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 posted inside, next the shore, understood what had happened, he opened a withering cannonade upon the village. Its effect became immediately visible in a stampede of the English; then the American corps which had been forced to take refuge among the reserve behind the wooded shoulder of the ridge, came on again in good order, re-occupied the shattered village, and even pushed its outposts further eastward, gaining ground.

Trabolgan was still held in the grip of the English who had stormed it; and their commander, seeing that matters stood badly on the right and on the centre, concentrated all the force he could spare upon that advanced post of his left. A battery was brought to bear upon the hillside below Roche’s Tower from the opposite slope; cavalry was massed behind the wood on the same slope; and the wood itself was again filled with infantry, taking the place of the force which had gone forward and captured the house.

General La Roche, on his side, perceived too that the brunt of the fight would next be about Trabolgan, and subsequently either at Roche’s Tower or on the opposite rising ground, according to which side should repulse the other. He therefore quietly drew off a considerable force, his now secure left wing, so as to leave his reserve intact for unforeseen emergencies, and hurried this force southwards along the rear of the ridge, between the line and the reserve, where it passed hidden from the enemy’s view. It debouched at Roche’s Tower, the infantry in front, just in time to engage in the fiercest contest of the day, with an English foot regiment which had poured across the low ground near the cliff and stormed the hill. This was a desperate move, because it must have been evident that a mass of men, if repulsed from Roche’s Tower, must literally be driven into the sea over the cliff. And such was actually the result. A tremendous charge of the French cavalry cleared the ground,