began a retreat across the more open parts of the defile. The Spaniards followed, pressing in the screen of tirailleurs by which the square was covered, and taking easy shots into the solid mass behind them. After six miles of marching under fire, Schwartz’s Swiss and Italians were growing somewhat demoralized, for nothing could be more harassing to raw and unwilling troops than such a retreat. At last they found their way blocked by the village of Esparraguera, where the inhabitants barricaded the streets and opened a hot fire upon the front face of the square. Seeing his men hesitate and break their ranks, Schwartz hastily bade them scatter right and left and pass round the village without attempting to storm it. This device succeeded, but when the two halves of the column reunited beyond Esparraguera, they were in such disorder that there was no means of stopping them. The whole streamed into Martorel in a confused mass at nightfall, after a retreat whose incidents remind the military reader, in every detail, of the rout of the British troops in the march to Lexington, on the first day of the old American War of 1775. When he reached the plains Schwartz was able to retire unharmed to Barcelona, having saved three of his four guns[301] and lost no very large proportion of his men. But he had suffered the disgrace of being worsted by inferior numbers of undisciplined peasantry, and brought his troops back in a state of demoralization, which was very discouraging to the rest of the garrison of the Catalonian capital. Duhesme, instead of taking him to task, fully approved of his retreat, on the ground that if he had pushed on for Manresa and Lerida he would probably have lost his whole brigade. Realizing at last the true strength of the insurrection, and learning that the _somaten_ was sounding in every village, and that the peasantry were flocking together in thousands, Duhesme determined to concentrate his whole force, and sent orders to Chabran to abandon his Valencian expedition and return at once to Barcelona. He was probably quite right in his resolve, though Chabran’s retreat was the determining fact that ruined Moncey’s campaign in the province south of the Ebro. The Emperor had sketched out the whole plan of operations on false premises, and when the new military situation had developed itself, it would have been absurd for his lieutenants to carry out his original orders in blind and servile obedience. [301] One gun was lost after leaving Esparraguera by the fall of a rickety bridge over the Abrera (Arteche, ii. 93, 94). Foy and other French narrators do not mention this loss.