he Archduke, who, acting
henceforward as King of Spain, had just made his entrance into that city
amidst the acclamations of the Catalan people. The principal fortresses
of the province had shared the fate of the chief city; and on one side
the insurrection spread to Saragossa, whilst on the other, the important
city of Valencia proclaimed Charles III. The situation was little better
in the west of the kingdom, for an Anglo-Portuguese army had penetrated
into Estramadura, commanded by a French refugee who had been made an
English peer,[35] and whose hatred pursued Louis XIV. on every field of
battle. Constrained to carry on the struggle simultaneously in Flanders,
Italy, and beyond the Pyrenees, in order to defend the integrity of a
monarchy which more and more hesitated in its obedience, the French King
had just sent to Spain thirty battalions and twenty squadrons, which it
became necessary to supplement by despatching a new army. Unhappily, the
time was approaching when the French soldiery had more cause to dread
their own generals than those of the enemy; and these forces, besides
being insufficient, were placed under the command of Marshal de Tesse, a
cunning courtier but mediocre general, incapable of any initiative
strategy, and whose sole study was to carry out to the letter the
personal instructions of Louis XIV. and Chamillard. However, either from
want of sufficient resources or want of skill, Tesse failed this once in
the execution of his master's formal orders, which directed him to
suspend all his operations in order to retake Barcelona at any cost. A
siege languidly conducted in presence of a fleet mistress of the seas,
on which the French flag dared no longer show itself, was followed by a
disaster aggravated by the presence of the King of Spain and by bitter
recriminations between the two nations together engaged in that fatal
enterprise. Alike indifferent to misfortune and success, still it might
be seen in Philip, since the presence of his rival in Spain, that there
was an indomitable resolution to die sword in hand in defence of the
sole right which touched his pride and his conscience. Before Barcelona
he had displayed a useless courage, and when de Tesse rendered it
necessary to raise the siege by his refusal to continue it, the
insurrection had closed to the King every road which gave access to his
capital. To rejoin the Queen Regent in the heart of the two Castiles,
Philip was compelled to take, in