On the 29th of February the Italian general relieved Daroca, and a few days later he occupied Calatayud, which had been left ungarrisoned since the disaster of the previous October[95]. After fortifying the convent of Nostra Señora de la Peña as a new citadel for this place, he split up his division into several small columns, which scoured the neighbourhood, partly to sweep in provisions for the post at Calatayud, partly to drive off the guerrilleros of the region. But to risk small detachments in Aragon was always a dangerous business; Villacampa, who had now come up from the south, cut off one body of 200 men at Campillo on March 5, and destroyed six companies at Pozohondon on the 28th of the same month. Taught prudence by these petty disasters, and by some less successful attacks on others of his flying columns, Palombini once more drew his men together, and concentrated them in the upland plain of Hused near Daroca. From thence he made another blow at Villacampa, who was at the same time attacked in the rear by a column sent up by Suchet from Valencia to Teruel. The Spaniard, however, easily avoided the attempt to surround him, and retired without much loss or difficulty into the wild Sierra de Albarracin (April 18th). Meanwhile, seeing Palombini occupied in hunting Villacampa, the guerrillero Gayan made a dash at the new garrison of Calatayud, and entering the city unexpectedly captured the governor and sixty men, but failed to reduce the fortified convent in which the rest of the Italians took refuge [April 29th]. He then sat down to besiege them, though he had no guns, and could work by mines alone: but Palombini soon sent a strong column under the brigadiers Saint Paul and Schiazzetti, who drove off Gayan and relieved Calatayud [May 9th]. [95] See above, page 21. Nevertheless three months had now gone by since the attempt to reduce southern Aragon began, and it was now obvious that it had been wholly unsuccessful. The hills and great part of the upland plains were still in the possession of the Spaniards, who had been often hunted but never caught nor seriously mishandled. Palombini owned nothing more than the towns which he had garrisoned, and the spot on which his head-quarters chanced for the moment to be placed. His strength was not sufficient to enable him to occupy every village, and without such occupation no conquest could take place. Moreover the time was at hand when Wellington’s operations in the West were to shake the fabric of French power all over Spain--even in the remote recesses of the Aragonese Sierras. Palombini was to be drawn off in July to join the Army of the Centre and to oppose the English. And with his departure such hold as the French possessed on the rugged region between Calatayud, Saragossa, and Teruel was to disappear.