The First siege of Badajoz was a siege carried out during the Peninsular War on the Spanish town of Badajoz, by the French general Soult.
It commenced on 27 January 1811, [1] despite the fact that Gazan's infantry division of 6,000 men, which was escorting the siege-train, would not arrive until 3 February. [2] The previous day, Soult had sent General Latour-Maubourg's six cavalry battalions across the Guadiana to blockade the fortress's northern approach. [3]
In order to draw some of the Allied forces away from Masséna and the Lines of Torres Vedras, [4] Soult had led an expedition of 20,000 men into Extremadura with the aim of capturing the Spanish fortress at Badajoz.
Dividing his army into two contingents, he advanced into Extremadura via the two main passes leading from Andalusia into the Guadiana valley, with the intention of rejoining at Almendralejo. [5] Although the columns commanded by Latour-Maubourg had been confronted by 2,500 Spanish and Portuguese cavalry near Usagre on 3 January 1811, it was only a screen covering the retreat beyond the Guadiana of a Spanish infantry division commanded by General Mendizabal. Latour-Maubourg was therefore able to take up his position near Almendralejo and await the arrival of Soult's second French column. [6]
Not yet being able to besiege so strong a fortress as Badajoz because of his reduced force, Soult changed his original plans and sent his light cavalry under Brigadier General André Briche to take Mérida and leaving four squadrons of dragoons at Albuera to watch the garrison at Badajoz, he marched with the remainder of his army to invest Olivenza. [7] Arriving on 11 January, Soult was confronted with a strongly garrisoned, [8] but untenable, fortress. The heavy French artillery finally began to arrive on 19 January, and by 22 January, a poorly repaired breach in the fortress's walls had been reopened. The garrison surrendered on 23 January, with over 4,000 Spanish troops from the Army of Extremadura taken captive. [9]
Soult was now in an even more difficult position: although he had a large contingent of cavalry (4,000-strong), he needed to deploy two battalions to escort the prisoners taken at Olivenza back to French-held Seville, leaving him only 5,500 infantry. Moreover, although the siege-train had begun to arrive, Gazan's infantry division had not. Despite these problems, Soult decided to besiege Badajoz in hopes that Wellington would send reinforcements to the Spanish fortress and thereby reduce the Allied forces facing Masséna at the Lines of Torres Vedras. [10]
The Peninsular War (1807–1814) was the military conflict fought by Spain and Portugal, assisted by the United Kingdom, against the invading and occupying forces of France for control of the Iberian Peninsula during the Napoleonic Wars. In Spain, it is considered to overlap with the Spanish War of Independence. The war began when the French and Spanish armies invaded and occupied Portugal in 1807 by transiting through Spain, and it escalated in 1808 after Napoleonic France had occupied Spain, which had been its ally. Napoleon Bonaparte forced the abdications of Ferdinand VII and his father Charles IV and then installed his brother Joseph Bonaparte on the Spanish throne and promulgated the Bayonne Constitution. Most Spaniards rejected French rule and fought a bloody war to oust them. The war on the peninsula lasted until the Sixth Coalition defeated Napoleon in 1814, and it is regarded as one of the first wars of national liberation and is significant for the emergence of large-scale guerrilla warfare.
The province of Badajoz is a province of western Spain located in the autonomous community of Extremadura. It was formed in 1833. It is bordered by the provinces of Cáceres in the north, Toledo, Ciudad Real in the east, Córdoba in the south-east, Seville, and Huelva in the south and Portugal in the west.
The Battle of Uclés saw an Imperial French corps led by Marshal Claude Perrin Victor attack a Spanish force under Francisco Javier Venegas. The French easily crushed their outnumbered foes, capturing over half of the Spanish infantry. Uclés is located in the province of Cuenca 15 kilometres (9.3 mi) east of Tarancón and 100 kilometres (62 mi) southeast of Madrid. The action occurred during what is called the Peninsular War in English-speaking countries and the Spanish War of Independence in Spain. The war was part of a larger struggle known as the Napoleonic Wars.
