While the officials in Madrid were bowing to Joseph, the people in the provinces were showing by open rebellion that they neither desired him as king nor wished for Napoleon’s assistance in the ruling of their country. The priests told the people of the Emperor’s ungenerous treatment of the Pope, how a French force had entered Rome in the previous February, and that his Holiness had lost almost every vestige of his civil power. Every little township began to take measures of offence and defence. Innumerable miniature armies roamed among the mountains like bandits, awaiting an opportunity to annihilate a French outpost, to interrupt communications, or to fall on a division as it marched along to join one of the army corps now being poured into Spain. General actions were not encouraged, and usually ended in disaster. Assassinations and massacres became the order of the day on both sides, forcing the French commanders to realise that they had to face a novel kind of warfare--a nation in arms. At the end of May 1808, when the people were actively organising, there were nearly 120,000 French troops in Spain and Portugal. In the first few engagements the Spaniards, who possibly numbered 100,000, including the regulars, were routed. When towns were besieged the French met with less success, and the defence of Saragossa under young Joseph Palafox, whose daring soon raised him to the dignity of a national hero, is a most thrilling episode. A name which must be coupled with his is that of Augustina (or Manuela) Sanchez. A battery had been abandoned by the Spaniards, and this brave girl, one of the many inhabitants who helped to defend their city, found that the hand of a dead gunner still grasped a lighted match, whereupon she seized it and fired the gun, thereby attracting the attention of the fugitives, who returned to the fight. The first siege of Saragossa lasted for nearly eight weeks, but the place eventually surrendered to Lannes.