1703
1704
The ranks of the regiment were speedily completed, and in the spring of 1703 it marched to Hull, Berwick, and Carlisle; where it was stationed in the following year.
1705
On the 31st of January, 1705, Colonel Lord Lucas died; and was succeeded in the colonelcy of the regiment by Lieutenant-Colonel Hans Hamilton, from the Earl of Derby’s Regiment, now the Sixteenth Foot.
Meanwhile, the war which commenced on the frontiers of the Netherlands, in 1702, had taken a wider range, and Italy, Germany, Portugal, and Spain, had become the theatre of conflict; and in May, the regiment embarked on board the fleet under Sir Cloudesly Shovel, with other forces commanded by General the Earl of Peterborough, either to aid the Duke of Savoy in driving the French out of Italy, to make an attempt on Naples and Sicily, or to effect a landing on the coast of Spain, as should appear most for the interest of Her Majesty’s service. The fleet arrived at Lisbon in June, and additional forces were put on board; Archduke Charles, who was acknowledged as King of Spain, also embarked, and an attempt on the coast of Catalonia was resolved upon. From Lisbon the armament sailed, on the 28th of July, for Gibraltar, where a reinforcement joined from the garrison, and Colonel Hans Hamilton, of the Thirty-fourth Regiment, was nominated quartermaster-general of the expedition.
Leaving Gibraltar, the fleet proceeded to the Bay of Altea, in Valencia, and a number of Catalonians and Valencians throwing off their allegiance to the House of Bourbon, and acknowledging Archduke Charles as king of Spain, the British general was induced to undertake the siege of Barcelona, the capital of Catalonia, which was defended by upwards of five thousand men, under the viceroy of Catalonia, Don Francis Velasco. In 1697, this fortress resisted thirty thousand French troops eight weeks, and cost Louis XIV. twelve thousand men; but the Earl of Peterborough was unable to bring more than seven thousand men into the lines, which gave an interesting character to the enterprise.
Landing near the river Bassoz, on the 23rd and 24th of August, the troops advanced towards the town, and after some difficulties were overcome, the siege was commenced. The native energy of British soldiers was conspicuously displayed on this occasion, and the grenadiers of the Thirty-fourth had the honor to take part in storming the detached fortress of Montjuich, situate on a hill on the west side of the town. The troops engaged on this service made a detour through the mountains during the night of the 13th of September, and stormed the outworks early on the following morning, making a lodgment, gaining the bulwark of a new fortification, and establishing themselves in the works. In a few days afterwards the garrison surrendered.
This success facilitated the siege of the city of Barcelona, in which the Thirty-fourth Regiment took an active part. The armed Catalonian and Valencian peasantry blocked up the avenues of the town; seamen were landed from the fleet to take part in the siege; the soldiers were incessant in their exertions; cannon and mortars were dragged up steep precipices by men; and a practicable breach being effected, a detachment of the regiment was in readiness to take part in storming the town; but the garrison surrendered, and saved the effusion of blood which would have attended this enterprise. A number of armed countrymen entered the city through the breach, to plunder the partisans of the house of Bourbon; but the Earl of Peterborough entered the town at the head of a troop of dragoons, and the grenadiers of the Thirty-fourth, and other regiments, put a stop to the plundering, and rescued the governor and his garrison from the vengeance of the people.