The lower house of convocation still continued to wrangle with their superiors; and though they joined the upper house in a congratulatory address to the queen on the success of her arms, they resolved to make application to the commons against the union. The queen being apprised of their design, desired the archbishop to prorogue them for three weeks, before the expiration of which the act of union had passed in parliament. The lower house delivered a representation to the bishops, in which they affirmed no such prorogation had ever been ordered during the session of parliament. The bishops found in their records seven or eight precedents of such prorogations, and above thirty instances of the convocation having sat sometimes before, and sometimes after, a session of parliament; nay, sometimes even when the parliament was dissolved. The queen, informed of these proceedings, wrote a letter to the archbishop, intimating that she looked upon the lower house as guilty of an invasion of her royal supremacy; and that if any thing of the same nature should be attempted for the future, she would use such means for punishing offenders as the law warranted. The prolocutor absenting himself from the convocation, the archbishop pronounced sentence of contumacy against him. The lower house, in a protestation, declared this sentence unlawful and altogether null. Nevertheless the prolocutor made a full submission, with which the archbishop was satisfied, and the sentence was repealed. About this period the earl of Sunderland was appointed one of the secretaries of state, in the room of sir Charles Hedges. This change was not effected without great opposition from Harley, who was in his heart an enemy to the duke of Marlborough and all his adherents; and had already, by his secret intrigues, made considerable progress in a scheme for superseding the influence of the duchess.
FRANCE THREATENED WITH TOTAL RUIN.
The French king at this juncture seemed to be entirely abandoned by his former good fortune. He had sustained such a number of successive defeats as had drained his kingdom of people, and his treasury was almost exhausted. He endeavoured to support the credit of his government by issuing mint-bills, in imitation of the bank-notes of England; but, notwithstanding all his precautions, they passed at a discount of three-and-fifty per cent. The lands lay uncultivated; the manufactures could be no longer carried on; and the subjects perished with famine. The allies, on the other hand, seemed to prosper in every quarter. They had become masters of the greatest part of the Netherlands, in consequence of the victory at Ramillies; the army of king Charles was considerably reinforced; a scheme was formed for the conquest of Toulon, by the troops of the emperor and the duke of Savoy, supplied with a large sum of money by queen Anne, and assisted by the combined fleets of England and Holland, under the command of sir Cloudesley Shovel. In a word, France seemed to be reduced to the verge of destruction, from which nothing in all probability could have saved her but the jealousy and misconduct of the confederates. Louis, by virtue of his capitulation with the emperor in Italy, was enabled to send such reinforcements into Spain as turned the fortune of the war in that country; while the distractions in the council of king Charles prevented that unanimity and concurrence without which no success can be expected. The earl of Peterborough declared against an offensive war, on account of the difficulty of finding subsistence in Castile; and advised Charles to trust to the expedition against Toulon. This opinion he sent from Italy, to which he had withdrawn.
THE ALLIES ARE DEFEATED AT ALMANZA.
Charles, however, was persuaded to penetrate once more to Madrid, and give battle to the enemy wherever they should appear. On the thirteenth day of March the army was assembled at Caudela, to the number of sixteen thousand men; under the auspices of the marquis das Minas, to whom the earl of Galway was second in command. They marched towards Yecla, and undertook the siege of Vilena; but having received intelligence that the duke of Berwick was in the neighbourhood, they advanced on the fourteenth day of April in four columns towards the town of Almanza, where the enemy were drawn up in order of battle, their number being considerably superior to that of the confederates. The battle began about two in the afternoon, and the whole front of each army was fully engaged. The English and Dutch squadrons on the left, sustained by the Portuguese horse of the second line, were overpowered after a gallant resistance. The centre, consisting chiefly of battalions from Great Britain and Holland, obliged the enemy to give way, and drove their first upon their second line; but the Portuguese cavalry on the right being broken at the first charge, the foot betook themselves to flight; so that the English and Dutch troops being left naked on the flanks, were surrounded and attacked on every side. In this dreadful emergency they formed themselves into a square, and retired from the field of battle. By this time the men were quite spent with fatigue, and all their ammunition exhausted: they were ignorant of the country, abandoned by their horse, destitute of provisions, and cut off from all hope of supply. Moved by these dismal considerations, they capitulated and surrendered themselves prisoners of