Guarromán, scarcely two leagues from Bailén, Vedel rested his footsore troops for a few hours—"he could not refuse this", says General Foy, "after three days and three nights of incessant marching"—while patrols raced west to Linares to secure his rear. Aware neither that Dupont was preparing to move in his direction, nor that Vedel was now in fact drawing in behind him, Reding, posting a few battalions to hold Bailén from whatever French formations might remain in the east, set off with his two divisions westwards on 18 July, intending to surround Andújar from the rear and smash Dupont against Castaños. Dupont slipped away from Andújar unobserved and at dawn on 19 July, his vanguard under Brigadier Théodore Chabert made contact with Reding's leading elements (veterans of the Walloon Guard) just shy of Bailén. Though caught off guard, Reding reacted "with promptitude and skill," dissolving his columns and drawing up a defensive line with 20 guns in an olive grove intersected with deep ravines, about two miles from Dupont's main body. Badly underestimating the force before him, Chabert charged his 3,000 men into Reding's two divisions and was enfiladed and repulsed with heavy losses. Dupont, following with the main body of the convoy at two leagues' distance, halted the bloodied vanguard, posted General Barbou to defend the rear against any pursuit by Castaños, and ordered all other formations to the fore in an attempt to crack Reding's line. Expecting to be overtaken and crushed by Castaños' columns at any moment—one division under La Peña had already crossed to Andújar in pursuit and approached steadily—Dupont committed his troops piecemeal, without massing a reserve. As one historian observes, his troops were "both exhausted and strung out, and to commit them to battle in dribs and drabs was foolhardy in the extreme." Brigadiers Chabert and Claude Francois Duprès led an infantry brigade and the horse chasseurs against the left wing, held by the Walloon Guards, but no ground was gained and Duprès fell mortally wounded at the head of his troops. Dupont's scattered guns were laboriously formed into batteries to support the attack only to be knocked out by the heavier Spanish artillery once the firing began. On the right, opposite Reding's militias and Swiss regulars, a fierce and desperate attack bent back the Spanish line. The cuirassiers trampled a Spanish infantry regiment, reached the artillery and sabred the gunners, but the defenders,