Before it was fully daylight General Chabert and his brigade had thrust back the Spanish outposts. But the strength of the insurgent army was quite unknown to him: the morning dusk still lay in the folds of the hills, and he thought that he might possibly have in front of him nothing but some flying column of insignificant strength. Accordingly, after allowing the whole of his brigade to come up, Chabert formed a small line of attack, brought up his battery along the high road to the middle of the amphitheatre, between the horns of the Spanish position, and made a vigorous push forward. He operated almost entirely to the south of the road, where, opposite Coupigny’s division, the hill was lower and the slope gentler than further north.
To dislodge 14,000 men and twenty guns in position with 3,000 men and six guns was of course a military impossibility. But Chabert had the excuse that he did not, and could not, know what he was doing. His attempt was of course doomed to failure: his battery was blown to pieces by the Spanish guns, acting from a concentric position, the moment that it opened. His four battalions, after pushing back Coupigny’s skirmishing line for a few hundred yards, were presently checked by the reserves which the Spaniard sent forward. Having come to a stand they soon had to retire, and with heavy loss. The brigade drew back to the cover of the olive groves behind it, leaving two dismounted guns out in the open.
Behind Chabert the enormous convoy was blocking the way as far back as the bridge of the Rumblar. Five hundred wagons with their two or four oxen apiece, took up, when strung along the road, more than two and a half miles. Dupont, who rode up at the sound of the cannon, and now clearly saw the Spanish line drawn up on a front of two miles north and south of the road, realized that this was no skirmish but a pitched battle. His action was governed by the fact that he every moment expected to hear the guns of Castaños thundering behind him, and to find that he was attacked in rear as well as in front. He accordingly resolved to deliver a second assault as quickly as possible, before this evil chance might come upon him. With some difficulty the Swiss battalions, Dupré’s brigade of light cavalry, and Privé’s dragoons pushed their way past the convoy and got into the open. They were terribly tired, having marched all night and covered fifteen miles of bad road, but their general threw them at once into the fight: Pannetier’s brigade and the Marines of the Guard were still far to the rear, at or near the bridge of the Rumblar.
Dupont’s second attack was a fearful mistake: he should at all costs have concentrated his whole army for one desperate stroke, for there was no more chance that 6,000 men could break the Spanish line than there had been that Chabert’s 3,000 could do so. But without waiting for Pannetier to come up, he delivered his second attack. The four Swiss battalions advanced to the north of the road, Chabert’s rallied brigade to the south of it: to the right of the latter were Privé’s heavy cavalry, two and a half regiments strong, with whom Dupont intended to deliver his main blow. They charged with admirable vigour and precision, cut up two Spanish battalions which failed to form square in time, and cleared the summit of the Cerrajon. But when, disordered with their first success, they rode up against Coupigny’s reserves, they failed to break through. Their own infantry was too far to the rear to help them, and after a gallant struggle to hold their ground, the dragoons and cuirassiers fell back to their old position. When they were already checked, Chabert and Schramm pushed forward to try their fortune: beaten off by the central battery of the Spanish line and its infantry supports, they recoiled to the edge of the olive wood, and there reformed.
The French were now growing disheartened, and Dupont saw disaster impending over him so closely that he seems to have lost his head, and to have retained no other idea save that of hurling every man that he could bring up in fruitless attacks on the Spanish centre. He hurried up from the rear Pannetier’s brigade of infantry, leaving at the bridge of the Rumblar only the single battalion of the Marines of the Guard. At eight o’clock the reinforcements had come up, and the attack was renewed. This time the main stress was at the northern end of the line, where Pannetier was thrown forward, with orders to drive Reding’s right wing off the Cerro del Zumacar Grande, while the other battalions renewed their assault against the Spanish centre and left. But the exhausted troops on the right of the line, who had been fighting since daybreak, made little impression on Coupigny’s front, and Reding’s last reserves were brought forward to check and hold off the one fresh brigade of which Dupont could dispose.
The fourth attack had failed. The French general had now but one intact battalion, that of the Marines of the Guard, which had been left with the baggage at the bridge over the Rumblar, to protect the rear against the possible advent of Castaños. As there were still no signs of an attack from that side, Dupont brought up this corps, ranged it across the road in the centre of the line, and drew up behind it all that could be rallied of Chabert’s and Pannetier’s men. The whole formed a sort of wedge, with which he hoped to break through the Spanish centre by one last effort. The cavalry advanced on the flanks, Privé’s brigade to the south, Dupré’s to the north of the road. Dupont himself, with all his staff around him, placed himself at the head of the marines, and rode in front of the line, waving his sword and calling to the men that this time they must cut their way through [12.30 P.M.].
All was in vain: the attack was pressed home, the marines pushed up to the very muzzles of the Spanish cannon placed across the high road, and Dupré’s chasseurs drove in two battalions in Reding’s right centre. But the column could get no further forward: the marines were almost exterminated: Dupré was shot dead: Dupont received a painful (but not dangerous) wound in the hip, and rode to the rear. Then the whole attack collapsed, and the French rolled back in utter disorder to the olive groves which sheltered their rear. The majority of the rank and file of the two Swiss regiments in the centre threw up the butts of their muskets in the air and surrendered—or rather deserted—to the enemy[151].
At this moment, just as the firing died down at the front, a lively fusillade was heard from another quarter. Cruz-Murgeon’s light column, from the side of the mountains, had come down upon the Rumblar bridge, and had begun to attack the small baggage-guard[152] which remained with the convoy. All was up. Cruz-Murgeon was the forerunner of La Peña, and Dupont had not a man left to send to protect his rear. The battalions were all broken up, the wearied infantry had cast themselves down in the shade of the olive groves, and could not be induced even to rise to their feet. Most of them were gasping for water, which could not be got, for the stream-beds which cross the field were all dried up, and only at the Rumblar could a drink be obtained. Not 2,000 men out of the original 11,000 who had started from Andujar could be got together to oppose a feeble front to Reding and Coupigny. It was only by keeping up a slow artillery fire, from the few pieces that had not been silenced or dismounted, that any show of resistance could be made. When the attack from the rear, which was obviously impending, should be delivered, the whole force must clearly be destroyed.
Wishing at least to get some sort of terms for the men whom he had led into such a desperate position, Dupont at two o’clock sent his aide-de-camp, Captain Villoutreys, one of the Emperor’s equerries, to ask for a suspension of hostilities from Reding. He offered to evacuate Andalusia, not only with his own troops but with those of Vedel and Dufour, in return for a free passage to Madrid. This was asking too much, and if the Spanish general had been aware of the desperate state of his adversary, he would not have listened to the proposal for a minute. But he did not know that La Peña was now close in Dupont’s rear, while he was fully aware that Vedel, returning too late from the passes, was now drawing near to the field from the north. His men were almost as exhausted as those of Dupont, many had died from sunstroke in the ranks, and he did not refuse to negotiate. He merely replied that he had no power to treat, and that all communications should be made to his chief, who must be somewhere in the direction of Andujar. He would grant a suspension of arms for a few hours, while a French and a Spanish officer should ride off together to seek for Castaños.
Dupont accepted these terms gladly, all the more so because La Peña’s division had at last reached the Rumblar bridge, and had announced its approach by four cannon-shots, fired at regular intervals, as a signal to catch Reding’s ear. It was with the greatest difficulty that the commander of the fourth Andalusian division could be got to recognize the armistice granted by his colleague; he saw the French at his mercy, and wanted to fall upon them while they were still in disorder. But after some argument he consented to halt. Captain Villoutreys, accompanied by the Spanish Colonel Copons, rode through his lines to look for Castaños.