General Hill, having sent all his baggage artillery and wounded men to Berioplano behind the Cristoval ridge, still occupied his strong ground between Lizasso and Arestegui, covering the Marcalain and Irurzun roads, and menacing that leading from Lizasso to Olague in rear of Soult’s right. His communication with Oricain was maintained by the seventh division, and the light division was approaching his left. Thus on Wellington’s side the crisis was over. He had vindicated his position with only sixteen thousand combatants, and now, including the troops still maintaining the blockade, he had fifty thousand, twenty thousand being British, in close military combination. Thirty thousand flushed with recent success were in hand, and Hill’s troops were well-placed for retaking the offensive. Soult’s situation was proportionably difficult. Finding that he could not force the allies’ position in front, he had sent his artillery part of his cavalry and his wounded men back to France immediately after the battle, ordering the two former to join Villatte on the Lower Bidassoa and there await further instructions. Having shaken off this burthen he awaited D’Erlon’s arrival by the valley of Lanz, and that general reached Ostiz a few miles above Sauroren at mid-day on the 29th, bringing intelligence, obtained indirectly during his march, that general Graham had retired from the Bidassoa and Villatte had crossed that river. This gave Soult a hope that his first movements had disengaged San Sebastian, and he instantly conceived a new plan of operations, dangerous indeed yet conformable to the critical state of his affairs. [Sidenote: Soult’s Official Correspondence, MSS.] No success was to be expected from another attack, yet he could not at the moment of being reinforced with eighteen thousand men, retire by the road he came without some dishonour; nor could he remain where he was, because his supplies of provisions and ammunition derived from distant magazines by slow and small convoys was unequal to the consumption. Two-thirds of the British troops, the greatest part of the Portuguese, and all the Spaniards were, as he supposed, assembled in his front under Wellington, or on his right flank under Hill, and it was probable that other reinforcements were on the march; wherefore he resolved to prolong his right with D’Erlon’s corps, and then cautiously drawing off the rest of his army place himself between the allies and the Bastan, in military connection with his reserve and closer to his frontier magazines. Thus posted and able to combine all his troops in one operation, he expected to relieve San Sebastian entirely and profit from the new state of affairs. [Sidenote: Plan 2.]