Napoleonic Warfare by John T. Kuehn

Author:John T. Kuehn [JOHN T. KUEHN]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781440833083
Publisher: ABC-CLIO

On May 2, the citizens of Madrid famously rose in revolt against the hated Mameluks and other French Guard troops under Murat in Madrid. Murat brutally repressed this revolt and for about three weeks all was quiet in Spain. However, between May 20 and June 5, major revolts broke out in nearly every city and town garrisoned by the French. Aside from Junot in Portugal, which also was in a state of low-level revolt, Napoleon had over 130,000 troops scattered throughout Spain. His strategy to have Murat and his subordinates break up the organizing Spanish armies, composed of the disgruntled and disenfranchised Spanish officers of the old Royal Army, failed.

The French situation in the Peninsula went quickly from bad to worse. Conventional Spanish armies were being raised in every corner of the country and the arid countryside had now become dangerous for anything other than organized French bodies of troops as the Spanish and Portuguese peasants organized to harass and murder the hated, pagan French oppressors (as they saw it). The British government also decided to take advantage of the moment and dispatched a British expeditionary force to attempt to retake Lisbon. It was to be commanded by two elderly British generals, Sir Harry Burrard and Sir Hugh Dalrymple. Meanwhile, French arms suffered disaster in the southernmost province of Andalusia. By this time Murat, who had become seriously ill just as the revolt was breaking out, had turned over his command to one of Napoleon’s aides, General Jean-Marie Savary. At the end of May, just as revolt was breaking out everywhere, General Dupont’s corps had proceeded south toward Cadiz. He had gotten as far as Seville, which his men plundered, before being recalled by Savary. Loaded with loot, he dithered for much of the month of June south of the Sierra Morena Mountains as another column of French troops moved south from Madrid to join him. Dupont had little idea of how exposed his command was. Through a series of miscues and poor French decisions, rather than any outstanding Spanish generalship, two Spanish armies totaling over 40,000 men managed to place themselves between Dupont and his escape route north at the town of Baylen. The column under General Vedel that was to join him had marched north and left no guard at Baylen to keep the escape route open. After weak attempts to break through, Dupont surrendered his force of over 11,000 tired and dispirited troops on July 20 to the Spanish. The Spanish threatened to massacre Dupont and his men if he did not recall Vedel, who was escaping to the north. In a stunning display of cowardice and incompetence, Dupont ordered Vedel to surrender and that individual stupidly obeyed. The total bag in prisoners was over 17,000 French. Europe was stunned on hearing a French corps had been annihilated (literally, as it turned out, when the Spanish reneged on every promise and sent their prisoners to die of disease and neglect on prison hulks at Cadiz and elsewhere).16

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