To aid Reille’s progress and to provide for the concentration of the whole army at Oyarzun, Clauzel was directed to make a simultaneous attack from Vera, not as at first designed by driving the allies from Santa Barbara and seizing the bridges, but leaving one division and his guns on the ridges above Vera to keep the light division in check, to cross the river by two fords just below the town of Vera with the rest of his troops, and assail that slope of the Pena de Haya where the Portuguese brigade and the troops under general Inglis were posted. Then forcing his way upwards to the forge of San Antonio, which commanded the intersection of the roads leading round the head of the mountain, he could aid Reille directly by falling on the rear of San Marcial, or meet him at Oyarzun by turning the rocky summit of the Pena de Haya. [Sidenote: August.] [Sidenote: Soult’s Official Report, MSS.] _Combat of San Marcial._ At daylight on the 31st, Reille, under protection of the French guns, forded the river above Biriatu with two divisions and two pieces of artillery. He quickly seized a detached ridge of inferior height just under San Marcial, and leaving there one brigade as a reserve detached another to attack the Spanish left by a slope which descended in that quarter to the river. Meanwhile with La Martiniere’s division he assailed their right. But the side of the mountain was covered with brushwood and remarkably steep, the French troops being ill-managed preserved no order, the supports and the skirmishers mixing in one mass got into confusion, and when two-thirds of the height were gained the Spaniards charged in columns and drove the assailants headlong down.