they ran off--two were captured in the tower, nine others outside it. The swimmers, now shivering with cold, for the afternoon was bleak, took possession of the bridgehead, and Foy’s sappers at the other end of the broken arch began to hurry forward ropes to establish a communication with the captured tower[108]. The major in command of the Brunswick battalion, half a mile off, behaved as badly as the subaltern at the tower. He should have come down in force and thrown the handful of naked men into the river. Instead of doing so he put his corps under arms in the edge of the wood, and sent information to his brigadier asking for orders. By the time that Halkett heard of the matter, a rough communication had been made across the shattered bridge, and the French were streaming over. Nothing was done, save to move reinforcements from the 7th Division to block the two roads that diverge from the bridgehead south and west. This extraordinary feat of Guingret’s party, one of the most dashing exploits of the Peninsular War, altered Wellington’s position, much for the worse. The enemy had now secured a crossing on the Douro opposite his extreme left wing. He had already begun to move troops in this direction, when he saw Foy pushing forward past Simancas, and on the morning of the 29th had resolved to leave Valladolid and make a general shift westward, parallel to the enemy. Soon after dawn the bridge of Cabezon was blown up, and the British right wing retired, under cover of the troops still holding Valladolid. When the right wing (the 5th Division and the Galicians) had passed to the rear of that city, and were nearing the Douro bridges (Tudela and Puente de Duero) behind it, the centre of the British line (1st, 6th, and Pack’s Portuguese) followed, and finally the left (two brigades of the 7th Division) evacuated Valladolid after destroying the Pisuerga bridge, and passed the Douro in the wake of the centre. All this was done with no molestation from the enemy, and at nightfall on the 29th every man was on the south of the Douro, and its bridges had been blown up after the rearguards had passed.