Thus while the siege of Lerida was going on, the marquis of Lazan entered the town of Alcanitz with five thousand men, and would have carried the castle, but that general Laval despatched two thousand men, from Zaragoza, to its succour, when the Spaniards, after a skirmish in the streets, retired; and, while this was passing at Alcanitz, Villa Campa, intercepted four hundred men conducting a convoy of provisions from Calatayud to Zaragoza. Colonel Petit, the commander, being attacked in the defile of Frasno, was forced to abandon his convoy, and, under a continued fire, to fight his way for ten miles, until his detachment, reduced to one hundred and eighty wounded men, passed the Xalon river, and, at the village of Arandiza, finally repulsed the assailants. The remainder of this desperate band were taken or killed, and Petit himself, wounded, a prisoner, and sitting in the midst of several Spanish officers, was basely murdered the evening after the action. Villa Campa put the assassin to death, but, at the same time, suffered the troops to burn alive the Alcalde of Frasno, an old man taken among the French. This action happened the day Lerida fell; and, the next day, Chlopiski, following Villa Campa’s march from Daroca, reached Frasno. The Spaniards were no longer there, and Chlopiski, dividing his forces, pursued them, by the routes of Calatayud and Xarava, to Molina, where he destroyed a manufactory for arms, and so pressed the Spanish general, that his troops disbanded, and several hundred retired to their homes. At the same time, an attack, made from the side of Navarre, on the garrison of Ayerbe, was repulsed. But these petty events, while they evinced the perseverance of the Spaniards, proved also the stability of Suchet’s power in Aragon. His system was gradually sapping the spirit of resistance in that province. In Lerida his conduct was as gentle and moderate as the nature of this unjust war would permit; and, however questionable, the morality of the proceeding by which he reduced the citadel, it must be acknowledged that his situation required most decided measures, for the retreat of the seventh corps set free not only O’Donnel’s army, but Campo Verde’s and all the irregular bands. The Somatenes of the high valleys appeared in force, on the Upper Segre the very day of the assault; eight hundred Miguelettes attacked Venasque three days after; and Campo Verde, marching from Cervera, by Agramunt, took post in the mountains of Lliniana, above Talarn and Tremp, where great bodies of the Somatenes also assembled.