The march of the two expeditionary columns began on May 24, a date at which Murat and his master had but the faintest notion of the wide-spreading revolt which was on foot. Moncey and Dupont were both officers of distinction: the marshal was one of the oldest and the most respected officers of the imperial army: he had won the grade of general of division in the days of the Republic, and did not owe his first start in life to Napoleon. Of all the marshals he was by several years the senior. He passed as a steady, capable, and prudent officer of vast experience. Dupont on the other hand was a young man, who had first won a name by his brilliant courage at the combat of Dirnstein in the Austrian war of 1805. Since then he had distinguished himself at Friedland: he was on the way to rapid promotion, and, if his expedition to Andalusia had succeeded, might have counted on a duchy and a marshal’s bâton as his reward. Napoleon knew him as a brave and loyal subordinate, but had never before given him an independent command. He could hardly guess that, when left to his own inspirations, such a brilliant officer would turn out to be dilatory, wanting in initiative, and wholly destitute of moral courage. It is impossible to judge with infallible accuracy how a good lieutenant will behave, when first the load of responsibility is laid upon his shoulders. On May 24, Dupont quitted Toledo with his 13,000 men: in the broad plains of La Mancha he met with no opposition. Everywhere the people were sullen, but no open hostility was shown. Even in the tremendous defiles of the Sierra Morena he found no enemy, and crossed the great pass of Despeña Perros without having to fire a shot. Coming out at its southern end he occupied Andujar, the town at the main junction of roads in Eastern Andalusia, on June 5. Here he got clear intelligence that the whole country-side was up in arms: Seville had risen on May 26, and the rest of the province had followed its example. There was a large assembly of armed peasants mustering at Cordova, but the regular troops had not yet been brought up to the front. General Castaños, whom the Junta had placed in chief command, was still busily engaged in concentrating his scattered battalions, forming them into brigades and divisions, and hastily filling up with recruits the enormous gaps which existed in the greater part of the corps. The regulars were being got together at a camp at Carmona, south of the Guadalquivir, and not far from Seville. The organization of new battalions, from the large number of volunteers who remained when the old regiments were completed, took place elsewhere. It would be weeks, rather than days, before the unorganized mass took shape as an army, and Dupont might count on a considerable respite before being attacked. But it was not only with the forces of Castaños that he had to reckon: at Cordova, Seville, Granada, and all the other towns of Andalusia, the peasants were flocking in to be