balance left over from the off-reckonings after clothing the men. The off-reckonings were the difference between pay and the subsistence allowance from which the man had to keep himself and his horse. At this time, pay was 1s. 6d. a day for a dragoon, 2s. 6d. for a trooper and eightpence for a foot soldier. Subsistence allowance was 1s. 2d., 2s. and 6d. respectively. A colonel of dragoons thus had fourpence per man per day as the gross off-reckonings, or £6 18s. 0d. per man a year. Of this he had to pay £1 7s. 4½d. as commission to the Paymaster-General, 1s. 6d. to the Chelsea Hospital, and other deductions leaving the Colonel £4 12s. 9½d. per man for clothing and equipment. He seldom failed to make a profit of at least a pound a man per year; this was regarded as justified. It was only when stoppages ate into the subsistence allowance (as they almost always did) that anyone had a grievance. In general, if a foot soldier got fourpence out of the sixpence of his subsistence allowance, he did not grumble much.

Troop and company commanders made their money from absentees. There were periodical mustering days; if the troop was fifty strong on mustering day, pay for fifty men would be drawn till the next mustering day; casualties thus enriched the officer.

This is a very brief account of a highly complicated subject; the most detailed account I know is in Walton’s History of the Standing Army, 1660-1700. A study of the pay chapters in this book would lead one to form a very poor opinion of the officers, for there certainly was a great deal of abuse. But the journals, memoirs and letters show that there were also many officers who did not put their pockets first. And listen to Peterborough, writing to Godolphin after the taking of Barcelona:

‘The commendations he (the King) gives the troops, the officers, and Brigadier Stanhope in particular, all that is but their due And I believe no body in command ever met with such a spirit in troops, with such discipline and cheerful obedience in officers and soldiers. There never was a greater trial of their submission nor a higher proof of English humanity than to enter a place pillaging by others and not to commit the least hostility but to employ themselves wholly in saving at the same time the town and their enemies . . . .’ and later in the same letter:

‘I owe too much to these troops to see them injured and oppressed.’ [Addl. MSS. 28,056, f. 329.]

Cromwell and Monk began a tradition of looking after the men, Marlborough carried it much further. If they were under the Duke, the men knew they would have bread and shoes, and more of their pay than under anyone else. There was an immediate falling off in all these matters when Ormonde replaced Marlborough.

Mountjoy’s, Barrymore’s and Donegal’s . . . St. Pierre says Monroe’s, not Mountjoy’s. But he is often wrong about names, and I can find no other reference to a regiment called Monroe’s in Spain. Mr. C. T. Atkinson tells me there was no regiment formally known by this name in Anne’s reign. It is difficult to trace regiments, because of the different names given them; for instance during the short period dealt with in this book I have found the Royals referred to not only by that name but also as Raby’s, and the Queen’s. One historian—and a distinguished one—says of the approach to Valencia: ‘By now Peterborough had two more British battalions, Rivers’ and Gorges’ as well as Mountjoy’s and Donegal’s.’ But when Donegal was killed at Montjuich in April 1706 his regiment was given to Gorges, so two of the four regiments named may have been really one. But I am not sure, because Gorges had another regiment in which he was succeeded by Allen. I do, however, feel fairly sure that by Monroe’s St. Pierre meant Mountjoy’s; it was an Irish regiment, disbanded in 1712. Barrymore’s was the 13th, the Somerset Light Infantry; Donegal’s or Gorges’s was the 35th, the Royal Sussex. Rivers’s, also called Southwell’s and then Harrison’s, was the 6th, the Royal Warwickshires.

I call them English, though two of them were then on the Irish establishment, which does not necessarily mean they were Irishmen. In any case, in the early eighteenth century the word British, now almost meaningless, was properly used of the people who painted themselves blue and opposed the landing of Julius Caesar, and was sometimes rudely applied to the Welsh.

Part Two — Chapter I

Four thousand infantry. Estimates of the strength of de las Torres are conflicting. Freind says 2000 horse and 4000 foot. St. Pierre says 1500 horse and dragoons ‘as well mounted as any in Europe’ and the same number of foot, among whom were two battalions of guards. Peterborough himself, writing of San Mateo, says 1500 horse but does not mention the number of foot, but in the same letter speaks of being opposed in Valencia by 2500 horse and 3000 foot. (To Godolphin, dated Castillon de las Planas, January 11th, probably the 22nd N.S., 1706.) [Addl. MSS. 39,757.] But in his letter to Colonel Jones, which was to fall into the enemy’s hands, he says that he himself had 6000 men, almost as many as the enemy. In a letter meant for the eyes of de las Torres he would be as accurate as he could on every point but the vital one on which he wished to deceive, and his intelligence was always said to be excellent. So we may conclude de las Torres was not far from 6000 strong.

There is no real discrepancy over the size of Peterborough’s forces. Colonel Parnell, who is anxious to make them as large as possible, counts the recently raised militia which Freind does not mention. Peter de Nérac’s reckoning in the story is the same as St. Pierre’s: he mentions the militia but does not think they will help much.

The Conde de Traguera. An imaginary nobleman. Truxillo, or Trujillo as he would spell his name now, is also fictitious.

Brigadier Robert Killigrew. He was lieutenant-colonel of the Royals in Portugal; he was a brigadier without pay by October 6th, 1705,[Killigrew to Raby. Addl. MSS. 31.134,f.144.] and in January 1706 became colonel of Conynghame’s Dragoons. He was commanding at Tortosa as brigadier in December. He was killed at Almanza and there is a curious monument to him in Westminster Abbey, the plaque which bears the inscription being placed on a pile of pistols, muskets, swords, bayonets and other weapons of the time.

Captain, later Colonel, Jones of Barrymore’s. St. Pierre says he was ‘a very good officer, and a very stirring man, who hath done good service’. There is a journal in Spanish of his defence of San Mateo and a monument to him in the town. He survived into George I’s reign and was thus alive when Freind’s account was published.

Cornet Francis and the mules. The hero of this exploit in history was Henry Herbert, cornet in the major’s troop of the Royals. It is mentioned in St. Pierre’s journal and in a letter to Raby. [Addl. MSS. 31,134, f. 295.]

The ‘Leave it to your Mistresses Letter’. The letter is printed in Freind’s account. Carleton refers to it, but does not quote it. Peterborough himself refers to it in a letter to Godolphin dated January 11th, 1706. (He must mean January 22nd, 1706, N.S., as he encloses a letter from Barcelona dated 14th.) This letter to Godolphin [Addl. MSS. 39,757.] seems to me to have considerable value as evidence. Peterborough is asking for money and his cue at the moment is that he can do nothing without money. He is therefore writing down his recent success as much as his temperament will permit; he encloses a letter of congratulation but adds, ‘this has an outside, though no real advantage in it, since to drive away fifteen hundred horse with two is not the common practise of war’. Again, ‘by this advantage, falsely called so, I lost the solid advantage of getting first to Valencia and betwixt them and some forces with which they are now joined’. Yet in the same letter he says that he sent ‘letters to the General which were directed to Jones and pretended to be betrayed to him, wherein I made mention of a considerable force’, etc. And he describes very graphically the enemy’s haste to get away.

Colonel Parnell and the Dictionary of National Biography would have one believe that the whole fabric of deception in the Valencian campaign, including this incident, was fiction, invented by Peterborough after the event. I have already given my reasons for thinking that Freind is generally to be believed on facts; while if Peterborough invented this episode, he must have done so in time to include it in his letter to Godolphin. This he is not very likely to have done, for Peterborough lived in the moment and at this moment he was not thinking of justifying himself in England. He was very busy and he wanted money. That he could achieve so much by bluff without money ran counter to his argument, but being Peterborough he could not resist putting it in. St. Pierre does not mention the letter, of which of course a regimental officer might know nothing, but he does express surprise at the speed with which the enemy decamped in spite of their superior forces. Although therefore the evidence for the letter is all defence evidence, and I cannot regard the point as proved beyond argument, I have personally no serious doubt that it was written at the time and sent in the way described, not invented two years later. Whether it had all the effect Peterborough supposed, I am not so sure.

That Peterborough himself wrote it, no one who knows him can question. Nothing could be more characteristic of the author. Perhaps the most convincing touch of all is the persuasive familiarity of the appeal at the end: ‘Dear Jones, prove a true dragoon . . .’ There is an artistry here; the writer had lost himself in his subject. Though likely to be wasted on de las Torres, this was just what Peterborough would have said if he had really been addressing Jones. And had Jones actually seen it, and had Jones really been a dragoon instead of a captain in Barrymore’s foot, it would no doubt have produced in him just the effect which ‘his friend Peterborough’ wished.

It should perhaps be explained that ‘the mountains on the right’ - from the point of view of Peterborough’s advance—are the same as ‘the hills on the left’—from the point of view of de las Torres, who is presumed to be facing north towards the English.

One must admire Colonel Arthur Parnell’s treatment of this episode. He does not discuss the letter or even mention it; he says that the relieving forces, under Killigrew, ‘accompanied by Peterborough’, marched to Traguera, whereupon de las Torres, checked by Jones’s stubborn defence of San Mateo, ‘continued his advance’ to Valencia. The advance in haste, with the enemy close on one’s heels to pick up the baggage, is a manoeuvre which I had supposed before reading Parnell had been first discovered by propaganda departments in the twentieth century.

Part Two — Chapter II

The Council of War at Albocacer. The minutes of this council of war are recorded by Freind and there is a manuscript copy in the British Museum. [Addl. MSS. 28,058, ff. 9 and 10.] St. Pierre was present, though he characteristically does not say so in his diary. He says the officers all tried to dissuade Peterborough from going on with the dragoons, but that he was ‘pricked by positive orders from the court, who could not know at such a distance what was best to be done.’ St. Pierre also guesses that he may have made promises to Cardona, the leader of the nobles of the Austrian party in Valencia, and adds that certainly he was in correspondence with certain ladies in Valencia whom he had never seen, a point Carleton mentions also.

In a letter to Raby, St. Pierre tells us more. ‘We did what we could to dissuade him, but to no purpose. I offered to go with him, but he would not let me goe, que j’etois trop sage pour aller avec luy.’ [Addl. MSS. 31,134, f. 295 et. seq.] Peterborough must have spoken to him in French; it is a touch delightfully revealing of both men. St. Pierre went to Vinaros with about fifty dragoons.

The minutes of the council are interesting in more ways than one, and having been responsible for many such minutes myself I feel some sympathy with Mr. Arent Furly who signed them. He begins by summarizing what would be now called the ‘I’ appreciation, the council’s estimate of the strength of the enemy before them. Then comes mention of news of the concentration against Barcelona, but a less threatening concentration than Freind says was announced in the King’s letters. It seems probable that Peterborough did not give the council the full extent of his bad news; he had made up his mind what he wanted to do and hoped to persuade the council to support him. If this was sharp practice, it was quite in character.

Mr. Furly then gives the strength and condition of the forces available to the general and goes on to the ‘conclusions and recommendations’ of the council of war. But in the middle of these, completely spoiling what would otherwise have been a logical and orderly piece of work, comes what is unmistakably an interpolation by his lordship, either in his own hand or entered on his instructions. It is a passage about his orders from Court, which certainly could not have influenced the council in their professional opinion, and it includes reflections on the orders he had received from the King to attack de las Torres which are really quite irrelevant and almost identical with what he wrote a few days later to Godolphin. [Addl. MSS. 39,757.] ‘These mad orders’, he wrote then, and they seem to have been an obsession with him. The council’s minutes end with a carefully worded sentence, heavy with negatives, about ‘the extreme necessity which in all probability is to be expected’. This I have reproduced almost verbatim.

