At midday on the 28th of July, the anniversary of the Talavera fight, the French gathered in masses at the foot of the position, and their skirmishers quickly spread over the face of the mountain, working upward like a conflagration; but the columns of attack were not all ready when Clausel’s right-hand division, without awaiting the general signal of battle, threw out flankers on the ridge beyond the Lanz and pushed down the valley in one mass. With a rapid pace it turned Cole’s left and was preparing to wheel up on his rear, when suddenly Madden’s Portuguese brigade of the sixth division appeared on the crest of the ridge beyond the river, driving the flankers back and descending, as from the clouds, with a rattling fire upon the right and rear of the column; and not less suddenly the main body of that division, emerging from behind the same ridge near the village of Oricain, presented a line of battle across the front. It was the counter-stroke of Salamanca! The French were, while striving to encompass Cole’s left, themselves encompassed; for two brigades of Cole’s division instantly turned and smote them on the left, the Portuguese smote them on the right, and thus scathed on both flanks with fire, they were violently shocked and pushed back with a mighty force by the sixth division, yet not in flight, but fighting fiercely and strewing the ground with their enemies’ bodies as well as with their own. Clausel’s second division, on the other side of Sauroren, seeing this dire conflict, with a hurried movement assailed the chapel height to draw off Cole’s fire from the troops in the valley, and gallantly did the French soldiers throng up the craggy steep; yet the general unity of the attack was ruined; neither the third division nor Reille’s brigades had yet received the signal, and their attacks were made irregularly, in succession, running from right to left as the necessity of aiding others became apparent. It was however a terrible battle and well fought. One column darting out of the village of Sauroren, silently, sternly, without firing a shot, worked up to the chapel under a tempest of bullets, which swept away whole ranks without abating the speed and power of the mass; the Portuguese there shrunk abashed, and that part of the position was won; soon however they rallied on Ross’s British brigade, and the whole, running forward, charged the French with a loud shout and dashed them down the hill. Heavily stricken the latter were, yet undismayed, they re-formed, and again ascended, to be again broken and overturned. But the other columns of attack now bore upwards through the smoke and flame with which the skirmishers covered the face of the mountain, and another Portuguese regiment, fighting on the right of Ross, yielded to their fury; thus a heavy body crowned the heights, and wheeling against Ross’s exposed flank forced him back also, and his ground was instantly occupied by the enemies with whom he had been engaged in front.