Of the remainder of Soult’s army, the troops in front of Cadiz, originally the 1st Corps, had been cut down to an irreducible minimum, by the necessity for keeping flank-guards to either side, to watch the Spanish forces in the Condado de Niebla on the west and the mountains of Ronda on the south. Even including the marines and sailors of the flotilla, there were seldom 20,000 men in the Lines, and the Spanish force in Cadiz and the Isle of Leon, stiffened by the Anglo-Portuguese detachment which Wellington always retained there, was often not inferior in numbers to the besiegers. The bombardment from the heavy Villoutreys mortars, placed in the works of the Matagorda peninsula, continued intermittently: but, though a shell occasionally fell in the city, no appreciable harm was done. The inhabitants killed or injured by many months of shelling could be counted on the fingers of two hands. The citizens had come to take the occasional descent of a missile in their streets with philosophic calm, and sang a derisive street ditty which told how ‘De las bombas que tiran los Gavachos Se hacen las Gaditanas tirabuzones.’ ‘The splinters of the bombs that the French threw served the ladies of Cadiz as weights to curl their hair[100].’ [100] See Schepeler, p. 172. The Fort of Puntales, on the easternmost point of the isthmus that links Cadiz to the Isle of Leon, felt the bombardment more severely, but was never seriously injured, and always succeeded in keeping up an effective return fire. With the artillery of those days--even when mortars of the largest calibre, specially cast in the arsenal of Seville, were used--Cadiz was safe from any real molestation. Marshal Victor was still in command of the troops in the Lines at the end of 1811, but the Emperor gave orders for his return to France, when he ordered the Army of Andalusia to drop its organization into army-corps, and replaced them by divisions. He directed that the Marshal should set out at once, unless he was engaged in some serious enterprise at the moment that the summons arrived. This--as we shall see--chanced to be the case, and Victor was still hard at work in January, and did not leave Spain till early in April.