Five days after their arrival they were joined by a corps which it was supposed had been cut off among the mountains of Rioja. The history of its escape is equally honourable to the men and to the Conde de Alache D. Miguel Lili, who conducted them. They formed originally a part of the army of Old Castille, under the Conde de Cartaojal, which had been broken up after the position of Logroño was lost. At the end of October, Castaños stationed it along the skirts of the Sierra de Cameros, extending from in front of Logroño to Lodosa; the last division of this force, which formed the left flank of the army, was posted at Nalda under Lili. During the first three weeks of November, this division sustained repeated and almost daily attacks; varying its position as circumstances required, and having, like Blake’s army, to endure the severest privations; nevertheless it carried off fourteen pieces of artillery, from Nalda to Ausejo and Calahorra, in sight of the French, and by roads which had been thought impracticable. On the night of the 21st, Lili received intelligence that a considerable force of the enemy had moved from Logroño towards Ausejo; the next day he learnt that the Spaniards, who were stationed there and at Tudelilla, had fallen back upon their right, and that 5000 French infantry and 1000 horse had moved from Najara, giving out that they were going for Calahorra. He was thus in imminent danger of being surrounded. Immediately he left the banks of the Iregua, and fell back to Venta de Codes, four leagues in the rear of Nalda, where, in the course of the night, a messenger from Cartaojal reached him with instructions written at Tudelilla, on the 21st, saying, that the French were in great force at Ausejo, and that Castaños ordered him to retreat by the Sierra to Agreda, whither Cartaojal himself was going with all his troops to oppose the French on the side of Almazan. ♦NOV. 23.♦