|
The Battle of Ordal on 12 and 13 September 1813 saw a First French Empire corps led by Marshal Louis Gabriel Suchet make a night assault on a position held by Lieutenant General Lord William Bentinck's smaller Anglo-Allied and Spanish advance guard. The Allies, under the tactical direction of Colonel Frederick Adam, were defeated and driven from a strong position at the Ordal defile largely because they failed to post adequate pickets. In an action the next morning at Vilafranca del Penedès, the Allied cavalry clashed with the pursuing French horsemen. The actions occurred during the Peninsular War, part of the Napoleonic Wars. Ordal and El Lledoner are located on Highway N-340 between Molins de Rei and Vilafranca. Arthur Wellesley, Marquess of Wellington's triumph at the Battle of Vitoria made Suchet's positions in Valencia and Aragon untenable. Accordingly, the marshal withdrew his soldiers from those two places and concentrated them near Barcelona. As the French withdrew, they were followed up by Bentinck's army of 28,000 Spanish, British, Germans, and Italians. Suchet resolved to strike at Adam's advance guard near Ordal with 12,000 soldiers while Charles Mathieu Isidore Decaen's 7,000 men advanced from the northeast. After Adam's defeat, Bentinck abandoned Vilafranca and fell back to Tarragona. Soon after, he resigned his command. Suchet's victory did not salvage the French position in Catalonia. As his troops were steadily siphoned away to defend eastern France, the marshal was forced to retreat to the Pyrenees, leaving behind several garrisons. These were picked off one by one until only Barcelona remained in French hands at the end of the conflict. ==Background== After the Siege of Valencia ended with a Spanish capitulation on 9 January 1812,〔Smith, 373〕 the victorious French army was temporarily halted by the illness of Marshal Louis Gabriel Suchet. The withdrawal of troops for Emperor Napoleon's planned invasion of Russia made additional conquests out of the question.〔Gates, 325〕 Suchet, suffering from strategic overstretch, remained fairly quiet that year. On 21 July 1812, one of his division commanders, General of Division Jean Isidore Harispe drubbed General José O'Donnell's Spanish army at the First Battle of Castalla. This persuaded Thomas Maitland to abandon his amphibious invasion of Catalonia and land his small Anglo-Allied army at Spanish-controlled Alicante instead. That summer and fall, Arthur Wellesley, Marquess Wellington defeated the French at the Battle of Salamanca, captured Madrid, and was subsequently driven back to Portugal after the Siege of Burgos. During these important events Suchet and Maitland remained mostly inactive.〔Gates, 363-364〕 After Maitland became ill in September, he was replaced in turn by Generals John Mackenzie, William Henry Clinton, James Campbell, and John Murray, 8th Baronet.〔Glover, 270〕 The last-named general repulsed Suchet's attack at the Battle of Castalla on 13 April 1813, but the overly cautious Murray withdrew after his victory.〔Smith, 414〕 At the prompting of Wellington, Murray mounted a sea-borne attack in June. In the Siege of Tarragona, Murray's timidity caused him to pass up a chance to conquer the weakly defended port. Fearing relief efforts by Suchet and General of Division David-Maurice-Joseph Mathieu de La Redorte, he ordered a hasty retreat, needlessly abandoning 18 heavy siege cannons. Murray was immediately superseded by Lord Bentinck.〔Glover, 270-275〕 Wellington's decisive victory at the Battle of Vitoria on 21 June 1813 made it impossible for Suchet to hold onto the provinces of Valencia and Aragon. Severely harassed by Francisco Espoz y Mina's guerillas, General of Brigade Marie Auguste Paris abandoned Saragossa on 10 July and fled over the Pyrenees to France.〔Gates, 405-406〕 Suchet evacuated the city of Valencia on 5 July〔Miró, ''Combat of the Ordal Cross''〕 and deliberately pulled back to Tarragona, leaving several French garrisons in his wake. Largely untroubled by Bentinck, the French marshal dismantled the fortifications of Tarragona and fell back toward Barcelona.〔 Suchet paused in his retreat at Vilafranca at the end of July. After staying there about one month, the French withdrew to the Llobregat River. Cautiously, Bentick moved forward to occupy the abandoned territory, reaching Vilafranca on 5 September.〔 At length, the British general linked with Francisco Copons y Navia so that he controlled 28,000 troops distributed between Tarragona, Vilafranca del Penedès, and Ordal.〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Battle of Ordal」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|