There were fewer of the roving guerrillas in Aragon, because something with the name of an army was kept on foot there, and in such a state that the regular service differed little from the course of life to which the adventurers were reduced. In no other part of Spain was the intrusive Government administered with greater ability and vigilance, nor more in the spirit of remorseless oppression and rapacity. The whole yearly revenue which had been raised in that province before the invasion, amounted to from ten to twelve millions of _reales_: the French exacted twelve per month as the ordinary contribution; they called for extraordinary payments when they pleased; and after these official exactions, the Aragonese were not exempted from the common lot of their countrymen in being at the mercy of every plunderer. What guerrilla parties there were in this part of the country were less heard of, because on all sides there were chiefs whose reputation, founded upon repeated successes, drew to their parties the men who would otherwise have been dispersed ♦THE CANTERERO.♦ in smaller bands. Anicio Algere, the Potter, whose scene of action was about Jaca, was the only one who obtained any degree of celebrity here. But along the great line of communication for the French armies, and especially the high road from the Bidassoa to Madrid, where it was of most importance for the enemy to secure the ways, and where most precautions were taken for securing them, there the guerrillas were most active and most daring. At the entrance of the villages houses were fortified with ditches, parapets, embrasures for field-pieces, and loop-holes for musquetry, and ditches and parapets across the roads. These stations served a double purpose; for here at every step the sick and wounded, who were on their way to France, were inspected with a vigilance so severely exercised, that it seemed as if the persons in authority, who could not escape from this hateful service, found a malignant satisfaction in disappointing others of their expected deliverance. They sometimes remanded men who had passed at several posts; and there were cases in which the wound or the malady (aggravated, perhaps, by so cruel a disappointment) proved ♦NAYLIES.♦ fatal at the very place where the sufferer had been refused permission to proceed, upon the plea that he was not sufficiently disabled!