The way to the frontier of Portugal had thus been opened, with an ease which seemed to justify Napoleon’s idea that the Spaniards would not hold out, when once their field armies had been crushed. Franceschi and Lahoussaye reported to the Duke of Dalmatia that they had swept the whole northern bank of the Minho, and that there was nothing in front of them save the swollen river and a few bands of Portuguese peasantry, who were observing them from Valenza, the dilapidated frontier fortress of the neighbouring kingdom. Both the French and the Galicians of the coast-line might well have forgotten the fact that there was still a Spanish army in existence within the borders of the province. It is long since we have had occasion to mention the fugitive host of the Marquis of La Romana. After being hunted out of Ponferrada by Soult on January 3, he had followed in the wake of Craufurd’s brigades on their eccentric retreat down the valley of the Sil. But while the British troops pushed on to Vigo and embarked, the Spaniards halted at Orense. There the Marquis endeavoured to rally his demoralized and starving host, with the aid of the very limited resources of the district. He had only 6,000 men left with the colours, out of the 22,000 who had been with him at Leon on December 25, 1808. But there were several thousands more straggling after him, or dispersed in the side valleys off the road which he had followed. Most of these men had lost their muskets, many were frost bitten, or suffering from dysentery. The surviving nucleus of the army was composed almost entirely of the old regulars: the Galician militia and new levies had not been able to resist the temptation to desert, when they found themselves among their native mountains. The Marquis hoped that, when the spring came round, they would find their way back to the army: in this expectation, as we shall see, he was not deceived. For nearly a fortnight the wrecks of the army were undisturbed, and La Romana was able to collect enough efficients to constitute two small corps of observation, one of which he posted in the valley of the Sil, to watch for any signs of a movement of the French from the direction of Ponferrada, while the other, in the valley of the Minho, kept a similar look out in the direction of Lugo. The latter force was unmolested, but on January 17 General Mendizabal, who was watching the southern road, reported the approach of a heavy hostile column. This was Marchand’s division of Ney’s corps: the Marshal had divided his force at Ponferrada; he himself with Maurice Mathieu’s division had kept the main road to Lugo, while Marchand had been told off to clear the lateral valleys and seize Orense. La Romana very wisely resolved that his unhappy army was unfit to resist 8,000 French troops. On January 19 he evacuated Orense, and fled across the Sierra Cabrera to Monterey on the Portuguese frontier. Here at last he found