This favourable occasion was not seized. Julian Sanchez, indeed, cut off a convoy, menaced Salamanca, and blockaded Ciudad Rodrigo; Santocildes came down to Astorga, and as I have before observed, Mina and the northern chiefs harassed the French communications; some stir also was made by the guerillas near Madrid, and Suchet was harassed, but the commotion soon subsided; and a detachment from Madrid having surprised a congregation of partidas at Peneranda, killed many and recovered a large convoy which they had taken; and in this complicated war, which being spread like a spider’s web over the whole Peninsula, any drag upon one part would have made the whole quiver to the most distant extremities, the regular armies effected nothing. Nor did any general insurrection of the people take place in the rear of the French, who retained all their fortified posts, while their civil administrations continued to rule in the great towns as tranquilly as if there was no war! Lord Wellington’s principal measure for dissipating the storm in his front had rested upon Blake. That general had wished him to fight beyond the Guadiana, and was not well pleased at being refused; wherefore the English general, instead of taking ten or twelve thousand Spaniards, and an uneasy colleague, into the line of battle at Campo Mayor, where he knew by experience that they would quarrel with the Portuguese, and by their slowness, insubordination, and folly, would rather weaken than strengthen himself, delivered to Blake the pontoons used at Badajos, and concerted with him a movement down the right bank of the Guadiana. He was to recross that river at Mertola, and to fall upon Seville, which was but slightly guarded by a mixed force of French and Spaniards in Joseph’s service; and this blow, apparently easy of execution, would have destroyed all the arsenals and magazines, which supported the blockade of Cadiz. Lord Wellington had therefore good reason to expect the raising of that siege, as well as the dispersion of the French army in its front. He likewise urged the regency at Cadiz to push forward general Beguines from San Roque, against Seville, while the insurgents in the Ronda pressed the few troops, left in Grenada, on one side, and Freire, with the Murcian army, pressed them on the other.