When Wellington had thus restored the fight in the centre, he directed the first division to push between Foy and the rest of the French army, which would have rendered it impossible for the latter to rally or escape; but this order was not executed, and Foy’s and Maucune’s divisions were skilfully used by Clausel to protect his retreat. Foy, posted on undulating ground and flanked by dragoons, covered the roads to the fords of Huerta and Encina; Maucune, reinforced with fifteen guns, was on a steep ridge in front of the forest, covering the road to Alba de Tormes; and behind this ridge, the rest of the army, then falling back in disorder before the third, fifth and sixth divisions, took refuge. Wellington immediately sent the light division in two lines, flanked by dragoons, against Foy, and supported them with the first division in columns, flanked on the right by two brigades of the fourth division, which he drew from the centre when the sixth division had restored the fight. The seventh division and the Spaniards followed in reserve, the country was covered with troops, and a new army seemed to have arisen out of the earth.
Foy, throwing out a cloud of skirmishers, retired by wings, firing heavily from every rise of ground upon the light division, which returned no shot, save by its skirmishers; for three miles this march was under his musketry, occasionally thickened by a cannonade, but the French aim was baffled by the twilight and rapid gliding of the lines. Meanwhile the French general Desgraviers was killed, the flanking brigades from the fourth division penetrated between Maucune and Foy, and it seemed difficult for the latter to extricate his troops. Yet he did so thus. Augmenting his skirmishers on the last defensible ridge, along the foot of which run a marshy stream, he redoubled his musketry and made a menacing demonstration with his horsemen just as the darkness fell; the British guns immediately opened, a squadron of dragoons galloped forwards from the left, the infantry impetuously hastened to the summit of the hill, and a rough shock seemed at hand, but there was no longer an enemy: the main body had gone into the forest on their left during the firing, and the skirmishers fled swiftly after covered by the smoke and coming night.