The Earl of Peterborough hastened from Valencia with a body of select troops, but found the town so closely beset that he was unable to force his way into it, when he took to the mountains, and harassed the enemy with skirmishes and night-alarms. The SIXTH was one of the corps which had the honour of sharing in the defence of this important city, and British valour was conspicuously displayed. When the garrison was nearly exhausted, its numbers decreased from deaths, wounds, sickness, and other causes, to about a thousand effective men, and a practical breach was ready for the enemy to attack the place by storm, the English and Dutch fleet arrived with five regiments of foot, the French fleet hurried from before the town, and the reinforcements were landed. Barcelona being thus relieved, the enemy, having lost five thousand men before the town, made a precipitate retreat on the 12th of May, leaving two hundred brass cannon, thirty mortars, and vast quantities of ammunition and provision behind them, together with the sick and wounded of their army, whom Marshal de Tessé recommended to the humanity of the British commander. During the siege, the roads by which the enemy could return into the heart of Spain had been broken up, and other obstructions raised among the mountains and defiles, and the line of retreat so crowded with armed peasantry, that the French army was forced to return to France, and re-enter Spain by the passes of the Pyrenean mountains. Thus Barcelona was preserved by British skill, valour and perseverance; that part of Spain was delivered from the presence of the enemy; and the forces were at liberty to engage in new enterprises. An immediate advance upon Madrid was resolved upon, and the Marquis das Minas and Earl of Galway, who commanded a British, Portuguese, and Dutch force on the frontiers of Portugal, were requested to penetrate boldly to the capital of Spain. To engage in this enterprise the SIXTH embarked from Barcelona, and proceeded by sea to Valencia, where King Charles was expected to arrive with the cavalry by land. While in Valencia the regiment furnished a detachment of non-commissioned officers and soldiers, which, with similar detachments from other regiments of foot, were formed into a regiment of dragoons, called the Earl of Peterborough's regiment.