The humour of the arrangement (which its creator most certainly failed to see) was that three-fourths of the territory of each department was in the hands of the patriots whom he styled rebels, and that none of his prefects could have gone ten miles from his _chef-lieu_ without an escort of 200 men, under pain of captivity or death. [87] Napoleon to Berthier, Paris, Jan. 25, after the receipt of the news of the fall of Valencia. [88] Details may be found in the dispatches of Feb. 29, and May 1st and 8th. [89] See vol. iv. p. 215. Reille’s start was much delayed by the fact that one of his French brigades had been told off to serve as escort to the mass of Blake’s prisoners from Valencia, and could not get quit of them till, marching by Teruel, it had handed them over for transference beyond the Pyrenees to the garrison of Saragossa. Of his two Italian divisions, Palombini’s was instructed to devote itself to the clearing of southern Aragon, and the opening up of the communications between the French garrisons of Daroca, Teruel, and Calatayud. The other, Severoli’s, called off from the siege of Peniscola, which had originally been entrusted to it[90], marched for Lerida in two columns, the one by the sea-coast and Tortosa, the other inland, by way of Morella and Mequinenza. When his troops had begun to concentrate on the borders of Aragon and Catalonia, in and about Lerida, Reille began operations by sending a column, one French brigade and one Italian regiment, to attack the ubiquitous Eroles, who, since his defeat at Altafulla a month before, had betaken himself to the inland, and the rough country along the valleys of the two Nogueras, with the object of covering Catalonia on its western front. [90] See above, p. 88.