Brennier, unable to emerge from the rocks and hollows where he was entangled, had been of no weight in this action, but Solignac, having turned the ravine, appeared on the left about the time Taylor’s charge terminated the fight in the centre, and his division, strongly constituted with all arms, was advancing impetuously along the narrow ground, when General Ferguson, who was there in opposition, met him with a counter attack, so fierce, so rapid and sustained, that the French, though fighting stubbornly, bent to the strong pressure. Solignac was wounded, his cavalry, artillery and infantry, heaped together and out-flanked, were cut off from their line of retreat and forced into low ground on their right with a loss of six guns. These pieces, placed under guard of the 71st and 82nd while Ferguson continued his course, were again lost by one of those events which make battles the property of fortune; for Brennier, after long struggling, having worked up the ravine by his right to an accessible place, had ascended the ridge, and, unexpectedly falling upon the two regiments in charge of the captured guns, beat them back. He thus got behind Ferguson, and had time been given to reform his troops and assail that general’s rear mischief would have ensued; but the English regiments were disordered only for a moment; they rallied on higher ground, poured in their fire, broke the French brigade with a charge and made Brennier, who was wounded, a prisoner. Solignac’s division was then without resource, when suddenly another and more decisive change came over this fitful battle. Junot’s left wing and centre had been so discomfited, that only half of Kellermann’s grenadiers and Margaron’s cavalry remained unbroken, and the road of Torres Vedras, the shortest to Lisbon, was uncovered; Brennier’s column was entirely broken; Solignac’s division was in confusion on low ground, cut off from Junot, and menaced front and rear. But of the English army, Hill’s brigade had not fired a shot; neither had the brigade conjoined with Trant’s Portuguese, and it was then marching to take Solignac’s division in rear. The two brigades of Ferguson’s third line had lost only a few men, and those on the central hill had not been hardly handled; there was therefore a powerful force in hand for further operations. Now Brennier, when first taken, eagerly asked if the reserve had attacked, and the other prisoners being questioned on this point replied in the affirmative,[2] wherefore the English general, judging the French power exhausted, and the moment come for rendering victory decisive, with the genius of a great captain resolved to make it not only decisive on the field but of the fate of Portugal.