And when night fell, and when the sound of the infantrymen dying still sounded from the Avila road, Herault marched.

He took all his cavalry due west across the plain and, when he had gone some five miles and the sound of the distant musketry was almost inaudible, he turned north onto a track that led across the lower hills of the western sierra. He led hussars, dragoons and lancers, men who had fought all across Europe, men who were feared all across Europe, but Herault knew that the great days of the French cavalry were passing. It was not their bravery that had diminished, but their horses. The animals were weak from poor food, their backs were ulcerated from too much riding and so, gradually but inevitably, Herault's column stretched. There were no guerilleros to slow them, it was the horses that could not keep up, and Herault, who was well mounted himself, paused at one hill crest and looked back in the thin moonlight to see his men faltering. He had planned to be at San Miguel at dawn, when the garrison's spirits would be at their lowest and he could burst from the hills in a monstrous display of steel and uniformed glory, but he now knew that his two thousand men would never reach the river in time. Their horses would not make it. A few beasts had gone lame, others breathed with a hollow whistling, and most hung their weary heads low.

But what two thousand men could not do, one hundred might, and Herault's old elite company of hussars, the men with the black fur colbacks, were mounted on the best horses Herault had been able to find.