In the Battle of Fuentes de Oñoro, the British-Portuguese Army under the Duke of Wellington checked an attempt by the French Army of Portugal under Marshal André Masséna to relieve the besieged city of Almeida.
Honoré Théodore Maxime Gazan de la Peyrière was a French general who fought in the French Revolutionary Wars and the Napoleonic Wars.
The Battle of Albuera was a battle during the Peninsular War. A mixed British, Spanish and Portuguese corps engaged elements of the French Armée du Midi at the small Spanish village of Albuera, about 20 kilometres (12 mi) south of the frontier fortress-town of Badajoz, Spain.
The Battle of Barrosa was part of an unsuccessful manoeuvre by an Anglo-Iberian force to break the French siege of Cádiz during the Peninsular War. During the battle, a single British division defeated two French divisions and captured a regimental eagle.
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The Battle of the Gebora was a battle of the Peninsular War between Spanish and French armies. It took place on 19 February 1811, northwest of Badajoz, Spain, where an outnumbered French force routed and nearly destroyed the Spanish Army of Extremadura.
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Armand Philippon, sometimes called Phillipon, was a French soldier during the French Revolution and the subsequent First French Empire.
In the Battle of Usagre on 25 May 1811, Anglo-Allied cavalry commanded by Major-General William Lumley routed a French cavalry force led by Major-General Marie Victor Latour-Maubourg at the village of Usagre in the Peninsular War.
In the Battle of Campo Maior, or Campo Mayor, on 25 March 1811, Brigadier General Robert Ballard Long with a force of Anglo-Portuguese cavalry, the advance-guard of the army commanded by William Beresford, clashed with a French force commanded by General of Division Marie Victor de Fay, marquis de Latour-Maubourg. Initially successful, some of the Allied horsemen indulged in a reckless pursuit of the French. An erroneous report was given that they had been captured wholesale. In consequence, Beresford halted his forces and the French were able to escape and recover a convoy of artillery pieces.
The 4th Siege of Badajoz took place from July to October 1658 during the Portuguese Restoration War. It was an attempt by a huge Portuguese army under the command of Joanne Mendes de Vasconcelos, governor of Alentejo, to capture the Spanish city of Badajoz, which was the headquarters of the Spanish Army of Extremadura. The fortifications of Badajoz were essentially medieval and considered vulnerable by the Portuguese, and had already been attacked by them three times during this war.
In the Battle of Zújar of the Peninsular War, part of the Napoleonic Wars, on 9 August 1811 an Imperial French division from Nicolas Soult's army attacked a Spanish division belonging to Manuel Alberto Freire de Andrade y Armijo's Army of Murcia. The French division, led by Nicolas Godinot, defeated Joseph O'Donnell's Spanish division with heavy losses. Zújar is located on Route 323, 13 kilometres (8 mi) northwest of Baza, Granada in Spain.
The VIII Corps of the Grande Armée was a French military unit that existed during the Napoleonic Wars. Emperor Napoleon I formed it in 1805 by borrowing divisions from other corps and assigned it to Marshal Édouard Mortier. Marshal André Masséna's Army of Italy was also reorganized as the VIII Corps at the end of the 1805 campaign. The corps was reformed for the 1806 campaign under Mortier and spent the rest of the year mopping up Prussian garrisons in western Germany.
The Second Siege of Badajoz saw an Anglo-Portuguese Army, first led by William Carr Beresford and later commanded by Arthur Wellesley, the Viscount Wellington, besiege a French garrison under Armand Philippon at Badajoz, Spain. After failing to force a surrender, Wellington withdrew his army when the French mounted a successful relief effort by combining the armies of Marshals Nicolas Soult and Auguste Marmont. The action was fought during the Peninsular War, part of the Napoleonic Wars. Badajoz is located 6 kilometres (4 mi) from the Portuguese border on the Guadiana River in western Spain.
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The Siege of Olivenza was a siege carried out between 19 January and 22 January 1811 during the Peninsular War on the Spanish-controlled town of Olivenza, by the French general Soult.