His first design was somewhat as follows: Bessières was to keep a firm hand on the line of communications, but also to detach a division of 4,000 men under Lefebvre-Desnouettes against Saragossa, and a brigade under Merle to pacify Santander and the northern littoral. The Emperor does not at first seem to have realized that, with the army of Galicia hanging on his western flank, Bessières might not be able to spare men for such distant enterprises. He dealt with the corps as if it had nothing to face save the local insurgents of Aragon and Old Castile. From the large body of troops which lay about Madrid, Toledo, and Aranjuez, two strong columns were to be dispatched to strike at the two main centres of the insurrection in Southern Spain. Dupont was to take the first division of his army corps, with two brigades of cavalry and a few other troops, and march on Cordova and Seville. This gave him no more than about 13,000 men for the subjugation of the large and populous province of Andalusia. The other two infantry divisions of his corps remained for the present near Madrid[100]. [100] For details of his force see the note on pp. 182-3. On the other side of the capital, Marshal Moncey with a somewhat smaller force--one division of infantry from his own army corps and one brigade of cavalry, 9,000 men in all--was to move on Valencia, and to take possession of that city and of the great naval arsenal of Cartagena. His expedition was to be supported by a diversion from the side of Catalonia, for Duhesme (in spite of the small number of his army) was told to send a column along the sea-coast route, by Tarragona and Tortosa, to threaten Valencia from the north. Moncey’s remaining infantry divisions, which were not detailed for the expedition that he was to lead, remained near Madrid, available (like Dupont’s second and third divisions) for the reinforcement of Bessières or the strengthening of the two expeditionary columns, as circumstances might decide.