Ballasteros, after his fiasco in front of Seville, made two fruitless attempts against isolated French garrisons. He failed at the Castle of Zahara on April 11th. One of his columns in an assault on Osuna two days later got into the town and killed or captured 60 of the defenders, but failed to take the citadel, where the remainder defended themselves till Pierre Soult was reported to be at hand, and the Spaniards withdrew[305]. He ended his campaign of raids, however, with a more successful stroke. Hearing that the brigadier Rey, with three battalions and some dragoons, was marching from Malaga to relieve the garrison of Ronda, he fell upon him at Alhaurin on the 14th with his main body, encompassed him with fourfold strength, and drove him in rout back to Malaga, capturing his two guns and inflicting more than 200 casualties upon him[306]. Ballasteros then hoped to seize on Malaga, where the French were much alarmed, and prepared to shut themselves up in the citadel of Gibalfaro. But the news that Pierre Soult and Conroux were approaching with a strong column caused the Spaniards to retire to the mountains above Gibraltar [April 19th]. Thus the operations in Andalusia, which had opened with Soult’s march to Badajoz, came to an end, with no ruinous disaster to the French, but with a diminution of their prestige, and a distinct weakening of their hold on the kingdom. In the Condado de Niebla Soult made no attempt to reoccupy lost ground, and east of Granada his line of posts had recoiled considerably on the Murcian side: Baza and Ubeda had been abandoned for good. It was but a vain boast when the Marshal wrote to Berthier that, after he had set all things to rights in the central parts of Andalusia, he intended to organize a general concentration to crush Ballasteros, and that his next task would be to lay siege for a second time to Tarifa, ‘the loss of which place would be more injurious to the English and the Insurgents than that of Alicante, or even that of Badajoz--against which last-named fortress I ought to make no attack till I shall have finished matters on the Tarifa side, and so have nothing to fear on my left flank[307].’ [305] Napier, I know not on what authority, says that Osuna was only defended by ‘Juramentados’ who made a gallant resistance against their own countrymen. But Soult, in a letter to Berthier dated April 21 from Seville, says that Osuna was held by some companies of the 43rd Line and a detachment of the 21st Dragoons. He cannot be wrong. Moreover, the 43rd shows losses at Osuna, April 13, in Martinien’s tables. [306] Martinien’s tables show three officers killed and nine wounded at ‘Alora near Malaga’ on this date, in the 43rd, 58th Line, and 21st Dragoons. Soult’s dispatch makes out that only Rey’s advanced guard under Maransin was cut up, and that the main body defeated the Spaniards. If so, why did they retreat on Malaga? [307] Soult to Berthier from Seville, April 17, 1812.