General Avril’s column having failed to effect its junction with Dupont, returned to Estremos, and it is probable that Junot never intended that it should be otherwise; for no great efforts appear to have been made by Avril to attain the object of the march. Loison was in the north, but orders were sent to him, to repair with his column to Oporto and assume the command of that city. Upon the 5th of June, one day previous to Bellesta’s defection, Loison had arrived at Almeida, and upon the 12th had made himself master of Fort Conception, a strong, but ill-placed Spanish fortification on the frontier. The commandant being partly persuaded, and partly frightened into a surrender of his charge, retired, with his garrison, to Ciudad Rodrigo. Upon receipt of the despatch which directed him to march to Oporto, Loison quitted Almeida, and endeavoured to penetrate into the province of Entre Minho e Duero by the route of Amarante, but his division was too weak to force his way through such a strong country (where the population was in full insurrection), and to take a great city, and it was possible that general Bellesta might have returned and fallen upon his flank. Swayed by these reasons, Loison advanced cautiously, and without vigour. Being slightly opposed at the position of Mezam Frias, and hearing that his baggage had been attacked at the same time by insurgents in his rear, he fell back at once upon Villa Real, there he engaged in another trifling skirmish, and then quitting his first route, crossed the Douero at Lamego, and marched to Castro d’Airo, being harassed on the road by the armed peasantry of the mountains skirting his line of march. At Castro d’Airo he faced about, and dispersed the assailants with some slaughter, and then continued his movement to Celerico without further molestation; at Celerico a body of insurgents fled without firing a shot; and Loison dividing his troops, sent one half to Trancoso, and with the other marched to Guarda, intending to scour that part of the country, and to put down the insurrection; but at this time he received one of twenty-five despatches sent by Junot for the purpose of recalling him to Lisbon; all the rest had been intercepted. Loison, upon the receipt of this despatch, returned to Almeida the 1st of July. Leaving his sick, his wounded, and weak men there, and making up the garrison to the number of twelve hundred and fifty, he removed all the palisades, guns, and materials from Fort Conception, completely ruined the defences of that place, and then prosecuted his march to Lisbon by the route of Guarda.