with these people was personal rancour; hence those troops who had behaved so ill in action, and the inhabitants, who alike withheld their sympathy and their aid from the English soldiers, to whose bravery they owed the preservation of their town, were busily engaged after the battle in beating out the brains of the wounded French, as they lay upon the field; and they were only checked by the English soldiers, who, in some instances, fired upon the perpetrators of this horrible iniquity. Hitherto the allied generals had paid little attention to the Duke of Dalmatia’s movements; but on the 30th of July information was received that he had entered Placentia at the head of an imposing force. The danger of the British on account of their numerical inferiority was extreme; in fact, the fate of the Peninsula was suspended on a thread, which the events of a few hours might dissever; and yet it was so ordered that no irreparable disaster ensued. The generals on each side at length became acquainted with each other’s strength; and this, it will be believed, was a moment of extreme peril for the British. Their progress was barred in front, the Tagus was on their left, impassable mountains on their right, and it was certain that the retreat of the Spanish would bring down the king and Victor upon their rear. In this trying moment Sir Arthur Wellesley abated nothing of his usual calmness and fortitude. He knew not the full extent of the danger; but assuming the enemy in his front to be thirty thousand men, and Victor to have twenty-five thousand others in his rear, he judged that to continue the offensive would be rash, because he must fight and defeat those two marshals 82separately within three days, which, with starving and tired troops, inferior in number, was scarcely to be accomplished. The movements of Sir Arthur were executed with precision and success. About noon, the road being clear, the columns marched to the bridge, and at two o’clock the whole army was in position on the other side; the present danger was therefore averted, and the combinations of the enemy baffled.