Between Bonnet in the Asturias and Ciudad Rodrigo, the long front against Galicia was occupied by a single weak French division, that of Serras, whose head quarters were at Benavente, his advanced post at Astorga, and his flank-guards at Leon and Zamora[269]. If the army of Galicia had been in good order this force would have been in great danger, for it was not strong enough to hold the ground allotted to it. But when Del Parque in 1809 drew off to Estremadura the old Army of the North, he had left behind him only a few skeleton corps, and the best of these had been destroyed in defending Astorga in the following year. The formation of a new Galician army of 20,000 men had been decreed, and the _cadres_ left behind in the country had been filled up in 1810, but the results were not satisfactory. The Captain-General, Mahy, was a man of little energy, and spent most of it in quarrels with the local Junta, whom he accused of conspiracy against him, and charged with secret correspondence with La Romana and his party. He seized their letters in the post and imprisoned two members, whereupon riots broke out, and complaints were sent to the Regency at Cadiz. This led to Mahy’s recall, and the captain-generalship was given to the Duke of Albuquerque, then on his mission to London. He died without having returned to Spain, so that the appointment was nugatory, and the Regency then gave it to Castaños, who was at the same time made Captain-General of Estremadura, after the death of La Romana and the disaster at the Gebora. Castaños went to the Tagus, to rally the poor remnants of the Estremaduran army, and while retaining the nominal command in Galicia never visited that province, but deputed the command in it to Santocildes, the young general who had so bravely defended Astorga in the preceding spring. He had been sent prisoner to France, but was adroit enough to escape from his captivity, and to make his way back to Corunna. His appointment was popular, but he got no great service out of the Galician army, which was in a deplorable condition, and hopelessly scattered. The Junta kept many battalions to garrison the harbour-fortresses of Corunna, Vigo, and Ferrol, and the main body, whose head quarters lay at Villafranca in the Vierzo, did not amount to more than 7,000 men, destitute of cavalry (which Galicia could never produce) and very poorly provided with artillery. There was another division, under General Cabrera, some 4,000 strong, at Puebla de Senabria, and a third under Barcena and Losada on the borders of the Asturias, opposite Bonnet. The whole did not amount to 16,000 raw troops--yet this was sufficient to hold Serras in observation and to watch Bonnet, who was too much distracted by the Cantabrian bands to be really dangerous. But in the spring of 1811 the Galicians could do no more, and Wellington was much chagrined to find that he could get no effective assistance from them, after he had driven Masséna behind