[171] They re-embodied the old 2nd, 12th, 21st, and 24th battalions of infantry of the line, the 6th Cazadores, and the 6th, 11th, and 12th light cavalry, as well as one or two other old corps whose numbers I cannot identify.
The Supreme Junta also concluded a treaty of offensive and defensive alliance with the Galician Spaniards, from whom they hoped to get arms, and perhaps a loan of troops. Moreover they sent two envoys to England to ask for aid, and eagerly welcomed at Oporto Colonel Brown, a British agent with a roving commission, who did his best to assist in organizing the new levies. The command of the whole armed force was given to General Bernardino Freire, a pretentious and incapable person, who turned his very moderate resources to no profitable account whatever.
A few days later than the outbreak of the insurrection in the regions north of the Douro, there was a corresponding movement, but of a weaker kind, in the extreme south. On June 16 the small fishing-town of Olhão in Algarve gave the signal for revolt: on the eighteenth Faro, the capital of the province, followed the example. General Maurin, the Governor of Algarve, was lying ill in his bed; he was made prisoner along with seventy other French officers and men, and handed over to the captain of an English ship which was hovering off the coast. The whole shore between the Sierra de Caldeirão and the sea took arms, whereupon Colonel Maransin, Maurin’s second-in-command, resolved to evacuate the province. He had only 1,200 men, a battalion each of the 26th of the line and the _Légion du Midi_, and had lost his communications with Lisbon, wherefore he drew together his small force and fell back first on Mertola and then on Beja, in the Alemtejo. The insurgents whom he left behind him could do little till they had obtained muskets from Seville and Gibraltar, and made no attempt to follow the retreating column northwards.
Meanwhile Junot, even after he had succeeded in disarming Caraffa’s Spanish division, was passing through a most anxious time. In obedience to the Emperor’s orders he had sent a brigade under General Avril towards Andalusia, to help Dupont, and another under Loison to Almeida to open communications with Bessières. But these detachments had been made under two false ideas, the one that the troubles in Spain were purely local, the other that Portugal would keep quiet. Avril marched southward with 3,000 men, but, when his vanguard reached San Lucar on the Spanish border, he found Andalusian militia provided with artillery watching him across the Guadiana. He also learnt that a large force was assembling at Badajoz, and that Dupont had got no further than Cordova--more than 150 miles away. After some hesitation he retraced his steps till he halted at Estremoz, facing Badajoz. Loison had much the same experience: starting from Almeida he crossed the border and scared away the small Spanish garrison of Fort Concepcion: but when he drew near Ciudad Rodrigo and learnt that the place was strongly held, that all the kingdom of Leon was in revolt, and that Bessières was still far distant in Old Castile, he drew back to Almeida [June 12-15]. Returning thither he heard of the troubles in Northern Portugal, and resolved to march on Oporto, which was still holding back from open insurrection when the news reached him. He determined to hasten to that important city and to garrison it. Taking two battalions and a few guns, while he left the rest of his brigade at Almeida, he marched on Oporto, crossed the Douro at the ferry of Pezo-de-Ragoa, and began to move on Amarante [June 21]. But the moment that he was over the river, he found himself in the middle of the insurrection: among the mountains the peasantry began to fire from above on his long column, to roll rocks down the slopes at him, and to harass his baggage and rearguard. Seeing that he had only 2,000 men in hand, and that the whole country-side was up, Loison wisely returned to Almeida, which he regained by a circular march through Lamego and Celorico, dispersing several bands of insurgents on the way, for the rebellion had already begun to spread across the Douro into the hills of Northern Beira [July 1].