A.D. 1705.

However unimportant it may appear in the vast page of history, no English account of sieges can be complete without a notice of that of Barcelona, in which he who may be called the last of our knights maintained so nobly that British good faith which we claim as our proudest characteristic.

In 1705, the earl of Peterborough commanded the army of the Archduke Charles, competitor with Philip V., the grandson of Louis XIV., in conjunction with the prince of Darmstadt. The siege was dragged on to a great length, and Peterborough was thinking of re-embarking his English soldiers, when he learnt that the prince of Darmstadt had been killed in carrying the intrenchments which covered Mount Joire and the city. A few days after, a bomb burst in the fort over the powder-magazine; the fort was taken, and the city consented to capitulate. The viceroy was conferring with Peterborough at the city gates, and the articles were not yet signed, when, on a sudden, cries and screams of distress were heard in the city: “You are betraying us!” exclaimed the viceroy; “we are capitulating loyally, and there are your English, who have entered the city by the ramparts, slaughtering, pillaging, and violating.” “You are mistaken,” replied Peterborough, “it must be the troops of the prince of Darmstadt. There is only one means of saving your city; let me enter the place at once with my English; I will make all quiet, and will then return to the gate, to complete the capitulation.” The tone with which he spoke this convinced the Spanish governor of his good faith, and he was allowed to enter Barcelona with his officers. As he expected, he found the Germans and Catalans sacking the houses of the principal citizens; he made them abandon their prey, and drove them out. Among the victims about to be sacrificed to the lust of the soldiery was the duchess of Popoli; he extricated her from the hands of the ruffians, and restored her to her husband. When the tumult was appeased, he returned to the gate and terminated the capitulation, offering a fine example of observance of his word given to a conquered enemy.

Lord Peterborough was certainly more an eccentric man than a great one, and yet, like Don Quixote’s, many of his eccentricities had a strong leaning to the side of greatness. Plutarch would have made a fine story of the above anecdote; it belongs to the character of the real hero, of whom, though abounding in great soldiers, modern history contains so few.

To show the importance of such a trait to the reputation of a nation, we have only to observe with what high praise the historians of other countries mention this act of simple good faith.