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"Spain and France are nearly at open war, and Monsieur d'Olivares has not hesitated to offer the assistance of his Catholic Majesty to the Huguenots." "Very good. I will consider it," said the King. "Leave me." "Sire, the States-General of Catalonia are in a dilemma. The troops from Aragon march against them." "We shall see. I will come to a decision in a quarter of an hour," answered Louis XIII.
"The campaign of Catalonia being thus ended, we were returning home, not overloaded with laurels; but as the Prince de Conde had laid up a great store on former occasions, and as he had still great projects in his head, he soon forgot this trifling misfortune: we did nothing but joke with one another during the march, and the prince was the first to ridicule the siege.
At Lerida, in Catalonia, the funeral of the Carnival was witnessed by an English traveller in 1877. On the last Sunday of the Carnival a grand procession of infantry, cavalry, and maskers of many sorts, some on horseback and some in carriages, escorted the grand car of His Grace Pau Pi, as the effigy was called, in triumph through the principal streets.
In this dilemma a council of war was held, and though many were in favor of abandoning the enterprise and returning to Portugal, it was at last determined, through the urgency of Charles, to remain and lay siege to the city. Barcelona, the capital of Catalonia, was then the principal sea-port of the Spanish peninsula on the Mediterranean.
"The city is very mercantile, and affords an excellent market to all nations. People from all Christian kingdoms resort to Alexandria, from Valencia, Tuscany, Lombardy, Apulia, Amalfi, Sicilia, Raguvia, Catalonia, Spain, Roussillon, Germany, Saxony, Denmark, England, Flandres, Hainault, Normandy, France, Poitou, Anjou, Burgundy, Mediana, Provence, Genoa, Pisa, Gascony, Arragon, and Navarre.
He was delighted, and told me, with evident vanity, that he had gone to Madrid three times, and had been ordered to return to Catalonia on each occasion. I thought my best plan would be to follow the viceroy's indirect advice, so I refused to join in any of the little parties of pleasure which Peralada proposed.
Then dismissing his two remaining servants, he rode forth alone from Navarre in the direction of Montserrat, a mountain town of Catalonia in the northern part of Spain. It will not be amiss to recall an event that occurred during this journey, to show the manner in which God directed him.
For, after her decease, the nuns of Gandia foretold many things, which afterward the event confirmed; as, amongst others, the unhappy success of the expedition to Algier; of which the Duke of Borgia, viceroy of Catalonia, gave the advertisement from them to Charles V. when he was making his preparations for that enterprize.
Again, in 1710, he succeeded in reaching Madrid, and, as we have described, he was driven back, with accumulated disaster, to Catalonia.
Navarre became a kingdom, and Aragon had its independent sovereigns, and was so fortunate as to possess a government that properly respected the rights of the people. The governors of Catalonia, until then subjected to the kings of France, took advantage of the feebleness of Louis le Debonnaire to render themselves independent.
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