, so that the French battery on the rocks raked the
whole line of battle. One of Baird's brigades was in column behind the
right, and one of Hope's behind the left; Paget's reserve posted at the
village of Airis, behind the centre, looked down the valley separating
the right of the position front the hills occupied by the French
cavalry. A battalion detached from the reserve kept these horsemen
in check, and was itself connected with the main body by a chain of
skirmishers extended across the valley. Fraser's division held the
heights immediately before the gates of Corunna, watching the coast
road, but it was also ready to succour any point.

When Laborde's division arrived, the French force was not less than
twenty thousand men, and the Duke of Dalmatia made no idle evolutions of
display. Distributing his lighter guns along the front of his position,
he opened a fire from the heavy battery on his left, and instantly
descended the mountain, with three columns covered by clouds of
skirmishers. The British pickets were driven back in disorder, and the
village of Elvina was carried by the first French column.

The ground about that village was intersected by stone walls and hollow
roads; a severe scrambling fight ensued, the French were forced back
with great loss, and the fiftieth regiment entering the village with the
retiring mass, drove it, after a second struggle in the street, quite
beyond the houses. Seeing this, the general ordered up a battalion of
the guards to fill the void in the line made by the advance of those
regiments; whereupon, the forty-second, mistaking his intention,
retired, with exception of the grenadiers; and at that moment, the enemy
being reinforced, renewed the fight beyond the village. Major Napier,
commanding the fiftieth, was wounded and taken prisoner, and Elvina
then became the scene of another contest; which being observed by
the Commander-in-Chief, he addressed a few animating words to the
forty-second, and caused it to return to the attack. Paget had now
descended into the valley, and the line of the skirmishers being thus
supported, vigorously checked the advance of the enemy's troops in that
quarter, while the fourth regiment galled their flank; at the same time
the centre and left of the army also became engaged, Baird was severely
wounded, and a furious action ensued along the line, in the valley, and
on the hills.

General Sir John Moore, while earnestly watching the result of t