22 July 1812, late afternoon
The French left destroyed
The 3rd Division comes at the head of Thomières’s division in a line two deep. The French columns at first drive it back, but are routed by a bayonet charge, and Thomières is killed. Seeing British cavalry nearby, Maucune forms his division in squares, and Leith’s 5th Division in line beats it in a musketry duel.
The charge of Pakenham’s 3rd Division, painting by Richard Caton Woodville Jr., 1890Wikimedia Commons, Richard Caton Woodville Jr., Public domain (Charge of Pakenham's Third Division.jpg)
As Maucune’s men fall back, Le Marchant’s heavy brigade, the 5th Dragoon Guards and the 3rd and 4th Dragoons, charges into them and breaks eight battalions one after another. Le Marchant is shot dead leading a squadron. Marmont, hurrying to his horse, is hit by a British shell that breaks his arm and two ribs, his second in command Bonet is wounded soon after, and the French army is left without a commander for between 20 minutes and more than an hour. Further east Cole’s 4th Division attacks Bonet’s division and Pack’s Portuguese climb the Greater Arapile, and both are driven back with the help of a battery of 40 guns on the hill.
Sources
- Rory Muir, Salamanca, 1812 (2001).
- Ian Fletcher, Salamanca 1812: Wellington Crushes Marmont (1997).
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