From thence they were driven, and fell back upon a battalion which had now formed in the plain of Argalaguer, and were protected by the buildings in that village; but supposing the few horse which Eroles then brought forward to be part of a greater force, Clement withdrew his men to a near wood, on the other side of a stream. Encouraged by success, the Catalans attacked them there also, drove them successively from thence and from Besalu, and did not give up the pursuit till night closed. In this affair Clement lost more than a thousand men, the Spaniards twenty-five killed and fifty wounded: scarcely any prisoners were taken; the French were persuaded that no quarter would be given, and in that persuasion some had run upon the bayonets of the Spaniards, and some had thrown themselves down a precipice near Castellfullit. The whole detachment would have been destroyed if Eroles had had his cavalry, but they had been detached before he knew of the enemy’s movements, and the utmost exertions did not suffice to bring them up in time. The Baron observed with satisfaction, in his dispatches, that they had been favoured with this victory by the patroness of Spain, on the[6]festival of whose conception it had been won. Such, indeed, was the spirit which the French found in Catalonia, and such the exasperated temper on their part which this unexpected and brave resistance had occasioned, that they said it would be necessary to exterminate one-half the Catalans in order to intimidate the other. They found a similar spirit in Aragon; but there the country had not the same natural strength, nor was there a single fortress to afford protection to the people. The army, however, under D. Joze Maria Carvajal, was again in activity; and though, owing to the incapacity of their commanders in the first years of the war, and the want of means in the utter destitution wherein it was afterwards left, it was never fortunate enough to perform any splendid or signal service, it deserved this praise, that for patience and constancy under the most trying circumstances, this of all the Spanish armies was that which during the contest deserved most highly of its country. The severest means were used to intimidate the Aragonese, but in vain. ♦EDICT AGAINST THE JUNTA OF ARAGON.♦ Suchet, as governor-general of that kingdom for the intrusive government, published a decree, saying, it had come to his knowledge that a set of senseless men, who had the ridiculous audacity to style themselves the Junta of Aragon, had fixed themselves in the village of Manzanera, from whence they endeavoured to disturb the tranquillity of the Aragonese, by their incendiary libels, and despotically took possession of the public revenues and stores: he gave orders, therefore, that they should be pursued, delivered over to a military tribunal, and be sentenced within twenty-four hours: that the people of Manzanera, or of any other place to which they might