I have taken the strengths of the forces threatening Barcelona from Freind’s account of the letters from the King, and there is no difficulty here. The figures add up to 23,000 and almost everyone agrees that something of this order was eventually Tessé’s strength before Barcelona. It was Stanhope’s estimate, and he is a most reliable witness. Peterborough in one letter says 16,000 but that was after the siege. Even Parnell makes the total 21,000.

The enemy strengths on the Valencia front are, however, very confusing. Stebbing, the best of the biographers, becomes hopelessly entangled, giving de las Torres 7000 men at San Mateo but only 2500 when he eventually meets de los Arcos. St. Pierre’s estimates of the enemy foot are much less than those of the council of war, and are not consistent with de las Torres’s strength at San Mateo. Colonel Parnell as usual chooses the lowest figure mentioned by anyone for the enemy and the highest for Peterborough, Lord Mahon roughly the reverse. I do not think it is possible to arrive at an account that is absolutely consistent. Estimates of enemy strength vary at different stages, there is wastage by disease and desertion. The estimates of the council of war at Albocacer are, however, reasonably consistent with most of the other contemporary information I have seen, and I have adopted these. Accordingly, to the council, de las Torres has 4800 men, compared with about 6000 at San Mateo. His 2000 horse, with Mahoni’s 500 and Velasco’s 500, would become 3000 before Valencia, where St. Pierre estimates 2500; or possibly Mahoni was included in de las Torres’s 2000. In either case, this is near enough for the horse, but nothing will make the figures for the foot agree. The council say 2800 for de las Torres, 5000 for de los Arcos, 1500 for Velasco; all these must surely have met before Valencia, making 9300, but St. Pierre estimates only 3000 here. The only explanation that occurs to me is that de los Arcos may have left most of his 5000 men where they were, two days march on the other side of Valencia, without moving them at all. After Peterborough entered Valencia, there were 4000 Castilians said to be near at hand, but not part of the main enemy army. If these men were the remains of de los Arcos’s 5000, the figures become just intelligible; but he is convicted of an incompetence and a torpor rare among even the noblest of generals.

The Episode of the Drunken Dragoons. The sole authority for this is Freind. But Freind is fully confirmed by St. Pierre about the Nules adventure, and if part of his story is confirmed by an independent witness, the court may well believe the rest unless there is good reason not to. And this stratagem is just the kind of thing Peterborough would have enjoyed. St. Pierre does not mention it, but then he deliberately restrains himself in his diary from the picturesque or ornamental, and we know he had gone with the foot and a few dragoons to Vinaros. Carleton refers to it only in the phrase: ‘left not the flying enemy without a feint of pursuit’; but he does not claim to have been present for any of this part of the story, and the sketchiness with which he treats it seems to me a slight argument in favour of the authenticity of the parts where he is more detailed.

The songs quoted are all from D’Urfey’s Pills to Purge Melancholy. This is a collection of songs, mostly from the ale-house or the stage, and mostly from Queen’s Anne’s reign, though they cover the whole Vicar of Bray period. Women, politics, wine, are the favourite subjects in that order. The politics are interesting, for d’Urfey’s opinions were probably those of the majority of the Queen’s subjects. He is a moderate man and condemns extremes, but he hates a Whig as much as Popery and drinks claret rather than port, which was still the hallmark of a Tory. He is proud of Marlborough and his victories, but he wants peace, despises Lewis le Grand more than he hates him, thinks a Frenchman no worse than an Irishman, and has little more use for the Welsh (referred to as British) or the Dutch, who steal our fish and won’t obey Marlborough.

It is disappointing that there is nothing in d’Urfey about this year in Spain, though there are several references to Almanza; but the people of London did know they had soldiers in Spain, for at Bartholomew Fair in 1706 was enacted:

The siege of Barcelona
or
The Soldier’s Fortune
with the taking of Fort Mount Joug containing the pleasant and comical adventures of that renowned hero Captain Blunderbuss and his man Squib.

Part Two — Chapter III

. . . I must have oats, barley, grass and stabling . . . The only authorities for this are Freind and Peterborough himself. ‘What with orders to one town to bake bread, to another to fetch oats, another straw and the like, I drove them before me three days with the greatest pleasure imaginable—‘[P. to Godolphin, January 22nd, 1706. Addl. MSS. 39.757.] As for the small parties and the rendezvous in the evening, it seems probable that the technique of long range penetration would be much the same in a Spain without aircraft as in a Burma where thick jungle spoiled their view of the ground.

Villa Real and Nules. Freind is confirmed by St. Pierre in considerable detail on these two towns. St. Pierre tells the tale twice, in his diary and to Lord Raby. [Addl. MSS. 31,134. f. 293.] The evidence for this adventure is thus as good as anyone could hope for, and it is worth considering whether Nules would have surrendered unless de las Torres and the countryside in general had believed that Peterborough was in pursuit with large forces and whether they would have believed anything of the kind unless he had practised deception on the lines described by Freind.

I am not sure that Peterborough actually spent the night in Nules; Freind gives no hint, St. Pierre implies that he took the horses and went straight back to Castillon.

Part Two — Chapter IV

Pearce’s Dragoons. There can be no doubt that Peterborough converted Barrymore’s Foot into Pearce’s Dragoons. The subsequent history of Pearce’s is recounted in the regimental history of the Somerset Light Infantry; they fought at Almanza and were disbanded at the Peace of Utrecht. Lord Barrymore (who did not forgive Peterborough for ‘spoiling his regiment’, and petitioned the Queen for redress) was allowed to take a non-commissioned officer and one or two men from each troop of the new regiment to England to raise the old regiment anew; it became the 13th Foot and eventually Prince Albert’s Own Somerset Light Infantry.

But about the manner in which it was done there is room for argument. Freind is the only authority for Peterborough’s speech and for the business of leading the men to where the horses were drawn up behind a hill, for I do not count Carleton as an authority for this part of the story. St. Pierre records the fact but says nothing of how it was done. I cannot see, however, that there would be much point in inventing such a story; there would be nothing to gain and the danger of being exposed. And it is thoroughly in character; a sound move entirely in the interests of the service, carried out with a touch of humour and drama, perhaps rather childish, perhaps rather flashy, but the kind of thing that does make a commander a personality in the eyes of his men. The whole thing made more of an impression on his contemporaries than it would today, because foot and dragoons were then far more distinct. Fresh commissions for instance were needed for the officers.

Derbyshire Ale. Derbyshire houses and Derbyshire ale are often mentioned in the memoirs of London in Queen Anne’s reign, particularly military memoirs of the less strictly professional kind. I imagine it meant Burton.

Peterborough’s movements. We have the date of the council of war at Albocacer, January 12th. Then came Villa Real and Nules, the return to Castillon, the conversion of foot to dragoons at Oropesa, but no date till the 22nd, when Peterborough wrote a letter to Godolphin headed ‘Castillon’. His letter from Alcala to the King is dated January 27th and he was at Murviedro on February 2nd. The intervening dates one must guess. The motto of the Earls of Peterborough was Nec Placida Contenta Quiete Est; I do not know why ‘contenta’ is feminine (unless it refers to one of the estoiles of the arms) but the words seem otherwise appropriate to the third Earl.

Part Two — Chapter V

Murviedro. This incident is really the most important in the chain of bluff that led from Traguera to Valencia. For de las Torres, before San Mateo, did not need much persuading to go; he was breaking orders by besieging the town at all. Murviedro on the other hand really was a full stop for Peterborough unless somehow the town could be taken and de los Arcos defeated or manoeuvred away from Valencia. It should be added that things in Valencia city were now becoming desperate and there was considerable risk of losing the city and the province.

The details of Peterborough’s complicated deception plan rest on Freind. Carleton repeats the same tale, but he obviously wrote with Freind before him, and cannot be regarded as an authority for details. But there is one interesting point in Carleton; he says casually that he discussed the affair afterwards with Mahoni, as he well might have done during his long captivity in Spain as a prisoner of war. This may I think be counted as confirmation, though not very strong, of the fact that something of the kind took place.

St. Pierre once again describes the affair as a regimental officer with no knowledge of what went on behind the scenes. He speaks in very brief and general terms of a parley with Mahoni, who agreed to surrender the town, and of the march across the plain in tactical formation, expecting a battle all the way. He expresses great surprise that de los Arcos should not have fought, for his horse were double the Allied strength and of much better quality. He can only suppose it was because my lord had sent a party of miquelets into the mountains to secure a very strong defile called Las Cabrillas de Bouniol.

This is not very convincing; if a general finds he cannot retreat, it usually means he has to fight. But the reasons for de los Arcos’s behaviour are in any case surmise. The undoubted facts are that he did avoid battle when he ought to have welcomed it and that Mahoni was sent to Madrid under arrest but exonerated and made a major-general. Freind’s story fits those facts and I have seen no other explanation that does. It is very much in accordance with Peterborough’s character, and I see no reason for doubting that it is substantially true. Even the hostile author of the Impartial Enquiry does not say it did not happen; he does suggest that it was rather discreditable and implies that it would have been better to fight ‘after the plain old-fashioned way’—like Galway at Almanza no doubt.

The only point in the story that presents any internal difficulty is the timing. Freind says Mahoni was anxious not to leave Murviedro till one o’clock at night, in order to give de los Arcos time to take up his position at the Carthusian convent. If that was Mahoni’s main concern, he would obviously send off his messenger to de los Arcos as soon as he could; that is, as soon as the time of the capitulation was fixed. Peterborough would reckon on that and would have time to send off his two Irish dragoons a little earlier, the moment he fixed the time with Mahoni’s second-in-command. They would have a start, equal to the time it took the second-in-command to get back to the town. This is all clear, but according to Freind the officers who left the garrison in alarm warned de los Arcos of Mahoni’s coming treachery earlier still. In that case they must have left before the discharge of musketry, not after it as he says. I do not think this small point invalidates Freind; the early eighteenth century were not imbued, as we are, with the habit of mind of the detective story.

Historians and biographers have made rather heavy weather of the whole episode. Stebbing, the best biographer in general, does not seem to understand that the whole point of the stratagem, which he characterizes as unnecessary, was to clear de los Arcos out of the way, not Mahoni. All the Victorians find the episode shocking and discreditable, and some of Peterborough’s warmest admirers try to explain it away. But if it is permissible to kill a man in war, it is difficult to see why it should be against the rules to impose on his credulity and put him in danger of his life. It is clear that Freind and Peterborough himself did not regard the plan as discreditable so long as Peterborough kept the letter of his word to Mahoni. Peterborough was certainly not the man to be nice on such a point. We in our generation are more accustomed to the idea of total war than our grandfathers; all the same, it would make an ugly story if Mahoni had been shot as a traitor, as he easily might have been. He is always spoken of as a brave and skilful officer.

It is wrong to say, as more than one historian does, that St. Pierre’s account is inconsistent with Freind’s. One is that of a regimental officer and the other that of a staff officer in the general’s confidence. They are naturally different, though not discrepant.

Part Three — Chapter I

Beating the Assembly. Most of this is to be found in General Kane’s A System of Camp Discipline, with which (in the R.U.S.I. but not in the British Museum) is bound up Discipline for a Battalion in Action; printed in 1757, it is a compilation of orders, going back to William’s reign.

Drummer’s Coat. I have not seen an illustration of a drummer of the Royals. Some regiments, though not all, dressed drummers and trumpeters in the coat with one loose sleeve; hussars later affected the same fashion.

