Here, however, he was overtaken and brought to action, on the 16th June, by Sir Arthur. Although the position was strong, and the brigade of Guards were the only infantry come up, the British general instantly made his dispositions for attack. The left was turned by the rifle corps, the Guards advancing boldly in front. After delivering a volley at the head of the column when it showed itself, the French precipitately fled--and, hurrying through the village in their rear, succeeded, under cover of darkness, in escaping. Some delay in clearing a defile allowed the horse artillery to come up, and their rapid fire did considerable execution before the crowd of fugitives could get beyond its range. The next morning’s dawn renewed the pursuit; and every turn of the road, cumbered with broken vehicles and deserted baggage, showed how severely the French army had been pressed. The bridge was nearly impassable from dead men and slain horses laid there in heaps by the grape and canister of the British guns. Arms, accoutrements, ham-strung mules, guns, tumbrils, knapsacks filled with silver plate, tapestry, and other valuable plunder were strewn indiscriminately along the line. To add to this scene of waste and suffering, the villages the advancing army entered were either in a blaze, or already reduced to ashes; for between the French troops and peasantry a deadly war of extermination was being carried on, and on both sides deeds of cruelty were every day perpetrated that can hardly be credited or described. Indeed, the French retreat through the Gallician mountains was only paralleled by the British on Corunna; with this exception, that many a straggler from the British columns was saved by the humanity of the Spaniards, while the unhappy Frenchman who lagged but a few hundred yards behind the rearguard, was butchered by the infuriated peasantry, bent on the work of slaughter and burning for vengeance on an enemy, who, in his day of conquest, and dominion, had taught the lesson of cruelty now practised so unrelentingly on himself. Soult turning from Montalegre towards Orense, and a French corps from Estremadura having moved on Alcantara, induced Sir Arthur Wellesley to discontinue the pursuit. The French marshal crossed the frontier on the 18th with barely nineteen thousand men, his guns, stores, and baggage abandoned to the conquerors. Ten weeks, perfect in every arm, that army had passed through Orense on its march to Oporto, mustering twenty-six thousand veteran soldiers. A short period had wrought a fearful change, and even the debris of that once splendid corps was only extricated from total destruction by the admirable tact and unbending _hardiesse_ of their brave and gifted leader.