the Allies during the war: Barcelona became the Austriacist capital in the Peninsula and, as a such, the political, social and economic centre of Charles III’s court and of a kingdom, something that had not happened for many centuries. An entry of 1709 cites a certain Colonel Wythers, to whom 300 pounds are paid for his extraordinary expenditure while serving in a Catalan regiment. A similar case, presented in the document on troop embarkations, explains the raising in 1708 of 5 regular battalions of Catalan infantry after the defeat in Almansa, in order to defend Catalonia. According to the document, two of them formed Blosset’s Regiment, another two Lord Gallway’s Regiment and the last was christened Regiment Saragossa, probably formed by Aragonese Austriacists. We suppose Gallway was one of the commanders of Gallway’s Regiment, but it is a very late date, as it is believed that all these regiments were disbanded in mid-1708. Anyway, both entries suggest that the presence of Catalan men in English-paid regiments might be higher than is currently accepted, which would mean an increase in the (already quite high) numbers of Catalan troops in Austriacist regiments during the war.23
«It is not for the interest of England to preserve the Catalan liberties»24 There is no doubt that England’s withdrawal from the Peninsula is largely to blame for the final Catalan defeat of 1714. Nonetheless, as we have tried to show in this chapter, neglecting the internal political struggle in England leads to a simplistic vision of the facts that took place in the final stages of the War of the Spanish Succession. Moreover, until now the huge financial effort that the Catalan adventure implied for England has not been properly emphasized, and the faith with which Parliament kept a military lead in the Peninsula, defending Catalonia and threatening Castile until 1710, has not been sufficiently highlighted. Undoubtedly this investment (not only in money, but also in manpower and political assets for the Whig government) is, for any nation, far more important than abiding by the clauses of a treaty, like that of Genoa. Around 1700, the English economy was on the verge of collapse, due in part to the various military conflicts at the turn of the century which,
23 See, for instance, Parnell (1905, p. 267), in which it is explained how these regiments were formed by Catalan soldiers commanded by English officers. 24 Sentence attributed to Lord Bolingbroke, England’s Prime Minister, during the Utrecht negotiations in 1713 (Soldevila, 1995, p. 11). X.Rubio (ed.) 29