CHAP. X. 1714. 1 Berwick, 47. the siege. at his disposal, to be able to think of foreign hostilities. Thus abandoned to their own resources, the Catalans with mournful resolution continued their resistance; the savage cruelty of the Spanish government had left them no alternative but victory or death. Berwick found in the camp eighty-seven heavy cannon and thirty-three mortars, with 1,500,000 pounds of powder, and every supply requisite for the longest siege; it was only a question, therefore, to which quarter his attacks should be directed. He determined to commence the attack on the side next the sea. On the 12th July, trenches were opened by ten battalions of foot and as many companies of grenadiers, and next day two considerable sallies, one with four, the other with six thousand men, were repulsed after a violent struggle, with considerable loss to the besieged. At the same time twenty vessels and a frigate steering for the port were captured by the blockading squadron coming from Majorca; but thirty others, with three transports, reached the harbour in safety, and brought supplies of provisions, which proved of essential service to the besieged.1 The breaching batteries opened their fire on the 25th Progress of July from eighty heavy cannon; and such was the execution done, that, by the 12th August, three breaches were made on the outworks of three bastions, which were stormed on that day; but on the next the besieged drove them out with the loss of fifteen hundred men. At the same time a Miquelet chief, Del Poul, descended from the mountains with twelve thousand mountaineers, and came within a few leagues of the French camp; but Berwick attacked and defeated him with very severe loss. Having thus secured his rear, he resumed the siege with CHAP. X. 1714. 1 Berwick, fresh vigour; and so effective was the fire, that by the 10th September seven huge breaches yawned in different parts of the rampart, at the foot of all which the ditch was filled up and the outworks carried. In these circumstances farther resistance was hopeless, and Berwick, moved by humanity, sent a flag of truce to pro- 211, 212. pose a capitulation. But the summons was sternly ii. 296-300. rejected, and the besieged, headed by their leaders, House of repaired with desperate resolution to the breaches to ii. 68. resist the assault.1 St Philippe, Coxe's Bourbon, storm of Sept. 11. The storm took place on the 11th September, and 48. was one of the most bloody and dreadful recorded in Dreadful history. At the signal of ten guns and twenty mortars, the town, which were discharged at daybreak, the whole besieging force moved forward to the assault: fifty battalions led the attack, while forty more were in reserve ready to support them. The attack was directed against the three bastions which had been breached, and, the garrison not expecting an assault so early, the besiegers entered without much difficulty, and got into the streets of the town. But it was there, as in after times at Saragossa, that the conflict really began. A terrible fire was opened on the assailants from the barricades and loopholed houses; and such was the vigour of the defence that the French were driven out of the bastion of St Peter, and, after being several times taken and retaken, it finally remained in the possession of the Spaniards. Berwick, alarmed by the dreadful carnage at that spot, hastened in person and drew off his men, after above two thousand had fallen in the murderous conflict. But in other quarters the assailants were more successful; and Villaroit, the governor of the town, was wounded. At length, at three in the afternoon, after a dreadful conflict of ten hours' CHAP. X. 1714. 1 Berwick, 49. duration, in which nearly every male inhabitant within the place had borne a part, the besieged beat a parley, and demanded to capitulate. Berwick promised that their lives should be spared, and the besieged were left for the night in possession of their barricades. Next day the victors made their entry into the town on all sides, with such order that not a soldier quitted the ranks; and after one of the most desperate assaults recorded in history, the prodigy was exhibited of discipline being entirely preserved, and not a shop pillaged or a woman violated—“ a circumstance," says Berwick, "which can be ascribed only to God, for all the power of man could not have restrained the soldiers."1 This memorable siege cost the besiegers, by Berwick's Humanity admission, ten thousand men: the loss of the besieged did not exceed six thousand. Berwick enhanced the glory termination of his conquest by the clemency which he