286 MASTER-GENERAL OF THE ORDNANCE IN IRELAND. 
by an action as odd as it was scandalous.' That regiment 
had received orders to march to the Lord Galway’s camp 
under the command of their Lieut.-Colonel, Bateman, a 
person before reputed a good officer, tho’ his conduct here 
gave people, nob invidious, too much reason to call it in 
question. On his march he was so very careless and negli- 
gent . . . . that his soldiers marched with their 
musquets slung at their backs and went one after another 
(as necessity had forced us to doin Scotland), himself at the 
head of them in his chaise, riding a considerable way before.” 
“Tt happened there was a Captain with three score dragoons, 
detached from the Duke of Berwick’s camp, with a design 
to intercept some cash that was ordered to be sent to Lord 
Galway’s army from Alicant. This detachment, missing of 
that intended prize, was returning very disconsolately, re 
infecta, when their Captain, observing that careless and 
disorderly march of the English, resolved, boldly enough, 
to attack them in the wood. To this purpose he secreted 
his little party behind a great barn, and so soon as they 
were half passed by he fell upon them in the centre with his 
dragoons, cutting and slashing at such a violent rate that he 
soon dispersed the whole regiment, leaving many dead and 
wounded upon the spot. ‘The three colours were taken and 
the gallant Lieut.-Colonel taken out of his chaise and carried 
away prisoner with many others; only one officer, who was 
an ensign and so bold as to do his duty, was killed.” 
The narrator of this inglorious episode goes on to say that the Duke 
of Berwick turned pale when he was told that a whole British regiment 
had been taken prisoners by a troop of Spanish cavalry. He declined 
to see the colours which were being exhibited in his camp, and when 
Colonel Bateman was brought before him the Duke, who was at heart 
a Briton, tho’ in arms against his own countrymen, merely said, “ you 
seem to have been very strangely taken, sir,” and then took no further 
notice of the crestfallen commander. ‘There is such a thing as “ the 
curse of a granted prayer,” and the Marquis de Montandre must have 
felt this when he heard of what had befallen his new regiment which 
he was not destined to see for several years. 
Although Montandre rejoined the Harl of Galway in Spain, he does 
not appear to have been present at the fatal battle of Almanza. It is 
probable that after delivering Queen Anne’s instructions and wishes 
to Lord Galway the Marquis was despatched to Portugal, to take up 
his divisional command there. We find him at Lisbon the first week 
in June 1707, when four British infantry regiments landed there from 
Ireland and marched under his command to the frontier. This timely 
reinforcement revived the drooping spirits of the Portuguese and gave 
1 Carleton’s story is entirely corroborated by the account given in the Post-Man of April 29th, 
707. 
