The whole 90,000 men of the French Army were over the Tormes that night, bivouacking on the heights from Torradillos to Valdenuerque, in front of Martin Amor. The operation had been neatly carried out, and was quite successful. Wellington had early knowledge of the French movement from two sources--his cavalry told him almost at daybreak that the French camps above Huerta were empty, and soon after came Hill’s news that Soult had begun to cross the Tormes in force at Galisancho. Quite early in the morning Wellington rode out in haste, to take command in person on the threatened front, after having issued orders that the whole of the troops on the San Cristobal position should follow him. He himself pushed on with his staff, met Hill in the wood south of the Arapiles, and told him to watch the roads from Alba with the 4th Division and Hamilton’s Portuguese. Then, taking the strong 2nd Division--8,000 infantry--and all the cavalry brigades that had been watching the middle Tormes (Slade’s, Long’s, and D’Urban’s, and Penne Villemur’s Spaniards) he pushed on to ‘contain’ and possibly to attack Soult[175]. But on arriving in front of Mozarbes a little before noon, he saw that the enemy had already three or four divisions and 4,000 horse drawn up in line to cover the passage of the Tormes by the rest of his army. He had arrived too late to check Soult’s leading columns, and if he sent for Hill and the other troops which lay to his rear, he would, even when they arrived, have only 25,000 men available to attack an enemy who had already as great a force in line, and who was receiving fresh troops every moment from the fords[176]. Nothing could be done till the great reserve from the San Cristobal position came up, and they were not due till late in the day--the last of them indeed did not cross the bridge of Salamanca till the following morning. At dusk Wellington ordered Hill to fall back with his infantry from the woods in front of Alba to the old position of the Arapiles, but kept his cavalry to the front, to cover his own line of battle as long as possible. Their screen of vedettes was placed in the line of woods from Miranda de Azan to Utrera, south of the heights on which Marmont’s army had taken up its position upon July 22nd. Till this cavalry was driven in, the French, on the rising ground above Mozarbes, could not make out the British position.