In the northern provinces the events were of little interest. Gallicia after the failure of Renovales’ expedition and the shipwreck that followed, became torpid; the junta disregarded general Walker’s exhortations, and, although he furnished vast supplies, the army, nominally twenty thousand strong, mustered only six thousand in the field: there was no cavalry, and the infantry kept close in the mountains about Villa Franca, while a weak French division occupied the rich plains of Leon. General Mahi having refused to combine his operations with those of the Anglo-Portuguese army, was thought to be disaffected, and at the desire of the British authorities had been removed to make way for the duke of Albuquerque: he was however immediately appointed to the command of Murcia, by Blake, in defiance of the remonstrances of Mr. Wellesley, for Blake disregarded the English influence. [Sidenote: See Vol. III pp. 312, 407, and 475.] When Albuquerque died, Gallicia fell to Castaños, and while that officer was co-operating with Beresford in Estremadura, Santocildes assumed the command. Meanwhile Caffarelli’s reserve having joined the army of the north, Santona was fortified, and Bessieres, as I have before observed, assembled seven thousand men at Zamora to invade Gallicia. [Sidenote: Mr. Stuart’s Papers, MSS.] In the Asturias, Bonet, although harassed, on the side of Potes, by the Guerillas from the mountains of Liebana; and on the coast by the English frigates, remained at Oviedo, and maintained his communications by the left with the troops in Leon. In November 1810 he defeated a considerable body of insurgents, and in February 1811 the Spanish general St. Pol retired before him with the regular forces, from the Xalon to the Navia; but this retreat caused such discontent in Gallicia that St. Pol advanced again on the 19th March, and was again driven back. Bonet then dispersed the Partidas, and was ready to aid Bessieres’ invasion of Gallicia; and although the arrival of the allied forces on the Coa in pursuit of Massena stopped that enterprise, he made an incursion along the coast, seized the Spanish stores of English arms and clothing, and then returned to Oviedo. The war was, indeed, so little formidable to the French, that in May Santander was evacuated, and all the cavalry in Castile and Leon joined Massena for the battle of Fuentes Onoro, and yet the Gallician and Asturian regular armies gained no advantage during their absence. [Sidenote: Intercepted letter of general Barthelemy to general Drouet, 1810. MSS.]