Half Boots. I have seen a picture of a dragoon at this period in a jacked boot like the horse, but it is not contemporary and Walton is definite that they wore half boots; they certainly could not have fought as infantry in jacked boots.

Silver binding for hat brims. See Atkinson s History of the Royals, p. 38, also one of the original illustrations to Walton s History of the Standing Army (in the Royal United Service Institute) which shows a dragoon of the Royals of this period with a brim bound in silver and a blue ribbon. But they had changed to the more conventional gold binding and black cockade by 1741.

The Commissary of the Musters. Most of this comes from Walton, Fortescue or St. Pierre’s letters to Raby. There were 5747 fictitious men authorized by warrant in the army in 1695. Sheldon of the Royals when captain-lieutenant wrote to Lord Raby: ‘Every muster day I run the hazard of being broke to make your lordship money . . . Your lordship’s account shows £100 gain by your troop besides your own pay and your servant’s in six months.’ But Raby was not ungenerous; he made a free gift to both Killigrew and St. Pierre of half the officers’ vacancies.

Minor Officers. The promotion of minor officers was always a problem; St. Pierre in one of his letters to Raby mentions a Mr. Le Ffevre, who, more fortunate than my Uncle Toby’s lieutenant of the same name, ‘hath two sons, the eldest not ten years old, both of them ensigns of foot’. [Addl. MSS. 22,231. September 29th or November 1707.] Raby wanted his nephew to be promoted lieutenant early enough to put him in a good position for a troop soon after he joined, but saw that it was much easier for the regiment to carry an absent cornet than an absent lieutenant. He had scruples in matters of this kind and sometimes asked his lieutenant-colonel’s opinion. From Killigrew he always got the answer: ‘Why not; The Regiment is your own.’

The sergeants in damask beds. St. Pierre to Raby, March 29th, 1706, from Valencia. [Addl. MSS. 31,134, f. 295.] C. T. Atkinson, in his history of the Royals, reads the word as servants, but St. Pierre always spells sergeant ‘seriant’ or ‘seriaunt’, and it is clear from the next letter which he means. Not that it is important.

Officers’ messes. The earliest reference I can find to a regimental officers’ mess is in the 1760s. By that time, they were clearly an established institution. I do not think they can have existed in Queen Anne’s reign, though Marlborough and Ormonde each maintained a headquarters mess for the staff. It is a guess that the mess developed from the kind of informal regimental dining club described in this chapter.

Levy Money. The reference in the text is a highly simplified statement of a complicated subject. St. Pierre says the recruits who reached them in Portugal have cost above six pounds a man. [Addl. MSS. 31,134, f. 103.] Later, recruits in the Peninsula are said to have cost the officers eight or nine pounds. Neither of these figures includes equipment, which would come from the off-reckonings of the regiment; and the £12 levy money for a dragoon must have included a contribution to horsing him, because the levy money for foot was much less, though it went up steadily throughout the war. A ‘good squat dragoon horse’ could be bought in Ireland for £5, but of course cost much more by the time it reached the regiment. Remounts were partly paid for by the levy money and partly by a stoppage of four shillings per man per month throughout the summer months when grass was plentiful. On inducements to join, see The Memoirs of Captain Peter Drake; he always stood out for four guineas and usually got it, though the officers tried to fob him off with two. On more than one occasion he then deserted and joined another regiment.

Awbyn’s character of Peterborough. This is from St. Pierre, who repeats the character from his journal in a letter to Lord Raby. I have paraphrased in the text to bring the language into keeping with the rest of the narrative. Here is the version in the letter; it was Written on March 29th, 1706.[Addl. MSS. 31,134, f. 295.] ‘I have no time to say more but only that my lord is the most extraordinariest man that ever I knew in my life. Had he the experience of some generals, few could be equal to him and none beyond him. When occasion requireth it, no man applies himself to business more than he doth, on horseback all day, writing despatches all night, for a considerable time together. No man enters more into the detail of troops than he doth, when he hath a mind to it; and he is maybe the first General in this age that hath made Warr without men or money and bettered the troops at the same time.’

In the diary he adds at this point: ‘it is a pity he is easily diverted from serious business’, and earlier: ‘He is very popular and generous but may be no extraordinary courtier.’ In the letter he goes on:

‘The confounded old lame ugly jades we brought over are now metamorphosed into fine Andalusian horses, Barrymore’s Foot into Pearce’s Dragoons . . . and I believe if our Court of Spain in followed his advice and directions by this time out of an Austrian Archduke he had made a real Spanish monarch.’

St. Pierre was a careful, sober and exact man, witness the list of clothes packed in every box that travelled with him, his numbered nightcaps, and his ‘règles qui doit observer un historien’. He was ‘trop sage pour aller avec milord’; but this was his opinion of his general, and though it is over-favourable it presents a side that should not be left out of account. No one could have written like that of the Peterborough presented by Dr. Trevelyan.

The new moon . . . It is due to a genuine coincidence, and not the writer’s habit of mind, that at so many stages of this story the moon is in her last quarter. There was a new moon on September 18th, 1705, N.S.; the rest are worked from that.

Part Three — Chapter II

There are no diaries for the second siege of Barcelona. Richards was with Stanhope and the relieving fleet while St. Pierre’s diary stops suddenly, soon after leaving Valencia. But there is a letter of St. Pierre’s to Lord Raby, [Addl. MSS. 31,134, f. 313.] and another letter, kept among his own papers, longer and more detailed, apparently never finished or dispatched. There is also a news letter. [Addl. MSS. 29,589, f. 443.] And there are the letters of the people themselves, Peterborough, Charles, Leake and Stanhope. I have quoted direct from many of them in Part III, Chapter IV.

The Defences. Colonel Parnell says that the defences of Montjuich had been greatly improved and that the breach at Barcelona had been repaired. I do not know what are his authorities; the only reliable reference to the point that I have found is Richards, [Stowe 471.2.] who is definite that no repairs had taken place. Peterborough himself says the same, and there would seem no great point in lying about it; Freind does not mention it.

English regiments. Two of them were Irish, but in the early eighteenth century the term English was used as the French use it today of anyone who spoke English.

Hamilton’s were the 34th, later the 1st Battalion The Border Regiment; Charlemont’s were the 36th, later the 2nd Battalion The Worcestershire Regiment.

Part Three — Chapter III

The Council of War. The opinions expressed in the text by Peterborough are an interpretation of his own letters, and Awbyn’s come from St. Pierre, whose letter is quoted in Part III, Chapter iv.

Byng. This was Sir George Byng, later Lord Torrington, father of the Byng who was shot ‘pour encourager les autres’.

The plan for an attack. It is Russell who says there was a plan of this kind, and that the messenger was captured. He does not quote his authority and I have found no contemporary evidence for it.

The blank sheet of paper and the open boat. Freind says nothing about this; Carleton tells the story with gusto and it is certainly a good one. The author of the article on Peterborough in the Dictionary of National Biography says that Carleton is not to be believed, being proved to be untruthful in a number of cases. As an example, this story is cited. It is proved to be untrue because the log of the Leopard, which is unusually full, says nothing about it. But this proves nothing of the kind; it is negative evidence, and there is positive—and hostile—evidence the other way. Sir John Leake says Peterborough came aboard him, and he cannot have flown.[Addl. MSS. 5438, f. 52.] Even the author of the Impartial Enquiry, a Whig counterblast to Freind, does not deny that the story of Peterborough coming aboard is true. More recent historians say that he came simply to steal from Leake the glory of relieving Barcelona. The plain fact is that though he seldom missed a chance of boasting, he did not boast of this, nor indeed regard it as glorious. His apologist Freind says nothing about it; in his letter to Godolphin after the siege [Addl. MSS. 28,057, f. 150.] Peterborough does not claim any glory for having brought in the fleet, though he does mention spending two nights in an open boat. He is angry with Leake for delaying so long, and here he is unjust; he is furious at having failed to bring the French to battle and claims that he had meant to divide the fleet into two and tempt Toulouse to fight. He can, incidentally, only have thought of this plan at the last minute, for he says nothing about it in his letter to Leake of April 28th. But he claims no glory. Was it modesty that held him back? If so, it was the first time in his life. The truth is very simple. He went aboard because he wanted to be present at the sea battle; he did not know, as the historians do, that there would be a bloodless victory. What would they have said of the joint admiral if there had been a naval engagement and he not there?

Part Three — Chapter IV

The letters quoted in this chapter, in the order in which they appear in the text, are:

1. From Peterborough to the King of Spain, ‘the greatest stroke of politicks in any age’; March 13th, 1706. This is printed and presumably translated by Freind. I can only regret that so great a historian as Dr. Trevelyan should have ignored this letter and have said that Peterborough’s ‘first thought’ on hearing of the King’s danger was his letter of March 30th quoted below.

2. Peterborough to Godolphin, April 8th. ‘Without a letter in five months. . . .’ [Addl. MSS. 28,057, f. 91.]

3. Peterborough to Savoy, March 30th: ‘I will give Spain. . .’ [Addl. MSS. 28,057, f. 93.] Historians who like Peterborough ignore this letter, those who dislike him quote only the king-making paragraph without the context. Parnell quotes it as evidence that the ‘treacherous English general’ was plotting deliberately to lose the King and put Savoy on the throne, and all his actions in March and April were directed to this end. Dr. Trevelyan makes much of the childish offer to Savoy, but does not quote the penetrating analysis of the strategic position and strongly implies that Peterborough meant his letter for no eyes but those of the Duke of Savoy. It was only by going to look at the manuscript myself that I found that it was an enclosure to the letter to Godolphin, a point that effectively disposes of Parnell and reveals more clearly than anything else could do the cocksure swaggering innocence that went with Peterborough’s duplicity. It is the immature duplicity of a talented boy who thinks himself a cynical man of the world and does not know that he is still a boy among men, with a boy’s honesty and a boy’s seriousness beneath his flippancy. That is how Peterborough appears beside St. John or Godolphin. I have not found an eighteenth-century translation of this letter, so I had to make my own, which is as literal as I could manage. I have had to edit slightly, for he constantly uses the word ‘they’, obviously referring to some hostile body, such as the ‘they’ of Lear’s rhymes; one has to make up one’s mind whether he means the French or the King’s ministers, and it is one as often as the other; I have done this for the reader. Peterborough’s French (which was obviously fluent but to my palate has a slightly rosbif flavour) turns literally into English not too unlike his own.

4. Charles III to Peterborough: quoted by Freind.

5. Peterborough to Leake: four letters. All are in manuscript in the British Museum. [Addl. MSS. 5438, ff. 47, 49, 52, 53.] The second is also printed [H.o.L. MSS. vii, p. 434.] in the House of Lords series.

6. Charles III to Leake. [H.o.L. MSS. vii, p. 438.] My translation, but there is an eighteenth-century translation in the Impartial Enquiry.

7. Horatio Walpole the elder, perhaps to Robert Walpole. [Addl. MSS. 29,589, f. 443.] It is unsigned and catalogued simply as a news-letter, but it must surely be the ‘letter from Mr. Walpole’s brother at the admiralty’, referred to in the previous letter in this collection, which is from Southwell to Nottingham. Robert Walpole was then Under Secretary at the Admiralty and his brother Horatio or Horace, uncle of the more famous Horace of Strawberry Hill, had just gone to Spain as Stanhope’s secretary.

8. Leake to the Secretary to H.R.H. Prince George of Denmark, Lord High Admiral of England (Queen Anne’s consort). [H.o.L. MSS. vii, p. 437, 438.] I have edited slightly as the Navy always used dates in the Old Style, which is very confusing. They are left out or translated to New Style to fit in with the rest.

