Nevertheless the peasantry gave effectual aid in landing the artillery, tents, ammunition, and stores.

On the 28th the king landed amid a great concourse of people, who received him with every demonstration of enthusiasm, and he could with difficulty make his way through them to the camp prepared for him near San Martino.
The presence of the king on shore added to the difficulties of the situation.

He and his following of German courtiers complained bitterly of the disinclination of the allies to undertake the siege, while the allies were incensed against those who reproached them for not undertaking impossibilities.

Dissension spread between the allies themselves, and the Dutch general declared that he would disobey the orders of the commander in chief rather than vainly sacrifice his men.
Peterborough was driven nearly out of his mind by the reproaches and recrimination to which he was exposed, and the quarrels which took place around him.

He was most anxious to carry out his instructions, and as far as possible to defer to the opinion of Charles, but he was also bound by the decisions of the councils of war, which were exactly opposite to the wishes of the king.
The Prince of Hesse Darmstadt enraged him by insisting that fifteen hundred disorderly peasants whom he had raised were an army, and should be paid as regular soldiers from the military chest, while they would submit to no discipline and refused to labor in the trenches, and an open rupture took place, when the prince, in his vexation at the results of the councils of war, even went so far as to accuse the earl of having used secret influence to thwart the enterprise.
To add to the difficulties of the commander in chief the English troops were loud in their complaints against him for having landed and committed them to this apparently hopeless enterprise; but they nevertheless clamored to be led against the town, that they might not be said to have "come like fools and gone like cowards." Lord Peterborough confided his trouble and vexation freely to his young secretary.