be forced into the battalions of the standing army. The constant series of defeats on record had been caused rather by the unskilful and over-ambitious operations of the generals than by their insisting on keeping up the regular troops, who had behaved well enough on many occasions. But too much had been asked of them when, half-trained and badly led, they were brought into collision with the veterans of France, without the superiority of numbers which alone could make up for their military faults. [84] See notes on discussions of this sort in Sir Edward Codrington’s _Memoirs_, i. pp. 264 and 277. He had seen much of the evils of both kinds of organization, and leaned on the whole to the irregulars, from a personal dislike for Lacy. Since the capture of Cervera, Belpuig, and Igualada in October, the territories held by the French in Catalonia fell into two separate and divided sections. On the western side, adjacent to Aragon, Frère’s division, left behind by Suchet, garrisoned Lerida, Tarragona, and Tortosa: though it was a powerful force of over 7,000 men, it could do little more than occupy these three large places, each requiring several battalions. At the best it could only furnish very small flying columns to keep up the communication between them. It was hard to maintain touch with the other group of French fortresses, along the sea-coast road from Tarragona to Barcelona, which were often obsessed by Spanish bands, and always liable to be molested by Edward Codrington’s British ships, which sailed up and down the shore looking for detachments or convoys to shell. The fort of the Col de Balaguer, twenty miles north of Tortosa, was the look-out point towards Tarragona and the sole French outpost in that direction.