Their best line of retreat was on the prolongation of Reille’s right, at Gamara Mayor; yet he was too distant to be supported by the main body, and therefore the safety of the latter depended on his good fighting. Many thousand carriages and other impediments were heaped about Vittoria, blocking all the roads and disordering the artillery parcs; and on the extreme left, Maransin’s brigade, occupying the Puebla ridge, was isolated and too weak to hold its ground. The centre was indeed on an easy range of hills, its front open, with a slope to the river, and powerful batteries bore on all the bridges; nevertheless, many of the guns being advanced in the loop of the Zadora, were exposed to musket-shot from a wood on the right bank. Seven bridges were within the scheme of operations, yet none were broken or retrenched. The bridge of La Puebla, facing the French left, was beyond the defile; that of Nanclares, facing Subijana de Alava, was at the French end of the defile; three bridges around the deep loop of the river opened upon the right of the French centre, that of Mendoza being highest up the stream, Vellodas lowest down, Tres Puentes in the centre: the bridges of Gamara Mayor and Ariaga were, as already said, guarded by Reille. Wellington projected three distinct battles. Graham, moving by the Bilbao road, was to force a passage with twenty thousand men against Reille, and Giron’s Gallicians were called up to his support; the design being to shut up the French centre and left between the Zadora and the Puebla mountain. Hill, having Morillo’s Spaniards, Sylviera’s Portuguese and the second British division, with cavalry and guns, in all twenty thousand men, was to force the passage of the Zadora river beyond the Puebla defile, assailing Maransin there with his right, while his left, threading the pass to enter the basin on that side, turned and menaced the French left and secured the bridge of Nanclares. In the centre battle, the third, fourth, seventh and light divisions of infantry, the great mass of artillery, the heavy cavalry and Portuguese horsemen, in all thirty thousand combatants, were led by Wellington in person. Being encamped along the Bayas, these bodies had only to march over the ridge which bounded the basin of Vittoria on that side, and come down to their respective points on the Zadora, namely, the bridges of Mendoza, Tres Puentes, Villodas and Nanclares; but the country was so rugged exact concert could not be maintained, and each general of division was left in some degree master of his own movements. BATTLE OF VITTORIA. (June, 1813.)