Drouet passed the Tagus the 29th at the abandoned fords of Fuente Dueñas and Villa Maurique, and the king, with his guards, repaired to Zarza de la Cruz. Meanwhile Soult whose divisions were coming fast up to Ocaña, restored the bridge of Aranjuez, and passed the Tagus also with his advanced guard. On the 30th he attacked general Cole who commanded at the Puente Larga with several regiments and some guns, but though the mines failed and the French attempted to carry the bridge with the bayonet they were vigorously repulsed by the forty-seventh under Colonel Skerrit. After a heavy cannonade and a sharp musketry which cost the allies sixty men, Soult relinquished the attempt and awaited the arrival of his main body. Had the Puente Larga been forced, the fourth division which was at Añover would have been cut off from Madrid, but the weather being thick and rainy, Soult could not discover what supporting force was on the high land of Valdemoro behind the bridge and was afraid to push forward too fast. The king discontented with this cautious mode of proceeding now designed to operate by Toledo, but during the night the Puente Larga was abandoned, and Soult, being still in doubt of Hill’s real object, advised Joseph to unite the army of the centre at Arganda and Chinchon, throwing bridges for retreat at Villa Maurique and Fuente Dueñas as a precaution in case a battle should take place. Hill’s movement was however a decided retreat, which would have commenced twenty-four hours sooner but for the failure of the mines and the combat at the Puente Larga. Wellington’s orders had reached him at the moment when Soult first appeared on the Tagus, and the affair was so sudden, that the light division, which had just come from Alcala to Arganda to close the left of the position, was obliged, without halting, to return again in the night, the total journey being nearly forty miles. Wellington, foreseeing that it might be difficult for Hill to obey his instructions, had given him a discretionary power to retire either by the valley of the Tagus, or by the Guadarama; and a position taken up in the former, on the flank of the enemy, would have prevented the king from passing the Guadarama, and at the same time have covered Lisbon; whereas a retreat by the Guadarama exposed Lisbon. Hill, thinking the valley of the Tagus, in that advanced season, would not support the French army, and knowing Wellington to be pressed by superior forces in the north, chose the Guadarama. Wherefore, burning his pontoons, and causing La China and the stores remaining there to be destroyed in the night of the 30th, he retreated by different roads, and united his army on the 31st of October near Majadahonda. Meanwhile the magazines along the line of communication to Badajos were, as I have already noticed, in danger if the enemy had detached troops to seize them, neither were the removal and destruction of the stores in Madrid effected without disorders of a singular nature.