Wellington never found any reason to do so. His method was to conceal his main line as long as possible by a dip in the ground, a hedge, or a wall, or to keep it behind the crest of the position which it was holding. To face the tirailleurs each battalion sent out its light company, and each brigade had assigned to it several detached companies of riflemen: from 1809 onward some of the 60th Rifles and one or two foreign light corps[90] were broken up and distributed round the various divisions for this special purpose. This gave a line of skirmishers strong enough to hold back the tirailleurs for a long time, probably till the supporting columns came up to help them. It was only then that the British skirmishing line gave way and retired behind its main body, leaving the deployed battalions in face of the French column, of which they never failed to give a satisfactory account. The covering screen of light troops often suffered terribly; e.g., at Barossa, Brown’s ‘light battalion’ lost fourteen out of twenty-one officers and more than half its rank and file[91], while holding off the French advance from the line which was forming in its rear. But the combat always went well if the enemy’s skirmishers could be kept back, and his supporting columns forced to come to the front, to engage with the regiments in two-deep formation which were waiting for them. [90] e.g. _Brunswick-Oels_ and the _Chasseurs Britanniques_. [91] See Blakeney, _A Boy in the Peninsular War_, edited by Sturges (1899), pp. 189, 190, for an account of this bloody episode. Charges with the bayonet are often heard of in narratives--especially French narratives--of the Peninsular War. But it was very seldom that the opposing troops actually came into collision with the white weapon. There were occasions, almost invariably in fighting in villages or enclosed ground, on which considerable numbers of men were killed or wounded with the bayonet, but they were but few. It is certain, however, that the 43rd at Vimiero, the 71st and 88th at Fuentes d’Oñoro, and the 20th at Roncesvalles, engaged in this fashion[92]; and other cases could be quoted. But as a rule a ‘bayonet charge’ in a French historian merely means the advance of a column up to the enemy’s position without firing: it does not imply actual contact or the crossing of weapons. An English charge on the other hand was practically an advance in line with frequent volleys, or independent file-firing. At Albuera, or Barossa, or Salamanca it was the ball not the bayonet which did the work; the enemy was shot down, or gave way without any hand-to-hand conflict. [92] The reader who is curious as to details of actual bayonet-fighting may consult Grattan for the 88th, and the anonymous ‘T.S.’ of the 71st for Fuentes d’Oñoro, and Steevens of the 20th for Roncesvalles. The charge of Tovey’s company of the latter corps, on the last-mentioned occasion, much resembled one of the incidents of Inkerman.