At first O’Donel who had advanced beyond Castalla, only skirmished with and cannonaded the French in his front, for he had detached the Spanish cavalry to operate by the plains of Villena, to turn the enemy’s right and communicate with Bassecour. While expecting the effects of this movement he was astonished to see the French dragoons come trotting through the pass of Biar, on his left flank; they were followed by some companies of infantry, and only separated from him by a stream over which was a narrow bridge without parapets, and at the same moment the cuirassiers appeared on the other side coming from Onil. The Spanish cavalry had made no effort to interrupt this march from Biar, nor to follow the French through the defile, nor any effort whatever. In this difficulty O’Donel turned two guns against the bridge and supported them with a battalion of infantry, but the French dragoons observing this battalion to be unsteady, braved the fire of the guns, and riding furiously over the bridge seized the battery, and then dashed against and broke the infantry. Delort’s line advanced at the same moment, the cuirassiers charged into the town of Castalla, and the whole Spanish army fled outright. Several hundred sought refuge in an old castle and there surrendered, and of the others three thousand were killed, wounded, or taken, and yet the victors had scarcely fifteen hundred men engaged, and did not lose two hundred. O’Donel attributed his defeat to the disobedience and inactivity of St. Estevan, who commanded his cavalry, but the great fault was the placing that cavalry beyond the defile of Biar instead of keeping it in hand for the battle. This part of the action being over, Mesclop, who had not taken any share in it, was reinforced and returned to succour Ibi, to which place also Harispe was now approaching from Alcoy; but Roche favoured by the strength of the passes escaped, and reached Alicant with little hurt, while the remains of O’Donel’s divisions, pursued by the cavalry on the road of Jumilla, fled to the city of Murcia. Bassecour who had advanced to Almanza was then driven back to his mountain-haunts, where Villa Campa rejoined him. It was at this moment that Maitland’s armament disembarked and the remnants of the Spanish force rallied. The king, then flying from Madrid, immediately changed the direction of his march from the Morena to Valencia, and one more proof was given that it was England and not Spain which resisted the French; for Alicant would have fallen, if not as an immediate consequence of this defeat, yet surely when the king’s army had joined Suchet.