This blow being struck, Hill returned to his old quarters, and the Spanish troops fell back behind the Salor, but the report of Girard’s disaster set all the French corps in motion. Drouet reoccupied Caceres with a thousand men; Foy passed the Tagus at Almaraz on the 15th of November, and moved to Truxillo; a convoy entered Badajos from Zafra on the 12th, a second on the 20th, and Soult, while collecting troops in Seville, directed Phillipon to plant all the ground under the guns at Badajos with potatoes and corn. Every thing seemed to indicate a powerful attack upon Hill, when a serious disturbance amongst the Polish troops, at Ronquillo, obliged Soult to detach men from Seville to quell it. When that was effected, a division of four thousand entered Estremadura, and Drouet, whose corps was thus raised to fourteen thousand infantry and three thousand cavalry, on the 5th of December advanced to Almendralejos, and the 18th his advanced guard occupied Merida. At the same time Marmont concentrated part of his army at Toledo, from whence Montbrun, as we have seen, was directed to aid Suchet at Valencia, and Soult with the same view sent ten thousand men to the Despeños Peros. [Sidenote: 1811. Dec.] Drouet’s movements were, however, again stopped by some insubordination in the fifth corps. And as it was now known that Soult’s principal object was to destroy Ballesteros, and take Tarifa, Hill again advanced, partly to protect Morillo from Drouet, partly to save the resources of Estremadura, partly to make a diversion in favour of Ballesteros and Tarifa, and in some sort also for Valencia. With this view he entered Estremadura by Albuquerque on the 27th of December, and having received information that the French, untaught by their former misfortunes were not vigilant, he made a forced march in hopes to surprise them. On the 28th he passed Villar del Rey and San Vincente and reached Nava de Membrillos, where he fell in with three hundred French infantry, and a few hussars, part of a foraging party, the remainder of which was at a village two leagues distant. A patrole gave an alarm, the French retreated towards Merida, and were closely followed by four hundred of the allied cavalry, who had orders to make every effort to stop their march; but to use the words of general Hill, “the intrepid and admirable manner in which the enemy retreated, the infantry formed in square, and favoured as he was by the nature of the country of which he knew how to take the fullest advantage, prevented the cavalry alone from effecting any thing against him.” Captain Neveux, the able officer who commanded on this occasion, reached Merida with a loss of only forty men, all killed or wounded by the fire of the artillery; but the French at Merida immediately abandoned their unfinished works, and evacuated that town in the night, leaving behind some bread and a quantity of wheat. [Sidenote: 1812. January]