On 23 November 1808 Marshal Jean Lannes, with over 30,000 French troops, attacked about 45,000 Spaniards under General Castaños and the Army of Aragon, strung along ten miles of hills from Tudela on the Ebro to Tarazona. The French broke through the Spanish center and routed the Aragonese, and a week later Napoleon forced the Somosierra pass.
Battle of Tudela
23 November 1808 · 217 years ago
Napoleon's trap
In November 1808 Napoleon came to Spain in person and broke the Spanish front at Burgos; his columns were then to swing outward and trap the Spanish armies on either side. On 21 November Castaños, commanding the Army of the Center, learned that Marshal Moncey's corps was moving against him while Marshal Ney's column was marching through the mountains by Soria toward his rear, and he fell back on Tudela.1
His line ran more than ten miles west from Tudela to Tarazona, far too long for his own troops alone. He needed the Army of Aragon, whose divisions under General O'Neille lay across the Ebro, but O'Neille would not move without orders from his own commander, José Palafox. On the night of 22 November the Aragonese were still on the far bank of the river.2
The gap at Tudela
Lannes, who had taken command of Moncey's corps and troops from Ney's, appeared before Tudela on the morning of the 23rd, just as the Aragonese were crossing the bridge and climbing to their position. The Spanish divisions were spread out with wide, unguarded gaps between them.3 › Napoleon Bonaparte
One French division attacked the heights above the town, held by the Aragonese, while another pierced the Spanish line beside them, and General Lefebvre-Desnouettes charged through the opening with his cavalry and threw the Spanish right into confusion. The Aragonese fled toward Saragossa. On the Spanish left, around Cascante and Tarazona, the larger part of Castaños's army achieved nothing against the single French division of Lagrange in front of it and then retreated.4
The cost and the road to Madrid
The Spanish lost all or nearly all of the guns they had brought into action, 26 according to Oman and 30 according to Napier, and thousands of men; Oman counts over 1,000 prisoners and at least 3,000 killed and wounded among the Aragonese, Napier eight or nine thousand men in all. Ney's column, which was meant to cut off the Spanish retreat, halted at Soria and arrived only after the battle, and Napoleon was angry that Castaños had escaped.5
The Aragonese went back to Saragossa, while the rest of Castaños's army headed for Madrid. Napoleon was faster: he forced the pass of Somosierra on 30 November, told in our article on the Battle of Somosierra, and his troops appeared before Madrid on 2 December.6
Battle of Humenné, 1619: the Lisowczycy and the first relief of Vienna
23 November 1619 · 406 years ago
Polish Lisowczycy cavalry, alongside loyalist Hungarians, beat a Transylvanian corps under George Rákóczi near Humenné, in today's eastern Slovakia, early in the Thirty Years' War. Polish tradition calls it the first relief of Vienna, since the Transylvanian army was then besieging the city.
Read the full story of Battle of Humenné, 1619: the Lisowczycy and the first relief of Vienna ›
