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. When the garrison was nearly exhausted, its numbers decreased from deaths, wounds, sickness, and other causes to about a thousand effective men, and a practicable 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 withdrew from before the town, and the reinforcements were landed. Barcelona being thus relieved, the enemy, having lost six 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 him, together with the sick and wounded of his army, whom Marshal de Tessé recommended to the humanity of the British commander. Barcelona was thus preserved by British skill and valour; and the THIRTY-SIXTH, with the other regiments in garrison, received the thanks of King Charles for this important service. On the 10th of May 1706, Lieut.-Colonel Thomas Alnutt was promoted to the colonelcy of the THIRTY-SIXTH regiment, in succession to the Viscount Charlemont, who had been removed by the Earl of Peterborough. A complaint on this subject was subsequently preferred by Lord Charlemont; and the reports made by the council of general officers, after a patient investigation, are inserted in the memoir of that nobleman, as Colonel of the THIRTY-SIXTH regiment, at page 109. These documents are highly flattering to Viscount Charlemont, and bear ample testimony to his gallant conduct at Barcelona. An immediate advance upon Madrid having been resolved upon, the Marquis das Minas and the 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 service the THIRTY-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 corps of infantry, were formed into a regiment of dragoons, named the Earl of Peterborough’s regiment.