It may be noted that we have hitherto not had occasion to say one word of General La Peña or his two infantry divisions since the main action began. On being informed, at the same time as Graham, of the approach of Victor from Chiclana, La Peña had no thought save to defend the isthmus by the Torre Bermeja against the approaching enemy. He drew up his own eleven battalions across it in a double or treble line, while Zayas, with those which had come out of Cadiz, watched Villatte across the Almanza creek. When Beguines appeared from the Cerro by the coast-track, he was put into the same mass, which must have risen to something like 10,000 men. Presently news came from the wood that Graham had faced about and was fighting the French. La Peña, as his own dispatch shows, concluded that the English must inevitably be beaten, and refused to stir a man to support them or to bring them off. Zayas repeatedly asked leave to march up to join Wheatley’s flank, or to cross the Almanza and to attack Villatte, but was refused permission. The first report, to the effect that Graham was driving the French back, La Peña refused to credit. It was not till the fugitives of Leval’s division were seen retreating past the head of the Almanza creek, that he could be got to accept the idea that Graham was victorious. And when pressed to join in the pursuit by Zayas, he merely said that the men were tired, and the day far spent. The reaping of the fruits of victory might be left for the morrow. When it is remembered that La Peña was only two miles from Wheatley’s fighting-ground, and three from the Cerro, his conduct seems astounding as well as selfish. Graham’s fight lasted nearly two hours. La Peña could have ridden over, to see what was going on, in a quarter of an hour. He refused to stir, and deliberately sacrificed his allies, because he had got a comfortable, almost an impregnable, position across the narrow isthmus, and would not move out of it, whatever might happen to Graham. This timid and selfish policy was an exact repetition of his betrayal of Castaños at Tudela in 1808. With his 10,000 men he could have crushed Villatte if he had advanced on one front, or have annihilated the remnants of Ruffin and Leval, if he had chosen to act on the other. [Illustration: BARROSA]