While these operations were going on, a furious attack was repeated on Fuentes d’Onoro. Infantry, cavalry, and artillery, all were brought to bear--a tremendous cannonade opened on the devoted village--and the assault was made at the same moment on flanks and front together. Desperate fighting in the streets and churchyard took place. The French feeding the attacking troops with fresh numbers, pressed the three regiments,[135] that held the upper village, severely;--but after one of the closest and most desperate combats that has ever been maintained, a bayonet charge of the 88th decided the contest;[136] and the assailants, notwithstanding their vastly superior force, were driven with prodigious slaughter from Fuentes; the upper village remaining in possession of its gallant defenders, and the lower in “the silent occupation of the dead.” Evening closed the combat. Massena’s columns on the right were halted-- and his sixth division, with which he had endeavoured to storm Fuentes d’Onoro, withdrawn--the whole French army bivouacking in the order in which they had stood when the engagement closed. The British lighted their fires, posted their pickets, and occupied the field they had so bravely held; and “both parties lay down to rest, with a confident assurance on their minds, that the battle was only intermitted till the return of daylight.” A brigade of the light division relieved the brave defenders of Fuentes,[137] and preparatory to the expected renewal of attack, they threw up some works to defend the upper village and the ground behind it. But these precautions were unnecessary; Massena remained for the next day in front of his antagonist--exhibiting no anxiety to renew the combat. The 7th found the British, as usual, under arms at dawn, but the day passed as quietly as the preceding one had done. On the 8th, however, the French columns were observed in full retreat, marching on the road to Ciudad Rodrigo. Massena, with an army reinforced by every battalion and squadron he could collect from Gallicia and Castile, had been completely beaten by a wing of the British army, consisting of three divisions only. With that unblushing assurance, for which the French marshals have been remarkable, of changing defeat into conquest, Massena did not hesitate to call Fuentes d’Onoro a victory. But the object for which the battle was fought was unattained--he failed in succouring the beleaguered city--and Almeida was left to its fate. In a close and sanguinary contest, like that of Fuentes d’Onoro, the loss on both sides must necessarily be immense. The British had two hundred killed, one thousand and twenty-eight wounded, and two hundred and ninety-four missing. The French suffered much more heavily; and it was computed that nearly five thousand of Massena’s army were rendered _hors de combat_. In the lower village of Fuentes alone, two hundred dead bodies were reckoned.