The Battle of Burgos, also called the Battle of Gamonal, took place on November 10, 1808 during the Spanish Civil War, and opposed the French army of Marshals Soult and Bessières to the Spanish forces of General Conde de Belveder. It takes place as part of Napoleon's campaign in Spain, which ends with the defeat of the Spanish forces and the evacuation of the peninsula by British troops. After a quick fight, the French inflicted a serious setback on their opponents who withdrew after suffering heavy losses. This victory, the first of the Napoleonic campaign, will prove to be of great strategic importance. Soult, in a position of strength, took advantage of this to conquer Burgos, thus occupying a vital location in the center of the Spanish device which would allow Napoleon to implement a series of maneuvers which would lead to the destruction of the last Spanish forces.
Context
After the defeats of the French army at Bailén in Spain and Vimeiro in Portugal, King Joseph Bonaparte, Napoleon's older brother, was forced to abandon Madrid and recross the Ebro with the rest of the imperial troops. The Emperor, faced with the gravity of the situation, decided to go to the peninsula himself at the head of the Grand Army, and, in the space of a few months, restored his brother to the throne and forced the English to re-embark.
On September 27, 1808, Napoleon met Tsar Alexander I in Erfurt to ensure his support against a possible attack from Austria when he and his best troops were engaged in Spain. Despite Alexander's lack of cooperation, the Emperor officially dissolved the Grand Army on October 12; leaving the army of Germany under the command of Marshal Davout, he set out for the peninsula with his Imperial Guard, his marshals and 200,000 veterans.
While his troops headed by forced marches towards Spain, Napoleon left Paris and went to Bayonne, from where he left on November 8 for Vitoria. He arrived there in the evening, accompanied by Marshals Lannes and Soult, and began to draw up his campaign plan on the basis of the information available. At this time, the French forces were still very dispersed:the 5th corps had not yet crossed the Pyrenees and the 8th, evacuated from Portugal after the Cintra convention, was being landed on the French coasts by the navy. British. In addition, the 1st corps of Marshal Victor and the 4th corps of Marshal Lefebvre, on the right wing, have still not effected their junction. The 2nd corps of Bessières, in the center, is at Briviesca; the 3rd under Marshal Moncey occupied Tafalla and Estella, while in the rear Ney's 6th Corps and the Imperial Guard approached Vitoria.
Opposite, the Spanish armies, scattered on either side of the front and without a real commander-in-chief, split into three groups:on the left flank, the army of Galicia under General Joaquín Blake fell back on Espinosa de los Monteros , while the army of the center under the command of generals Castaños and Palafox is quartered around Tudela and prepares for the offensive; finally, a third army coming from Extremadura marched on Burgos, commanded first by General José Galluzo and then by the Count of Belveder. General John Moore's British Expeditionary Force is in Portugal and stands ready to support its allies.
French strategy and preliminary moves
For his part, Napoleon decided on the strategy to be used:while the 3rd corps will remain on the defensive, Marshal Ney will advance on Aranda and Marshals Victoret Lefebvre will engage General Blake's army frontally. The main attack will be launched in the center by the 2nd Corps, where Soult has replaced his colleague Bessières in command; the Marshal must go to meet the army of the Count of Belveder, crush it and seize Burgos, thus cutting the Spanish device into two parts which can be circumvented and destroyed later. The Emperor, with the Imperial Guard and the reserves, will follow the 2nd corps very closely.
Soult, having arrived in Briviesca on the morning of November 9, put his troops in motion towards the village of Monasterio which overlooked the plain of Burgos. The French reached their destination in the night and set up their headquarters there, while the light cavalry moved forward to cut off the enemy's communications.
