In eastern Catalonia the newly-arrived commander, General Decaen (a veteran whose last work had been the hopeless defence of Bourbon and Mauritius, where he had capitulated in 1810), had some 24,000 men in hand. But he was much hampered by the necessity for holding and feeding the immense Barcelona, a turbulent city which absorbed a whole division for its garrison. It was constantly on the edge of starvation, and was only revictualled with great trouble by vessels sailing from the ports of Languedoc, of which more than half were habitually captured by the British, or by heavy convoys labouring across the hills from Gerona, which were always harassed, and sometimes taken wholesale, by the Spanish detachments told off by Lacy for this end. Gerona and Figueras, both fortresses of considerable size, absorbed several battalions each. Smaller garrisons had also to be kept in Rosas, Hostalrich, Mataro, and Montlouis, and there were many other fortified posts which guarded roads or passes, and were worth holding. It was with difficulty that 6,000 or 8,000 men could be collected for a movable field-force, even by borrowing detachments from the garrisons. An additional nuisance cropped up just as Decaen took over the command: Lacy, seeing that the Pyrenean passes were thinly manned, sent Eroles with 3,000 men to raid the valleys of Cerdagne on the French side of the hills. The invaders beat two battalions of national guards near Puigcerda, and swept far down the valley (October 29-November 2), returning with thousands of sheep and cattle and a large money contribution levied from the villages. This raid (which enraged Napoleon[85]) made it necessary to guard the Pyrenees better, and to send up more national guards from the frontier departments. [85] Who called the raid an ‘insult’--Napoleon to Berthier, Paris, Feb. 29, 1812, and compare letter of March 8.