When Mina’s followers had thus lost their leader, disputes arose concerning the command; and there being no one whose personal qualifications were generally acknowledged, it was resolved to choose his uncle for his name’s sake, for in that name there was a strength. His uncle, Francisco Espoz y Mina, was born in 1781, in the village of Ydozin, upon a little farm, the sole patrimony of his family, to which he succeeded on his father’s death. His education consisted in having merely been taught to read and write; and husbandry had been his only occupation, till under the impulse of the general feeling he took arms against the oppressors of his country; and having, according to his own account, done to them all the hurt he could as long as he remained in his own house, he enlisted as a volunteer in Doyle’s battalion. Soon afterwards, using that freedom which the times allowed, he joined his nephew’s guerrilla, and on the evening after the young hero’s capture, he left the band apparently with the intention of betaking himself to some other course of life; a deputation of seven persons followed him, and urged him to take the command, which having against his will accepted, he began to exercise with a strength of character that never halted in half measures. One of his first acts was to put down those who resisted the authority which he claimed as commander-in-chief of the guerrillas of Navarre, and in which the Junta of Aragon confirmed him. A certain Echeverria had aspired to this rank; he had some 800 men in his company, consisting mostly of German deserters, who inflicted more evil upon the peasantry than upon the French. Espoz y Mina, with about half that force, surprised and arrested him, had him shot with three of his principal comrades, and incorporated the men in his own band. A gang of forty ruffians, with a woman by name Martina for their leader, infested Biscay and Alava, and committed so many murders, that the cry of the land went forth against them; he dispatched a party, who surprised half these banditti with their execrable mistress at their head, and they were sent to summary execution. Espoz y Mina himself narrowly escaped from the treachery of another adventurer, who for his evil countenance was known by the appellation of Malcarado. This man had been a shepherd, and afterwards a serjeant in Mina’s troop. He, too, intended to make war upon his own account; but finding that this would not be permitted by the new guerrilla chief, who suffered no banditti to exercise their vocation within his reach, he deemed it better to make terms with the French than be exposed to danger on both sides; feigning, therefore, to serve under Espoz y Mina, he gave general Pannetier information of his movements, ... and drew off the advanced guard from before the village of Robres, so as to give a French detachment opportunity to enter while the chief was in bed. The alarm roused him but just in time; he defended himself at the entrance of the house with the bar of the door for want of any other weapon, till his faithful follower, Luis Gaston, came to his assistance and brought a horse. Enough of his people collected to make head against the enemy, rout them, and rescue their prisoners. Immediately he pursued Malcarado, and having what was deemed sufficient evidence of his treason, ordered him to be shot, and the priest of the village and three alcaldes to be hanged, side by side, as his accomplices.