Cantabrians kept a high spirit; they won many small successes, and they were perpetually helped by the British from the side of the sea. Bessières had a hopeless problem before him in this quarter, considering the size of his army. [266] Bessières soon after his arrival put a garrison in Santoña, between Santander and Bilbao. But this was not his only trouble; Bonnet in Asturias was holding Oviedo and the district immediately round it with a strong division, which varied at one time and another from 6,000 to 8,000 men. He was very useful in his present position, because he cut the Spanish line of defence along the north coast in two, and because he seemed to threaten Galicia from the north-east. The threat was not a very real one, for he had not enough men to deliver an attack on eastern Galicia and at the same time to hold Oviedo and its neighbourhood. But he was a source of trouble as well as of strength to his superiors, for it was very difficult to keep in touch with him through the pass of Pajares, and if he were to be attacked at once by the Galicians and by a British landing-force, his position would be a very dangerous one. He had been put to great trouble by Renovales’s naval expedition in October 1810[267], though this was but a small force and had not received any real help from Galicia along the land side. Bessières, after he had been a few months in authority, was inclined to withdraw Bonnet to the south side of the sierras, and to abandon Oviedo, but was warned against such a move by his master, who said that this would be ‘a detestable operation,’ as it would relieve Galicia from the threat of invasion, allow of the re-formation of a Junta and an army in Asturias, and necessitate a heavy concentration at Santander[268]. Nevertheless the Marshal did at one crisis withdraw the division from Oviedo. [267] See vol. iii. pp. 486-7. [268] _Correspondance_, no. 17,785, 8th June, 1811.