The ground was exceedingly diversified with woods and plains, here covered with corn, there broken by ditches, vineyards and hamlets; hence the action, for six miles, resolved itself into a running fight and cannonade, the dust and smoke and tumult of which, filling all the basin, passed onwards towards Vittoria. Many guns were taken, and at six o’clock the French reached the last defensible height, one mile in front of Vittoria. Behind them was the plain in which the city stood, and beyond the houses thousands of carriages, animals and non-combatants, men, women, and children, huddling together in all the madness of terror; and as the English shot went booming over head, the vast crowd started and swerved with a convulsive movement, while a dull and horrid sound of distress arose: but there was no hope, no stay for army or multitude. It was the wreck of a nation. French courage was not yet quelled. Reille, on whom every thing now depended, maintained his post at the Upper Zadora, and the armies of the south and centre, drawing up on their last heights between the villages of Ali and Armentia, made their muskets flash like lightning, while more than eighty pieces of artillery, massed together, pealed with such a horrid uproar, that the hills laboured and shook and streamed with fire and smoke, amidst which the dark figures of the French gunners were seen hounding with a frantic energy. This terrible cannonade and musketry checked the allies. The third division, having the brunt of the storm, could scarcely maintain its ground, and the French generals began to draw off their infantry from the right wing, when suddenly the fourth division rushing forward carried the hill on the French left; then the heights were all abandoned, for at that moment Joseph, finding the royal road so blocked by carriages the artillery could not pass, indicated the road of Salvatierra for retreat, and the troops at once went off in a confused mass. The British followed hard, and the light cavalry galloped through the town to intercept the new line, which passed a marsh, and was likewise choked with carriages and fugitive people, for on each side there were deep drains. Disorder and mischief then prevailed entirely. The guns were left on the edge of the marsh, the artillerymen fled with the horses, and the infantry, breaking through the miserable multitude, went clean off: the cavalry however still acted with order, and many generous horsemen were seen to carry children and women from the dreadful scene.