The English historians gently slide over the atrocities of this war. Though all profess to follow San Felipe[b] they do not mention the rapes, murders, acts of sacrilege, and robberies committed by the English and their allies, the Catalan miquelets, who were, in fact, a species of banditti. Wives ravished before the eyes of their fettered husbands, daughters before their fathers; even churches turned into brothels, and the altars used as the most convenient places for the consummation of such iniquities, are said to have been common scenes. The Catalans themselves are implicated in them.
Lord Mahon[f] will not allow Tessé[g] to have possessed merit of any description. Both his memoirs and his letters show that he was a sagacious observer; and his military talents were unquestionably not mean.
The reduction of Barcelona and the insurrection of Valencia could not fail to make a profound impression at Madrid. By this time Philip seems to have attained a salutary conviction that, unless he assumed an activity corresponding to his circumstances, his reign would soon be at an end; he accordingly resolved to take the field in person. Having petitioned Louis for a powerful reinforcement, and withdrawn most of the troops engaged on the frontiers of Portugal,—leaving a handful only under Berwick, who had been again ordered to assume the conduct of the western war,—he proceeded to invest Barcelona, the recovery of which would naturally constrain the submission of Catalonia, and perhaps put an end to the war by the capture of his rival.
In the passage through Aragon little care was taken by the royal army to cultivate the good will of the people; because a lieutenant was murdered in his bed at Guerrea, the incensed soldiers were permitted, not only to plunder the inhabitants, but to massacre the neighbouring peasantry. Philip proceeded towards the capital, under the walls of which he was joined by the duke of Noailles; and he had the gratification of seeing the entrance to the harbour blockaded by a fleet of thirty sail. Yet twenty-three days elapsed before the fall of Monjuich, and several more before a breach was made in the walls of the city wide enough to admit the assailants. In a few hours Philip was assured that the enemy would be in his power. At this critical moment, when the sun of Charles seemed to be set forever, a British squadron appeared in sight; the French fleet retired towards Toulon.
Valencia
Philip, forsaking his guns, his baggage, and even his wounded, made a precipitate though reluctant retreat. At this time his affairs seemed hopeless. The duke of Marlborough had just triumphed at Ramillies; a French army in Italy had been almost annihilated; and the war in his own western provinces was no less disastrous than in the eastern. Great as were the abilities of Berwick, his small band could not face the forty thousand enemies before him: he therefore retreated, and had the mortification to witness the capture of Alcantara, Ciudad Rodrigo, and Salamanca, and the approach of the confederates towards Madrid. By his advice the court was removed to Burgos, the ancient capital of Castile. It was high time; for scarcely had Philip left it, when the light troops of Galway and De las Minas appeared in sight, and on the 28th day of June, those chiefs, at the head of thirty thousand men, made a triumphant entry into Madrid.
To ordinary and even to many acute observers the Bourbon power seemed forever fallen in the peninsula. Without forces, without money, a fugitive from his capital, which was occupied by a formidable enemy, his fairest provinces in the power of his rival, Philip was expected to retreat into France. But adversity called forth powers which had hitherto slumbered within him, and the existence of which had not been suspected, perhaps, even by himself. With a fortitude which would have done honour to a stoic, he bore his sudden, almost overwhelming reverses: with pathetic simplicity he harangued his handful of troops, whom he assured of his unalterable resolution of dying with them in defence of their common country; and, as to the future, he looked forward with a hope which showed that he knew the Spanish character much better than his timid counsellors.
[1706-1707 A.D.]
When the allied troops had entered into Madrid, no shout had been raised in favour of Charles: a mournful silence reigned on every side. Madrid was not Spain, and the Spaniards were not Flemings—facts of which the allied generals had soon a melancholy experience. In Castile, almost every individual became a soldier. Estremadura furnished and equipped twelve thousand; in Salamanca, no sooner had the allies left it on the march to the capital than the inhabitants arose, again proclaimed Philip, and levied a body of troops to cut off all communication between them and Portugal. Those whom sickness or age prevented from drawing the sword, contributed their money to the same end. “The day before yesterday,” wrote the princess Orsini, “a priest brought 120 pistoles to the queen, from a village which contained only the same number of houses. He said, ‘My flock are ashamed of sending so small a sum; but they wish me to say that there are also 120 hearts faithful even to death.’ The good man wept as he spoke, and truly we wept with him!” The rising spirit of the people was not the only cause of this change: the allied generals grew suddenly inactive; the troops in Madrid abandoned themselves to many excesses, which they found more attractive than the fatigues and dangers of a campaign. Had even the inhabitants been attached to Charles, the presence of the Portuguese—such were nearly all the troops under De las Minas—would have changed their loyalty into disgust. Another expedient of a most loathsome kind did more mischief; the common women were instructed to visit the tents of the invaders, of whom six thousand were soon taken to the hospitals.