But the opportunity which he expected, and which he provided by his retreat, soon occurred; the greater part of the troops which had been sent against him returned toward Zaragoza, and so well had Mina instructed his officers, and so well did they execute their instructions, that when he re-entered Navarre, his whole band were re-assembled within four-and-twenty hours. “It would not have been strange,” he said, “if some of the men, closely pursued as they had been, and dispersed in scattered parties, as the only means of safety, had returned home; but only a very few, who were sick, had done this, and of them not a man without his officer’s permission.” During this long pursuit, the enemy, less accustomed to fatigues and privations than the hardy mountaineers of Spain, suffered a tenfold greater loss than they inflicted; above 1000 of their men were invalided, and as many more wounded in the incessant skirmishes which took place. ♦MARCH 18.♦ A seasonable supply of flints, cartridges, and other necessaries, was sent at this time to Mina by the Junta of Aragon. He was soon seen at the gates of Estella; from that city he decoyed a hundred of the garrison, by showing only a few of his men, whom they sallied to cut off; then he rose upon them, killed half their number, and took the rest prisoners under the very walls of the fortress, not one escaping. A letter from Reille to Marshal Bessieres was intercepted shortly afterwards, in which he said, “that by this imprudence of the governor of Estella, they had lost more men in one foolish affair, than they had taken from the enemy during a pursuit of two months. The brigands,” he added, “had so many partisans, that their sick and wounded were in all parts of the country, and yet it was impossible to detect them: the public spirit was very bad, and the business could never be completed in Navarre, till a place of deportation was appointed for all the relations and connexions of the brigands, and strong escorts along the road to convoy them thither.” ♦MARCH 23.♦