General Duhesme rested a few days, and then marching from Barcelona with six thousand men in the night, arrived the 2d of September at day-break on the Llobregat, and immediately attacked Caldagues’ line in several points, but principally at San Boy and Molino del Rey. The former fort was carried, some guns and stores were captured, and the Spaniards were pursued to Vegas, a distance of seven or eight miles; but at Molino del Rey the French were repulsed, and Duhesme then returned to Barcelona. It was the intention of the British ministers, that an auxiliary force should have sailed from Sicily about this period, to aid the Catalans; and doubtless it would have been a wise and timely effort: but Napoleon’s foresight prevented the execution; for he directed Murat to menace Sicily with a descent; and that prince, feigning to collect forces on the coast of Calabria, spread many reports of armaments being in preparation, and, as a preliminary measure, attacked and carried the island of Capri; upon which occasion sir Hudson Lowe first became known to history, by losing in a few days a post that, without any pretensions to celebrity, might have been defended for as many years. Murat’s demonstrations sufficed to impose upon sir John Stuart, and from ten to twelve thousand British troops were thus paralyzed at a most critical period: but such will always be the result of a policy which has no fixed and definite object in view. When statesmen cannot see their own way clearly, the executive officers will seldom act with vigour. The Spanish army was now daily increasing; the tercios of Migueletes were augmented in number, and a regiment of hussars, that had been most absurdly kept in Majorca ever since the beginning of the insurrection, arrived at Taragona. Mariano Alvarez, the governor of Gerona, was appointed to the command of the vanguard, composed of the garrisons of Gerona and Rosas, and of the corps of Juan Claros, and other partizans. Francisco Milans and Milans de Bosch, with their Migueletes, kept the mountains to the northward and eastward of Barcelona; and while the latter hemmed in the French right, the former covered the district of El Vallés, and like a bird of prey watched the French foragers in the plain surrounding Barcelona. Palacios remained at Villa Franca, and the count of Caldagues continued to guard the line of the Llobregat. The little port of St. Felice de Quixols, near Palamos Bay, was filled with privateers, and the English frigates off the coast not only aided the Spaniards in all their enterprizes, but carried on a littoral warfare in the gulf of Lyons with great spirit and success.