After various petty skirmishes, in which the insurgents of Arragon were worsted by Lefebre Desnouettes, and those of Navarre and Biscay by Bessieres, the latter officer came upon the united armies of Castile, Leon and Galicia, commanded by the Generals Cuesta and Blake, on the 14th of July, at Riosecco, and defeated them in a desperate action, in which not less than 20,000 Spaniards died.

This calamitous battle it was which opened the gates of Madrid to the intrusive king--whose arrival in that capital on the 20th of the same month has already been mentioned.
But Joseph was not destined to remain long in Madrid: the fortune of war, after the great day of Riosecco, was everywhere on the side of the patriots.

Duhesme, who had so treacherously possessed himself of Barcelona and Figueras, found himself surrounded by the Catalonian mountaineers, who, after various affairs, in which much blood was shed on both sides, compelled him to shut himself up in Barcelona.

Marshal Moncey conducted another large division of the French towards Valencia, and was to have been further reinforced by a detachment from Duhesme.
The course of events in Catalonia prevented Duhesme from affording any such assistance; and the inhabitants of Valencia, male and female, rising _en masse_, and headed by their clergy, manned their walls with such determined resolution, that the French marshal was at length compelled to retreat.

He fell back upon the main body, under Bessieres, but did not effect a conjunction with them until his troops had suffered miserably in their march through an extensive district, in which every inhabitant was a watchful enemy.
A far more signal catastrophe had befallen another powerful _corps d'armee_, under General Dupont, which marched from Madrid towards the south, with the view of suppressing all symptoms of insurrection in that quarter, and, especially, of securing the great naval station of Cadiz, where a French squadron lay, watched, as usual, by the English.