It was in this state of affairs that general Stewart, returning from Elizondo by the mountain road, reached the field of battle. The passes of Lessessa and Aretesque were lost, that of Maya was still held by the left wing of the seventy-first, but Stewart seeing Maransin’s men gathered thickly on one side and Abbé’s men on the other, abandoned it to take a new position on the first rocky ridge covering the road over the Atchiola; and he called down the eighty-second regiment from the highest part of that mountain and sent messengers to demand further aid from the seventh division. Meanwhile although wounded himself he made a strenuous resistance, for he was a very gallant man; but during the retrograde movement, Maransin no longer seeking to turn the position, suddenly thrust the head of his division across the front of the British line and connected his left with Abbé, throwing as he passed a destructive fire into the wasted remnant of the ninety-second, which even then sullenly gave way, for the men fell until two-thirds of the whole had gone to the ground. Still the survivors fought, and the left wing of the seventy-first came into action, but, one after the other all the regiments were forced back, and the first position was lost together with the Portuguese guns. [Sidenote: French official report, MSS.] [Sidenote: British official return.] Abbé’s division now followed D’Armagnac on the road to the town of Maya, leaving Maransin to deal with Stewart’s new position, and notwithstanding its extreme strength the French gained ground until six o’clock, for the British, shrunk in numbers, also wanted ammunition, and a part of the eighty-second under major Fitzgerald were forced to roll down stones to defend the rocks on which they were posted. In this desperate condition Stewart was upon the point of abandoning the mountain entirely, when a brigade of the seventh division, commanded by general Barnes, arrived from Echallar, and that officer charging at the head of the sixth regiment drove the French back to the Maya ridge. Stewart thus remained master of the Atchiola, and the count D’Erlon who probably thought greater reinforcements had come up, recalled his other divisions from the Maya road and reunited his whole corps on the _Col_. He had lost fifteen hundred men and a general; but he took four guns, and fourteen hundred British soldiers were killed or wounded. [Sidenote: Southey.] [Sidenote: General Stewart’s Official Report.] [Sidenote: Wellington’s Despatches.]