The Commissari, which is a continuation of the Bayonette towards the great Rhune, was covered by a profound gulf thickly wooded and defended with skirmishers, and between this gulf and another of the same nature the main road, leading from Vera over the Puerto, pierced the centre of the French position. Rugged and ascending with short abrupt turns this road was blocked at every uncovered point with abbatis and small retrenchments; each obstacle was commanded, at half musquet shot, by small detachments placed on all the projecting parts overlooking the ascent, and a regiment, entrenched above on the Puerto itself, connected the troops on the crest of the Bayonette and Commissari with those on the saddle-ridge, against which Giron’s attack was directed. But between Alten’s right and Giron’s left was an isolated ridge called by the soldiers the _Boar’s back_, the summit of which, about half a mile long and rounded at each end, was occupied by four French companies. This huge cavalier, thrown as it were into the gulf to cover the Puerto and saddle ridges, although of mean height in comparison of the towering ranges behind, was yet so great that the few warning shots fired from the summit by the enemy, reached the allies at its base with that slow singing sound which marks the dying force of a musquet-ball. It was essential to take the Boar’s back before the general attack commenced, and five companies of British riflemen, supported by the seventeenth Portuguese regiment, were ordered to assail it at the Vera end, while a battalion of Giron’s Spaniards preceded by a detached company of the forty-third attacked it on the other. [Sidenote: Clauzel’s Official Report, MSS.] At four o’clock in the morning Clauzel had received intelligence that the Bayonette was to be assaulted that day or the next, and at seven o’clock he heard from Conroux, who commanded at Sarre, that Giron’s camps were abandoned although the tents of the seventh division were still standing; at the same time the sound of musquetry was heard on the side of Urdax, a cannonade on the side of Irun, and then came Taupin’s report that the vale of Vera was filled with troops. To this last quarter Clauzel hurried. The Spaniards had already driven Conroux’s outposts from the gorge leading to Sarre, and a detachment was creeping up towards the unguarded head of the great Rhune. He immediately ordered four regiments of Conroux’s division to occupy the summit the front and the flanks of that mountain, and he formed a reserve of two other regiments behind. With these troops he designed to secure the mountain and support Taupin, but ere they could reach their destination that general’s fate was decided. [Sidenote: Plan 5.]