At this point in the battle, the position of the two armies looked rather odd, since many of the troops on both sides occupied the riverbanks where their opponent had begun the fight. Eugène now made the critical and correct decision to keep pressing the attack and hope that his onrushing columns would scare the main Austrian army across the Mincio once more. He detached the Italian Royal Guard back to Goito in order to secure the bridge, reinforced his eastern flank against Mayer, and, with 13,000 men and 30 guns, advanced north to the village of Valeggio, hoping to cut his enemy's line of retreat. Bellegarde's earlier decision to leave his reserve now paid dividends; Merville's dragoons routed General Perreymond's 1st Hussars and captured the brigade's six guns, only to be counter-attacked, driven back, and see the French reclaim five of those guns. Merville had deployed his men into three lines around Pozzolo: the first two were composed of 2,000 elite grenadiers under General Josef von Stutterheim and the third by the dragoons brigade. They awaited an attack by Eugène, who recalled the Royal Guard from Goito to bolster the two infantry divisions under generals François Jean Baptiste Quesnel and Marie François Rouyer. Eugène finally began a combined arms attack and only heroic resistance by Stutterheim's masses, who lost over 700 men, prevented a breakthrough. Realizing the danger of being outflanked, Merville fell back a mile north of Pozzolo. Eugène's men attacked Merville's division in its new position, but at this time sufficient reinforcements from Bellegarde permitted Merville to stem the French tide and ground the battle to a virtual halt. Renewed French drives took them to the hamlet of Foroni, but nightfall prevented the capture of the crucial Borghetto bridge. Meanwhile, Verdier's men to the north had been barely hanging on, but once the sounds of Eugène's guns were manifest, they became emboldened and managed to defeat the Austrian charges.