Battle progress
On November 10, 1808, at 6 a.m., a first confrontation took place at Villa Fria between the vanguard of General Lasalle's French cavalry and a Spanish contingent of more than 5,000 men. At 8 a.m., when Marshal Soult arrived on site, the infantry of the 2nd Army Corps emerged on the ground after a forced march from Villa Fria and Rio Bena. The Spanish vanguard is thrown back on Gamonal where the Count of Belveder is present with the bulk of his troops. The right wing is positioned in a wooded area a short distance from the Arlanzón River, while the left wing unfolds in Velimer Park. The army of Extremadura aligns a total of 11,000 infantry, 1,100 cavalry and thirty pieces of artillery, and can also count on the support of 7 to 8,000 armed civilians. The regular units of Belveder's corps have a reputation as the best regiments in the Spanish army:well-equipped by the British, they include the Royal Guard, the Mallorca, Zafra and Valencia de Alcántara infantry regiments, the Hussars of Valencia as well as the Royal Carabinieri; however, despite their valour, these units would not be able to sustain the onslaught of the French soldiers, and the brief ensuing battle would prove to be a real disaster for the Earl of Belveder.
Hostilities began with Spanish artillery fire along the entire front line, while at the same time General Lasalle's cavalry maneuvered on the enemy's right to exploit a fault in the Belveder system along the 'Arlanzon. It was the attack of the French infantry, however, that determined the outcome of the battle. Soult launches an assault on the veterans of the Mouton division, who, after forming in a column, charge with momentum into the woods of Gamonal and quickly disperse the Spanish defenders. The Bonet division, which follows the movement, begins the pursuit of the defeated opponents.
Seeing the broken right flank, the Spanish left wing withdrew from the battlefield in disorder, as the French troops advanced rapidly on Burgos which they reached almost at the same time as the fleeing army of Belveder. The city is stormed without much resistance. Marshal Bessières, commanding the heavy cavalry of the 2nd corps, goes on the attack and sabers the Spanish survivors who leave many pieces of artillery in the hands of the French attackers; a contingent of Catalan soldiers present on the other bank of the Arlanzón is also dispersed by the horsemen. The Spanish defeat is complete:the army of Extremadura has lost 2,500 killed or wounded, 900 prisoners and all its artillery. The French also recovered 4,000 rifles and thirty ammunition boxes. The column of fugitives disintegrated along the way, and the defeated commander, the Count of Belveder, managed to escape and reach Lerma in the evening, where he regrouped some battalions which had not taken part in the battle and which managed to flee towards Aranda de Duero under cover of the night.
In Burgos, the French take possession of the stores and warehouses of the army of Extremadura; Soult, who won the battle in a few hours and conquered an important city, decides to exploit his advantage and continues to advance in several directions. While a column marched on Lerma in pursuit of the enemy, other detachments of the 2nd Corps marched on Palencia and Valladolid, while the Marshal put himself at the head of a strong column and, the same day, began to advance north towards Reinosa where he hoped to cut the lines of communication of General Blake's army in accordance with Napoleon's plan.
Consequences
On November 10, parallel to the fall of Burgos, Marshals Victor and Lefebvre confronted General Blake's army at the Battle of Espinosa. The French attacks, repelled on the first day, broke through the Spanish lines on November 11, but could not prevent the withdrawal of the 12,000 survivors of the Army of Galicia, who quickly retreated westward without being pursued. The Emperor's strategy was put into practice without however achieving all the expected results. Soult entered Reinosa on November 14 after a forced march of almost a hundred kilometers through the mountains, but Blake eluded him and managed to rally León on November 23 with about 10,000 soldiers. In the following weeks, the French maneuver against the Army of the Center will only be partially successful due to the lack of cooperation between Marshals Lannes and Neyet and the slowness of operations.
Spanish historians commemorate this battle, in memory of the vain bravery of the regiments of the Guard and the Walloon regiments, commanded by Don Vicente Genaro de Quesada. Forming the rearguard of the splintered Spanish lines, these troops sustained repeated charges from General Lasalle's cavalry without yielding an inch of ground, at the cost of a massacre of French as well as Spanish. Of the 307 men in the rearguard, only 74 survived, covered in blood, ragged uniforms, bent and blunt bayonets. It is said that Bessières himself returned his sword to Quesada and had his wounds dressed in the French field hospital. These acts of chivalry became increasingly rare as the war in Spain dragged on.