In the first dismal months of fighting, the Army of the Eastern Pyrenees was beaten at Mas Deu and Bellegarde and forced back under the walls of Perpignan.

Throughout the year the representatives on mission had enormous powers and used them to interfere with the military effort and to arrest officers that they deemed unpatriotic or unsuccessful.

After establishing itself on Spanish territory, the army won a decisive victory at the Battle of the Black Mountain in November during which Dugommier was killed.

The execution of King Louis XVI of France and Queen Marie Antoinette outraged the ancient monarchies of Europe.

[2] At the start of the War of the Pyrenees, Servan went to Bayonne in the west, assigning Mathieu Henri Marchant de La Houlière to take charge at Perpignan in the east.

A Spanish column of 4,500 soldiers under Captain General Antonio Ricardos invaded France on 17 April 1793, driving a French garrison from the town of Saint-Laurent-de-Cerdans.

[5] General of Brigade Claude Souchon de Chameron was appointed to lead the local forces on 25 April and he took interim command of the newly created army from 1 to 13 May.

[7] The Army of the Eastern Pyrenees was in the grip of its representatives on mission, "to an extent unknown elsewhere", according to historian Ramsay Weston Phipps.

This may have been because of the lack of officers from the regular army establishment and because the representatives were local men who wanted to promote their personal friends.

Fabre demanded and got 100 Jacobins to be sent from Paris to be distributed within the army as "Civic Apostles" where they stirred up trouble among the enlisted men.

Flers used the time to build the fortified Camp de la Union under the walls of Perpignan where his drilled his 12,000 men.

In the event, the French artillery under the direction of Jean Fabre de La Martillière outdueled the Spanish guns and Ricardos withdrew.

[13] On 7 August 1793 General of Division Hilarion Paul Puget de Barbantane accepted the army command from the representatives on mission, assuring them that he wanted to "wash out his original sin" of being an aristocrat.

[16] In the Battle of Peyrestortes on 17 September, d'Aoust with 8,000 troops defeated Lieutenant General Juan de Courten's 6,000 men.

In the evening d'Aoust, Goguet and Representative Joseph Cassanyes improvised a successful assault on the camp at Peyrestortes, driving the Spanish forces south of the Têt River and capturing 500 men, 43 guns and seven colors.

The Allies lost only 56 casualties while inflicting losses of 340 killed and wounded, 312 missing, 26 guns, two colors and 2,000 muskets on the French.

The government singled out the Army of the Eastern Pyrenees for disapproval despite the fact that its representatives were in large part responsible for the defeats.

[26] The army's reorganization and resupply was necessary because seven-eighths of the infantry's muskets had no bayonets, the artillery was badly armed, the cavalry and wagon train's horses were starving because of a lack of forage, the food supply was intermittent and the men's uniforms were in poor condition.

[26] Both Pérignon and Augereau, as well their subordinates General of Brigade Claude Perrin Victor and Colonel Jean Lannes, later became Marshals of France under the First French Empire.

[28] In Madrid for a conference, Ricardos died on 13 March 1794 supposedly from poison intended for Manuel Godoy, Prince of the Peace.

His successor, Lieutenant General Alejandro O'Reilly died on 23 March of a stomach ailment while traveling to take command.

[29] On 29 April Dugommier's feint attack on the Spanish left led de la Union to reinforce that wing.

A furious Dugommier now asked his government to declare a "war to the death" and the National Convention voted that Spanish prisoners were to be executed.

Augereau's men smashed the Spanish columns in their front with heavy losses and de la Union's attack failed.

Doppet took too long and, when de la Union moved against him, Augereau had to send a column under General of Brigade Louis Lemoine to help.

The undefeated Spanish right wing under Lieutenant General Juan Miguel de Vives y Feliu was also compelled to retreat.

Pérignon quickly seized Figueres and bluffed the powerful Sant Ferran fortress into surrendering on 28 November with 9,000 Spanish prisoners and 171 guns.

Unwisely, Schérer then began building a line of defenses in marshy ground which caused hundreds of his troops to sicken with fever.

[43] With a column of between 7,000 and 9,000 men, Cuesta wiped out the French garrisons at Puigcerdà and Bellver de Cerdanya in late July.

Schérer's chief of staff General of Division Charles Pierre de Lamer particularly praised Lannes as a talented leader.