war, to the amount of thirteen battalions. The Portuguese, and part of the English horse, with the infantry that guarded the baggage, retreated to Alcira, where they were joined by the earl of Galway, with about five and twenty hundred dragoons which he had brought from the field of battle. About three thousand men of the allied army were killed upon the spot, and among that number brigadier Killegrew, with many officers of distinction. The earl of Galway, who charged in person at the head of Guiscard’s dragoons, received two deep cuts in the face. The marquis das Minas was run through the arm, and saw his concubine, who fought in the habit of an Amazon, killed by his side: the lords Tyrawley, Mark Ker, and colonel Glayton, were wounded: all their artillery, together with an hundred and twenty colours and standards, and about ten thousand men, were taken; so that no victory could be more complete; yet it was not purchased without the loss of two thousand men slain in the action, including some officers of eminence. The duke of Berwick, who commanded the troops of king Philip, acquired a great addition of fame by his conduct and behaviour before and during the engagement; but his authority was superseded by the duke of Orleans, who arrived in the army immediately after the battle. This prince seemed to entertain some private views of his own; for he took no effectual step to improve the victory. He began a private negotiation with the earl of Galway, during which the two armies lay inactive on the banks of the Cinca; and he concluded the campaign with the siege of Lerida, which was surrendered by capitulation on the second day of November: then the troops on both sides went into winter quarters. The earl of Galway and the Marquis das Minas embarked at Barcelona for Lisbon, and general Carpenter remained commander of the English forces quartered in Catalonia, which was now the only part of Spain that remained to king Charles.
UNSUCCESSFUL ATTEMPT UPON TOULON.
The attempt upon Toulon by the duke of Savoy and prince Eugene might have succeeded, if the emperor, notwithstanding the repeated remonstrances of the maritime powers, had not divided his army in Italy, by detaching a considerable body through the ecclesiastical state towards Naples, of which he took possession without any difficulty. Besides, ten thousand recruits destined for the Imperial forces in Italy were detained in Germany, from an apprehension of the king of Sweden, who remained in Saxony, and seemed to be upon very indifferent terms with the emperor. With the assistance of the English and Dutch fleets, the duke of Savoy and prince Eugene passed the Var [149] [See note 2 B, at the end of this Vol.] on the eleventh day of July, at the head of an army of thirty thousand men, and marched directly towards Toulon, whither the artillery and ammunition were conveyed on board of the combined squadrons. The French king was extremely alarmed at this attempt, as five thousand pieces of cannon, vast magazines, and the best part of his fleet, were in the harbour of Toulon, and ran the greatest risk of being entirely taken or destroyed. The whole kingdom of France was filled with consternation when they found their enemies were in the bosom of their country. The monarch resolved to leave no stone unturned for the relief of the place, and his subjects exerted themselves in a very extraordinary manner for its preservation. The nobility of the adjacent provinces armed their servants and tenants, at the head of whom they marched into the city: they coined their plate, and pawned their jewels for money to pay the workmen employed upon the fortifications; and such industry was used, that in a few days the town and harbour, which had been greatly neglected, were put in a good posture of defence. The allies took possession of the eminences that commanded the city, and the ordnance being landed, erected batteries. From these they began to cannonade and bombard the city, while the fleet attacked and reduced two forts at the entrance of the Mole, and co-operated in the siege with their great guns and bomb-ketches. The garrison was numerous, and defended the place with great vigour. They sunk ships in the entrance to the Mole: they kept up a prodigious fire from the ramparts: they made desperate sallies, and even drove the besiegers from one of their posts with great slaughter. The French king, alarmed at this design of his enemies, ordered troops to march towards Toulon from all parts of his dominions. He countermanded the forces that were on their route to improve the victory of Almanza: a great part of the army under Villars on the Bhine was detached to Provence, and the court of Versailles declared, that the duke of Burgundy should march at the head of a strong army to the relief of Toulon. The duke of Savoy being apprized of these preparations, seeing no hope of reducing the place, and being apprehensive that his passage would be intercepted, resolved to abandon his enterprise. The artillery being re-embarked, with the sick and wounded, he decamped in the night, under favour of a terrible bombardment and cannonading from the English fleet, and retreated to his own country without molestation.* Then he undertook the reduction of Susa, the garrison of which surrendered at discretion. By this conquest he not only secured the key to his own dominions, but also opened to himself a free passage into Dauphiné.