When Bessieres retreated after the defeat of Baylen, Blake occupied Leon, Astorga, and the pass of Mansanal: farther into the plains he durst not venture without cavalry. At this time Cuesta, with one thousand five hundred dragoons, was at Arevalo, and the junta of Castille and Leon, having taken refuge at Ponteferrada, commanded him to transfer his horsemen to Blake’s army; but Cuesta, an arbitrary old man, exasperated by his defeat, and his mind rankling from his quarrel with Blake, instead of obeying retired to Salamanca, collected eight or ten thousand peasants, armed them, and then annulled the proceedings of the junta, and threatened the members with punishment for resisting his authority as captain-general. On the other hand Blake protected them, and while the generals disputed, three thousand French cavalry descending the Douero, scoured the plains, and raised contributions in the face of both their armies. [Sidenote: Capt. Carrol’s letters.] Blake finding that the obstinacy of Cuesta was invincible, quitted his cantonments early in September, and skirting the plains on the north-east, carried his army by forced marches to the Montagna St. Ander, a small rugged district, dividing Biscay from the Asturias. The junta of the latter province had received enormous and very timely succours from England, but made no exertions answerable to the amount of the assistance granted, or to the strength and importance of the district. Eighteen thousand men were said to be in arms, but only ten thousand were promised to Blake, and but eight thousand joined his army. In Catalonia the war was conducted by both sides without much connexion, or dependance on the movements of the main armies; and at this period it had little influence on the general plan of campaign. Thus, it appears, that one month after the capitulation of Dupont, only nineteen thousand infantry without cavalry, and those under the command of more than one general, were collected at Madrid; that only sixteen thousand men were in line upon the Ebro, and that the remainder of the Spanish armies, (exclusive of that in Catalonia computed at eleven thousand men,) were many days’ march from the enemy, and from one another. The chiefs at discord with their respective juntas, and at variance among themselves, were inactive, or as in the case of Galluzzo, doing mischief.