t and forsaken your general?"

The appeal was not in vain. Ashamed of their late panic the fugitives
halted, faced about, and pressed after him up the hill, and, on reaching
the top, found that, strangely enough, the garrison had not discovered
that the bastion had been abandoned, for in their retreat the English
were hidden from the sight of those in the inner works.

The Marquis de Risbourg, instead of following up his advantage, had at
once left Montjuich at the side near the city, taking Colonel Allen and
the prisoners with him, and pushed on toward Barcelona. Halfway down
he met the reinforcement of three thousand men. The prisoners, on being
questioned, informed the Spanish commander that Lord Peterborough and
the Prince of Hesse led the attack in person.

Thereupon the officer commanding the reinforcements concluded that the
whole of the allied army was round the castle, and that he would be
risking destruction if he pushed on. He therefore turned and marched
back to the city. Had he continued his way Peterborough's force must
have been destroyed, as Stanhope had not yet come up, and he had with
him only the little force with which he had marched out from camp, of
whom more than a fourth were already captured or slain. Such are the
circumstances upon which the fate of battles and campaigns depend.

CHAPTER VIII: A TUMULT IN THE CITY

As the Spanish column retired to Barcelona under the idea that the
whole English army was on the hill, the Miquelets, as the armed bands
of peasants were called, swarmed down from the hills. Incapable of
withstanding an attack by even a small force, they were in their element
in harassing a large one in retreat. Halfway between Montjuich and the
town was the small fort of San Bertram. The garrison, seeing the column
in retreat toward the town, pursued by the insurgent peasantry, feared
that they themselves would be cut off, and so abandoned their post and
joined the retreat.

The peasants at once took possession of San Bertram, where there were
five light guns. As soon as the news reached Peterborough he called
together two hundred men and led them down to the little fort. Ropes
were fastened to the guns, and with forty men to each gun these were
quickly run up the hill and placed in position in the captured bastions.
So quickly was this done that in less than an hour from the abandonment
of San Bertram by the Spanish the guns had opened fire upon Montjuich.

While the t