The French 66th, ordered by the Marshal to carry the bridge, formed its grenadiers on the knoll, to lead the column, and then charged at the passage. But the leading company was mown down, before it had got half way across, by a concentrated musketry salvo from the hillside in front, and the enfilading fire of the guns from the right. The column broke, and the men recoiled and dispersed among the rocks and trees by the bank, from whence they opened a fierce but ineffective fire upon the well-sheltered British battalions. Ney, who had now lost his temper, ordered up a _bataillon d’élite_ of light infantry[302] which had distinguished itself at the siege of Ciudad Rodrigo, and told his aide de camp Sprünglin to take the command and cross at all costs[303]. There ensued a most gallant effort and a hideous butchery. The Chasseurs flung themselves at the bridge, and pushed on till it was absolutely blocked by the bodies of the killed and the wounded, and till they themselves had been almost literally exterminated, for out of a battalion of little more than 300 men 90 were killed and 147 wounded in less than ten minutes. A few survivors actually crossed the bridge, and threw themselves down among the rocks at its western end, where they took shelter from the British fire in a little corner of dead ground, but could of course make no further attempt to advance. [302] The _Chasseurs de la Siège_ formed of picked marksmen from all the regiments of the 6th Corps. [303] That Ney himself was the person responsible for this mad adventure seems proved by the journal of Sprünglin, who writes ‘À midi je reçus de M. le Maréchal lui-même l’ordre d’emporter _à tout prix_ le pont de la Coa, d’où deux compagnies de Grenadiers venaient d’être repoussés. J’avais 300 hommes; je formai mon bataillon en colonne et abordai les Anglais à la baïonnette, et au cri de _Vive l’Empereur_. Le pont fut emporté, mais j’eus 4 officiers et 86 soldats tués, et 3 officiers et 144 soldats blessés. Le 25 le bataillon, étant détruit, fut dissous.’ That the bridge was ‘emporté’ in any other sense than that a score or so of survivors got to the other side, and then returned, is of course untrue. Sprünglin, p. 439.