13,000 men south toward Seville and ultimately the port of Cádiz, which sheltered Admiral François Rosilly's fleet from the Royal Navy. War reaches Andalusia Dupont's corps primarily fielded of second-line forces of a distinctly unimpressive character. These second-line troops, originally raised as provisional or reserve formations, had been intended either for internal police services or garrison duty in Prussia—evidence that Napoleon intended the Spanish campaign to be "a mere promenade." This force approached Córdoba in early June and in their first formal battle on Andalusian soil, captured the bridge at Alcolea, sweeping past the Spanish troops under Colonel Don Pedro de Echávarri that attempted to block their progress. The French entered Córdoba that same afternoon and ransacked the town for four days. However, in the face of increasingly menacing mass uprisings across Andalusia, Dupont decided to withdraw to the Sierra Morena, counting on help from Madrid. The French retreated in the sweltering heat, burdened with some 500 wagons of loot and 1,200 ill. A French surgeon remarked: "Our little army carried enough baggage for 150,000 men. Mere captains required wagons drawn by four mules. We counted more than 50 wagons per battalion, the result of the plunder of Córdoba. All our movements were impeded. We owed our defeat to the greed of our generals." "Récit du Docteur Treille" in Larchey, p. 1: "Notre petite armée avait plus de bagages qu'une armée de 150,000 hommes. De simples capitaines et des civils assimilés à ce grade avaient des carrosses à quatre mules. On comptait au moins cinquante chariots par bataillon ; c'étaient les dépouilles de la ville de Cordova. Nos mouvements en étaient gênés. Nous dûmes notre perte à la cupidité des chefs." General Jacques-Nicolas Gobert's division set out from Madrid on 2 July to add weight to Dupont's expedition. However, only one brigade of his division ultimately reached Dupont, the rest being needed to hold the road north against the guerrillas. Reinforcements across the Sierra Napoleon and the French strategists, anxious about their communications with Bayonne and wary of a British descent upon a Biscayan coast already in open revolt, initially prioritized operations in the north of Spain. In mid-June General Antoine Charles Louis Lasalle's victory at Cabezón simplified matters tremendously; with the Spanish militias around Valladolid destroyed and much of Old Castile overrun, Savary shifted his gaze south and resolved to reopen communications with Dupont in Andalusia. Apart from the