CRAWFURD’S _OPERATIONS_ 1810. _Published by T. & W. Boone 1830._] Nevertheless, the combat was unnecessarily continued. By the French, as a point of honour, to cover the escape of those who had passed the bridge. By the English, from ignorance of their object. One of the enemy’s guns was dismantled, a powder-magazine blew up, and many continued to fall on both sides until about four o’clock; when a heavy rain causing a momentary cessation of fire the men amongst the rocks returned, unmolested, to their own party, the fight ceased, and Crawfurd retired behind the Pinhel river. Forty-four Portuguese, two hundred and seventy-two British, including twenty-eight officers, were killed, wounded, or taken, and it was at first supposed that lieutenant Dawson and half a company of the fifty-second, which had been posted in the unfinished tower, were also captured: but that officer kept close until the evening, and then, with great intelligence, passed all the enemy’s posts, and, crossing the Coa at a ford, rejoined his regiment. In this action the French lost above a thousand men, the slaughter at the bridge was fearful to behold; but Massena claimed to have taken two pieces of artillery, and it was true; for the guns intended to arm the unfinished tower, near Almeida, were lying dismounted at the foot of the building. They, however, belonged to the garrison of Almeida, not to the light division, and that they were not mounted and the tower garrisoned was a great negligence; the enemy’s cavalry could not otherwise have fallen so dangerously on the left of the position, and the after-investment of Almeida would have been retarded. In other respects, the governor, severely censured by Crawfurd, at the time, for not opening his fire sooner and more vigorously, was unblameable; the whole affair had been so mismanaged by the general himself, that friends and enemies were mingled together from the first, and the shots from the fortress would have killed both.