Thus the battle was suddenly begun on both fronts, but Graham had only 500 men up on one side, and 900 with the guns on the other. The main body was coming on through the wood behind in an extraordinarily mixed order. When Graham gave orders to Wheatley’s brigade to face to their right flank and push through the wood northward, and to Dilkes’s brigade to turn about on the road and return to the Cerro by the way they had come, there was no small confusion. By some misunderstanding the rear companies of the 67th, which was the last battalion in Wheatley’s brigade, faced about and followed Dilkes, though the leading companies went off with their proper companions, the 28th and 87th. On the other hand, by a compensating mistake, the two companies of the Coldstream Guards, which belonged to Dilkes, turned north into the wood and followed Wheatley[152]. The brigades exchanged, as it were, 250 men with each other. In addition the battalions, owing to the sudden inversion of their column of march, were all out of their proper order in their brigades, and went into action ‘almost anyhow.’ [152] The biography of General Dilkes seems to explain this matter. Duncan, the artillery commander, thought that he would be going into action without any infantry supports, and rode to the nearest brigadier--this was Dilkes--to ask him to lend a few companies to cover the guns. Dilkes assented, and told the Coldstream companies in the middle of his column to fall out and follow the guns. But Graham had already set aside the two companies of the 47th, from Barnard’s battalion, for the same purpose. When Duncan found them waiting for him in the edge of the wood, he told the officer commanding the Coldstreamers that he was not wanted, and these two companies marched off and fell into line in a gap in the front of Wheatley’s brigade. But while a line of some sort was being formed, the screen of light troops which Graham had thrown forward, to detain the enemy, during the deployment of the main body, had done its duty by allowing itself to be knocked to pieces while attacking fivefold numbers. It had to be sacrificed to gain time, and carried out its orders completely. We will take the fortunes of the right-hand force first.