The fighting now became severe, as the Frenchmen held tenaciously to their position on the Hermandad ridge, and raked the assailants with artillery fire from the village of Margarita, until the 52nd Light Infantry coming up, charged the enemy out of the village. The 3rd and Light Divisions then pressed southwards and carried the village of Ariñez, from which the defenders rapidly withdrew. Thence the victorious Allies swept east, and followed the French, now ordered to retire upon Vittoria. Hill had worked his way forward on the right; the far-distant sounds of Graham's attack on the left could be distinctly heard through the din of battle; and Wellington knew that all was going well. At this juncture King Joseph began to realise the situation; that his flanks were in imminent danger, and that his centre, still six miles in front of Vittoria, ran the risk of being cut off and annihilated; so, unwillingly, he ordered a retirement. And his men, magnificent soldiers that they were, gave an object-lesson in the art of defending and retiring from successive positions. The six miles of country over which the ensuing running fight took place was undulating, rough, and broken; and the enemy, knowing each ridge, hillock, and fold in the ground, made every use of such knowledge, so that resistance was constant. Successive positions were taken up, and defended with gun and musket, until their defence seemed hopeless; and each position abandoned told its tale of destruction--of dead and wounded Frenchmen, and of captured guns. Hour after hour the battle raged, and at about six o'clock in the evening the enemy made his last stand on a low ridge, barely a mile from Vittoria, refusing to acknowledge even then that he was beaten. Here stood eighty guns, pouring grape and round shot on the assailants, while amongst the guns and on their flanks the infantry used their muskets with deadly effect. For the moment the Allies were unable to face the storm, and the French general, noticing the recoil of the 3rd Division, and under the impression that he was fighting a rearguard action, commenced to withdraw the troops on his left flank. But the 4th Division, observing the movement, rushed headlong on the retiring body, and carried the position. Then, and not till then, did King Joseph, watching events from the town, understand that the day was lost. Up till that moment he had imagined his centre to be impregnable, his left flank to be secure, and Reille still holding his ground on the right. Yet there were few of the inhabitants of Vittoria so sanguine as the king, and early in the afternoon the roads running east from the town were already blocked with carriages, carts, and fugitives on foot. Then, when the centre gave way, panic prevailed; the king ordered the guns to take the road to Salvatierra; the allied cavalry swept through and round Vittoria, and the infantry followed with all speed.