The second comment is equally obvious: Duhesme’s generalship was even worse than that of Del Palacio. Since the Spaniards came against him not with the whole army of Catalonia, but with a mere detachment of 7,000 _somatenes_, he should have formed a covering force of 5,000 men, and have fallen upon them while they were still at some distance from Gerona. Instead of doing this, he allowed them to encamp for three days unmolested at Castella, a village no more than five miles distant from Reille’s outposts. There they concerted their operations with the garrison, and fell upon the investing force at the moment that suited them best. It is the extraordinary apathy or neglect displayed by Duhesme that justifies Caldagues’ bold stroke at the French lines. Finding the enemy so torpid, he might well venture an assault upon them, without incurring the charge of rashness of which Napier finds him guilty[320]. In other circumstances it would have been mad for the Spaniard, who had no more than 7,000 _somatenes_, to attack a French army 13,000 strong. But seeing Duhesme so utterly negligent--and his army strung out on a long front of investment, without any covering force--Caldagues was quite justified in making the experiment which turned out so successfully. Duhesme tried to extenuate his fault, by giving out that he had been about to abandon the siege even before he was attacked, and that he had orders from Bayonne authorizing such a step. But we may be permitted to join his successor St. Cyr in doubting both the original intention and the imperial authorization[321]. There is at least no trace of it in the correspondence of Napoleon, who as late as August 23, seven days after the fight outside Gerona, was under the impression that Reille’s division alone might suffice to capture the city, though he was prepared if necessary to support him with other troops. On the seventeenth of the same month, the day on which Duhesme began his disastrous retreat on Barcelona, Napoleon had already made up his mind to supersede him, and had directed St. Cyr, with two fresh divisions, to take post at Perpignan. But in the orders given to the new commander in Catalonia there is no sign that the Emperor had acquiesced in the raising of the siege of Gerona, though it may perhaps be deduced from a later dispatch that he had not disapproved of the strengthening of Lecchi’s garrison at Barcelona by the withdrawal of Chabran’s division from the leaguer[322]. [320] Napier, i. 89. [321] St. Cyr, _Journal de l’Armée de Catalogne_, 1808-9, p. 15.