A few days after the affair of Bascara, eight hundred volunteers, commanded by two officers, named Foxa and Cantera, quitted Olot, and making a secret march through the mountains, arrived in the evening of the 10th, upon the Ter, in front of Angeles; but being baffled in an attempt to pass the river there, descended the left bank in the night, pierced the line of investment, and, crossing at a ford near St. Pons, entered Gerona at day-break. This hardy exploit gave fresh courage to the garrison; yet the enemy’s approaches hourly advanced, pestilence wasted the besieged, and the Spanish generals outside the town still remained inactive. In this conjuncture, Alvarez and his council were not wanting to themselves; while defending the half ruined walls of Gerona with inflexible constancy, they failed not to remonstrate against the cold-blooded neglect of those who should have succoured them; and the Supreme Junta of Catalonia, forwarded their complaints to the Central Junta at Seville, with a remarkable warmth and manliness of expression. “The generals of our army,” they said, “have formed no efficient plan for the relief of Gerona; not one of the three lieutenant-generals here has been charged to conduct an expedition to its help; they say that they act in conformity to a plan approved by your Majesty. Can it be true that your Majesty approves of abandoning Gerona to her own feeble resources! If so, her destruction is inevitable; and should this calamity befall, will the other places of Catalonia and the Peninsula have the courage to imitate her fidelity, when they see her temples and houses ruined, her heroic defenders dead, or in slavery? And if such calamities should threaten towns in other provinces, ought they to reckon upon Catalonian assistance when this most interesting place can obtain no help from them?”--“Do you not see the consequences of this melancholy reflection, which is sufficient to freeze the ardour, to desolate the hearts of the most zealous defenders of our just cause? Let this bulwark of our frontier be taken, and the province is laid open, our harvests, treasures, children, ourselves, all fall to the enemy, and the country has no longer any real existence.” In answer to this address, money was promised, a decree was passed to lend Catalonia every succour, and Blake received orders to make an immediate effort to raise the siege. How little did the language of the Spaniards agree with their actions! Blake, indeed, as we shall find, made a feeble effort to save the heroic and suffering city; but the Supreme Central Junta were only intent upon thwarting and insulting the English general, after the battle of Talavera, and this was the moment that the Junta of Catalonia, so eloquent, so patriotic with the pen, were selling, to foreign merchants, the arms supplied by England for the defence of their country!