[280] Eben’s dispatch is in the Record Office, in the miscellaneous volume at the end of the Portugal 1809 series. Knowing the sort of rabble that was in front of him, Soult made no attempt to turn or outflank the Portuguese, but resolved to deliver a frontal attack all along the line, in the full belief that the enemy would give way the moment that the charge was pushed home. He had now about 3,000 cavalry and 13,000 infantry with him--Merle being still absent. He told off Delaborde’s division with Lahoussaye’s dragoons to assail the enemy’s centre, on both sides of the high-road, where it crosses the Monte Adaufé. Mermet’s infantry and Franceschi’s light horse attacked, on the left, the wooded slopes of the Monte Vallongo. Heudelet’s division, on the right, sent one brigade to storm the heights above the river, and left the other brigade as a general reserve for the army. Lorges’ dragoons were also held back in support. As might have been expected, Soult’s dispositions were completely successful. When the columns of Delaborde and Heudelet reached the foot of the enemy’s position, the motley horde which occupied it broke out into wild cheers and curses, and opened a heavy but ineffective fire. They stood as long as the French were climbing up the slopes, but when the infantry debouched on to the plateau of Monte Adaufé they began to waver and disperse[281]. Then Soult let loose the cavalry of Lahoussaye, which had trotted up the high-road close in the rear of Delaborde’s battalions, the 17th Dragoons leading. There was no time for the reeling mass of peasants to escape. ‘We dashed into them,’ wrote one officer who took part in the charge[282]; ‘we made a great butchery of them; we drove on among them pell-mell right into the streets of Braga, and we pushed them two leagues further, so that we covered in all four leagues at full gallop without giving them a moment to rally. Their guns, their baggage, their military chest, many standards fell into our power[283].’ [281] Eben, in his report, says that at the moment of the French assault one of his guns in the battery commanding the high-road burst, and killed many of those standing about, and that the rout commenced with the stampede caused by this explosion. [282] Naylies [of the 19th Dragoons], p. 87. [283] Even while flying through the streets of Braga, some of the routed horde found time to pay a visit to the town gaol, and to murder the _corregidor_ and the other prisoners who had been placed there on the eighteenth.