Craufurd, who had now resumed command of the light division, covered the passage of the seventh over the Turones, and then retired slowly along the plain in squares. The French horsemen outflanked him and surprised a post of the Guards under Colonel Hill, taking that officer and fourteen men prisoners, but continuing their course against the 42nd Regiment were repulsed. Many times, this strong cavalry made as if it would storm the light division squares, yet always found them too formidable, and happily so, for there was not during the war a more perilous hour. The whole of that vast plain was covered with a confused multitude of troops, amidst which the squares appeared as specks, and there was a great concourse of commissariat followers, servants, baggage, led horses, and peasants attracted by curiosity, and all mixed with broken picquets and parties coming out of the woods: the seventh division was separated by the Turones, while five thousand French horsemen, with fifteen pieces of artillery, were trampling, bounding, shouting, and impatient to charge; the infantry of the eighth corps being in order of battle behind them, and the wood on their right filled with the sixth corps. If the latter body, pivoting upon Fuentes, had come forth while Drouet’s division fell on that village, if the eighth corps had attacked the light division and all the cavalry had charged, the loose crowd encumbering the plain, driven violently in upon the first division, would have intercepted the latter’s fire and broken its ranks: the battle would have been lost. No such effort was made. The French horsemen merely hovered about Craufurd’s squares, the plain was soon cleared, the British cavalry took post behind the centre, and the light division formed a reserve to the first division, the riflemen occupying the rocks on its right and connecting it with the seventh division, which had arrived at Frenada and was again joined by Julian Sanchez. At sight of this new front, perpendicular to the original one and so deeply lined with troops, the French army stopped short and commenced a cannonade, which did great execution amongst the close masses of the allies; but twelve British guns replied with such vigour that the enemy’s fire abated, their cavalry drew out of range, and a body of infantry attempting to glide down the ravine of the Turones was repulsed by the riflemen and the light companies of the Guards.