This rampart and fort, and the hog’s-back itself, were defended by Barbot’s brigade of Maransin’s division, and the line of retreat was towards a low narrow neck of land, which bridging the deep ravine linked the Rhune to Clauzel’s main position: a reserve was placed here, partly to sustain the thirty-fourth French regiment posted on the slope of the mountain towards Sarre, partly to protect the neck of land on the side of that village. As this neck was the only approach to the French position in that part, to storm the smaller Rhune was a necessary preliminary to the general battle, wherefore Alten, filing his troops after dark on the 9th from the Hermitage, the Commissary mountain, and the Puerto de Vera, collected them at midnight on that slope of the greater Rhune which descended towards Ascain. The main body of the light division, turning the marsh by the left, was to assail the stone traverse and lap over the star fort by the ravine beyond; Longa, stretching still farther on the left, was to turn the smaller Rhune altogether; and the forty-third regiment supported by the seventeenth Portuguese was to assail the hog’s-back. One battalion of riflemen and the mountain-guns were however left on the summit of the greater Rhune, with orders to assail the craggy post between the Rhunes and connect Alten’s attack with that of Giron’s Spaniards. All these troops gained their respective stations so secretly that the enemy had no suspicion of their presence, although for several hours the columns were lying within half musket-shot of the works. Towards morning indeed five or six guns, fired in a hurried manner from the low ground near the sea, broke the stillness, but the French on the Rhune remained quiet, and the British troops awaited the rising of the sun when three guns fired from the Atchubia mountain were to give the signal of attack. BATTLE OF THE NIVELLE.