showed to the of Berwick to the besieged, and of the War cession. of the Suc- Vanquished. Twenty of the leaders were sent to the castle of Alicante, where they were imprisoned, and two hundred ecclesiastics were banished to Italy. But no blood was shed on the scaffold-a circumstance so much at variance with the usual cruelty of the Spanish character, and the declared intentions of the government, that it can be ascribed only to the humane interposition of Berwick. A few days after, he granted a favourable capitulation to the Count of Montemard in Caulona, which had the effect of entirely terminating the war in the Peninsula. Majorca alone still held out for Charles; but the fame of Berwick's clemency, and the arrival of ii. 304-307. ten thousand French troops, induced its inhabitants, after every preparation for resistance had been made,2 to * Coxe's House of Bourbon, ii. 70-73. St Philippe, Berwick, 216, 217. accept the very favourable terms which were offered to them; and with their submission to Philip TERMINATED THE WAR OF THE SUCCESSION. CHAP. X. 50. of Marshal James Fitzjames, Duke of Berwick, who had the 1714. glory of bringing this bloody and long-continued war Biography to a conclusion, was born in London on 21st August Berwick. 1670-the natural son of the Duke of York, afterwards James II., and of Arabella Churchill, sister of the Duke of Marlborough. So decided was his turn for a military life, that, when only fifteen, he left the pleasures and seductions of the court of London to learn the art of war under one of its masters, Charles, Duke of Lorraine, then general of the Imperial armies in Hungary; and he made his first campaigns against the Turks. He was distinguished at the siege of Buda, and shared in the glorious victory of Mohatz. When his father, James, was driven from the throne, he joined him, and was with him in his expedition into Ireland, and at the battle of the Boyne, where he received the only wound he met with in his long career. In 1692 he beheld from the coast of Normandy the destruction of all the hopes of his house at the battle of La Hogue, and served under Luxembourg in Flanders till the conclusion of the war by the Treaty of Ryswick. In 1704 he was intrusted with the command of the army in Spain: "All parties," says Montesquieu, "were anxious to gain him: he thought only of the monarchy, saved Spain, and was recalled." Affairs having again become desperate in the Peninsula, he was sent out a second time as marshal and commander-in-chief: he gained the battle of Almanza in 1706, and again saved Spain to the house of Bourbon. His skilful defence of Languedoc in the subse- Univ.iv. quent years has always been regarded by military men wick.) as a model of defensive warfare.” 1 1 Biog: 384, (Ber ter. CHAP. X. 1714. 51. Berwick was one of the greatest generals and noblest characters of that age of glory. Lord Bolingbroke said, "he was the best great man that ever existed." His His charac- character, both as a general and in private, was irreproachable. He had not the daring in counsel of Marlborough or Eugene, but he equalled either of these commanders in methodical warfare; and when the moment of action arrived, none exposed their life with more intrepidity. But he preferred combination to hazard, and never committed to chance what he could gain by perseverance. He was the perfection of the Turenne school of warfare. It is a most extraordinary fact, that while Marlborough all but overturned the monarchy of France by his victories in Flanders, and unquestionably would have done so but for faction at home, his nephew, Berwick, by his single arm, preserved that of Spain for the house of Bourbon. His private character was unblemished bred up in a licentious court, himself the fruit of irregular amours, he avoided all its seductions, and "shunned," in Montesquieu's words, "the snares of virtue itself." His humanity after victory was as admirable as his arrangements before, which secured it. England has equal cause to be proud of her victories and her defeats in that warfare, for they both were owing to the military genius of the same family-and that one of her own. She may well claim Berwick among her great men; for not only was he born in England, but he was descended, by the father's side, from the mingled line of the Plantagenets and the Stuarts, and by the mother's from Sir Francis Drake; and he bore in his veins the same blood as the Duke of Marlborough. There are few men who can boast a more illustrious ancestry and connection, and still fewer who have done so much to ennoble it.1 1 Biog. Univ. iv. 385. Montesquieu Eloge de Berwick. |