First it must be held in mind that the army of the south, so powerful in appearance, did not furnish a proportionate number of men for field-service, because the reinforcements, although borne on the rolls, were for the most part retained in the northern governments. Soult had sixty-seven thousand French and six thousand “Escopeteros” present under arms in September; but then followed the surprise of Girard at Aroyo de Molinos, the vigorous demonstrations of Hill in December, the failure of Godinot at Gibraltar, the check sustained by Semélé at Bornos, and the siege of Tarifa, which diminished the number of men, and occasioned fresh arrangements on the different points of the circle. The harvest of 1811 had failed in Andalusia, as in all other parts, and the inhabitants were reduced to feed on herbs; the soldiers had only half rations of bread, and neither reinforcements of men, nor convoys of money, nor ammunition, nor clothes, had come either from France or from Madrid for a long period. It was under these circumstances that Soult received the order to send twenty thousand men against the Alemtejo. But the whole of the Polish troops, and the skeletons of regiments, and the picked men for the imperial guards, in all fifteen thousand, after being collected at the Despeñas Peros, while Suchet was before Valencia, had now marched to Talavera de la Reyna on the way to France; at that moment also Ballesteros appeared, with the fourth Spanish army, twelve thousand strong, in the Ronda, and his detachments defeated Maransin at Cartaña, which of necessity occasioned another change in the French dispositions. Moreover the very successes of Suchet had at this time increased Soult’s difficulties, because all the fugitives from Valencia gathered on the remains of the Murcian army; and fifteen thousand men, including the garrisons of Carthagena and Alicant, were again assembled on the frontier of Grenada, where, during the expedition to Estremadura, the French had only three battalions and some cavalry.