At day-break on the 22nd, Marmont who had called the troops at Babila Fuente over the Tormes, by the ford of Encina, brought Bonet’s and Maucune’s divisions up from the forest and took possession of the ridge of Calvariza de Ariba; he also occupied in advance of it a wooded height on which was an old chapel called Nuestra Señora de la Pena. But at a little distance from his left, and from the English right, stood a pair of solitary hills, called the _Two Arapiles_, about half cannon-shot from each other; steep and savagely rugged they were, and the possession of them would have enabled the French general to form his army across Wellington’s right, and thus bring on a battle with every disadvantage to the allies, confined, as the latter would have been, between the French army and the Tormes. These hills were neglected by the English general until a staff officer, who had observed the enemy’s detachments stealing towards them, first informed Beresford, and afterwards Wellington of the fact. The former thought it was of no consequence, but the latter immediately sent the seventh Caçadores to seize the most distant of the rocks, and then a combat occurred similar to that which happened between Cæsar and Afranius at Lerida; for the French seeing the allies’ detachment approaching, broke their own ranks, and running without order to the encounter gained the first Arapiles and kept it, but were repulsed in an endeavour to seize the second. This skirmish was followed by one at Nuestra Señora de la Pena, which was also assailed by a detachment of the seventh division, and so far successfully, that half that height was gained; yet the enemy kept the other half, and Victor Alten, flanking the attack with a squadron of German hussars, lost some men and was himself wounded by a musket-shot. The result of the dispute for the Arapiles rendered a retreat difficult to the allies during day-light; for though the rock gained by the English was a fortress in the way of the French army, Marmont, by extending his left, and by gathering a force behind his own Arapiles, could still frame a dangerous battle and pounce upon the allies during their movement. Wherefore Wellington immediately extended his right into the low ground, placing the light companies of the guards in the village of Arapiles, and the fourth division, with exception of the twenty-seventh regiment, which remained at the rock, on a gentle ridge behind them. The fifth and sixth divisions he gathered in one mass upon the internal slope of the English Arapiles, where from the hollow nature of the ground they were quite hidden from the enemy; and during these movements a sharp cannonade was exchanged from the tops of those frowning hills, on whose crowning rocks the two generals sat like ravenous vultures watching for their quarry.