The confusion in Leval’s division on being suddenly attacked by an unexpected swarm of skirmishers pouring out of the wood was extreme. So much were they taken aback, that Vigo-Roussillon of the 8th Line assures us in his memoirs that a false alarm of cavalry was raised, and that his regiment, and the first battalion of the 54th, formed square before the mistake was recognized, and caught some shells from Duncan’s guns in that uncomfortable situation, before they had time to deploy for action against infantry. This they had to do under a heavy fire from Barnard’s riflemen, who had advanced quite close to them. Leval’s fighting formation was the usual ‘column of divisions,’ i. e. a front of two companies and a depth of three in each battalion, or (since these units averaged 650 men each, and the companies over 100 bayonets) a front of seventy-two men and a depth of nine. The length of Barnard’s skirmishing line, with his 400 rifles, seems to have covered the front of the right battalion of the 54th and the left battalion of the 8th--some 1,300 men. The 95th did considerable execution on them while they were getting out of square formation: but when the columns advanced firing, the skirmishing line had to fall back. Its loss was heavy--sixty-five killed and wounded; among the latter Barnard, commanding the battalion. The next troops whom the French encountered were the flank companies of the 20th Portuguese--330 men only, who had advanced on the right rear of the 95th, supporting them in échelon. This was a new corps, which had been sent to Cadiz the moment it was raised in 1809, and had never been under fire before. Considering their hopeless position, alone in front of an advancing division, the Portuguese behaved very well; they held their ground for some time, while their colonel, Bushe, as is recorded by an eye-witness, rode slowly backward and forward behind them with his spectacles on, crying as the balls whistled past, ‘Que bella musica,’ to encourage his men. But he was soon mortally wounded[155], and after his fall the line melted away and drifted to the rear, after having kept a battalion of the French 8th engaged for some minutes: proportionately its loss was much the same as that of the Rifles--56 killed and wounded out of 332 present--one man in six. [155] Vigo-Roussillon says that he personally captured Colonel Bushe, who was riding away slowly from the front, disabled by a wound. This seems contradicted by the very circumstantial evidence of Bunbury, adjutant of the 20th Portuguese, who says that Bushe had his horse shot under him, and was mortally wounded, that he declined being sent to the rear, and was propped up and left behind by his own orders. French soldiers were seen rifling him as he lay.