The insurrection--such as it was--started in the north, where the departure of Belesta and his division had left the two provinces of Tras-os-Montes and Entre-Douro-e-Minho free from any garrison, French or Spanish. Oporto had been bidden to work out its own salvation by Belesta, and on the day of his departure (June 6), a junta of insurrection had been acclaimed. But there followed a curious interval of apathy, lasting for ten days: the natural leaders of the people refused to come forward: here, just as in Spain, the bureaucracy showed itself very timid and unpatriotic. The magistrates sent secret offers of submission to Junot: the military commandant, Oliveira da Costa, hauled down the national flag from the citadel of San João da Foz. The members of the insurrectionary junta absconded from the city or kept quiet[170]. It was only on the news that the neighbouring districts and towns had risen, that the people of Oporto threw themselves frankly into the rebellion. The rough mountain districts which lay to the east of them showed a much more whole-hearted patriotism: between the ninth and the twelfth of June the whole of the Tras-os-Montes took arms: one junta at Braganza nominated as commander the aged General Sepulveda, who had been governor of the district in the days of the Prince-Regent: another, at Villa Real on the Douro, also put in its claim and chose as its leader Colonel Silveira, an officer who was destined to see much service during the war of independence. Though the French were no further off than Almeida, the rival governors nearly came to blows, but the final insurrection of Oporto created a new power to which both consented to bow. [170] For these incidents, so discreditable to the leading men of Oporto, see Foy, iv. 206, and Toreño, i. 152. Most Peninsular historians consign them to oblivion.