In August, and the beginning of September, Suchet, while preparing for this great enterprise, had dispersed the bands of Villa Campa and the other chiefs, who during the siege of Taragona vexed Aragon. He had sent his feeble soldiers to France, receiving conscripts in their places, and although the harvest was very bad, formed large magazines in Morella and Tortoza. Eight thousand men had been left in Catalonia under general Frere, another eight thousand were placed under general Musnier, to protect Aragon, and twenty-four thousand of all arms remained for the invasion of Valencia, but this force Suchet thought inadequate, and demanded a reinforcement from the army of reserve, then in Navarre. Napoleon, whose system of war, whatever has been said to the contrary, was eminently methodical, refused. He loved better to try a bold push, at a distant point, with a few men, than to make an overwhelming attack, if he thereby weakened his communications; he judged courage and enterprise fittest for the attack, prudence and force for the support. And yet he designed to aid Suchet’s operations vigorously when the decisive blow could be struck. Then not only the divisions of the reserve were to march, but combined movements, of detachments from nearly all the armies in the Peninsula, were arranged; and we shall find, that if Wellington, by menacing Ciudad Rodrigo, saved Gallicia, the French army of the north, in return, by menacing Gallicia, fixed the allies on the Agueda, and so protected Suchet’s invasion of Valencia. [Sidenote: 1811. Sept.] Three roads led to the Guadalaviar, one from Tortoza by the sea-coast, one by Teruel and Segorbe, and one by Morella and San Mateo. That from Tortoza, and that by Teruel, were carriage-roads, but the first only was fit for heavy artillery, and it was blocked, partially by the fortress of Peniscola, and completed by the fort of Oropesa. Wherefore, though the infantry and cavalry could move on a bye-road to the right, the convoys and the guns, which were at Tortoza, could not pass until Oropesa was reduced. Nevertheless the French general, well knowing the value of boldness in war, resolved to mask Peniscola, to avoid Oropesa, to send his field artillery by Teruel, and uniting his troops near Saguntum, to offer battle to Blake; and if the latter declined it, to reduce Oropesa and Saguntum, trusting for subsistence to the “_huerta_” or garden of Valencia, until the arrival of his convoys.