9. ‘Awbyn’ to Raby. This is really St. Pierre to Raby. [Addl. MSS. 31,134, f. 313.] The real letter was kept by Raby and not sent on to Godolphin. I have modernized the spelling a little, added some punctuation and substituted ‘assaulted’ for ‘insulted’, which reads oddly nowadays in that sense. But it is curious to find ‘frame’ used in a sense so near the modern American sense of framing someone for a crime he has not done. ‘Perkin’ means a Pretender; it was a slang name for James III, hence for any Pretender; the origin I suppose is Perkin Warbeck.

I might here again emphasize that St. Pierre is not Awbyn. St. Pierre shows none of that touch of the visionary which Awbyn had, though like Awbyn his opinions are sometimes impossible to justify on strictly professional grounds. Colonel Parnell says that at the council of war about attacking the town Peterborough, actuated by motives of treachery and cowardice, influenced everyone to vote against attacking the besiegers, only St. Pierre being man enough to stand against him. There is not a shred of evidence for this, and St. Pierre’s letter, in the sentence about Peterborough’s trouble and anguish, is definitely against it. In fact, this is a good example of Colonel Parnell’s history where Peterborough is concerned. I must in fairness add that I think he is often reliable when not influenced either by his obsessional hatred of Peterborough or his almost equally emotional reverence for Prince George of Hesse or the Earl of Galway.

Part Three — Chapter V

Dragoon Campbell. This is recorded in St. Pierre’s diary, but it happened in Portugal in 1705. Campbell re-enlisted in Stewart’s, the 9th Foot, the Royal Norfolk Regiment.

‘A Royal Regiment in rags’ . . . St. Pierre to Raby. [Addl. MSS. 31,134, f. 313.]

Lord Raby’s watch. Lord Raby did send St. Pierre a sword and some buttons as a present.

Gabriel is entirely imaginary. My private picture of her is as different as possible from my picture of Madame de St. Pierre, whose letters are in a fine sloping handwriting I find detestable.

The council of war of May 18th. The minutes are printed by Freind. The council of war in the Prince George is printed in H.o.L. MSS. vii, p. 439. The author of the Impartial Enquiry finds the resolution of the sea council inconsistent with that of the land council and regards it as an example of Peterborough’s inconsistency. But this shows only that the learned author does not understand councils of war. The fleet were to clear the east coast of Spain, and would naturally go beyond Valencia to clear up the hostile fortress of Alicante; the army were to march from Valencia to Madrid; one is complementary to the other.

‘All past differences being forgotten . . .’ An overstatement, but Peterborough himself seemed to think it true; see his letter to Godolphin [Addl. MSS. 28,057, f. 154.] of May 12th, 1706 (probably 23rd N.S.).

‘They will persuade the King to write . . . asking him to say positively . . .’ The letter and answer are to be found in H.o.L. MSS. vii, pp. 467-70.

‘The admiral. . . made a speech . . .’ Both naval and air officers still sometimes find it necessary to make a speech explaining that war in their peculiar element is quite different from war on land. And as in Mr. Furly’s day, they sometimes want it to go in the minutes.

Part Four — Chapter I

The price of mules. Richards’s paper in the Stowe Collection, 471-2, is the authority for this, and also for the views expressed by Richards in this chapter. But I distinguish between Richards in Valencia, critical but not hostile, and Richards after he had seen the King’s ministers and swallowed their story that it was on Peterborough’s advice that they had turned back to Aragon. He is then hostile as well as critical. Richards had seen Charles’s inquiry of the 9th about Aragon; I do not think, however, that he had really seen Peterborough’s answer of June 13th. (Both are in H.o.L. MSS. vii, pp. 471-4). He refers in Stowe 471-2 to Charles’s letter; I have made him see the answer for convenience. It is surmise that the peasants would rather take nothing than a quarter of the price; I think it would be the reaction of Indian peasants and have an idea that in matters of this kind the Spanish peasants of the eighteenth century were not very different.

Psalm 8. Awbyn quotes the Authorized Version here but uses the Prayer Book for Psalm 104 in the first chapter of this book. My only excuse is that the Authorized Version’s ‘little lower than the angels’ seems to me better than the Prayer Book.

Part Four — Chapter II

All this chapter is very controversial and writers differ enormously not only as to where the blame lies but on the facts. Here I need only say that Freind prints the letters Peterborough wrote after the King’s decision of June 29th to go by Aragon, in all of which he presses the King hotly to come by Valencia. But the charge made by the Austrian Court to Godolphin, and subsequently laid against Peterborough by the Queen’s Ministry, is that before June 29th he discouraged the King from going to Valencia. The memorial by Count Gallas on behalf of the Court is to be found in H.o.L. MSS. vii, pp. 450-5; Peterborough’s reply, not made till he was charged by Sunderland, Secretary of State, in 1707, is set out in the same volume, pp. 470-92. It takes the form of quoting in full the letters from which Gallas had misquoted extracts. The impression left on me is that if there was ever one opinion which Peterborough held consistently, it was in favour of the southern route, that he never advised a change of plan, but that he did write many very frank and injudicious letters which a wiser man would not have written, as I have tried to show in the text. Richards was persuaded by the Court party that Peterborough had changed the plan; but he did not think so in Valencia, for he was very surprised when he reached Tarragona and found the resolution taken for Madrid. Stanhope, the Portuguese Ambassador and Noailles all write to Peterborough as though he were known to be strong for Valencia; the authors of the two news-letters [Addl. MSS. 29,589, ff. 443, 447.] and St. Pierre [Addl. MSS. 31,134, f. 328, f. 341 and f. 351.] are also most emphatic on the general belief that Peterborough always pressed for this route. And there is no evidence to the contrary, if his letters are read in their entirety. Richards was misled, and has misled others, for several historians state categorically that Peterborough advised the King to turn back. There is a longer note on all this, because it is really the most controversial point about Peterborough, and that is saying a lot.

Part Four — Chapter III

The main authority for the plan for marching a detachment to Alcala on the Henares is a letter [Addl. MSS. 29,589, f. 447.] which is catalogued simply as a news-letter. It is bracketed in the catalogue with f. 443, which I think must be by Horatio Walpole the elder; but f. 447 was written from Alicante and by someone who had been in Valencia during the critical days of June. I cannot say if the handwriting is by the same person as 443; if so, it was certainly written with a very differently cut quill. The writer is an admirer of Peterborough’s (no one is ever neutral about him) but I do not see that that is any reason for discounting his evidence on facts. He also tells the Huete story, which is repeated by Freind and Carleton, but Carleton this time says he was there. Eighty Royal Dragoons escorted Peterborough to the coast; I made the rest of the regiment go with him as far as Huete to suit my own convenience, a liberty I have not taken elsewhere. But I wanted to bring in the Huete story as a final touch of Peterborough’s quixotic folly about money.

Awbyn’s letter on the last page to Lord Raby is from two of St. Pierre’s letters; the second paragraph about accoutrements is from his letter of October 23rd, 1706; [Addl. MSS. 31,143, f. 351.] the first paragraph about pretty gentlemen is from one of June 15th, 1708. [Addl. MSS. 22,231.] St. Pierre in his references to Peterborough has given me the hints for Awbyn’s attitude throughout; he clearly admired him greatly at first; his phrase about my lord’s ‘trouble and anguish’ shows that he was still warmly on his side up to the relief of Barcelona. But after Guadalaxara he is slightly disillusioned; he says twice that Peterborough went away because he could not have the sole command, but he is still indignant at the calumnies of the Prince of Lichtenstein and very definite that Peterborough was always in favour of the southern route.

For Peterborough’s detachment of view when he lost command see his written opinion at a council of war in Valencia in February 1707, and his letter to the Portuguese Ambassador of April 1707, both printed by Freind.

Awbyn’s Wager is based on a letter of St. Pierre, who did lay fifty guineas that Charles would be proclaimed King in Madrid within a year of the assault on Montjuich, and had the nerve to claim that he had won on the ground that the Portuguese had proclaimed him during their brief stay. But St. Pierre was altogether a cooler hand than Awbyn.

Epilogue

The letter was written by Pope to Patty Blount.

III. The Assault on Montjuich

The account generally given of the assault on Montjuich follows Carleton’s Military Memoirs, which is in fact the only printed account by an eye witness and the only account which sets out to give a detailed description of the whole engagement. Doubts, however, have been thrown on Carleton’s authenticity and even if we accept him at his face value, he was writing more than twenty years later, at the age of about seventy-six. And his eulogies of Peterborough are a trifle overdone; to me at least he gives the impression of being anxious to get the backing of a distinguished patron for his book. This is surmise, but we have his own statement that he thought he should have been rewarded for his services in the battle and that he had been pressing his claims on ministers since he came back from Spain. So that for this episode in particular Carleton must be read with caution, though there is no reason for discounting him entirely.

There are, however, other eye-witnesses. Colonel St. Pierre’s diary was written day by day and for his own satisfaction; he is a man in no way anxious to justify himself and it must, I think, be assumed that he is right about anything he saw himself. But he was not in the fighting and much of what he records must have been at second hand.

Colonel Richards’s diary, like St. Pierre’s, was found among his papers after his death and was not intended for publication. He took part in the fighting and was in Peterborough’s confidence as to the real purpose of the night march. He has also written a memorial on the whole expedition, and another paper on the later stages of the campaign in which he is highly critical of Peterborough, and which has slightly the air of a brief, though an honest one, for one of Peterborough’s opponents. There is also a letter by Richards to the Board of Ordnance and another, less formal, to a friendly official (his brother-in-law) so that we have four accounts by Richards of the same affair; he is critical and impartial and his four accounts tally very well.

The inquiry into Lord Charlemont’s conduct two years later is also of interest, but every witness is trying to establish a point one way or the other.

Richards is therefore much the best authority and my account follows Richards, supplemented by St. Pierre and Carleton where Richards is silent.

There is a discrepancy at the start, for Carleton says the troops were up in good time to attack before dawn, but that Peterborough deliberately kept them back for reasons I do not find convincing. Richards says they lost their way, the musketeers going one way, the grenadiers a second, the Earl and the Prince a third, ‘and all wrong’. They were late and it was for this reason they did not attack till an hour after dawn. I have of course followed Richards.

It is Carleton who gives the division of troops into an eastern and western wing, with a reserve, and who assigns the command of the western assault to Colonel Southwell. There is a difficulty here, for Colonel Southwell is also spoken of as commanding the grenadiers, and of course there were grenadiers in both wings, while Richards speaks of Colonel Southwell in the later stages of the northeastern assault where most of the fighting took place. Southwell also gave evidence about the retreat at the Charlemont inquiry. I have inferred that Colonel Southwell commanded the grenadiers in the night march; then, as senior to Colonel Allen, took command of the right wing of the assault, which was not only traditionally the senior post but was the more independent, as the generals were to accompany the left wing. But having made his lodgment, he might well have left a junior in charge and come to headquarters for orders, when he became involved in the confused events at the north-eastern bastion.

It is St. Pierre who says that Peterborough and Prince George came together to the dragoons and told them to go back. This is not easy to reconcile with the rest of the story. Both Richards and Carleton make Peterborough go back to see what was happening to Stanhope, but they both make him go alone, after Prince George’s death. St. Pierre, however, must be trusted to know what happened to the dragoons and I conclude that Peterborough went back twice. He was never a restful character. The visit to the dragoons in company with Prince George can only have taken place during the hill which by all accounts occurred when the first lodgments had been made in the outworks.

