The heights of Barrosa extend to the shore on one side, and slope down to the plain on the other towards a lake called the Laguna del Puerco: the ridge itself was called Cabeza del Puerco by the Spaniards, but it will retain the better name which was this day acquired for it. Victor with 8000 men advanced against this point. The troops which had been left there were the regiments of Siguenza and Cantabria, a battalion of Ciudad Real, another of the Walloon guards, and a battalion of the King’s German legion. Ignorant of Graham’s movements, and knowing themselves unable to maintain the post against such very superior numbers, they thought it best to form a junction with the British, whose rear they should by this means cover, and be themselves covered on the way by the pine forest through which they were to pass. Accordingly they made this movement with perfect coolness and in perfect order, General Whittingham covering one flank, Brigadier D. Juan de la Cruz Mourgeon the other; for on both sides the enemy endeavoured to envelope them. ♦GENERAL GRAHAM MARCHES BACK TO THE HEIGHTS.♦ Graham, meantime, was marching rapidly back, but at a distance from the shore; whereas these troops kept near it, apparently to lessen the danger of being turned on that side by the enemy’s light infantry. In such intricate and difficult circumstances it was impossible to preserve order in the columns; and before the troops were quite disentangled from the wood, they saw that the detachment which they were hastening to support had left the heights; that the left wing of the French were rapidly ascending there, and their right stood upon the plain, on the edge of the wood within cannon shot. General Graham’s object in countermarching had been to support the troops in maintaining the heights; “but a retreat,” he says, “in the face of such an enemy (already within reach of the easy communication by the sea beach) must have involved the whole allied army in all the danger of being attacked during the unavoidable confusion of the different corps arriving on the narrow ridge of Bermeja nearly at the same time.” Trusting, therefore, to the courage of his men, and regardless of the numbers and position of the enemy, he resolved immediately to attack them. ♦BATTLE OF BARROSA.♦