The second, which is inferior to the first, commences at St. Jean Pied de Port, and unites at Pampelona: it runs through Taffalla, crosses the Ebro at Tudela, and enters the basin of Madrid by the eastern range of the Sierra de Guadalaxara, where the declination of the mountains presents a less rugged barrier than the snowy summits of the northern and western part of the chain. The third threads the Pyrenees by the way of Jaca, passes the Ebro at Zaragoza, and uniting with the second, likewise crosses the Guadalaxara ridge. The fourth is the great route from Perpignan by Figueras and Gerona to Barcelona; from this latter town it leads by Cervera and Lerida to Zaragoza. Hence Zaragoza, the capital of Aragon, one of the great dépôts of Spain for arms and ammunition, and at that time containing fifty thousand inhabitants, was a strategetical point of importance. An army in position there could operate on either bank of the Ebro, intercept the communication between the armies of the Eastern and Western Pyrenees, and block three out of the four great roads leading upon Madrid; if the French had occupied it in force, their army in the capital would have been free and unconstrained in its operations, and might have acted with more security against Valencia; and the dangerous importance of the united armies of Gallicia and Leon would also have been diminished, when the road of Burgos ceased to be the only line of retreat from the capital. Nevertheless, Napoleon neglected Zaragoza at first, because that having no citadel, a small body of troops could not control the inhabitants, and a large force would have created suspicion too soon, and perhaps have prevented the success of the attempts against Pampelona and Barcelona (objects of still greater importance); neither was the heroic defence which that city afterwards made within a reasonable calculation. The grand duke of Berg and the duke of Rovigo remained at Madrid, and from that central point appeared to direct the execution of the French emperor’s projects; but he distrusted their judgment, and exacted the most detailed information of every movement and transaction. In the course of June, Murat, who was suffering from illness, quitted Spain, leaving behind him a troubled people, and a name for cruelty which was foreign to his character. Savary remained the sole representative of the new monarch: his situation was delicate; he was in the midst of a great commotion; upon every side he beheld the violence of insurrection and the fury of an insulted nation; it behoved him, therefore, to calculate with coolness and to execute with vigour. [Sidenote: Cabanes’ War in Catalonia, 1st Part.]