Battle of Saragossa, 1710: the allies take back Aragon

By 1710 the War of the Spanish Succession had been going on for nearly a decade. When Charles II died childless, his will named Philip of Anjou, who became Philip V, but the Habsburg Archduke Charles, backed by most of the lands of the Crown of Aragon, disputed the throne. Zaragoza, writes Eliseo Serrano Martín of the University of Zaragoza, was a Bourbon city in 1710; that summer it saw the two kings, the two armies and much of Europe meet on its doorstep.²

Serrano Martín describes the conflict as at once a dynastic war, an international war and an economic one, deciding not only who would sit on the Spanish throne but also who would rule the seas and trade with America. It lasted until the peace treaties of Utrecht in 1713.³

Background: a kingdom changing hands

Aragon had already changed sides once. After the allied defeat at Almansa in April 1707, Aragon, Valencia and Murcia were lost to the allies, and Philip's government swept away most of Aragon's own laws and institutions under the decrees known as the Nueva Planta.⁴

In the summer of 1710 the allied army beat the Marquis de Bay at Almenar, near Lleida, on 27 July. The Bourbon army fell back through Aragon toward Zaragoza, and the allies followed, taking Huesca on 10 August.⁵

The two armies reached the outskirts of the city in mid-August, and for several days their cavalry skirmished. On 19 August the allies crossed the Ebro and drew up for battle; the Bourbons formed facing them with their backs to the city.⁶

Armies and commanders

The allied army was commanded by the Austrian field marshal Guido Starhemberg, with the English general James Stanhope leading its left wing. Its regiments came from half of Europe: Germans and Austrians in the center, with English, Dutch, Portuguese, Palatine and Spanish troops on the wings.⁷

On the other side the Marquis de Bay, who had only just taken over the Bourbon command, led an army in which Spaniards served beside Walloon and other foreign regiments. His men hardly knew him, and after the defeat at Almenar their spirits were low.⁸

The totals depend on the source. The Gran Enciclopedia Española gives the allies 23,000 men and the Bourbons no more than 20,000; the historian Joaquín Beltrán, quoted by HoyAragón, and the tercentenary portal Zaragoza 1710-2010 give the allies 25,000, and the Austrian staff history of 1887, working from the field records, 22,000 allies against some 14,000 Bourbon infantry and 6,000 horse.⁹

One unusual feature is that both claimants to the throne were near the field. Neither fought, but both were close enough to the action to be in danger: Charles stayed with his troops, and Philip waited near the city for the outcome.¹⁰

The wings were led by experienced men. On the Bourbon right, facing Stanhope, stood the best cavalry under the lieutenant generals Amézaga and Mahony; the Bourbon left, by the city and the river, was under José de Armendáriz. On the allied side the Count of Atalaya commanded on the right by the Ebro, and the Count of Belcastel led allied infantry in the attack.¹¹

The battle in phases

The cannonade. The Bourbon guns opened fire at first light, and the artillery of both armies kept up the duel through the morning. The allied advance began, by the Spanish accounts, in mid-morning; the Austrian history puts Charles's signal for the general attack at half past eleven.¹²

Stanhope's wing. On the allied left, the Bourbon cavalry struck first and broke into the allied lines, and for a moment it looked as if Philip might win. Then the allied horse and the infantry posted among it counterattacked, threw the Bourbon cavalry back on its own foot soldiers, and broke the Bourbon right.¹³

The riverside wing. What happened near the Ebro is told two ways. The Austrian staff history has the allied right beating off the Bourbon left and driving it back to the walls of the city. The tercentenary portal, weighing the Spanish chroniclers Bacallar and Castellví and the English writer Boyer, has the Bourbon horse first routing the allied cavalry there, before the allied infantry re-formed and won back the ground.¹⁴

The center. In the middle the German infantry crossed the Barranco de la Muerte and climbed Monte Torrero under heavy fire. When the Bourbon center came forward to meet it, it could not stand the shock; threatened on its flank, it gave way and dragged the rest of Philip's army with it.¹⁵

Turning point: the rout

The retreat became a rout. The allies took 22 of the Bourbon guns and some 70 or more flags and standards, and Philip himself came close to being captured as his army fled.¹⁶

The figures for the Bourbon losses differ widely. The Austrian staff history, quoting the official Vienna Diarium, counts 3,600 dead buried on the field and 712 officers and 4,310 men taken prisoner, of whom 1,500 went over to Charles. The tercentenary portal gives 4,000 dead and 6,000 wounded and prisoners; Beltrán, quoted by HoyAragón, about 10,000 killed and wounded and nearly 5,000 prisoners; and the Atlas de Historia de Aragón about 3,000 dead and 4,000 prisoners. Allied losses were much lighter: about 2,000 by the portal's count, 534 killed and 930 wounded by the Austrian lists.¹⁷

Aftermath

Philip fled toward Castile and Madrid. On 21 August Charles entered Zaragoza to the cheers of its people and restored the laws, the fueros, that Philip had abolished.¹⁸

The road to Madrid lay open, and in September the allies occupied the capital for the second time in the war. They could not stay there: they had to leave Madrid again, and on their retreat eastward they were beaten at Brihuega on 8 and 9 December, where Stanhope himself was taken prisoner, and at Villaviciosa on 10 December.¹⁹

By the end of 1710 Philip V was firmly established in Spain, Zaragoza had returned to him, and the allied forces were confined to Catalonia. Charles's rule over Aragon had lasted only a few months.²⁰ › 20 August in military history

Legacy and memory

For James Stanhope, Almenar and Saragossa were the high point of the war in Spain; within four months he was a prisoner, and only after his release did he go home to England and begin a second career as a statesman. The war ended with Philip on the throne.²¹

The battlefield itself has almost vanished. Most of it lies under the southern districts of the modern city. Only the name of the Barranco de la Muerte, the Ravine of Death, keeps the memory; Serrano Martín quotes a guide of 1860 that already explained it by the great battle fought there at the start of the previous century.²²