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The 4th Siege of Badajoz took place from July to October 1658 during the Portuguese Restoration War. It was an attempt by a huge Portuguese army under the command of Joanne Mendes de Vasconcelos, governor of Alentejo, to capture the Spanish city of Badajoz, which was the headquarters of the Spanish Army of Extremadura. The fortifications of Badajoz were essentially medieval and considered vulnerable by the Portuguese, and had already been attacked by them three times during this war.〔White, p. 68〕 So in 1658, Mendes de Vasconcelos gathered an army at Elvas and advanced on Badajoz. The city was poorly defended and the Spanish troops under the command of Francisco de Tuttavilla, Duke of San Germán, looked principally to their own survival until a Spanish relief expedition could be mounted. The Portuguese forces launched a direct assault on the town, hoping initially to capture a key fort, San Cristóbal, but after 22 days of unsuccessful attack, the Portuguese abandoned this plan and began to build a circumvallation wall around Badajoz instead, to try to isolate the city. These plans received a boost when they captured a large Spanish defensive installation outside Badajoz, the Fort of San Miguel, but were unable to use this platform successfully against Badajoz itself. The siege lasted for four months, during which time one-third of the Portuguese troops either died (mainly from the plague) or deserted.〔 The arrival of a relief army, under King Philip IV of Spain's favorite don Luis de Haro in October, lifted the siege. Mendes de Vasconcelos, the Portuguese commander, was stripped of his rank and imprisoned for his failure. Taking advantage of this failure, D. Luis de Haro, invaded Portugal and besieged Elvas, the main defensive system of Portugal - where the Portuguese army that had besieged Badajoz took refuge and was suffering a second catastrophic plague. A small relief army was improvised by the Portuguese which inflicted a crushing defeat to the Spanish army at the decisive battle of the Lines of Elvas (14 January 1659).〔''Facing the imminent arrival of an army led by D. Luis de Haro, the Portuguese troops opted by withdrawing to Elvas and waiting for the Spanish.The confrontation occurred in January 1659, and was a thunderous disaster to D. Luis…the military setback, which added to the disastrous situation of the Netherlands, forced Madrid to seek peace with France.'' in Valladares, Rafael- ( ''La Rebelión de Portugal 1640-1680'' ), Junta de Castilla Y León, Consejería de Educación y Cultura, 1998, ( ''page 163'' )〕 This way, the Portuguese independence was granted while the Spanish reached military advantage in the secondary front of war, Minho and Galicia. ==Background== After the death of John IV of Portugal in 1656, various Spanish offensives were launched against Portuguese territory, mainly from Extremadura, but also from Galicia, where a second front was opened to force the Portuguese to divide their forces.〔González López, p. 158〕 The Spanish Army of Extremadura, recently reinforced with many veterans of the war against France, was commanded by Francisco de Tuttavilla, Duke of San German, who appointed Gaspar Téllez-Girón y Sandoval, Duke of Osuna, as general of artillery and his second-in-command.〔González López, p. 159〕 In 1657 they laid siege to the Portuguese town of Olivença with 8,000 soldiers and 29 cannons and occupied the town, despite a desperate attempt by the Count of San Lorenzo, military governor of Alentejo, to dislodge them by launching a surprise attack himself on the Spanish town of Badajoz. Mourão fell into Spanish hands shortly thereafter.〔 San Lorenzo was then dismissed from his command and replaced by dom Joanne Mendes de Vasconcelos, who easily managed to retake both Mourão and Olivença in the following months, since their Spanish garrisons had been considerably diminished in order to move troops to face the French armies in Catalonia.〔Aldama/González, p. 368–369〕 Mendes de Vasconcelos, encouraged by his successes, promised the Portuguese Queen Regent Luisa de Guzmán that he would capture the town of Badajoz, headquarters of the Spanish Army of Extremadura and therefore the most important Spanish fortress near the Portuguese frontier.〔Aldama/González, p. 369〕 The Count of Sabugal suggested that an offensive in the north, to conquer the Galician city of Tui, would be easier, due to the mild climate of the coast, and suggested that this would also be strategically more beneficial as it would secure the province of Entre Douro e Minho. But the queen and her ministers preferred Mendes de Vasconcelos' plan.〔Ericeira, p. 93〕 He was given command of an army consisting of 14,000 infantry and 3,000 cavalry troops with a train of 20 cannons and 2 mortars, gathered in the main fortress of Elvas. Mendes de Vasconcelos' second-in-command was the recently appointed Maestro de Campo General dom Rodrigo de Castro, a friend of the Count of Soure, Vasconcelos' enemy in the court, which was a cause of friction between them.〔Ericeira, p. 94〕 The Spanish fortress town of Badajoz was at that time garrisoned by 4,000 infantry and 2,000 cavalry soldiers. The military governor of the fortress was the Marquis of Lanzarote, Diego Paniagua y Zúñiga,〔 but the command of the army belonged to the Duke of San German, who had retreated to Badajoz after the loss of Olivenza, which he had briefly attempted to retake.〔 The infantry was led by don Diego Caballero de Illescas, the tercios by don Rodrigo de Múgica y Butrón, the cavalry by the Duke of Osuna, and the artillery by don Gaspar de la Cueva, brother of the Viceroy of New Spain.〔 The defenses of the town consisted essentially of an old Moorish Alcazaba and a medieval wall dating from the Almohad period, reinforced since the outbreak of the war in 1640 by various newly built bulwarks and ravelins.〔Villalon, p. 120〕 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「Siege of Badajoz (1658)」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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