For Craufurd, fancying or hoping that the enemy were moving off, and ever anxious to be the first in pursuit, took two or three soldiers with him, and walked cautiously along the causeway so far that the French sentry challenged and fired; Craufurd ordered his escort to return it. And this alarmed the enemy; who, fancying probably that the English were crossing the bridge in force, opened a heavy fire, the balls of which rattled among the olive trees where the weary Riflemen were bivouacked, and rudely disturbed their rest. However, at last the uproar ceased; and when day broke on the 19th it was found that during the remainder of the night the French had formidably increased the strength of their position by placing _abattis_ on the causeway and breastworks at the end of it. They had also placed guns on the high ground which rose behind, and which they had also fortified with _abattis_. The position, in fact, was a very strong one: in front the Rio Mayor, and swampy ground crossed only by the bridge and causeway; on the left the Tagus, with ground rising in bold and hilly eminences; and the considerable town of Santarem about a league in the rear. After bivouacking in a pine-wood near Valle, where, as in the previous night, they suffered from torrents of rain, they were ordered on the 20th to cross by a bridge near Valle to the left of the enemy’s position and to attack his picquets. The Battalion was employed to drive in the enemy’s advanced party, which they effected in fine style, and with but slight loss, though under sharp fire from the French light troops for about two hours. The object of this reconnaissance was to ascertain whether Massena’s whole force occupied the position or only a rear-guard; though, as Beckwith observed in his north-country phrase to a staff officer who asserted his certainty that it was but the latter, ‘It was a _gay_ rear-guard that built that _abattis_ in a night.’ However, it being evident that the whole of Massena’s army held this strong position, the Battalion was withdrawn and placed in houses, cottages and sheds, near the bridge. On it they had double sentries; close to it an outlying picquet of three hundred men; a large inlying picquet close by; and the rest of the Battalion, sleeping always by their arms, were ready, in case of an alarm, to turn out at a minute’s notice. As the Battalion remained thus posted at Valle, near the bridge to Santarem, during the winter, and there is nothing to record of them for four months, I shall return to trace the services of the 2nd and 3rd Battalions; observing only that General Craufurd at this time went on leave of absence to England, and that Sir William Erskine succeeded to the command of the Light Division during his absence.