The passage of the line of the Douro in presence of an army in a condition for battle is difficult, and it requires much circumspection on the part of the General to hazard it in the face of an enemy. Yet Marmont managed to cross. He employed the days of the 13th, 14th, 15th, and 16th of July in a series of evolutions we had hitherto been unaccustomed to witness; and, in fine, on the morning of the 17th, after having made a night-march of thirteen Spanish leagues, his army was over the river, in battle array on the plain to the right of Nava del Rey, while the bulk of our army was in full movement upon Toro, distant several leagues from the 4th and Light Divisions and the two brigades of heavy horse. The village of Torrecilla de la Orden was in their front. Marmont, finding how well the passage of the Douro had been masked by his night-march, and seeing the small number of troops that were at hand to oppose his movement, ordered his masses forward in the hope of crushing them. The 4th and Light Divisions, covered by Bock’s dragoons,[28] retired upon the rising ground behind the villages. At this point various charges were made by the cavalry of both armies; and it was not until after a retreat of three hours, under a burning sun and a torrent of shot, that the two divisions reached the heights of the Guarena. The soldiers, famishing with thirst, their tongues cleaving to their mouths, and fainting with fatigue, rushed headlong towards the river; and before they had drank sufficiently to satisfy their burning thirst, the heights above them were crowned with forty pieces of cannon at half-range. Great was the confusion caused by the cannonade; and it was not without suffering some loss that they effected their retreat to the opposite bank. In less than an hour they joined the 1st and 3rd Divisions, and the entire continued the retrograde movement. ----- Footnote 28: The 1st and 2nd Heavy Dragoons of the King’s German Legion, lately arrived from England. -----