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Sufficient troops were left in Brighuega to attend to the evacuation, and when it was at an end, those troops left the place themselves and joined their comrades, who, with M. de Vendome, were waiting for Staremberg outside the town, at Villaviciosa, a little place that afterwards gave its name to the battle. Only four hundred men were left in Brighuega.
Staremberg is said to have loitered away his time unnecessarily, from motives of envy to the English general, who had surrendered before his arrival. The troops lay all night on their arms near Villaviciosa, and on the twenty-ninth were attacked by the enemy, who doubled their number.
Only file through the bars of my cage and lend me your dagger. We have but little time, quick, quick! Oh, if my teeth were but files! I have tried to eat through this iron." "Eccellenza," said Rinaldo, "I have already filed through one bar." "You are a god!" "Your wife was at the fete given by the Princess Villaviciosa. She brought home her little Frenchman; she is drunk with love.
Vendôme was fifty-one when he defeated Eugène at Cassano; and at fifty-six he won the eventful Battle of Villaviciosa, to which the Spanish Bourbons owe their throne. Villars, who fought the terrible Battle of Malplaquet against Marlborough and Eugène, was then fifty-six years old; and he had more than once baffled those commanders.
Sufficient troops were left in Brighuega to attend to the evacuation, and when it was at an end, those troops left the place themselves and joined their comrades, who, with M. de Vendome, were waiting for Staremberg outside the town, at Villaviciosa, a little place that afterwards gave its name to the battle. Only four hundred men were left in Brighuega.
Villaviciosa is gained, but it is also without him. This hero is not sharp-sighted enough to see success when it comes. He thinks it defeat, and gives orders for retreat. When informed that the battle is gained, he returns to the field, and as daylight comes perceives the fact to be so.
Stahrenberg retraced his steps; on the 10th of December fighting began near Villaviciosa; the advantage was for a long time undecided and disputed; night came; the Austrian general spiked his guns and retreated by forced marches; the Spaniards bivouacked on the battle-field, the king slept on a bed made of the enemy's flags; the allies had taken refuge in Catalonia; Spain had won back her independence and her king.
Villaviciosa is gained, but it is also without him. This hero is not sharp-sighted enough to see success when it comes. He thinks it defeat, and gives orders for retreat. When informed that the battle is gained, he returns to the field, and as daylight comes perceives the fact to be so.
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.
The first of these was the more readily acceded to, as the great battles of Almanza and Villaviciosa, gained by Philip's generals, the dukes of Berwick and Vendome, had steadily fixed him on the throne of Spain a point still more firmly secured by the death of the emperor Joseph I., son of Leopold, and the elevation of his brother Charles, Philip's competitor for the crown of Spain, to the imperial dignity, by the title of Charles VI.
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