St. Pierre is also useful in his references to a body of 400 men who were ‘to take up on the left hand between the town and the castle to prevent any succour’. This body must have been the reserve under the Dutch colonel to which Carleton refers; it is common sense to suppose they would be moved round for this vital task when it became apparent that Stanhope would not be in time. Later St. Pierre speaks of ‘those who were to hinder the communication’ being called to the attack, and this too I have embodied in my account by bringing the reserve up to the outworks.

St. Pierre characteristically does not say where he was himself and it may be he was with the dragoons at the Covered Cross. He and Carleton both say there were three hundred dragoons. Peterborough himself in a letter produced at the Charlemont inquiry says they were under Brigadier Killigrew, who was still lieutenant-colonel of the Royal Dragoons, just about to be promoted. It seems a fair assumption that the three hundred were mainly from the Royals, but I doubt whether they could have mounted the whole number; St. Pierre says in a letter that they had only 170 horses that could go. I have therefore suggested that a detachment of Conynghame’s Irish Dragoons (later 8th Royal Irish Hussars) were present as well. But there is no evidence for this. As Killigrew was at the Covered Cross, St. Pierre may have been left in the camp. He was still officially the major of the regiment, though a brevet lieutenant-colonel soon to be made substantive, and a brevet colonel soon after that. At any rate, he could not know at first hand what was happening in the north-east bastion and he confuses three retreats that are clearly distinguished by Richards.

The first happened when the grenadiers failed to get into the donjon because the ladders were too short; they fell back to the outworks just as Peterborough and Prince George came up. This was a misfortune for which no one could be blamed. Later, after Prince George had been lost, as Richards says, when Peterborough had again gone to see what had happened to Stanhope, Lord Charlemont ordered a retreat and then, when the enemy appeared to surrender, countermanded his order. The troops, who had started down the hill, came back to the outworks and were greeted by the besiegers with heavy fire; it was then that Colonel Allen and two hundred men were taken. Then came panic and flight, the third retreat, only stayed by Peterborough in person. If these three retreats, exactly described by Richards, are borne in mind the sequence of events becomes intelligible, and incidentally the evidence at the inconclusive inquiry two years later into Lord Charlemont’s conduct is less puzzling. Some of the witnesses may be describing the retreat Charlemont ordered—a genuine error of judgment—and others the panic which occurred later, and which he may, as they say, have tried to stop.

Carleton as well as St. Pierre confuses these three episodes and another important difference between Carleton and Richards is over the death of Prince George of Hesse. Carleton says that the enemy cheered loudly on the arrival of the dragoons sent from the town as a reinforcement; that hearing these cheers, Prince George supposed the garrison wished to surrender and that therefore he marched with three hundred men up to the donjon, where most of those with him were taken prisoner and he himself was killed while falling back. Apart from the reasons already given for thinking Richards a better witness than Carleton, part of this tale becomes mere nonsense when you look at it carefully. For when Prince George led his party forward Peterborough is said to have been ‘in the upper part of the bastion’. He stayed there while Prince George went up to the donjon, while large numbers of men were taken, and while the rest retreated. His curiosity being at last aroused, he came down ‘to see what was doing below’ and Prince George fell dying at his feet. But his reason for going into the upper part of the bastion could only have been to see better; once there he could not have been more than a few feet distant from Prince George who was ‘in the gorge of the bastion’, and it is inconceivable that three hundred men could have been led forward ‘without the orders of their general’ as Carleton says, and without his knowledge. Prince George was by all accounts a good soldier, popular, and a chivalrous gentleman. He had no command of British troops and military etiquette at this period was strict. He would be most unlikely to attempt to lead British troops forward to the surrender of the donjon without permission when their commander was present. His behaviour as described by Carleton is rash, if not foolhardy, and highly discourteous to Peterborough, while the latter ‘in the upper part of the bastion’ must have been in a trance at a vital stage in the battle. Nothing could be more foreign to his character; he might do too much himself, he might interfere unnecessarily or change orders on a whim, but he could never stand by and see another lead his troops to take the surrender of a fortress.

By Richards’s account, Prince George suggested that an attempt should be made to cut the communication with the town—a need that seems to have impressed every soldier. He was killed while making this attempt, for which he had permission. Peterborough was absent, giving orders for the march of Stanhope’s reinforcement. The actions of both commanders thus become intelligible and soldierly.

There is another difference. Carleton, who does not distinguish between the retreat Charlemont ordered and the panic which followed, says that Peterborough induced the troops to turn round and led them back to their positions without the enemy perceiving that they had gone. This cannot be reconciled with Richards, who says that the panic was the direct result of enemy action. ‘The enemy sallied upon us’, he says, when Charlemont ordered the retreat, and he goes on that he and Colonel Southwell had ‘much ado to bring off the wounded and ammunition’. The impression that the enemy followed up the retreat is strong, though he does not explicitly state that they came down to the outworks. And when Peterborough, having fallen ‘into the horriblest passion that ever man was seen in’, led the troops back ‘with a great deal of bravery and resolution’, there was certainly opposition. The ‘fyer broke out afresh’ and Richards himself thought it very rash to return. I have pictured the enemy as coming right down to the outworks; if they did not do this, they were at least firing on the outworks from the covered way that surrounded the donjon.

Altogether, the account in Fortescue and others, which follows Carleton, gives a general impression that is not seriously misleading, but which is inaccurate in a number of details when compared with Richards. It is enough to conclude that Carleton’s recollections twenty years later were a little confused, as was not unnatural.

I had formed my conclusions independently and written this note before I read Dr. Trevelyan’s article on the subject in the Cambridge Historical Journal, 1931. It is an impertinence for me to comment on Dr. Trevelyan’s scholarship but I am glad to find that he regards Richards as the best authority; he does not mention St. Pierre and dismisses Carleton entirely, but to me it seems that though clearly inferior evidence both are useful as supplements to Richards. Dr. Trevelyan concentrates his attention mainly on the planning of the assault, the plan being attributed by Parnell, as one would expect, to Prince George. Richards’s evidence, however, brings overwhelming proof; it was Peterborough’s plan, and here I am glad to agree with Dr. Trevelyan. But I like to think it was the midnight talk with St. Pierre that turned Peterborough’s thoughts southward.

IV. The Events of June and July 1706

It is an odd thing about Peterborough, and to me attractive, that no one is agreed about what he did during this year in Spain. There are a dozen points at which those who do not like him state flatly as an undeniable fact what is just as flatly denied by those who do.

Of these points, the most crucial is his conduct during June 1706. It is vital, because in the middle of May, Charles III had Spain in his hands. The main Bourbon forces had fled from the Peninsula, Catalonia and Valencia had declared for Charles, Aragon was favourable, Castile was not yet enthusiastic for Philip, and the other provinces were indifferent. He had only to march to Madrid and Spain was his. But he delayed, he changed his plan, he went round a longer way. By the end of July, Spain was lost.

Peterborough in 1707 was formally charged by a Secretary of State with responsibility for the delay and the change of plan. If the charge is proved, he was guilty of a frivolity in affairs of state that is inexcusable and indeed he almost ceases to be interesting. For the interest lies in the touch of genius spoilt by failings that are great no doubt, but are complementary to his genius and which he has some chance of overcoming. But this would be too much, a Hamlet who was really mad all the time.

He himself denied the charge categorically and we have no right to say that it was true without examination. Of Colonel Parnell we do not by this time expect an open-minded approach, but others have unfortunately followed him; even Stebbing accepts the charge saying that Peterborough asked Charles to wait till he had completed the administrative arrangements. But he does not quote his authority.

I have been able to find no critical examination of the evidence, but it is, as a matter of fact, good evidence, much better than we have had to consider for the campaign in Valencia, written evidence, the solid satisfying evidence of the letters in dispute. We can satisfy the court one way or the other with evidence of this kind, and without any reliance on the elderly reminiscence of Carleton or the frank partisanship of Freind. St. Pierre is not much help, for he was the regimental officer who knew nothing of high policy; all we can deduce from him is the feeling of the camp. He writes in July:

‘We are to march for Madrid in a few days if the King can be persuaded to goe there; my lords Peterborough and Galway pressed very much for it but contrary to their advice and the protestations of Mr. Stanhope and the Portuguese ambassador, he is gone to Saragossa. . . .’ [St. Pierre to Raby, July 14th, 1706. Brit. Mus. Addl. MSS. 31,134, f. 328 and to the same effect in letters at f. 341 and f. 351.]

Richards is in a different category because he was up to a point in Peterborough’s confidence and because he also talked with the Court. The second part of his journal [Brit Mus. Stowe MSS. 471.2.] is not a daily diary, like the first part; it includes far more discussion and less fact, and it soon becomes clear that he is a witness hostile to the defence. In Barcelona, he criticizes everyone, on both sides and with a good deal of justification; the conduct of the great men has been, he says, so very much out of the way, that he decides no good will come of staying and makes ‘specious reasons’ to my lord for going to England. This, his second mission as Peterborough’s agent, has to do with the accounts, which certainly required explanation.

Before he left Valencia with Peterborough’s letters, Richards records the arrival of letters from Barcelona in which the King reopened the question of going to Saragossa. Richards knew that in Barcelona Peterborough had been hot for the route by Valencia; indeed it is Richards who tells us that Peterborough had taken the trouble to speak separately to everyone susceptible to his influence before the council was held. He had also called a council on board the Prince George, Leake’s flagship, to make sure he had the support of the sea officers. [H.o.L. MSS. vii, 439.] He had succeeded in over-ruling the Court party, headed by Lichtenstein and Cifuentes, who as everybody knew, wanted to go by Aragon; their motives were mainly the hope of loot and bribes, but no doubt they also regarded independence of Peterborough as a good in itself. Probably Peterborough had trodden on many toes in the course of getting his way, but he and everyone else believed that he had got it.

Now came the King’s letter of June 9th [H.o.L. MSS. vii, 471.] re-opening the question, on the grounds that assurances of good will were coming in from Aragon. It is a polite and friendly letter, deferring to Peterborough’s judgment and asking for his opinion. Richards does not seem to have seen Peterborough’s answer, but until he left Valencia it does not appear that it had occurred to him that Peterborough had any changed intention. Richards’s comment is that it was ‘the more strange’ that the King should have written in this way, as a second council of war had confirmed the opinion of the first. He also appears to sympathize with his general in the confusion caused by fresh orders from home to send regiments to Savoy, orders which, he says, are ‘like to puzzle us’.

Richards left Valencia with orders to pick up the King’s letters and take them on to England. He was greatly surprised on meeting the Court at Tarragona to find the decision had been taken to go by Saragossa. This makes it clear that when Richards left Valencia he had no idea of Peterborough’s changing his mind, and that all he said afterwards is hearsay evidence, not strictly admissible. When he was told that the change was due to Peterborough’s letters, he criticized his general very sharply and it now occurs to him that the dispatch of a detachment to take Alicante proved that my lord had no real intention of going to Madrid. The Court was at first very cold to Richards, thinking that he was going to England to justify Peterborough as against themselves, ‘whereas’, he writes, ‘it was entirely my own idea and in fact I dare say my Lord thought his conduct so far from reprehension that mankind would rather be in admiration of it’. The King instructed him to wait while letters were prepared, and he left eventually with a memorial from Count de Gallas to Godolphin. According to this memorial the Court were not to be blamed for the change of plan; it had been forced on them by Peterborough’s letters, from which extensive extracts were included. [H.o.L. MSS. vii, 450 et. seq.] Richards, when he reached London, saw Godolphin, Lord Treasurer, and Sunderland, Secretary of State; he believed, in all sincerity, that Gallas’s charges were true and no doubt said so. From that time onwards, both the statesman and the politician regarded Peterborough’s conduct as wholly factious. It was not till 1707 that he answered the charges in detail, by the effective method of producing the whole correspondence. [H.o.L. MSS. vii, 471 et seq.]

