But the Piedmontese, foreseeing they should be
surrounded next day by the French, who had penetrated behind
them, by a pass in the mountains, retired in the night.
Being
received on board the English Fleet, which lay at Villa Franca,
they were conveyed to Oneglia. In examining the bodies of those
that were killed in the battle, the inhabitants of Nice
perceived, that a great number of the Spanish soldiers were
circumcised; a circumstance, from which they concluded, that a
great many Jews engage in the service of his Catholic majesty. I
am of a different opinion. The Jews are the least of any people
that I know, addicted to a military life. I rather imagine they
were of the Moorish race, who have subsisted in Spain, since the
expulsion of their brethren; and though they conform externally
to the rites of the Catholic religion, still retain in private
their attachment to the law of Mahomet.
The city of Nice is built in form of an irregular isosceles
triangle, the base of which fronts the sea. On the west side it
is surrounded by a wall and rampart; on the east, it is over-hung
by a rock, on which we see the ruins of an old castle, which,
before the invention of artillery, was counted impregnable. It
was taken and dismantled by marechal Catinat, in the time of
Victor Amadaeus, the father of his Sardinian majesty. It was
afterwards finally demolished by the duke of Berwick towards the
latter end of queen Anne's war.
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