While the fate of the Portuguese expedition was still uncertain, while it seemed possible to Napoleon that Masséna might cling to his position at Santarem till Soult came up to join him on the Tagus, a considerable change was made with regard to the French troops in northern Spain. Convinced at last there was little to be said in favour of that system of many small ‘military governments’, in Old Castile and the neighbouring provinces, which he had created in 1810, the Emperor resolved to put them all under a single commander. This would give him six less independent generals to communicate with, and would ensure for the future a much better co-operation between the divisions which occupied the valley of the Douro and the Pyrenean regions. The six military governors had been each playing his own game, and taking little notice of that of his neighbours. Their enemies were mostly the guerrillero bands of the Cantabrian hills and of Navarre. Each general did his best to hunt these elusive enemies out of his own department, but took little heed of their trespasses on his neighbours’ territory. Evasive and indomitable partisans like Mina in Navarre, Julian Sanchez in Old Castile, and Porlier and Longa in the Cantabrian sierras, found it comparatively easy to shift their positions when the pressure on one region was too great for them, and to move on into another--they were sure that the hunt would soon slacken, and that they could return at their leisure to their old haunts. The Emperor thought that it would be possible to make an end of them, if all his garrisons and movable columns in northern Spain were put under a single commander and moved in unison under a single will. Hence came the decree of January 8, 1811, creating the ‘Army of the North,’ and handing it over to Marshal Bessières, whose name was still remembered in those regions owing to his old victory of Medina de Rio Seco. His authority extended over the troops stationed in Navarre, Biscay, Burgos, Valladolid, Salamanca, the Asturias, and Santander, including not only the regular garrisons of those provinces but the two divisions of the Young Guard, which had replaced Drouet’s corps in Old Castile, and the division under Serras which watched Galicia from the direction of Benavente and Astorga. The total of the forces placed under his orders amounted to 70,000 men, of whom 59,000 were ‘présents sous les armes,’ the rest being in hospital, or detached outside the limits of the territory assigned to the Army of the North.