All this time a fierce battle was going on at Fuentes Onoro. Massena had directed Drouet to carry this village when Montbrun’s cavalry first turned the right wing, it was however two hours later ere the attack commenced. The three British regiments made a desperate resistance, but, overmatched in number and unaccustomed to the desultory fighting of light troops, they were pierced and divided; two companies of the 79th were taken, their Colonel, Cameron, mortally wounded, and the lower part of the town was carried: the upper part was however stiffly held and the musketry was incessant. Had the attack been made earlier, and all Drouet’s division thrown frankly into the fight, while the sixth corps from the wood of Poço Velho closely turned Fuentes Onoro, the latter must have been forced and the new position falsified. But Wellington, having now all his reserves in hand, detached considerable masses to support the fight, and as the French reinforced their troops, the whole of the sixth corps and part of Drouet’s were finally engaged. At one time the fighting was on the banks of the stream and the lower houses, at another on the heights and around the chapel, and some of the enemy’s skirmishers even penetrated towards the main position; yet the village was never entirely abandoned by the defenders, and in one charge against a heavy mass on the chapel eminence a great number of French fell. Thus the fight lasted until evening, when the lower part of the town was abandoned by both parties, the British holding the chapel and crags, the French retiring about cannon-shot distance from the stream. After the action a brigade of the light division relieved the regiments in the village, a slight demonstration by the second corps, near Fort Conception, was checked by a battalion of the Lusitanian legion, and both armies remained in observation. Fifteen hundred men and officers, of which three hundred were prisoners, constituted the loss of the allies. That of the enemy was estimated at the time to be near five thousand, but this was founded on the supposition that four hundred dead were lying about Fuentes Onoro. Having had charge to bury the carcasses at that point, I can affirm, that about the village not more than one hundred and thirty bodies were to be found, more than one-third of which were British. EVACUATION OF ALMEIDA. (May, 1811.)