When within two miles of Toulouse, we could distinguish the black columns of the enemy filing out of the town to the eastward, and forming in order of battle on the _Terre de Cabade_, which was crowned with redoubts, and constituted the _apex_ of their grand position nearly three miles long, and extending in a southerly direction by Calvinet, towards the road of Montauban. They also occupied with a small body of troops and two pieces of light artillery, the detached eminence of _la Borde de La Pugade_, for the purpose of watching the movements on the left and centre of our army. This small hill was of fallow ground, without hedges, trees, or entrenchments. At the first view, the French army seemed to be formed from the right bank of the Garonne, and resting their right flank on the detached hill of _la Borde de la Pugade_, which, in reality, only formed a dislocated elbow of their position. The ancient wall of the town was lined by the enemy, being covered at a short distance by the royal canal (which communicates with the Garonne), and runs in a half circle round the north and west sides of Toulouse. Over it there were six bridges, within five miles, occupied as _têtes-du-pont_; the three to the southward being marked by the before-mentioned heights, which gave the enemy an exceedingly strong position, and to embrace which it was necessary to split our army into three distinct bodies, to be ready to fight independently of each other—as follows:— Lord Hill's corps was stationed on the left bank of the Garonne (to coop up the enemy in the entrenched faubourg of St. Ciprien), but was so completely cut off from the army destined to fight the battle, owing to the river intervening, that the nearest communication with it was, at least, sixteen miles by the pontoon bridge we had crossed in the morning—although, as the bird flew, little more than two miles from the right flank of the army, composed of four divisions, and a corps of Spaniards which were destined to fight the battle. The right wing consisted of the third and light divisions, the centre of the Spaniards, and the left wing of the fourth and sixth divisions with the great bulk of the cavalry, ready to shoot forward from the village of Montblanc, to throw the enemy on two sides of a square.