The difficulty, great before, was now much increased. An attentive examination of the French defences convinced Hill that to reduce the works in the pass, he must incur more loss than was justifiable, and finish in such plight that he could not afterwards carry the forts at the bridge, which were the chief objects of his expedition. Yet it was only through the pass of Mirabete that the artillery could move against the bridge. In this dilemma, after losing the 17th and part of the 18th in fruitless attempts to discover some opening through which to reach the valley of Almaraz with his guns, he resolved to leave them on the Sierra with the centre column, and to make a false attack upon the tower with general Chowne’s troops while he himself, with the right column, secretly penetrated by the scarcely practicable line of La Cueva and Roman Gordo to the bridge, intent, with infantry alone, to storm works which were defended by eighteen pieces of artillery and powerful garrisons! This resolution was even more hardy, and bold, than it appears without a reference to the general state of affairs. Hill’s march had been one of secrecy, amidst various divisions of the enemy; he was four days’ journey distant from Merida, which was his first point of retreat; he expected that Drouet would be reinforced, and advance towards Medellin, and hence, whether defeated or victorious at Almaraz, that his own retreat would be very dangerous; exceedingly so if defeated, because his fine British troops could not be repulsed with a small loss, and he should have to fall back through a difficult country, with his best soldiers dispirited by failure, and burthened with numbers of wounded men. Then harassed on one side by Drouet, pursued by Foy and D’Armagnac on the other, he would have been exposed to the greatest misfortunes, every slanderous tongue would have been let loose on the rashness of attacking impregnable forts, and a military career, hitherto so glorious, might have terminated in shame. But general Hill being totally devoid of interested ambition, was necessarily unshaken by such fears.