Harispe quickly reached Sanguessa, but the column from Pampeluna being retarded, Mina, with surprising boldness, crossed its line of march, and attacked Tafalla, thus cutting the great French line of communication; the garrison, however, made a strong resistance, and Mina disappeared the next day. At this period, however, reinforcements from France were pouring into Navarre, and a division, under Loison, was at Logroño, wherefore Harispe having, in concert with this general and with the garrison of Pampeluna, occupied Sanguessa, Sos, Lodosa, Puenta de Reyna, and all the passages of the Arga, Aragon, and Ebro rivers, launched a number of moveable columns, that continually pursued Mina, until chased into the high parts of the Pyrenees, cold and hunger obliged his band to disperse. The enterprising chief himself escaped with seven followers, and when the French were tracking him from house to house, he, with a romantic simplicity, truly Spanish, repaired to Olite, that he might see Suchet pass on his way from Zaragoza to Pampeluna. But that general, while seemingly occupied with the affairs of Pampeluna, was secretly preparing guns and materials, for a methodical war of invasion, beyond the frontiers of Aragon, and when general Reynier, coming soon afterwards from France, with troops intended to form an eighth corps, was appointed governor of Navarre, Suchet returned to Zaragoza. During his absence, some petty actions had taken place, but his general arrangements were not disturbed, and the emperor having promised to increase the third corps to thirty thousand men, with the intention of directing it at once against Valencia, all the stores befitting such an enterprise were collected at Terruel in the course of January. The resistance of Gerona, and other events in Catalonia having, however, baffled Napoleon’s calculations, this first destination of the third corps was changed. Suchet was ordered to besiege Tortoza or Lerida; the eighth corps, then forming at Logroño, was directed to cover his rear, and the seventh corps to advance to the Lower Ebro and support the siege. Nor was this arrangement definitive; fresh orders sent the eighth corps towards Castile, and just at this moment Joseph’s letter from Cordoba, calling upon Suchet to march against Valencia, arrived, and gave a new turn to the affairs of the French in Spain. A decree of the emperor, dated the 8th of January, and constituting Aragon a particular government, rendered Suchet independent of the king’s orders, civil or military. But this decree, together with a renewed order to commence the siege of Lerida, had been intercepted, and the French general, doubtful of Napoleon’s real views, undertook the enterprise against Valencia. Desirous, however, of first intimidating the partisans hanging on the borders of Aragon, he detached Laval against Villa Campa, and the latter being defeated on the side of Cuença, his troops dispersed for the moment.