He ended by making his way across the mountains to join the Marshal. [337] See pp. 62, 63 of this volume. Meanwhile, Augereau, with Pino’s Italian brigades, reached Granollers, and came into touch with Duhesme’s troops, just in time to find that a disaster had preceded his arrival. The Governor of Barcelona, in obedience to the orders sent him, had marched out on January 16 with three battalions and 250 cuirassiers in order to meet the Marshal. He waited four days at Granollers, and then left the brigade under the charge of Colonel Guétry, and returned in person to Barcelona, recalled by rumours of a threatened attack from the side of Tarragona. On the morning after his departure Guétry’s force, which believed itself in complete security, was suddenly surprised in its camps by a detachment sent out by O’Donnell. That enterprising officer had heard that Augereau was still twenty miles away, and that Guétry had scattered his men in the three villages of Santa Perpetua, Mollet, and Granollers, in order to cover them from the bitter January weather. Accordingly, he resolved to risk an attack on this unwary detachment. Two brigades--about 4,000 men--under the Marquis of Campo Verde, made a forced march across the mountains, and fell upon the villages at dawn. The battalion of the 112th in Santa Perpetua was completely cut to pieces or captured--only two men are said to have escaped. The 7th and the cuirassiers at Mollet fared somewhat better, but were driven back to Barcelona with heavy loss. Part of the third battalion, one of the 5th Italian Line regiment, which was posted at Granollers, escaped destruction by throwing itself into a fortified convent, and held out for two days, till it was saved by the approach of Augereau along the high-road. Altogether, Duhesme’s division was thinned by the loss of 1,000 men on January 21-22: Guétry had been taken prisoner, with some 600 men more and two guns. The Spaniards disappeared the moment that Augereau came in sight, and rejoined O’Donnell in the hills. Augereau entered Barcelona on the twenty-fourth, and at once asserted his authority by deposing Duhesme from the governorship and sending him home to France. They were old enemies, and the general’s friends regarded his disgrace as a display of spite on the part of his superior[338]. But as all the Spanish narratives describe the eighteen-months’ dictatorship of Duhesme as having been as much distinguished for private rapacity as for public oppression, it is probable that the Marshal’s action was wholly justifiable. The Emperor, however, refused to sanction the prosecution of the general on the charges laid against him, remarking that such proceedings would give too much pleasure to the Catalans, ‘il y avait bien autre chose à faire que de réjouir les Espagnols par cette réaction[339].’