This will appear more than bare Supposition, if we compare the present Situation, as to Strength, of the two contending Powers:  The French, at the Birth of the Siege, consisted of five thousand Horse and Dragoons, and twenty-five thousand Foot, effective Men.  Now grant, that their kill’d and wounded, together with their Sick in the Hospitals, might amount to five Thousand; yet as their Body of Horse was entire, and in the best Condition, the Remaining will appear to be an Army of twenty-five Thousand at least.  On the other Side, all the Forces in Barcelona, even with their Reinforcements, amounted to no more than seven thousand Foot and four hundred Horse.  Why then, when they rais’d their Siege, did not they march back into the Heart of Spain, with their so much superior Army? or, at least, towards their Capital?  The Answer can be this, and this only; Because the Earl of Peterborow had taken such provident Care to render all secure, that it was thereby render’d next to an Impossibility for them so to do.  That General was satisfy’d, that the Capital of Catalonia must, in course, fall into the Hands of the Enemy, unless a superior Fleet remov’d the Count de Tholouse, and threw in timely Succours into the Town:  And as that could not depend upon him, but others, he made it his chief Care and assiduous Employment to provide against those Strokes of Fortune to which he found himself again likely to be expos’d, as he often had been; and therefore had he Resource to that Vigilance and Precaution which had often retriev’d him, when to others his Circumstances seem’d to be most desperate.

The Generality of Mankind, and the French in particular, were of opinion that the taking Barcelona would prove a decisive Stroke, and put a Period to the War in Spain; and yet at that very Instant I was inclin’d to believe, that the General flatter’d himself it would be in his Power to give the Enemy sufficient Mortification, even though the Town should be oblig’d to submit to King Philip.  The wise Measures taken induc’d me so to believe, and the Sequel approv’d it; for the Earl had so well expended his Caution, that the Enemy, on the Disappointment, found himself under a Necessity of quitting Spain; and the same would have put him under equal Difficulties had he carry’d the Place.  The French could never have undertaken that Siege without depending on their Fleet, for their Artillery, Ammunition, and Provisions; since they must be inevitably forc’d to leave behind them the strong Towns of Tortosa, Lerida, and Taragona.  The Earl, therefore, whose perpetual Difficulties seem’d rather to render him more sprightly and vigorous, took care himself to examine the whole Country between the Ebro and Barcelona; and, upon his doing so, was pleasingly, as well as sensibly satisfy’d, that it was practicable to render their Return into the Heart of Spain impossible, whether they did or did not succeed in the Siege they were so intent to undertake.