ow to evaporate. When the shot of the foe were crumbling the walls of
Barcelona, he was in danger of the terrible doom of being taken a
captive, which would have been the annihilation of all his hopes.
Despair nerved him to effort. But now his person was no longer in
danger; and his natural inefficiency and dilatoriness returned.
Notwithstanding the urgent intreaties of the Earl of Peterborough to
pursue the foe, he insisted upon first making a pilgrimage to the shrine
of the holy Virgin at Montserrat, twenty-four miles from Barcelona.

This curious monastery consists of but a succession of cloisters or
hermitages hewn out of the solid rock. They are only accessible by steps
as steep as a ladder, which are also hewn upon the face of the almost
precipitous mountain. The highest of these cells, and which are occupied
by the youngest monks, are at an elevation of three or four thousand
feet above the level of the Mediterranean. Soon after Charles's
pilgrimage to Montserrat, he made a triumphal march to Madrid, entered
the city, and caused himself to be proclaimed king under the title of
Charles III. But Philip soon came upon him with such force that he was
compelled to retreat back to Barcelona. Again, in 1710, he succeeded in
reaching Madrid, and, as we have described, he was driven back, with
accumulated disaster, to Catalonia.

Three months after this defeat, when his affairs in Spain were assuming
the gloomiest aspect, a courier arrived at Barcelona, and informed him
that his brother Joseph was dead; that he had already been proclaimed
King of Hungary and Bohemia, and Archduke of Austria; and that it was a
matter of the most urgent necessity that he should immediately return to
Germany. Charles immediately embarked at Barcelona, and landed near
Genoa on the 27th of September. Rapidly pressing on through the Italian
States, he entered Milan on the 16th of October, where he was greeted
with the joyful intelligence that a diet had been convened under the
influence of Prince Eugene, and that by its unanimous vote he was
invested with the imperial throne. He immediately proceeded through the
Tyrol to Frankfort, where he was crowned on the 22d of December. He was
now more than ever determined that the diadem of Spain should be added
to the other crowns which had been placed upon his brow.

In the incessant wars which for centuries had been waged between the
princes and States of Germany and the emperor, the States had acqui