district was familiar. When he reached the sea at Malgrat he found that his troubles were only growing worse. The _somatenes_ hung on his right flank, while Lord Cochrane’s frigate the _Impérieuse_ followed him on the left hand, giving him a broadside whenever his march lay within cannon-shot of the beach. Moreover, the peasants had been cutting and blasting away the road under Cochrane’s direction; and at each point where one of these obstructions had been made, it was necessary to drag the guns and wagons of the column across almost impassable hillsides[319]. Finding that he was making no appreciable progress, and that his men were growing utterly demoralized, Duhesme at last took a desperate step. He blew up his ammunition, burnt his baggage, cast his field-guns into the sea, and fled away by hill-tracks parallel with the shore. After long skirmishing with the _somatenes_ he reached Mongat, where Lecchi came out to his aid with 1000 men and a battery--all that could be spared from the depleted garrison of Barcelona. There the Catalans stayed their pursuit, and Duhesme’s harassed battalions poured back into the city, sick of mountain warfare, half-starved, and carrying with them nothing but what they brought in on their backs [August 20]. As a fighting force for offensive operations they were useless for some weeks, and all that their general could do was to hold for foraging purposes as much of the open ground about Barcelona as he could manage to retain. Nothing more could be essayed till Napoleon should vouchsafe to send heavy reinforcements to Catalonia, for the purpose of reopening the severed communications with France. [319] See Cochrane’s autobiography, i. 266. Two obvious criticisms on these operations in the month of August must be made. The first is that Del Palacio might probably have destroyed Duhesme’s whole army, if, instead of sending out his lieutenant Caldagues with a handful of regulars and 2,000 _miqueletes_, he had marched on Gerona with his entire force, the 5,000 old troops from Port Mahon and the whole of the local levies of Central Catalonia. Lecchi was so weak in Barcelona that a few thousand _somatenes_ could have kept him in check, for he dared not ungarnish the city. If the Captain-General had thrown every man into the struggle at Gerona, it seems certain that Duhesme must either have been annihilated or have fled away with Reille to Figueras, abandoning Barcelona to its inevitable fate.