Suchet himself repaired to Monzon the 10th of April, and placed a detachment at Candasnos to cover his establishments from the garrison of Mequinenza, and the 13th he advanced with a brigade of infantry, and all his cavalry, by Almacellas, against Lerida; meanwhile Habert, descending the right bank of the Segre, forced the passage of the Noguerra, and obliged Perenna to retire within the place. The same day Musnier came up from Flix, and the town being thus encompassed, the operations of the seventh and third corps were connected. Suchet’s line of operations from Aragon, was short, direct, and easy to supply, because the produce of that province was greater than the consumption; but Augereau’s line, was long and unsafe, and the produce of Catalonia was at no time equal to the consumption. Lerida, celebrated in ancient and modern times, contained about eighteen thousand inhabitants. Situated upon the high road from Zaragoza to Barcelona, and about sixty-five miles from each; it possessed a stone bridge over the Segre, and was only a short distance from the Ebro, and the Cinca rivers; its strategic importance was therefore great, and the more so, that it in a manner commanded the plains of Urgel, called the granary of Catalonia. The regular governor was named Gonsalez, but Garcia Conde had been appointed chief commandant, to appease his discontent at O’Donnel’s elevation; and the troops he brought with him had encreased the garrison to nine thousand regulars, besides the armed inhabitants. The river Segre covered the town on the south-east, and the head of the bridge was protected on the left bank, by a rampart and ditch enclosing a square stone building. The body of the place on the north side, was defended by a wall, without either ditch or covered way, but strengthened and flanked by bastions, and by towers. This wall on the east, was joined to a rocky hill more than two hundred and fifty feet high, the top of which sustained the citadel, an assemblage of huge solid edifices, clustered about a castle of great height, and surrounded by an irregular work flanked by good bastions with ramparts from forty to fifty feet high. The descent from this rock into the town, was gentle, and the works were there strengthened by ditches; on the other parts, the walls could be seen to their base; yet the great height of the rock rendered it impossible to breach them, and the approaches were nearly inaccessible. Between the citadel-rock and the river, the town was squeezed out, about two or three hundred yards, and the salient part was secured by an entrenchment, and by two bastions called the Carmen and the Magdalen.