A great responsibility now fell on the Spanish officers on the Cerro; they were under orders to evacuate the heights when Graham should have got away westward. What were they to do when it suddenly became clear that they were themselves about to be attacked? They might attempt to defend the hill with the one British and five Spanish battalions which lay, unseen to the French, under the seaward slope of the Cerro: or they might simply obey orders, and retire towards the main body, abandoning their dominating position. The latter course was the one taken. The five Spanish battalions streamed down the seaward face of the hill in no very good order, and fell in there with the baggage of the whole army. All together began to retire northward; there was a block on the beach, the baggage mules were driven right and left, and many got loose and bolted. Meanwhile Whittingham with the cavalry (three Spanish[149] and two K.G.L. squadrons) ranged himself across the track, where he was soon faced by the French dragoons, who had galloped round the south-eastern face of the heights with remarkable celerity.
Whittingham’s retreat was not made without a protest against it by Colonel Browne, who urged, firstly, that it was madness to abandon the height, secondly that he had Graham’s orders to stand there, and could obey no others. The cavalry general replied that, for his part, he had resolved to retire, and offered to lend Browne one of his squadrons to cover his retreat towards the British division, if he would not follow him to the coast track. The fiery colonel made no reply, but turned to his battalion and ordered it to occupy the ruined chapel on the top of the Cerro and the neighbouring thickets, and to prepare for action. But in half an hour, seeing Whittingham’s column far off at the foot of the hill, and six French battalions coming in upon him, Browne gave way and descended into the pine wood in search of Graham[150]. The French—Ruffin’s division—took possession of the heights, and planted a battery upon them.
Meanwhile we must return to Graham, concealed in the wood, and marching (as it were blindfold) across the front of Leval’s approaching column. He had no cavalry with him, but presently two mounted guerrilleros rode up in haste, and told him that the French were close on his flank. Riding back to the rear of his division, he saw from the edge of the forest Beguines’s troops pouring down the near side of the Cerro, and Ruffin’s mounting its northern ascent. Leval was also visible to the left.
Graham’s mind was made up in a moment: ‘A retreat in the face of the enemy,’ he writes, ‘who was already in reach of the easy communication by the sea-beach, must have involved the whole allied army in the danger of being attacked during the unavoidable confusion, while the different corps would be arriving on the narrow ridge of Bermeja at the same time,’ i. e. he saw that he himself coming out of the wood, Whittingham and Beguines from the shore track, and the main body returning from the Almanza creek bridge, would meet in disorder on the narrow neck of the peninsula by the Torre Bermeja, and would be unable to form an orderly line of battle. Even if they did, and then held their ground, the object of the whole expedition was lost, and the French, in possession of the Cerro del Puerco, once more blocked the army into Cadiz.
The alternative was to take the offensive before the two French columns had united, and to attack them while they were still coming upon the ground, and before they had drawn up in any regular order. It was evident that they were hurrying forward without any notion that they were liable to be thrown on the defensive at a moment’s notice. In three minutes Graham had made up his mind to attack himself, instead of allowing himself to be chased into the Bermeja position. The wood, in which his division lay concealed, enabled him to hide his movement, though it made that movement perilously disorderly. The orders given were simple: the leading brigade, that of Colonel Wheatley, was to push straight through the wood till it reached the northern edge, and then form there, and attack Leval. The rear brigade, that of General Dilkes, was to counter-march down the wood-path on which it was engaged, till it too cleared the wood, and then to form up and attack Ruffin on the slopes of the Cerro del Puerco. The ten guns, in the centre of the marching column, were to push up a side track which seemed passable, and to form on Wheatley’s right, in the centre between the two brigades. Meanwhile these movements would take some time to execute, and the French were coming closer to the wood every minute. It was necessary to hold them back at all costs till a line could be formed. With this object Graham resolved to throw forward on each front a light infantry force, which should engage the enemy, regardless of order and of losses, till the main body got up. On the left Barnard’s four companies of the 95th Rifles and the two companies of the 20th Portuguese under Colonel Bushe, about 700 men in all, were ordered to break through the wood directly before them, without any attempt at formation, and when they reached its edge, to sally straight out at Leval’s front, in the best skirmishing line they could make. On the right there was a force already to the front—Browne’s flank battalion, 536 muskets, which had just descended unwillingly from the Cerro, and was visible at its foot.
This last force was near Graham as he sat on his horse among the trees at the wood’s end. He cantered up to Browne, and asked him why the Cerro had been abandoned. ‘Because five battalions of Spaniards went off before the enemy came within cannon-shot,’ was the reply. ‘Well, it’s a bad business, Browne; you must instantly turn round again and attack.’ The flank battalion began to extend into skirmishing order, when Graham, after a moment’s reflection, said, ‘I must show something more serious than skirmishing. Close the men into compact battalion! And then attack in your front and immediately.’ Dilkes’s brigade was coming up, but was still a mile away in the wood, and Browne came out of the trees into the open absolutely isolated, to attack uphill six battalions and a battery with a two-deep line of just 536 men[151]. Blakeney says that his colonel rode into action singing the old naval song—
‘Now cheer up, my lads, ’tis to glory we steer,’
a tune to which he was much addicted at all times in and out of season.
About the same time, or a few minutes later, Barnard’s and Bushe’s scattered and uneven line burst out of the northern edge of the wood a mile away, and found themselves facing Leval’s division at the distance of only some 400 yards. This force, quite unaware that any enemy was yet near, was advancing in two columns each of three battalions, the right one composed of the 54th regiment and a battalion of grenadiers réunis, the left of the 8th regiment followed by a single battalion of the 45th. Their divisional battery was following on their left rear. Barnard, who got a little further to the front than the Portuguese, was facing the French 54th, Bushe, who was drawn back a little in échelon, was opposite the French 8th. They had hardly opened their fire, which had great effect because the enemy had no screen of voltigeurs out to cover him, and was caught unprepared for an infantry fight, when Duncan’s ten guns, which had made extraordinary good pace through the wood, appeared, and unlimbering at its edge began to fire shrapnel into the leading battalions of the French. Behind them the two companies of the 47th, which properly belonged to Barnard’s provisional battalion, took post as their supports.
Thus the battle was suddenly begun on both fronts, but Graham had only 500 men up on one side, and 900 with the guns on the other. The main body was coming on through the wood behind in an extraordinarily mixed order. When Graham gave orders to Wheatley’s brigade to face to their right flank and push through the wood northward, and to Dilkes’s brigade to turn about on the road and return to the Cerro by the way they had come, there was no small confusion. By some misunderstanding the rear companies of the 67th, which was the last battalion in Wheatley’s brigade, faced about and followed Dilkes, though the leading companies went off with their proper companions, the 28th and 87th. On the other hand, by a compensating mistake, the two companies of the Coldstream Guards, which belonged to Dilkes, turned north into the wood and followed Wheatley[152]. The brigades exchanged, as it were, 250 men with each other. In addition the battalions, owing to the sudden inversion of their column of march, were all out of their proper order in their brigades, and went into action ‘almost anyhow.’