breathing fire and stretching like greyhounds along the plain, his guns bounding like things of no weight, and the mounted gunners in close and compact order protecting the rear. But while this brilliant action was passing in one part, the enemy were making progress in the wood, and the English divisions being separated and the right wing turned, it was abundantly evident that the battle would soon be lost, if the original position was not immediately regained. In this posture of affairs lord Wellington directed the seventh division to cross the Turones and move down the left bank to Frenada, the light division to retire over the plain, the cavalry to cover the rear. He also withdrew the first and third divisions, placing them and the Portuguese in line on the steppe, before described as running perpendicular to the ravine of Fuentes Onoro. General Crawfurd, who had resumed the command of the light division, first covered the passage of the seventh division over the Turones, and then retired slowly over the plain in squares, having the British cavalry principally on his right flank. He was followed by the enemy’s horse, which continually outflanked him, and near the wood surprised and sabred an advanced post of the guards, making colonel Hill and fourteen men prisoners, but then continuing their charge against the forty-second regiment, the French were repulsed. Many times Montbrun made as if he would storm the light division squares, but the latter were too formidable to be meddled with; yet, in all this war, there was not a more dangerous hour for England. The whole of that vast plain as far as the Turones was covered with a confused multitude, amidst which the squares appeared but as specks, for there was a great concourse, composed of commissariat followers of the camp, servants, baggage, led horses, and peasants attracted by curiosity, and finally, the broken piquets and parties coming out of the woods. The seventh division was separated from the army by the Turones, five thousand French cavalry, with fifteen pieces of artillery, were close at hand impatient to charge; the infantry of the eighth corps was in order of battle behind the horsemen; the wood was filled with the skirmishers of the sixth corps, and if the latter body, pivoting upon Fuentes, had issued forth, while Drouet’s divisions fell on that village, while the eighth corps attacked the light division, and while the whole of the cavalry made a general charge; the loose multitude encumbering the plain would have been driven violently in upon the first division, in such a manner as to have intercepted the latter’s fire and broken their ranks.