Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 21, 2025
Presently Stanhope was badly defeated at the important battle of Brihuega, and Staremberg shortly afterwards lost at Villa Viciosa. This decided matters in Spain. Charles was compelled to flee the country, and Philip's throne was finally secured to him. The end of the war came in an altogether unexpected and strange fashion.
As General Staremberg, at the head of the advance guard, pressed eagerly on, he left Stanhope at quite a distance behind. They encamped for a night, the advance at Cifuentes, the rear at Brihuega. The hostility of the natives was such that almost all communication was cut off between the two sections of the army.
He took Ticonderoga, but one of his divisions was defeated with heavy loss at Bennington a disaster which, Lord Stanhope says, exercised a fatal influence over the rest of the campaign; and finally, a week before this letter was written, he and all his army were so hemmed in at Saratoga, that they were compelled to lay down their arms a disgrace which was the turning-point of the war, and which is compared by Lord Stanhope to the capitulation of his own ancestor at Brihuega in the war of the Spanish Succession.
The defeats of Almansa, Brihuega, and Villaviciosa were nearly contemporary with the victories of Blenheim and Ramillies; and the thousands of British troops compelled to lay down their arms at the first named belonged to the same service as their fellow-countrymen who so often marched to victory under Marlborough.
"Nobody with me," says the English general, imagined that they had any foot within some days' march of us and our misfortune is owing to the incredible diligence which their army made." Stanhope had but just time to send off a messenger to the centre of the army, which was some leagues from Brihuega, before Vendome was upon him. The town was invested on every side.
And as he was thus spoiling he came to a place which is now called Brihuega, and it pleased him well, for it was a fair place to dwell in, and abounded with game, and there was a dismantled castle there, and he thought that he would ask the King for this place.
He set out from Talavera with his troops, and pursued the retreating army of the Allies with a speed perhaps never equalled, in such a season, and in such a country. He marched night and day. He swam, at the head of his cavalry, the flooded stream of Henares, and, in a few days, overtook Stanhope, who was at Brihuega with the left wing of the Allied army.
Under the irresistible impulse of a noble patriotism which had at last recovered itself, the English force of Lord Stanhope capitulated at Brihuega after a terrible carnage, and Stahrenberg, crushed in his turn at Villaviciosa, carried away by his flight the last hopes of the House of Austria.
Thither he had detached his aide-camp with an account of his situation on the appearance of the Spanish army; and Staremberg immediately assembled his forces. About eleven in the forenoon, they began to march towards Brihuega; but the roads were so bad that night overtook them before they, reached the heights in the neighbourhood of that place.
General Stanhope, with the British forces, was quartered in the little town of Brihuega, where, on the twenty-seventh day of the month, he found himself suddenly surrounded by the whole Spanish army.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking