Maucune was now maintaining a noble battle. He was outflanked and outnumbered, yet the safety of the French army depended on his courage, he knew it, and Pakenham, marking his bold demeanour, advised Clinton, who was immediately in his front, not to assail him until the third division should have turned his left. Nevertheless Clinton plunged his troops into action under great disadvantage; for after remaining some time unnecessarily under Maucune’s batteries, which ploughed heavily through their ranks, they were suddenly directed to attack the hill, and aided by a brigade of the fourth division they rushed up; but in the darkness of the night the fire showed from afar how the battle went. On the English side a sheet of flame was seen, sometimes advancing with an even front, sometimes pricking forth in spear heads, now falling back in waving lines, anon darting upwards in one vast pyramid, the apex of which often approached yet never gained the actual summit of the mountain; but the French musketry, rapid as lightning, sparkled along the brow of the height with unvarying fulness, and with what destructive effects the dark gaps and changing shapes of the adverse fire showed too plainly: meanwhile Pakenham turned the left, Foy glided into the forest, and Maucune’s task being then completed, the effulgent crest of the ridge became black and silent and the whole French army vanished as it were in the darkness. During this fight Wellington in person made the light division advance towards the ford of Huerta, having the forest on his right; for he thought the Spanish garrison was still in the castle of Alba, and that the enemy must be found at the fords. For this final stroke he had strengthened his left wing; nor was he diverted from it by Foy’s retreat into the forest, because it pointed towards the fords of Encina and Gonzalo, where the right wing of the allies would find him; moreover a squadron of French dragoons, bursting from the forest soon after dark and firing their pistols, had passed at full gallop across the front of the 43rd Regiment towards the ford of Huerta, indicating great confusion in the defeated army, and confirming Wellington’s notion as to the direction: yet the troops were then marching through standing corn, where no enemy could have preceded them!