General Ballasteros, as it will be remembered, had landed from Cadiz at Algeciras on September 4th, 1811, and had been much hunted during the autumn by detachments drawn both from the troops in the kingdom of Granada and those of Victor[103]. As many as 10,000 men were pressing him in October, when he had been forced to take refuge under the cannon of Gibraltar. But when want of food compelled the columns of Barrois, Sémélé, and Godinot to withdraw and to disperse, he had emerged from his refuge, had followed the retiring enemy, and had inflicted some damage on their rearguards [November 5, 1811]. His triumphant survival, after the first concentrated movement made against him, had much provoked Soult, who saw the insurrectionary movement in southern Andalusia spreading all along the mountains, and extending itself towards Malaga on the one side and Arcos on the other. The Marshal, therefore, determined to make a serious effort to crush Ballasteros, and at the same time to destroy one of the two bases from which he was wont to operate. Gibraltar was, of course, impregnable: but Tarifa, the other fortress at the southern end of the Peninsula, was not, and had proved from time to time very useful to the Spaniards. It was now their only secure foothold in southern Andalusia, and was most useful as a port of call for vessels going round from Cadiz to the Mediterranean, especially for the large flotilla of British and Spanish sloops, brigs, and gunboats, which obsessed the coast of Andalusia, and made the use of routes by the seaside almost impracticable for the enemy. Soult was at this time trying to open up communications with the Moors of Tangier, from whom he hoped to get horses for his cavalry, and oxen for the army before Cadiz. But he could not hope to accomplish anything in this way so long as Tarifa was the nest and victualling-place of privateers, who lay thick in the straits only a few miles from the coast of Morocco. [103] See vol. iii. pp. 594-5.