ination to which he was exposed, and the quarrels which took place
around him. He was most anxious to carry out his instructions, and as
far as possible to defer to the opinion of Charles, but he was also
bound by the decisions of the councils of war, which were exactly
opposite to the wishes of the king.

The Prince of Hesse Darmstadt enraged him by insisting that fifteen
hundred disorderly peasants whom he had raised were an army, and should
be paid as regular soldiers from the military chest, while they would
submit to no discipline and refused to labor in the trenches, and an
open rupture took place, when the prince, in his vexation at the results
of the councils of war, even went so far as to accuse the earl of having
used secret influence to thwart the enterprise.

To add to the difficulties of the commander in chief the English
troops were loud in their complaints against him for having landed
and committed them to this apparently hopeless enterprise; but they
nevertheless clamored to be led against the town, that they might not be
said to have "come like fools and gone like cowards."

Lord Peterborough confided his trouble and vexation freely to his young
secretary. Jack was sincerely attached to his generous and eccentric
chief, and the general was gratified by the young officer's readiness at
all times and hours to come to him and write from his dictation the
long letters and dispatches which he sent home. He saw, too, that he
was thoroughly trustworthy, and could be relied upon to keep absolute
silence as to the confidences which he made him.

In the midst of all these quarrels and disputes the siege was carried
on in a languid manner. A battery of fifty heavy guns, supplied by the
ships and manned by seamen, was placed upon a rising ground flanked
by two deep ravines, and on several of the adjacent hills batteries of
light field guns had been raised. Three weeks were consumed in these
comparatively unimportant operations, and no real advance toward the
capture of the place had been effected. Something like a blockade,
however, had been established, for the Catalan peasants guarded
vigilantly every approach to the town.

The officers of the fleet were no less discontented than their brethren
on shore at the feeble conduct of the siege, and had they been consulted
they would have been in favor of a direct attack upon the city with
scaling ladders, as if they had been about to board a hostile ship.
But Pet