Gayan soon baffled his pursuers, and then moved by Medina Celi and Soria to Navarre, thinking to surprise a money convoy going to Burgos for the army of Portugal, but being followed on one side by a detachment from Hused, and met on the other by Caffarelli, he was driven again to the hills above Daroca. Here he renewed his operations in concert with Villa Campa and the Empecinado, who came up to Medina Celi, while Duran descended from the Moncayo hills, and this menacing union of bands induced Reille, in May, to detach general Paris, with a French regiment and a troop of hussars, to the aid of Palombini. Paris moved by Calatayud, while Palombini briskly interposing between Duran and Villa Campa, drove the one towards Albarracin and the other towards Soria; and in June, after various marches, the two French generals uniting, dislodged the Empecinado from Siguenza, chasing him so sharply that his band dispersed and fled to the Somosierra. [Sidenote: June.] During these operations, Mina was pressed by Abbé, but Duran entering Tudela by surprise, destroyed the artillery parc, and carried off a battering train of six guns. Palombini was only a few marches from Madrid, and the king, alarmed by lord Wellington’s preparations for opening the campaign, ordered him to join the army of the centre, but these orders were intercepted, and the Italian general retraced his steps, to pursue Duran. He soon recovered the guns taken at Tudela, and drove the Spanish chief through the Rioja into the mountains beyond the sources of the Duero; then collecting boats, he would have passed the Ebro, for Caffarelli was on the Arga, with a division of the army of the north, and a brigade had been sent by Reille to the Aragon river with the view of destroying Mina. This chief, already defeated by Abbé, was in great danger, when a duplicate of the king’s orders having reached Palombini, he immediately recommenced his march for the capital, which saved Mina. Caffarelli returned to Vittoria, and the Italians reaching Madrid the 21st of July, became a part of the army of the centre, having marched one hundred and fifty miles in seven days without a halt. Returning now to the other divisions of the army of the Ebro, it is to be observed, that their movements being chiefly directed against the Catalans, belong to the relation of that warfare. OPERATIONS IN ARAGON AND CATALONIA. [Sidenote: See Vol. IV Book XV.] After the battle of Altafulla, the fall of Peniscola, and the arrival of Reille’s first division on the Ebro, Decaen, who had succeeded Macdonald in Upper Catalonia, spread his troops along the coast, with a view to cut off the communication between the British navy and the interior, where the Catalan army still held certain positions. [Sidenote: February.]