During the retreat from Elbodon, the left wing of the army was ordered to fall back on the first division, at Nava d’Aver, but to keep posts in observation on the Azava. Carlos d’España retired with Sanchez’s infantry behind the Coa, and the guerilla chief himself passed with his cavalry into the French rear. The seventh division was withdrawn from Allemadilla to Albergaria, and the head-quarters baggage moved to Casilla de Flores. The light division should have marched to Guinaldo; general Craufurd received the order at two o’clock, he plainly heard the cannonade, and might easily have reached Guinaldo before midnight, but he only marched to Cespedosa, one league from the Vadillo, which river was immediately passed by fifteen hundred French. The position at Guinaldo was therefore occupied by only fourteen thousand men, of which about two thousand six hundred were cavalry. The left of the army, concentrated at Nava d’Aver, under Graham, was ten miles distant; the light division being at Cespedosa and debarred the direct route by the ford of Carros, was sixteen miles distant, and the fifth division, posted at Payo in the mountains, was twelve miles distant. Meanwhile Marmont brought up a second division of infantry, and in the course of the night, and the following day, united sixty thousand men in front of Guinaldo. The situation of the English general was become most critical, yet he would not abandon the light division, which did not arrive until after three o’clock in the evening. Marmont’s fortune was fixed in that hour! He knew nothing of the allies’ true situation, and having detached a strong column by the valley of the Azava to menace their left, contented himself with making an ostentatious display of the imperial guards in the plain, instead of attacking an adversary who was too weak to fight, and laughing to see him so employed, soon changed the state of affairs. In the night, Wellington by a skilful concentric movement from Guinaldo, Nava d’Aver, Perales, and Payo, united the whole army on new ground, between the Coa and the sources of the Agueda, twelve miles behind Guinaldo; and it is a curious fact that Marmont had so little knowledge of his own advantages, that instead of harassing the allies in this difficult movement, he also retired during the night, and was actually in march to the rear, when the scouts of the column, which had marched by the valley of Azava, brought word that the allies were in retreat, and their divisions still widely separated. Dorsenne then insisted that Marmont should wheel round and pursue, but lord Wellington was already in a strong position behind the stream of the Villa Maior.