Macdonald was usually unlucky in his Catalonian campaigning; though he had won great reputation in mountain warfare against the Austrians in his early days, he does not seem to have been able to apply his knowledge of it to Spain. Marching from Ginestar by Falset, he reached and occupied the large town of Reus, only ten miles from Tarragona, on January 12th. From thence he set his army in motion for Valls on the 15th, marching across the front of the fortress, with which he clearly had no intention of interfering. His vanguard was formed by the Italian division, which was followed at a distance of three miles by his three French brigades and his single regiment of cavalry. Meanwhile Campoverde, now in command at Tarragona, had detached General Sarsfield with a division of 3,000 foot and 800 horse--all that the Army of Catalonia possessed--to observe the march of the French, while he himself remained just outside Tarragona with the remainder of his troops--some 8,000 men. Sarsfield had taken post at Pla, some five miles north of Valls, which town he had evacuated on the approach of the enemy. When Macdonald’s leading brigade reached Valls, information was received that there was a Spanish force close in its front. Without waiting for orders from the Marshal, who had merely directed that Valls should be occupied, the commander of the vanguard, General Eugenio[300], resolved to bring the enemy to action. Marching with five Italian battalions and only thirty chasseurs--about 2,500 men in all--he ran headlong into Sarsfield’s forces drawn up in a well-masked position, the infantry occupying a ridge, the 800 cavalry hidden in a wood to the left. Unable to estimate the enemy’s strength, and thinking that a brisk attack might drive them off the ground, Eugenio--a man of reckless courage--made a direct frontal charge against the enemy’s position in column of battalions. He was completely beaten, his brigade fell back still fighting, and he was himself mortally wounded. The recoiling mass was saved from annihilation by the arrival on the field of the other Italian brigade, that of Palombini, on which it rallied. But Sarsfield’s troops were determined to finish appropriately the day that they had begun so well. They fell on the newly formed line and broke it, the cavalry turning Palombini’s right and sweeping it away. The whole Italian division would have been annihilated but for the arrival of two squadrons of the 24th Dragoons under Colonel Delort, who charged the victorious cavalry, and, though hopelessly outnumbered, gave the Spaniards so much trouble that the routed infantry of Eugenio and Palombini escaped into Valls, without much further loss. Macdonald had refrained from bringing up the French brigades to help his vanguard, because he had discovered a column under Campoverde coming out of Tarragona to threaten his rear. This demonstration kept him occupied while the Italians were being cut up by