Such an exploit naturally drew down once more upon Mina the attention of all the neighbouring French commanders: Dorsenne and Reille again sent columns to aid the governor of Navarre, and from the 23rd to the 28th of April Mina was being hunted by powerful detachments converging on him from all sides[97]. He himself was very nearly captured at Robres by General Pannetier--who surprised him at dawn, helped by treachery on the part of a subordinate guerrillero chief, and dispersed his followers for the moment[98]. But all who were not slain or captured rallied around their indomitable leader, and followed him in a hazardous retreat, in which he threaded his way between the converging columns of the French and ultimately escaped to the Rioja. He asserts in his Memoirs, and with truth, that he was at this time of the highest service to Wellington’s main operations, since he attracted and detained beyond the Ebro such a large proportion of Dorsenne’s Army of the North, that in April and May it had not a man to spare to help Marmont. Even Dumoustier’s Guard division, under orders to return to France for the Russian war, was put into the pack of pursuers who tried in vain to hunt him down. [97] There seems to be an error of dates in Napier, iv. p. 172, concerning Mina’s operations, as the surprise of the convoy at Salinas is put _after_ Mina’s escape from Pannetier at Robres. But Mina’s own Memoirs fix the date of the latter as April 23rd, 1812, while the former certainly happened on April 7th. Toreno (iii. p. 87) has got the sequence right. [98] There is a curious and interesting account of this in Mina’s own Memoirs, pp. 31-2, where he relates his narrow escape, and tells how he had the pleasure of hanging his treacherous lieutenant, and three local alcaldes, who had conspired to keep from him the news of Pannetier’s approach.