Leaving Biscay to Palombini and Foy, Clausel had collected at Vittoria one of his own divisions, hitherto scattered in small detachments, but relieved by the reinforcements sent him from the Army of Portugal. For beside the four divisions lent for active service, he had taken over the whole Province of Burgos, to which Reille had sent the division of Lamartinière. With his own newly-collected division, under Vandermaesen, and Taupin’s of the Army of Portugal, Clausel set out for Navarre on April 11th, to combine his operations with those of Abbé and to hunt down Mina. As he had already sent forward to the Governor of Navarre the division of Barbot, there was now a field-force of 20,000 men available for the chase, without taking into consideration the troops tied down in garrisons. This was more than double the strength that Mina could command, and the next month was one of severe trial for the great guerrillero. Clausel’s first idea was to catch Mina by a sweeping movement of all his four divisions, which he collected at Puente la Reyna in the valley of the Arga (April 24). Mina answered this move by dispersion, and his battalions escaped through intervals in the cordon with no great loss, and cut up more than once small detachments of their pursuers. Clausel perceiving that this system was useless, then tried another, one of those recommended by the Emperor in his letter of instruction of March 9, viz. a resolute stroke at the enemy’s magazines and dépôts. Mina kept his hospitals, some rough munition factories which he had set up, and his store of provisions, in the remote Pyrenean valley of Roncal, where Navarre and Aragon meet: it was most inaccessible and far from any high road. Nevertheless Clausel marched upon it with the divisions of Abbé, Vandermaesen, and Barbot, leaving Taupin alone at Estella to contain Western Navarre. He calculated that Mina would be forced to concentrate and fight, in order to save his stores and arsenal, and that so he might be destroyed. He was partly correct in his hypothesis--but only partly. Mina left four of his battalions in Western Navarre, in the valleys of the Amescoas, to worry Taupin, and hurried with the remaining five to cover the Roncal. There was heavy fighting in the passes leading to it on May 12 and 13, which ended in the Navarrese being beaten and dispersed with the loss of a thousand men. Clausel captured and destroyed the factories and magazines, and made prisoners of the sick in the hospitals, whom he treated with unexpected humanity. Some of the broken battalions fled south by Sanguesa into lower Navarre, others eastward into Aragon. Among these last was Mina himself with a small party of cavalry--he tried to fetch a compass round the pursuing French and to return to his own country, but he was twice headed off, and finally forced to fly far into Eastern Aragon, as far as Barbastro. This region was practically open to him for flight, for the French garrison of Saragossa was too