This is the main evidence, Gallas’s extracts, and Peterborough’s correspondence in full. The prosecution is less damaging on closer examination than at first sight. To begin with, Gallas is unable to quote a single sentence, from start to finish, in which Peterborough directly advises Charles to wait, to turn back or to go by Aragon. But the extracts do sound highly discouraging. The question is how they were intended.

There are two letters of June 10th which had crossed the King’s letter of the 9th. They are therefore written on the assumption that there is no question of any change of plan. Then comes Peterborough’s letter of June 13th in which he gives his reply to Charles’s request of the 9th. This is the crux, his considered opinion in reply to a question. It is a letter in which he is far less outspoken than usual and far more politic in recognizing that other people are entitled to an opinion. But it is not a well considered letter all the same. He sets out at length the administrative difficulties he is facing. They are not strategical or tactical; de las Torres always does him the honour of retiring. But he is short of money, he is short of mules, many of the men are new to the country and are sick; the whole march is not going to be easy. ‘Wherefore I must tell your Majesty that all change of scene augments the expense. I see the importance of the project of Aragon; it would be a very good one if we had the necessary troops and money but the first dispositions being fixed I do not apprehend how it is possible to put those other views in execution. We shall have difficulties enough though attended by the fleet. . . The men will not be able to bear the marches through the burning mountains of Aragon.’

There is his opinion, and it is clear enough. But he was in an unusually conciliatory mood for he goes on to make suggestions that would to some extent meet the King’s points. The main advance must be by Valencia; he proposes to take Requena, on the road from Valencia to Madrid, and there make magazines. But, to encourage the people of Aragon, it would now be safe to reduce to a minimum the garrisons of Catalonia and send a thousand horse and two thousand foot to Saragossa. Or perhaps His Majesty himself might gratify his people by a personal visit, riding there with a party of horse and coming on to catch up the foot at Valencia or Requena. ‘But, Sir, for God’s sake, seek the way to Madrid by all means possible.’

No one could cavil at the intention of this letter. But if a lawyer or a civil servant had drafted it for Peterborough, he would have been careful to make little of the administrative difficulties. Everyone knew that, as Stanhope wrote to Peterborough in June, there was still ‘a mighty hankering’ after Aragon; [June 18th, 1706; H.o.L. MSS. vii, 477.] anyone in the world but Peterborough would have taken care not to supply the Court party with just the material they wanted. And it is the same in half a dozen letters written to Charles throughout June, particularly those of the 10th; except in the letter of the 13th, he assumes Charles is coming by Valencia, never discusses Aragon, and runs on in his frank, picturesque, wildly exaggerated style about the difficulties, as though to his dearest friend.

All this was picked out and put into Gallas’s memorial—as any lawyer could have told it would be. Let me quote three short extracts: the two most damaging I can find and one fair sample.

‘June 17th . . . If your Majesty or any of the troops go by Saragossa, you may find money there.’ Most damaging, away from the context; but not when read with the letter of the 13th. Peterborough is explaining that he has no money for Charles; he is short himself; it is to get money, as well as mules, that he has sent the detachment to Alicante. The detachment to Saragossa, which he suggested on the 13th, may also be fortunate.

Again, on June 10th, ‘I cannot stir one step in your service.’ Most damaging; an affront to the King, a refusal to meet him, or perhaps an indication of his inability to march. But from the context, it is clear that he is talking about money. All he gets from England is marked for particular purposes; he has none for the King and cannot meet him over money. It is a banker’s phrase, not a general’s.

June 22nd. ‘The want of baggage mules makes me despair . . .’ This is a fair sample of Peterborough’s style. On the 19th he says he has got half the mules he needs for the foot. The thought he wished to express on the 22nd was one he would have done better to keep to himself, but if he had to express it, anyone else would have said: ‘I am still worried about mules.’ For he is not really in despair; he does not know what it is to be in despair, nor does he mean the King to despair. It is part of the strange simplicity of his egotism that he never stops to think what his letter will sound like to anyone else.

That is the main evidence, but there are other witnesses to be heard before we come to judgment. Richards speaks in his diary of the ‘incredible resentment’ caused at the Court by Peterborough’s action in telling the King that he could not go on. No doubt that resentment was perfectly genuine among the small fry. They had probably seen Gallas’s memorial or heard the substance of it. And for Lichtenstein, Cifuentes and the others there need not have been much dissimulation over the resentment, even if the occasion for it were not what they pretended. Their King had been affronted publicly in January when Peterborough forced him to countermand his own orders and send to Valencia the 1300 troops he had wished to keep for the defence of Catalonia; he had been rebuked in the letter in which Peterborough announced his intention of marching to Valencia ‘with what I have’; and as for themselves, this is the style in which he wrote, and no doubt spoke, of them:

‘The character of Prince Lichtenstein is such as could scarce be believed were it not soe universally known; But above all his weakness is the most surprising and dangerous (His falsehood, his pride, his greediness for money, I shall not so much insist on but) His meddling with everything and understanding nothing must bring us to Ruin.

‘One day he thinks himself in Madrid and then puts on all the Airs of German Insolence and Spanish Pride; the next he gives all for gone and is the most abject dispirited creature in the world, to the degree of crying like a child and lamenting to all that come near him and disheartening all Mankind.’ [Addl. MSS. 28,056, f. 392.] (To Godolphin, December 30th, 1705. signed by Mitford Crowe as well as Peterborough. It reeks of the latter in every line and it is a remarkable instance of his powers of persuasion that he was able to get a diplomatist to sign such a document.)

Not much, therefore, is to be deduced from the incredible resentment of the Court. It is more interesting to see how they broke to Peterborough the news of the decision at Tarragona, which was on June 29th. The King had come to Tarragona, in deference to Peterborough’s opinion, but with the reservation that he would there make up his mind whether to come on down the coast or turn aside to Lerida on the way to Aragon. It should perhaps here be emphasized that when travelling with pack animals in mountainous country it is usually quicker to go round the longer way by the valleys. That is why it was quicker to go to Madrid by Valencia than by Aragon, and why Tarragona was not really out of the way to either place.

When the decision was reached, the King wrote to Peterborough. He does not say in this letter, which is dated July 2nd, [Brit. Mus. Addl. MSS. 28,057, f. 278.] that it is because of Peterborough’s letters that he is going to Aragon. He says only that there is more money and more food by that route, and that the people want to see him.

Peterborough replied on July 5th: [Addl. MSS. 28,057, f. 282.] ‘Les chemins sont si libres du côté de Madrid que les déserteurs passent à trois ou quatre. Votre Majesté peut passer à cette Capital de ce côté-ci comme dans une profonde paix.’ And he continues in the same strain in four more letters, urging haste, and by Valencia. He has by now realized the mistake he made in writing so frankly of the difficulties in his earlier letters.

On July 6th [Addl. MSS. 28,057, f. 286.] King Charles writes to Godolphin that the justification for his change of plan is to be found in Peterborough’s letters. Even now he does not say that Peterborough advised him to turn back, but that he discouraged him:

‘. . . venant d’etre averti en chemin par différentes lettres du dit Comte (Peterborough) que l’état miserable dans lequel se trouvoit ce Royaume-là ne lui permettoit pas de faire avec les trouppes le moindre pas pour mon service, faute des réquisites pour le train de bagage, et que le comte ne me scauroit assister d’aucun secours. . . .’

These are misquotations from Peterborough’s letters, and were no doubt drafted at the same time as Gallas’s memorial. The same statements were made to Peterborough on the same date for the first time [Addl. MSS. 28,057, f. 288.] and on the 13th Peterborough wrote to Godolphin: [Addl. MSS. 28,057, f. 296.] ‘You will see my letters are made their motives for this most amazing resolution. They say I was unwilling—nothing was ever more desired and pressed by any man. Whether my arguments were good I must submit to those that read my letters . . . these accounts (of money matters) are called motives to persuade them from coming this way.’

It is now to be seen whether the few disinterested people at Charles’s Court believed that Peterborough was responsible for the change of plan. At the council of war on the 29th the Court party, that is Lichtenstein, Cifuentes and Noailles, voted for Aragon; Stanhope and the Portuguese Ambassador were on the side of the angels. The Portuguese Ambassador wrote to Peterborough and to Godolphin in London deploring the decision deeply. [To Godolphin June 29th to July 19th. Addl. MSS. 28,057, ff. 264 and 265. To Peterborough, July 3rd and July 19th, H.o.L. MSS. vii.] In all his letters he speaks as though this were contrary to all that had been settled before, in none does he suggest for a moment that the change was made on Peterborough’s advice, while to Peterborough he writes as one known to hold the same views as himself.

Stanhope, then Queen Anne’s Envoy to Charles III, is even more explicit. He writes [H.o.L. MSS. vii, 478.] (June 29th, Villa Franca) to Peterborough:

‘What can be their true reason I do not know. What they pretend and chiefly argue upon is the unreadiness of your troops and the difficulty which your Lordship has represented either for the troops to march or subsist.’

There is an implied criticism here of Peterborough’s lack of diplomacy, but no doubt that he would have voted with the angels.

There are also two significant letters between Peterborough and Noailles. [June 18th and July 6th, H.o.L. MSS. vii, 474 and 475.] Peterborough was a bad judge of men and curiously innocent in his self-absorption; for some reason he regarded Noailles as a friend and wrote to him with the devastating frankness, the wholesale disregard for discretion, that he used to Godolphin or Stanhope. On June 18th, he puts his opinion of the Aragon project to Noailles with none of the unwonted restraint he had shown in his letter of the 13th to the King. He believes Noailles agrees with him. On July 6th Noailles, writing to Peterborough, excuses himself for voting the wrong way at the council of war on the 29th. He has clearly no doubt what Peterborough’s opinions are.

Again, there is Peterborough’s letter of June 23rd to Godolphin:

‘The Portuguese have but to walk to Madrid: it will be without a blow. The two thousand horse and six thousand foot with which I march from Valencia into Castile make the case (for.the Bourbons) desperate, which was enough so before by the superiority of the Portugueses. . .’ [Addl. MSS. 28,057, f. 247.] Here again he is still impatiently expecting the King.

When Peterborough at last reached London, he was confronted with a series of charges, of which one was:

‘Your discouraging the King of Spain from marching to Madrid by way of Valencia. . . .’

To some of the other charges, his replies are evasive or quibbling. But there is no equivocation in his answer to this one. ‘I did everything to make him come. Nothing can appear more plain and all to the contrary most frivolous . . . I could have nothing more to desire then but the honour of carrying the King to Madrid, it being inconceivable that I myself should obstruct my own honour and interest. . .’ [H.o.L. MSS. vii, 401.] Sunderland, the Secretary of State, then re-framed the charge in more exact terms:

‘You did not, after coming to Valencia, solicit or press the King of Spain to go by way of Valencia, till he had taken the resolution of going by Saragossa, which resolution was occasioned by the discouragements you had given him. . . .’ [H.o.L. MSS. vii, 405.]

To this, Peterborough’s reply was that it should not have been necessary to urge the King to do what had already been decided in a solemn council; but that in fact he did press and solicit him to come as quickly as possible throughout June. In proof of this, he submitted the correspondence I have tried to sum up.

But before proceeding to a finding on the main charge, it is worth considering for a moment the subsidiary charge that Peterborough ought to have looked further ahead and managed better, that in short he should have been ready to march to Madrid as soon as he reached Valencia in June.

It is of interest—and anyone with experience of the lobbying that goes on in a conference between Allies will recognize the technique—that as early as May 25th the King wrote to Peterborough asking him a series of exact questions about the possibility of maintaining the troops and the Court with provisions and money on the route to Valencia. On May 26th Peterborough replied, avoiding any definite commitment but assuring the King in general terms that all would be well. [H.o.L. MSS. vii, 468, 469.] The truth was undoubtedly that he had not made all the necessary arrangements and relied on making them when he got to Valencia, where, with the support of the fleet, he undoubtedly had much more hope of success than in Saragossa. The second council of war followed, and on May 28th Peterborough left Barcelona by sea on the understanding that the King would follow within a week or ten days. By June 10th, Peterborough was writing of the difficulty of getting mules.

One may guess that Marlborough, had he been in Peterborough’s place, would have left behind him when he marched from Valencia in April someone supremely competent with orders to collect the horses and mules that would be needed in June. He would probably never have seen a mule himself but he would have got what were needed. Peterborough, however, was not an administrator in that class at all. There are accounts by his admirers of his chaffering for mules in the market-place himself. That would be in character. Tremendous energy we may expect, but not carefully thought out administration or delegation to a good subordinate. He did succeed during his first stay in Valencia in re-mounting the horse; St. Pierre writing to Raby is enthusiastic about his new horses and says the Royals had not been so well mounted since Flanders. [Addl. MSS. 31,134, f. 295 et seq.] Peterborough had also sent many horses to Catalonia, but you cannot train grooms in a day and many of them, says St. Pierre, were spoiled on the way. But there can be no doubt that Peterborough had not collected or arranged to collect all he would need after the relief of Barcelona. This was a failure of foresight and organization, but it must be remembered that in March Barcelona and the whole expedition were in deadly danger. Marlborough, and he alone, had that supreme power to compel circumstance and control events that would enable him to reckon with confidence what the position would be and what he would need in three months’ time.

Whether Peterborough really exerted himself to the full when he came back in the beginning of June I do not think can be finally decided. His admirers and the witnesses he produced in the House of Lords inquiry say that he did, but that is not proof. It was not, however, in his character to do anything by halves; he would either neglect a matter entirely or do the most he could. We have his own statement that by June 19th he had collected half the mules needed for the foot regiments. [H.o.L. MSS. vii, 453 misquoted by Gallas, quoted in full by Peterborough.] We have Richards’s statement that he was trying to get mules but that lack of money forced him to offer half price, and half of that on deferred payment, so that it is not surprising that they were slow in appearing. He was short of money and he says de las Torres had driven away most of the mules of the countryside to the borders of Murcia and Andalusia. My own conclusion is that he did not look far enough ahead and make the arrangements which he ought to have made when he was first in Valencia, but that on his return he probably but not certainly did the best he could in difficult circumstances.

To return to the main charge, that he advised the King to go by Aragon. On this, it seems to me that an impartial court can draw only one conclusion. If there was one opinion in his life in which Peterborough was consistent, it was that the King ought to go to Madrid as quickly as possible and by Valencia.

But it is true that in March he did not foresee the situation in June; that he underestimated the administrative difficulties; that he never lost a chance of reviling the King’s ministers; that he had reproved and affronted the King during the first march to Valencia and yet now forgot this and wrote to him with the freedom of a trusted friend. All that is true and it is only to say that he was Peterborough not Marlborough.

V. Peterborough’s Life Before and After This Year

Stebbing is not easy to get hold of and the article in the Dictionary of National Biography is misleading, at least on the military side of Peterborough’s career. I feel these notes would not be complete without a very brief sketch of the rest of Peterborough’s life.

He was probably at Eton and Christchurch, but at neither for long; in 1674 at the age of sixteen, Charles Mordaunt went as a naval volunteer to the Mediterranean in the ship of Admiral Arthur Herbert, later Lord Torrington, his mother’s half-brother. The object of the expedition was to crush the Corsairs of Algiers, and Mordaunt took part in the battle in 1675 by which this was for the moment achieved. In the same year, he succeeded by his father’s death to the Viscountcy of Mordaunt. When the expedition came home in 1677, he married, but again in 1678 shipped as a volunteer in a frigate commissioned for service on the Barbary coast: he came home to cheer the bride within a year, but in June 1680 volunteered for service in the land force dispatched to relieve Tangier.

There are only two glimpses of his character in these early adventures, but both are typical. On his second voyage, the chaplain fell ill and there was to be no service one Sunday; Lord Mordaunt, just twenty, feeling nothing was too much for a young Viscount, announced that he would preach in the chaplain’s place and settled down to work on his sermon. The news brought the chaplain from his bed with a run; he eventually triumphed and noted in his diary: ‘So the reverend Lord’s Sunday work is come to nothing.’ My lord in a pique transferred to another ship.

There is also a letter written to his uncle, Admiral Herbert, on his return from his first voyage; it is the cool, friendly letter of a young man with utter confidence that his personal charm and his rank enable him to say exactly what he thinks without giving offence. The talk in London, he says among other things, is that the admiral is much too indiscreet in his whoring. A viscount who is heir to an earldom can speak on terms of perfect equality with a much older relation who is a commoner.

From 1680 onwards, Mordaunt said goodbye for the present to naval and military adventures and became the young man of fashion with an eye on politics. His father, a younger brother, had been a Royalist and had been created Viscount as a reward for his long services; his uncle, the elder of the two brothers, the second Earl of Peterborough, went even further in his attachment to the Stuarts. But Charles Mordaunt, although never so rich or so unambitious that he could despise Court favour, was clear from the start that he had nothing to say to absolutism, either in religion or politics. Years later, in Barcelona, when the inhabitants expressed some anxiety about interference with Catholic worship, he replied: ‘Wherever I have my quarters, I shall have conveniency enough to worship God; and as for the rest of the Army they shall perform divine service among themselves without giving offence to anybody.’ That expresses his life-long attitude to religion exactly, and in politics he showed his opposition to Stuart prerogative as early as 1680 when it was a dangerous thing to do. He joined with Shaftesbury and fourteen other peers in a petition in 1681 against the convocation of Parliament at Oxford, and was always with the Whig or rebel minority in the House of Lords until the accession of James II.

James, as everyone knows, began his reign by demanding what Charles had been too wise even to mention, a larger standing army, commissions for Roman Catholic officers, and much more. Mordaunt addressed the House with great fire and brilliance, opposing the King’s policy, and for the greater part of the next four years he was in Holland, closely associated with William of Orange, whom he pressed from 1686 onwards to undertake the ‘business of England’. No English noble was more openly William’s friend nor more deeply committed to the Revolution. He landed with William at Torbay, and led his advanced guard to receive the surrender of Exeter and to raise the western counties.

The first year of William’s reign was one of the two occasions in Charles Mordaunt s life when fortune held out her hands to him loaded with all he cared to pick up and was man enough to hold. He became in the course of three months Privy Councillor, Lord of the Bedchamber, Colonel of Foot, Lord-Lieutenant of Northamptonshire (superseding his Jacobite uncle Peterborough), Water Bailiff of the Severn, First Commissioner of the Treasury, and Earl of Monmouth. But he was an incorrigible Whig; happiest in opposition. A superficial frivolity might seem the reason for his refusal to study his own interests; but there was a deeper seriousness that would never permit him to sacrifice his lightest belief to royal authority. There were others of the nobles in Europe who professed an interest in the philosophy of Locke, but few except Mordaunt put their principles into practise when they were dealing with royalty. But perhaps in his case it was less philosophy than temperament. Though he could never have held together the Grand Alliance as Marlborough did, it is equally true that he could never have knelt to Anne and begged weeping for his wife’s place at Court. And now within four years he was associated with an attack on the military administration, that is to say, on the King, and by 1694 he was no longer summoned to the Privy Council nor did he perform his duties as a lord of the Bedchamber. He was never again to enjoy William’s full confidence.

As First Lord of the Treasury, his main business had been patronage, and his worst enemies have not ventured to suggest that in this he was anything but disinterested and generous. John Locke and Isaac Newton benefited now (and Locke for the rest of his life) from Monmouth’s kindness; Dryden, Berkeley and Pope were to be added to the list later. The conversation of the wits and poets at Will Irwin’s coffee-house, at the corner of Bow Street, Covent Garden, was perhaps the first of his pleasures when out of employment, the rivals being the cultivation of the vines, the peaches and the famous tulip-tree at Parson’s Green, good-humoured adventures with gentlemanly highwaymen, and light-hearted escapades of a rather undergraduate character. For instance, when he was on a visit to London just before the Revolution, a friend expressed a desire to own a singing canary in which the hostess of a certain tavern took great pride. Monmouth stole it for her, leaving in its place a bird that was dumb; coming back to the tavern after the Revolution, perhaps with the same companion, he had the impudence to condole with the hostess, who was a red-hot Tory, and to suggest that the bird had lost its voice when the true King crossed the sea. This must have been when he was First Lord, if it happened at all; tales of the same kind were told of him all his life and no doubt boyish pranks did alternate with the political intrigue, of which opposition to the royal prerogative seems always to have been the main motives.

There are two controversial episodes from William’s reign that must be mentioned because they illustrate the times as much as the character of Monmouth. The first occurred while he was still in William’s favour. William was in Ireland; Mary in England was advised by nine lords of whom Monmouth was one. Letters were intercepted on their way to a French agent in Antwerp, M. Coutenay; they revealed the secret deliberations of the Council of Nine; they were written in lemon-juice, a simple form of invisible ink which is said—but I have never tried it—to become legible when held to a fire. The letters formed a series which stopped when Monmouth and his secretary Major Wildman were away.

It seems to me easy to rule out any idea that Monmouth was really trying to betray William either to Versailles or St. Germains. No one was more irrevocably committed to the Revolution than he; he had nothing to gain and everything to lose by the return of James II. And in any case, he knew the letters were being intercepted; neither he nor anyone else would have gone on sending them if they had really been meant to reach France. It is more plausible to suppose that Monmouth intended the letters to be intercepted and to incriminate Nottingham; he did suggest to the Queen that Nottingham or someone on his staff might be the author. But if this was his intention—and it would not be out of character—it seems very odd that he did not put into the letters something that would indicate Nottingham; in his letter to Colonel Jones in San Mateo, when we know he was trying to deceive, he cannot be accused of under-emphasizing the point he wanted to make. Still more telling, at this period he was pressing for permission to go away from London; the letters, if he was the author, would obviously stop when he went and suspicion would be directed to himself. No one can seriously suppose he had not the wit to see that. My conclusion is that he did not know who sent the letters; either he had been so indiscreet that Wildman was in a position to write the letters without his knowledge or perhaps another of the nine councillors was trying to incriminate Monmouth. Either is possible on character; Wildman by all accounts would have intrigued against his own shadow on a desert island, and certainly there were several of the councillors who would have been glad to disgrace Monmouth and who were quite capable of such a manoeuvre. But I prefer the Wildman theory; it cannot be more than a theory. Monmouth was a bad judge of men and certainly trusted him too far.

