Souham cannonaded the rear-guard at Torquemada on the 24th, and then passing the upper Pisuerga sent Foy’s division against Palencia, but ordered Maucune to pursue the allies to the bridges of Baños, Isidro, and Muriel, halting himself, however, if fame does not lie, because the number of French drunkards were even more numerous than those of the British army. COMBAT ON THE CARION. (Oct. 1812.) Before the enemy appeared the summits of the hills were crowned, the bridges mined, and that of San Isidro strongly protected by a convent filled with troops. The left of the position was equally strong, but the advantage of a dry canal with high banks, running parallel with the Carion, was overlooked, and the village of Muriel was not occupied in sufficient strength. Foy meanwhile reached Palencia, where, according to some French writers, a treacherous attempt was made, under cover of a parley, to kill him; he however drove the allies with loss from the town, and in such haste that all the bridges were abandoned in a perfect condition, and the French cavalry, spreading abroad, gathered baggage and prisoners. This untoward event compelled Wellington to throw back his left at Muriel, thus offering two fronts, the one facing Palencia, the other the Carion; in that state Maucune, having dispersed some caçadores defending a ford, fell with a strong body of infantry and guns on the troops at Muriel, just as a mine was exploded and the party covering the bridge were passing the broken arch by means of ladders. The play of the mine checked the advance of the French, but suddenly a horseman, darting at full speed from their column, rode down to the bridge under a flight of bullets from his own people, calling out he was a deserter. When he reached the chasm made by the explosion, he violently checked his foaming horse, held up his hands, exclaimed that he was a lost man, and with hurried accents asked if there was no ford near. The good-natured soldiers pointed to one a little way off, whereupon the gallant fellow looked earnestly for a few moments to fix the exact point, then wheeling sharply round, kissed his hand in derision, and bending low over his saddle-bow dashed back to his own comrades, amidst showers of shot and shouts of laughter from both sides. Maucune’s column, covered by a concentrated fire of guns, then passed the river at the ford thus discovered, made some prisoners in the village and lined the dry bed of the canal.