ats of Sauroren, and each was, in Wellington's own
phrase, "bludgeon work"--a battle of soldiers rather than of generals,
a tangle of fierce charges and counter-charges, of volleys delivered so
close that they scorched the very clothes of the opposing lines, and
sustained so fiercely that they died down only because the lines of
desperately firing men crumbled into ruin and silence. Nothing could
be finer than the way in which a French column, swiftly, sternly, and
without firing a shot, swept up a craggy steep crowned by rocks like
castles, held by some Portuguese battalions, and won the position.
Ross's brigade, in return, with equal vehemence recharged the position
from its side, and dashed the French out of it; the French in still
greater force came back, a shouting mass, and crushed Ross's men. Then
Wellington sent forward Byng's brigade at running pace, and hurled the
French down the mountain side. At another point in the pass the French
renewed their assault four times; in their second assault they gained
the summit. The 40th were in reserve at that point; they waited in
steady silence till the edge of the French line, a confused mass of
tossing bayonets and perspiring faces, came clear over the crest; then,
running forward with extraordinary fury, they flung them, a broken,
tumultuous mass, down the slope. In the later charges, so fierce and
resolute were the French officers that they were seen dragging their
tired soldiers up the hill by their belts!

It is idle to attempt the tale of this wild mountain fighting. Soult
at last fell back, and Wellington followed, swift and vehement, on his
track, and moved Alten's column to intercept the French retreat. The
story of Alten's march is a marvellous record of soldierly endurance.
His men pressed on with speed for nineteen consecutive hours, and
covered forty miles of mountain tracks, wilder than the Otway Ranges,
or the paths of the Australian Alps between Bright and Omeo. The
weather was close; many men fell and died, convulsed and frothing at
the mouth. Still, their officers leading, the regiment kept up its
quick step, till, as evening fell, the head of the column reached the
edge of the precipice overlooking the bridge across which, in all the
confusion of a hurried retreat, the French troops were crowding. "We
overlooked the enemy," says Cook in his "Memoirs," "at stone's-throw.
The river separated us; but the French were wedged in a narrow road,
with