All the avenues leading to the town of Fuentes d'Oñoro were in a moment filled with French troops; it was occupied by our 71st and 79th Highlanders, the 83rd, the light companies of the 1st and 3rd Divisions, and some German and Portuguese battalions, supported by the 24th, 45th, 74th, and 88th British Regiments, and the 9th and 21st Portuguese. The sixth corps, which formed the centre of the French army, advanced with the characteristic impetuosity of their nation, and forcing down the barriers, which we had hastily constructed as a temporary defence, came rushing on, and, torrent-like, threatened to overwhelm all that opposed them. Every street, and every angle of a street, were the different theatres for the combatants; inch by inch was gained and lost in turn. Whenever the enemy were forced back, fresh troops, and fresh energy on the part of their officers, impelled them on again, and towards mid-day the town presented a shocking sight; our Highlanders lay dead in heaps, while the other regiments, though less remarkable in dress, were scarcely so in the numbers of their slain. The French Grenadiers, with their immense caps and gaudy plumes, in piles of twenty and thirty together—some dead, others wounded, with barely strength sufficient to move; their exhausted state, and the weight of their cumbrous appointments, making it impossible for them to crawl out of the range of the dreadful fire of grape and round shot which the enemy poured into the town. Great numbers perished in this way, and many were pressed to death in the streets.