Probably therefore St. Cyr was justified in halting for a month, which he employed in clearing the whole country-side for thirty miles round Barcelona, and in collecting the stores of food which his army required before it could make another move. The halt allowed time for the Catalans to rally, and for Reding to reorganize his army: by February he was ready once more to try his fortune in the field. Indeed, he was ere long more formidable than St. Cyr had expected, for he was joined by the second brigade of his own Granadan division, which came up from Valencia not long after the battle of Molins de Rey, and the last reserves from Majorca had also sailed to aid him, after giving over the fortifications of the Balearic Isles to the marines of the fleet, and the urban guards of Palma and Port Mahon. The _miqueletes_, too, returned to their standards when the first panic was over, and in a month Catalonia could once more show an army of 30,000 men. The first incident which occurred to encourage the insurgents was that on January 1. Lazan fell upon and very severely handled a detached battalion of Reille’s division at Castellon in the Ampurdam[80], and when Reille came up against him in person with 2,500 men, inflicted on him a sharp check at the fords of the Muga. Not long after, however, the Marquis withdrew from this region, and marched back toward Aragon, taking with him his own division and leaving only the weak corps of Alvarez to deal with Reille. His retreat was caused by the news of his brother’s desperate position in Saragossa. Hoping to make a diversion in favour of Palafox, Lazan marched to Lerida, where he began to gather in all the men that he could collect before moving back to his native province. Thus the pressure on Reille was much reduced. [80] This was the 4th battalion of the 2nd of the line, which had joined Reille in the late autumn, and did not form part of his original division as detailed in the Appendix to vol. i. St. Cyr says that it only lost sixty prisoners besides some casualties. Lazan wrote that he took ninety prisoners, and killed or wounded over 200 more Frenchmen.