He left Madrid on June 4: a week later he was near Cuenca, in the midst of the mountains. Not a shot had yet been fired at him, but as he pressed eastward he found the villages more and more deserted, till at last he had reached a region that seemed to have become suddenly depopulated. He turned a little out of his way on the eleventh to occupy the city of Cuenca[103], the capital of this wild and rugged country, but resumed his advance on the eighteenth, after receiving from Madrid peremptory orders to press forward[104]. There lay before him two tremendous defiles, which must be passed if he was to reach Valencia. The first was the deep-sunk gorge of the river Cabriel, where the highway plunges down a cliff, crosses a ravine, and climbs again up a steep opposing bank. The second, thirty miles further on, was the Pass of the Cabrillas, the point where the road, on reaching the edge of the central plateau of Spain, suddenly sinks down into the low-lying fertile plain of Valencia. [103] Cuenca lies twenty-five miles off the main Madrid-Valencia road, well to the north of it. [104] Moncey’s delay of a week at Cuenca provoked Savary (now acting for the invalided Murat) to such an extent, that he sent forward the cavalry-general Excelmans, nominally to take charge of Moncey’s vanguard, really to spur the cautious marshal on to action. But Excelmans was captured on the way by peasants, and sent a prisoner to Valencia. If the Conde de Cervellon, the general whom the Valencian Junta had put in charge of its army, had concentrated on these defiles the 7,000 or 8,000 regular troops who were to be found in the province and in the neighbouring district of Murcia, it is probable that Moncey would never have forced his way through the mountains; for each of the positions, if held in sufficient force, is practically impregnable. But the Spaniards had formed a deeply rooted notion that the invader would come by the easy road over the plains, by San Clemente and Almanza, and not through the mountains of Cuenca. The whole of the troops of Murcia and the greater part of those of Valencia had been directed on Almanza, where there was a good position for opposing an army descending from Castile. Only a small detachment had been sent to watch the northern road, and its commander, Don Pedro Adorno, had stationed at the bridge of the Cabriel no more than one battalion of Swiss mercenaries (No. 1 of Traxler’s regiment) and 500 armed peasants with four guns. The position was too extensive to be held by 1,500 men: Moncey found that the river was fordable in several places, and detached a small column to cross at each, while two battalions dashed at the bridge. In spite of the steepness of the ravine the French got over at more than one point, and climbed the opposite slope, whereupon the peasants fled, and half the Swiss battalion was surrounded and captured while it was trying to cover the retreat of the guns[105]. Adorno, who was lying