[205] I cannot find the authority for Napier’s statement that Fane joined Ferguson in the second move. He seems still to have acted in the centre.
Wellesley had not intended to assault the Columbeira heights till the turning movements of Trant and Ferguson should be well developed. But, contrary to his intention, part of his centre pushed forward at once, and when it was engaged the other troops in the front line were sent up to its aid. The face of the hill was scarred by four ‘passes’ as Wellesley called them, or rather large ravines, up each of which some of the British troops tried to penetrate. On the extreme right the light companies of Hill’s brigade, supported by the first battalion of the 5th Regiment from the same brigade, delivered their attack up one gully. The second pass, just beyond the village of Columbeira, was assayed by the 29th from Nightingale’s brigade, with the 9th of Hill’s in support. The 82nd went towards the centre, while Fane’s two rifle battalions and the 45th tried the heights far to the left.
The 29th Regiment, urged on by the rash courage of its colonel, Lake, attacked some time before any other corps was engaged. It pushed up a narrow craggy pass, the bed of a dried-up mountain torrent, where in some places only two or three men abreast could keep their footing: the further that the battalion advanced, the more did the ravine recede into the centre of the enemy, and the 29th was soon being fired on from three sides. The right wing, which led, at last forced its way to the brow of the hill, and was able to deploy in a more or less imperfect way, and to commence its fire. In front of it were the few companies of the 4th Swiss, some of whom tried to surrender, calling out that they were friends, turning up their musket butts, and rushing in to shake hands with the British[206]. But before the 29th could fully recover its formation, it was fiercely charged from the rear: some of the French troops on the lower slopes of the position, finding themselves likely to be cut off, formed in a dense mass and rushed straight through the right wing of Colonel Lake’s regiment from behind, breaking it, killing its commander and capturing six officers and some thirty of its rank and file, whom they took back with them in triumph. The 29th reeled down the slope into a wood, where it reformed on its comparatively intact left wing, and then resumed the fight, aided by the 9th, its supporting regiment. About this moment the 5th and Fane’s rifles made other attacks on the two ends of the hostile line, but were at first checked. Delaborde and his brigadier, Brennier, had only four battalions on the ridge, as they had detached three companies of the 70th far to their right in the direction in which Ferguson was moving. But they held their ground very gallantly, waiting till the British skirmishers had begun to get a lodgement on the brow, and then charging each detachment as it tried to deploy, and forcing it down to the edge of the wood that covered the lower slopes. Three assaults were thus repulsed, but the British troops would not be denied--Wellesley wrote that he had never seen more gallant fighting than that of the 9th and the 29th[207]--and after each reverse formed up again and came on once more. After two hours of desperate struggles they made good their lodgement on the crest at several points: Ferguson’s troops (though they had lost their way and wasted much time) began to appear on the extreme left, and Delaborde then saw that it was time for him to go.
