The Anglo-Sicilian armament arrived at Alicant at a critical moment; the Spanish cause was there going to ruin. Joseph O’Donel, brother to the regent, had with great difficulty organized a new Murcian army after Blake’s surrender at Valencia, and this army, based upon Alicant and Carthagena, was independent of a division under general Frere, which always hung about Baza, and Lorca, on the frontier of Grenada, and communicated through the Alpuxaras with the sea-coast. Both Suchet and Soult were paralyzed in some degree by the neighbourhood of these armies, which holding a central position were supported by fortresses, supplied by sea from Gibraltar to Cadiz, and had their existence guaranteed by Wellington’s march into Spain, by his victory of Salamanca, and by his general combinations. For the two French commanders were forced to watch his movements, and to support at the same time, the one a blockade of the Isla de Leon, the other the fortresses in Catalonia; hence they were in no condition to follow up the prolonged operations necessary to destroy these Murcian armies, which were moreover supported by the arrival of general Ross with British troops at Carthagena. [Sidenote: See Plan 6.] O’Donel had been joined by Roche in July, and Suchet, after detaching Maupoint’s brigade towards Madrid, departed himself with two thousand men for Catalonia, leaving general Harispe with not more than four thousand men beyond the Xucar. General Ross immediately advised O’Donel to attack him, and to distract his attention a large fleet, with troops on board, which had originally sailed from Cadiz to succour Ballesteros at Malaga, now appeared off the Valencian coast. At the same time Bassecour and Villa Campa, being free to act in consequence of Palombini’s and Maupoint’s departure for Madrid, came down from their haunts in the mountains of Albaracyn upon the right flank and rear of the French positions. Villa Campa penetrated to Liria, and Bassecour to Cofrentes on the Xucar; but ere this attack could take place, Suchet, with his usual celerity, returned from Reus. At first he detached men against Villa Campa, but when he saw the fleet, fearing it was the Sicilian armament, he recalled them again, and sent for Paris’ brigade from Zaragoza, to act by Teruel against Bassecour and Villa Campa. Then he concentrated his own forces at Valencia, but a storm drove the fleet off the coast, and meanwhile O’Donel’s operations brought on the FIRST BATTLE OF CASTALLA. [Sidenote: See Plan 7.]