The resources at hand were not inconsiderable: in Galicia, or on the way thither from Portugal, were no less than thirty-nine battalions of regular infantry--though most of them were very weak: there were also thirteen battalions of embodied militia, some thirty guns, and a handful of cavalry (not more than 150 sabres). The Junta had placed in command, after the murder of the captain-general Filanghieri, a comparatively young general--Joachim Blake, one of those many soldiers of fortune of Irish blood who formed such a notable element in the Spanish army. When the insurrection broke out he had been merely colonel of the regiment named ‘the Volunteers of the Crown’: he had never had more than three battalions to manage before he found himself placed at the head of the whole Galician army. Though a most unlucky general--half a dozen times he seems to have been the victim of ill fortune, for which he was hardly responsible--Blake was in real merit far above the average of the Spanish commanders. He had neither the slackness nor the arrogance which were the besetting sins of so many of the Peninsular generals: and his dauntless courage was not combined with recklessness or careless over-confidence. He showed from the first very considerable organizing power: all his efforts were directed to the task of inducing the Junta and the people of Galicia to allow him to draft the crowds of recruits who flocked to his banner into the old regiments of the line and the militia, instead of forming them into new corps. With some trouble he carried his point, and was able to bring up to their full complement most of the old battalions: of new units very few[132] were created. When he took the field it was only the old _cadres_ thus brought up to strength that accompanied him, not raw and unsteady troops of new organization. [132] The best known was the _batallon literario_, composed of the students of the University of Santiago. After hastily concentrating and brigading his army at Lugo, Blake led them to the edge of the mountains which divide Galicia from the plains of Leon. It was his original intention to stand at bay on the hills, and force the French to attack him. With this object he occupied the passes of Manzanal, Fuencebadon, and Puebla de Sanabria, the only places where roads of importance penetrate into the Galician uplands [June 23]. His whole field force, distributed into four divisions and a ‘vanguard brigade’ of light troops, amounted to some 25,000 men fit for the field: in addition, 8,000 or 10,000 new levies were being organized behind him, but he refused--with great wisdom--to bring them to the front during his first movements.