The discomfitted divisions, retiring concentrically, soon met, and with infinite spirit endeavoured to re-form and renew the action; but the play of Duncan’s guns, close, rapid, and murderous, rendered the attempt vain. Victor was soon in full retreat, and the British having been twenty-four hours under arms, without food, were too exhausted to pursue. While these terrible combats of infantry were fighting, La Peña looked idly on, neither sending his cavalry, nor his horse-artillery, nor any part of his army, to the assistance of his ally, nor yet menacing the right of the enemy, which was close to him and weak. The Spanish Walloon guards, the regiment of Ciudad Real, and some Guerilla cavalry, indeed turned without orders, coming up just as the action ceased; and it was expected that colonel Whittingham, an Englishman commanding a powerful body of horse, would have done as much; but no stroke in aid of the British was struck by a Spanish sabre that day, although the French cavalry did not exceed two hundred and fifty men, and it is evident that the eight hundred under Whittingham might, by sweeping round the left of Ruffin’s division, have rendered the defeat ruinous. So certain, indeed, was this, that colonel Frederick Ponsonby, drawing off the hundred and eighty German hussars belonging to the English army, reached the field of battle, charged the French squadrons just as their retreating divisions met, overthrew them, took two guns, and even attempted, though vainly, to sabre Rousseau’s chosen battalions. Such was the fight of Barosa. Short, for it lasted only one hour and a half, but most violent and bloody; for fifty officers, sixty serjeants, and above eleven hundred British soldiers, and more than two thousand Frenchmen were killed and wounded; and from the latter, six guns, an eagle, and two generals (both mortally wounded) were taken, together with four hundred other prisoners. [Sidenote: Appendix, No. IX. Section 1.] After the action, Graham remained some hours on the height, still hoping that La Peña would awake to the prospect of success and glory, which the extreme valour of the British had opened. Four thousand men and a powerful artillery had come over the Santi Petri; hence the Spanish general was at the head of twelve thousand infantry and eight hundred cavalry, all fresh troops; while before him were only the remains of the French line of battle retreating in the greatest disorder upon Chiclana. But all military feeling being extinct in La Peña, Graham would no longer endure such command. The morning of the 6th saw the British filing over Zaya’s bridge into the Isla. [Illustration: _Vol. 3, Plate 9._ BATTLE of BAROSA _5^{th} March, 1811_. _London Published by T. & W. BOONE Nov^r 1830._] [Sidenote: Official Abstracts of Military Reports, MSS.]