166 TRAVEL, ADVENTURE, AND SPORT. 



was only moderately successful the free corps which 

 he raised never amounted to above six or eight 

 hundred men ; but Marquinez, putting out all his 

 energy, before long found himself at the head of a 

 strong body of cavalry, well mounted and equipped ; 

 and he took the field with renewed confidence, and 

 this time with the sole command. 



In one of the first expeditions which he undertook, 

 after this resurrection of his partida, he encountered 

 three hundred "Westphalian cavalry in the French 

 service, whom he totally defeated, after fighting for 

 a whole morning, and losing a large number of men 

 and horses. The Westphalians were returning from 

 a reconnaissance, in which they had made several 

 prisoners, and amongst others, a lady of a good 

 family of Sahagun, and wife of a captain in the 

 Spanish army. This woman, during the few days 

 which the insecurity of the roads compelled her to 

 pass in the society of Marquinez, became violently 

 enamoured of that officer, and finally abandoned her 

 husband and children to follow him in his adventurous 

 course of life. Endowed with masculine courage, 

 strong-minded, and possessed of greater physical 

 strength than is usual in her sex, she did not hesitate 

 to assume the costume of a hussar, and to fight by 

 the side of the dashing guerilla to whom she had 

 attached herself. She soon became well known in 

 the district which was the scene of operations of 

 Marquinez's troops, by the appellation of La Collegiala 



