Suchet hoped that the battle of Valls, and other defeats sustained by the Spaniards at this period, would give him time to re-organize his troops in tranquillity--but this hope soon vanished. The peasantry, observing the weakness of the third corps, only waited for a favourable opportunity to rise, and the Migueletes and Somatenes of the mountains about Lerida and Mequenenza were, under the command of colonel Pereña and colonel Baget, already in activity. While the duke of Abrantes yet held the command Blake’s appointment took place; and that general drawing troops from Valencia and Tarragona, and, being joined by Lazan, fixed his quarters at Morella, on the frontier of Aragon. Designing to operate in that province rather than in Catalonia, he endeavoured to re-kindle the fire of insurrection; nor was fortune adverse to him. A part of the garrison of Monzon having made an unsuccessful marauding excursion beyond the Cinca, the citizens fell upon those who remained, and obliged them to abandon that post, which was immediately occupied by Pereña. The duke of Abrantes sent eight companies of infantry and thirty cuirassiers to retake the place: but Baget having reinforced Pereña, the French were repulsed, and the Cinca suddenly overflowing behind them, cut off their retreat. The cavalry, plunging with their horses into the river, escaped by swimming; but the infantry finding the lower passages guarded by the garrison of Lerida, and the upper cut off by the partizan corps, after three days’ marching and skirmishing, surrendered to Pereña and Baget. The prisoners were carried to Tarragona, and soon afterwards exchanged, in pursuance of a convention made by Reding and St. Cyr. This little success was, as usual, sufficient to excite the most extravagant hopes, and the garrison of Mequinenza having, about the same time, burnt a bridge of boats which the French had thrown over the Ebro at Caspe, Blake immediately advanced, and, driving back the French from Beceyta and Val de Ajorfa, entered Alcanitz. The beaten troops retired in haste and with loss to Samper and Ixar; and it was at this moment, when the French were harassed on both banks of the Ebro, and their wings separated by the destruction of the bridge at Caspe, that Suchet arrived to take the command of the third corps. Seeing his divisions disseminated over a great tract of country, and in danger of being beaten in detail, he immediately ordered general Habert to abandon the left bank of the Ebro, cross that river at Fuentes, and follow in reserve upon Ixar, where Suchet himself rallied all the rest of the troops, with the exception of a small garrison left in Zaragoza. BATTLE OF ALCANITZ. [Sidenote: Suchet’s Memoirs.]