The right wing of the Spaniards, meantime, had made the enemy give ground, and were following up their success; but Alburquerque, seeing what had occurred in the other flank, proposed to form in close columns of battalions, and begin their retreat. Eguia overruled this, saying he had no instructions to that effect, and not daring even in this evident emergence to act upon his own responsibility. Indeed it is affirmed, that not one of Cuesta’s officers knew his intention of giving battle an hour before the action began. Affairs were every moment growing worse, and Eguia having left the right of the line, the Duke gave the necessary command; but it had been delayed too long; the whole force of the French artillery was concentred upon these columns, who were now the only troops that remained unbroken; a total dispersion took place; and the enemy, forming a chain of cavalry all round the routed army, executed their orders, which were to give no quarter. They had suffered enough in the action to make them obey this atrocious command with good will. They had themselves 4000 men killed and wounded, ... nearly a fifth of their whole force; their official statement of the Spanish loss made it 7000 killed; other accounts carried it to 12,000. Cuesta could only state that it was very great, and ascertain that a hundred and seventy officers of infantry and ten of cavalry were killed, wounded, or missing. ♦NO QUARTER GIVEN.♦ Weariness, rather than compunction, on the part of the French, at length put a stop to the carnage, and the account of prisoners is variously stated from three thousand to seven; but it is certain that not two ever reached Madrid. A wounded Spanish officer was brought into the room where Victor was at supper, and the French Marshal said to him, “If my orders had been obeyed, sir, you would not have been here.” Those orders had been obeyed too well. The dragoons that night in the French camp were rubbing their sword arms with soap and spirits, to recover the muscles from the strains of that day’s slaughter. Their cruelty was not satiated even with this success. A peasant in one of the near villages had a son who was in Cuesta’s army, where he had served for some time. When the army drew near Medellin, this Juan went to his father’s house, and his conversation induced his two brothers, Antonio and Carlos, to go with him as volunteers. Juan was never seen after the battle; but the father upon searching the field found Antonio’s body, and the other brother, wounded, and weeping over it. He removed the dead son and the living one to his cottage, that the one might receive Christian burial, and the other such help as might have restored him. A party of the French, in their work of pillage, entered the house, and finding a wounded Spaniard there, deliberately shot him, before his father’s face. ♦ESCAPE OF ALBURQUERQUE.♦