General Lassalle, with the light cavalry, led down upon the Spanish right, and filled the plain between the river and the wood. At the same moment the Spanish artillery opened along the whole of their line, and the French infantry formed in columns of regiments arrived. Mouton’s division, composed of old soldiers, broke at once into the wood at a charging pace. General Bonnet followed closely, but so rapid and effectual was the assault of Mouton’s veterans, that Bonnet’s troops never fired a shot. The Spaniards fled in disorder, the left wing, although not attacked, followed the example of the right, and the whole mass, victors and vanquished, rushed into the town of Burgos with extraordinary violence and uproar. At the same moment, Bessieres, who retained the command of all the heavy cavalry, passed at full gallop toward the Madrid road, where it crosses the Arlazon, sabring the fugitives, and taking all the guns which had escaped Mouton’s vehement attack; and on the other side of the river, Franceschi was seen to cut in pieces some Catalonian light troops stationed there, and to bar all hopes of flight. Never was a defeat more instantaneous, or more complete. Two thousand five hundred Spaniards were killed; twenty guns, thirty ammunition waggons, six pair of colours, and nine hundred men, were taken on the field. Four thousand musquets were found unbroken, and the fugitives were dispersed far and wide. Belvedere himself escaped to Lerma, where he arrived in the evening of the day on which the battle was fought. Meeting some battalions, principally composed of volunteers, on their march to join his army, he retired with them to Aranda de Douero during the night; but first, with true Spanish exaggeration, wrote a despatch, in which he asserted, that the French were repulsed in two desperate attacks; but that after thirteen hours hard fighting, they succeeded in a third. All the ammunition and stores of the Spanish army were captured in Burgos; and the indefatigable marshal Soult, who was still upon the post-horse, which he mounted at Briviesca; not content with travelling from Bayonne to Burgos, taking the latter town, and gaining a decisive victory within the space of fifty hours; now rallied his corps, and detaching one column in pursuit on the side of Lerma, and another towards Valencia and Valladolid, marched himself with a third, on the very day of the battle, towards Reynosa, where he hoped to intercept Blake’s line of retreat to the plains of Leon. [Sidenote: Carrol’s Corresp^{ce}.] [Sidenote: Ibid.]