The British guns returned a sporadic fire. They were holding the bulk of their ammunition for the moment when the French columns were launched across the plain towards the village, though every now and then a case shot exploded at the tree line to make the French gunners duck and curse. One by one the aim of the French guns was shifted from the ridge onto the burning village where the spreading smoke gave evidence of the damage being done. Behind the ridge the redcoat battalions listened to the cannonade and prayed they would not be asked to go down into the maelstrom of fire and smoke. Some chaplains raised their voice over the sound of the cannon as they read Morning Prayer to the waiting battalions. There was a comfort in the old words, though some sergeants barked at the men to mind their damned manners when they tittered at the line in the day's epistle which enjoined the congregation to abstain from fleshly lusts. Then they prayed for the King's Majesty, for the royal family, for the clergy, and only then did some chaplains add a prayer that God would preserve the lives of His soldiers on this Sabbath day on the border of Spain.
Where, three miles south of Fuentes de Onoro, the cuirassiers and chasseurs and lancers and dragoons were met by a force of British dragoons and German hussars. The horsemen clashed in a sudden and bloody mкlйe. The allied horse were outnumbered, but they were properly formed and fighting against an enemy force strung out by the excitement of the pursuit. The French faltered, then retreated, but on either flank of the allied squadrons other French horsemen raced ahead to where two battalions of infantry, one British and one Portuguese, waited behind the walls and hedges of Poco Velha. The British and German cavalry, fearing that they would be surrounded, hurried out of danger's way as the excited French horse ignored them and charged at the village's defenders instead.
"Fire!" a caзador colonel shouted and ragged smoke whiplashed from the garden walls. Horses screamed and fell, while men were plucked backwards from saddles as the musket and rifle balls cracked straight through the cuirassiers' steel breastplates. There was a frantic trumpet call and the charging French horse checked, turned and rode back to re-form, leaving behind a tideline of struggling horses and bleeding men. More French horsemen were arriving to join the attack; imperial guardsmen mounted on big horses and carrying carbines and swords, while beyond the cavalry the leading foot artillery unlimbered in the meadows and opened fire to add their heavier missiles to the six-pounder guns of the horse artillery. The first twelve-pounder cannon balls fell short, but the next rounds crashed into Poco Velha's defenders and tore great gaps in their protective walls. The French cavalry had drawn to one side to re-form its ranks and to open a path for the infantry who now appeared behind the guns. The infantry battalions formed themselves into two attack columns that would move like human avalanches at the thin line of Poco Velha's defenders. The French drummer boys tightened their drumskins, while beyond Poco Velha the remaining seven battalions of the British Seventh Division waited for the attack that the drums would inspire. Horse artillery guarded the infantry's flanks, but the French were bringing still more horses and still more guns against the isolated defenders. The British and German cavalry, which had been driven away westwards, now trotted in a wide circle to rejoin the beleaguered Seventh Division.
French skirmishers ran ahead of the attacking column. They splashed through a streamlet, passed the artillery gun line and ran out to where the dead horses and dying men marked the limit of the cavalry's first attack. There the skirmishers split into their pairs to open fire. British and Portuguese skirmishers met them and the crackle of muskets and rifles carried across the marshy fields to where Wellington stared anxiously southwards. Beneath him the village of Fuentes de Onoro was a smoking shambles being pounded by a continuous cannonade, but his gaze was always to the south where he had sent his Seventh Division beyond the protective range of the British cannon on the plateau.
Wellington had made a mistake, and he knew it. His army was split in two and the enemy was threatening to overwhelm the smaller of the two parts. Gallopers brought him news of a broken Spanish force, then of ever mounting numbers of French infantry crossing the stream at Nave de Haver to join the attack on the Seventh Division's nine battalions. At least two French divisions had gone south for that attack, and each of those divisions was stronger than the newly formed and still under-strength Seventh Division which was not only under attack by infantry, but also seemed assailed by every French horseman in Spain.
French infantry officers urged the columns forward and the drummers responded by beating the pas de charge with a frantic energy. The French attack had rolled over Nave de Haver, had brushed aside the allied cavalry and now it had to keep up the momentum if it was to annihilate Wellington's right wing. Then the victorious attack could lance at the rear of Wellington's main force while the rest of the French army hammered through his battered defences at Fuentes de Onoro.
The voltigeurs pushed back the outnumbered allied skirmishers who ran back to join a main defence line being shredded and torn by French canister. Wounded men crawled back into Poco Velha's small streets where they tried to find a patch of shelter from the terrible storm of canister. French cavalrymen were waiting on the village's flanks, waiting with blade and lance to pounce on the broken fugitives who must soon stream back from the columns' attack.
"Vive l'Empereur!" the attackers shouted. The mist had gone now, replaced by a clear sunlight that flickered off thousands of French bayonets. The sun was shining into the defenders' eyes, a great blinding blaze out of which loomed the huge dark shapes of the French columns trampling the fields to the sounds of drums and cheering and the thunder of marching feet. The voltigeurs began firing at the main British and Portuguese line. The sergeants shouted at the files to close up, then looked nervously at the enemy cavalry waiting to charge from the flanks.
The British and Portuguese battalions shrank towards their centres as the dead and wounded left the files. "Fire!" the British Colonel ordered and his men began the rolling volleys that rippled smoke up and down the line as the companies fired in turn. The Portuguese battalion took up the volleys so that the whole eastern face of the village flashed flame. Men in the leading ranks of the French columns went down and the columns divided so that the files could walk round the wounded and dead, then the ranks closed up again as the cheering Frenchmen came stolidly on. The Portuguese and British volleys became ragged as the officers let men fire as soon as they were loaded. Smoke rolled thick to hide the village. A French galloper gun unlimbered on the village's northern flank and slashed a roundshot into the caзadores' ranks. The drummers paused in the pas de charge and the columns let out their great war cry, "Vive l'Empereur!" and then the drums began again, beating even faster as the columns crashed through the fragile vegetable gardens on the outskirts of the village. Another roundshot seared in from the north, slathering a gable end with blood.