I can take no other measures, leaving the rest to Providence.

The time lost (so much against my inclination) exposes me to a sacrifice, at least I will perish with honor, and as a man deserving a better fate." The earl now again sent orders to one thousand Spanish foot and three hundred horse, which had before been nominally placed at his disposal, but had never moved from the town in which they were garrisoned, to follow him into Valencia; and at the same time he wrote to Colonel Wills to march immediately with a like number of English horse and foot to his assistance.
The king, on the receipt of Peterborough's letter, issued positive and peremptory orders that the Spanish troops were at once to be set in motion.

Colonel Wills wrote in reply that an important action had taken place at San Esteban de Litera on the 26th and 27th of January, between General Conyngham with his brigade and the Chevalier d'Asfeldt, in which, after a bloody contest, the French were driven from the field with a heavy loss of killed, wounded, and prisoners, the allies had also suffered serious loss, and General Conyngham had received a mortal wound.

The command, therefore, had devolved upon himself.
Having seen the infantry march off, Peterborough, attended only by his two aides de camp, took his place at the head of his handful of cavalry and proceeded on his desperate enterprise--an enterprise the most extraordinary that has ever taken place between enemies of an equal degree of civilization.

It was a war of a general with a small escort, but literally without an army, against able officers with thousands of disciplined troops and numerous defensible towns and positions, against enormous difficulties of country, against want and fatigue in every shape, and above all, against hope itself.
And yet no one who had witnessed that little body march off would have supposed that they were entering upon what seemed an impossible expedition--an expedition from which none could come back alive.