He resolved to march himself upon Baylen, but he was encumbered with an immense train of baggage, and by numerous sick, whom he would not abandon to the cruelties of the enemy; the movement was deferred till the next day, the 18th July. At the approach of night the army began its march. The heat was still suffocating. A great number of soldiers, suffering from dysentery, had been unable to find a place in the wagons, and dragged themselves behind the train, scarcely able to bear the weight of their arms. The anxiety of General Dupont was entirely for his rearguard; he feared that General Castaños, informed of his movements by the hundreds of voluntary spies who served the Spanish cause, would throw himself on his rear. The vanguard was feeble, composed of young and undisciplined soldiers; when it deployed at three in the morning, on the rocky banks of the Rumblar, the Spanish posts occupied the passage. Before the combat, the soldiers rushed towards the bed of the torrent. It was dried up. "The Spaniards have taken away the river!" cried the French, even then disposed to treat painful thoughts with gayety. The Spanish battalions barred the route of Baylen, which General Reding had occupied the previous day. Worn out by the heat, by thirst, by the march, our soldiers charged the enemy, and drove them back as far as the plain of Baylen. There lay extended before us the Spanish army, in front of the little town, in an amphitheatre of hills, covered with olive-trees. The Spanish artillery was formidable: the field-pieces brought up by the French were soon dismounted. The centre of the Spanish army remained solid, and even the charges of cavalry could not break it. When at last the front ranks opened under the shock of the horses, or the steel of the bayonets, the lines reformed at the end of the plain, always pitilessly barring the road. The cannonade did not slacken for a single instant. The soldiers began to show signs of discouragement, and the officers proposed to the general to abandon the sick and the baggage, and to form into a compact mass, in order to open a passage by force in the direction of La Carolina, occupied by General Vedel. Dupont expected his lieutenant every moment. He refused to abandon his train, and vainly renewed the attack on all the length of the Spanish lines. Up to this time the Swiss regiments in the service of France, mixed with our soldiers, and marching in our ranks, had remained faithful; the bad fortune of our arms, the view of their comrades fighting among the Spaniards under a chief of their race, triumphed at last over their good resolutions--they deserted in a body. At the same moment the sound of cannon was heard in the distance, but it was not in the direction of La Carolina, it was at the bridge of Rumblar: General Castaños arrived to crush us.