In the other episode, there can be no question of Monmouth’s guilt. Sir John Fenwick had taken part in the conspiracy of 1695 to assassinate the King. When he was at last captured, there were two witnesses against him; his conviction seemed certain and he made a confession which incriminated no red-hot Jacobites but a number of the King’s supporters, among them great Whigs such as Shrewsbury and Russell and moderate Tories such as Godolphin and Marlborough. One of the two witnesses against him, however, was bribed by his wife, Lady Mary Fenwick, to abscond and it now became clear that he would not be convicted by the ordinary law of the land on the evidence of the one who remained. He withdrew his confession. The Whigs, however, were determined he should not escape; they brought in a Bill of Attainder which passed the Commons and reached the Lords in November of 1696.

It is at this stage that Monmouth comes into the story. He communicated with Sir John through Lady Mary Fenwick, suggesting that he should again confess and recommend himself to mercy by including matters that would implicate Shrewsbury, Marlborough, Godolphin and the rest; under the impression that Fenwick would accept this life-line, he showed him in the opening stages of the proceedings every favour he could. But when it became clear that Sir John had now decided to keep his mouth shut and die like a gentleman, Monmouth turned on him with all the savagery at his disposal. When Lady Mary saw this and realized that her husband’s case was hopeless, she revealed the reason for Monmouth’s change of front.

It is of course generally known that Shrewsbury, Marlborough and Godolphin had flirted with the Jacobites. This is not the place for a discussion of their guilt; to me the most plausible theory seems to be Mr. Churchill’s that Marlborough and Godolphin wanted intelligence; they talked with agents to get news and gave away only what they knew was already known. But Monmouth may well have believed them far more guilty than they were; he had the private evidence of one Matthew Smith which certainly suggested it, which he may have believed to be entirely true. And he could not himself stomach any truck with the Stuarts.

His motives in his approach to Sir John may thus have been not altogether unworthy but he certainly cannot be acquitted of spitefulness in the way he turned on the accused who would not do as he wanted. By the standard of public life at the time, however, the offence hardly deserved the punishment of confinement in the Tower which it received. It does not seem to have been regarded as a serious disgrace by his contemporaries and the Marlboroughs and Godolphin were reconciled with him before the beginning of the Queen’s reign. The action of the Lords was their way of burking an indiscretion; the King too was anxious that no attention should be drawn to the relations of his ministers with St. Germains and he is said to have appeased the enfant terrible with £2000 a year from the Privy Purse.

Monmouth, who by his uncle’s death had become Earl of Peterborough soon after he came out of the Tower in 1697, was offered early in the new reign command of a joint Anglo-Dutch expedition to the West Indies. But the Dutch contingent was withdrawn and the remaining forces being manifestly inadequate, he remarked that he had no wish to go to the next world loaded with empty honours. The expedition did not sail. Then in 1705 came his appointment to command the Mediterranean expedition, as commander-in-chief of the land forces and joint admiral of the fleet, he and Sir Cloudesley Shovell equally having the right to wear the union flag at the main top masthead of any ship they were in.

This was the second time that fortune had stretched out to him full hands, the second time he did not hold what he picked up. The story has been told in the text; all that need be added here is that strategically he was right at every stage. He would have preferred Italy to Spain and it certainly would have been much better; by the time France had been defeated from a foothold in Italy, the Spanish might well have been so tired of Philip and his Frenchmen that they would have accepted Charles and his Austrians. Again, Peterborough would have preferred Valencia and a dash for Madrid to the Barcelona project, and he was right. Once in Barcelona he wanted to use it immediately as a stepping-stone to Valencia and Madrid but he was prevented by the King; later he saw that Tessé had walked into a trap when no one else did see it; he alone saw that by the time Guadalaxara was reached it was time to go on the defensive. He was right, every time, but how differently, with what patience, what reserve and what blandness, Marlborough, seeing the same ends, would have set about getting his way, compelling circumstance to his will! One of the greatest living soldiers has said that strategy is the easiest part of the general’s art; Peterborough’s year as a commander-in-chief is an example in point.

Here for the moment, let us play the game beloved of amateurs of cricket and pick up a team from the generals of the War of the Spanish Succession. Marlborough first and Eugene second; perhaps there is not much between them at directing an army on the battlefield (though Eugene was not there at Ramillies, the most perfect of Marlborough’s battles), but Eugene has to his credit no piece of administration to compare with the march to the Danube, and he was, as Mr. Churchill says, a land animal. He never believed in the Toulon expedition and muffed it; he refused the great sea-based advance that might have ended the war in 1708. But who comes next; Berwick? Villars? Vendome? It is between those three, depending on the state of the game. Berwick, being an Englishman, was, I think, the best for a cool defence; the other two were quick scorers. However that may be, it is company too exalted for Peterborough; he had better be captain of the second eleven, for unless he is captain he will quarrel with someone. And let him have faithful honest old Galway, unselfish and uninspired, to keep wicket and make an unexpected stand as last man in.

Peterborough was an exceptionally lucky man; it is not often that fortune comes back when she has once been rebuffed. She did not give him a third chance. He returned to England (after much delay) in the summer of 1707 and for some time was involved in answering the charges brought against him by the Ministry, which was now, if not exactly a Whig ministry, based on Whig support. The charges and his answers are all set out in House of Lords MSS. vii. He comes out of most of them fairly well, but nothing could straighten his accounts, and of course there was no getting away from the main charge, the one that was never stated, that he had quarrelled with everyone, the King, his ministers, Galway and the admiral. He became a hero with the Tories, for the discreditable reason that he was not Marlborough and they wanted Marlborough’s blood because he was too big to be a party man. Overpraised by the Tories, blackened by the Whigs, his reputation has never since been assessed with complete impartiality.

It remains true that when Harley and St. John attained office they employed Peterborough only on a variety of diplomatic missions designed primarily to keep him out of the way. This, say his detractors, was because they understood his real worth, but surely one reason was that in his own odd way he was too honest to suit them. He could hardly have been persuaded to keep quiet if he had known that British troops were to take the field by the side of faithful allies with orders not to fight. While Harley and St. John were deviously negotiating their separate peace, Peterborough was urging on the Court of Vienna to fresh efforts. But he kept quiet, to his discredit, once the peace was accomplished and signed, and got his reward; Ambassador to the Court of Sicily, Governor of Minorca, this was the kind of appointment that was ended by the accession of George I, who would have nothing to say to him and forbade him the Court.

It is not particularly pleasant to watch him in those years, attacking Galway and Marlborough; the best one can say is that in that period soldiers of noble blood were politicians before they were soldiers. ‘Jemmy Campbell behaved like an angell,’ said Orkney, when he broke the lines at Malplaquet, but the Duke of Argyll behaved very differently in the House of Lords; Peterborough at least had never served under the men he attacked.

The years from 1714 to Peterborough’s death in 1735 are less distressing. There is no need, in this short sketch, to linger over his elderly flirtation with Mrs. Howard, later Lady Suffolk; all that need survive are two lines of verse:

‘I said to my heart, between sleeping and waking,
Thou wild thing, that always art leaping or aching’.

and one phrase from a letter: ‘. . . showing how a soldier, how a philosopher, how a friend of Lady Suffolk’s ought to the . . .’ His amours all his life were trivial and immature and to me do not ring very true; mostly a matter of conventional gallantry, the terms in which Carleton reports them, ‘a good correspondence with the fair sex’, seem about just. There were some amusing stories of his youth, but later it all became rather a bore. Each of his two wives was faithful till death brought parting and probably each knew very well how much to believe of the tales of his infidelities.

There are plenty of glimpses of him in these last years, for he was famous as a wit, a cook and a gardener, most of all as an eccentric. He can be seen choosing a chicken at the poulterer’s for his supper; walking home from the market with the Star of the Garter on his breast and a cabbage under his arm; slipping away from his guests to put on a cook’s cap and apron and cook the dinner; arriving at Bath with no luggage and going to the Assembly in his boots. It is now that Pope writes:

And he whose lightning pierced the Iberian lines
Now ranks my quincunx and now trains my vines,
Taming the stubborn genius of the plain
Almost as quickly as he conquered Spain.

But I do not see him with any tool in his hands larger than a pruning-knife.

When it comes to summing-up, we can reject Colonel Parnell’s

. . . twenty-nine distinct damnations,
One sure if another fails. . . .

his picture of the coward and traitor, ‘notorious for atheism and foul living’, sluggish and incompetent, sunk in a life of pleasure. And with equal firmness we can refuse to accept Sir Walter Scott’s panegyric and regard even Macaulay’s picture as too brightly coloured. ‘This man was, if not the greatest, yet assuredly the most extraordinary character of his age, the King of Sweden himself not excepted. Indeed, Peterborough may be described as a polite, learned and amorous Charles XII. His courage had all the French impetuosity and all the English steadiness. His fertility and activity of mind were almost beyond belief. They appeared in everything that he did, in his campaigns, in his negotiations, in his familiar correspondence, in his lightest and most unstudied conversation. He was a kind friend, a generous enemy, and in deportment a thorough gentleman. But his splendid talents and virtues were rendered almost useless to his country by his levity, his restlessness, his irritability, his morbid craving for novelty and for excitement. . . .’

Between these extremes of praise and blame lived a human being, always self-centred, gay and courageous, frequently frivolous, inconsistent and spiteful but never mean or pettifogging. There are anecdotes innumerable and some of them no doubt true; whether all of them are does not matter. What does matter is that there should emerge a man ‘delightful to jest and masquerade with, less admirable to mate or work with; easier to like or to love than to approve; equally hard to have to do with and to do without’. (Stebbing.) Listen to Swift, writing of him to Stella: ‘the ramblingest lying rogue on earth . . .’ ‘I love the hangdog dearly . . .’ ‘As soon as he saw me, he left the Duke of Ormond and other lords and ran and kissed me before he spoke to them, but chid me terribly for not writing to him . . . He is at least sixty and has more spirits than any young man I know of in England.’ And to Archbishop King, Swift writes: ‘Your Grace knows he is a person of great talents but dashed with something restless and capricious in his nature . . . he is such a sort of person as may give good advice which wise men may reasonably refuse to follow.’ And to Pope: ‘I always loved him well.’

Swift’s doggerel lines on him hit the right note too:

Mordanto fills the trump of fame,
The Christian world his deeds proclaim,
And prints are crowded with his name.

In journeys he outrides the post,
Sits up till midnight with his host,
Talks politics, and gives the toast.

Knows every prince in Europe’s face,
Flies like a squib from place to place,
And travels not, but rims a race.

From Paris gazette à la main
This day arrived, without his train,
Mordanto in a week from Spain!

A messenger comes all a-reek,
Mordanto at Madrid to seek;
He left the town above a week.

Next day the post-boy winds his horn,
And rides through Dover in the morn;
Mordanto’s landed from Leghorn!

Mordanto gallops on alone,
The roads are with his followers strown,
This breaks a girth, and that a bone:

His body active as his mind,
Returning sound in limb and wind,
Except some leather lost behind.

A skeleton in outward figure,
His meagre corps, though full of vigour,
Would halt behind him were it bigger.

So wonderful his expedition,
When you have not the least suspicion.
He’s with you like an apparition.

Shines in all climates like a star
In senates bold, and fierce in war,
A land commander, and a tar.

Heroic actions early bred in,
Ne’er to be matched in modern reading
But by his namesake Charles, of Sweden.

I have ended the text with Pope’s letter to Martha Blount about Peterborough’s last days; he repeats some of it in a letter to Swift: ‘This is a man that will neither live nor the like any other mortal,’ he ends. That is really the last word; Peterborough was determined to be different from anyone else and succeeded so well that you either like him or you don’t. And personally, having read all I could find and tried my best to be fair, I find I like him better than when I began.