About eleven, the enemy having been baffled in all their attempts, intermitted the attack, rested their troops, and, it is said, cooked their dinners upon the field. Wine and a little bread were served out to the British troops. A brook which flows into the Tagus separated the French and English in one part of the field, and during this pause men of both armies went there to drink, as if a truce had been established. Their muskets were laid down and their helmets put off while they stooped to the stream, and when they had quenched their thirst, they rested on the brink, looking at each other. The heat and exasperation of battle were suspended; they felt that mutual respect which proofs of mutual courage had inspired, and some of them shook hands across the brook, in token that although they were met to shed each other’s blood, brave men knew how to value a brave enemy. At such a moment it was natural for Englishmen to have no other feeling; ... the atrocities by which Buonaparte’s soldiers in the Peninsula had disgraced their profession, their country, and their nature, were for the time forgotten. This interval also was taken for bringing off the wounded who lay intermingled as they had fallen. And here also a redeeming sense of humanity was manifested; all hostility being suspended among those who were thus employed, and each striving who should with most alacrity assist the other in extricating the common sufferers. About noon Victor ordered a general attack along the whole line. His own three divisions were to attack the hill once more. Sebastiani was to form his first division in two lines on the left of Lapisse; Leval, with a brigade just then arriving from Aranjuez, to be stationed to the left of this division, a little in the rear; still further left, Milhaud, with his dragoons, was to observe Talavera; Latour Maubourg’s infantry and Merlin’s light-horse formed in the rear of Victor to support his corps, and advance into the open ground now occupied by him, as soon as he should have won the hill. The reserve was placed in a third line behind Sebastiani’s corps.