564 
ACHIEVEMENTS OF FIELD ARTILLERY. 
menced to move his reserve to the rear, and was contemplating a 
general withdrawal when the 3rd and 7th Divisions of the Allied force 
made a rush on the bridge at Mendoza and crossed the river, while the 
light division moved from Villodas to Tres Puentes, and crossing there 
took the advanced French post in rear, and the French were forced to 
take np a position on the heights before Arinez. The 4th Division, 
under General Cole, also advanced from the bridge at Nanclares, joined 
in the attack of the left wing, and the heavy cavalry, also passing the 
river, filled the interval between Cole and Hill. 
When the French were thus caught in the midst of their dispositions 
for retreat, they threw out a great battery of 50 guns which, supported 
by crowds of skirmishers, gave breathing time to their hard pressed 
comrades by the effective and active fire which they kept up on the 
advancing enemy. Then the first great artillery duel of this battle, rich 
in artillery achievements, commenced, for Wellington called to his 
assistance several brigades of British gnus, and the front of both 
armies was soon shrouded in the dense smoke of the contending artil¬ 
leries. During this contest the French gradually drew off their troops 
to a second position in front of Gomecha, where they had posted their 
reserve, but their rear-guard still clung to the village of Arinez, and 
held back the rising tide of the Allied onset. 
But Picton’s and KempPs brigades after severe fighting succeeded in 
carrying the village, and the 7th Division on their left, and the 4th on 
their right were soon also triumphantly forcing their way onward. 
Thus it was that the French troops at Subijana found their position 
turned, and being hard pressed, both in their front and on their left, 
they fell back in a disordered mass and tried to gain the great line of 
retreat to Vittoria. Soon they dissolved into a more or less confused 
multitude, and but for the broken nature of the ground would have 
been totally disorganised and destroyed. As it was, many cannon were 
taken, as the English followed them in a running fight, nor was any 
effective stand made until they gained the last defensible height about 
a mile in front of Yittoria. There they turned and faced their foes, for 
chaos reigned behind them, betweemthem and the city, and the plain 
was blocked with a confused collection of carriages and animals, non- 
combatants, women and children, all huddled together in panic stricken 
helplessness. As Napier says:—“It was the wreck of a nation.” 
With desperate energy the French gunners laboured to delay the 
ruin they could no longer avert, and 80 guns massed together again 
opened a terrible cannonade, while the remains of their armies formed 
up between the villages of Ali and Armentia and made a most 
determined resistance. 
Now it was that another famous artillery duel took place, and that 
our guns, handled with an unusual boldness, and in a manner calculated 
to develop their effect to the fullest extent, did such excellent service. 
The great mass of French guns brought our advance for a time to a 
stand-still, and they had begun to diseDgage their infantry in succession 
from the right, when the 4th Division carried the hill on their left, and 
immediately all the heights were abandoned. 
Seeing the great road blocked, the French endeavoured to gain 
