St. Cyr had not known how to improve a victory so well as the Spaniards did how to remedy a defeat. As soon as the fugitives from Molins de Rey brought the first tidings of their rout to Tarragona, the populace, supposing themselves to be betrayed, rose tumultuously, and took the power into their own hands. They blocked up the gates, unpaved the streets, and removed the stones to the windows and varandas, that they might be ready for a civic defence. They got possession of the arsenal, and distributed the arms and ammunition; they moved the artillery from one place to another, at the will of any one who fancied himself qualified to give orders; and they called out for the head of Vives, as the traitor who had been the cause of all their misfortunes. In this imminent danger Vives made a formal resignation of the ♦REDING TAKES THE COMMAND.♦ command, and Reding, upon whom it devolved, was enabled to save his life by letting him be put in confinement. The superior Junta, apprehensive alike of the populace and of a siege or an immediate assault, got out of the city as soon as they could (for the people had forbidden any person to leave it), and fixed themselves at Tortosa, leaving, however, two of their members to represent them in the Junta of that district. If while this insubordination prevailed the French had attempted to carry the place by a coup-de-main, they might probably have succeeded; but St. Cyr was not so well acquainted with the inability of the Spaniards as with the difficulties of his own position. A few days after the battle a strong detachment of French appeared before the city; the generale was beaten, the somaten was sounded from the Cathedral, one of the forts fired, and the place was in the utmost confusion, when a flag of truce arrived, with a request that an aid-de-camp of M. St. Cyr might be allowed to confer with General Vives. Reding, to whom the letter was delivered, suspected that the real intent must be to discover the state of the place; he communicated it to the Junta, and two of their members, with two officers, were sent out to know the purport of the mission. It was not without difficulty that these persons could get out of the gate, so fearful were the people of being betrayed; the general opinion was, that the French had sent to summon the town, and the universal cry was, that they would not capitulate, they would listen to no such proposals, they would die for their king, their religion, and their country. It proved, however, that the aid-de-camp came only to propose an exchange of prisoners. The impolicy of agreeing to this was obvious; but Reding knew how ill the prisoners on both sides were treated, and thought it due to humanity to exchange them. The advantage was wholly on the enemy’s side; they received disciplined soldiers, who had now been many months in the country, and had had opportunities since their capture of observing the state of the Spaniards, and even learning