The tale of this part of the battle of Saguntum is lamentable. There is no record so bad in the whole war: even the Gebora was a well-contested fight compared with this--and at Belchite the army that fled so easily gave way before numbers equal or superior to its own, not inferior in the proportion of one to three. The fact was that the Valencian troops had a long record of disasters behind them, were thoroughly demoralized, and could not be trusted for one moment, and that the Murcians (as Mahy confessed) were not much better. The defeat was rendered more shameful by the fact that the smaller half of Blake’s Army, the ‘Expeditionary Force,’ was at the same moment making head in good style against numbers rather larger than its own, and seemed for a moment about to achieve a splendid success. If the Spanish left, 17,000 strong, could have ‘contained’ half its own strength, if it could have kept 8,000 instead of 4,000 French employed for one hour, Blake might have relieved Saguntum and driven off Suchet. But the story is disgraceful. Mahy wrote next morning to Blake, ‘I must tell you, with my usual bluntness, that you had better sell the horses of this cavalry, and draft the men into the infantry. I could not have believed in the possibility of such conduct, if I had not seen it with my own eyes take place and cost us so much[32].’ Blake actually gave orders for one hussar regiment (a Murcian one) to be deprived of its horses and drafted out. But did the infantry behave much better? [32] Quoted in Arteche, xi. p. 178. We may now turn to a less depressing narrative, the story of the operations of Blake’s own wing. The Commander-in-Chief, as it will be remembered, had with him the ‘Expeditionary Divisions,’ the Valencian Reserve Division, and Loy’s and Caro’s 1,100 cavalry. He took post himself on the height called El Puig, with one brigade of the Valencians, to the south of the ravine of the Picador, which crosses the plain in a diagonal direction. The rest of the troops went forward in two columns: Zayas formed the right near the sea; his flank was covered by a squadron of gunboats, which advanced parallel with him, as near the shore as their draught permitted. He was ordered to push on and get, if possible, round Suchet’s flank, where Habert’s line was ‘refused,’ because of the guns of the flotilla, whose fire the French wished to avoid. If successful Zayas was to try to communicate with the garrison of Saguntum. Further inland Lardizabal’s division, accompanied by the 1,100 cavalry, and followed by the other brigade of the Valencian reserve, crossed the Picador at the bridge on the _chaussée_, and deployed in the plain, directly opposite Harispe’s division. The whole force was about equal to the French opposed to it.