_First battle of Sauroren._—It was fought on the fourth anniversary of the battle of Talavera. About mid-day the French gathered at the foot of the position and their skirmishers rushing forward spread over the face of the mountain, working upward like a conflagration; but the columns of attack were not all prepared when Clauzel’s division in the valley of Lanz, too impatient to await the general signal of battle, threw out its flankers on the ridge beyond the river and pushed down the valley in one mass. With a rapid pace it turned Cole’s left and was preparing to wheel up on his rear, when a Portuguese brigade of the sixth division, suddenly appearing on the crest of the ridge beyond the river, drove the French flankers back and instantly descended with a rattling fire upon the right and rear of the column in the valley. And almost at the same instant, the main body of the sixth division emerging from behind the same ridge, near the village of Oricain, formed in order of battle across the front. It was the counter-stroke of Salamanca! The French, striving to encompass the left of the allies were themselves encompassed, for two brigades of the fourth division turned and smote them from the left, the Portuguese smote them from the right; and while thus scathed on both flanks with fire, they were violently shocked and pushed back with a mighty force by the sixth division, yet not in flight, but fighting fiercely and strewing the ground with their enemies’ bodies as well as with their own.