drawn without any authority or permission from Her Majesty, and at such a price which if answered must affect all the remittances that shall be necessary to be made for the public service the whole year. I am commanded at the same time to take notice to your Lordship of the extraordinary manner in which you left Spain, where you had so great a trust committed to you by Her Majesty's Commissions, to go to negotiate matters with other Princes, without any orders from the Queen for so doing or any credentials to those Princes. Upon all these accounts I am commanded by Her Majesty to let your Lordship know that it is her pleasure that you return forthwith to England, to acquaint Her Majesty with the reasons and grounds of your proceedings."

This despatch bears the date of January 14 Old Style, and did not come to Peterborough's hands till March New Style. It affected his interests in more than one respect. The Bills from Genoa having been protested by the Government, Peterborough had to defray from his private fortune the difference between the prices of accommodation and the prices current, which upon the entire sum amounted to several thousand pounds. But the Earl ever generous, nay even lavish of his money, felt far more keenly the imputation on his public character. "Sir," he wrote to Stanhope, "you would little expect, I believe, that all objections are now reduced to my having taken up without order and with such loss such considerable sums at Genoa. Surely if ever extraordinary measures were to be taken it was when an army was in such extraordinary necessity; and four or five thousand pounds more or less ought not to be brought in balance with the loss or safety of an army.. Any other answer

but this I think superfluous. But, Sir, had not the necessity of the English army required it, I could as you know have disposed the whole sum without loss to England. The Portuguese were wise enough to desire the money at the price; and no other nation but would have thanked me for my zeal. I am confident you will inform the Court of the necessity and of the service, which however I only desire they will forgive."2

Even before he received the letter of recall, Peterborough had determined to quit Spain, where he held no command, and go back to the Duke of Savoy. He embarked from Valencia, and after touching at Barcelona steered for the coast of Italy. With him were three English men-of-war; one of them, the Resolution, commanded by his second son, a gallant seaofficer, Captain Henry Mordaunt. In their way they fell in with a French squadron of greatly superior force, and the Resolution was especially hard-pressed. Mordaunt however maintained the conflict for several hours with great bravery; until at last finding his ship much shattered he ran her on shore. The Earl, who had gone on board the Enterprise frigate, received a contusion in a subsequent attack, but found the enemy desist, and on the 1st of April got safe into Leghorn.

Peterborough showed himself far less incensed than might have been expected at the terms of his dismissal. He did not break off his correspondence with the Ministry in England. On the contrary he wrote. several letters both to Sunderland and Marlborough, assuring them that he should be able when they met to explain every point in his conduct to their entire

2 Letter dated Barcelona, March 25, 1707 (MS.).

satisfaction. Meanwhile he seemed in no hurry to go home. His restless spirit impelled him to divers negotiations and cabals with the Courts both of Turin and Vienna, which having no direct authority from his own could attain no practical result.

On the 7th of February the English fleet, with the troops under Lord Rivers's orders, had arrived at Alicant. According to Stanhope's plan the military operations should have been at once begun. But instead of these there arose a controversy between Lords Rivers and Galway as to the chief command; a controversy which continued for three weeks, and which was terminated only by the moderation and good temper of Lord Rivers, who leaving the troops behind him re-embarked for England. Then at least the campaign should have commenced. Then however a still more serious difficulty was interposed by Charles. He was jealous that he could not at his pleasure direct the movements of the troops; and he gave his principal confidence at this time to Count Noyelles, who was jealous also on his own account. Under the influence of this intriguing officer, Charles suddenly declared himself resolved to quit the army and go back to Barcelona, on the plea that an attack was threatened from the side of Roussillon. All remonstrances against this scheme from the other chiefs at Valencia proved of no avail; and Charles set out upon his journey on the 7th of March. His absence, as an adviser, from the scene of operations might perhaps have been borne with equanimity; but it was no light matter that he took with him, or there detained, Dutch and Catalan troops to the number of several thousand men. Stanhope as English Envoy to his Court was also bound to attend him; and thus, to his own great chagrin, found

himself debarred from taking part as he had expected in the army's advance upon Castille.

The evils of disputed or divided command had for a long time past been urged by Stanhope on the Ministers in England; and he had advised that Prince Eugene might if possible be sent to Spain, as almost the only man to whose authority all the nations and all the chiefs concerned would willingly bow. But the Court of Vienna could by no means spare Eugene from its own more immediate objects; and thus the main army of the Allies in Spain in this year as in the last was after many jars left to the joint and incapable direction of the Earl of Galway and the Marquis Das Minas.

The time which the Allies had lost was not lost by King Louis. He saw the importance of pressing the war in Spain, and with that view resolved to make a sacrifice elsewhere. By his orders there was signed at Milan a Convention with Prince Eugene, according to which the French garrisons were to relinquish the fortresses which they still retained in Northern Italy, and to march back without molestation to their frontiers.3 In this manner some eighteen or twenty thousand good French troops became disposable for active service, and part of them were at once sent across the Pyrenees. Louis had also resolved to signalise his Spanish army by placing at its head a Prince of the Blood. Thus, while he left the Duke of Berwick as second in command, he named as chief his nephew the Duke of Orleans, who was burning to retrieve his disaster at Turin.

8 See this Convention (which, | capitulation) in Lamberty, vol. iv. says Sismondi, avait la forme d'une p. 391.

Early in April after long delays Galway and Das Minas began their forward movement. Having first destroyed some of the enemy's outlying magazines, they invested the Castle of Villena, but speedily changing their purpose raised the siege and pressed onward to give battle. They came in sight of Berwick's army on the morning of the 25th, and found that he had taken post on an open plain with the small town of Almanza behind him. By that time Berwick had already received great part of his expected reinforcements, although the Duke of Orleans, who had made a circuit through Madrid to pay his respects to the King and Queen, had not yet arrived.

Destitute of exact intelligence as much as of military skill, the Allied Generals were not apprised of Berwick's accession of troops and consequent superiority of numbers. That superiority was above all in horse, which in a bare and open country could act with especial advantage. On the whole the Bourbon army was of five-and-twenty thousand men, while that of the Allies much thinned by recent sickness fell short of eighteen. It could not fail to be noticed that both the pretenders to the Crown, the one but twenty-four, the other but twenty-two years of age, had quitted their armies only a few weeks or months before and were moping in their palaces instead of leading the battle in which their fate would be decided. "What fools we are to fight for such louts!"-this, as rumour says, was once the exclamation of Peterborough.4

The Allied chiefs, discerning when too late their great inferiority in cavalry, endeavoured to atone for

♦ Voltaire, Siècle de Louis XIV., vol. i. p. 342, ed. 1752. See also Sismondi, vol. xxvii. p. 25.