Beginning with eight hundred badly armed peasants and fourteen horses, the gallant leader had at the time of his death a force of twenty-eight thousand well-organized and disciplined infantry and eight hundred horsemen, with twenty-eight pieces of artillery and twelve thousand spare muskets, all won by his good sword from the foe,—his arsenal being, as he expressed it, "in the ranks of the enemy." During these two years of incessant war more than fifty thousand of the army of Spain, including a very large number of officers, had fallen in Navarre, sixteen fortified places had been taken, and the cause of Don Carlos was advancing by leaps and bounds. The road to Madrid lay open to the Carlist hero when, at the siege of Bilboa, a distant and nearly spent shot struck him, inflicting a wound from which he soon died. With the fall of Zumalacarregui fell the Carlist cause. Weak hands seized the helm from which his strong one had been struck, incompetency succeeded genius, and three years more of a weakening struggle brought the contest to an end. In all later revivals of the insurrection it has never gained a hopeful stand, and with the fall of "Uncle Tomas" the Carlist claim to the throne seemingly received its death-blow. The events of the war between the Navarrese and their opponents were so numerous that it is not easy to select one of special interest from the mass. We shall therefore speak only of the final incidents of Zumalacarregui’s career. Among the later events was the siege and capture of Villafranca. Espartero, the Spanish general, led seven thousand men to the relief of this place, marching them across the mountains on a dark and stormy night with the hope of taking the Carlists by surprise. But Uncle Tomas was not the man to be taken unawares, and reversed the surprise, striking Espartero with a small force in the darkness, and driving back his men in confusion and dismay. Eighteen hundred prisoners were taken, and the general himself narrowly escaped. General Mirasol was taken, with all his staff, in a road-side house, from which he made an undignified escape. He was a small man, and by turning up his embroidered cuffs, these being the only marks of the grade of brigadier-general in the Spanish army, he concealed his rank. He told his captors that he was a _tambor_. In their anxiety to capture officers the soldiers considered a drummer too small game, and dismissed the general with a sound kick to the custody of those outside. As these had more prisoners than they could well manage, he easily escaped.