That commander was now too strong to be meddled with. He issued eight days’ bread to his army, marched very leisurely, picked up on his route the garrisons and troops who came into him at Antequera, from the Ronda and from the coast; and at Grenada he halted eleven days to give Drouet time to join him, for the latter quitting Estremadura the 25th by the Cordova passes, was marching by Jaen to Huescar. Ballesteros had harassed the march, but the French general had, with an insignificant loss, united seventy-two guns and forty-five thousand soldiers under arms, of which six thousand were cavalry. He was however still in the midst of enemies. On his left flank was Hill; on his right flank was Ballesteros; Wellington himself might come down by the Despenas Perros; the Murcians were in his front, Skerrit and Cruz Murgeon behind him, and he was clogged with enormous convoys; his sick and maimed men alone amounted to nearly nine thousand; his Spanish soldiers were deserting daily, and it was necessary to provide for several hundreds of Spanish families who were attached to the French interests. To march upon the city of Murcia was the direct, and the best route for Valencia; but the yellow fever raged there and at Carthagena; moreover, Don S. Bracco, the English consul at Murcia, a resolute man, declared his resolution to inundate the country if the French advanced. Wherefore again issuing eight days’ bread Soult marched by the mountain ways leading from Huescar to Cehejin, and Calasparra, and then moving by Hellin, gained Almanza on the great road to Madrid, his flank being covered by a detachment from Suchet’s army which skirmished with Maitland’s advanced posts at San Vicente close to Alicant. At Hellin he met the advanced guard of the army of Aragon, and on the 3rd of October the military junction of all the French forces was effected. [Sidenote: October.] The task was thus completed, and in a manner worthy of so great a commander. For it must be recollected that besides the drawing together of the different divisions, the march itself was three hundred miles, great part through mountain roads, and the population was every where hostile. General Hill had menaced him with twenty-five thousand men, including Morillo and Penne Villemur’s forces; Ballesteros, reinforced from Cadiz, and by the deserters, had nearly twenty thousand; there were fourteen thousand soldiers still in the Isla; Skerrit and Cruz Murgeon had four thousand, and the Partidas were in all parts numerous: yet from the midst of these multitudes the duke of Dalmatia carried off his army his convoys and his sick without any disaster. In this manner Andalusia, which had once been saved by the indirect influence of a single march, made by Moore from Salamanca, was, such is the complexity of war, after three years’ subjection, recovered by the indirect effect of a single battle delivered by Wellington close to the same city.