The only Spanish fighters who were playing the proper game in 1809 were the Catalonian _somatenes_, and even they gave battle far too often, and did not adhere with a sufficient pertinacity to the harassing tactics of guerrilla warfare. General Arteche has collected in his fourth volume something like a dozen schemes for the expulsion of the French from Spain, which were laid before the Junta, or ventilated in print, during this year. It is interesting to see that only one of them advocates the true line of resistance--the avoiding of battles, the harassing of the enemy’s flanks and communications, and the employment of numerous flying bands instead of great masses[45]. Some of the other plans are the wild imaginings of ignorant fools--one wiseacre wished to run down the French columns with pikemen in a sort of Macedonian phalanx, another to arm one-sixth of the troops with hand-grenades! But the majority of the Junta’s self-constituted advisers thought that numbers were the only necessary thing, and proposed to save Spain by crushing the invaders with levies _en masse_ of all persons between sixteen and fifty--one enthusiast makes the age-limit fourteen to seventy! [45] See Arteche, iv. 115-51: the advocate of the guerrilla game was a certain Faustino Fernandez. These were the views of the nation, and the generals and the Junta were but infected with the common delusion of all their compatriots. They would not see that courage and raw multitudes are almost helpless when opposed by equal courage combined with skill, long experience of war, superior tactics, and intelligent leading. SECTION X THE AUTUMN AND WINTER CAMPAIGN IN CATALONIA CHAPTER I THE SIEGE OF ROSAS Before we follow further the fortunes of Southern Spain, it is necessary to turn back and to take up the tale of the war on the Eastern coast at the point where it was left in Section V. The same torpor which was notable in the operations of the main armies of the Spaniards and the French during the months of September and October was to be observed in Catalonia also. On the Ter and the Llobregat the inability of the French to move was much more real, and the slackness of the Spaniards even more inexplicable, than on the Ebro and the Aragon.