us circling round them. Shouts and gesticulations were in vain. He
was a man of giant height and strength, and he actually seized a Spanish
ensign in his iron grip, and carried him bodily, flag and all, at a run
for fifty yards towards the moving French lines, and planted him there.
When released, however, the bewildered Spaniard simply took to his heels
and ran back to his friends, as a terrified sheep might run back to the
flock. In half-an-hour Beresford's battle had grown desperate.
Two-thirds of the French, in compact order of battle, were perpendicular
to his right; the Spaniards were falling into disorder. Soult saw the
victory in his grasp, and eagerly pushed forward his reserves. Over the
whole hill, mingled with furious blasts of rain, rolled the tumult of a
disorderly and broken fight. Ten minutes more would have enabled Soult
to fling Beresford's right, a shattered and routed mass, on the only
possible line of retreat, and with the French superiority in cavalry his
army would have been blotted out.

The share of the British in the fight consisted of three great attacks
delivered by way of counter-stroke to Soult's overwhelming rush on the
hill held by Blake. The first attack was delivered by the second
division, under Colborne, led by General Stewart in person. Stewart was
a sort of British version of Ney, a man of vehement spirit, with a daring
that grew even more flame-like in the eddying tumult and tempest of
actual battle. He saw Soult's attack crumpling up Blake's helpless
battalions, while the flash of the French artillery every moment grew
closer. It was the crisis of the fight, and Stewart brought on
Colborne's men at a run. Colborne himself, a fine soldier with cool
judgment, wished to halt and form his men in order of battle before
plunging into the confused vortex of the fight above; but Stewart, full
of breathless ardour, hurried the brigade up the hill in column of
companies, reached the Spanish right, and began to form line by
succession of battalions as they arrived.

At this moment a wild tempest of rain was sweeping over the British as,
at the double, they came up the hill; the eddying fog, thick and slab
with the smoke of powder, hid everything twenty yards from the panting
soldiers. Suddenly the wall of changing fog to their right sparkled into
swiftly moving spots of red; it shone the next instant with the gleam of
a thousand steel points; above the thunder of the cannon, the