The Marshal, who was present in person on the top of the Cerro, then brought up his reserve, the two battalions of grenadiers under General Chaudron Rousseau. He himself and the brigadier were both distinctly seen leading on the column, the Marshal waving his large white-plumed hat over his head. This charge was delivered against the right of Dilkes’s line, where the 3rd Guards and wing of the 67th lay, that of the 24th Ligne had been more against the centre and the 1st Guards. But the result was the same, though the contest was more long and bloody. The grenadiers are said to have struggled forward, losing heavily at each step, till their front was within a very few yards of Dilkes’s line: it was only then that they halted and began to fire--a fatal step in such a contest, where impetus was the sole chance of the attacking mass, and superiority in musketry fire (owing to the longer front) was on the side of the English line. This of course was a terribly murderous business to both sides, as the figures presently to be quoted will show. But as in all similar contests during the Peninsular War, the line hit harder than the column. The four French battalions began at last to give way, and could not be kept together. Then Victor tried to bring in the two left battalions of his line to their aid, but these two units were pestered and impeded, when they began to move off from their first position, by the remains of Browne’s flank battalion, which (though reduced to under 300 muskets) began to press forward again, when the troops hitherto in their front commenced to move off to the right. ‘They darted from behind trees, briars, brakes, and out of hollows,’ says Blakeney. ‘I could imagine myself like Roderick Dhu upon Benledi’s side--it was a magic effect. We confidently advanced up the hill and, unlike most advances, in this one our numbers increased as we proceeded, soldiers of the flank battalion joining at every step.’ This scattered little force hung on to the flank of Victor’s right, and prevented it from rallying the broken force now recoiling from in front of Dilkes. The flankers had even the good fortune to capture a howitzer from the left of Victor’s battery placed by the chapel on the hilltop; another gun was taken by the 1st Guards in their forward progress. It must have been just at this crisis that the whole French mass broke; up to this moment it had been recoiling sullenly, still keeping up some fire from its rear. But now the observer saw[153], ‘with loud and murmuring sounds, Ruffin’s division and Rousseau’s chosen grenadiers rolling with a whirling motion down into the valley below, leaving their two brave generals mortally wounded on the hill, which was left in possession of their bloodstained conquerors.’ [153] Blakeney, p. 195.