The fate of the Portuguese centre was no less horrible. Their commander, Parreiras, fled early, and got over the bridge to report to the Bishop the ruin of his army. The main horde followed him, though many lingered behind, endeavouring to defend the barricades in the streets. When several thousands had passed the river, some unknown officer directed the drawbridge between the central pontoons to be raised, in order to prevent the French from following. This was done while the larger part of the armed multitude was still on the further bank, hurrying down towards the sole way of escape. Nor was it only the fighting-men whose retreat was cut off: when the news ran round the city that the lines were forced, the civil population had rushed down to the quays to escape before the sack began. It was fortunate that half the people had left Oporto during the last two days and taken refuge in Beira. But tens of thousands had lingered behind, full of confidence in their entrenchments and their army of defenders. A terrified mass of men, women, and children now came pouring down to the bridge, and mingled with the remnants of the routed garrison. The pontoons were still swinging safely on their cables, and no one, save those in the front of the rush, discovered that there was a fatal gap in the middle of the passage, where the drawbridge had been raised. There was no turning back for those already embarked on the bridge, for the crowds behind continued to push them on, and it was impossible to make them understand what had happened. The French had now begun to appear on the quays, and to attack the rear of the unhappy multitude: their musketry drowned the cries of those who tried to turn back. At the same time the battery on the Serra hill, beyond the river, opened upon the French, and the noise of its twenty heavy guns made it still more impossible to convey the news to the back of the crowd. For more than half an hour, it is said, the rush of fugitives kept thrusting its own front ranks into the death-trap, forty feet broad, in the midst of the bridge. If anything more was needed to add to the horror of the scene, it was supplied by the sudden rush of a squadron of Portuguese cavalry, which--cut off from retreat to the east--galloped down from a side street and ploughed its way into the thickest of the crowd at the bridge-head, trampling down hundreds of victims, till it was brought to a standstill by the mere density of the mass into which it had penetrated. So many persons, at last, were thrust into the water that not only was the whole surface of the Douro covered with drowning wretches, but the gap in the bridge was filled up by a solid mass of the living and the dead. Over this horrid gangway, as it is said, some few of the fugitives scrambled to the opposite bank[293].