About the same time that the enemy commenced their operations on this side, a very strong body of their infantry crossed the Bidassoa, in two columns, by the fords below Salon, in front of the position occupied by the 9th Portugueze brigade. Major-General Inglis moved with his brigade to their support, and finding he could not maintain the heights between Lezaca and the river, withdrew to those in front of the convent, protecting there the right of the Spanish army, and at the same time the approach by Oyarzun to S. Sebastian’s. Major-General Kempt meantime moved a brigade of the light division to Lezaca, by which he kept the enemy in check; and the Earl of Dalhousie was directed likewise to support Major-General Inglis; but being engaged at the Puerto de Zugarramundi, he could not begin his march till late in the afternoon, nor arrive before the ensuing morning, when the operations were at an end. For the enemy, when they found that Major-General Inglis was in a position from which they could not dislodge him, and knew that they had completely failed at the heights of San Marcial, felt that their situation on the Spanish side of the Bidassoa was becoming every moment more critical, and retired during the night. But the river had then so risen, and was still rising so fast, that the rear of their column was obliged to cross by the bridge at Vera: and to effect this, they attacked the posts of the light division about three in the morning. If a sufficient force could have been spared for guarding this point, a very considerable part of Soult’s army might have been taken. The bridge was not wide enough for more than three or four to pass abreast, and a continual fire was poured upon it from the walls of a neighbouring convent, so that they were believed to have lost not less than a thousand men in passing. The loss of the allies on this day amounted to 400 killed, about 2060 wounded, and 150 missing, nearly 1600 of these being Spaniards. The brunt of the action had fallen upon them; and in this respect it was a day of great importance, because it made the French feel their own growing inferiority, and apprehend that San Marcial would teach the Spaniards the same confidence in themselves which the Portugueze had learned at Busaco. Among the British officers who fell was Captain Douglas of the 51st: he is thus mentioned in a work wherein so many crimes have been recorded, because his brother officers bore this testimony to him, that he was the only man they knew of whom they could truly say there was nothing in him in the slightest degree approaching to a vice. The men of his company carried him off the field, made his grave carefully, and gave him a soldier’s burial with all the marks of respect which they could bestow.