On the 19th the armies maintained their respective ground in quiet until the evening, when Marmont concentrated his troops in one mass on his left near the village of Tarazona, and Wellington, fearing for his right, again passed the second branch of the Guarena, at Vallesa, and El Olmo, and took post on the table-land above those villages. The light division, being in front, advanced to the edge of the table-land, overlooking the enemy’s main body which was at rest round the bivouac fires; yet the picquets would have been quietly posted, if sir Stapleton Cotton coming up at the moment, had not ordered captain Ross to turn his battery of six-pounders upon a group of French officers. At the first shot the enemy seemed surprised, at the second their gunners run to their pieces, and in a few moments a reply from twelve eight-pounders shewed the folly of provoking a useless combat. An artillery officer was wounded in the head, several of the British soldiers fell in different parts of the line, one shot swept away a whole section of Portuguese, and finally the division was obliged to withdraw several hundred yards in a mortifying manner to avoid a great and unnecessary effusion of blood. The allies being now formed in two lines on the table-land of Vallesa offered a fair though not an easy field to the enemy; Wellington expected a battle the next day, because the range of heights which he occupied, trended backwards to the Tormes on the shortest line; and as he had thrown a Spanish garrison into the castle of Alba de Tormes, he thought Marmont could not turn his right, or if he attempted it, that he would be shouldered off the Tormes at the ford of Huerta. He was mistaken. The French general was more perfectly acquainted with the ground and proved that he could move an army with wonderful facility.