Whittingham was caught in a rather dangerous position, for a little while before the attack developed, he had received an order from head-quarters bidding him execute against Robert’s division precisely the same manœuvre that Suchet was trying against himself, viz. to send troops to outflank the extreme French right. He was told by the bearer of the orders, a Sicilian colonel, that this was preliminary to a general attack downhill upon the French line, which Murray was intending to carry out. The Spanish division was to turn its flank, while Adam and Mackenzie went straight at its front. There is some mystery here--Murray afterwards denied to Whittingham that he had given any such order[430], and Donkin, his Chief of the Staff, maintained that his general was thinking of a retreat all that morning rather than of an attack. Yet Colonel Catanelli was a respectable officer, who was thanked in dispatches both by Murray and Whittingham for his services! Three hypotheses suggest themselves: (1) that Murray at one moment meditated an attack, because he saw Suchet holding back, and then (with his usual infirmity of purpose) dropped the idea, and denied having made any such plan to Whittingham, whose position had been gravely imperilled by its execution. This is quite in accordance with his mentality, and he often tampered with the truth--as we shall see when telling the tale of Tarragona. (2) That Donkin and the head-quarters staff, enraged with Murray’s timidity, were resolved to commit him to a fight, and gave unauthorized orders which must bring it on. (3) That Catanelli, from lack of a good command of English, misunderstood the General’s language, and gave complete misdirections to Whittingham. I must confess that I incline to the first solution[431]. Whatever the source of these orders may have been, Whittingham began to carry them out, though they seemed to him very ill-advised. But noting that if he completely evacuated the heights of Guerra there would be a broad gap in the allied line, he left his picquets in position and two battalions on the crest of the hill[432], with another in support behind[433], while with the remaining three[434] he moved off to the left. The march was executed, out of sight of the enemy, by a mountain path which ran along the rear of the heights.