Instead of leaving the newly arrived division to guard the passes, Dupont called it down to join him in the valley of the Guadalquivir. With the assistance of Vedel’s troops he considered himself strong enough to make head against the Spanish army under Castaños, which was commencing to draw near to Andujar. Keeping his original force at that town--a great centre of roads, but a malarious spot whose hospitals were already crowded with 600 sick,--he placed Vedel at Baylen, a place sixteen miles further east, but still in the plain, though the foot-hills of the Sierra Morena begin to rise just behind it. To assert himself and strike terror into the insurgents, Dupont ordered one of Vedel’s brigades to make a forced march to Jaen, the capital of a province and a considerable focus of rebellion. This expedition scattered the local levies, took and sacked Jaen, and then returned in safety to Baylen [July 2-3]. Meanwhile Castaños was drawing near: he had now had a month in which to organize his army. Like Blake in Galicia, he had used the recruits of Andalusia to fill up the gaps in the depleted battalions of the regular army. But less fortunate than his colleague in the north, he had not been able to prevent the Juntas of Seville and Granada from creating a number of new volunteer corps, and had been obliged to incorporate them in his field army, where they were a source of weakness rather than of strength. His total force was some 33,000 or 34,000 men, of whom 2,600 were cavalry, for in this arm he was far better provided than was the army of the North. The whole was organized in four divisions, under Generals Reding, Coupigny, Felix Jones (an Irish officer, in spite of his Welsh name), and La Peña. In addition there was a flying brigade of new levies under Colonel Cruz-Murgeon, which was pushed forward along the roots of the mountains, at a considerable distance in front of the main body: it was ordered to harass Dupont’s northern flank and to cut his communications with Baylen and La Carolina.